Beyond Deserving

by Sandra Scofield

  They march through the park into the hills above. By then they have slowed to a mild canter. “God,” Ursula puffs. “I seem to be running out of gas.”

  Teresa laughs and says, a little shakily, “Why don’t we do this all summer and fall, right up until bad weather?”

  Ursula groans. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  They both stop, gulping air and laughing. Teresa puts a hand on Ursula’s shoulder and says, “More immediately, would you want to go together on a yard sale?”

  “A sale?” Ursula’s mind is filled with images of heaps of clothing, chairs and tennis rackets, lamps in the back of the closet. “That’s a terrific idea,” she says. “When? Your house or mine?”

  “I’m going to do some major repairs and painting, and buy new furniture, so let’s do it in my driveway. I’ll take care of the ads. Say a month, towards the end of June?”

  “Sure.”

  “Maybe your husband’s brother could come over sometime and see what I want done. Angela says his work is good.”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  “Let’s go back to the bakery. Let’s eat something this time.”

  Ursula agrees. She swings her arms vigorously. “Do you think we’ve burned off a rugulach?”

  She returns home feeling quite proud of herself. It’s only nine in the morning and she’s been out of bed for two hours.

  Michael and Fish are on the front porch steps drinking coffee. Ursula holds up a bakery bag. “Scones,” she says. The men follow her back to the kitchen.

  “We’re going to do the floor,” Fish says, and bites into a scone.

  “Right now?”

  “I told you I would,” Michael says.

  Ursula goes upstairs to bathe and change clothes. While she is in the tub Juliette knocks on the door. “I’m dying to go to the bathroom,” she says. “You can come in,” Ursula says, and Juliette makes a sound of disgust. “Hurry UP.”

  Juliette goes in quickly as Ursula exits wrapped in a towel.

  Downstairs Michael and Fish are banging around. The roll of rubber flooring has been brought up.

  Ursula takes a cup of coffee into the dining room and calls her mother.

  She hears water running upstairs. Knowing Juliette is occupied, she tells Clare how worried she has been.

  “Is she actually not eating at all? Is she wasting away in front of you?” Clare asks in a calm, almost leisurely way.

  “That’s not it, but she’s certainly not robust.”

  “She’s a dancer. They want their bones to show.”

  “She’s a child, still growing. She’s terrified her breasts are sprouting on her.”

  “I never knew where you got yours.” Clare is thin and flat and angular, a body type that ages very well. “Your father’s mother, I suppose. She was all pillowy.”

  “It’s not my figure I called to discuss,” Ursula says. She should have known her mother would downplay her urgency. One of Clare’s favorite expressions is, “I’ve seen worse.”

  “I’ll be down for her ballet opening. Do you think Carter will mind very much my missing graduation Friday?”

  Ursula laughs. “A bus load of kids leaves soon after the ceremony. They’re going to Disneyland. He has a girlfriend. He thinks it’s funny that I even want to attend the graduation. To him, it’s already happened.”

  “Tell Juliette to call me. When nobody’s home.”

  Ursula knows that Juliette will want to. She is stabbed with jealousy, and with gratitude, oddly mixed. “You think you can find out long distance if she’s too shaky? You’ll tell me if she worries you, too?”

  “Don’t underestimate your mothering, Ursula. You do very well with both of them. I have always admired your light hand.”

  “Of course I was crazy at fifteen.”

  A long silence tells Ursula that her mother is not eager to dip into the past. “I got out of it okay,” Ursula adds.

  “Without a lot of intervention, as I recall.”

  “You weren’t there,” Ursula says, surprised to hear the recrimination in her statement of fact.

  “I was on the phone with your father, or with his wife when he was buried in his studies, several times a week, for several years, my dear daughter.”

  Now it is Ursula’s turn to be silent, this time in amazement. “I had no idea.”

  “We all agreed not to make too much of your moods and antics. Your father said he could do so as long as you kept your grades up. He worried so about you getting into a good college. Did he tell you that, or did you just sense it?”

