Cloudbursts

by Thomas McGuane

Iris sat down to rest, knowing she shouldn’t place her hands on her stomach complacently. She had come to view its swelling as something strange, and the acceptability of that view comforted her.

  * * *

  —

  The porch and the room had fallen into shadow, and the end-table lamps made a yellow glow. Betty stared past her drink while Iris, in her bathrobe, combed out her wet hair. When Claude, who was Betty’s husband and Iris’s father, came in the house, still dressed for business and somehow out of place in this summer cottage, he first peeked through the partially opened front door with either dread or uncertainty. But when he did come in, he did so as the house’s proprietor.

  “Hello, Mother.”

  Betty didn’t yield too quickly, so Claude tried Iris. “How is our royal project?” he asked.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  Claude clasped his hands before him and turned to Betty. “Dja stock up? Scotch?”

  “We have that,” said Betty. “We also have some terrifying concoctions belonging to the owner. Mai-tai mix. Spañada wine.”

  “Sid’ll be down. Save it for Sid.”

  Betty asked, “Did you stop off?”

  “Nope,” said Claude. “This is my first. Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” said Betty. “No, Iris, no record.”

  “Sid wanted to meet me for one quick one, but I said, Do you realize what kind of miles I got in front of me?”

  “I think I’ll watch sunset from the porch,” said Iris unnoticed. She went through the sliding door to the porch, where she felt day fade before the electric lights of the house. If she tried, she could make out what her parents were saying to each other, but she didn’t try.

  Claude said, “Can she hear us?”

  “Who’s supposed to bring my stuff up from home?”

  “I’m seeing to it. I didn’t want to look like we were moving out. The Oakfields were staring from their lawn.”

  “How come Sid’s coming up? Does he have to know?”

  “Sid knows all. He’s bringing up a low-mileage Caddy Eldo he wants us to try. Burgundy. Vinyl top. The point is, life doesn’t have to come to an end. Oh, no.”

  Betty drifted off. “Could be gorgeous,” she said.

  “And Judge Anse and his wife will come by. Make sure Iris doesn’t back out.”

  “Remind me to thank them for finding us this priceless bide-a-wee. I could smell the wienie roasts from down the beach. This place is like a ballpark.”

  “You can always go home, babe, and return when it’s all over.”

  Strangely enough, they toasted this, too, touching glasses. Claude winked. Betty said, “You.”

  That night when they played gin rummy, Betty was the only one who seemed to have any vitality. Claude leaned a tired, stewed face on one hand and stared at the deck with uncaring eyes. Iris played and kept score. Betty played like a demon; she was in a league of her own. She could shuffle like a professional, making an accordion of the cards between her hands.

  “My final pregnancy was ectopic,” said Betty with an air of peroration. “Otherwise, Iris, you would have had a little baby brother or sister. The ovum—egg to you—the ovum developed in the cervical canal, not in the uterus where the darn thing was supposed to be. Gin!”

  “Great,” said Claude. “It’s over.”

  “I see the doctor tomorrow,” said Iris. “Right?”

  Betty gathered all the cards together in a pile. “Iris, I would hope that it’s clear why you cannot—repeat, cannot—fritter around in the discard pile and expect to get anywhere.”

  * * *

  —

  Betty and Iris worked closely together inserting leaves into the dining-room table. As the table expanded, the living room–dining room combination became less of a no-man’s-land. Iris and Betty quit shoving and moved around the table, looking at all the comforting empty space on its top. Steaming pots in the kitchenette abetted the festivity.

  “Your assignment is to set the table,” said Betty. “Ten-four on that?”

  “Ten-four.”

  “I will sit at this end, your father at that end. Dr. Dahlstrom goes right there, and Miss Whozis, his girlfriend, goes there. If she has a poodle, the poodle remains in the car.”

  “You don’t even know her, Mother.”

  “I said if there is a poodle. Iris, I love dogs!”

  “Really? What about Brucie?”

  “So here we go with Brucie again. Brucie was a mongrel, I don’t miss him at all. He might have been a dear dog if you weren’t designated to pick up after him. No, Brucie would have never been put to sleep if he had learned to potty outside.”

  “My favorite part of this is the smell of the upstairs cedar closet.”

