Evening News

Home > Other > Evening News > Page 26
Evening News Page 26

by Marly Swick


  “Jess is in law school,” Vonnie said.

  “Really.” Giselle nodded, feeling old suddenly. She saw Jess looking at her and felt self-conscious, remembering her black eye. She wanted to explain about the champagne cork but knew how lame it would sound. She wondered how much Vonnie had told her. About Trina and everything.

  Vonnie and Jess sat down on the sofa. Vonnie picked up the remote and clicked on the TV. The fluffy gray cat leaped onto Vonnie’s lap. Jess leaned over and petted her.

  Seeing the two of them sitting side by side on the sofa, Giselle felt a little left out. “I think I’ll go back to bed,” she said, yawning.

  “Okay,” Vonnie said. “Holler if it’s too loud.” The guest room was right next to the living room.

  “I’m sure it won’t bother me,” Giselle lied. There was nothing she hated more than the mumble of a television when she was trying to sleep. It was something she and Ed used to squabble over all the time. As she walked back to the spare room and crawled underneath the sheet, she was thinking about Ed. About how odd it was to think of him being only ten minutes away, with her son. Their son. And their not even knowing she was here.

  ***

  The next morning, before anyone else was up, Giselle called the farm. She felt nervous, like a party-crasher, as the phone rang and rang. She could picture the expression on her son’s face as he recognized her voice: Who invited you? For no logical reason she felt pissed off at Ed, as if he were obscurely to blame for the difficulty of the situation, as if he had somehow poisoned Teddy’s mind against her, even though the few times she had spoken to Teddy since he’d been away, she could hear Ed in the background coaching him to talk to her, to tell her about this or that. Did you tell her about the deer? she’d hear Ed prompting in the wings. Did you tell her about soccer? As if she would be pleased that Ed had found a soccer team for Teddy to play on so he could be with kids his own age. Well, she supposed she was pleased — she knew it was a good thing — but what would happen when it came time for Teddy to leave? To go back home to California? He never mentioned that. Ed was never big on thinking ahead.

  After maybe a dozen rings, just as she was about to hang up, a groggy-sounding male voice, not Ed’s, answered the phone, making no attempt to disguise his irritation at having been woken up. She almost hung up, but she couldn’t stand the thought of waiting any longer than she had to.

  “Hello,” she said, “is Teddy there? This is his mother.”

  “Gigi?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Mac. How the hell are you?” Then he groaned as he caught himself. “I’m real sorry about — you know — what happened out there.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks. How are you doing?”

  “Good, you know, hanging in there. It’s been kind of a good time working on the kennel and all with Ed. It’s really going to be something. How’s California?”

  “Actually, I’m here. In Lincoln.” She paused as Mac hacked away, a smoker’s cough he’d had ever since high school. “Can I speak to Teddy?”

  “They’re not here. There’s a note here saying they went to do some errands. Should be back by noon.”

  Giselle sighed. It was only eight-thirty. “Well, tell them I’m at my sister’s. You got a pencil?”

  “Shit, just a minute.” Mac disappeared for a minute and came back on the line. She gave him Vonnie’s number. “Got it,” he said. “Hell, it’s real good to hear your voice. I know Teddy’ll be real excited.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks, Mac.” She hung up and stood there looking out the window at the square green lawns and flowering redbud trees. She didn’t know what she was doing back here. It was like being trapped inside her high school yearbook. Mac Mackey. They had gone out on a few dates before she started seeing Ed. All through junior high, she’d had a big crush on Mac. He’d played lead guitar in a garage band whose name changed every year but whose members remained constant. Ed played the bass. Then Mac’s longtime girlfriend, Ginny Brantley, decided she wanted him back, and that was that. Mac had been real nice about it, but Giselle still felt crushed. It wasn’t until months later she found out that Mac had put Ed up to asking her out. She had fallen for Ed on the rebound.

