Foxglove

by Mary Anne Kelly

  She rubbed her eye, exasperated.

  They looked at each other. He came over, naked like that, and stood there in front of her. He sank to his knees and his head fell contritely into her lap. For one panic-stricken moment she knew that even if he was having an affair, she could not stop loving him. She understood quite clearly women through time immemorial who’d put up with all sorts of shameless behavior and for what? Not for the rent, surely. For the man. The great hell of a hunk of him, the bastard. “You bastard,” she said.

  He smiled up at her. His thick and blue-black hair was way too long. He would lose it one day, she noted with pleasure.

  “I got something to show you,” he said.

  “I won’t look.”

  “I’m starving,” he said, giving up too easily, and she remembered how he’d walked through without even greeting her parents.

  “How’s Ben Kingsley doing?” he asked. “He sure knows how to eat, eh? No, I mean, for someone so skinny.”

  “So why didn’t you come in and steal yourself a snack? Everybody else did.” She picked up his clothes squeamishly and dropped them to the floor.

  He looked into her eyes. One time when he was very young, when his mother was still alive back in Brooklyn—this was before she’d gotten sick—over in Bay Ridge, in the dead of the winter she’d taken him to the park on the edge of the water. It was a really sunny day and the air was stretched and tight. Everything glinted with refrozen snow. He must have been five. She’d gotten hold of a little second-hand two-wheeler with training wheels, and she’d taken him down there to try it out. She’d put him on it and held onto the back of the seat and run alongside it while he churned and pumped and balanced. He remembered her laughing, and that red scarf she always wore, whipping around her face. He remembered heading straight for the water, the crisp, heady air full of her carefree laughter, when all of a sudden the bike went without any wobble; it let go the trainers and went flat out on its own, on the wheels it was made to, it went. And for the first time, instead of being scared and falling, he kept right on pumping and felt the connection, the strength in his legs, to the pedals and the handlebars holding him up; and it was like he flew, like he was flying like some free bird from nobody’s rooftop, straight into the unbroken brilliant bright blue of the water. And he looked into Claire’s still-there eyes. He closed up his own. She dug her short nails into the crux of his knees.

  He was tired. He’d been through so much.

  She said, “Look. I happen to know about the horse.”

  “I’m so glad,” he said, “because I was scared shit to tell you.”

  She let go of him. “Very endearing. Big you scared of little me. But it’s not going to make it any easier for you. I’m very upset. How do you think I felt, finding out like that from Freddy?”

  “Fred? How the hell did he find out?”

  “Johnny, what do you want? Me and you to sit here now and figure out how the hell Freddy would know my husband bought himself a racehorse?”

  “Well, half. Half a racehorse. Wiggins bought the other half.”

  She pushed him hard with the heel of her hand. She growled.

  “All right.” He put his arms around her and she could feel his great heart pumping blood. “I only didn’t tell you because I knew you would yell.”

  “Yell? I would have said ‘no way.’”

  “Claire, listen to me. A horse like this comes along once in a guy like me’s life. I could never afford to keep her if Wiggins wasn’t a trainer. She’s got her own little stall nice and cozy right over here at Aqueduct.”

  “What a pity we moved. You could have rolled out of bed and dropped over to see her.”

  “Yeah, I thought of that, too.”

  “Johnny. I was being facetious.”

  “Oh. Well, we’re still nice and close. Hop, skip, and a jump.”

  “And what about the bills?”

  “Don’t you worry about that. That’s my business. I’ll win big again any day now.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “What? I never let you down yet, did I? Did I?”

  “I’m not used to bill collectors. Credit companies. Somehow I don’t think they’ll get it that it’s your business, not mine.”

  “That’s not your job to worry about the bills. You let me worry about that. Your job is to feed me and keep me warm.”

  “What are you, a plant?”

  Anthony threw open the door. “Aha!”

  “Tch,” Johnny said. “Two more minutes and you would have got an education.”

  “Go on! You know what. Get away from her!”

  Limp with laughter at his rage, they let him yank them away from each other, till they were at opposite sides of the bed.

