By the time Gina tore across the yard, Donder had lodged in the nearest fir’s lower branches. When her coaxing raised only a baleful stare, Gina quit clicking her tongue and hauled the cat unceremoniously through bush and bramble. Mulch clumps clung to his clotted fur. A hairline cut razored down one side of the flabby neck. Blood puckered from the scrape. Gina tucked the cat under her arm like a football and ferried him back to the house. While she cleaned the cut with the hairball towel, Dunderhead ranted and Blitzen stared Gina down. Her last sight of the pair as she fled out the garage door was Donder sprawled on the bamboo floor, paws waving with unabashed pleasure under Blitzen’s rough tongue massaging the cut.
After fetching Arthur from his fencing lesson, Gina moped in the kitchen. Time to work up the nerve to place the weekly call to Dad. In hopes of glossing over how little he saw of her these days, Gina lately had established a routine of regular phone calls. Madame Bozek’s transformation of her father from an emotional firewall to a peddler of joy only fanned Gina’s anxiety. Now her aversion to the neighbor cat’s dodder and slime felt unkind and troublingly instinctual, too close to her feelings over Dad’s aging. That Dad deserved a lukewarm daughter did not ease her guilt. He was celebrating his age, while her mother never would have the chance either to love or suffer the twilight years.
She forced herself to place the call, which turned weird almost immediately. “It’s important not to get rustly, Virginia.”
She’d just told him Red had submitted his one hundredth job application, a federal architect position on a Dubai air base. For the building trades wiped out in the downturn, opportunity resided squarely in the Middle East. “Do you mean rusty, Dad?” Was it a bad connection or his new habit of jumbling his consonants that led her to hear made-up words? The land line filled with static. Dad refused to use his cell phone.
“Rustly, Daughter. Undisciplined energy will overtop your psychic stream.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Wash dishes. Answer phones. Groom horses. Any job will do. Pride won’t pay the bills.”
“If only humiliation did,” she muttered. Rustly. Undisciplined energy. Gina chalked such nonsense up to Madame Bozek’s rhetorical flourishes. She still couldn’t believe that the man who’d never trafficked in any spiritual creed was devoting all his time and God knew how much cash to sessions with a fortune-teller. This while he’d made no financial overtures to his own daughter to help with their predicament. Gina leaned against the counter. Under the cobwebbed window sill, dirty lunch dishes crowded the sink, the worn Corelle rims chipped like beaten-up teeth.
“Let me set something up for you with Steed,” Dad was saying.
Barnard Steed Lincoln Mercury was in bankruptcy. Gina had heard the news from Steed’s neighbors, who were tracking the foreclosure proceedings on the man’s house. “I don’t think Steed’s hiring, Dad.” The dish rack next to the sink boasted a spotless Toucan Sam cereal bowl. A spoon gleamed in the silverware holder. Arthur had washed his breakfast dishes again. That evening, when she came in to figure out the cheapest way to make pasta appealing for yet another night, Gina would find he’d cleaned up the lunch dishes, too.
Gina moved to the window. Beyond the fence, the loamy black mulch piled at the evergreen’s trunks had turned a wan gray in the heat.
“You need to work the phones, Daughter. Resumes don’t land jobs.”
“I’ve made calls, Dad. So has Red. Many, many calls.”
“Atta girl. I’ve got Madame working up some spirit lines for you. Keep you balanced until the breakthrough.”
Dad insisted on calling the psychic Madame like the woman was some ancient village seer. Gina never could shed her irritation long enough to wonder whether Dad might be losing hold of his unerringly shrewd judgment as well as his wallet. A door slammed. Red appeared on the back patio swinging a spade and a pair of gardener’s kneepads as if he were actually going to spruce up the yard. “Thanks. I guess.”
“There always is one, sweetheart.”
“Spirit lines? You know I don’t believe in that stuff, Dad.” Red caught her eye through the window, flicked a cheery thumbs-up, and headed toward the back fence.
“A breakthrough.” Rebuke hardened Dad’s voice, more like his old self. “Something will come along. Just make sure your eyes are open when opportunity falls in your lap.”
