He looked at the bleach as if seeing it for the first time. “No.”
“You’re holding the bottle, sweetie.” She struggled to soften her accusing tone, coax the truth. “Is that what you used to clean up Donder’s mess?”
He met her eyes boldly. “I didn’t.”
Donder bolted into the living room. She wouldn’t have imagined that sack of bones could move so fast. She followed to see the old cat rubbing his—her—sagging belly against a softball-sized ring of bleached, frayed fibers glaring from the midnight-blue wool carpeting like a fallen moon.
Before he left to meet with Price and the phantom client the next morning, Red delivered glum remarks he may have intended to be a pep talk about her dad and bridging temporary financial gaps. Gina burned her lip on the instant coffee he’d fixed for her. Red knew he was asking the impossible. After her parents’ divorce, when the discrepancy between the caliber of lawyers each could afford had broken her mother and enriched her father, her mother’s job in the Sears appliance department couldn’t begin to cover the basics. As a teenager, Gina sparred with him over late support payments when her mother wouldn’t muster the gumption anymore. Gina had even gone begging for groceries once when she’d broken her ankle and couldn’t work at the evangelical home for six weeks. One of Dad’s oft-donned aphorisms was about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and by God he’d stuck to that one over the years. She’d always viewed his stinginess as just another maxim, not as liberation from a depressed wife.
He had ended up buying groceries, though, that one time.
Gina trudged to cat duty not knowing whom to resent more—Red, Dad, or Donder and Blitzen. After changing the water and doling out the vitamins she’d managed to forget every time, she moped her way across the backyard. Arthur was parrying his foil with the tire swing chains. The foil had been his last gift before the recession hit. With an economizing impulse that in hindsight may have been her own future-gazing, Gina hadn’t purchased the professional model Arthur had admired in the mall sword shop, but a cheap online knock-off. Arthur never noticed the difference. His lessons were the one luxury she didn’t have the heart to take from him. She’d put the summer session on a credit card, nudging it over the limit.
She paused behind the evergreens to watch him practice his steps. He studied his canvas tennis shoes, streaked with grass stains and dirt, as they maneuvered into the lunge on a chain link. His lips moved silently with each thrust as if reciting the next step. It was like watching him learn to read, when his concentration had focused not on divining the meaning of the words but on the perplexing task of pronunciation. He executed a clean strike dead center through a link. The chain chimed merrily as the blade slid against the metal. Gina clapped.
Although Arthur was facing her as he sparred, he hadn’t seen her behind the firs. He yanked the foil from the link. The rubber ball protecting the blade’s tip popped off and plunked into the bucket of now-murky water, forgotten after Red’s yard work.
“Mom! Look what you made me do!”
Gina bounded to the fence and hopped the rail. Arthur plunged his arm into the algae film the heat had shellacked on the water’s surface. The sour odor of mildewed water mixed with his sweat’s sharp musk. As a boy, on hot summer days he’d smelled of sugared milk. “Let’s dump it out, honey.”
Arthur withdrew his hand, cradling the ball in his palm. The smooth boyish skin and nubby fingers were adorably out of sync with his long body. With a childish cuff he kicked over the bucket. “What am I going to do now? My lesson’s tomorrow!”
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to scare you like that.” Gina’s remorse burrowed deeper at the hard proof that she’d purchased a piece of shit.
Arthur examined the blade despondently. The tip had snapped cleanly off. “Can we fix it? Because we don’t have the money to replace it.”
She met her son’s accusing gaze. The forces reveal a midmorning journey, Daughter. Bull’s-eye. “We have to go see Grandpa now, honey,” she sighed. “Maybe he can help us out.”
Arthur grinned. “We’re going to see Grandpa?”
“He … invited us.”
Instead of demanding to know whether Grandpa would buy him a new sword, the thought that would have sprung to her own mind at Arthur’s age, her son exclaimed, “I miss Grandpa. He’s funny.” He bounded to the van, broken foil aloft as if leading the charge.
