Evening News

by Marly Swick

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He tipped his ED’S ANIMAL FARM seed cap. “You think it’s time for Teddy’s cake yet?”

  She squinted into the sun that was just beginning to sink, sending out its own natural fireworks, shimmery gold against the flat blue sky. “Let’s wait a bit.” They looked over at Teddy, who was presiding over a little petting zoo he’d talked his dad into rigging up. Half a dozen smaller kids were crowded round him as he passed around a brown bunny. Giselle could hear him saying, “Be gentle. Don’t scare him.” There was also a goat, a litter of kittens, two hamsters, a box turtle, and a snake.

  “Seems like you’re off to a great start here,” she said.

  Ed shrugged modestly. “I had a lot of help.”

  A pretty blond woman in cutoffs and a white halter walked up to Ed and handed him a beer. “You look thirsty.” She glanced over at Teddy, who was hamming it up for the little kids with the big old black snake wrapped around his neck. A little girl squealed and ran away as he waved the snake in her direction. “You must be Teddy’s mother,” she said to Giselle.

  Giselle nodded coolly. She recognized the woman from a photograph stuck to Ed’s refrigerator. The two of them standing by some river with their arms around each other’s waist in matching plaid shirts.

  “This is Sharon,” Ed said. “She’s an artist. She painted all the signs. Did a hell of a job, too.”

  His use of the term artist irked Giselle, and she was surprised by the completely unwarranted hostility she felt toward the woman, who seemed, she had to admit, perfectly pleasant.

  “Teddy’s such a sweet boy,” the woman said.

  “He has his moments,” Giselle said.

  Ed shuffled his feet nervously and cleared his throat. “I better see how the food supply’s holding out.” He walked off and left them standing there.

  To compensate for the childish bitchiness she was feeling inside, Giselle smiled and said, “The signs are great. Where’d you learn how to paint like that?”

  “I majored in art in college.” Sharon made a self-deprecatory face. “Then I had a baby and my husband left me, and I figured I better figure out a way to make some money.” The woman took a sip of beer. “I mean, it’s not like I dreamed of being a sign painter.”

  Giselle nodded, liking the woman despite herself. Maybe they could even become friends. God knows she could use a friend. “Do you have a boy or a girl?”

  “Girl.” Sharon looked around as if she were going to point her out but then said, “She’s with her father for the month. In Boulder. He went to some Robert Bly lecture and converted to fatherhood. A bit belatedly but still . . .” She shrugged. “Chloe’s crazy about him. She’s five and a half. Honestly, sometimes I don’t know if it’s healthy. It’s like she’s going on a date. She changes her clothes five times before he picks her up. We had a big fight this last time ’cause I wouldn’t let her wear her tutu on the airplane.”

  Giselle laughed.

  “You’re lucky to have a boy,” Sharon said.

  Giselle could see the precise instant it hit her. The woman clapped her hand to her mouth and said, “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. Ed told me and —” She shook her head. “I feel just awful.”

  “Please.” Giselle reached out and touched her hand. “It’s okay. Really.” She actually felt a rush of sympathy for her. It was the sort of clumsy thing she might have done and then lain awake half the night, kicking herself. But she could see that Sharon was too mortified and flustered to recover anytime soon. To let her off the hook, Giselle said, “I think maybe it’s time for the birthday cake.”

  On her way into the house she passed by Ed, who was busy giving some people a tour of the new facilities, explaining about the outdoor run and the indoor run. Giselle signaled to him that she was going to bring out the cake. She made little cutting motions with a pretend knife and then blew out the candles. Ed looked puzzled at first and made a charades gesture back: Sounds like? She pretended to blow out the candles again. He nodded and gave her a thumbs-up sign.