  “My favorite part of the whole damn thing was when your father learned of your condition and burst into tears. Boo-hoo-hoo. Like Red Skelton.”

  “I meant the house.”

  Claude seemed to try to come in from work differently every time. That night he ran in the door carrying his briefcase like a hot cannonball. And his voice was elevated.

  “Dr. Delwyn Dahlstrom and his chiquita are right behind me,” he cried.

  “What of it?” said Betty, smoothing her sleeves. “Our society is reduced to Iris, her gynecologist, and his bimbo. What difference does it make if they’re early?”

  “I want a shower.”

  “Not if they’re five miles back, kiddo. No way, Jose.”

  “Grab me a pick-me-up. I’m gonna go for it.”

  Claude rose to the occasion. When the doctor came, he pulled open the front door as if revealing the grand prize on a quiz show. Dr. Delwyn Dahlstrom, a portly, grinning Scandinavian, swung his arm to indicate Melanie, a bug-eyed redhead of twenty-five years with a purse of pinto calf.

  “We stopped off,” Melanie explained. “See, so if we’re late, that’s how come, ’n’ ’at.”

  Claude spread his arms for the coats. When he got them, he transferred them to Iris and then hurried around the center island to the bartender’s side and began pulling noisy levers on ice trays while the others tried to talk.

  Claude said, “I remember Delwyn making bathtub gin in the urinalysis machine. Does that date me?”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have mai-tai mix?” Melanie inquired.

  “And enough Spañada to sink a battleship,” said Betty.

  “Betty’s right,” said Melanie. “My taste in drinks is corny. I’m a workin’-class gal.”

  Dahlstrom’s spirits made the dinner a noisy good time for everyone except possibly Iris, who was too young to drink and came to seem almost frozen. And maybe Claude noticed it, even though technically Iris wasn’t his department, because he abruptly slumped into his chair and held his head for an odd instant of silence. The others looked at him, and it passed.

  “Are you feeling baby move regularly?” Dahlstrom asked Iris.

  “Yes,” said Iris with a red face.

  “And still our young man has not come forward?” the doctor inquired.

  “Delwyn,” said Claude, “it goes like this: He has not come forward. Iris is fifteen. Iris is going on with her life. If the young man comes forward, Iris’s life doesn’t go forward. Use your brain, Delwyn. The story is, Iris goes on with her life.”

  “And Claude handles the private adoption,” Betty added. Dahlstrom looked all around himself in search of something; then, his focus sharpening, he suddenly noticed Melanie. “Melanie,” he said, “go find yourself a snack.”

  Betty pulled a contraption out of the closet, something made of metal tubes and cloth. “When I get back to the only home I’ve known since being dragged from Massachusetts as a young bride, it will be Indian summer. Indian summer! To think! I am very lightly complected. So this is going to make a difference on those long days ahead.” With a clattering rush of fabric and aluminum, a red-and-green-and-yellow beach umbrella sprang open. Betty was drunk.

  Claude said, “Jesus H. Christ.” And the doctor said he didn’t get it. Melanie sa
id she knew what it was, it was a beach umbrella, and Betty said she still didn’t have the dunes of childhood and that that stupid odorless lake out there didn’t have so much as a single Pocahontas or other legendary figure associated with it, unless it was the propane man she had been unable to reach on the phone all day.

  “In my mind’s eye,” said Betty, “I will be able to sit next to the Atlantic.”

  “Bearing Portuguese immigrants,” said Claude.

  “I will hear—shut up, Claude—the cry of gulls and the moaning of sea buoys.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Dr. Dahlstrom. “I thought she was from some burg near Boston.”

  Claude detonated a sigh. “Yeah, she is,” he said, well within her hearing. “But here’s the catch. It had a trolley stop near the water. I’ll never hear the end of this if I live to be a hundred.”

  But Melanie took up for Betty. “I’m like Betty when it comes to mountains. I used to live with my dad in Denver. Even in traffic jams—like going to a Broncos game—you could see right over the top of the cars all the way to…all the way to…what was it, Pikes Peak?”

  The doctor said reverently, “My favorite is La Jolla.” The syllables seemed to come from his chest.

  “I go on standing for something,” said Betty. “Year after year.”