“The impact should be hard to miss.” Over the phone line’s cottony buzz she heard the discreet clinking of Dad’s china tea service. So Madame was there pouring out tea, no doubt diluting it with an elderly spinster’s heavy hand with the milk and sugar. Once they hung up, the woman was bound to brush Dad’s fingers discreetly when she handed over his cup and saucer, the china rattling bone on bone. Gina hoped these teas were a substitute for the exchange of more intimate fluids. Dad’s wealth made him a prime mark for a rip-off artist looking to secure a more earthly gig. A murmured question flowed through the line, the clear, silky voice still clinging fiercely to youth. The mouthpiece muffled, and then Dad was back, tone brisk.
“Forces are gathering, Daughter. Have to sign off soon.”
“That’s fine. Got some spooks of my own to tend.” At the fence, Red was strapping the kneepads to legs bunkered in long canvas pants. It was true Red hated shorts. And he did walk with a slight limp, a holdover from a serious bout of reactive arthritis when they were first married. No wonder Helen had been so quick to believe Arthur. Arthur must have based the fib on Red’s limp, which Gina hardly noticed anymore but might be obvious to their son or their neighbors as evidence of an adventuresome past life.
“They hear, you know.”
“Who, Dad?”
“Spirits. When you mock them. Your mother might be listening.”
Some nerve. Her mother had committed suicide just before Gina and Red’s wedding. Gina had discovered the body when she stopped by with the mother-of-the-bride dress she’d picked up from the local mall. The death came long after her parents’ divorce, but Gina held Dad responsible. Any child would, she reasoned. After the split, her mother had struggled with depression and poverty. When her mother died, Gina couldn’t bear to see Dad anymore. She broke off all contact until Arthur was old enough to ask if he had grandparents. By then, Dad was Arthur’s only living grandparent. She’d reconnected, then, for her son’s sake.
After fifteen years, calling him out on his unfeeling crap was misspent anger. “Yeah, well … I meant something else. Clients. I’m actually doing some consulting.”
“Freelancing the bookkeeping?”
“Um. Pet care, actually.”
“Excellent,” he said approvingly. “Your uncle is mopping up that market in Florida, you know. I’ll put you in touch for some pointers. Got a whole fleet of mobile grooming vans. Joltin’ Joe’s Groom on the Go. Shampoo, nail clipping. Even brush a dog’s damn teeth.”
DiMaggio should open a spirit line to his estate lawyers, Gina thought. Outside, Red sank gingerly to his knees and took up a spade. The emerald-green kneepads, brighter than the grass, disappeared in a thicket of clover. Was this stiffness new? Arthur had told the neighbor women Red’s “wound” had been acting up lately. Maybe Red was having trouble with his joints. She pushed aside any guilt that her son was more in touch with Red’s well-being than she was.
“Charges top dollar according to zip code,” Dad was saying. “Make sure you do the same, Daughter. Swanky clients expect swanky prices for quality service. None of this fifteen dollars a day crap.” He paused a beat. Gina swore under her breath. Bull’s-eye. She hadn’t mentioned how much the cat work was paying. “Any time you want Madame to meet with you, sweetheart, she’s promised to make room. She’s overbooked these days, but she’ll fit you in. As a favor to me.”
Gina had never met Madame and wasn’t about to, either, unless it was to run interference on the woman’s influence over her father. Gina kept hoping an intervention wouldn’t become necessary. Dad’s notorious suspicion of women’s designs on his money was
bound to triumph over the wiles of a woman no doubt draped in a paisley muumuu with wire-and-jade bangles twined around her bony wrists.
Madame Bozek was saying something to her father again. Gina imagined a flowing patterned scarf wound around a crimped nest of graying hair. Must be time to break out the cheesy crystal ball. But the charlatan’s image Gina conjured at that drifting background voice didn’t diminish one hard fact. Since taking up with Madame, Dad had divined, with eerie accuracy, every detail of Gina’s misfortunes. He’d known about Gina’s banishment from the Price office by the time she reached home in tears. He called the night of Red’s disappearing client to warn her of “the dust storm,” which, in the dead of winter, made no sense until Red told Gina the absconder’s name was Dustin Stromberg. For a time, the land line threw him off. Dad had complained he couldn’t get a “read” on her if she didn’t visit in person. Now it seemed he’d scaled that barrier. Either that or Madame was coaching him.
