Mother walked out and greeted them, then wobbled oddly between them. Father put his arm around Mother and kissed her, then took her inside. Someone turned the spotlights off and the backyard grew still and soft and not quite dark in the moonlight. I heard the guests’ cars starting up and simmering away down the street. Then Miss Delgarno reappeared again as a darker shadow in the dark, moving toward Mother’s garden, past the tall oak and the two smaller cherry trees and into the back woods. She wore a long, cape-like coat this time. Shell followed behind practically invisible except for the tiny glow of a cigarette that zigzagged like a firefly. He crossed the lawn and headed for the woods. I saw him drape his long arm around her shoulder before they disappeared into the trees.
Chapter Six
The After Party
In the dark hours after my parents’ dinner party, a police officer found Mother at the edge of Gooseneck Lake slumped over the steering wheel. The car hurtled over the embankment, a low dirt mound, and drove into the shallow water. The jolt broke her nose and bruised her forehead. Emergency workers removed her from the front seat and took her to the local hospital for observation.
“Very, very lucky,” Father said, shaking his head.
He stood at my bedside looking crumpled. The early morning sun nudged the windowsill behind him. His hair was askew, his clothes buttoned wrongly.
“I didn’t hear the car leave,” I said. “Where was she going?”
“The lake. The lake. You know your mother. Full of whimsy. Beautiful night. Party. She went on a drive to get some fresh air, those aches she gets and the point is, she’s going to be fine. Took those pills. The doctors don’t tell you the effects.” He fluttered his knotty hands to illustrate what he meant then turned back to the door. He didn’t want to tell me more than that.
Gooseneck Lake is where I spent winter days ice-skating with school friends. On one end, it stretched into a long, narrow shape. We skated on the belly section, where it opened up into a round, plump pond protected by shrubs and scraggly trees, where Mother lost her bearings rounding a curve. I shook my head. I felt angry, unable to comprehend.
“I don’t get it.”
“She’ll be fine, fine, fine. Crazy accident. Damn arthritis. Those pills. You and the boys spend the day with your aunt until we straighten this thing out. Get dressed and come downstairs.”
He closed my door.
This word ‘accident’ made him behave in a peculiar shifting way. His voice trembled. I was accustomed to his shouts. But now as I listened to him hurry down the hall, knocking on Robert’s door and repeating the word, “accident,” in a whisper, I wished he would revert to a louder gauge.
I lay on my back in bed, looking at the ceiling as Robert’s reply floated into the hallway, an elongated, twelve-year-old’s whining question: “Whyeeee?”
Father said something inaudible.
“I don’t want tooooo. Nooooo.”
My brother sounded scared, which made him defiant.
“Get up.”
Father tromped up to the attic and I heard Peter’s voice and Elliot’s, then Father stepping heavily back down to the second floor landing.
“Sarah, now, please.”
I sat up and got dressed. My three brothers came down one by one and sat on the kitchen stools. Dora, silently poured bowls of cereal and stood at the sink cleaning vegetables, looking stern-faced and military. While we ate, Aunt Annette arrived. She wore a brown and white polka-dotted dress that touched the midline of her knees. Her calves looked surprisingly slender, given her girth, wide shoulders and full bosom. Her dark leather pumps tip-tapped on the kitchen floor. She smelled freshly showered and powdered.
“Hello, dears,” she said, bending down to kiss Elliot. She reached toward Robert, but he recoiled and stepped away. So she took Elliot’s hand and assured him that Mother would be fine. Elliot snuggled against her thigh.
“What happened to her?” Elliot asked.
“Your mother hurt her nose. She’ll be home in a week, so we don’t need to be glum,” my aunt said.
“How did she hurt it?”
“In the accident.”
“But how did it happen?”
Elliot persisted — that part of him that needed to cure all ills, mend animals, fix people, as if his whole being were in a state of anticipation, the hairs on his skin like mini-antennae honing in on what might and could go wrong.
“So many questions, dear. I don’t have all the answers right now but when I do I’ll tell you. How’s that?”
