by Delia Ephron
I hadn’t seen McKee since the event, at least not that I knew. It was difficult to tell one cop from another as they cruised by. I’d visited the dispatch office only once, where I was ignored by Sally, the dispatch officer. She spent most of her time on the phone with her mother, who baby-sat her toddler while Sally worked. They discussed his nap, his diet, what clever thing he was doing. “Hold on, Mom,” was what she usually said, before switching to 911 to announce, “Police Emergency,” or to handle more routine matters on the regular line. Sally’s ignoring me could signify nothing—business as usual—or loyalty to the department in general or McKee in particular. I wondered if he was angry with me. Had I embarrassed him or hurt his feelings by insulting his competence? Most likely I wasn’t on his radar screen at all. McKee had a job, a security company on the side, a wife, possibly a family. I had considerably more spare time than he did. I contemplated taking a knitting or patchwork class at the local historical society, and went so far as to phone an inquiry. Curb my lusty thoughts by keeping my hands busy. Wasn’t that what nuns did?
“I think I should back off the police,” I told Art at the editorial meeting. “I feel really bad.”
“If you feel so bad, why did you write that stuff?” asked Rob, the other reporter, taking a large bite of his muffin and sending a shower of crumbs onto his notepad and lap.
“I don’t know, it just happened. Like automatic writing. I didn’t mean to attack the police, only to tease.”
“I hate teasing,” said Bernadette. “My boyfriend teases me. We have these big bushes on either side of the front door. They’re like cut in a shape so they don’t look like a bush.”
“Yes,” I said, helping her along.
“So he knocks on the front door, and when I open it, no one. I say, ‘Hello.’ He jumps out from behind the bush, screaming.”
“That’s scary.”
“No it isn’t. So then I say, ‘Stop teasing me,’ and he says, ‘I’m not teasing, I’m flirting.’”
Art attempted to get the meeting back on track. “Whatever you were doing in that column, Lily, teasing, flirting—”
“I wasn’t flirting.”
“Of course not.” Art chuckled—the sort of sound you might hear if you placed your ear next to an aquarium and discerned the faintest bubbling of the oxygen pump. “Whatever you were doing, keep it up.”
Bernadette raised her hand, waiting to be called on.
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to phone Mr. DePosta. He’s so mean.”
“You have to call Mr. DePosta,” said Art. “He’s the one who filed the complaint.”
“About what?” asked Rob.
“About teenagers hanging out on the sidewalk in front of his store,” I said. “I noticed it in the police log.”
“I already talked to him once. I won’t call him again.”
“Reporters make phone calls, Bernadette,” I said, not unkindly. “That’s what we do.”
“Not me, okay? Anyway, you act ways I wouldn’t. God, you swore at the police.”
“I did not.”
“We’ll discuss Mr. DePosta later,” said Art. “Next week there’s a town meeting on the deer problem. Cover it, Lily.” He stood up, indicating that we should get to work.
I dragged my chair back through the hall and found several messages and my telephone ringing. “Lily Davis here.”
“This is Angela Stubbs. As a twenty-year pet owner—” People always felt the need to establish their credentials, however dubious. Mrs. Stubbs went on to assert that dogs give unconditional love, unlike children, and the police were wiser to rescue Baby than a joker like Gavin Sturges.
“You’re right. Of course, you’re absolutely right.” I closed her out politely, “Thank you for calling.”
“Hey.”
I turned to see Bernadette pull a velvet scrunchee out of her ponytail, fluff her long black hair dramatically so it fell around her shoulders like a full skirt, and whisk it right back up again. “You know, your kid does it.”
“Does what?”
“Hangs out in front of Mr. DePosta’s liquor store.” Bernadette sank into her chair as if it were a depressing place to be.
“How do you know?”
“His shaved head. Mr. DePosta complained about it.”
“His hairstyle isn’t illegal, and neither is his hanging out.” I swiveled away from her, my chair seat tilted, and I had to grab the desk to keep from falling over.
