She was quiet again, thinking this over, I could tell. Then she asked, “Why will they have to leave it to someone?”
I said, Only because they miss the city so much—didn’t you notice, it’s all they talk about? Sooner or later they’re going to want to go back to the city and leave the house to someone else. “To you,” I said. Everyone who misses a place so much, I said, eventually goes back to it. “Which is why I know you’ll always come back here, to me.”
Now she nodded, ready to leave behind, it seemed, whatever notion she’d had, just moments ago, about never returning.
“Will you live there, too?” she whispered. “With me?”
I considered this for a minute. “I’ll be living here,” I said. “But I could visit.”
“Will you sleep over?”
“Sure,” I said. “Sometimes.”
“I wouldn’t want to sleep there alone,” she said.
“What a coininkydink,” I said in my best Three Stooges voice. “Neither does Mrs. Swanson.” I moved my head to a cooler part of the pillow. “I don’t know what there is to be afraid of. Fairies? I’d love to see some fairies dancing around my room.”
But Daisy shook her head again. “Ghosts,” she said. “Like the book said, if you sleep alone.”
I laughed, and tightened my grip around her. “I don’t think seeing ghosts would be such a bad thing, either. You might see someone you used to know.”
“Like Curly,” she said, sleepy at last, and I said, “There you go.”
I held her, listening to her breath until I matched it with my own, and then woke briefly to hear Petey’s breath as well, and to see his shadowed form against our window.
When Dr. Kaufman Came by our blanket at the beach that afternoon, Flora was still napping in the shade of my father’s umbrella and Daisy and I were sitting on the edge of the quilt, drawing finger pictures in the sand. As I saw him approach, I quickly erased my picture, throwing the sand over Daisy’s feet, pretending I was unhappy with what I had drawn.
He’d just come out on the train. The city was unbearable, he said, 108° in the shade. (My parents had listened to the weather on the radio that morning, had smiled smugly at each other when they’d heard.) He had his beach chair and his newspaper and he dropped both in the sand to sit at my feet. He wore the same black polo shirt and red trunks. The insides of his thighs were still pale. “I have something to show you,” he said, opening the paper and pulling out two long envelopes. “And a favor to ask.”
They were letters from the twins, camp letters decorated with stick figures sitting in canoes and dancing around bright orange fires. On wide-lined paper and in their shaky, oversized hands, Patricia had written that she loved swimming, got stung by a bee, and sang Doe, a Deer at the talent show. Colby, less prolific, went fishing and won a prize—although he didn’t say, as Dr. Kaufman pointed out, delighted, leaning over my knees as I read, if one was the result of the other.
I folded my legs under me as I handed the letters back. “Tell them I said hi.” And he said, buoyantly, “Oh, I already have.”
He looked the letters over again and then folded them up and returned them to their envelopes. “They’ll be out here August 10,” he said. “And here’s the thing. I’ve met this woman, her name is Jill, she’ll be here this weekend. I’ll introduce you. Anyway, she’s going to be out here that week, too. For the whole week. She really wants to spend some time with the kids, get to know them. Which is great and all, but I don’t want to overwhelm her.” He smiled. The bright sun shone through his thinning brown hair and lit his scalp. It seemed to light his brown eyes as well, and I realized he had, since last week, been relieved of the burden of his loneliness. “So,” he said, “can I book you, the week of the tenth?”
I saw Daisy turn her head over her shoulder, listening. “I’ve got Flora,” I said, but he held up his hand. “I know, I know.” He lightly touched his fist to my knee. I saw his eyes slip from my face to my chest to my lap, a happy little tour. “This is just for the nights,” he said. “We’ll do things with the kids during the day, but I’d really like to give her, give Jill, her nights off.” He smiled again. It occurred to me that Ana, too, had her nights off. He suddenly reached out and moved away a strand of hair the wind had blown across my mouth. “It’d be a big help to me,” he said. “And the kids would love it. I really want it to be a great week.”
