James came over and climbed onto Ace’s lap, and Ace bounced his leg up and down without thinking, to give the baby a horsey ride.
“It doesn’t feel the way you’d think it would,” he said finally.
Nora sat down at the table. “Your mother made a cake,” she said.
Ace looked at her, angry. The nerve along his jaw twitched. “Yeah?” he said. “How come everybody knows so much about my goddamned life?”
“It’s vanilla fudge,” Nora said.
Ace grinned in spite of himself. “Oh, really?”
“Listen, go home,” Nora said. “She worked on it all day yesterday. She had the oven on even though it was ninety-six. She put it in the cabinet over the refrigerator so you wouldn’t see it.”
Ace put the baby down on the floor and stared at Nora. “Are you kicking me out?” he asked.
“Do I have to?” Nora said.
“Does she?” Ace asked Billy.
Billy looked at his mother and tried to hear what she was thinking. He strained to pick something up over the sound of James rattling pots and pans and the dog barking in the backyard, but nothing came through. His mother looked calm as glass; she had her hands around a tumbler of cold lemonade and she was staring at Ace.
“She won’t kick you out,” Billy said, hoping it was true.
“That just goes to show how much you know, buddy,” Nora told Billy. She thought about the Laundromat on Eighth Avenue and the wild lilies from her grandfather’s yard that had refused to grow on her windowsill, she thought about her children asleep in their beds when the stars came out, and then she realized that she no longer heard the drone of the Southern State, it had become the sound of a river, smooth and constant and blue. She closed her eyes when Ace got up from the table, and after the first few steps he took across the kitchen floor, she couldn’t even hear him anymore.
It was dark now, but the temperature was still just as high as it had been at noon. Ace noticed the car as soon as he stepped out of Nora’s house, and he stood there on her stoop, wondering why it was parked in his driveway. He saw that his father was leaning up against the front grille. The light of the Saint’s cigarette looked like a firefly. The car was a blue Ford with whitewall tires. Ace loosened his tie. He’d put Nora’s grandfather’s watch in his pocket and it was heavy, like a stone. He cut across the lawn and grass stuck to the soles of his shoes.
“Your mother’s been waiting,” the Saint said when Ace walked to the driveway. “She made a cake.”
“So I hear,” Ace said.
He went to the driver’s side and ran his hand over the paint.
“Four on the floor,” the Saint said to him as he smoked his cigarette.
Ace nodded and looked inside the open driver’s window. “Eight-cylinder,” the Saint said. “I rebuilt it.”
Leaning against the car, the Saint looked smaller than usual, more clenched up, as though you could see his muscles working under his skin.
“Pop,” Ace said.
“I know you wanted a Chevy, but believe me, you’ll get better mileage on this,” the Saint said.
Ace wanted to put his arms around his father, but instead he came to stand beside him and leaned on the car’s grille. They could see the lights inside the house; the globes of the pole lamp in the living room formed three perfect white moons.
“I always thought you’d be the one to work with me; that’s what I wanted, but that’s not the way it turned out,” the Saint said.
Ace could hear that his father’s breathing was strained.
“Look, Pop,” he said. “I’ve been saving up for a car. I’ve got enough money.”
The Saint threw his cigarette on the ground and stomped on it. “It’s the one thing I can give you!” he said.
“All right,” Ace said, frightened.
“Jesus Christ!” the Saint said, turning to look at him, and looking at him so deeply that Ace took a step backward. “God damn it,” the Saint said, wounded. “Can’t you just take the damn car!”
Ace put his arms around his father and noticed what he would have known long before if he had only looked; after all this time he was now taller than the Saint.
SOMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT JAMES WOKE UP. HE opened his eyes, but he didn’t make a peep. His stuffed bear was with him in the crib, and he stroked the bear’s face and his glass eyes. Through the screen window he could hear the first cicadas; he could see a few bright stars. He closed his eyes and the stars disappeared; he opened them and there they were again, set into a black bowl above his house.
