That night I didn’t kneel to pray. There was no hope. I didn’t ask for miracles, or forgiveness, which perhaps was a miracle. I curled up in bed on my side and prayed the “Now I lay me down to sleep” prayer of my childhood, complete with God-blesses, then tucked my hands securely under my pillow. That was when the baby came alive, paddling and kicking so that my belly looked like a bag in which an animal was trapped. A heel distended the skin below my rib cage. I reached out and pinched it between my thumb and forefinger, holding fast to the tender back of the baby’s foot for a moment, feeling the surreal tremble of flesh and bone and muscle. Then it slipped from my grip. I rolled onto my back and palpated my abdomen, searching for some part of my baby to grab on to, something to touch. I feared this was love—a guilty pleasure. I was betraying my father. How could I embrace a future with this child as the sun, and not him?
When I awoke the next morning, my whole body ached, as though during the night unseen forces had been wrestling and tugging on my limbs. I pulled on a sleeveless red cotton dress ticked with black sunflowers that I’d packed on a whim. I hadn’t worn it all summer because it clung to my breasts and accentuated my belly, but now I didn’t care. I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. Quickly I cleaned out my drawers and packed my things away. If there is no God, then everything is permitted. I wondered if God had sent Sister Corrina to test me, if he was playing with me like a bug, a potbellied bumblebee, legs bowed and woolly with pollen, wobbling toward the anesthetizing pleasure and forgetfulness of reality’s bell jar.
As I zipped up my bag, a finger of sweat traced my spine from neck to tailbone, and my hips ached under my weight. How my hips hurt as they spread, widening like a wishbone. I shoved my feet into tight sandals, my feet and ankles so swollen as to appear boneless. The baby lay low and motionless in my body, still and heavy as a stone.
I had an hour before my taxi picked me up. I dragged my bag downstairs. The convent, though silent, felt ominous, unsafe. My only refuge was the outdoors. I’d lost. I’d accomplished nothing.
Now that I knew about the beer traps it seemed I was destined to step in them. After narrowly avoiding overturning three cups secreted in the grass, their soggy, slumberous occupants lolling like nihilistic sybarites in an alcoholic hot tub, I made it down to the water. There they were, the entire sisterhood, at least a dozen barefoot nuns, some in their gray habits, others in knee-length white T-shirts and footless black tights, huddled together on the dock. It was obvious by the way that they clung to each other, giggling nervously, that few of them could swim. I watched as they strapped on safety-orange life vests and removed their headdresses, bobby pins pinched between their lips, shyly exposing themselves as redheads, blondes, and brunettes.
Mother Saint Agnes lined the sisters up on the dock. One by one the nuns crossed themselves, pinched their noses, and, with extreme reluctance, plopped into the deep, gasping and shrieking as they hit the water, their habits and T-shirts ballooning around them, then slowly deflating, swirling around their waists as they bobbed to the water’s surface. The most frightened held fast to the dock like gray barnacles, not trusting God; the others headed for the shallows or treaded water furiously, the Sound churning with the music of their kicks, the slap of their hands beating the water. Overhead a pair of gulls screamed over the shrieks of the sisters. The echo of their laughter imprinted on the air.
I watched Sister Corrina dog-paddle into the eel grass, emerging from the water, her sopping habit hitched up to her knees. I couldn’t help staring. Across the width of her thigh was a long gash, fresh and red, as though she’d gartered her leg with barbed wire. She made her way toward me, stopping only for a moment to cocoon herself in a blue beach towel. Under Mother Saint Agnes’s gaze, she was tentative, but determined to speak to me.
“So, do you swim?” I asked, my voice wavering, remembering how she’d held my face. I kicked off my sandals, then wished I hadn’t, as droplets of water fell from her wet body onto the tops of my feet.
“Swim?” she protested breathlessly. “Oh, no. I can’t,” she said, staring out at the Sound, her lashes beaded with salt water.
I felt dizzy, holding on tightly to the arms of my lawn chair.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“You’re fine,” she said, casting her attention back to the water. “You’re going to have a baby.”
