by Ann Hood
It was after these special picnics that Claudia had taught Simon to swim. She had held him up by the waist as he kicked, his tanned legs splashing her. She had watched his head bob in the water, blowing a steady stream of bubbles. In her fantasy, Claudia warned Simon never to swim without her hands to hold him above water. She told him how special he was because, before she’d had him, she had been lost, really. It had been the feeling of him inside her that had given her a purpose. She told him all the things she had always felt about him but had never said because he was such a little boy, too young to understand.
Sometimes, though, she came to the pond and lay under the tree with her more than two feet of coppery hair fanned out around her and couldn’t conjure these sounds or smells no matter how hard she tried. She could set the scene up: the farmhouse is red with rickety white shutters and the front yard is littered with bicycles and Nerf balls. The children are all around, running in for juice or a snack or to have a scraped knee kissed or an argument settled. There is the barn and Elizabeth is up in the loft painting. Howard and Claudia’s husband, Peter, are working in the fields, figuring out an irrigation problem, maybe, or checking the corn. But sometimes, the scene, though completed in her mind, was more like one of those illustrations in a children’s book that looks all right but asks: “What’s wrong with this picture?” And on those days, the missing component was her inability to return with all of her senses to that time. She would set the scene but not be able to smell the air and hear all the right sounds or to feel, totally, the peace she had then.
It was that feeling, that complete picture, that Claudia went down to the pond to recapture. And on the days that she could return to that time, she would stay under the tree until it grew dark and someone—Peter, usually—came to get her. He would take her back to the house, no longer full of smells like fresh basil or cluttered with children’s toys, emptied long ago of Elizabeth’s family—Rebekah’s hair ribbons and Elizabeth’s paints and Howard’s booming laugh. She sat at the table, unable then to reconcile the house in her mind with the cold, echoing place she sat in, and drank coffee with Peter. I was watching the children, she would say. They’re swimming. And they’re safe. Long ago, Peter had stopped explaining to her. He no longer even bothered to respond. Instead, he just looked away.
A LOT HAPPENED ON the day that Simon died. Howard left for Japan to study the Japanese technique of pottery making. Elizabeth found out that she was pregnant. And Nixon resigned as president. The day went like this: Claudia overslept. When she got downstairs, Elizabeth had already returned from taking Howard to the airport in Springfield. She was making curried egg salad for lunch. Rebekah was at the kitchen table, her hair in braids. Her overalls had a tiny stain on the bib.
Claudia had a lot to do. Peter was at an auction in Lee and so she had to pick the vegetables to bring to the market the next day. In those days she was a compulsive list-maker and she sat at the table with a pen and pad. The pad had CHEKHOV LISZT at the top of each page in big square letters.
“Why don’t you go and play with the boys?” Elizabeth said to Rebekah. “You can bring them sandwiches and have a picnic.”
Rebekah shrugged. She was a serious child with black hair and eyes that looked like black olives. She always wanted things she couldn’t have. Her Christmas list the year before had blond hair and blue eyes at the top.
Just then, Claudia’s three boys came in. They were all tall and thin with shaggy blond hair. Claudia called them the Beach Boys. Sometimes they would put on a concert for her. Henry and Johnathan would strum imaginary guitars and Simon would keep the beat by banging his hands on any available tabletop. They would sing “Surfin’ Safari” and “Help Me Rhonda,” with Johnathan doing the high parts.
Now they came in for permission to go swimming in the pond. Claudia noticed that Simon’s nose was sunburned. He had on a striped shirt with two little footprints on the pocket. Hang Ten. “I’ll keep an eye on the little guys,” he told her with a wink. He loved the role of big brother.
“How about some lunch first?” Elizabeth asked, and started making sandwiches for them. The curry made the egg salad a dark yellow. That color was etched in Claudia’s mind forever. The next day she threw out some living room curtains that were the same rich gold.
“Can we eat under the tree?” Henry asked. He was only six then, but almost as tall as Simon.