I picked up my stack of messages. I flicked the corners, making a little animated flip book, but the image kept repeating instead of progressing. Re: column, re: column, re: column. Except one.
“Hope your ankle’s better.” No name. I went downstairs.
“Who left this?” I slid the pink slip in front of Peg, who shifted her gaze from a crossword puzzle to my message. She chewed on her bottom lip and took a sip of Lipton’s before responding. “Don’t know.”
“Male or female?”
“Don’t remember.”
Jane frequently left messages on my home machine, without identifying herself, but she knew my ankle was healed. I heard footsteps on the stairs. Bernadette was coming down fast, tying her orange sweater around her shoulders.
“I love that color, Bernadette.”
“Feel it, it’s so soft.” She batted a sleeve in my direction. I caught it and raised it to my lips, felt an erogenous jolt, and immediately freaked. What in the world was I doing?
“I’m going home for lunch,” I said. It wasn’t yet noon. “I’m starved. I must be hypoglycemic or something.”
“Strange,” I heard Bernadette remark, and I didn’t know if she was referring to the fact that I had almost kissed her sweater sleeve or announced that my sugar levels had dropped. I didn’t look at either Bernadette or Peg, but climbed the narrow steps two at a time to get my purse, and then left the building by the back staircase
CHAPTER 4
I DID GO home for lunch. I needed to be someplace private, because I felt exposed. That moment of eroticism overtaking me for no reason whatsoever. A Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing—the first time the doctor becomes Hyde unintentionally, uninduced, no potion swallowed, and yet the mouth grimaces, teeth protrude, beastlike hair sprouts wildly all over his face. It was a trifling episode—fondling that orange sleeve, raising the soft wool to my face, leaning forward to inhale and caress—but it was not willed.
My street appeared empty except for Mr. Woffert, securing Tyvek to his second story. “Uh-oh,” he said as I got out of my car. I assumed he had detected an unforeseen underlying problem like dry rot, and gave him a wave and an encouraging smile. In retrospect I believe he was commenting on my arrival. I entered the house and walked into the kitchen.
Deidre was sitting on the table, naked. Her long legs wrapped Sam’s waist and formed an interlocking S twist around his bare behind. Deidre, a few inches shorter than Sam when standing, topped him by a good six inches when sitting on the breakfast table having sex. Her eyes popped wide open, marbly blue martian eyes. Her legs and arms whipped apart and fluttered momentarily.
I backed out in a shot. “Sam, Deidre, get dressed,” I yelled from the hall, then retreated further into the living room. Almost immediately I wasn’t sure that I had seen what I thought I had seen. If Deidre and Sam had insisted that they had been fully clothed and simply hugging, they might have convinced me. “Get yourselves dressed and come in here,” I shouted, while I prayed that the vision be erased from my consciousness, that I be allowed the merciful flipside of trauma—memory loss—the way accident victims cannot recall the moment of impact.
Normal range? Not in the normal range? Who knew?
I heard their feet on the stairs, ascending in a measured way. They didn’t have the decency to sprint. They were neither embarrassed nor ashamed. I dug my fingers into my scalp and pulled my hair at the roots. The pain felt good.
A few minutes later, they clomped down and into the living room, flushed but dressed. I pointed
to the couch and they sat. Deidre, her boots planted far apart, leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, a benched New York Knick waiting to resume play. Sam slumped, his body maintaining all the definition of a potato sack.
“We’re speaking English,” I said. “Why aren’t you in school?”
Before the question was out of my mouth, I knew the answer: Because they wanted to be here, having sex. I rephrased. “How often do you cut school?”
Sam began chewing his thumb. Deidre sent her missile gaze into my own. Two questions, no answer.
I tried to break the ice. “Who are Klingons?”
“They’re a weird race of warriors who like to kill people” Sam replied promptly.
“They like to kill people?” No direction was safe.
“They want to die.” Sam smirked then caught himself. Deidre emitted one of her motorized laughs.