“You’re scared of the water?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine she was afraid of anything.
Mother Saint Agnes called out to Sister Corrina, waving her back to the fold.
“You will never be alone,” Sister Corrina said. Her hand reached out quickly to touch my hip, then pulled away. I’d wanted her blessing, but it wasn’t that sort of touch.
I walked toward the water’s edge. The rocks were wet and slippery with algae, and the cold singed the bottoms of my feet.
“What are you doing?” Sister Corrina asked nervously, her teeth tugging hard on the edge of her loose purple nail. “It’s not safe,” she said, her eyes fixed on my belly, the black sunflowers rippling with the baby’s movement.
“It would feel good,” I said. “Wouldn’t it?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “Don’t go.”
I gasped as the water spread my dress out around my hips and lifted me up.
“You shouldn’t be swimming,” Sister Corrina said, reaching out to grab my shoulder, to pull me back onshore.
“What should I do?” I said as the current picked me off my feet, pulling me into the heart of the Sound. “For God’s sake, what should I do?”
WILD KINGDOM
“Oh, this is silly, isn’t it?” my mother said, as she dumped out some sticky buds on a Gourmet magazine she had balanced on her knees. “Obviously, your dad can’t smoke,” she said, separating weed from seeds. “Sometimes, though”—she smiled—“I blow it into his mouth.”
Sometimes I blow it into his mouth.
I had no idea, when I asked after the quarter-ounce of Yellow Man’s Paradise that I’d given Dad as a Father’s Day gift, that Mom would tramp upstairs, rifle her underwear drawer, and return with the dope, stashed in a caviar tin, and some rolling papers.
I had no idea my mother could roll a joint, really roll a joint. I was amazed at her nimble-fingered joint wizardry.
“Should we do it?” Mom asked, waggling the little jar of pot. “Do you want to try some? This stuff, my, it’s so strong. We could never, if we lived to be—”
“Sure,” I said.
My little sister, Dee, now attorney-at-law, let her jaw drop. Really drop, like in the cartoons. You could have driven a truck into that mouth. Two shots at the bar had only stoked her zeal for truth and justice. Except when it came to speed limits. But something like drugs, that was non-negotiable. I hoped Mom didn’t pick up on Dee’s shock. I didn’t want anything to make her feel bad, or break the spell.
“Huh,” Dee said. She didn’t want to be left out, but she was floored. Here was our mother, a former leader of the Bluebirds, who used to wash my mouth out with soap for swearing so regularly that all our soap bars bore my tooth marks, not only putting a finishing lick on a fat spliff, but getting our dad stoned. Even at twenty-five, Dee still saw our parents as the gods we imagined them to be as children. She tucked her feet up under her and crossed her arms against her chest, staring at her perfect pedicure, each toenail shiny and pink as the lip of a seashell. She shook her head so her straight corn-colored hair fell across her face, then stared at the unlit joint dangling from my lips with the suspicion of a little sister used to being duped. She acted like I’d planned all this.
I hadn’t, but for the first time in a long while I was enjoying myself.
Or rather, I had been enjoying myself. Now, Mom and Dee are hiding out in the car and I’m hunting snack food in the smoked-meat-and-motor-oil aisle of the Mobil Convenience Shop. So stoned I am bounding up and down the aisles with the gait and authority of an overblown pool
toy, my ass seeming to rise up behind me, threatening to tip me over onto my face.
Home was nice. The three of us lounged out on the back deck in our chaises drinking a nice Sauvignon Blanc. In an imitation of casualness, my mother leaned over the arm of my chair to light the joint. As our arms touched, her hands cupped around the flame, a ripple of excitement spread through my body, a gulping giggly terror. As the flame ignited paper, I imagined we were in a bar, she was the brave soldier, I was the daffy showgirl, and Dee was the inscrutable professor recording our every moment. Our mother was strong, in control, she would always protect us, but what did she want in return? Did she want anything? Anything I could give her?