James was now twenty months old, and he loved to dance. Whenever his mother put on her Elvis records James clapped his hands and lifted first one foot and then the other; when he was very daring, he would pick up both feet at the same time and hop like a bunny and then his mother would scoop him up and kiss his neck and tell him he was wonderful. He had a passion for lime-flavored Jell-O and graham crackers and hiding behind doors, especially when he heard his mother calling to him and he could see her in a crack in the door as she looked worriedly for him. He liked to get the deck of cards when he went to Marie’s house to be baby-sat and let all the cards fall to the floor in a storm, then carefully pick them up, one by one. He liked to sit on Marie’s lap and have her sing “Clap hands, clap hands till Daddy comes home” in her smoky voice that sounded like a friendly frog. He could now understand everything that was said to him, even when he made a mess in Billy’s room and Billy said, “Bug off, buster!” He understood “sweetie pie” and “Bring me your shoes.” He could speak, but aside from a few words—Mama, Marie, doggy, Twinkle, nose, hi, butter, one two three—everything he knew refused to come out as words, and whenever that happened he stamped his feet and lay down on the floor clutching Googa, and then he would feel much better.
He loved to look around his room, especially through the wooden slats of his crib. When he woke early, or in the middle of the night, he always made sure that everything was still the same. Still the lamp on the dresser, the toy box in the corner, the red-and-white rug in the center of the floor, the fringes of which he liked to chew on sometimes, when no one was looking. Tonight, while everyone else was asleep, his room was exactly as it had been when he’d gone to bed. Because it was still dark, he knew that if he called out his mother wouldn’t give him a bottle, he was too old for that. She would only come to the doorway and say Ssh, but he experimented by banging his hand against the crib. He banged harder, then began to kick with his feet. He heard someone get up, and then footsteps in the hallway, and he knew from the sound of nails clicking on the wood that it was the dog.
Rudy stood outside the door, breathing hard and listening, so James kicked harder against his crib, and finally Rudy pushed open the bedroom door with his nose. The dog’s nose was wet and black and his fur was black and wheat-colored. James sat up in his crib, holding onto Googa and his blankie, and when the dog came over he stuck his fingers through the slats. Rudy let himself be prodded, then stuck his nose between the slats and pushed the baby’s hand away. James took his blankie and threw it over his own head.
Rudy stood on his back legs and leaned into the crib to pull the blanket off with his teeth, then he dropped the blanket onto the mattress. The dog sat down beside the crib and let the baby touch his big, black nose.
“Nose,” James said.
They stared at each other in the darkened room. The sound of the Southern State was faint, almost watery. Rudy nudged the baby until he lay back down. James reached for his blankie and hugged it, still staring into the dog’s eyes. James smelled good, like milk, and the dog licked his face through the slats.
Cool night air came in through the window, and the grass smelled sweet. When the neighborhood was a potato farm, rabbits used to appear between the raised rows at dusk, and they stayed until long past midnight, digging in the soft earth for their supper. Now there were only stuffed bunnies in toy boxes, although sometimes when Rudy went into Nora’s backyard he dug deeper and deeper until he
found a potato that had grown in spite of the lawn above it.
Rudy sat by the crib until the baby moved his thumb into his mouth and closed his eyes. Then he got up and went to the rug and circled until he found the exact right spot and he lay down, his head on his paws. He kept his eyes open and listened to the sound of human breathing, a sound so helpless it could make even a dog shed tears. Beneath the sound of breathing was the rustle of moths hitting against the window screen, the creak of the floorboards settling, the sound of a window shade in another room flapping against a wooden sill. Sometimes, on nights when there was a full moon and the whole world turned silver, or on black nights, when he could have slipped through the shadows and in between the parked cars more quickly than any human feet, the dog felt something in his blood that urged him to run. He could have scooped up those bunnies between the rows of potatoes with one snap of his jaws and eaten them whole. He could have outrun any car on the Southern State and if anyone had tried to hold him back he could have cracked a femur in two, so that pieces of bone flew into the air. If he’d wanted to, he could have leapt up and knocked out the screen window with one push of his huge head and the fences in the backyards could never have held him back. But the sound of human breathing made him stay on the red-and-white rag rug. It didn’t matter that he could run faster than any man, or if somewhere there were still rabbits who put down their ears and trembled in the dark. Even when he was asleep he was ready for the whistle or the clap of human hands that might wake him. He longed for the call; in his dreams when he was running only inches away from the moon, a full moon, white enough to blind a man in seconds, he was ready to be claimed by the person he belonged to.
