Dee and I don’t say anything.
“I mean, sometimes I just don’t know what to tell you girls, and what not to tell you,” our mother says, her voice catching.
I reach at my feet for—what? A wrench, a snow scraper? My hand closes around a can, an aerosol can of cheese, and before I can really think that this isn’t at all like Macing an attacker—after all, the windows are up, and cheese isn’t known for its blinding ability—I shoot a ribbon of nacho spread at the windshield. It adheres stickily to the windows, but the baboons don’t react at all. Then, as quickly as they’d appeared, they jump off the car and run skittering for the treetops. Balanced on the back of the largest female is a hijacked hubcap, a big silver bowl that catches the late afternoon light and brightens it.
I stare out the windshield, stuccoed with bright orange snakes of cheese.
“I know I should be angry,” my mother whispers, dreamily watching the baboons tearing up handfuls of grass and throwing them into the hubcap. “But I’m not. I don’t know why. You’d think I might be. You’d think I’d be furious. I just can’t get angry. Who would I be angry at? Tell me. Your father?”
The truck in front of us peels out, leaving us in a cloud of red dust. My mother turns the key in the ignition and steps on the gas, the car lurching forward as though it had just been too frightened to move.
I reach around the seat and put my hand up to Annabelle’s lips, checking her breathing. “Thank God,” I say.
“What?” my mother asks, rummaging in her purse for a pack of sugarless gum.
“That didn’t just happen,” Dee insists. She leans forward wrapping her arms around the headrest of my mother’s seat.
“We could have been killed,” I say.
“This is bad,” Dee says. “Don’t even say killed.”
“Oh, nonsense,” my mother says.
“We could have been scratched,” I offer meekly. “You’ve heard of Ebola, haven’t you?”
My mother hits the brakes again; we’re all jolted forward.
“Shit. What do you want me to do, Evie?” my mother snaps. “Tell me. Tell me, please”
This kind of outburst is so uncharacteristic that both Dee and I are struck dumb. What I want is my father. That’s all. I want him.
After a few silent moments, Dee whimpers, “I want to go home.” When neither my mother nor I respond, she says, “Tell me that we’re not going into that zoo.”
“We’re already there, you idiot,” I snap at her.
“For heaven’s sake, girls, stop it. We’re fine,” my mother says. She rolls down her window, the hot air blowing her hair back and into her face so she can scarcely see.
In the parking lot I suddenly feel sober. Maybe it’s wiping my shameful attempt at self-defense off the inside of the car with aloe baby wipes, or maybe the pot is wearing off, or maybe it’s the weight of Annabelle in my arms. It’s strange, but for some reason my daughter seems more manageable dressed like a bunny. As I try to slip her into the Snugli baby carrier, she wakes and, wailing, beats at the air with her fists. Her eyes run with angry tears. Please, I think, not now. Dee is still in the car, refusing to leave the backseat, her arms wrapped around her knees, staring out the smeary windows of the car like she’s been through some kind of disaster. I let Annabelle scream in the hope that she’ll tire herself out. I take off my sweater and wrap it around my sister’s shoulders. The sun is skulking behind the trees; the banners of clouds now look like bandages.
“Dee? Hello, Dee. Come in, Dee. Do you hear me?” I shake her gently by the shoulder. Her hair is adorned with long skinny braids like a flower child’s.
“What’s up with Mom?” she whispers to me, her gaze fearful. “Is she nuts?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, knotting the sweater under her chin. I will entertain no talk of mutiny. No fissures of dissent will be tolerated. We follow Mom to the death.
My mother appears at my shoulder. “Is she all right?” she asks.
“She’s just fine,” I say. I flash my sister a pull-yourself-together look, then grasp my crying Annabelle’s limp hand. I make her wave at her grandma, like an infant Miss America. I kiss her sticky fingers. I want to make my mother smile, but she just looks rattled.
“I can take care of this,” I say. I root through the diaper bag and locate the sticky bottle of red elixir. I extract a quarter inch, pop the dropper in Annabelle’s howling yap, and squeeze.