“Sure,” Claudia said. She put down her pen and helped Elizabeth wrap the sandwiches. She put some fruit in the bag for them too.
Johnathan insisted on carrying the food. He was always trying to prove he wasn’t a baby anymore. “See,” he said, “I can carry this by myself. I’m a big boy now.”
Elizabeth persuaded Rebekah to go with them. As the children left, she shouted after them. “Don’t swim right after you eat. You’ll get a cramp.”
“That’s an old wives’ tale, you know,” Claudia laughed.
“Well,” Elizabeth shrugged, “it can’t hurt.”
“My mother used to always warn me not to sit on the sidewalk. It gives you piles.”
“Piles?”
“Hemorrhoids.”
Both women laughed.
“It’s such a funny day,” Claudia said then.
“You slept too late.”
“Mmmm. I had strange dreams. The tree near the pond was choking me, and Simon came to save me. Then we rode off on a porpoise.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Did you ever wish,” Claudia said, “I don’t know…that things could stay the same?”
“Are you feeling blue because Howard went to Japan for that training?”
“I guess that’s part of it. When he comes back you’ll all move and start a pottery business. I don’t know. I feel sort of like things will never be this good again. The way they are now.”
Elizabeth put her hand over Claudia’s. “My poor friend. You never did take to change very well. But it will be a while before we find a place where we can live and have room for a workshop and a store too.”
Claudia smiled a little.
“All right,” Elizabeth said. “I was saving this for more of a major announcement but, since you need some cheering up, I’ll tell you now.”
“If it’ll cheer me up, I’m ready.”
“I got a call today from the doctor. The rabbit died.”
Claudia shrieked and the women hugged. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, Claudia began to cry.
“Happy tears,” she said. “Honest.”
CLAUDIA CONSIDERED, FOR A brief moment, abandoning her chores and going for a swim with the children. But it was already late and she had so much to do. Of course, had she gone, she would always think, Simon would not have died. She would have been there to save him. And sometimes, in her daydreams under the tree, that is how the day went.
By the time Claudia was in the garden picking the vegetables, the sun was at its hottest. She still could easily recall how strong the smell of the dirt was in the noontime sun. It reminded her of her hometown in California. In Delano, the temperature would hit 100 degrees every day and bring the smell of hot dry dirt to her in the same way as today. Claudia thought of this as she picked first the tomatoes and then the radishes. She filled large baskets with the vegetables, heaping them so high that some tumbled to the ground. In the details that she could recall from the day that Simon died, the order in which she picked the vegetables and the way they looked was perhaps the strongest. The tomatoes were blood red, the radishes a brighter shade of red, almost magenta, and both were covered with dirt that allowed the colors just to peek through, like the vegetables in one of Elizabeth’s paintings.
Claudia was pulling carrots out of the ground when she caught a glimpse of Rebekah going into the barn. A few minutes later, Rebekah and Elizabeth both emerged. Elizabeth waved over to her.
“The boys are teasing her,” she shouted in explanation.
Claudia nodded and continued picking the carrots. It crossed her mind to go down to the
pond and tell them to leave Rebekah alone. But she didn’t.
It seemed like only a few minutes later, but by the slant of the sun and the number of filled baskets, Claudia realized it was actually an hour or more later that the commotion began.
First she heard shouting from down by the pond. She looked up, confused. For a moment she thought she really was back in Delano, a young girl again on her parents’ farm. Once, there had been an accident there. A Mexican farm worker had gotten hurt in a piece of machinery. Claudia was about eleven at the time, and had stood, unable to move, as the frightened voices neared. “Señorita,” they had shouted, “get help.” But she had just stood there with the smell of dry dirt all around her and the hot sun beating down. And now, here was her son, Henry, running and shouting for help. Something terrible had happened. Claudia watched as Johnathan ran up the hill as well, howling like a hurt puppy. Yet she could see that he wasn’t hurt at all. My God, she thought, it’s Simon.