  “I don’t remember considering it. School wasn’t hard, that’s all.”

  “Your stepmother was the reliable one. It was her idea to send you to England the summer between your junior and senior years.”

  “I was hopelessly polite and timid in an excruciatingly proper British homestay,” Ursula recalls.

  “Her theory was the experience would distract you.”

  “And break my habits?” Like whole weekends in bed, refusing to come out. Her stepmother brought in two trays a day without a rebuking word. Then there were the beer binges, which her father certainly didn’t know about.

  Her mother says, “I wanted you to come to Seattle that summer. I was managing a wonderful small gallery, and we ran classes all summer. I thought you could work it out if I got your hands in clay or paint.”

  “Mother,” Ursula says sadly, because that option was never discussed. She assumed her occasional one-week visits were all her mother wanted.

  “I wasn’t aggressive enough, and England sounded nice.”

  “Well,” Ursula says brightly, wishing she could really “reach out and touch” her mother, “where shall I send Juliette now?”

  “Let’s see,” Clare says, and then goodbye.

  By the time Ursula hangs up, the activity in the kitchen has accelerated. Fish has brought in a battered tape player and put on Janis Joplin.

  “Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz,” Ursula sings along. She pulls her knees up to her chest and clasps them. She closes her eyes. “My friends all drive Porsches, I must make a—mends—” She really tries to match Janis’s coarse cry.

  “—Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a color tv,” Fish joins in. “Dialing for dollars is trying to find me—” They laugh.

  “Ohhh!” Juliette cries as she speeds through the kitchen and out the back door. Michael doesn’t even look up, Fish is still laughing, and Ursula goes to the window of the dining room to peer out on the yard. The window is filthy.

  Juliette arranges herself on their one battered lawn chair, stretching her legs out to catch the mild morning sun. She is wearing a pair of shorts, a top from a two-piece bathing suit, and rolled-down anklets with sandals. Ursula wonders why in the world she keeps on socks to lie in the sun.

  “I’ve got to make some calls,” she says at the door to the kitchen. “I’m going upstairs so I won’t bother you.” Neither Fish nor Michael even look up. She finds her address book in the mess of her top drawer and sits on the bed to call Portland. She wants so much to reach old friends, the impulse is almost painful. She says to herself it is too early for this, then chooses the first number, and dials.

  Carter stumbles across her vision, on his way to the bathroom, clad only in his jockey shorts, the ones that say JOGGER on the hip. He stubs his toe on the loose carpet near her bedroom door and grumbles, saying something obscene. “Carter,” she calls, and he says, disappearing from sight, “Yo, Mom.”

  “This is Ursula Fisher,” she says to Hank Lutter when he answers on the fifth ring. “Ursula, Hank,” she says. “Don’t you remember?”

  46

  “The Lutters are the last couple I’d have predicted would divorce,” Katie says when Ursula tells them about her conversation with Hank. Katie seems completely unself-conscious, bringing up the subject of divorce.

  The are sitting on the new gray kitchen floor, eating pizza fetched by Carter from two different establishments. Katie w
orked wardrobe on a matinee and showed up just in time to rave about the floor. “It looks so expensive!”

  Michael says it wasn’t. “I bought the flooring at a close-out sale. And except for the pizza, the labor was free.” He punches his brother on his folded-up leg.

  Carter appears from the living room where he, his girlfriend Annabel, and his buddy Joel have had their own pizza feed. “So what do you think? Which do you like best? What crust?” he burbles.

  The adults stare.

  “The one with pepperoni is deep-dish. They call it Sicilian. The other one is supposedly hand-tossed. I wanted to try spicy shrimp but they didn’t have anything to use for spices. Wouldn’t it be good with that Cajun shit on it? And instead of Canadian bacon—shit, that stuff is rubberized—I’d use that real Italian ham, I can’t remember what it’s called—you used it last July Fourth around melon strips, remember, Mom—”

  “What the hell?” Fish drones.

  “You did good, son,” Michael says.

  “What is this mad interest in pizza, Carter?” Ursula asks.