She ruled out utterly the notion that the fifteen bucks was a lucky guess.
“Dad, you know, I’m real busy with Arthur.”
“Bring the boy when you come tomorrow.”
“I can’t come tomorrow.”
“The forces reveal a midmorning journey, Daughter. I miss the boy bundles. Signing off.” The disconnection’s flat drone rang in her ear.
Gina hung up, furious at the guilt trip that her avoidance was keeping Arthur from his grandpa. Red finished grooming one fence post and crawled to the next, sneezing. He must be wilting in the full sun, clad in those canvas pants. Why was he weeding by hand, when that flame-throwing gizmo stashed in the garage was supposed to make the chore a cinch? Gina’s last gift to Red before the downturn had been the Weed Dragon, a portable flamethrower they’d laughed over at the local hardware store before the store manager demonstrated how to cremate a clump of dandelions to fine ash motes. Red could use it standing up, finish the job in a fraction of the time. That’s what the store manager had sold them on, anyway.
Gina went to the garage and pulled the Dragon from between a stack of two-by-fours and the bird feeders they couldn’t afford to fill this season. The whole outfit was bulkier than she remembered. She hefted the propane tank and tucked the wand under her arm. On the way out the back door, she remembered the store manager wore goggles. She also remembered the impressive radius of the blue flame zapping those poor dandelions. She dug out goggles from a box Red had labeled Safety and headed for the fence.
At the relief of her shadow blocking the sun, Red looked up at her. Gina plunked the Dragon down on the grass. “Why don’t you use this? You look so miserable all hunched over.”
Red stared at the flamethrower as if struggling to remember why they possessed such a contraption. “Seems like overkill, don’t you think?”
“Worked great at the store.”
“Yeah, well. We should have returned it when our pocketbooks went to hell.”
Gina sympathized with the real reason he didn’t want to use the Dragon, but she was sick of avoiding the gadgets and luxuries of their former life with the same buried shame that drove them to bail on the household chores. “Yeah, well. Since we didn’t, might as well put it to good use.”
“It feels good to be working with my hands.” But Red rose slowly to his feet, his brow bright with sweat. The kneepads, streaked with dirt and grass, hung loosely at his shins. Red slipped them off and set the spade on a fence post.
Gina handed him the goggles. “Why do you wear pants in the summer, anyway? It’s scorching out here.”
Red pulled the goggles over his eyes and inspected the tank. “Call your dad?”
“How did you know?”
“You always ask weird questions after you talk to him.”
“No I don’t. But, as it happens, yes. I interrupted tea with Madame. Heard all about my uncle’s lucrative mobile dog-grooming fleet.”
Red fastened the tank to his back with the Dragon’s wide black straps, toggled a switch. The wand’s tip hiccupped softly, and the odor of propane swirled in the humid air. Red grinned, gray eyes shining behind the goggles. “Do I look bad ass?”
“Like you’re out to launch a preemptive strike on a cockroach.”
Red gave her a mock salute with the wand. A long blue flame shot from the tip. Red jumped. “Jesus.”
“Be careful with that thing!” Gina took a step back.
“I’ll say. Almost gave myself a permanent hickey.” Gina rolled her eyes. Red laughed. “I know you can’t resist a man and his fire stick. Come on over here and plant the real thing on me.” Red moved to sweep her in a hug, one hand sliding to her thigh. The wand slapped her bare leg. The tip was still hot.
“Ow!” Gina pushed him away. Red stumbled back, thrown off balance by the tank, she thought. Or maybe his joints were stiffer than she realized. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to knock you over.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Red slid the tank off his shoulders and bent over a dial, not meeting her eyes.
“The guy at the store said to have water on hand.” Gina rubbed her leg. “There’s an idea.”