As if she were watching a movie run in slow motion, Claudia saw Elizabeth run out of the house with Rebekah and motion for all the children to stay, stay put. Don’t go down there, Claudia told herself. The wind blew Elizabeth’s hair into her face and she had to keep reaching up to pull it away so she could see as she ran. Johnathan was howling incoherently and Henry ran to the top of the hill, looked down, then ran back to the house, over and over he did this. At the top of the hill, as he peered down, he hopped on one foot, like he had to go to the bathroom.
Later, people told Claudia that she, too, had run down to the pond, right behind Elizabeth. They said that she had stood screaming at the edge of the water as Elizabeth pulled Simon out and tried to breathe life into him. But she was sure that they were wrong. She had stayed in the garden and picked the lettuce and then the summer squash. An ambulance came and still she kept picking. But don’t you remember running up the hill, holding Simon’s hand on the stretcher and Elizabeth yelling for the children to go inside the house? they asked her later. She had looked up, she remembered, when they put him in the ambulance, then she had resumed picking the summer squash. They, too, were a rich yellow. And it was then she had thought of the draperies in the living room. She didn’t leave the garden until Elizabeth came and led her away. “No,” they told her later. “You ran down to the pond and rode in the ambulance all the way to the hospital.” But she shook her head.
Later, as they sat, numb and silent in the living room waiting for Peter to return from Lee, Howard called from Kennedy airport. His flight to Japan was delayed and, he told them, Richard Nixon had resigned.
UNDER THE TREE NEAR the pond, Claudia was on her back and listening to the children’s voices that only she could hear. The breeze made the leaves move in a kind of waltz. The branches of the tree were arms that reached out to her and picked her off the ground. Claudia smiled as Simon came and took her from the dancing tree and into his arms. He was tall and blond and so very strong. She waved good-bye to the tree.
“Simon,” she whispered.
“No, Mom. It’s Henry.”
Claudia sighed. “I see.”
He put her down gently, supported her on his arm.
“Can you walk okay?” he asked her.
Claudia nodded and they glided up the hill toward the house. She looked back at the pond and watched the boys splash in the water.
“Today,” she said, “I picked all the vegetables. First the tomatoes, then radishes and carrots. Then lettuce, and finally, summer squash.”
Henry, 1985•
IF ANYONE WERE TO NOTICE the lanky blond boy and the bulkier dark-haired one sitting together hour after hour on Indian Rock in near silence, it would be inevitable to wonder what had brought them together. That was how unlikely a pair these two were. Henry looked like the boy on the beach who gets sand kicked in his face. Sometimes he wore small round wire-rimmed glasses. Always he carried a book with him. The other boy, Pogo, was the one who kicked sand in the boys like Henry’s faces. He was not tall, but his muscles made up for his lack of height. He was described frequently as massive rather than merely large. In high school, he had been an All-State wrestler both his junior and senior years. The last book that Pogo read was To Kill a Mockingbird in eighth grade.
When he wasn’t with Pogo, Henry sat in the loft in the barn and read. He also plotted how to get Rebekah Morgan to fall in love with him. Lately Henry fantasized that he was Jay Gatsby and Rebekah was Daisy, the distant streetlights in the town his green light. They lay ahead of him as symbols of his hope and love.
Pogo worked in Holyoke at a factory that made clothes for expensive teddy bears. He liked to sit in his ’67 Mustang convertible and drink beer in the high school parking lot at night. Pogo was twenty years old, three years older than Henry. In October, he would marry his high school sweetheart, Carol. Carol was a cashier at the A&P. This summer she had been working extra hours and Saturdays to save money for their future.
IT WAS A WARM Saturday in June and Pogo and Henry were perched on Indian Rock. The afternoon sun was giving way to dusk, the sky growing pink around the edges.
Pogo sipped his beer.
“Sure is pretty,” he said.
Henry didn’t answer, just drew on the end of a joint he was smoking.
“We sure do live in a pretty corner of the world, huh?”