  “Namely, the eternal sea,” said Claude. Quite suddenly, he realized that Iris was at the foot of the stairs. She beheld the adults.

  “Good night, everybody!” she cried. “And thank you!” It wasn’t until she’d gone up and was safely out of earshot that Dr. Dahlstrom said, “Thanks for what?”

  Everyone but Melanie fell into a kind of state; she stared from one distant gaze to another, then shrugged. Finally, the doctor said, “You got around the courts on the adoption?”

  “Mmmhm.”

  “Who’s the pigeon?”

  “Yup,” said Claude. “Who’s the pigeon? A judge. Yes, a judge, and his hearty but barren wife of thirty years. I like the guy. A real diamond in the rough. State college. Babson-type portfolio of investments. Getting on in years. Wealth. Half hour a day on the rowing machine. Plus, if he morts out, she has family. Betty and I went over this one good.”

  “How did you find this fellow?”

  The question didn’t make Claude comfortable. “Through a thing down at the plant,” he said. “We tipped a few. This and that. Said his life had everything but kids. A bulb went off.” Claude looked around to find someone to break the silence. He didn’t seem to like this silence at all, and no one was coming forward to break it. Just whose side were they on?

  “You know,” said Claude, “I’m not the biggest guy on the block. Just a Quonset building, a couple of presses. One shift. One time clock. One faithful foreman. I make the calls. I say, You build it, I’ll sell it. I call on everybody. I call on the competition. We make beautiful music together. And then one of my boys, a Polack, sticks his big mitt in a punch press. It goes up next to the roller and never comes out. I offer my most sincere regrets. I don’t say, What’s with your mitt in the roller? I’m sad for him, but, no, he wants it all. He wants my business. You can’t have it, I say. It’s that simple: You can’t have it. You can have reasonable compensation, but no more. I want it all, says the Polack. And he has counsel who feels so confident, he has taken it on as a contingency bond. I say, You lean on me, I lean on you. I call on the judge, not as a finagler but as a red-blooded American with his own business. I sell myself to the judge. Meanwhile, the Polack’s lawyer is sending me poison-pen letters. Shit. You reach a point where you don’t know whether you’re part of what makes America great or not.”

  “Eight hours from now,” said Dr. Dahlstrom, “I’ll be dropping gallstones in a porcelain pan. I can’t deal with this.”

  “You know what I’m in a mood for?” said Melanie. “A diner. Some ham and eggs. The night shift. Neon.”

  “That is Melanie,” said Dahlstrom. “That is her magic.”

  “I’m going to let those dishes sit till morning,” said Betty, apparently overfaced by the magic of Melanie. Conversation trailed off; a car started up; things in the foreground seemed impossible to notice. Their four faces hung in the air.

  Claude wandered over to the bar and made himself a nightcap. He was already in a cloud. Betty went up the stairs, and Claude slumped in the peculiar apelike repose produced by patent recliner chairs. He was almost dreaming, but it wasn’t a dream; it was something he remembered—Iris saying, “Daddy, I know you didn’t want this for me, but as long as the baby is healthy, can’t we…?”

  Among the key effects Betty brought to the lake was Claude’s stadium blanket in blue and maize, his school colors. Iris covered him with it, knowing he had to work tomorrow and needed his rest.

  * * *

  —

  Passing time was a kind of sedative for Betty and Iris. For the moment, they were old friends. When Claude came home at night, he thought they were babbling, and sometimes there was a genuine issue: Iris still wanted the baby; then Betty wanted the baby because of the one she had lost through her ectopic pregnancy; then Betty and Iris thought they could team up and raise the baby. Under the last plan, Claude would have to move out. Even Claude thought so.

  They lay out on the lawn with bright tanning reflectors under their chins; they were stretched on lawn chairs; and the heat, the big midwestern heat, was everywhere.

  “Sunbathing will make an old bag out of you in a New York minute.”

  “What do you call this lake?” Iris asked.