  He raised his eyebrows. “And let that be a lesson to you both,” he said, his pointer finger up in the air, hot tears in his eyes. He meant business, did Anthony. There would be no hanky-panky while he was about.

  Dharma passed by the open door, on her way to who knew what. She didn’t look in. Children all pretty much have an innate sense of discretion when it comes to adults. All except for Anthony.

  “That reminds me,” said Claire, taking the letter from her pocket and handing it to Johnny.

  Anthony stayed sturdily on, guarding them from each other, but when he saw Johnny open the letter, he knew things had shifted from intimacy to, oh, some bill or something and so he left, choosing to go follow Dharma, who was following Floozie, who was on her way to investigate the goings-on across the street from Michaelaen’s window. Downstairs was well and good, but up here you could step out onto the actual roof. It was on a low grade up here, panning out from Michaelaen’s tiny balcony. From here you could peer out onto the entire block, up to the woods and down as far as Jamaica Avenue. Of course, you had to take care you didn’t fall off.

  While Johnny read Tree’s timely (or untimely) letter, Claire plucked at the truant goose feathers that poked through the quilt. Imagine Mary not telling her how she went off on the bus to visit Mrs. Dixon. Oh, she’d known how she’d gone off to see her at that criminal asylum after the whole horrifying episode had taken place. She hadn’t approved then (somehow Christian kindness seemed to stop at the wickedness of children murdered) but she had understood her mother’s resigned loyalty. She was Irish, after all. Not raised in the shallow new age, but in a time and place that stood by its survivors, right or wrong, no matter how wrong, if they were of their own. Still and all, Claire shivered, Mrs. Dixon had been so wrong, she had put her own darling Michaelaen in danger as well. Claire never would have met Johnny but for that terrible tragedy. He’d been assigned to the case and had suspected even her. “Expatriate,” he’d called her. “Member of some weird Indian cult.” If anyone had told her then that she’d be married to this man, she would have laughed out loud. But she was married to him, wasn’t she? And Swamiji was downstairs eating crumb cake with her brothers-in-law. She looked sadly at Johnny. Brows knit, he was just getting through the one page. He was not the great reader, Johnny.

  “Boy oh boy,” he said.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  “Hey. That’s about as rough as it gets, you know?”

  He smoothed the letter out on the coverlet and they looked at it together. It had gone to their old house first, back to the post office and on to here.

  It was dated the day she had died. It read:

  “Dear Claire,

  “Seeing you the other day was just what I needed. You reminded me of all sorts of things I’d completely forgotten. Isn’t it wonderful that we both have children? It would have been so sad if one of us had to feel sorry for the other one on that count. If that’s the only thing I’ve done right in this life then at least I’ve done that.”

  Claire’s eyes filled up with tears. Every time she read that part she cried.

  “Will you come and visit me?” the letter continued, “sometime very soon, because I want to revisit the secret places of our childhood, all right? Y
ou are the only one who would understand. Your sister tells me how busy you are, but after seeing you, I just know you’ll find the time for me. Some bonds are never broken. Not with time or space. You understand.”

  Yes—Claire smiled in spite of her tears—she would always understand. Tree had added,

  “And Claire, remember how you always told me it didn’t matter about finding the treasure? Well, now I think I understand what you meant. In fact, it’s better not to.”

  She had signed the letter “your old friend, Tree.” “P.S.,” it read, “I tried to call but your phone’s been shut off.”

  “Come on, Claire,” Johnny hissed at her. “Stop blubberin’ all over the place. Anthony will hear you and get all upset.”

  Claire snorted her emotions accommodatingly to a close. She knew what he really meant was that he couldn’t stand to see or hear her cry, and if she didn’t stop he would say some nasty bullying thing to upset her so she would. Her anger was one thing he was always prepared to deal with. She couldn’t bear this predictable seesaw of her own charted course. She closed her eyes, lay down on her back, and consciously unclenched her fists. She took breath in through her nostrils and out slowly through her mouth. Oblivion, she called silently, come capture me.