“I guess so,” Henry said.
Pogo drained his can of beer.
“Shit,” he said. “I’ve got to go pick up Carol at work.” He crushed the can in his hand and tossed it downward. The sound of it as it bounced off the rocks echoed for quite some time.
“Why do you always litter?” Henry asked, shaking his head.
“It disintegrates. Really.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Pogo shrugged.
They sank back into their comfortable silence and watched the pink as it spread throughout the sky. It deepened, turned to violet, faded into smoky purple in the distance.
“I hear they’ve got some great sunsets in Hawaii,” Pogo said.
“Sounds right.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, the sun sets in the west.”
“Right.”
Henry nodded.
“Shit,” Pogo said as he got up. “I’m late. You want to come with me to get Carol?” Henry shrugged.
“Come on. Come with me.”
“Okay,” Henry said.
They made their way down the rocks. Henry stopped to pick up the crushed Miller cans. He threw them into the metal trash can on the corner near Pogo’s car.
“Did you know,” Henry said as they drove, “that I was almost on That’s Incredible?” “Get out.”
“Really.”
“Was it for some wild stunt? Like I saw a guy once that put on a special suit that wouldn’t burn, you know, like it was treated with some special stuff. And he put this suit on and he ran through a tunnel of fire. It was really something. Flames shooting out everywhere. And the suit was on fire but I guess like it didn’t really burn, you know. These guys ran out and hosed him down. For a while it looked like maybe he did burn anyway. He just lay there in this like burned-up suit and John Davidson got real nervous. His voice was all shaky and stuff. But then the guy jumps up and tears the suit off. It was so great.”
“Well, it wasn’t for anything like that.”
“Another time, right? I saw this guy who was like blind and retarded and maybe even deaf and these real old people adopted him. So they were sleeping one night and the old lady thinks maybe she left the radio on or something because she hears music. So she goes downstairs and it’s the retarded guy playing the piano and singing ‘Amazing Grace’!”
“An idiot savant.”
“Whatever.”
Henry laughed. He liked being high and riding through the warm evening with Pogo.
They parked in front of the A&P and waited for Carol. The store lights were bright and Henry watched the people inside. There was a pregnant woman in the express lane with two baskets of food. The peopl
e in line behind her were staring and pointing because she had much more than the ten-item limit. A tall man wearing pink glasses and a toupee and holding two frozen dinners started counting the items in her baskets. Henry could see them clearly as they rolled down the conveyor belt. Froot Loops. Oreos. Pampers.
A boy in a green smock was collecting shopping carts in the parking lot. When he had a line of them, he wheeled them through the mechanical doors and into the store. Henry watched the boy add these carts to a line already inside. The doors opened again like a large toothless mouth and Carol walked out with another girl. They both had on tight jeans and high-heeled sandals. Their eyes were rimmed in bright blue, their lips were red and shiny.
“That’s Debbie,” Pogo said. “Boy, is she hot.”
Henry looked at the girl as she approached. She had on a white muscle T-shirt. Her breasts showed through, large and heavy. Pogo was always trying to fix Henry up with someone. He couldn’t understand why Henry wasted his time on Rebekah Morgan.
Henry moved to the backseat so that Carol could sit next to Pogo. As soon as the girls got in, they lit up cigarettes.
“This is Henry, Debbie,” Carol said.
“Hi.” Debbie smiled. “Hi, Pogo.” She tugged on Pogo’s hair.
“Get out,” he said. “I’m driving.”
“What a day,” Carol said.
“I’ll say,” Debbie agreed. “I hate working customer service. Why does Eddie put me there every Saturday?”
“The same reason he puts me on Express. There are always fights in Express. Every single time. There’s always some sleazy person who has like a million items and comes through Express. Can’t these people read?”
“Some lady today comes up to the window with this can of string beans and shoves it right in my face. ‘Look at what’s in here,’ she says.”
“God!” Carol said, turning around toward the backseat. “What was it?”