The water was the color of packed shadows. Some days it did not seem like water so much as thick brown silk, a river of ladies’ nylons. The bait Vincent used was a shred of bacon or a pinched ball of store bread. Catfish and carp, and the occasional gar, were all he ever caught. Vincent called carp crap, the big, silvery sluggards who ate the hook and whatever was aboard, and then were dragged without a hint of resistance to the foot of the landing. Vincent employed a wicked gaff Rudy had made to haul the fish from the water. He sold the carp to those less fortunate. Ina sampled a bite once, and even before the toxins injected into that water by industry and humanity were common knowledge, something in the taste of the fish struck her as evil.
Gar were just too strange; needle-nosed, spine-thin, they radiated an aura of bad luck and were cut loose immediately, the hook sacrificed.
Catfish she loved. They were blandly delicious, and went perfectly with buttered corn on the cob, fruit balls in juice, and cold beer. Catfish had a spirit when hooked that promised a fight. The whiskers that rimmed their struggling mouths were like the eyes of potatoes gone wild in the dark. But their appearances at the end of the line grew more infrequent until catching one was an event, and the last one Ina remembered landing was a fat grandfather cat hooked by Ray when he was on the edge of adolescence, and he had hated that his father had had to come to the rescue to get the creature out of the water and onto the landing.
The river was a place to go. A place where things were out of sight, where there was the possibility of being alone when life at the top of the stairs pressed in. Vincent took Ray there to tell him about sex. Ina had given Annie the same news at the kitchen table.
Vincent often went to the river alone, taking only a pole and a piece of bread, returning in an hour or so without the bread. They went there as a family, with Helene and Rudy and Amanda, because on the hottest nights it felt a degree cooler down there shooing bugs in the dark, the lines falling out of sight before they entered the water.
But then the river landing became inhabited by people of vague repute, nonfishermen, drinkers of hard liquor, individuals who seemed to appear without benefit of the stairs, by-products of what was going bad in the water. Finally she had to forbid her children to play on the stairs or to go down to the landing. She suspected Annie obeyed her, but she knew Ray had a taste for unsanctioned excitement and she saw him come up from the stairs in the dark with the other boys and race across the street until attaining the safety of his yard, while his friends dispersed like bugs caught in the light. She asked Vincent to speak to Ray, and perhaps he did, but Vincent possessed a faith in his son that was unswerving, and doubted that a few illicit trips to the river would significantly warp the basic perfection of Ray’s nature.
Vincent’s tackle box was in the front closet. Ina lugged it to the kitchen table. The box was constructed of khaki-colored steel and secured with a lock of considerable resolve, a lock to which Ina had no key.
She climbed the stairs to the bedroom and lay down on her bed. She brought the phone from the night table and put it on her stomach. She liked to call Ray and Annie in the morning. With the time difference, she could usually reach them before they left home for the day.
Ray’s number rang. He was her baby. An inch shorter than Vincent, with a little weight problem. He had never married.
“Ray here.”
“It’s me.”
“I was thinking about you,” he said brightly.
“You were not.”
“I was! I had a premonition you’d call.”
“You did not!”
“I did! Why won’t you ever believe me when I tell you something?”
“What am I calling about, then?” she asked.
“It wasn’t that detailed a premonition, sweetheart,” Ray said, and Ina felt the little ting of disappointment that was a mother’s companion.
“Why aren’t you at work?”
“It’s only seven forty-five here,” Ray said. “The sun is barely up. The freeways are barely jammed.”
“Don’s been at work for an hour.”
“Don’s a fast-tracker,” Ray said. “I’m merely a laundry czar.”
“Where did Daddy keep the key to his tackle box?” Ina asked.
“Oh—I had a premonition you were going to ask me that!”
“Smarty. You did not.”
“I did. A dream: fish, key, lures, Mom.”
“You’re a mean son. Do you remember?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I thought I might go fishing,” Ina said.
Ray said nothing.
“I’m not senile. You’re thinking that, but I’m not.”
“That river is pure carcinogens, Mom.”
“I’ll be long gone by the time the cancer grows.”
“Please don’t. For me?”
A faint stain, still damp, lay to her right in the bedding, remnants of a spilled glass of beer from the night before. She shifted her leg and felt the coolness bleed through her nightgown to touch her thigh.
“Besides, that is no place for you to go. It’s full of perverts,” Ray said vehemently.
“It’s not so bad. The sun is out.”
“It doesn’t reach down there,” Ray said. “Please don’t.”
“Without that key, I won’t be able to.”
“Good. Then I won’t tell you.”
“Do you know?”
“I won’t tell you,” Ray said.
“This is your mother—”
“I’m opening another store,” he said.
Ina hesitated, proud of her son, but irritated at being patronized. “Tell me where the key is, then I’ll take an interest in your business,” she said.
She heard Ray sigh. “I really don’t know, Mom.”
“All right. How many is that now?”
“Eleven, in all. Nine here, one in Boulder, one there.”
