You’re shivering, he said.
I’m not.
I can see you. You’re like vibrating, and your teeth are chattering. Take a drag. Quick. You want my coat?
Nice coat.
I grabbed it off a chair. Here.
He stood up and began a tortured twist to get the pink coat off his arms. Shit.
Don’t tear it!
The rip was loud in the plastic bubble. Damn, he said. Now we’re screwed.
Here, said Lily. Give it here. And she stood behind him to pull the sleeves, gently, one at a time, shimmying the pink nylon away from his navy blue ski sweater. She loved his sweater. She could smell the warmth coming out of the coat that was his, the old blueberry smell that made her want to laugh. Put it on, he said.
But she couldn’t right that moment, so he took the coat from her hands and dropped it on top of her head. There you go.
Oh no, she said, holding the cigarette out in front of her. Don’t let it burn, she said. Please! Margaret will kill me. Is it touching? Can you tell?
He didn’t answer. She waited a minute, then pushed the jacket off her face. How did he leave so quietly. His cigarette still burned in the metal cup of the watermelon rind.
He never spoke to her again for the rest of the year and when their graduation happened he didn’t even say congratulations, which was pretty much mandatory. Wasn’t it funny how he’d danced right toward her then veered out the French doors like a signal. Wasn’t that funny, and Margaret had seen it, too. Someone likes you, she said. But not in quite the way Lily expected her to, it was with a ripple of disapproval. But Margaret had been irritable since the flood because now Tommy was upstairs all the time. Clocking her every move, she said. He eavesdrops on my farts. He thinks he’s a master detective.
By the end of June, the water had risen high in a surprise summer storm and rushed over the dock through the Foleys’ backyard and straight into the porch and from there it surged into the basement, soaking the passion pit, revealing the bong and the copy of The Sensuous Woman hidden beneath the train set.
The brown water bubbled the green paint from the porch cement just as her mother had foretold, and in the basement the red corduroy was beyond salvage. The bong was confiscated and The Sensuous Woman, too, which Mrs. Foley told all her friends was conducive to screwing. Privately the friends thought the passion pit was enough inspiration for teenage boys. They need an instruction manual? And the hilarity of the bloated pages of pointers on a blow job properly administered made for a few happy nights in the wake of the Foleys’ misfortune. But the neighbors took seriously the flash deluge and what it meant for property values and the seals around their own foundations. There was loose talk about French drains for a while and then July came with its perfect weather and August, searing the lawns, too dry to reawaken the resting fears.
Out on the terrace these same parents laughed under an umbrella they put up over one of the round tables. A single netted candle flickered. And one mother, Mrs. MacPherson, hugged her arms tight, one hand gripping each shoulder as she laughed beyond her natural limit, then squeezed to rein herself in. This was entirely necessary according to Lily’s mother. The woman had no inner controls. She’d said some things about Cubbie that her mother couldn’t forget and wouldn’t repeat. Lily watched the woman who laughed, restraining herself; some snaggled teeth made her smile look tender even in the vampire light of the candle and Lily wondered what she might have said. Who would say anything bad about Cubbie? But her mother had told her people in the town were not as pleasant as they appeared and it was about time Lily grew up and understood that. The woman’s smile made Lily smile too—she couldn’t help it—and she thought Russell Crabtree might be able to see her already, and for a moment couldn’t make herself move.
A weeping willow glowed on the edge of the terrace, its long fronds lit whitish by a thick bright moon now low in the sky. Tree shadows made monster fingers on the fairway. No one noticed Lily finally stepping off the stair onto the green; she wandered out into the hush of the night, the throb of the music a bubble of sound already behind her. The willow tree rustled as she rubbed along the lowest reach and rounded the other side. Across the first fairway, a gazebo made a black dome. She’d sat there on cold days with hot chocolate and lemonade on hot. Margaret’s father was a bad golfer and brought the girls along for company when he had to fulfill his obligation as a member. They chased balls and drove the cart. Their gazebo stop by the end of the first hole was a joke for them all, the hilarious evidence that Margaret Foley’s father was hopeless at something.