“When will you know?”
“Later, Elliot. Let’s think about the zoo.”
Father came in shaved and combed, his hair flat. “I’m leaving now. Okay?” He turned to Aunt Annette. “You’re all set?”
“I’d like to go with you,” Peter said. He spoke with new authority, a new kind of inner confidence.
Father stepped back and bumped into the stove.
“Not today, Peter. I mean it. Please.” His voice sounded desperate.
Peter started to speak then changed his mind. Instead, he slid his lanky body off the stool and walked out of the room.
~~~~~
Accident became the operative word, a simple word pockmarked by carelessness and avoidable travesty. The word infuriated me. Fuming, I got into the front seat of Aunt Annette’s car. She pushed the master button on the control panel. All the door locks clicked simultaneously like bullets shooting at targets. This didn’t help my mood.
“Everybody set?” She looked into the rearview mirror, then put the car into reverse.
“Do we have a choice?” Peter asked.
“No,” I said.
The car smelled of my aunt’s perfume and had an indifferent air, as if nothing on Earth could soil it or her or us but I knew better. I was the mature one, wasn’t I? Isn’t that what mother said? Sarah, you’re very mature for your age, beyond your years. We drove out of the neighborhood, in my aunt’s scratch-free black Cadillac with melon-colored leather seats, ashtrays hidden in the doors, down the hill past hedges dried out from summer heat.
On the highway, Peter stared out the window in front, his long, blond ponytail all I could see of his expressions. Beside me, Elliot played with two of his plastic animals — a horse and a sheep. He whispered to himself and tapped the sheep’s head against the horse’s muzzle, then walked them up and down his thigh, or tilted them on the ledge of his knees. Robert read his book about time travel, his head in an invisible vise, his hand turning pages with a snap that told me he was fending off our shared dismay. No one tried to make conversation.
At the zoo, we filed through the turnstile and headed first to the bird exhibit. Despite the sunny day, the crowds were thin, perhaps because of the heat. We found ourselves alone inside the marshland area, a dark, low-lit room that smelled of old rain and bird droppings. In the water tank, a mallard pecked at a Styrofoam cup floating in the reeds. Robert stopped to look at a school of goldfish. One fish stopped at the glass. Its flat eye peered through murky liquid.
“Why was her car in the lake?” Elliot asked suddenly. He spoke clearly, his voice rising in the dankness.
Peter walked away from the snake tanks and stood next to Robert.
“It went off the embankment. The tire tripped off the side. That’s my guess.”
“It was an accident, dear,” Aunt Annette said. “Another car may have blinded her.”
That word again. The more I thought about her driving so late at night, bleary-eyed and oblivious, the more incensed I became. The so-called accident. Why not just say my mother was crazy, caught up in something that I couldn’t see or grasp. Mother had behaved irresponsibly. We all knew it.
Elliot took my Aunt’s hand.
“Let’s go see the monkeys. Okay, everybody?” she said.
~~~~~
We left the birdhouse and followed a cracked walkway to the monkey exhibit, another dark, hollow building. The Gorilla House looked like an abandoned Hollywood movie set with fake bou
lders, straw piles, a few lean trees. Sky domes let in a hazy light. High on a rock perch, a full-grown male gorilla eyed us disinterestedly. A younger gorilla lingered near the glass front. He picked up a rubber tire and rolled it alongside the glass, then picked it up again and threw it. Elliot crouched down and pressed his palm against the glass.
“He wants to play.”
“He must be bored,” I said.
The young gorilla walked up to where Elliot knelt on the concrete floor. The two stared at each other. Elliot waved and smiled. The gorilla hopscotched, screeched and ran up the boulders, then down. He thumped on the Plexiglas to startle us.
“Stand back,” Aunt Annette said.
“He’s playing!” Elliot jumped up and down, delighted by this.
“Gorillas are highly intelligent,” Robert said.
The gorilla ran away and came back again, then danced in a small circle.
Peter said: “Yeah, well. That’s why they shouldn’t be locked in here.”