  Just hearing Mac’s voice made her crave a smoke. She saw a half-full pack of Camel Lights lying on the makeshift coffee table. They must be Jess’s. Her sister had quit smoking when Bev was diagnosed with cancer. For a moment she fought the urge, remembering what an ordeal quitting had been, but then she thought, What the hell? and walked over and sneaked one. She lit it with the Zippo lighter lying next to the pack. As she inhaled, she felt dizzy, and it flashed through her mind that it was really over with Dan. Her marriage was really over. She felt some superstitious sense that if she smoked this cigarette, that was that. There would be no going back. It was practically a felony to smoke in California. She grabbed the ashtray and stubbed out the cigarette, then went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She wasn’t ready to burn any bridges yet.

  ***

  It had been years since she drove a stick shift. Giselle knew it was a real act of generosity on her sister’s part to loan her Tracker. It was obvious Vonnie took great care of the car. It was spotless outside and inside. As she drove down Thirteenth Street, heading for the highway, Giselle thought of her old Honda sitting in the garage back home. A rolling Dumpster cluttered with soft drink cans, candy wrappers, old homework of Teddy’s, discarded clothes, beach blankets, crinkled-up maps of places she’d probably never pass through again.

  It was only eleven o’clock, but she was too anxious to wait any longer. Maybe they’d be back earlier than noon. She plucked a cassette blindly from Vonnie’s tape carrier, afraid to take her eyes off the road even though there was almost no traffic by California standards, and slid it into the tape player. After a hazy morning, the sun was shining. The air, she had to admit, smelled fresh. After L.A., the sky seemed too blue to be real, the color of a crayon. Music blasted from the tape deck. You seem very well, things look peaceful / I’m not quite as well, I thought you should know . . . “Christ,” Giselle muttered, “not this,” and punched the tape out again. Just hearing a few bars had ruined her mood, which had improved dramatically once she got out of the apartment and into the car. It was 9 A.M. in California. Dan was probably driving to his office at this very moment, listening to this very tape. She bit her lip to keep from crying as she turned west onto Old Cheney Road.

  It was amazing how quickly the city petered out and you were in the country. The prairie. Nothing but sky and fields and the occasional house. She remembered their friends in L.A. — Dan’s friends, really — discussing some harebrained idea, a proposal they had read about in The New Yorker or someplace, to turn the Great Plains states into a buffalo commons. One big Yellowstone or Yosemite. Everyone except her, the only Midwesterner, seemed to think it was a fine idea.

  It had been years since Giselle had been out to the Bedford farm, and she was worried she would miss the turnoff, but she spotted it right away. She recognized the mailbox that Granpa Bert had fashioned from an old duck decoy. From the outside the old white farmhouse looked just as she remembered it. She rolled up the window as the little jeep bounced up the long gravel drive, whipping up a cloud of dust. The malamute burst out of the screen door at the side of the house and lunged against the side of the Tracker, barking and wagging his tail. All bark and no bite apparently. Giselle yelled at him to get away, afraid he would scratch the shiny magenta paint. “Hey there, Beowulf,” she called out, climbing out of the jeep. “You were just a puppy last time I saw you.” The dog stopped barking and eyed her curiously, as if he’d just figured out who she was and had decided to reserve judgment.

  There were three vehicles parked in front of the barn, including a white van. On the phone Ed had told her he’d traded in Granma Rose’s Buick for a used Dodge Caravan he thought would be handy for transporting dogs and cats. He planned to offer a door-to-door taxi service. She figured they m
ust be home. But then just as she was collecting herself to go knock on the door, Mac rounded the corner of the house holding a paintbrush, a big smile on his face.

  “They aren’t back yet,” he hollered. She glanced down at her watch as if she didn’t know what time it was. Right behind Mac was another familiar face, maybe thirty pounds heavier but unmistakable. Leverett Johnson, aka Frito. One Halloween about two decades ago he’d dressed up as the Frito Bandito, and the name had stuck. That’s what she hated about small towns: everything stuck. She knew that Frito held it against her, leaving Ed and taking off to California with Teddy. He had tried to talk her out of going. Giselle cringed inside and kept her gaze on Mac as they walked toward her. Mac gave her an awkward hug, careful not to drip white paint all over her. Frito just nodded and offered a neutral-sounding hello.

  “I guess I’m a little early,” she said, wishing she had waited until she knew for sure they were home. “I’m anxious to see Teddy.”

