There were always pretty girls around, in droopy long dresses, with cracked heels and no makeup. But they weren’t the ones she had to worry about. She had to think for a minute, remembering. Those two who had traveled with them, and had some right to be there, those were the ones—Mariah? Mara. “Mara meaning bitter,” the girl would introduce herself, twisting her ripe lips. She sang with the band and had crying fits on the road requiring Rudy’s presence in the room she shared with her friend with the made-up name. Sky. Mara and Sky. Names Angie had imagined were written on her skin, dug into her palms. And she had forgotten! Or almost forgotten. She was old.
But she hardly ever felt old. On the contrary, she had been old then. They were old, she and Rudy, for what they were doing, the company Rudy liked to keep. They were on the far edge. All around them were kids. Rudy was tired of the band and they were tired of him; during his guitar solos they liked to wander around the stage talking and drinking. He wasn’t all that well because he was careless with his insulin. When he went to the free clinic for his cough the nurse told him to quit smoking but she said it was the diabetes that was going to get him if he wasn’t careful.
Rudy was trying to quit smoking. He did quit. He got a job. The baby was born and then the changes came of their own accord for several years, and then the diabetes went out of control again and this time his kidneys failed and then his heart, and he died.
“I wish he could see this house,” Angie said. They were having breakfast on the terrace, on the second day.
“Who?” Pat said patiently.
“Your father.”
“Why is that?”
“Oh . . .” Angie took off her glasses to wipe off the fine spray from the fountain. Why? Why this wish to get the attention of the dead, force them to marvel at some exceptional thing? As if the sight of the living themselves, fighting and sleeping with each other and crawling through sewage, would not be enough to shake the husks of the poor emptied-out dead. “It would . . . mean something to him.” But what, exactly? She felt a flash of conspiracy, the arrival of an undermining opinion, cool as the spray on her cheek: Rudy would laugh at this house. “Well, he didn’t have money in his pocket till near the end. You know”—she turned to Erika—“when my dad hired him, he was out on his own. Hitched all the way from West Virginia to the Oregon coast. The reason he came at all was to play music at the carnival—we had a timber carnival in town. He was thin as the neck of his guitar. That kind of diabetics aren’t fat. He had to give himself shots, and my mother was a goner when she saw that, that and the smoking. She was going to put a stop to that, and feed him up. But he was a grown-up sixteen.” The quality of Erika’s listening changed. “He went right to work in the yard. The lumberyard. You could be a man at that age, back then, if you had to.”
“Don’t tell her that,” Pat said.
“We ran off together a year later. I was a bit older.”
“She’s heard all that.”
Erika said, “I have not and I don’t remember.”
Angie pried the picture of Rudy out of her wallet. She looked into the green eyes until the restlessness showed itself, as if the eyes would look away from hers if they could, and then she handed the picture to Erika. “We had to come back, though, we didn’t have a penny. I knew my parents would take us right back, poor things, they wanted grandchildren. But they never lived to see any, did they.”
“No, they didn’t,” Pat agreed, looking at her watch.
“I’m not going to have kids,” Erika said.
“Is that right?” Angie said. “So Rudy put in ten years in the yard with my dad. He was good at it. Then the strangest thing—folk music came in, overnight, and we packed up. We thought it was now or never, it was his chance. Oh, we roved around the country. It was before anybody ever heard of hippies. I just followed along. That’s the way things were then.”
“Not any more,” Pat said. “Nowadays girls don’t tag along after some guy they married, do they, Erika? Rika.”
“Whatever,” Erika said.
“Come here,” said Angie. “I want to kiss the birthday girl.” She was never sure Erika would come, but she did, she leaned across the table holding out her smooth cheek smelling of apricots.
“It’s a whole different ballgame,” Pat said.
Pat’s boyfriend Eric played basketball. In their senior year the whole state knew Eric. He had the longest leg bones Angie had ever seen, and the biggest joints; he had a long neck with a prominent Adam’s apple, and the fact that he was not, at first glance, a handsome boy didn’t bother the rows of girls at the tournaments, chanting and holding up cutout letters of his name.