  “What is this, hah? What are you doin’? Posing for the imprimatur?”

  She opened her eyes. “You mean the stigmata?”

  “Yeah.”

  He climbed on top of her.

  Once, he had told her that he had no courage. All those heroics he’d gotten medals for in the department were just a result of not caring if he lived or died. “Like, I could give a shit,” was how he’d put it. “Every day was just one more have-to-get-up to the same do-it-all-the-hell-over.” Only now, since they had Anthony, he said, now he was a total coward. If anything happened to him on the job, and Anthony was left alone, like if something would happen to her as well and Anthony would be left alone, the way he had been—“Aw jeez.”

  She knew just what he meant. She saw such a lonely spot there on his neck and she put her hand down on it.

  Johnny got excited right away. One thing about his wife, she was always ready for him.

  “Lock the door,” she babbled as he locked the door.

  He put his stubbled cheek down on her still wet one and they rolled back over Tree’s crumpled letter. He pushed up her skirt and got hold of her silky damp panties. The last thing she thought of as he put his big hands ’round her madrigal thighs, was the swift glint of mischief from Swamiji’s quick raisin eyes.

  CHAPTER 6

  White fog rolled up and over Richmond Hill. Not yet dispersed by daylight, it encompassed Claire and Floozie at her feet. “Don’t wander away, now,” Claire thought but didn’t say. She didn’t have to. With this animal, you only had to think something and she felt what you meant, telepathically. What with the kids in school all week, she and Floozie spent all sorts of time together now. Claire had taken pity on the always bedraggled little dog and trimmed her snarly coat with a cuticle scissors. Floozie had stood painstakingly still for the entire process.

  Unfortunately, the early rays of actual sunshine weren’t catching right for photography. It was only a vapor, pouring through, but it wasn’t hitting the house quite the way she had hoped. She loved this high-speed black-and-white. You could do all sorts of things with it, and never have to bother with artificial light. She tapped her toe impatiently. This particular house had always interested her. It was one of those Italianate Victorians, all hooded windows and brackets under eaves, then broken suddenly by the generous, curvaceous sweep of a balcony, a tower, a terrace. She had pushed the film so it would develop grainy, still sharp but almost muted. That and the fog would be perfect.

  There was talk of this area becoming protected by the Historical Association. It would be a terrible shame if they let these beautiful old homes be so radically destroyed by uncaring landlords interested in utilizing the great spaces; adding on illegal apartments, garish extensions, closing off majestic wraparound front porches and turning them into vast waiting rooms, extra bedrooms, windowless, Formica-paneled dens. This one was still intact architecturally, but simply white. She tried to imagine it in the traditional colors of Victoriana; God, there were so many combinations. The best renovation with color she had seen was in San Francisco, where they jazzed up the pediments with six and seven subtle tones at once.

  It was awfully chilly up here on the hill. She shivered again and pulled her jacket tighter around her. It was Carmela’s jacket, fashionable but last year’s. Carmela had left it flung across a chair at her house when she’d borrowed Claire’s old navy-blue pea jacket to go with some Marlene Dietrich thing she was affecting. Claire’s jacket was so old it was right in step. And warm, she reflected sorrowfully. Not like this darn piece of floppy melodrama.

  She searched the pockets, not expecting much, hoping without hope for a pair of gloves. There was a piece of paper in there, crumpled, which she opened up and read. “Because there was a peacock and a social rodent,” it began in Carmela’s tight script, “there were spider webs, but not where you could see them, touch them. They were in the arms of Ephesus, they jangled small change in their pockets. They were stale-bread eyes wide open. They were waiting for the thunder. Wash them down like silk kimono, chewed-up eye with spittle on it.”

  Uch. Yuch. That was Carmela, all right. All talent, no taste. Why did she write about horrible things like that?