“My cleaning giant,” she said fondly.
“Everyone’s clothes get dirty.”
“Where’s the new one?”
“Right by UCLA,” Ray said. “It could do more business than the other ten combined.”
“That’s my boy.”
“Thanks, dear,” he said. “But now I’ve got to get out in it.”
“No key?”
“Try the board in the garage. Remember it? That’s where I’d look, anyway,” he said. “But if you find it, promise me you won’t use it.”
She put the phone down, folded her hands over it, then lifted it and dialed Annie, who lived within miles of Ray but never saw him. Annie’s housekeeper answered.
“Bixler residence, to whom do you wish to speak?”
“Annie, please.”
“Momento.”
Her daughter came on the line, sounding out of breath.
“It’s me,” Ina said.
“Mom. Jesus. What a surprise,” Annie said. “But I can’t talk now. I’ve got tennis—and I overslept.”
“Just one thing. Where did Daddy keep the key to his tackle box?”
“His tackle box? I don’t know. You aren’t going fishing.”
“I was getting blue. I thought a little fishing might cheer me up.”
“At the river?”
“Of course, dear.”
“It’s not safe there. You told me so yourself ages ago. It can only have gotten worse. It’s not safe anywhere around there anymore.”
“Annie, that’s an absurd California prejudice,” Ina said. “My neighborhood is fine. Where Helene lives—that frightens me a little. But this part of town is still quite nice.”
“I’ve got to run,” Annie said.
“Let me talk to Meg.”
“Not home. School.”
“Has she discovered boys?”
“She won�
�t tell me,” Annie said. “She’s almost fifteen, after all. That disinterest in the opposite sex is feigned.”
“What’s she doing tonight?” Ina asked. She wanted something she could hold in her memory; the occasional school picture that arrived in the mail seemed dated even as it fell from the envelope.
“Nothing specific. She’s very studious. She has a friend she goes down to see,” Annie said. “Her name is Katy. They’re very tight. Jesus, Mom, I’m late.”
“Invite me out. I miss my girl.”
“You’re always invited,” her daughter said with an abrupt enthusiasm that Ina did not trust. “A standing invitation.”
“Have Don invite me.”
“Don? Don loves you. He’s too busy to show it, that’s all. Come out anytime. Gotta go. Love. Bye.”
She put the phone down, abruptly sad. Her children in a rush out in Los Angeles, Vincent slipping from her memory. Her heart was in pieces for just the few moments she took to doze off.
When she awoke she wanted to go to the river more than ever; to prove that her children were wrong in their estimation of her helplessness. She sat on the side of the bed through a brief spell of dizziness. She went to the bathroom, then patted cold water on her face as she bent over the sink. Dots of dried soap speckled the mirror and faucet and struck her as slovenly. With a piece of toilet paper she wiped them away. She was starting to feel better; the little nap had refreshed her. In the bedroom she changed into blue jeans, a yellow cotton blouse, and her Nikes, feeling girlish and anxious to be on her way. She tied a scarf around her abundant white hair.
She went out the back door and down the walk to the garage. It was hot and still in there. The tackle box key was not hanging on the board above Vincent’s tool bench, and she muttered, “Damn.” The garage had been Vincent’s province. He did the driving, shoveled the snow, mowed the lawn, and the garage was his base. He preferred being at work, or inside reading or talking to her, but he drew satisfaction from completing mundane jobs that had to be done. Ina could find him in the garage after she had looked everywhere else.
Within a month of Vincent’s death, Ray had sold his father’s LTD and left a hole in the garage that always startled Ina. The space between the smudged, busy walls—with their precarious organization of tools, bikes, and junk, and years of license plates numbered LC5885—yawned at her, reminding her that she was old and bound to be tired. Reminding her that her Vincent was gone.
One Saturday morning—the LTD sparkling in the driveway after its weekly wash—Vincent had pointed out to her how the oil stains on the garage floor were always changing. He examined them like clouds. Abe Lincoln’s profile. A lion. A woman bent over a dog. A tree. Two men reading one newspaper. The car leaked oil like an artist, but Vincent never did anything to fix the problem. He enjoyed the pictures.
But Ray sold the car because Ina could not drive. With the car gone, the pictures on the floor were thus frozen. She looked at the floor from different angles, in different light. The pictures soon were gone. So carefully detailed by Vincent, they were invisible to her now.
Back in the kitchen she patted cool water on her face again and took a minute to compose herself. It had been a mistake going to the garage, to venture where memories of Vincent were so thick.
When she felt able she went to the front of the house to check for the mail, knowing there was nothing, but always hoping it would come early that day. So much of what was delivered was junk, and much of it still addressed to Vincent; everyone having a sale, everyone needing money. Nevertheless, she cherished the expectancy.