Angie loved Eric. She would be the last to find fault with a boy who noticed whatever you had left that was feminine. But she knew that politeness of his, that warm look of attention, she knew a ladies’ man. Don’t cling, she warned Pat silently.
Pat had lipstick on and her curly hair fell down over her shoulders. Women were getting permanents for just that soft look. But Pat was not exactly soft, even then. She and Eric were going down the porch steps, lugging the metal sides of a bed frame. Eric had to prop it so it stuck out the back window of the car, too big for the trunk where Pat had crammed most of the books from Angie’s house. “You don’t read, Mom.” She hugged Angie to her. “Say me good-bye,” she crooned, as she had as a toddler when Angie left for work.
“But I’ll see you in a month,” said Angie in sudden fright. She already had the time off, to be there when the baby was born. Pat was eight months pregnant but she was going to college. The state university had offered her money. Only one of them could go, to start with. “He’ll support me and then I’ll support him,” Pat said, and that was what they did, after a fashion.
Eric shut the trunk and came back up the steps. “I’ll take care of her,” he said, putting his arm around Angie.
But Eric wouldn’t be like Rudy—Angie was willing to bet on that—always making that wide circle back to home, because down deep Eric wasn’t forsaken, and making up for it, the way Rudy had been. He didn’t have Rudy’s sadness, his need. He wasn’t going to stay in a sporting goods store in Eugene for long, losing his chance to play basketball while he put Pat through college.
Angie was wrong; Eric did stay. He stayed faithfully, taking care of Pat. But the thing that happened to Pat was underway, by then. Pat didn’t cling at all, she did the opposite. She wouldn’t set a date to marry Eric, and then she wouldn’t marry him. She floated away, lighter all the time, quicker, smarter. In no time she was someone whose job paid a sum she wouldn’t tell either one of them. Then she was someone who talked on the phone with her feet on the table and said, “All we need is the space and three hundred thousand dollars.”
Eric turned out not to want anything for himself, except Erika. When Pat took her away to Seattle Eric surprised everybody by not going to school on the money she offered him. He took off for Alaska.
From the first, he stayed in touch with Angie. He wrote that he had a job on a fishing boat. Every winter he appeared, tall and wind-burned, in her doorway. He had girlfriends but he didn’t marry them. He didn’t change. Angie decided he was one of those men pledged, with no loss of manhood, to his high school self. “I’m ready for this sunshine,” he would say, hugging her. “Saw my little girl on the way down. She’s about ready to do a summer up with me.” He had been saying this about Erika for years.
Erika jumped to her feet. It was the fastest Angie had seen her move. The others were still in their jeans but Erika had put on a white cotton nightgown with ribbons trailing from the neck.
“Hello,” Angie said lightly, crossing the room. She didn’t exactly swoop in, she was slow at this time of night. “And who have we here?” Smoothly, the boy got to his feet, while Erika cried “Grandma!” in a stagey voice. “This is Jonah.”
“Jonah,” said Angie, holding out her hand. The boy shook with his left hand because he had a cast on his right arm. He smiled, a smile devoid of excitem
ent or fear. A small boy, thin, shorter than Erika, with hair peroxided white-blond and dark eyes puffy on the upper lids. Small, flattish nose, deeply curved mouth, surprisingly adult. He looked familiar to Angie. She said, “Have I met you?” At that some of the girls choked with laughter.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, Jonah, I’m afraid you’ll have to go. I didn’t see your name on the guest list.” She didn’t like the sound of that after she said it.
“OK,” the boy said. Standing up alone in the ring of girls he went on smiling steadily. His face was like a chunk of carved and sanded pine. The swollen eyes made her think of Bill Diehl. That was it. Bill’s came from alcohol.
The boy didn’t say he was sorry or make a move to leave, he looked at Erika, who was playing with the ribbons at her neck. He was waiting for her to say she had turned the alarm off and let him in. Angie knew that. But Erika was not going to say it. “Bye, Jonah,” Erika said, waving her fingers. She made a little kiss in the air.