I recalled the summer afternoon that I had held his children in my lap while he and his wife—their mother—were inside, the rising tenor of her voice: Oh, what happened; oh, where is it? I wondered if I could anticipate something of the same, the week of the tenth, now with a different woman’s voice crying out. The sand had slipped from Daisy’s instep, I could see through it to the bruise, but I knew, too, that Dr. Kaufman’s attention was elsewhere—on himself, to be exact. I thought there was something Red Roverish, something panting and a little dumb about his new enthusiasm, for this woman, for his kids, for his sudden reprieve from his bachelor summer. I knew Daisy, her bruises and her pale skin, would be lost in it all.
I said I’d do it, and he said, “Great,” a little too loudly. Flora stirred beneath the umbrella and he hunched his shoulders and put his fingers to his lips. “Sorry,” he said, mouthing the word. He leaned closer; for a minute I thought he was going to kiss me again, but he merely whispered, “We’ll look for you on the beach this weekend. You’ll get to meet Jill.” He stood. He waved to Daisy and she waved back. He pointed to his own cheek. “She’s getting some nice color,” he said, as if that was that. He picked up his newspaper and his chair and headed down the beach, his calves muscular, slightly bowed, his shoulders thrown back, and his head turning, unabashedly it seemed, toward every young woman he passed. With his every step, a happy spurt of sand was thrown up by his heels.
I packed us up as soon as Flora woke. Even this far out on the Island, it was a hot, hot day, and by the time we got back to Flora’s house, we were all cranky. There was a strange car in the driveway and as we walked past the studio I heard another man’s voice, and some laughter. Ana was in the kitchen, in her blue uniform. She was putting tiny sandwiches on a tray that already held crackers topped with caviar and bits of hard-boiled egg. There was a table fan spinning in front of the window. She said something in French that I gathered meant “Don’t bother me,” so I took both girls back to Flora’s bathroom and put them in the shower. I got them dressed and combed out their hair and put some of Flora’s baby dolls on the floor for them to play with and then went in to take a shower myself. It was not something I’d ever done before. I had been warned early on by my mother, who had learned it from her own parents, that the last thing I should do in the homes of my employers was to act as if it were my home as well. No matter how warm and friendly and welcoming my employers might be, a bit of distance and decorum, my mother and her mother before her had said, is always appreciated. Helping myself to their shower and to Flora’s mother’s skin cream (a lovely lily-of-the-valley scent that really put Noxzema to shame) was hardly distant or decorous, but I was hot and salty and tired, and more and more I was coming to realize that Flora’s house was the only place I really wanted to be. I put on my shorts and, because of the heat, dispensed with a T-shirt and just slipped into another one of my father’s crisp button-downs, one that I had taken from his closet that morning and placed in the bottom of the beach bag. I wrapped my hair in a towel and, barefoot, carried the skin cream back to the bedroom to share it with the girls. I was just smoothing some on Flora’s arms when he came to the doorway. He asked if I would bring her out to the living room, someone wanted to meet her. I took the towel from my head and shook my hair like a dog, wetting us all, getting the girls laughing and running. Then I used the towel to dry Flora’s and Daisy’s hair and scooted them out the door.
He was a short, thin young man, with dark hair slicked back from his high forehead and dark eyes and a long, elegant nose. He was standing by the plate-glass window, looking out into the trees,
with one hand in the pocket of his slouchy pants and a cigarette he looked too young for in the other. He turned when we entered and a kind of astonishment came into his face. “Look at this,” he said, taking in the three of us, and then turning his full attention to Flora when her father said, “This one’s my daughter.”
The man bent, as if to shake her hand, but instead waved at her, just a diddle of his fingertips, and Flora smiled from behind my leg and did the same. He then straightened up and looked at me. He had large eyes and pale skin and a slight shadow of a beard. He was the type of guy the girls at the academy would have called cute, dreamy. I was introduced as the babysitter, and he took my hand and shook it and then raised it to his lips and kissed my knuckles. He looked up at Flora’s father. “Fortunate babies,” he said, still holding my hand, and then his eyes took in the damp shirt I wore and whatever was under it. Daisy was introduced as “the faithful companion.” He shook her hand, too, saying, “Will you look at this hair.”