  Along with the ten-foot Milk-Bone, Aunt Lou had baked Teddy’s cake. It was a large sheet cake, chocolate with white icing, that said, HAPPY FIRST DECADE, TEDDY, decorated with miniature soccer balls around the edges. Aunt Lou’s husband, Edgar, had delivered the cake earlier in the afternoon. Ever since she had her left foot amputated as a result of diabetes a couple of years back, Aunt Lou rarely set foot out of the house anymore. Those were Edgar’s exact words. “Set foot.” Teddy had giggled when he heard them and hopped around on one foot the minute Edgar took off. As Giselle lit the ten candles, she wondered just how happy Teddy’s first decade had been. She could only hope the next one would be better. She mumbled a little prayer under her breath — one of those little “Please, God” bargains, even though she had never been much of a believer, then or now — and carried the cake out the door onto the front porch. She walked gingerly, afraid that the breeze would blow out the candles before Teddy had a chance to make his wish. Ed saw her and hurried over, walking beside her, attempting to block the wind.

  “Hey, Ted-head!” he hollered. “How ’bout trading that snake for some cake?”

  Teddy unwound the snake that was curled around his arm and dumped it back into its cage. “Come on,” he told the little kids. “Come have some birthday cake.”

  Giselle handed Ed the cake knife. “You cut the cake, and I’ll serve. But first I want to take some pictures.” She pulled a disposable camera out of the pocket of her baggy sundress and pointed the camera at Teddy as he took a deep breath and held it in for as long as he could and then exhaled. She snapped the picture. The candles wavered and went out. Everyone cheered. She looked around for Ed, to share this classic parents’ moment, but didn’t see him anywhere. Gail waved to her and walked over. She looked even better than she had in high school, thinner and sleeker. Gail asked her if she’d heard about Mrs. Van Dorn’s mastectomy and when Giselle said she had, they began to swap stories about their former yearbook adviser. It turned out that she had also given Gail a copy of Margaret Bourke-White’s biography as a graduation gift. Giselle was laughing when she heard Ed yelling. She turned around and saw him standing in front of two men over by the driveway, on the fringe of the crowd. One man had a fancy camera with a camera strap slung over his shoulder.

  “You get the fuck out of here, or I’ll throw you out,” Ed was shouting at them. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, you scumbags.”

  Giselle’s blood froze. She knew who they were. Reporters. Here for the perfect photo op: a local-interest story about the boy who shot his sister. She had held her breath for a day or two after the TV show, expecting the media to appear on her doorstep, but nothing happened. When Lois had called, all concerned, having seen Dan on television, Giselle had told her that everything seemed to be all right. Apparently, no one in Lincoln was the wiser. Since Teddy had his father’s last name, Bedford, no one seemed to associate Dan Trias with Teddy Bedford. But now, obviously, some eager beaver would-be Woodward and Bernstein duo had caught wind of the story. She saw Teddy looking over at his dad. He had been so happy all day. This would ruin it for him for sure. Beowulf was barking at the men, excited by Ed’s angry tone and gestures. A few people were beginning to get curious.

  “Hey, Teddy!” She hurried over and grabbed his arm and spun him back to the table. “We’ve got to cut up this cake. There’s hungry people waiting.” She set down the camera and picked up the big knife and started carving the cake into squares. “You scoop the ice cream.” She handed Teddy the ice cream scoop before he could protest. “Hurry, before it melts.”

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the two men trotting, half running, down the gravel drive. Ed was brandishing a spade. He looked like one of those crazed Freemen in Montana, holding the FBI at bay. She started to breathe again as the two men got into a green Jeep and drove off.

  “Who were those guys?” Teddy asked.

  “Inspectors,” she improvised. “Building inspectors for the new kennel
.”

  “Oh.” Teddy licked some frosting off his fingers. The explanation seemed to satisfy him. Two of the littler kids were bashing each other with the Fun Noodles. Teddy ran over to join in. He pretended to let the little kids beat up on him, falling to the ground and begging for mercy.