When the boy moved, Angie followed in her trailing robe. “Where do you live?” she demanded.
“He lives—” Behind her somebody covered the speaker’s mouth.
“Near here,” he said, facing her at the door with a mild defiance and ringing the hanging pipe chimes of the doorbell with his knuckles. His eyes in their full lids suddenly flashed at her, like a dog’s when you try to take something away from it.
“Can you get home?” Angie said. “It’s after one.”
“Sure.”
“Do you need a ride?” she persisted. “Should I call anybody?”
“No!” the girls cried. “You’ll get him in trouble!”
Cham was back. Close behind them, she gave a hiss, a dog-shooing noise, whereupon the boy slipped through the door and was absolutely gone.
With a dark look over her shoulder at the girls, Cham punched the keys of the alarm. She had the purse with her again. “What’s in your bag?” Angie said. She couldn’t help it. “Luck,” said Cham. Angie pictured dried roots, a nutmeg, something sewn into a cloth. Cham opened the purse, let Angie look, and quickly snapped it shut. There was a rock inside.
“Stop it, Rika!” The girls were play-slapping each other.
Angie said, “Well, I think that’s that, Cham. I think we can get back to bed.” To the girls she said, “Don’t think this is any surprise to me. I had a daughter, you know.”
At this they crowded around her, touched her arms, flirted with her, eager to have their say. “He would have been in big trouble if you called his house.” “He would get it. His father—” “Not his father, dummy.” “His foster father—whatever, he’s crazy.” “His foster mom’s pretty bad, too.”
“Well, did you consider that when you invited him?”
“Invited him!” They all mimed shock.
“You invited him, Erika,” Angie said. “You called him. I saw you on the phone.”
“He just came,” Erika said, quickly sullen.
“You might think about him out there at this hour, trying to get a bus, if there is such a thing in this neighborhood.” They nodded solemnly, all but Erika. “How old is he?” Angie had a sudden feeling the boy might be in his twenties.
“Fif-teen,” one of them said, drawing it out. The dreamy-faced redhead, Jessica. “Fifteen? I think? Right, Rika?” They all smiled and swayed. So they were all in love with Erika’s boyfriend.
“He is not,” said Tamiko. “He’s older.”
“He’s sixteen.” Erika folded her arms and recited in a patient singsong, “He’s not from here, he’s from Alaska, the caseworker took him away from his father, they always do that, they don’t understand his people, he missed school so he’s a grade behind.”
“Only a grade,” Angie said.
“He’s smart,” Erika said with the pride of possession.
“You can see that,” Angie said. Erika’s fingers with their light blue polished nails lay on the skin of her folded arms without pressing. I bet you don’t usually get caught, Angie thought. I bet you get away with a lot. “So now, go to sleep, girls. Get down in those bags. Otherwise I’ll have to stick you in bedrooms and you’ll never find each other. Anybody need a pillow?”
Crawling on their knees over the sleeping bags they grabbed their pillows and began to thump each other with them. “Hey, quit it, I give up!” Then quickly with their ringed fingers they smoothed the pillows and held them up for Angie’s inspection, subdued now, a devout little group. Tamiko hugged her two pillows and laid her head on them. They all copied her. That was the one Pat had referred to, the one with a bodyguard. Tamiko. Her driver had taken off his hat and handed Tamiko’s two pillows to Angie with a bow.
When Angie woke again it was just her three o’clock habit. Wide awake this time and knowing where she was, she found the bathroom without turning on the light and sat getting her breath. Along the rail under her hand were nicks and scratches where the poor fellow must have backed and tipped his wheelchair getting on and off the toilet. “Don’t worry about him, he’s tough.” So Pat had said. The girls, too: “These girls are tough.” And Angie: “You’ll do fine, you’re tough.” And it was true, Angie had done fine. All the same, if everyone was tough, then no one was heartless. When she came out she stopped at the window and parted the half-open vertical blinds with a finger, to look at the fountain. She could see its plume drop straight now with no wind. The moon still cast full light. She saw the blond boy, leaning forward—was he crying?—with his forehead buried in the tangled clematis on the wall that half-enclosed the courtyard.