“Stop it,” I coo. “Stop it, you bad, bad little girl, I want no trouble from you, no I don’t.” I kiss her head, the soft spot on her skull, her fontanelle, covered in sweet baby velvet. I kiss her chocolate-covered cheeks and taste her salty baby tears mingled with icing.
“Dee?” my mother says again, touching Dee’s shoulder as though she’s not even sure she’s alive.
“I’m staying in the car, it’s the only rational thing to do in this circumstance,” Dee says.
“Well, we’ll miss you,” my mother says. Then, when Dee doesn’t respond, she coos, “It will be five minutes, honey. You can watch the seals. You like the seals. You always have.”
“Here,” she says, sticking out her hand. “I’ll hold your paw.”
“All right,” Dee says, getting out of the car and taking my mother’s hand. “Just don’t leave me anywhere.”
As we enter the zoo proper we are accosted by a friendly group of giant rodents, or rather college-age volunteers dressed up as a raccoon, a rabbit, a chipmunk, and a beaver. These chipper woodland guides spend their days zealously handing out maps and offering assistance to anyone who might require it. I’m sure we look like we require assistance.
“Cease and desist,” Dee says as the beaver approaches us. Clinging to my mother, she stares down at the filthy matted paw he extends toward us. He smells of cigarettes and Brut cologne. I step up and give him a poke in the chest. “Back off, beaver,” I say, as though he were a playground bully.
“There,” a muffled voice says defensively, “the ladies’ room.” He points out the comfort station, then, looking rebuffed and dejected as only a boy in a beaver costume can look, he shuffles off to join his furry friends, who are regarding us with a keen eye, perhaps debating what airborne contagion could cause such red eyes and surliness. Is it possible all three of us could be infected?
The problem, the urgent problem that requires my mother’s attention, is the dinner tables. Just how close should the tables be set up to each exhibit? The big-ticket buyers are closest to the lions and elephants, but the question is just how close they should be. A horsey-looking blonde, one of Delaware’s greatest natural resources, approaches us decked out in a blue pant suit with gleaming epaulets, an outfit so garish, it must have cost a fortune. “You’re here,” the woman brays.
“This must violate some kind of animal-rights law,” Dee says, hands on her hips. “Eating lamb chops near a lion’s den—it’s entrapment. You don’t know what could happen. Boom.”
“Ooh, you make my point perfectly,” the woman says. “This is the proximity concern, Grace.” The woman lowers her voice and takes my mother’s arm in an attempt to draw my mother aside, but Mom won’t follow her. “You see, we’re not covered for such a thing as dry cleaning,” she says, “or what have you.”
“Excuse me?” my mother says. I wonder if Misty of Chincoteague can tell my mother is stoned, and if she can, would she tell anybody?
“Animals are messy.” The woman laughs. “You see my concern, of course.”
“Someone’s nice suit might get trashed,” my mother says, a slightly malicious tinge to her voice. “Here’s an idea, perhaps everyone who paid big money to be up close could get a complimentary slicker, no, a trash bag, to wear over their clothes—how would that be?”
I know what my mother is thinking. Last Saturday night, while driving crosstown to the University Club for dinner, my father shit himself in his linen suit.
The woman stares down her nose at my mother. “Uhhuh,” she says, and glances at her clipboard. �
�All right, then,” she says, setting her equine chin, “I’ll be over there with the hot-hors-d’oeuvres people.”
My mother just stands there. She looks helpless—my father should be here to help her, to protect her. I wonder if my father is still at the party, sipping juleps, cracking jokes. I wonder if he bet on a winner? Is Billy driving him home; is Daddy sleeping in the car? Or is he at home, calling upstairs and down into the basement, looking for us? Waiting for us, wondering where we are? Wondering why we didn’t leave a note?
“Mom,” Dee says, “do it for Booster and Mr. Ha Ha.”
“Ya Ya,” my mother says. “Mr. Ya Ya.”
“Ya. Good,” Dee says.
My mother calls out to a man in overalls and starts directing him as to where to place the tables. I can tell she wants to get the hell out of here.