The morning rush hour was winding down, but Jackson Road was stalled to a creep. A line of cars was backed up at the longest stoplight in town, where gas stations and car dealerships checkered the boulevard. Already the day’s heat was oppressive. Through the open window an impatient horn blasted, and the smoky odor of gas and rubber clogged the breeze. Arthur cradled the broken foil on his lap like a wounded pet and stared out the window at the vacant lot where Diamond Ford, Dad’s dealership, used to stand. A Subaru dealership had been planned for the site, but the recession hit after demolition on Dad’s place. Concrete rubble and drifting piles of dirt stood abandoned. The demolition had taken out the old oaks lining the road, too. No more nuts.
A horn honked again, this time at Gina’s rear bumper. She honked back. Sweat ran down her neck, pearled in the space between her shoulders and the upholstery. “Why did you fib about the bleach, honey?”
Arthur lodged a finger in his mouth. “I didn’t.”
“You were holding the Clorox. How could you look me straight in the eye and tell a fib like that?”
He looked her straight in the eye. “I didn’t.”
“Sweetheart,” she began. He looked down at his foil. A flush seeped around his T’s fraying neck. “Did you fib to Colten and Priscilla’s mommies about your daddy being in the army?”
The flush flamed scarlet. “I don’t remember.”
“Did you fib about him being a general? Fighting the Iraqis?” She paused. His head sank to his chest. “Losing a leg?” Her voice rose impatiently.
Adolescent defiance surfaced hopefully at her change in tone. “Maybe.”
The traffic eased through the light. Out of habit, Gina glanced at the hole in the earth where Dad’s lot once stood. She used to spot Dad out on the lot no matter what time of day she happened to pass by. He was never one to sit behind a desk. “Come on, Arthur. Tell Mom. Why would you make up such a story?”
Arthur wiped at his nose with his wrist. “Colt was bragging on his dad. So.”
“Candice or Helen?”
“His dad, Mom.”
She sighed. “I didn’t think Colten knew who his dad was.”
“Well, he does. And he’s cool. He designs software and plays in a rock band, I mean, not professionally or anything. Just for fun. He gave Colt some really cool video software when they met.”
“Wow. That’s pretty cool stuff. I didn’t know the mommies kept in touch with … the daddy?”
Arthur picked up on the singular. “He’s just Colt’s dad. Cil has another dad. Anyway, Helen was making us PB-and-J sushi rolls and Colt’s bragging, and his dad’s … well, he’s really rich and said he’d take Colt scuba diving in Hawaii over Christmas break when his band goes down there to play, and I guess …” He ran a finger over the foil’s broken tip. “I guess I wanted to tell something cool about my dad.”
“Your dad is cool. Architects are way cool. They build stuff.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Your dad designed many buildings in our very own town.”
Arthur writhed, wiped his nose again. On the winding road to Dexter, the morning’s sweltering tarry odor gentrified to rich, earthy leaves on a tolerably cool breeze. Arthur’s hair ruffled in the wind. “I know he used to build cool stuff.”
Used to. Gina glanced at her son’s slouched body, tucked into the seat all angles and limbs. “Not rock-band cool, I guess. Not rich cool, either,” she said quietly. “Right?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” He stared at a point just past her shoulder, pleading with the empty space. “Are you going t
o tell Dad?”
“We have to work something out about the carpet.”
“I mean about the other thing.”
“Not if it’s going to upset you.” Her fib. Relief flooded his soft blue eyes. “Colt’s a bit young to go scuba diving, you know.” She rubbed his shoulder. “And you’re a bit too old to be telling fibs.”
“You can call them lies, Mom. Fibs are what kids tell.”
Past the village’s outskirts, Dexter’s strip malls yielded gently to gingerbread Victorian homes and wide-eyed bungalows. Gina turned down her father’s street, lined with the oaks Jackson Road had lost. Whenever she pulled into Dad’s circular drive, Gina always positioned for the getaway. She drove the car straight past the house around the horseshoe bend to park facing the street. A Honda Civic was perched in the turnaround near the garage. She noted the fresh paint, trendy tans and plums, on the Victorian’s new siding. The home’s style couldn’t decide between modern and classic. Anyway he’d sunk a fortune into the renovation. He hadn’t hired Red to do the drawings, either. Dad never mixed business with family. Gina cut the engine. Gripped the steering wheel. Stared at her knuckles’ white domes. Keep your nut small.