There was someone else. Someone he was leaning on, against the vines. Arms unwound from his back. The girl pushed him away from her, just enough to get a gulp of air, and then she stretched herself out against the wall and drew him back. She was smaller than he was, hidden by his body. It was not Erika.
Angie could feel, along the front of her own body, the straining and pressing of the two small frames. The boy had made an effort to get the cast out from between them and had it propped against the wall over the girl’s head so that they could lie together upright in the vines. Finally he stepped away, shook himself like a dog, and faced forward, leaning back heavily on the wall and fitting his shoulder to hers.
It was the little girl Meghan, with the flower face and black curls.
Now the boy threw his head back and Angie could just hear his voice, a faraway moan. The girl answered, slowly but with an up-note, a question. Gradually, without looking at him, she made some quiet argument to him and twined her arm in his, taking his hand. With their backs against the wall, holding hands, they turned their heads slowly to face each other. It was as if the kissing had been forced on them, and now for a minute they were free of it. They could have been on a stage, holding hands, about to open their mouths and begin a duet. Something unaccompanied, lyrical, medieval, with pain as its subject, pain and secrecy. Secrecy enclosed them.
So maybe it was not Tamiko, but this one, who required a bodyguard. If that was so, they would have to plan around it. They would have to figure it in, they would know all about how to pretend, how to see that suspicion fell on someone else. On Erika.
The boy let her drag him against her chest and back to her mouth. She had him around the ribcage as if she might lift him off his feet. His knee was between her legs. Of course. Of course. That was how it went. Angie could feel her own pulse, keeping the same old heavy beat of curiosity and objectless longing.
Then she saw Erika. She was standing on the balcony of her own room, above the wing that was Cham’s, looking down into the little courtyard. Angie saw her white face, her hair hanging forward, and followed her gaze down to the embrace against the wall. No, there was no argument, no way to refute what was going on. When she looked back, Erika was gone.
Angie turned from the window. Was she out of sight in the dark of the room? She wanted to get back into bed, into Pat’s soft sheets. But she would have to take charge, the boy Jonah would have to leave. At least
the girls should all be in the house, wherever the boy was. She didn’t like the thought of Erika up on the balcony. In the tantrum years, the years of the forming will, she had taken care of Erika—never a child to be shielded, pitied. And what could Angie say now, if she went now and found her? Don’t let it hurt you? For a long time she stood by the bed. Finally she pulled the red robe back on, tied it, and softly opened the door. Cham was standing a few feet away. “Same thing again,” Cham said. “Girls get up.”
“Are you familiar with this scenario?” Angie whispered. “Is this what happens? What’s the story?”
Cham said doggedly, “Girls get up. Erika and one girl.”
“I mean, are we supposed to take action?”
“This boy is not for birthday. Not for girls.”
“Well then, I’ll see what I can do.” She swept past Cham down the hall, and counted the girls in sleeping bags. Erika was one of the four.
At that moment the house exploded in blaring sound. Angie tripped and almost fell. Her hands found the rail, but that drove the buzz up her arms. As it poured in on her, the girls clambered up screaming. Cham was running flatfooted to the door. She peered through the hole and stepped back, making a violent crisscross motion with her hands at Angie to show—what? “Stop it! Turn it off!” Angie shouted.
“Girl,” Cham said, raising her voice angrily. “She try to open. So—” She pointed at the top of the door. A metal plate had dropped two inches to block it.
“So let her in!”
The girls had their pillows over their heads, all except Erika, who yelled, “Turn it off! Turn it off or the cops will come!”
“Oh, no, the cops!” The girls’ heads came up. “Jonah! Rika, Jonah’s not here, is he?”
“Cham!” Angie shook her by the arm. “Turn the alarm off this minute and open the door. We don’t need the police here. It’s Meghan!”
“A man,” said Cham. “A man is here.”
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