Such a novel idea. A father with a flaw. Lily’s own father could do anything he put his mind to, and he had the kind of courage most men are only called upon to locate in wartime; he was that brave and resourceful all the time. At breakfast for instance, when he was home, which used to be weekends and now was never, he’d turn his face and look out at the water and say something about the tide, high or low, in or out, and a hush would fall over the table. Then he’d ask for more coffee and her mother was up and looking in the freezer for the kind she bought and saved just for him. She’d make a fresh pot. He didn’t tell her not to bother.
Margaret’s father was not only a bad golfer. When he trimmed the hedges he made flattops with bare sticks poking out, so Mrs. Foley had to call in a rescue team. He wore a hat, indoors, to cover the strange pink map of New Jersey slowly revealing itself across his scalp. How convenient, Margaret said. Every day he lost more hair. And sometimes he cooked for the family, disgusting things with clams and gelled gravies that tasted of dirty slimy socks. Whenever Lily ate Mr. Foley’s cooking she understood the wisdom of her father’s abstention.
A diaper smell came up from the grass and this was a secret recipe the new groundskeeper was using to keep the course vibrant in the August drought. Some poop from animals fermented in kegs. She pinched her nose and closed her eyes as if that would stop the swift stink coming to her from the ground. Lily wished now she’d worn her shoes.
Fortunately Russell Crabtree, she knew, had a summer cold. He always had a cold or a flu or a broken wrist or a twisted ankle or the worst impetigo anyone had ever grabbed out of a swimming pool. He got fleas from his dogs and lice from his baby cousin’s nursery school; he had knock-knees and there was a rumor that he’d been born with a hole in his brain. In seventh grade he’d written a poem about it and then explained in a way that got him a permanent A-plus that the air pocket wasn’t a metaphor. When she left, Lily would miss him.
Somewhere out here Russell was smoking. Didn’t that mean, when he saw her, he might remember the night in the plastic porch? And just as she’d known, right under the black dome a tiny flash of a pin light, then it vanished as it would in a cupped hand. The poop smell stronger now and the grass sodden under her feet, she wondered if the hem of Margaret’s dress was soaking up the stuff. The idea of Russell flinching from the stink when she arrived, of him having a bad reaction played in her mind, like an image caught in an air pocket, she thought, suddenly pleased with herself. If he ever wrote a poem about her what would he say?
Her grandmother told her she had eyes the color of bluebells, which was certainly poetic. All along the water’s edge Doris planted bluebells when Lily was a baby. And she kept small bunches clipped in jars on the picnic table because she liked them best out in the open in the sunshine. Her mother liked to say, We name you Lily and naturally Momo plants bluebells. But her grandmother had gotten in bigger trouble over the bluebells, an invasive species, it turns out. All down the shoreline, along the river, the neighbors had to resort to drastic remedies to fight off the encroaching blooms. They’re crackpots, said Momo. What could be the trouble with bluebells?
But it wasn’t the flowers themselves Mr. Foley had explained. They took over the sod and wove tendrils through innocent soil. A plague, said Mr. Foley, then he’d finally found the solution. Some mixture of lye and ashes packed against the roots at the first sign of spring. And the new groundskeeper at th
e golf club agreed. Her grandmother’s bluebells had popped up on a fairway or two. And Mr. Foley was given the unusual pleasure of addressing the membership with his authority. Nobody, not even the weed-killing team at the club, held this against Lily. If the blue of her eyes really matched this pest no one but her grandmother had noticed.
She saw the flicker of light again in the black dome of the gazebo, and heard a cough, quick and dry. And she realized that Russell might not be alone. She felt something stick into her toe and bent down to scrape it off when out of the darkness the cough was right beside her. Hey, she said, standing up. Russell?
But the big hand that pushed at her right in the center of her chest, clumsy like the paw of a puppy, couldn’t be his. Russell’s hands were slender and bony. A big Saint Bernard puppy, or even a bear, was pushing a heavy unskillful body into hers. Hey, she said, laughing. Stop. Russell?
But she knew it wasn’t him. Greg? she tried. Greg Kiernan?
Yeah, what about it, he said, as if she were interrupting him in the middle of an important activity. His big body pushed harder and knocked her over. The wet grass soaked all through the gray flannel of Margaret’s maxidress.