“Are you coming, Mom?”
“Fine, honey.” She stroked Arthur’s hair, snagged a comforting touch of silk before he pulled away.
“I asked if you were coming, not how you are.”
“Oh. Guess I’m preoccupied.” She smiled at him thinly.
He stared at her mouth warily as if the grin was a cover up. “Are you mad that I broke the foil?”
“That was my fault, sweetheart.”
Arthur met her eyes squarely. “Then are you mad because I told those lies about Dad?”
“What? No.” Gina caught herself. Disapproval felt like duty here. “Well, yes. A little. Not mad, honey. Just concerned, you know? Like maybe you’re fibbing because you’re concerned about our … situation.”
“I am concerned about you guys not having jobs, but what does that have to do with lying about Dad?”
“Well. Kids fib when they’re stressed. You’re not born knowing how to lie. Kids develop it when they’re faced with uncomfortable choices. Like having to fess up to something they’re afraid to admit. Like breaking something.” She paused. “Or staining something. Like the neighbors’ carpet.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“I’m just saying, dear, that when all the choices are bad, kids fib. As a way out. Is this making sense?”
“You think I’m being mendacious because I want a way out of your guys not having jobs?”
A lacy curtain at the front window rustled, lifted, and fell. Dad, eyeballing their arrival. “Where did you learn a word like mendacious?”
“It was vocab last year, Mom.” Arthur rolled his eyes. “Mendacious, mendaciousness, mendaciousnessly.”
“Mendaciously,” Gina corrected.
He frowned. “I don’t think that’s right.”
Gina yanked open the van door. “Look it up.”
Arthur dogged her heels to Dad’s threshold. “Mendacity,” he hissed into her ear.
Dad called out, “Enter, Daughter,” through the door before she’d had the chance to tweak the bell.
As she cruised through the flagstone foyer to Dad’s office, converted now into his “parlor,” Gina worked to rearrange her expression from annoyance to an acceptable facsimile of good-to-see-you cheer. But her dismay took a hopeless plunge when she stepped into the parlor and saw the round table with the fringed tablecloth he used for séances groaning under the weight of a full tea service. The moist aroma of twigs and orange peel wafted over her. It was barely noon. She’d timed this visit to avoid teatime. Although Dad swore by the medicinal properties of the stuff, tea made her bloat.
“What a thunderpuss you bring today, Daughter.” Dad drummed a wizened fist on Arthur’s shoulder as her son bent over to hug his frail shoulders. His fingers shook, a tremor she’d first noticed on her last visit. Much worse now. Gina bestowed a light peck on his clammy cheek. Nerves, shame, a weird sort of subterranean gladness attached to her kiss, hanks of emotion she’d never unwind. “Good to see you, young man.”
Arthur beamed. “Me too, Grandpa.”
“I don’t know what that means, Dad.”
“That I’m glad to see the boy?” Dad winked at her.
“Thunderpuss?”
“The look on your puss.” He motioned them to armchairs draped with the same lurid paisley fabric as the table. “You exude catastrophe and spilt milk.”
“You’re not making sense.”
Arthur sprawled into the chair closest to Dad. “Grandpa means you look pissed, Mom.”
“Righto.” Dad grinned.
“And depressed.” Arthur wormed a cucumber sandwich from a prissy bone-china plate etched with vines and roses.
“Thank you, Son. I get it now. Sit up straight.”
Arthur stuck out his lip at her. Dad studied Arthur’s slack posture approvingly. “Leave him be. A young man has to spread his aura.”
“Whatever happened to undisciplined energy?”
Dad turned a rheumy gaze on her. His eyes’ brittle lenses glittered like light glancing off dental mirrors. Cataracts? “The boy’s energy isn’t undisciplined, Virginia. It’s expansive.”
