by Mad Dash
And when she said Andrew should come down, he didn’t think it was a suggestion.
The house was a tiny, postwar bungalow on a one-block street lined with replicas of itself. He sat in his car and tried to imagine Dash growing up here, playing in the miniature yard, running on the chalky sidewalks—when suddenly the enormity of what he didn’t know about her crashed over him in a hot, numbing wave. His fear was physical; it made his heart race, his palms sweat. It was as close to a panic attack as he’d ever had, before or since. He thought of driving off; his fingers even fiddled with the key. In that moment he forgave her for running away—after all, she’d only given in to the same sickening temptation he was feeling. And it wasn’t heartless of her, he realized, it was smart—for God’s sake, they’d only known each other five months.
He’d gotten out of the car stiff-jointed, like a man going to his hanging. Arlene answered the door. She looked at him and laughed (but in the same sweet, charmed way Dash sometimes laughed at him), and kissed him on both cheeks. He took heart from her unworried face. She sat him down in the living room, asked about his trip, gave him a glass of sweet tea. Then she told him a story that only confused him.
“When Dash was in kindergarten, she made friends with a little girl named Karen Svensdotter. That’s all she talked about for days, Karen Svensdotter said this, Karen Svensdotter did that, oh, to have freckles like Karen Svensdotter—well, finally the day came when the mother called and invited her to go home with Karen after school one day. A playdate. Dash was just over the moon, so excited, she couldn’t sleep the night before. So the mother picked the girls up at school, took them home, and at three o’clock Dash called. In tears. ‘Come and get me, Mama, I want to come home!’”
Arlene had a mannerism so like one of Dash’s—crossing her legs and leaning so far forward to speak to her companion, her breasts almost touched her thigh—Andrew was distracted and could hardly follow what she was saying. It seemed like rambling, anyway. Where was Dash? Why were they talking about Karen Svensdotter?
“She stopped crying as soon as she was out of that house. ‘Mama,’ she told me on the way home, ‘Mama, they all had such little ears!’” Arlene leaned back to laugh. “Little ears, every one of them, the mother, Karen, her two brothers—the whole family had little ears.”
“Em,” Andrew said, empty-headed.
“Well, it just scared her to death. She wasn’t a fearful child, but something about it just got her. Those little ears. I guess she thought the Svensdotters were monsters or something. And that was the end of the friendship, needless to say. I don’t remember what I told the mother when I called her up to apologize. Nothing about little ears, I’m sure.”
She laughed again (Chloe’s laugh; pure music), and Andrew tried to smile back politely.
“Now, honey. Don’t take this personally, because it’s not. What happened…” She touched his arm with her fingertips. She still wore a wedding ring, he noticed; her hands were the same bony, competent shape as Dash’s.
“What happened is, you…” She put her hands over her nose and mouth, an abashed little tent. Then she sat up, squared her shoulders, and gave it to him straight. “Honey, it’s your hair. It took an age to get it out of her, but that’s what it is. Your wedding haircut, it just—now, it looks fine to me, a little short but perfectly nice, not one bit alarming—”
“My haircut?” He’d gone to his father’s barber two days earlier, mentioned he was getting married. It was shorter, yes, but he’d thought—he’d thought—
“She won’t talk about it—truthfully, she’s hardly done anything except cry since she got home—but she did say—”
“My haircut?”
“She mentioned that—”
“Where is she?”
“In the backyard. You go talk to her.” Arlene stood up. “I didn’t tell her you were coming. Honey, everything’s going to be just fine. Believe me, this is something y’all are going to look back on and laugh at.” She gave his shoulders an affectionate shake before turning away, her lips pressed together. As if, for her, the laugh had already started.