In the bedroom, where he lay beside Nora, Ace knew that he would never love another woman the way he loved her. She was asleep, but he couldn’t leave her alone. He ran his hands along her arms, her breasts, and then her belly. There were stretch marks across her belly and hips from carrying her children; bands of devotion Ace could not, and might never, understand. When he asked her to go with him, she told him to shut up and kiss her and stop wasting their time. And he supposed she was right; now that he had her grandfather’s watch he was amazed to see how quickly time passed.
The night before, when he had cleaned out his room, he’d found only enough possessions worth taking to fill one small suitcase. The Saint and Jackie had stayed late at the station, sharing a pizza out of its box and cleaning the windows in the office with Windex. This way there would be no good-byes, and Ace understood that, he actually appreciated it. His mother was not so easy; she wept in the kitchen as she fixed him two roast beef sandwiches and a tin of cookies to take along. She threw her arms around him when he came in with his suitcase and pretended she wasn’t crying. When Marie finally let him go, Ace packed up the Ford the Saint had given him and, with Rudy beside him, drove to a field beside Dead Man’s Hill. He’d planned to leave right then, but when he saw the entry ramp to the Southern State, he left the car parked and walked back to Nora’s. Her door was unlocked and she’d been waiting for him in the kitchen with the glass of water she hadn’t given him the first time he’d come to her house.
Now it was morning, just dawn, but morning all the same. He’d done it, he’d stayed the whole night through and seen the way she looked before she opened her eyes, the way her black hair streaked along the white pillowcase. He watched her sleep, then got up and pulled on his clothes. He went to the window and lifted one slat of the Venetian blinds to look at his house; his mother was probably already fixing coffee, his father was in the shower, Jackie was reaching for his freshly pressed uniform, which hung in his closet. As far as they were concerned, Ace was already gone. But he wasn’t. He got himself a cigarette and sat down on the edge of the bed. He would think about Nora every time he saw a woman wearing a charm bracelet, every time he had his lunch at noon or took off a woman’s blouse, and when he drove across the desert on his way to California, he would pull over to the side of the road and stare into the purple dust and say her name out loud.
He went back to the bed and Nora woke and sat up. She put her arms around him and leaned her face against his back, then reached for the cigarette in his hand and took a drag, before stubbing it out in the ashtray on her night table.
“Nora,” Ace said.
“I’m going to plant sunflowers today,” Nora told him. “All around the patio. I’m going to do the laundry and then I have to go food shopping. We have no bread.”
She kept her arms around Ace and he leaned back toward her, until she pulled away.
“Whole-wheat bread,” Nora said.
All through June there had been a troop of large black ants in Nora’s kitchen and she couldn’t seem to get rid of them, not even when she washed the counters with a mixture of garlic and wild marjoram, the way her grandfather always did. The ants were fearless; they’d jump into the sugar bowl or even into your coffee cup, and Marie McCarthy had told Nora that everyone in the neighborhood had them in June and that the only way to be rid of them was to put out ant poison and be done with it. So Nora had put out poison in the little tins she saved from frozen chicken pot pies, making certain that the tins were far out of the baby’s reach, and the ants started to die right away.