“Feel my head,” Dee says, leaning heavily against my shoulder. She is cold and clammy, her skin cast with the palest green. Her head looks like a grape.
“You’re fine,” I say.
“Really?”
“Yes,” I snap. “Really.”
She lays the back of her hand against her forehead.
“Stop it. Nobody is sick,” I say.
“I’m going back to the mother ship,” Dee says. “Get it? The car. Mom’s car.”
“Dee, sweetie,” I say, “stay,” and because she is my little sister, and because she knows in her heart she’d be abandoning me and our mother, she stays.
My mother is done in ten minutes. In this time Dee and I make the executive decision to pick up beer on the way home. At least a twelve-pack. Maybe some of those Susan Anton cigarillos.
On the way out we pass Little Borneo, the future home of Mr. Ya Ya and Booster. My mother stops cold, and stares through the mesh that is draped over the fifteen-foot-tall cage. Branches are woven through the bars to give the illusion of jungle. In the back there’s a little shelter made of bent-over branches, a bed of crushed-down leaves, and, up high, a concrete ledge, the pretend canopy. Everything is ready for the happy couple.
“Will I come here?” my mother asks no one in particular. “Will I ever come here?”
On the way home, I keep thinking of my father as he was last weekend, when Billy and I visited. His back was sore, and so he asked me to wash his hair, as I’d once done a long time ago.
“You know, that shower—” he started to say, then stopped.
“No problem,” I said. I wanted it to be me leaning his head into the sink, me staring dumbly as the water plastered his hair flat against his skull, me squirting baby shampoo into my hand and freezing for an instant before I dared to touch his head. A shiver of fear, then thrill, that it’s me he’s asked to wash his hair, me he trusts. We’re that close.
I know he asked me because he knew I wanted to do it.
I know he asked me to spare my mother the hurt.
I know he was afraid he’d slip in the tub.
Afraid.
I turned off the tap and handed him a towel. I turned away as he wrapped it up like a turban.
“Lawrence of Suburbia,” he’d said, striking a pose, his hand shielding his eyes as though our neighbor’s rooftop satellite dish were the burning sun.
My father’s car is in the driveway. Billy and my dad are out on the back deck, an empty bottle of Veuve Cliquot upside down in the ice bucket. The table in front of them is littered with red pistachio shells. Their fingertips are stained pink.
“We didn’t go,” my father fairly crows.
“What?” my mother says. Her eyes light on the champagne. It was supposed to be for pre-dinner cocktails. Every meal is a celebration these days, even though my father doesn’t eat much. He does drink though, rolling the empty wine bottles across the dining-room floor. I haven’t seen him throw a bottle off the deck since Billy’s and my wedding three years ago. Back when we were all happy. I remember him standing there in a tuxedo, making a toast to Billy and me, and then hurling the bottle off the deck and into the woods, where it landed soundlessly. The way they disappeared without a trace, without a sound, made the woods seem like the sea.
“For Christ’s sake, that Derby party is just old farts sitting around swapping liver-failure stories—nobody even watches the race anymore,” my father says. He gets up, goes to the fridge, and gets a beer for himself and one for Billy, who leans against the railing of the deck like a sailor on leave. Dee had only made it as far as the living-room sofa.
“So what did you do?” I ask Billy.
“We went to a bar,” he says. “Watched the race, had a few beers. How’s Annabelle?”
“She’s asleep in the garage. In the car seat, you know, not in a wheelbarrow or anything. You can go see for yourself. I was just about to bring her in.”
“No, no, I’ll get her,” Billy says. He seems eager to escape.
“So where was this bar?” my mother asks, trying to sound nonchalant. She knows they got lost. She knows that my father got confused and didn’t know where he was, he got angry and embarrassed and they just gave up.
“It was in Wilmington. You know, we were driving by and we saw this big-screen TV, and anyhow, it seemed like a good idea, so we parked and went in.”
“Oh,” my mother says, straightening up the counter, which doesn’t need straightening.
“Which bar?” I ask. I too was curious.
“Bottoms Up.” My father is obviously, cracking up. He tosses a nut into his mouth.