Arthur chewed away as Gina settled gingerly into the fussy chair opposite. She took in the room with the rising dread she always felt here. Her private spirit of dismay, and not come to reassure her of the joys of the next life, either. The parlor had the farcical look of a movie-set fortune-teller’s den. The cherry bookshelves used to boast hardcover leatherette Book of the Month Club volumes, the Great Books series first through third, prized first-edition Sherlock Holmes volumes. Now clunky, mismatched tomes on spiritualism were stacked merrily in no particular order. Proof that, unlike the previous library’s fastidiousness, these books were being read. Above the flagstone fireplace’s granite mantel, the original Ansel Adams prints, Dad’s treasures, had been replaced by grainy photographs of Houdini and Conan Doyle. She wondered again at how thoroughly the precious objects of his long spiritual slumber, as he now called the pre-Bozek days, had been cleaned out.
More fraudulent still was Dad’s transformation from hale coffee-drinker to simpering tea-sipper. Every time she saw him, Gina was startled by what she could only classify as shrinkage. His broad chest had collapsed to a hollowed-out crypt. The lavender-scented shawl he’d taken to wearing accentuated the slack canopy of skin cascading from his jowly neck. His complexion, once tanned and thrumming with vigor even in the dead of rigorous Michigan winters, had thinned to a silvery translucence. Bright-violet veins throbbed in the cavern between his eyes and the bony knobs of his temples. He’d been an active man all her life. But while before his activity had been the product of a strong body in relentless motion—the man never sat down except to eat—the ceaseless pulsing of his flesh was now the forced by-product of inertia. There wasn’t a single part of Dad that didn’t throb, twitch, or distend. And the dowager’s hump that had formed from his hunching over tea, blanketed by that ridiculous shawl, completed his transformation from a man of the world to a crone no longer quite in this world.
Unbearable. Gina folded her arms and locked her attention on the tea service, the finger sandwiches and scones, the clotted cream in a dainty bowl with a sterling silver serving spoon. The fussy chairs. The claustrophobia of clashing scents; tea, lavender perfume, the stale odor of sweat Arthur was exuding more fiercely now that they were cramped in this close room. And the overstuffed chairs made it impossible to sit up straight.
The empty one next to her seemed to be raised up off the floor. Maybe it was more comfortable. This chair sported a different slipcover than the rest, a lurid black-and-pink damask rose print. It slowly dawned on her that there were four chairs sidling up to the table. The empty one was positioned higher than the rest because the legs were resting squarely on Dad’s spirit books. Like a damn throne. And the Civic i
n the driveway. Since when did Dad consort with Hondas?
Gina glanced up, collided with his eyes’ inscrutable glitter. “Madame has just this morning opened up exciting spirit lines for you, Daughter,” he preempted smoothly. “We have been waiting for you.”
A young, lithe woman, smart in a tailored navy pantsuit, appeared in the doorway brandishing a silver tray loaded with tea cakes. The aroma of fresh pastry and roasted nuts sluiced the humid bergamot air. Arthur sat bolt upright.
“Those look great!” His gaze devoured the perfect double-decker rounds stuffed with almonds and fat whole raspberries, expertly topped with light pillows of icing. After weeks of eating nothing but plain, cheap cereal and pasta, Gina couldn’t fault the eager spittle now peppering his lips.
“Cassie sure tinkles her tea cakes,” Dad bumbled.
The young woman settled in the raised chair and set the tray on the table close to Arthur. “Help yourself, young man.”
Dad pounced on the cakes, beating Arthur’s snaking reach. The young woman handed Dad a china plate. Arthur snatched a pastry and bit it in half. Creamy icing skidded from the treat to his lips.
“Arthur.” Gina glared at him. “Plate and napkin? And manners?”
“Here you go.” The woman gave Arthur a plate. Arthur turned his admiring, hungry gaze from his cake to the beautiful young woman.
Gina’s guilt over Arthur’s almost desperate enjoyment of the treat was soothed by her irritation at this girl’s easy flirtatious tone. Who was this, Madame Bozek’s daughter? A niece? A sidekick? How many resources was the woman devoting to bilk her father? “Is this a family operation, then?”
The young woman gazed at Gina with dismayingly stunning eyes. “Excuse me?”
“Who are you?”
States of Motion Page 17