  Carter bends down on one knee, to their level. “You’d think the pizza market would be saturated, right? Pizza Hut, Dominos, Pappy’s—But where’s the high-class pizza? Where’s the REAL pizza? You know, on the streets in Rome they sell it cold. It’s got a deep bready crust—sort of like that one—and they put olives and anchovies—”

  “How do you know?” Katie asks.

  Carter grins. “Annabel lived there a year, when she was thirteen.

  “What are you trying to say?” Ursula asks. From around the corner Joel yells. “Caaaarter! The movie’s gonna start!”

  “I just think there’s untapped poTENtial,” Carter says, and is gone.

  “Did Juliette eat?” Ursula asks Michael.

  “Where is Juliette?” Katie asks.

  “She’s out back,” Fish says. “She made a cheese sandwich and went out a while ago.”

  “What’s her PROBLEM?” Ursula says, up on her knees.

  Michael grabs her arm, to keep her from getting up. “There is nothing you need to do out there,” he says.

  Ursula slumps. “She’s bugging me.”

  “Relax,” Fish says. “It’s the end of the school year. All that boring wind-down shit they do. She’s sick of it.”

  “Moody,” Katie says. “I was moody at that age.”

  “What about Hank Lutter?” Michael says. He gets them each another beer from the refrigerator and sits down again, leaning against the cabinet and stretching out his legs. “I suppose you got all the details.”

  Ursula, slightly flustered, says, “I was so shocked I said, ‘What do you mean, divorce?” and Hank laughed. He said Jane has a new job at the university in Santa Cruz—she’s a therapist in the health center. He said she’ll finally get to deal in intimacy all day. What do you think he meant?” She has a tiny hope Michael won’t say he knows just what Hank meant.

  “She’s been doing something new since I saw her,” Fish says. He grins. “Her idea of therapy used to be feeding you and then rubbing up against you in the hallway—”

  “Go on, Fish.” Katie flicks his hair with her fingertips.

  “It’s true,” Michael says. Ursula stares at him. “Meaning what?” she demands.

  “Just what Fish said. She liked to get a feel before you went home. I think she felt daring, without feeling compromised. We were all friends.”

  “She’s the straightest friend we had in Portland!” Ursula says indignantly.

  “Remember the time she and I took the drive to the Japanese flower gardens?” Michael says. “You took the kids to see Bambi or Cinderella or some other sappy movie.”

  “Vaguely.” Ursula feels hazy herself. This reminds her of one of those novels where the author gives you fifty pages of “her” and then tells the same story only about “him” and it isn’t like “she” thought at all.

  “We never got out of the car.” Michael starts to laugh. “She said Hank was working so hard, studying for his CPA exams, that he was neglecting her.”

  “I don’t think I like this,” Ursula says, but she is definitely interested.

  “You fucked in the car?” Fish says.

  “Naw. She talked for two hours straight. Hank this, Hank that. She had just found out she was pregnant again. She was starved to talk.”

  “You sat in a car and listened to Jane Lutter TALK for TWO HOURS?”

  Michael, Fish, and Katie laugh, while Ursula blushes and blinks.

  “Well, gee, yes,” Michael says teasingly. “But we never did it again, honest. It didn’t mean a thing.”

  Ursula starts to cry. “Oh shit,” she says.

  “You’re kidding,” Michael says. “Aw, Ursie, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” He crawls over to her and pats her cheek and says, “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “Two HOURS,” Ursula sputters. She runs upstairs, throws herself across her bed, and weeps. Even if she did live in Portland still, their old friends would be new people, just like she probably is, too. She doesn’t mind growing up; she just never thought it would be lonely. She feels abandoned by life.

  Michael sits down beside her and strokes her back. “Are you coming down with something?”

  “Oh!”

  “I know, Ursie.”

  She sits up. “You know what, Michael Fisher?”

  “I know you wish we talked more.”

  “You do?”

  “I never mean not to. I just always seem to see a shortcut to the point. I could try, I guess. I do love you.”

  Ursula sniffles. “There was something about—about Jane?”