I wanted to get out of the stuffy building. I started to think about the hours the gorilla spent inside the cage and it depressed me.
“I can’t breathe in here.”
“But they’re protected,” Elliot said.
“Endangered,” Robert said.
“Not all,” Elliot said.
“Shall we keep going?” my aunt said. We were on edge and she didn’t want Robert or Peter to start arguing.
We left the building and headed for the giraffes at the opposite end of the park. My aunt walked slowly, stopping to read signposts that explained animal behaviors and foods. Even though the day was muggy, my aunt wore stockings. I wondered if she ever took them off.
Peter began humming a folk tune, the notes falling gently like a stone down a small hillside. Michael row your boat ashore, hallelujah. I joined him.
Ahead of us, Elliot, never quick-legged, hurried toward two giraffes grazing in a large open field. A barb-wire fence cordoned off the area. The giraffes, tall as palm trees, turned toward him as he approached them. They began to move in his direction, their elegant necks swaying in unison toward a small, faded sign: ELECTRIC FENCE LOW VOLTAGE.
“Don’t touch the fence, Elliot!” I screamed too late.
He grabbed the wire and fell backwards onto the ground, shrieking. Peter raced over. I came up right behind. Elliot rolled over onto his stomach and began sobbing.
“You’ll be fine, son!” a guard called from the road. A man sped over in a golf cart. He turned to Aunt Annette, who looked horrified. “Don’t worry now. The shock don’t harm him. It scares them. That’s what it is.”
“Do you want to explain this?” Aunt Annette asked.
Peter and I both put our arms around Elliot, who sat up looking at his hands. Robert stood with his arms lifelessly at his side, then he began hopping in place. The gray-haired guard assured us that Elliot would not suffer any physical harm.
“It’s low voltage and keeps both animals and visitors safe.”
Aunt Annette dismissed the man, turning impatiently. “My word. How could you?” I had never seen her upset. Her chin shook. Even with Mother’s accident, she had been calm, almost expectant. “Come on, dears. I’ll take you to lunch.”
We watched the guard drive slowly away.
“Let’s go home,” Peter said.
Elliot started whimpering. “I want to go to the hospital. I want to see my mother.”
“Yes. Why don’t we go see her?” I asked.
“I promise you, she’ll be home in a few days.”
My aunt put her arm around Elliot. He curled his shoulders inward, pressing his chin to his chest. I wanted to cry, too. I turned back to look at the giraffes. They had loped to the opposite end of the field; beautiful, untouchable beasts.
We got in the car. I sat in back again, between Elliot and Robert.
“Did it hurt?” Robert asked Elliot as we backed out of the parking lot. “What was it like? Was it like fire? Did it burn?”
“Shut up, Robert, you sound like a mini-Hitler,” Peter said in front.
I held Elliot’s hand and rubbed it between my own.
“It was terrible about the sign,” I said.
“Did you see it?” Aunt Annette asked me in the rearview mirror. “It was barely legible.”
“That place should be shut down,” Peter said.
“Shameful. I’d read that it had improved,” Aunt Annette said. “It’s utter negligence. Low voltage, my word.”
“I’m okay,” Elliot said. “It’s not the animals’ fault.”
Aunt Annette drove out of the parking lot. There were no indications of betterment here — faded signs, asphalt buckling and curling at the edges. In the rear-view mirror I saw her lips pressed into a straight line.
“We’ll have lunch. That will make us all feel better. Who wants clam chowder? Elliot, Robert? And we’ll have softie ice creams for dessert.”
~~~~~
In the evening, I talked to Mother on the phone.
“Are you taking care of the house for me?” she asked.
“Dora is.”
“Would you do me a favor, sweetie? The roses need to be fed. In the garage on the third shelf of the metal rack, you’ll see a tall can with a picture of roses on it. Take a tablespoon of the white powder and mix it with a gallon of water, then pour the mixture into the roots. Give them a good soak.”
I listened. Her voice sounded groggy.
“All right, dear? That would be a big help to me.”
“We wanted to come to the hospital and visit you today.”