She left Red fiddling with the dial. In the garage, Gina went right to a neat stack of buckets standing on a shelf marked Medium Bins. Before the downturn, Red had organized his garage meticulously, down to the smallest washer for a quick faucet repair. Now the cool, dim space felt like the last stand against the helpless disarray of the Arnold house and yard. Gina breathed in a momentary peace before fetching a bucket. Below the buckets was the Recreation shelf. Between Arthur’s outgrown T-ball equipment and Red’s high school practice football, the Flies bin lay empty, not yet re-purposed.
Gina filled the bucket with water from the spigot at the back of the garage. When she returned, Red was pointing the wand at a patch of clover near the fence post. The cheery purple heads incinerated in a flash of blue. The flame was smaller now, more precise. Red scuffed at the remaining ash with the tip of his work boot. “Wow. Nifty, don’t you think?”
“Aren’t you supposed to zap the roots or something? That’s what the guy at the store said.” Gina set the bucket down next to the play structure. “Should I be worried that Madame Bozek is exerting undue influence over my father?”
“I think that’s the least of your worries.” Red always thought she was overreacting to Madame Bozek. If she makes the old man happy, be happy for him, Gina.
“Not if she cleans him out. It says on her website that house calls go for five hundred dollars an hour.” The website had scrupulously detailed prices, all of them outrageous. Rosy-cheeked fairy figurines perched on healing stones adorned the price list page. Gina hadn’t seen a photo of Madame Bozek anywhere, only waterfalls spilling serenely amidst fern clusters. “The site said she specializes in grooming clients for future prosperity. I think she’s grooming Dad for her future prosperity.”
“Maybe you should visit more often, keep tabs a bit more. Might make you feel better.” Red glanced at her as he pumped propane into the wand, his gaze shimmery behind the steamy goggle lenses. He seemed like he was having fun, for once. Score one for the Dragon.
“I feel better not visiting, actually. Now he’s keeping his cell phone off all the time, so reaching him is a pain.” She hadn’t told Red about her suspicions that Dad might be reading her aura through the phone lines. She also never told him about Dad’s dead-on predictions.
“He needs reminding to turn it on, Gina.”
“He does it on purpose.”
“He’s just old, and not plugged in like we are. Remind him. A lot. That’s what we do for elderly parents, right?”
Right. Before their passing, Red’s spry parents thrived on farming the artisan winery they’d purchased from the returns on farsighted long-term investments. His parents lived a sensible, committed life. No goofy psychics laying hands on their grapes to predict the next harvest. No ghost of a mother who’d taken her life on the eve of her only child’s wedding.
Red moved on to the next post. The crabgras
s he zapped burned up and wafted away like an obedient signal fire. He’d gotten the hang of the Dragon fast, as was his way. “What puts you in such an energetic mood for yardwork, anyway?”
“I’ve been working on a lay out for some condos. Thought I’d take a break, tackle some of the stuff we’ve been letting go lately.” Hope laced his voice.
“Who on earth wants to build condos now?”
“A Michigan football fanatic who wants to put his Chicago connections up for the home games in style. You’ll be interested to know Jim Price referred me. I think he’s hoping to revive the firm. We were supposed to meet up with the client this morning, in fact.”
“Supposed to?”
“He had something come up at the last minute.”
“You drew a sketch for a no-show client?”
“He rescheduled. Price thinks it’s going to go ahead. Eventually. Anyway, nothing else to do but apply for computer-drafting work in the Arabian Peninsula.” Red pumped the wand and moved down the fence. “By the way, Don Gammon landed a temporary job overseas.”
Don Gammon used to be president of the state architects’ professional society back when there was a state architects’ professional society. “That’s fantastic. Where?”
“Afghanistan. He’s sleeping on his daughter’s sofa until he leaves.” Red torched the next patch of crabgrass. Now that the fence was looking manicured, Gina felt some unspoken pact between them eroding, that letting things go was their tacit way to face losing it all. Red had been right. Throwing flames at a bunch of plants was overkill. “I’ll take my chances with Price,” Red continued. “At least until Arthur is old enough to afford a sofa.”
A breeze stirred, and sparks flew to the fence post. Flames lapped the pine. Gina made a move for the bucket, but Red smothered the fire with his sole. Flakes of blackened wood settled lightly among the weeds. The jagged scorch mark would be glaringly obvious to the neighbors no matter who owned the fence.
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