  Michael smiles at her. “Now you’re stirring up dust where there’s no dirt. Jane Lutter is not and was not an issue.”

  “I had this idea. I thought maybe Carmen and Winston could come down from Seattle. I got Carmen on the phone but she and Winston are going camping with friends, and she didn’t even suggest coming later. I asked Hank about the Edsons. He said Tony Edson’s diabetes is so bad he’s losing his sight—”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Hank says Tony says it doesn’t matter, their kids are wonderful, their house, their land. He can go on, not seeing. God, Michael, I’m talking about all this with Hank, and I know I’ll NEVER talk to Tony or Bea, either one. We haven’t seen them in so long, can you imagine how I’d launch this conversation. Heard about your eyes—” These are people Ursula loved.

  “What did you do, Ursie? Who else did you call?”

  “That’s all. My mother, Hank, Carmen. I tried to get one of my friends from work up there but nobody answered.”

  She lies on her back, and Michael stretches out beside her. “Where are Katie and Fish?” she asks. Before Michael answers, she says, “Katie and Fish, hear that? They are back together, aren’t they?”

  “Fish says he doesn’t know. He says he isn’t ever going to bring up the subject of the divorce again, like he thinks Katie has forgotten it.”

  “Why would she divorce him now? He’s a saint.”

  “Listen, Ursula, I don’t know anything more about them than you do.”

  “Fish talks to you. Katie and I haven’t really talked in a year. Not since Fish got busted.”

  “Fish and I mostly are talking houses. Construction stuff.”

  A breeze rattles the leaves outside the window and gushes across them on the bed, creating a quick moment of dramatic feeling in Ursula. Like standing on a high bluff.

  Michael says, “They went somewhere with Juliette.”

  “They did?” They would hear the ocean below. They would embrace. People have been swept off this cliff by the wind.

  “Fish said they wouldn’t be long.” He runs his finger along the side of Ursula’s breast. Her attention snaps back.

  “Not now, Michael.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He lies on his back, too, folds his hands on his chest. “I used to think I’d have lots of friends. I
’d work and when I was off I’d drink beer and listen to funny stories, I’d hike and fish in season, you and I would make love every night—”

  Ursula almost whispers. “But it hasn’t turned out like that, has it? Not exactly?” She thinks of Friday nights in River Cove. Did he foresee that set of responsibilities? And the children?

  “Remember that stupid tv show we watched a couple of times, about the old college friends? How they all fall in and out of each other’s houses and problems, and they tell one another everything? It’s bullshit, isn’t it? I hated that show right away, it was like an ad for a certain lifestyle, an attempt to validate the idea of lifestyle, but now I don’t think that’s what it’s about at all. It’s a fantasy about how you hold up your life, how you have lots of support from friends if you’re cool enough. It’s about friendship, the way Dallas and Dynasty are about being rich. It’s that Big Chill fantasy.”

  Ursula waits a long moment, and realizes that Michael isn’t going to say anything else. She feels close to him, and surprised at him, and completely unsure about what she can say or do. Only she can’t just let it lie. “I guess that’s what you have family for,” she says tentatively. “For support, and purpose? The kids, for fresh chances.” Ideas about altruism and citizenship crowd her mind too, ideas her father hammered in with years of light taps, but it isn’t the right time to suggest an overhaul of their life. Not even of her life. She votes. She gives. She’s on the board of Planned Parenthood.

  Michael turns onto his side, takes her hand. “Once when Fish and I were about Juliette’s age, we went hunting. We hiked out five, six miles from the road, and this incredible storm came up, lashing wind and rain. We came to a little campground and it had an old neglected outhouse. We got in it out of the rain, till it let up. Only it didn’t let up, all night it rained. And all night we stood crammed in that damned outhouse, telling each other stories and jokes, until we both fell asleep. I can’t remember what we talked about. Kid shit. I wouldn’t want to be stuck with him anywhere all night anymore. But sometimes, when he’s a real asshole, I remember that stupid hike. We had a good time in an outhouse! It was an adventure.”