“Which is it? They want to kill people or they want to die?”
“Both. They want to die gloriously so they can go to Stobcor.”
“Stob-o-cor,” corrected Deidre.
“Is that heaven?”
Sam nodded.
“Look, I am fed up with both of you. You are too young to be having sex, period.” I could hear the inanity of my own words, but I plowed on. “I may have to speak to Sam’s father about this.”
“Go ahead,” said Sam, daring me. He knew my telling Allan would establish my own incompetence.
“I’m taking you both back to school. Deidre, I don’t want to see you around here for a while. Sam, I’ll discuss your life later.”
“Petak,” said Deidre.
“What does that mean?”
Sam shrugged.
Deidre’s speaking Klingon was like my parents’ conversing in French when I was a child so I wouldn’t understand. Possibly, I hated her. “Come on, get your backpacks.”
Sam rose reluctantly, pulling dead weight into a standing position. Deidre batted at her pale, wilting bangs. It was the first vaguely female move I had seen her make, if I didn’t count having sex.
CHAPTER 5
AS SOON AS I delivered Sam and Deidre back to school, I called Jane.
“Are you free?”
She heard my neediness over the phone. “Is dinner tonight soon enough?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, sweetie. Burgers and Such, seven-thirty.”
I arrived before her and parked myself in a booth along the wall so no one would overhear us. This upscale hamburger joint reminded me of my ex-husband, because of the spider plants hanging above the tables beside the front window. Allan had loved spider plants, perhaps he still did. Spider plants produced offshoots, baby clumps of thin green-and-white leaves that he snipped and planted in smaller pots. They never died, and they all reproduced boring replicas that prospered even in the arid atmosphere of our marriage. It occurred to me, staring at those plants, that the most innocuous memories of life with Allan bugged me. I should phone him to discuss Sam. The prospect was demoralizing.
On her way to the table, Jane greeted every single person, or so it seemed. She either had sold each one a house or was planning to someday in the future. She blew kisses to those too far away to address personally, and from Jane this gesture was not an affectation but true affection. We were a perfect pair, she the most popular transplant and I the least.
She leaned down to kiss my cheek, slid into the booth, and took charge. She signaled the waitress, and we ordered. “But first please bring me a frozen margarita. Have one, Lily. Two,” she told the waitress, and relieved me of the menu.
Settling in, she smoothed the front of her pink silk blouse and retucked it at the waist. Jane always spruced up before talking and usually offered a self-criticism. “I’m too old for pastels,” she said tonight. With suppressed excitement, she added, “So tell me what happened.”
As we sipped our drinks, I took her through my story of finding Sam and Deidre, leaving out why I happened to return home at eleven a.m. If Deidre weren’t a completely peculiar human being, I pointed out, Sam would just be having sex, which would be sort of in the normal range (SONR) for his age, although there was that other business: When I returned him to school and spoke to the guidance counselor, she told me he was flunking English and French. “He’s only been in school six weeks.”
“Hold it, one thing at a time,” said Jane.
“If Deidre hadn’t been bizarre in the extreme, I probably would have sat Sam down and discussed condoms.”
“You should discuss condoms anyway.”
“I will.” My head was spinning. Should I call Deidre’s mother? Should my first conversation with her—my first conversation with any parent in this town—be about our children’s having sex? “I have to call Deidre’s mother.” I took such a big gulp of margarita that it dribbled down my chin.
Jane handed me a napkin. “Talk to Sam about condoms first. Eventually you can call her mom. And you don’t have to worry about Deidre’s cutting school today. It’s not your responsibility to inform her mother about that. Believe me, the guidance office has already delivered the news. Oh, good,” she said, as her favorite dish, the hot turkey sandwich, was set in front of her. The white meat reminded me of the pale flesh on Sam’s bare bottom, and that tan gravy was a near match for the color of Deidre’s legs. A new obsession was taking hold. My encounter with McKee in the summer house had been supplanted by the sight of Deidre’s pretzel lock around my son’s naked behind.