It was amazing how fast they could die and how many of them there were; she had to sponge them off the counters and sweep them into a dustpan so James wouldn’t pop them in his mouth. The man at the hardware store had promised Nora that all her ants would be dead in twelve hours, but she had expected them to slink off somewhere and die quietly, not turn onto their backs and wave their legs and litter her floor and make her feel like a murderess. It was clear the ants knew something horrible was going on, because the ones who were still mobile were frantic, ignoring the sugar bowl and the sticky cookie James had left on his highchair. They made a line along the window ledge above the sink, racing back and forth. Nora got a newspaper and rolled it up, planning to kill them all quickly, and then she realized what they were doing. The healthy ones and the ones who were already in the grip of the poison were racing back and forth to their nest in the window ledge, trying desperately to save their eggs. All along the counter by the sink there were tiny yellow eggs, translucent as rice paper, delicate enough to disintegrate as soon as Nora touched them with her finger.
Nora stood at the counter and wept as the ants dragged more and more unsalvageable eggs out from their nest. She wept as she brushed the eggs into a paper plate and took them out to the backyard, where she mixed them into the earth in the place where she would plant her sunflowers. She sat out there for a long time, perched on the border of bricks Mr. Olivera had carefully placed around the patio, and when she was done crying she knew she’d be able to watch Ace put on his boots.
When he forced himself to leave the bedroom, he found the dog waiting for him by the front door, and Ace snapped on his leash. They went through the backyards and along the fences, and because they traveled as the crow flies they got to the parkway in no time. Ace let Rudy off his leash, and they took off for the Ford parked on the other side of Dead Man’s Hill, running until they finally reached the place where there were no more chain-link fences, where the air was as sweet as it used to be when there was clover and tall, purple lupine and Dead Man’s Hill was covered with small wild roses that bloomed for only one week out of the year.
ON THE LAST SUNDAY IN JUNE, NORA AND JAMES went into the backyard with two spoons and a packet of sunflower seeds. It was a beautiful day, hot and clear, with high, white clouds that looked like popcorn. After a lunch of tunafish and chocolate milk, Nora settled James in his stroller, to let him nap while they walked. When she stopped in the driveway to light a cigarette she saw Donna Durgin pull up in an unfamiliar car. Donna honked the horn three times and looked at her old house, but nothing happened. Donna leaned on the horn again, and Nora headed for the car and went around to the driver’s window. She tapped on it and Donna jumped. When Donna recognized Nora, she rolled down her window.
“You’re wearing black,” Nora said. “You look fantastic.”
Donna smiled and adjusted her black headband. She had on a black cotton sweater and tight black slacks; her blond hair was cut short and curled around her face.
“I’m picking up my kids,” Donna said.
“Good for you,” Nora said.
“I get them every Sunday and he knows I come at one.”
“He probably wants to make you squirm because you look so great,” Nora said. Nora reached her hand into the car and pressed down on the horn and didn’t let up. “That ought to get his attention,” she said.
Robert Durgin opened the front door and pushed the screen ajar. He was wearing an undershirt and jeans and he yelled for Donna to hold her goddamned horses.
“See what I mean?” Nora said.
Donna got out of the car to wait for her kids. She knelt down and tickled James under his chin. “I got lost coming here today,” she said. “I got all confused and forgot what street I was on.”
Donna straightened up and she and Nora leaned against the car and looked at the house.
“I always wanted to have an arbor right in front of the stoop,” Donna said. “I wanted red roses growing up it.”
“Roses are a pain in the ass,” Nora said, as she stubbed out her cigarette under her shoe. She was surprised when Donna Durgin laughed. “Well, they are,” Nora said. “You’ve got to spray them for aphids and fertilize them like crazy and cut them back before winter and then pray that your kids don’t prick their fingers on the thorns. Sunflowers are better. Come over in August and you’ll see. I’ll have a whole forest of them, they’ll all be six feet tall.”
Both women smiled to think of a ring of yellow flowers, all moving their heads toward the sun.
“I’m going to get my children, too, you know,” Donna said.
Donna’s kids were at the screen door, but Robert was holding them back, giving them some last-minute advice.
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