Hey! You’re wrecking everything, she said. He fell down on his knees and his elbows pinned her around the hips digging the dress deeper into the grass. The strangeness of that, the burrowing of his elbows, his big face and his long thick blond hair, cut in some Dutch-boy shape, a clear concession to his mom, held between his hands. Then he dropped his hands to her skirt and clutched the fabric over her belly. His big face lit only slightly by the scant moon hovered over her chest as if waiting for instructions, and she felt herself go silent. Like the submarines her mother said had cruised nearby during World War II even into the Navesink River. Right outside Momo’s house a periscope had popped up near the duck blind.
Holy Shit! she heard someone hissing. You stupid ass, Kiernan. Do you want to get yourself arrested? And then Greg was trying to elbow himself off her with a lot of exertion, but it became a slow backward crawl as if he didn’t have the power to just stand up. Then she felt his weight come off her so fast she was almost rocketing up into the black sky. Come on, douchebag. This was Russell talking. Get up. And Greg Kiernan was struggling to his feet, being yanked by the arm away from her. Get out of here, said the voice that she was positive was Russell. Get out, you asswipe. It was like she wasn’t there at all. She was a condition that was dangerous and as a friend Russell was dragging Greg away. For his own good. You and your pathetic johnson, she heard the Russell voice say, with compassion she thought. Yeah, man, said Greg. Anything with a cunt. Screw me. I’m disgusting. I’m just disgusting, she heard, as the voice drifted away. I’m disgusting, quieter now, sad and regretful, though with a little laughter, too. I’m disgusting, he said so far away now, and happy, and safe. He was out of danger. He was okay.
7
It was only polite to tell whoever was calling that she couldn’t speak right now. Doris held the heavy receiver away from her mouth. She’d just told the last person, Kay Sheehan, that she was in a rush, and that call had lasted nearly an hour. Half the problem was body language she thought, even if the other person couldn’t see it. If she sat down, and crossed her legs and nestled the receiver close, she was committed. She stood now and said, Hello whoever you are, I’m afraid I can’t speak, and she laughed, too, knowing the person calling was likely a friend. Or a salesperson and in either case, inclined to be tolerant.
It was Kay Sheehan back again with another thought about Doris’s health. She had fainted all of one time total, Doris laughed. In the supermarket where the entire town happened to be shopping on a Saturday morning. That’s what I get for running on black coffee, she told the crowd assembled in aisle 3, waiting to see if the ambulance should be sent on its way or the hospital alerted to an emergency coming. Jamie Ekdahl, sweet girl, made the right decision. Let’s give Doris a little breathing room. And then sent her daughter, thrilled to be assigned this task, to grab an orange juice carton and a tube of paper cups and open them both on the spot. Doris took a long sip, and soon was on her feet. Perfectly fine, she said again and again.
Jamie Ekdahl insisted on driving her home. She’d arrange to pick up Doris’s car later in the day with her newly licensed son. You’re running a tight ship, said Doris, riding in the cozy clean Volkswagen, the daughter strapped in the back still wondrous that the juice and the cups were free! V.I.P. treatment, said Jamie to her daughter.
V.I.P. and on the evening news you’d think with all the calls. Now Kay Sheehan really wanted to know—what she’d forgotten to ask the last time she phoned—was, And what did Jean have to say about all this? Maybe she was thinking twice about getting on any ocean liner?
Doris remained standing, held the receiver farther away from her face and almost shouted, Why, she better get on that ocean liner! And if I don’t get my Lily out of bed ... but then she thought, That wouldn’t be the end of the world. Lily could finish out her summer here and Doris could fly her to London in time for school. Why hadn’t she thought of this before? Kay, you’re a dear. And then she put down the phone.
Almost ten o’clock and Lily still sound asleep. Doris wrapped a tight rubber band around the metal box with the paper label: HAIRPINS. Her hair sometimes smelled of the sour cherry throat drops previously contained. Lily laughed at her for this funny smell and nuzzled her hair. She was still a snuggle bear, that girl, and Doris felt slightly sad thinking she’d miss the day to day of these momentous years ahead, Lily thirteen, Lily fourteen, her Lily all grown up. Jean at fifteen was already self-possessed and turning down suitors. But Lily, Doris guessed—and hoped if she were honest—would be more like herself, a late bloomer. She hadn’t met Clyde until she was nearly twenty-six and Jean was just turning three. Two lost babies of her own, but she seldom thought of them. Though now she couldn’t remember why she had the hairpins in her hand or why she’d brought them downstairs to begin with.