  Ed threw the spade into some bushes by the side of the barn and started back toward the party. You could tell a mile away that something was wrong. One look at his face, and everybody would be wanting to know who those guys were and what the story was. She hurried over and linked her arm through his and walked him around behind the barn. He was breathing heavily and shaking his head. “You know who those bastards were?” he asked.

  “I think so.” She led him up a gently sloping hill to a patch of shade underneath two old oak trees. “You were pretty impressive,” she said. “Just like Alec Baldwin punching out the paparazzi.” She was trying to lighten things up. She didn’t want him to go back to the party looking like he could kill someone with his bare hands.

  “Who’s Alex Baldwin?” He pulled a red bandanna out of his back pocket and swiped at his neck and face. She remembered how he used to sweat a lot, but his sweat never seemed to smell sharp and unpleasant like other men’s.

  “A movie star. He was bringing his new baby home from the hospital and this photographer got too close, and he decked him.”

  “Oh yeah.” Ed worried the little post in his ear. “Didn’t he go to jail or something?” He sat down next to her on an old tree stump.

  “I don’t remember. Maybe he paid a fine. I forget.” She reached over and took his hand. “Have I told you lately that I’m glad you’re Teddy’s father?”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything to that.

  On the phone when she had told Laura that she was planning to rent an apartment and stay in Lincoln, Laura had protested. “But why? Why go backward? I think you’re making a big mistake.”

  And Giselle had said, “You don’t understand. Ed’s the only person on this earth who cares about Teddy as much as I do. I owe it to Teddy to be here.”

  “Well,” Laura had sighed, obviously unconvinced. “I guess that’s why I don’t have children.”

  After she hung up, Giselle had brooded over what Laura said about going backward. She had thought the same thing herself at first, but in the past few days, since painting the new apartment and getting the job at the Journal-Star, unglamorous as it was, she had started to think about the move in more positive terms. Maybe she wasn’t going backward so much as returning to the point where her life seemed to have veered off track. Where she seemed to have lost her momentum, like a kid who’d fallen off her bike and had the wind knocked out of her. And then, later, when she finally picked herself up and got back on, she was wobbling like crazy, like someone who had lost her confidence, and before she was really up and running, she’d met Dan. Which might have worked out just fine, under other circumstances — who knows? — but this time she was determined to steer her own course. To go the distance. To pick up where she had left off a decade ago.

  She had actually pilfered a picture of herself in high school, her yearbook portrait, from a collage on Vonnie’s refrigerator and tucked it into the frame of her medicine chest mirror at the new apartment, where she would see it first thing every morning. To remind herself of the girl she used to be. The future Lois Lane. If Ed could get this kennel up and running, surely she could get a lousy B.A. And go on from there. The adviser at the university had seemed enthusiastic and encouraging. She said she had been a returning student herself, a mother of four. But all your children are alive, Giselle had wanted to say, sinking for a moment into self-pity, as she struggled to get a grip on herself and ask another question about the English major, which, the adviser assured her, law schools would look upon favorably. If you can read and write well, she said, you’ll have a real advantage over most of these kids, as if to assure Giselle that she hadn’t really lost all those years after all: she wasn’t just older; she was wiser and better prepared. It was a hard sell and Giselle was a tough customer, but she appreciated the effort.

  They could hear the music carried on the wind from down below. Mac’s band was playing old rock ’n’ roll songs, the same songs he used to play in high school, only a little more out of practice. Still, the folks all seemed to be having a good time. She looked over at Dinky’s grave, marked with a wooden cross and a pile of stones, and she remembered the afternoon she had sat here drinking coffee from a thermos while Ed dug the grave. It took a long, long time. It was a warm spring day, but the ground was still half frozen from a late snow. And Dinky was a big dog — part Great Dane. She had her sociology textbook with her, studying for the final exam. But mostly she had watched Ed digging. He had removed his red flannel shirt, which was waving like a flag from one of the branches. She had sat there admiring the way his muscles worked under the white T-shirt and how silently and swiftly he dug the hole, deeper and deeper, without stopping to complain about how hard the ground was or how long it was taking. She knew how much the dog meant to him. He’d had Dinky since he was five years old. The dog was fifteen — 105 in dog years — half blind and crippled from arthritis, but he still followed Ed everywhere. She remembered saying to Ed, “From now on, I guess I’ll have to be your best friend.” She had actually said that to him. And he had hugged her to him, crushing her, as if he actually believed her.