When Mom handed Dee the joint, she took it, with only a second’s hesitation, and toked away. This was our mother, after all. We smoked, and coughed, and smoked, giggling like kids getting away with murder. We had all afternoon to sober up before the men came home. Neither my father nor Billy would ever need to know. I was happy to have them both out of the house, though I was a little jealous that my father had asked Billy to go to the Kentucky Derby party with him. Just because it had been an all-male event for twenty-five years didn’t mean I didn’t want my father to invite me.
My father, to my surprise, had liked Billy from the beginning, despite the facts that he’d never mowed grass, or been hunting, or seen one ancient ruin. Despite the fact that he was a musician who only worked sporadically doing studio work, despite the fact that I told him I’d fallen in love with Billy at first sight. Unlike with other boys, there had been no initiation, no long silences or trick questions asked under a bamboozlement of alcohol. He’d taught Billy how to rebuild a carburetor and repair a cane chair, and the two of them had rebuilt the back deck and reshingled the roof. Sometimes I felt like my father had just given me to Billy. Really given me away.
But it was good that Billy was going. He could drive, and Dad could drink if he felt like it. It would be good company, and maybe they’d even win some money. It was silly to be jealous.
“So, this party is in Greenville?” my mother had said this morning, emptying the dishwasher, not looking at my father. I’d heard her ask my father a variation of Do You Know Where You Are Going at least three times this morning.
“God damn it, Grace,” my father said, shaking his head, then he got distracted by the fact that the cuffs of his khakis were pooling on the tops of his loafers. He’d lost more weight.
Billy came galloping through the kitchen with Annabelle in his arms. He dashed into the living room, tossed her, squealing, onto the sofa, and kissed her baby stomach. When Dee and I were small, we played on that sofa with our father. Every night after dinner we’d beg him to do the Crab. The object was to scare us. Dee and I would play on the sofa as though it were a raft, and my father would lie on the floor pretending to be a giant crab. We’d dangle our legs over the side, and he’d pretend to be asleep, finally when we got bold enough to actually touch our toes to the carpet he’d attempt to grab us by the ankles and drag us down onto the floor and tickle us. We’d scream until we were hoarse.
Last night my father had been been lying on the floor in the living room with Annabelle asleep on his chest, his eyes closed. I couldn’t even look at them.
“Check it out,” Billy said. “What do you think, is it me, or what?” He had on an old blue-and-green madras jacket of my father’s, one he wore in the sixties, and a little panama hat from the same time, both from the attic. My father laughed. “That’s the spirit. Hey, listen, they’re yours, son. Take ’em.”
We all laughed, covering up his words. This was no time to give anything away.
“All righty, I am ready to take somebody’s money,” Billy said, rubbing his hands together. He picked Annabelle up off the floor and gave her a good-bye kiss. “So, Ev, you’re okay with this, me leaving you with the baby?”
“Of course,” I said. It was a little humiliating how much better Billy was at being a mommy than me.
“I just gave her a bottle, she’s clean, and we’ve got eye rubbing, so she’s probably going to go down soon.”
My mother covered her mouth so Billy couldn’t see her smile. Nobody had figured Billy would take to fatherhood the way he had. It was the job he was born for. I’d joke that it was because he’d been taking care of me for years, and no one would dispute it.
“Okay, so I’ve read her the Elizabeth Bishop poems she likes and that Goodnight Moon you put out, but you know, I think she’s beyond that. She’s very advanced.”
“Of course,” my father said. “We’d expect nothing less, right? It would be a shame to throw such a beautiful baby back.”
“Billy, honey,” my mother started, but my dad grabbed him by the arm. “We’ll see you later.”
Certainly my father would have wanted no part of this dope-smoking escapade. It was a matter of dignity. No matter how sick he was, he was still our father, and in his mind fathers didn’t do drugs with their children, regardless of their age. So even though I’d watched him hold the Ziploc up to the light, examining the fat green buds graced with sticky yellow flowers, even though I’d heard him upstairs violently puking, smelled vomit on his breath, watched him refuse my mother’s offer to make him anything he wanted—a grilled cheese, a chocolate milk shake—listened to him reply, “I can’t, I can’t—this freaking nausea is going to kill me,” I was to act as though the weed didn’t exist, as though none of this was happening.