She checked her hair and lipstick and twisted the bow on her neck scarf, adjusted her eyeglasses in the front hall mirror. She’d been married to Clyde for thirty-two years, just shy of that number, but Lily’s hands felt closest, like a funny kitten, poking at her skin. She would miss that girl terribly. Missed her already. Lily? she called up the staircase, and then grabbed the banister. She loved this house; it had been her mother’s and someday it would be Jean’s and then Lily’s. She could do that much, keep this house for them, but already she imagined a time when she didn’t live here and no one alive had even seen her mother, and then one day, her brother’s memory would vanish, too. Though for now Kay Sheehan was an astringent reminder. And Doris was thankful for that, could laugh at herself for still feeling, she wouldn’t call it jealousy, it was a sense of propriety. Her brother Teddy, he’d be an old man now, but not really. She knew men handsome as ever. Just think of, oh, there were enough old roosters strutting around to know Teddy would have kept his handsome face, his strong, surprising body, big and tall and full of grace. Teddy full of grace and her mother said that was a blasphemy, or close enough. But it wasn’t, really. Where else in this world would we find grace but in those we love? At least that’s the way she’d always felt, but her mother advised against it. Called her rash, but she really meant vulnerable, suggested gardening instead where devotion is reliably rewarded.
Teddy inspired devotion, and that’s why Kay Sheehan always made her smile, in a complicated way. She could see Kay still in a madras swimsuit and hair cut tight to her pretty face, legs pulled close, up on a wooden bench on the Sea Bright boardwalk, big cat’s-eye sunglasses in white to emphasize a tan and the nearly white blond of her curls. She was a looker alright. But weren’t they all. Weren’t we all.
Doris’s hand went to the scar on her throat. Jean had told her it was a terrible habit. All these years her hand had flown to her throat—oh twenty times a day! said Jean—and she hadn’t realized. She’d never known. Clyde never said a word. Though, when she thought of him
, that was scarcely a mystery. She’d put on a wedding bonnet in front of this very mirror; that was the only word for it, the odd construction she’d worn on her wedding day. She’d made it herself, a bonnet of cream-colored velvet and moiré silk ribbon and shaped it so it sat tilted on her head. It was gorgeous and her hair was dark and shiny. Her dress salt-and-pepper tweed, like her hair now, her mother refused to come to the wedding at all, and really it was only a priest’s blessing so who could blame her. Doris never had. But Clyde never quite forgot. So much that was murky to Doris was clear to Clyde. He was always certain.
She wore the bonnet tipped over her forehead and Father Hetzler blessed them both at the railing of the dark altar, and only Teddy was there to give her away and wasn’t he plenty, more than she would ever need. She understood her mother. She did. She and Clyde were blessed and then Father Hetzler let them out the side door and down the steps that Doris had swept herself that morning. She’d come by and swept away the new snow from the night before and placed a little bundle of flowers, her only bridal bouquet, a clutch of small tea roses she’d bought walking over at the florist on Avenue of Two Rivers. Scarcely a bud to be had this time of year, and she hadn’t told him, old Mr. Canton, that it was her bridal bouquet. She took the wax paper bundle and cleared off the ice from the little exterior altar to the Virgin. Nothing funny in this; you saw small offerings there all the time out of nowhere as if all the most pagan rituals took place in the night and left behind these souvenirs. She put her bridal bouquet at the stone feet of the tiny Italian Virgin, then walked home to put on her good tweed dress and velvet bonnet and by the time Father Hetzler was letting them out the side door to Clyde’s car, which they’d drive to the courthouse for the official ceremony and then to Atlantic City, by the time she caught Clyde’s hand on the icy church side steps, her wax paper bouquet was gone. On someone’s winter breakfast table she thought, bringing good cheer.
The Loved Ones Page 7