He turned to Flora’s father. “This is a riot,” he said. “You among all these females.” And Flora’s father smiled and shrugged. There was something both fond and tolerant in his manner. As Ana swung in with the tray of caviar, the young man took a small notepad and pencil from his back pocket and Flora’s father said, good-naturedly, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Bill,” but he waved the pencil and then jotted something down. He closed the book with a grin, returned it to his pants. “Just a note,” he said.
Over her shoulder, Ana told me that Flora’s dinner was ready in the kitchen.
Once again, he raised his hand and wiggled his fingers at us. “Bon appétit,” he said. On a plate on the table there were some crackers, some carrot and celery sticks, and a mashed hard-boiled egg. I had a feeling that Ana had just put it all together, perhaps when she’d heard us out in the living room. She didn’t return to the kitchen the whole time we were there, coaxing Flora to eat (I finally made her a cream-cheese-and-jelly sandwich, the fail-safe), and it was only after we had gone outside to look for fireflies that I heard the water running in the sink and the clink of ice and glass.
A little while later, I heard the screen door slam, and the young man came down the steps and into the yard. I had a firefly in my palm, but I let it go as I saw him approach, suddenly feeling a little foolish to be playing such games. It was still warm, but a breeze had begun to stir. “Oh, it escaped,” he said. He stood beside me and watched it rise into the air. Then he kept his chin raised and said, “How old are you?”
I told him and he nodded, his eyes still on the sky. “Are you too young,” he said, “to know what’s going on here? I mean, what the arrangement is.” I paused for a moment. He had a long neck and a jaw and cheekbones that might have been carved. I still couldn’t guess how old he was. Twenties, perhaps. “I just take care of Flora,” I said.
He looked down at me, his chin still raised. “I guess that means you are,” he said. Then he lowered his chin. “When does Mommy get back?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
He put his hands in his pockets, raised his shoulders, and gave a great sigh. For a minute we both watched Daisy and Flora crossing the lawn. “Someone told me she’s in Europe,” he said, and I felt my heart sink, for Flora.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought she was in the city.”
“She is,” he said. “Some city. Somewhere or other.” He looked at me again. “This may turn into a permanent position for you,” he said. We were nearly the same height and he was standing very close to me, our arms nearly touching. I’d had very little experience with boys my own age, but somehow I understood that he was not flirting. The admiration that occasionally showed in his eyes—that familiar prelude to being told I was pretty—seemed entirely incidental. “I mean,” he said, as if we were old friends, “the French lady is fine and all. He has a taste for such things. But I’ve never known him to want a steady diet of middle-aged and plump. There’s always got to be something young and lively”—he motioned toward Flora—“child-bearing, for dessert.” He swept his gaze over me again. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a blood-of-a-virgin kind of thing, I guess.” I looked at his dark eyes and his handsome face. He had straight white teeth, thin lips. I blinked twice, and then he suddenly touched my arm and laughed as if there were a pit caught in his throat.
“Oh no,” he said, still holding my arm. “Now you’re going to quit. Oh God, he’ll murder me. I’ve lost him his beautiful teenage babysitter. Oh God.” He leaned closer, moving his hand to my back. “Don’t quit,” he said, and I felt his fingertips along my spine. “Tell me you’re not going to quit,” he said. “Forget what I said. He’s a perfectly harmless guy. He’ll probably have to marry that maid in there if you quit.”
I saw that Daisy and Flora had turned their attention to him, drawn by his spluttering laughter. “I wouldn’t quit,” I said softly, trying to smile. “Why should I quit?”
He suddenly waved a hand in front of his lips, as if he’d just taken a mouthful of something hot. “I talk too much,” he said. “It’s what he likes about me.” He put his hands into his pockets once again. “Of course, there’s no reason for you to quit and no reason he shouldn’t stay out here in this perfectly lovely place with all of you perfectly lovely little females.” He waited a beat. I heard the screen door open behind us, and then felt his hand on my back again, his nails scratching my spine. “And if you’ve got nothing on at all under that big white shirt,” he said softly, into my ear, “well, that’s perfectly lovely, too.”