The only part Dad wanted to discuss was the buy. Mary Beth had made the buy. “Let me, darling,” she insisted. “I don’t mind. Really.” I was relieved. Even though we hadn’t spoken in months, probably since she came to see the baby six months ago, she was there for me. She’d offered, knowing of course what a chicken I was. “Tell me again,” he’d say, like a little kid eager to hear a tale of derring-do. So, I’d tell him about how Mary Beth had gone on an adventure to a trendy architecture firm in midtown that did a little drug business on the side. Depending on my mood, I sometimes improvised a fire on the subway tracks, a man who could have been an undercover cop following her at a distance.
“They really had a big binder filled with swatches of various strains of marijuana inside?”
“And hash, and Thai stick.”
“Thai stick! Amazing.”
Here he’d pause. “And they gave her the pot”—a special blend to curb nausea and give you the munchies—“in one of those hard paper tubes architects carry blueprints in…. And nobody suspects a thing—she took the subway, no fear of drug-sniffing dogs…”
“The risks I take for you,” I said, even though it was Mary Beth who had, it seemed happily, assumed any risk, not me.
“Amazing,” he said.
While we were sitting out on the deck, we heard someone start up a lawn mower, and my mother began to laugh.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if the neighbors dropped by, or the lawn boy showed up?”
“Is he cute?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The lawn boy.”
“Oh my God,” Dee said, scrambling to sit up straight in her chair. “No way. Are you serious?” Then she began to giggle. “Wait, I’m a lawyer. I’ll get us off.”
“Oh my, this is good, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ve laughed like this since, um…” my mother said, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her linen blouse, her train of thought derailed in smoke.
Nothing could touch us. For the first time since before Annabelle was born, I felt relaxed. Nothing existed but the puffy white clouds, somersaulting over our heads like fat puppies.
“Look, baby animals,” I said. My mouth stretched into a huge, stupid grin. Nothing hurt. We were unreachable. Then the phone rang.
Blame the Shackleford Zoo, aka Wild Animal Drive and Conservation Park, for ruining our afternoon. The party planners they’d employed to choreograph tomorrow night’s gala benefit had hit an impasse on table placement, and my mother’s presence was requested—no, demanded. The benefit, which would enable the zoo to
purchase two adult Borneo orangutans, was my mother’s baby. The zoo was deeply in debt, due to low attendance and the fact that the owner, Jip Slingluff, purchased wild animals the way some people bought fancy clothes or stereo equipment. All it took was a photograph of the awesome, highly photogenic, marmalade-colored giants of the ape world, Mr. Ya Ya and Booster, to turn Slingluff’s head. Unfortunately, a zoo in Ohio—one with deep pockets and a snappy monorail—was equally in thrall to these gentle beasts. Jip Slingluff believed my mother was his best hope.
Because there are no secrets in a small town, he knew that two years ago, while in Borneo at a game preserve (the last trip my parents had taken, and probably ever would), my mother had had an ecstatic experience while bottle-feeding a baby orangutan orphaned by poachers. As far as I know, it was her first and last epiphany. “It was magical,” she’d said, her eyes all moony.
“Magical,” my father agreed, but it wasn’t the orangutans so much as the rain forest that enthralled my father, the opportunity to discover orchids he’d only ever read about. There were orchids with petals mimicking human flesh, orchids exuding the scent of meat and honey, orchids whose flowers sported petals like long hairy ponytails, and others whose faces looked like wild boars. He wanted them all. My father believed he could induce these highly temperamental plants, which often refused to bloom for periods of nearly a decade, not only to grow but to propagate in his own greenhouse. He was patient. He misted and fertilized, cultivating plants whose leaves were plain, not even slightly decorative, and whose roots grew wormlike out the top of the pots. He clipped and turned them to or from the sun, hoping that sometime years from now they might send up a spike and bloom for a few weeks. Half the time it was impossible to tell if they were alive or dead.
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