  “Nice little car,” Mac said, looking inside the Tracker.

  “It’s my sister’s,” she said.

  “How’s she doing?” Mac asked.

  “Fine. She opened a new bar.”

  “Yeah,” Frito said. “We heard.”

  Mac shot him a don’t-get-into-that look.

  While she was pacing around Vonnie’s apartment, it had occurred to Giselle that maybe it would be better to catch Teddy by surprise. Before he had time to build up any resistance to the idea of her being there. But now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe it would have been better to meet on neutral territory. A McDonald’s or Denny’s. She was considering just taking off when they heard the crunch of tires on gravel and turned to see a big black motorcycle skimming up the long driveway.

  “That’s them,” Mac said.

  The dog’s ears perked up and his tail beat the air in anticipation.

  From halfway down the long gravel drive, Teddy recognizes his mother standing there even though she is wearing dark glasses and her hair is different. Cut short and fluffy, almost to her ears. His arms cinch themselves tighter around his dad’s waist. He yells, “My mom’s here!” but the words are pushed back at him by the wind, and his dad just yells, “What?”

  Teddy is holding on to a small sack of drill bits and screws and half a dozen candy bars that they bought at Payless Cashways. On his feet he’s wearing some new black cowboy boots with red stitching, which his dad just bought for him at The Fort. They are almost identical to his father’s boots except that you could fit three of Teddy’s inside one of his dad’s. He loves riding on the motorcycle, an old Harley-Davidson his dad bought from a real Hell’s Angel. Everywhere they go, he begs his dad to take the motorcycle, but more often than not they need to take the van in order to cart stuff.

  The motorcycle skids to a halt, kicking up a cloud of pebbles, and they both remove their helmets. Teddy leans forward then and whispers into his dad’s ear, “It’s Mom.” He can feel the shock zap through his dad’s body as he looks over at her and smooths down his mussed hair.

  The boots feel stiff and slippery — he feels as if he’s walking on ice as he follows his dad across the dirt to where his mom is standing with Mac and Frito. When he first recognized her, he felt glad. But then it hit him that she must’ve come to take him back to California. Why else would she be here? And he doesn’t want to go. Not now. Not ever. But definitely not now. He kneels down and lets Beowulf lick his face, a big slobbery hello, stalling for time. He can feel his mother watching him. He can feel her waiting for him. Let her wait, he thinks, I’m not going anywhere. He can see her smile tremble and fade as he dawdles with the dog until his dad hollers, “Teddy! Get your butt on over here and say hello to your mother.” Trying to make it sound like Teddy hasn’t yet recognized her. He doesn’t know why his dad is always worrying about hurting her feelings when she didn’t care about his feelings. She didn’t care whose feelings she hurt when she left his dad and dragged Teddy all the way to California. If they hadn’t gone to California, nothing bad would’ve happened. They would all still be happy. Alive and happy. And he isn’t the only one who thinks so. He heard Frito saying so to his dad after Teddy was in bed the other night. “It’s a fucking tragedy is what it is,” Frito said. “If she’d’ve just stayed put, everything would’ve been cool. You’d’ve worked things out.” Teddy hadn’t been able to hear what his dad said. Or maybe he didn’t say anything. His dad doesn’t really talk all that much.

  He knows his mother doesn’t really think his dad is all that smart. Not like Dan, who is a college professor. In third grade when Teddy got stuck in the Robins reading group for slow readers — actually, medium slow, the real slow group was the Sparrows — his mother said she hoped he wasn’t taking after his father. “Your father was never much of a student” is what she said. After a week in the Robins, Teddy got promoted to the Bluebirds, the best group, and his teacher sent home a note saying it was all a mistake, and his mother kissed him and seemed so happy to find out he wasn’t a bad student like his father, after all. But his father is smart. The other evening before supper he was watching Jeopardy! and calling out all the answers while he chopped onions and fried up some hamburger for the chili. He knew everything — sports, the Bible, presidents, science. Even Mac was impressed. He said, “You should go out to Hollywood and be a contestant.” His dad just looked embarrassed and stopped saying the answers out loud.