Flora went to her father with her hands cupped around a lightning bug and we both turned to watch them. He bent over her, placed his hand on her head, and then looked at the two of us.
The young man suddenly slipped his arm under mine, laughing. “I just asked your babysitter out on a date. Completely innocent. A movie and an ice cream soda. Do you mind?”
He drew closer to us. “I don’t mind,” he said. “She should be going out for movies and ice cream sodas,” he said. He plucked at the young man’s shirtsleeve, moving him away. “But not with you.” He looked at me. “He is, you know, what some of your schoolmates might refer to as a Macduff.”
The young man laughed, a deep laugh in the back of his throat, and said, “That’s a new one.” And then Flora was at my knees, reaching up. I stepped away from them both and bent down and lifted her. She immediately put her head on my shoulder.
I looked at her father from over her head, and as if in response he took the young man’s arm again and said, “Let’s go eat.” The man stumbled a bit over the grass, calling, “Good night, girls,” as they made their way to the car. He got into the driver’s seat, and then Flora’s father shut the car door and turned back to us. Passing her, he touched Daisy’s head gently, in a kind of benediction, and then he put his arm across my shoulder and leaned to kiss his daughter’s hair. “Good night, sweetheart,” he said, as if this were a nightly routine. I could smell the drinks on his breath. Flora snuggled shyly against my shoulder. Straightening, he turned to kiss me lightly on the forehead, my own lips just inches from the fragile skin of his throat. The faint odor of aftershave, of bay rum. He touched the back of my hair, still damp from my shower, and lifted a handful of it off my neck. Suddenly it was all I could do not to lean my head into his palm. It was all I wanted to do. But I was aware of Macduff watching, perhaps scribbling something in his little notebook. I was aware of Daisy, too, and Flora in my arms. “I apologize,” he whispered. He lifted a handful of my hair and then let it fall through his fingers, catching just the last bit of it and raising it to his lips. Then he turned back toward the car.
Flora, her head tucked into my shoulder, suddenly reached out and put her hand over my heart, as if she had felt the change in its rhythm. Daisy turned to watch the car pull out, returning Macduff’s little fingertip wave as he passed. Then she turned back to me. I put my hand out for her. “Let’s get Flora to bed.” And was grateful for the steadying effect of he
r grip.
We met Ana just inside the door. She had her black skirt and the sleeveless top on again, now with one of Flora’s mother’s scarves tied jauntily around her neck. She had her purse over her arm and said, “Bonsoir,” and I had to put my hand out and touch her in order to make her pause. Her flesh was cool.
“You’re leaving?” I asked. She was wearing more lipstick, more makeup, than I was used to seeing, and I could smell Flora’s mother’s Chanel.
“I have a dinner appointment,” she said, without a pause in her forward momentum. “I will be back later on.” She had the car keys in her hand and she raised them a bit, let them jingle. “You are the babysitter,” she said as she pushed through the screen door.
“Goodbye, Ana,” Flora said to the scented air. And then to me, “Ana’s gone.”
“Vanished,” I said.
I called my parents to tell them I’d be here a while longer, and they suggested they come over and pick up Daisy if we were out much later than ten. Daisy grimaced when I told her this, but I put my arm around her and said not to worry about it. How late could they be?
We read to Flora for a while and then played with her a while longer on the rug. When she was finally asleep, Daisy and I went into the kitchen and snacked on crackers and celery and hard-boiled eggs, little sweet pickles and Spanish olives and bright red maraschino cherries. We washed what dishes there were and put everything away, and then I made us both grilled cheese sandwiches. The television was in the guest room and we carried our dinner in there. But Macduff had a thick leather overnight bag opened on the bed—a pair of trousers hung over the back of the chair—and although I spread a towel out on the floor in front of the TV and we put our plates on it and ate our sandwiches there, neither one of us felt comfortable enough to linger. Instead, I took a blanket from Flora’s closet and spread it over the white leather couch in the living room and told Daisy to lie down awhile. I sat on the floor beside her and let her braid and unbraid my hair until her responses grew shorter and her hands grew still. I crossed my arms over my raised knees and bent my head into them, waiting.
Child of My Heart Page 17