“I’m so glad you could have dinner. So unbelievably grateful. Jonathan didn’t mind being left alone?”
Jane licked some salt off her glass. “He probably likes it.” She slapped the sentence with a laugh. “You could buy some Trojans and give them to Sam.”
“Maybe. Although it is his responsibility.”
“Well, you should tell him that if they’re going to have intercourse, they should have it in Sam’s room and not treat your house like a sex playground.”
“Right.” I poked around my chef’s salad for something I might have the energy to swallow, like a slice of radish. Unfortunately, the radish was white, which also resembled … I plucked out a cube of ham.
“Have you ever made love on a table?” I asked Jane.
“No.”
“Me, neither.” The acknowledgement depressed me. My son’s short sexual history eclipsed my own.
“Pretty wild,” said Jane. “But probably uncomfortable.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
“Like who?”
“Oh, you know, when you see something like that in a movie, everyone always says, ‘It couldn’t be very comfortable.’ Or, ‘Personally, I’d rather do it in bed.’ And while they might rather be in bed—”
“What?”
“Being overcome by passion is thrilling. As an idea, anyway.”
I wouldn’t have taken this detour, academic as it was, if I had not had a margarita. Even one drink tends to unhinge me. I am the walking definition of “can’t hold her liquor.” Jane had stopped eating. Her knife and fork bordered opposite sides of her plate as if she’d dropped them. I felt guilty noticing this, but stared nonetheless. Our conversation had struck a nerve; it made me wonder. Jane was forty-four, seven years my senior, just old enough to be a fantastic mix of friend and mother. Her two kids were in college. Maybe, after all these years, Jonathan did like her to be out; he had the place to himself. Or perhaps he took her for granted and thought of her as décor, not a lamp exactly, more like a down pillow. I was hardly an expert on long-term relationships. My only long-term was with my son.
I scanned the room to give her some privacy and to settle my tipsiness by attempting journalistic detachment. Burgers and Such was a haven for year-round residents. The blue-checked tablecloths and stumpy red candles supplied low-rent atmosphere; the clunky walnut bar drew customers by being absolutely devoid of intimidating chic. Bernadette was in front, mingling with the other singles. I spotted my cable TV installer planted in front of an iced b
eer mug. Like many others, he was watching football on TV. I liked the clubhouse atmosphere.
“What are you looking at?” asked Jane, as I saw McKee walk in. He was in uniform.
I swung around. “Nothing. The cop. The one who drove me to the medical center.”
“The one you insulted in your column?”
“Never mind. Don’t pay attention. He’s not looking over here, is he?”
“Well, aren’t we grown-up? No, he isn’t. He’s taken off his hat and he’s ordering something, probably a beer. Let’s hope he’s not on duty.”
“So do you know who Deidre is? Have you met her parents?”
“Fine, fine, we’ll talk about Deidre. He’s cute, though,” she said, her eyes veering toward the bar. “It looks like he ordered a Coke.”
“Yes, he is cute, and married.”
“With three children, as a matter of fact. I just realized I know him,” said Jane. “Tom McKee. He’s on the school board.”
“Deidre’s parents.” All of a sudden I was sober. “Who are they?”
“I’ve met the father many times. He owns that restaurant on the wharf, the Clam Bake.”
“There’s no mother, right?”
“No, there’s a mother, too. And four kids altogether. Oddly enough, both parents are short. I handled their sale when they traded up. Needed two extra bedrooms, and I found them a property the bank had repossessed.”
McKee had three children. He was a daddy, a devoted daddy who not only was a cop and had a security business, but was on the school board. The school board didn’t quite fit with him. It didn’t make sense that he would break a rule, check out that house while on duty, if he was on the school board. He was a dangerous type to be a school board member. “Dangerous” was the word that came to mind, but of course it couldn’t possibly be right. I must have meant “rakish.”