His haircut? He walked out through the kitchen, rubbing the bare back of his neck, in a fog of confusion. Dash had left him over a haircut? It made so little sense, he couldn’t think. Was he marrying a crazy person? Arlene seemed so normal, though, and so unconcerned. What was he missing? Was he really supposed to take comfort from the fact that Dash had done something just this absurd and idiotic when she was five years old? He couldn’t possibly throw in his lot with a person like that. Lunacy, insanity—
He saw her at the end of the neat, fenced backyard, sitting on one of the low seats of a rusted swing set with her back to him, staring down at the grassless patch of ground at her feet as she swung herself listlessly back and forth, back and forth. The skirt of her white sundress billowed over her knees with each forward pass. She was barefooted. Both hands gripped the swing’s chains, and her head was bent at a sad, sideways angle. She looked forlorn. Impossibly lovely. He tried to hang on to his outrage, at least his bafflement, but they disappeared together the moment she turned around and saw him.
Because who could resist the rising light in her face or her slow, radiant smile, the pure joy in her eyes followed so quickly by a flood of helpless tears? Who could resist her flying white skirt and flashing legs, the reckless collision of her body against his when she threw herself into his arms and kissed him all over his face? She kissed the sparse hair in front of his ears—formerly sideburns—with extra fervor, and she rubbed her nose against the prickly side of his neck and murmured through her tears, “I’m sorry, oh, darling, I’m so sorry, I love you, you don’t look anything like him, I love you, let’s get married right away.” She cried so many tears, soon his face was as wet as hers.
“Like who?”
“Your father. Why do we have to wait? Let’s get married today, do you want to? I’m dying to.”
So they did. Not that day but the next, with a minister Arlene knew from sewing altar cloths for the Baptist church around the corner. Andrew’s father, a lifelong Episcopalian, had little enough use for Dash already and he balked at that, wouldn’t come down with Tommie for the ceremony. A week later Dash and Andrew threw a big party for themselves at the Thai-Vietnamese restaurant, and a week after that Andrew’s hair had grown out enough so that the whole issue drifted away, seemed almost dreamlike to him in time. He forgot about it.
Until, two months pregnant with Chloe, Dash took the car—they only had one in those days—and escaped to Arlene’s again. That time he didn’t go get her.
He thought of calling her now. Not of going to get her, just calling her. To tell her about Hobbes.
She’d probably be on her way to the cabin from work, though, and he didn’t like to talk to her while she was driving. Then, too, she’d try to cheer him up, and the things she would say—Hobbes was old, he’d had a good life, better to lose him now than when he was in pain and incontinent—Andrew didn’t feel like hearing those things now. Even from her.
He should go in and get warm. He’d catch his death out here. Or he could just stay where he was and feel sorry for himself. Remembering his wedding had put him in a strange mood, hopeful and sad at the same time. Bittersweet. Like recalling the warm, inspiring parts of a friend’s funeral.
He put his coat over his head and hugged his knees to his chest. He’d stay out here with Hobbes a little longer.
dash
fifteen
“Thank God for children.” Greta stabs a forkful of Cobb salad and shakes her head. She’s done her hair in braids today, four thick ones swinging around like orange tails, and one more curled up in a circle on her forehead like a hat ornament. “If I had to deal with nothing but mothers, I’d go nuts. I don’t see how you do it.”
“Well, you said it—the kids. But you have to admit, not all mothers are like that one.”
We’re decompressing, over a takeout lunch in the office, from a shoot this mo
rning at the home of Mrs. Valerie Weiss-Slater and her new baby, the adorable Sophie. It was Greta’s first location shoot, plus she’d never worked with a child as young as Sophie—ten weeks.
“But God, wasn’t that lady a piece of work? Could you believe she wanted to pretend to breast-feed?”
“Oh, I’ve done mothers like that before,” I say over a mouthful of pickle. “They want the full Madonna portrait, but none of that messy stuff that goes with it.”
Beads clack in Greta’s hair when she shakes her head some more. It’s so much fun to teach her. I have to look at everything through her eyes, which makes it all new. “Valerie should’ve gotten the Academy Award,” she grumbles.