  Teddy can see his mom biting the inside of her cheek the way she does when she’s nervous. He walks over and says, “Hey, Mom, fancy meeting you here.” It’s an expression his dad likes to use.

  His mom smiles and nibbles at her lip. He can’t see her eyes, but he has the feeling she might be about to cry. He can feel the new boots pinching his toes. It suddenly occurs to him that they left his old sneakers at the shoe store. Left them lying in a paper sack on the counter. He wants to tell his dad they need to go back, but he doesn’t want to let his mother know they went off and forgot them. He knows she’ll blame it on his dad, who gives him a little push toward his mom. Teddy takes a step closer and gives her a hug.

  “So!” His dad smiles and rubs his hands together. “You want to see what we’ve been doing to the place?”

  His mother nods her head, and they all tromp inside the house except for Frito, who says he’s got work to do. Seeing it through his mom’s eyes as his father leads her around the downstairs, pointing out the office and the grooming area and the indoor kennels and dog run, Teddy can see they’ve still got a lot of work to do. The grand opening is supposed to be in two weeks. But his mom smiles and nods and seems impressed. At least she oohs and aahs politely. Then his dad leads them upstairs to show her how they’ve turned the upper floor into a separate apartment. Teddy’s boots clatter on the wooden stairs. He places each foot carefully, afraid he might slip and fall.

  After the tour of the living quarters, his dad asks if she’d like a Coke or something. His mom says okay and sits down on the edge of the sofa that’s covered with an old paint-spattered sheet. Teddy hesitates, then sits down next to her. He thinks maybe if he’s really nice, she will see what a good environment this is for him and let him stay. He knows that Hannah was always talking about good and bad environments. His mother gave his dad the name of a shrink here Teddy is supposed to see, but they haven’t got around to calling him yet.

  Even though the living room is kind of dark — his dad’s planning to put in a skylight — his mother is still wearing her dark glasses. It bugs him. Teddy says to her, “Why don’t you take off your sunglasses?”

  She takes them off just as his dad comes back into the room, holding a couple of Diet Cokes and a Sprite. His dad stops in his tracks and stares. Her hand flies up and covers her eye.

  “It’s not what you think,” she says. “I got hit with a champagne cork.”

  His dad doesn’t say anything, just kind of shakes his head.

  “It’s true,” she adds defensively. “You want me to swear on a Bible?”

  “I
didn’t think you had that much to celebrate these days,” his dad says as he hands her a Coke.

  She glares at him and slides her dark glasses back on. His father winks at Teddy as he hands him his Sprite. Mac has disappeared.

  “So, how long you staying?” his dad asks, getting right down to it.

  His mother fiddles with the buttons on her shirt and says, “A week. Possibly two.” She takes a sip of Coke. “It was all sort of spur of the moment.”

  His dad seems to relax a little. He leans back in the rose velvet armchair and rests his head on the lace doily. At least she isn’t planning to leave right away. Like today or tomorrow. They have some time to work things out. At least this is what Teddy thinks his dad is thinking. Sometimes he thinks he can read his dad’s mind — they’re so much alike. Then other times his dad seems like he’s off in his own world. He doesn’t even know you’re there.

  “I like your hair,” his dad says.

  “Thanks,” his mom mumbles, and bites her lip.

  “Mine’s longer than yours now.” His dad laughs and waves his ponytail.

  “I’m growing my hair,” Teddy tells her. He reaches up and tries to gather it into a stubby ponytail. He knows better than to bring up the earring.

  His mother turns to him. “I thought maybe you could spend the night at your aunt Vonnie’s. We could rent a movie and order a pizza.” She smiles brightly. “What do you say?”

  “You mean tonight?” Teddy shoots a look at his dad. Help me!

  His mother sees the look on his face and says, “Well, not necessarily tonight. Whenever’s good. Tomorrow maybe. Or the next night. I don’t want to interfere with your plans.”

  “Okay,” Teddy says. What else can he say? He doesn’t want to make her feel bad. He’s kind of glad to see her, but seeing her reminds him of all the bad stuff he’d just as soon not think about. And he doesn’t want to piss her off. If she gets mad, she could drag him back to California. Just the other night his dad explained to him how custody works. “Maybe Thursday.”

 

‹ Prev