  “Don’t move your head when you talk, Iris! You’re blinding me. I don’t know, Lake Polliwog or some fool thing. Don’t you wonder what’s going on at home? I see grass growing knee high. I see four feet of morning papers on the porch; a storm door slams back and forth in the wind. Maybe the fire department broke in looking for bodies and stole my silver. The TV we left on to discourage burglars has become some kind of haunted Magnavox. It’s awful what your mind will do to you. We never got around to putting a decal on the picture window, so the birds with broken necks have gone on piling up. Life just rushes at you, and the birds keep dying.”

  “My feet are swollen. And my fingers, too.”

  Iris held her hands up in the glare and examined their watery thickness. “I could go for a foreign film right now,” she said. “In the picture this girl is pregnant. Out of wedlock in Italy. It’s a spa, and Marcello Mastroianni is careless about cigarettes and their effect: on the unborn. The spa carries extremely complicated pastries which resemble pretzels. There’s a bilingual midwife, and all the cars are low slung. Sometimes the girl rides in the cars with Mastroianni. Sometimes they pass the evenings playing chess, which they call ‘shess.’ The girl only knows how to play checkers, which they call ‘sheckers.’ When she says, ‘King me,’ they’re pleasant about it and give the girl soda water, a ring, a buncha stuff. Finally the baby is born, so pink, so perfect and all. They call a wet nurse from the village, but the baby won’t have a thing to do with this stranger. The baby returns to the girl…by suction.”

  “Iris, that’s impossible. A baby can’t fly through the air by suction.”

  “Mom, it’s a movie.”

  “What about Marcello Mastroianni? Does he get around by suction, too? When your father was courting me, it was like a real movie. He lived in a boardinghouse. The lady who ran the place raised enormous Belgian hares. And when the lady slept, the Belgian hares guarded the stairs. They had two big teeth in front, and if you didn’t go up the stairs in a slow and dignified fashion, one of those huge rabbits would have you by the leg like that!”

  “What were you doing up the stairs of Dad’s boardinghouse?”

  “Not what you think, young lady.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Silence; then Betty said, “I’m not going to let this pass.”

  “So don’t.”

  “I’m terribly afraid that you have confused my morals with your own.”

  “What a lovely remark,” said Iris i
n a broken voice.

  “The truth shall set ye free.”

  “You big ole bitch.”

  The two were now sitting up, reflectored heads facing each other like two nodding, miserable sunflowers.

  “You won’t hear this child calling you what you called me,” said Betty. “You won’t hear it call you anything.”

  * * *

  —

  Betty had always enjoyed her cocktails, but she never drank in the daytime. That changed. It didn’t make her sentimental or angry or any of the usual things. It just sped her up. She didn’t drink that much, but it was enough to get her darting around and creating an atmosphere of emergency.

  One unseasonably cold afternoon, Iris sat dog-earing a paperback with the glass porch doors closed and the oven door open to supplement the baseboard electric heating. Betty was coasting past the windows about the time Claude was expected. Suddenly, she froze in place. “Here comes your father followed by Sid Katzendorf in a Cadillac! It’s the low-mileage Eldo!”

  When Claude came in, he was equally excited. Even Iris felt the desperation in this; there had never before been any conversation about Cadillacs. It was just desperate.

  “A beauty,” Claude said, “and it’s loaded. But let’s don’t rush. You drive it. Try it in a few spots, the freeway, here in the neighborhood. At first it seems like the Queen Mary, but you’ll get the hang of it. If you like it, tell Sid to mark it sold. We can swallow the tab. I’ll spare you the details. Try the factory air.”

  When Betty went out the door, things calmed down. Claude had bought Iris a Swiss Army knife, the one that must weigh a pound, and she immediately treasured it. Then they had some orange juice. It almost seemed as if the Cadillac were a decoy.

  Iris thought Claude loved her.

  “Iris,” he said, “you’re going to survive all this. You’re going to finish school. You’re going to go to college. If that Polack and his squashed hand don’t take my company away from me, I’ll give it all to you. How’s that sound?” Claude hugged Iris and said, “Then I’ll never lose you.” The whole house seemed to go quiet. Iris marked her place and put the book aside. She opened and closed each blade and implement of the knife. He loves me very much, she thought. The evening sun got under the clouds and began to suggest a normal summer evening. The door burst open, and Betty ran in, struggling for composure. When she spoke, her voice was tragic and bore the keening finality of a summing up. She quit talking like Massachusetts.