“I know. Your father told me. Put Elliot on, honey. He had a terrible scare today.”
I went down to the garage to prepare the mixture. The powder had a putrid smell of old dung. I dumped a dose of powder in the watering can, carried it out to the garden in the backyard and soaked the dirt beneath the rosebushes. Afterwards, I went into my parents’ bedroom and opened Mother’s toiletries closet. Crystal perfume bottles clustered on the shelf like miniature people whispering secrets. One bottle looked like a flower vase. Another bottle came from Paris. I dabbed sweet stinging perfume down my arms, resting my cheek on the shelves, inhaling the mixed bouquets. Upstairs, Peter was playing a Joni Mitchell record, replaying “The Circle Game” song over and over. We can’t return we can only look behind — Mitchell’s sweet soprano circling my parents’ bedroom ceiling like a bird calling far away at sea.
In Mother’s clothes closet, I paddled through the hangers, touching one dress after another, her blue taffeta dress next to her red mohair suit. I found matching red silk-dyed shoes in a plastic bag on the floor. The yellow dress she had worn at the party was missing. I imagined it rolled up in a bag, soaked and soiled by the muddy water. I knelt inside the closet and shut the door, fitting my hands into Mother’s pointed shoes. Blue taffeta swished across my face. Protected now, I curled up and listened to the music upstairs. Closing my eyes in the darkness, I saw Mother standing at the full-length closet mirror, turning to view herself, highly critical, unsatisfied; moving away, then approaching her image again like a firefighter trying to battle stubborn flames.
What was burning?
Downstairs I heard my aunt’s voice interspersed with Father’s voice, then the front door shutting. I hurried out of the closet and slipped into my room.
Father checked in with each of us.
“She’s fine. Bruised and swollen. Recovering.”
He stood at my bedroom door and talked to my rug, not looking at me. “I’m tired now. Let’s just be thankful she’s all right.”
I wanted him to tell me more, explain her to me, but I could see that he was withholding something, not wanting to speak. Later that evening, I heard him scrambling through the downstairs rooms like a hermit crab, searching to inhabit another empty shell abandoned on the sea floor. He walked heavier than usual, back and forth through the house as if carrying his life’s belongings on his back, anticipating her return, not knowing exactly where to go withou
t her.
~~~~~
The next morning I woke early and went downstairs. I found Father asleep on the couch, an empty vodka bottle by his feet.
“Dad,” I whispered. “Get up.”
He opened his eyes, blinking, stirring his brain. He sat up slowly.
“Fell asleep,” he said, sluggishly.
He stood up and hobbled over to the stairs. Once he started up to his bedroom, I sat on the couch in the warm indentation of his body and wrapped my robe around my legs. I waited for my brothers to rise. Dora was already up. I heard glasses clinking in the kitchen as she unloaded the dishwasher. Then Elliot came down to watch cartoons on TV. Robert came next and finally Peter. I heard Dora open the cupboard, the carving knife slicing oranges for juice. I took the empty vodka bottle into the kitchen to dump in the trash. Dora turned to inspect me, her arm muscles bulging from pressing oranges for juice.
“Where’d you find that?”
“Living room.”
Dora shook her head.
“Glory. My word; what I’ve seen.”
I took a bowl down from the cupboard and poured cereal and milk into it, then slid onto the stool. Dora poured me a glass of juice.
“You have some of this,” she said, coming over to me.
She stood close. I breathed skin cream and the scent of oranges on her hands. She poured three more glasses and set one in front of each empty stool.
“I hate the pulp,” I said, sipping.
“That’s what’s good for you. Drink it anyway.”
She looked at me sternly but I smiled, comforted by her steady, grim demeanor, her incisive talk; her sweet-smelling dark skin.
“How come you put up with us?”
She started to answer but changed her mind.
“Drink your juice, Sarah.”
She went over to the sink and finished unloading the dishwasher.
Despite another round of pleas, Father refused to take us to the hospital. The doctors had put Mother in a special ward for observation.
Night Swim Page 5