  ***

  The fireworks from down below sounded like scattered gunfire. It wasn’t even quite dusk yet. Someone was jumping the gun.

  “You should get back to your party,” she said.

  He stood up and held out his hand to her. His hand felt like an old worn baseball mitt, large and leathery. They walked back down the hill to the party. Teddy ran up to greet them, waving a lit sparkler in his hand. She was afraid of firecrackers. One of the kids in their neighborhood, Denny Mahoney, got his thumbs blown off by a cherry bomb one Fourth of July. The plastic surgeons had fashioned something called thoes, sewing his big toes onto his hands. It had seemed like a miracle at the time.

  “Where were you guys?” Teddy asked them.

  “Just up there.” Ed pointed to the fields behind the barn.

  “Doing what?” Teddy said.

  “Talking.” Ed shrugged.

  “Talking about what?” Teddy asked suspiciously.

  “Stuff,” Ed said.

  “Good stuff,” she added, seeing the anxious look on Teddy’s face.

  He smiled as his sparkler fizzled out and then he ran to get a new one.

  “I don’t know how you do it,” Laura had blurted out during that same phone conversation, just as they were about to hang up. “Don’t you ever blame him?” She didn’t have to say his name. Giselle knew who she meant.

  “All the time,” Giselle had said. “Every day.”

  “Really?” Laura had sounded surprised, or maybe just surprised that Giselle had admitted it. “But Teddy doesn’t know?”

  “He knows,” she said.

  “And how does that make him feel?”

  “How do you think?

  “I don’t know,” Laura said.

  “I don’t know either,” Giselle had said. “I can’t even imagine.”

  Giselle looked over at her son. He was waving a sparkler in each hand, drawing circles in the air, bathed in a shower of white sparks.

  She remembered last Fourth of July. They had driven to the beach. Trina, just barely a year old, squatted in the sand, digging a hole with her new shovel and bucket. Teddy, the big brother, squatted beside her, giving her pointers. And Dan stood in the surf up to his waist smiling and waving at them. She had shot a whole roll of film that day with a brand-new Minolta Dan had given her for her birthday. Then Dan motioned for her to come in. “Water’s great!” he’d shouted. And she had carried Trina to the water’s edge, with Teddy galloping along in front. She handed the baby over to Dan, who held her on her stomach while she paddled her arms and legs gamely in the waves. “A real little Esther Will
iams,” Dan bragged to an older woman in a white sailor hat who was smiling indulgently in their direction. And Teddy, feeling ignored, had shouted, “I can do the backstroke. Watch me!”

  The water was chilly, as always in California, and after a few minutes Giselle had waded back to shore alone. When she picked up the bright beach towel to dry herself off, she realized that the camera was gone. At first she couldn’t believe it. She picked up the beach blanket and shook it out. Then she dumped the contents of the straw beach bag onto the blanket and sifted through it twice. But the camera was definitely gone. Nothing else, just the camera. At the time she was more upset about the camera than the film. The roll of pictures that would never be developed. At the time she didn’t even realize what had been stolen from her.

  ***

  “Mom, Dad, look!” Teddy shouted at them. “Smile!” He had picked up her disposable camera from the table where she’d set it down and was aiming at them through the viewfinder. Even from this distance she could see that his fingers were sticky with chocolate frosting and she wanted to tell him to wash his hands first, but she didn’t. She felt Ed’s arm encircling her waist. She smiled obediently.