There was a lovely soft-gray light coming through Valerie’s gauzy bedroom curtain while we were setting up this morning, and she looked wonderfully maternal in a diaphanous white negligee, doing the sleepily ecstatic look with half-closed eyes and beatific smile—she must’ve been practicing in the mirror—when all at once she pulled a breast out of her nightgown and shoved it in Sophie’s startled mouth. “Hurry,” she snapped when Sophie, quite naturally, began to suck.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Greta declares. “
“You wouldn’t have done the shot?”
“No. It’s bogus.”
She’s so cute. “Well, what’s dressing up a little girl in a Victorian gown and a big floppy hat and sticking her in a pony cart? Portrait photography’s a lot about pretend.”
“It’s not the same.”
“No, probably not. You’re right. And I do draw the line sometimes—like when the mother wants total nudity, and it feels more like porn than maternity. But, honey, if Valerie wants to pretend she nursed her baby, what do we care?”
“She’s a phony. What if she tells the kid she nursed her? And Sophie grows up believing it?”
“Well—then Sophie will always think it’s sweet and precious that she and her mother had that bond, and one day she’ll nurse her own child.”
Greta rolls her eyes in a way that reminds me of Mo. They think I’m Pollyanna.
“We got some great shots, though, didn’t we? Especially the baby by herself.” We propped Sophie up with the arm of the sofa under her chest in Valerie’s immaculate white living room, and the first thing she did was yawn. I’m fast—I got the pug nose, the puffy eyes squeezed tight shut, and oh, the big, toothless, wide-open mouth. Of course Valerie had to put a fuzzy pink blankie under her—no drool allowed on the furniture—but that turned out to be even better, because then I got the unbelievably delicate pastel of Sophie’s beautiful skin. I think if you get that right, a baby’s skin, the rest almost doesn’t matter.
The phone rings. It’s still a luxury to have somebody else answer it. “Bateman Photography, this is Greta, how can I help you?” She’s so efficient. She jots down notes while she listens. “Oh, I’m sorry, we’re going to be closed all next week. But after the eleventh you’re welcome to come in. What about Tuesday?”
Whenever we speak, I make a point to tell Andrew how well she’s working out. Because it’s true, not just because I want to rub his nose in the brilliance of my choice. The new website Greta designed gets more hits in a day than the old one did in two weeks. She never misses a meter reading, she’s good on the phone, she’s great with kids. Studio work is still a challenge—we haven’t yet repeated the Greta-in-charge experiment (which went pretty well, no major catastrophes)—but I think that’s to be expected when you’re just starting out. The main thing is, she’s flashy. People come in and it’s not just boring old me anymore; there’s this extremely odd-looking young woman, edgy, arty, still a bit unpolished, head in the clouds sometimes. Somebody interesting.
She hangs up the phone. “A lady and her four-year-old. She doesn’t have any idea what she wants.”
“Is she coming in for a consult?”
“Yeah, end of April. Spring’s really filling up,” she notes, entering the appointment on the computer.
“I know, but I still need my week. God, one whole, uninterrupted week in Virginia.” I thrill at the prospect.
“You look different. You look good, but different.” Greta sits back down at the other side of my desk. “I mean, from when I first met you.”
“I do? Well, my hair.” I got about six inches cut off last week, a complete surprise to my hairdresser, not to mention me. “I’m old, Harold, cut it all off,” I told him. “Old people don’t get to have long hair.” He didn’t want to; he threatened to give me a perm and dye it blue. I was scared to death, but I kept insisting, and now—I like it! It’s easy, I don’t have to do anything, and it makes me look—the magic Y word—younger.
“Yeah, but no, it’s not just the hair.” Greta squinches her pale-lashed eyes into slits, studying me.
“I’ve lost some weight,” I say helpfully.
“No…”
“Just from walking. Sock and I take these long walks in the woods—”
“No, that’s not it. Oh, well.” She gives up, starts throwing lunch stuff in the trash.