The mail had not arrived. She left the front door open, storm door on the latch. She took two slices of raisin bread and dropped them in the toaster slots. She noticed the cord needed wrapping. At Helene’s not long ago, Ina had seen the cord of her sister’s toaster burst into flames. It was not a traditional fire, but a fast white flame around the plug, nearly painful to look at.
“What’s that horrid smell?” Helene asked, her voice curling at the end with a trace of burgeoning panic. Ina stood at her sister’s side to keep her away from the flame. The tiny white storm of electric fire lasted just long enough to sear through the cord and smudge the outlet with a greasy black residue.
“It’s a fire in the toaster,” Ina said, carefully pinching the plug and yanking it from the socket. Helene sniffed, turning her nose frantic as a hound. “It’s under control.”
“Will this delay my toast being done?” Helene had asked.
Ina put her raisin toast on a plate and took it to the table. She got a knife from the drainboard and margarine, jelly, and beer from the icebox. She buttered the toast, then spread on jam. She popped the Old Style and poured it headless into her blue glass. She took a swallow. The beer was so cold that it made her real teeth ache. She found a catalog to read while she ate. It was full of impossibly slim and beautiful young women dressed in clothes that reminded Ina of fashions in vogue during the Second World War.
She took a bite of toast, chewing carefully. The ache from the beer had not entirely diminished. With her mouth full of bread, she took another swallow. It felt lost in there. She closed her eyes, sighed, and chewed.
“I was beautiful once,” she said out loud, flipping the pages of the catalog.
There had been a time when she and Helene were considered quite a pair of beauties. “A toothsome twosome,” Vincent had called them, even when it was no longer specifically true. But there had been a time when they were vied for.
She pushed away from the table, having finished her toast and most of her glass of beer. She carried the glass down the hall to the front door. She flipped the latch and leaned outside to check the mail, although barely a quarter-hour had passed since she had last looked. She went on through the front door and sat down on the top porch step. She swallowed what remained of her beer. Po Strode would look over and see Ina drinking at ten in the morning. A cool breeze chased around her ankles. The street was empty of traffic. After a minute, a maroon car went past.
She wanted another Old Style, and to use the bathroom, but having found a comfortable seat she felt rooted to the spot for the time being. Her headache was starting again; she felt like taking another quick nap. The street was still. It was paved and amply shaded, but still gave off a summer haze as though the ghost of the original dirt hovered over it. Before they got old, Ina and Po Strode nearly made a living running a stand out at the curb. Po sold the sweet corn, tomatoes, and melons she grew in the gardens that flourished on the quarter-acre of land between the Strode house and the Lockwood house. Ina sold preserves Helene had put up, strawberries packed thick as marbles in glass jars, and the fish—mostly carp—she and Vincent pulled from the river.
Vincent would park his car by the stand and pretend to be a customer when business was slow.
“It gives the impression you’ve got a buyer,” he said. “Nobody likes to be the first to part with their money.”
A young man came up the stairs from the river. He stood on the top step and peered up and down the street. Ina could tell only that he was tall and thin, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a fringed leather vest. He stood in sunlight while Ina sat in shadow. She felt invisible. She felt cool, abuzz, mysterious. Vincent would have warned her to get inside, but she felt her safety lay in remaining absolutely still. She sensed the young man wanted no witnesses. He was only thirty yards away; Ina doubted she could get inside and lock the door before he was upon her.
He lit a cigarette. He possessed a callow beauty; he had muscles and youth, that vanity of stance and movement people of a certain age acquire and inevitably lose. He smoked and looked up and down the street.
In another time, if he had stayed where he was and she stepped back fifty years, Ina would have called his attention to her. She had known how to walk, how to meet an eye; she could rattle her beads. Young girls always seemed more aware of what they were doing; the dan
ce of youth had a rhythm for them, and consequently the end of that dance was harder on them. She had once been quite a romantic, sometimes in secret. She had been a wild lover. She had ridden horses. Now she sat with her empty glass hoping the young man did not look her way. He was raptly smoking, giving the impression of performing an act terribly urbane.
Abruptly the young man looked directly at her and she felt a bolt of fear, but then his line of vision swiveled past. His hair was very long, and tied in a tail down his back. The maroon car she had seen earlier returned. It carried young men, and one of them looked directly at her, of this she was certain. The boy by the river stairs threw away his cigarette and climbed in. Gears shifted, she heard a lively raising of voices, a laugh, and the car sped away.
Ina surmised that he had been dropped by his friends at the head of the stairs to conduct some business down at the river. She pulled herself to her feet on the porch railing and went inside. Her front room was cool and dim. She supposed she should dust. Her blind sister kept a tidier home. Ina made two transits of the room, touching objects, realigning them. Most of all she wanted to go down to the river to learn what those boys were up to.
She went into the hallway and before turning right to go to the kitchen she quickly checked the mail. Helene answered the phone on the first ring.
“It’s me,” Ina said. “I saw a boy on the river stairs. He’s up to no good.”
“He was probably fishing,” Helene said.
“He wasn’t carrying a pole.”
Crows Page 38