  Claire hadn’t hesitated to read Carmela’s note, never thought of herself as prying, even half believed it was written somehow for her. Why else had she left it there for her to find? Freud Schmoid, Johnny would say. Still …

  “Tell you what,” she told the dog, “how ’bout I buy you breakfast?” Terrific idea, agreed the dog, hopping in. On food they both agreed. It calmed and cured most any situation. Luckily, Floozie was so small she fit inconspicuously inside Claire’s roomy film bag, she’d just stuff the film into the camera bag and off they’d go. “Just don’t budge,” Claire advised her. “Americans are not as permissive about dogs in restaurants as Europeans are, you know.” No, Floozie hadn’t known that, but it was useful information. You never knew where you found yourself in life. She jumped back out of the bag for a last sniff around.

  Pancakes, that was what Floozie had in mind. Claire was thinking more along the lines of poached eggs on English muffins, juice, and good strong coffee. This school business wasn’t such a bad idea. Zinnie was dropping the lot of them off this morning, so Claire could get her head start on the light. She didn’t envy Zinnie, getting herself ready for work and the kids dressed as well. Especially Anthony. He was a real toughie when it came to getting ready, stalling and running and hiding under the table. But she also knew that kids tended not to behave as badly towards people who weren’t their mother. Anyway, Zinnie would make it good and clear that she’d just leave him behind if he didn’t get a move on. Claire wasn’t going to worry about it. This was, if she wasn’t mistaken, the first morning she’d actually had completely off since Anthony was born. Usually, she’d race back to make them all breakfast. Yes it was, it was true. She relished the very idea of going “out” to breakfast on her own. Let’s see, she planned, I’ll buy a newspaper and sit there and read it like an actual grown-up person, like a working girl, like a single. I will finish my entire meal without looking up once, without running to “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, come quick” just to discover a shiny new toy advertised on the tube, without going to kiss someone’s boo-boo, without running to break up a ninja battle under my dining room table, without jumping up to compose a Swamiji’s tiffin, no matter how well loved the swami. She could go to Jahn’s, the old turn-of-the-century ice cream parlor on Hillside and Myrtle, romantic and dark with real Tiffany lamps and Impressionist paintings by Papa Jahn himself. Good electric coffee there. Or Salerno’s. Or she could hike across the Interboro to Freddy’s place. Delicious cappuccino. Naw. They’d recognize her and not let her pay. She was really in the mo
od to chow down, and she didn’t want anyone throwing it back in her face, mouthing off what a greedy horse she was, what an absolute pig. She also didn’t feel like chitchatting with the help, which she would feel obliged to do. No, the hell with that. So where? Ah. She knew just the place.

  “C’mon, Floozie, hop up in my bag—oh, never mind, you can use the exercise, I suppose. Just stay by my feet so you don’t go into the street.” Claire looked up suddenly and noticed the beautiful lines of the funeral parlor across the street. Funny, she’d never looked at it quite like this, architecturally. It was what? Free Classic? Miraculously, it hadn’t been destroyed in the renovation. For no other reason, probably, than it was big enough as it was. What the heck. She snapped it quickly and went on her way. Leaves fell in a shower with another gust of wind. So many fell at once it gave new, if redundant, meaning to the term “fall.” It really did remind you why you loved this time of year. Everything covered with ivy had turned bright red, the same cheerful red of the maples, at least one on every street. They hiked along, she and Floozie did.

  Floozie looked this way and that. She started to run into the street. “Wait!” Claire cried but it was too late; the car whizzing up Park Lane South seemed to come out of nowhere. Claire covered her eyes. It was her fault, her fault. Her heart came to an absolute and morose stop. It was over. The car just kept right on going. She went to retrieve the squashed body before someone else ran her over again, and the dog stood up. “Rap!” she barked angrily, “Rap! Rap!”

  It wasn’t possible. She was alive. Claire scooped her up and ran up the embankment like she had the dog on a plate. She didn’t know where she was running, but she kept going. She only stopped running when she realized her camera was banging a hole in her side. Annoyed, the dog jumped down. Claire fell to the grass. She probed the dog’s trembling body everywhere, jabbing and petting. “I can’t believe it,” she finally concluded. “They ran right over you and didn’t touch you. Thank God.”