I wish she could, but I’m not surprised she can’t nail it down, the precise change she sees in me. I certainly can’t. As soon as I think, This is how I feel, I don’t feel that way anymore, I’ve gone off in a different direction. Greta must see a pinwheel when she looks at me, multicolored vanes constantly spinning, spinning—or one of those trick card decks you thumb through fast and see some jokey scene played out in cartoons. Except my deck’s not in order, so there’s no coherent scene, just jerky, unconnected postures.
It’s not all bad, though. It’s as if I’m standing on tiptoes all the time. From excitement, from anxiety, both—doesn’t matter; either way, I’m not sleepwalking. Boy, am I wide awake.
“You know what, Greta, you can probably take off right now. Nothing here for you to do, and I have to start sorting through proofs if I’m going to get them online for Valerie by tomorrow. Because come hell or high water, I am out of here Friday night.”
Greta sort of dithers in the doorway.
“I mean, is that okay? You get your bonus today, of course, for helping on the shoot. And full pay next week even though I won’t be in the—”
“I know.” She’s got one arm in the sleeve of her gnarled green sweater, which she always wears with a long fuchsia muffler. “Um,” she says.
“What’s up?” She can’t have a raise yet. Can she? Maybe she can. She deserves it. Yes! She can. I’m excited, anticipating the good news.
“Um.” She falls back in the chair, unwinding her muffler. She’s a lipstick freak, always choosing the reddest, the brightest, her round mouth like a tropical flower in her milk-pale face. She takes a deep breath. “Joel asked me to marry him. I said yes.”
I don’t say, “Oh, wow,” soon enough. I’m too shocked. “Oh, wow. I’m so surprised. How about that.” I should get up and hug her. “You and Joel. That’s amazing.”
“It just happened. I haven’t told my parents yet, even. We’re thinking June.”
“June.”
She speaks quickly. “Because we both want a small wedding, tiny, just family, and we’ll probably do it outside in a park or something. So no big, like, preparations or anything. And afterward I’m going to work at home. Designing commercial websites. Which I’ve been doing some of already in my spare time, you know—I told you. And I’d help Joel, too, because his goal is for us both to be independent, work for ourselves, not have bosses. He’s got plans already for his own consulting firm, he’s got great contacts in the industry and also in the government, which is where it’s all at in this town. There’s this woman at his work that he’d go in with, she’s Chinese, so they’d get minority set-asides.”
I stop listening to Joel’s consulting firm plans. I’m having an out-of-body experience. Greta has turned into a ventriloquist and her dummy is talking to me. “But, Greta,” I manage when she pauses. “What about your career? Your photography career,” I specify in case she’s forgotten. “What about photojo
urnalism? Travel?” I stand up, have to dissipate some energy. “What about perfecting your art?”
She lowers her head, becoming absorbed in braiding three pieces of fringe on the muffler.
“You know I’m glad for you. If this is what you want. But honey, you’re so young—”
“Twenty-five?”
“That’s young. Do you have to marry him?” I try a laugh, to mask the exasperation. “Couldn’t you just live together?”
“He has a son, Dash.”
“Right, okay, but—is this what you want? Be sure, be absolutely sure. Joel, I can see—and I know he loves you, but isn’t it possible the, the practicalities might also be motivating him here?”
“Like what?”
“Like wanting some help with little—I’m sorry, I forget his name—”
“Justin.”
“—Justin, wanting a mother for him, needing help when it’s, when there’s—”
“Justin already has a mother.” She stands up, too. “I have to go.”
“Wait, wait. I am really not saying what I mean.” I follow her out through the studio. Something’s hounding me, I can’t let this go. I’m not angry, exactly; it’s more like desperation.
In the lounge, she whirls around to face me. “You know, Dash—” Her face is pink; she’s about to cry. Oh no! Then I will, too. “You’re not my mother.”
“Of course I’m not, of course not. But we’re friends, and I couldn’t stand it if you were making a mistake.”
“I’m not. Not for me.”
“I know you feel that way. I know exactly how you feel right n—”
“No, you don’t.”