“You’re joking,” my mother said. “The topless place?”
“They’ve got a great TV.” My father is obviously enjoying himself.
“You’re not serious,” my mother says, looking horrified. “Oh my God, you are.”
Billy walks through the kitchen with Annabelle asleep in his arms. “She’s really zonked,” he says, hurrying through the kitchen, his head down, avoiding my mother’s stare. My stare. I don’t know what to think, the idea of my father and husband in a titty bar doesn’t make sense. I can’t picture it.
“We had a couple beers, we talked—mostly about you, of course…” my father says, and laughs again. His cheeks are flushed. I wonder if the cancer is in his brain.
“I’m just surprised,” my mother says.
My father offers no explanation, just shrugs.
Mom looks baffled, betrayed even. It’s ridiculous. You know what, I’m glad. I am so glad my father spent his afternoon doing what he pleased, I’m glad he blew off the stiffs and glad he felt footloose, like he was getting away with something. I hope he forgot. I don’t think about Billy.
“So,” my father says. “How was your day, ladies? Do any shoe shopping?”
“Some of us have been working,” my mother snaps. “We had to go to Shackleford and deal with those idiots who are putting on the benefit,” she says. You couldn’t tell she was leaving anything out. She’s good. Still, she looks wiped out, her eyes tired and bloodshot, her hair on end.
“So I guess I can assume you’ll be feeling up to going tomorrow night, huh, Charles?”
“Whatever you like,” he says.
He gets up slowly from his chair. “Evie,” he says, “come with me into the library, I want to talk to you.”
“I’m going to lie down,” my mother says, her voice tight. “Then I’ll make dinner, but right now, I’m lying down.” She marches into the living room and flops down on the sofa across from Dee. Dee is flattened; her arms and legs sprawl out like someone has stepped on her. My mother makes a show of closing her eyes and laying her hand against her forehead. She’ll be asleep in minutes.
From the foot of the stairs, I can hear Annabelle making cranky baby noises. I wonder if she’s woken herself up, or if Billy woke her. I wonder how long it will be before she is crying again. Then I hear Billy start reading to her, and she is quiet.
The walls of the library are tea-colored and decorated with mounted heads of bucks and does, and loot from my parents’ trips abroad. There are bronze statues of Buddha, ebony masks tufted with anima
l hair and straw, signifying fertility and long life, and an exotic arsenal of handsomely carved Indonesian shields streaked with tree sap, bone spears fashioned from the femurs of cassowary birds, and berry-painted blow darts. If war ever erupted in the suburbs, my parents could kick their neighbors’ asses. If it weren’t for the banal squeals of a police-drama car chase emanating from the living room, where both my mother and sister now lie fast asleep, you could imagine you were holed up in a tiny game lodge.
My father settles himself down at the end of the brown leather sofa.
“I’m particularly fond of that one,” I say, pointing over my father’s head to a shield emblazoned with the image of an irate, multifanged, knife-wielding infant.
“Huh, really?” my father says, distracted. It obviously didn’t hold the same sway for him.
I sit in the middle of the sofa, close, but not too close to him.
“So,” he says, smiling, hands folded in his lap. “I’m concerned, not really, but concerned a little about what you’re reading to Annabelle. All this poetry is fine, but kids need stories. Real stories,” he said, his eyes bright. I don’t know if the gleam is from his foray into jiggle heaven or something else.
“All right,” I say. “But I need a drink.” He gets up and pours us both port, an old, old Sandeman he’d bought for his and Mom’s thirtieth wedding anniversary. There is just a little left.
I crane my neck to stare at the wall behind my father, where our family’s personal trophies hang—the bust of a stag, the head of a doe, and racks of antlers. Whenever I’d attack my father and my grandfather, old One-Shot Harry, not only for being brutal cold-blooded Bambi-annihilators, but for using their heads and horns as home decoration, my father would coolly defend himself by insisting, “It’s family history.” Then he’d say, “These mounted heads aren’t simply glorifying the hunter’s skill, honey—they’re honoring the life of the animal, as well as the battle itself.”
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