Beyond Deserving

by Sandra Scofield

  June and Katie, grateful for Rhea’s interruption, laugh uneasily. “Just people, honey,” Katie says. She pulls Rhea by the hand, away from June. The agent announces boarding. “Safe trip, Mother,” she says. Rhea breaks away and runs ahead.

  “Who’s going to meet us?” she asks when they’re settled in their seats.

  “I think Fisher and your Uncle Michael will both come.”

  “What about my cousins?”

  “Carter has a job, and Juliette is rehearsing for her ballet. She has her first summer performance tomorrow night. So you see, you’re just in time!”

  “I’ve never been anywhere,” Rhea says solemnly.

  “Well, now you will have.”

  “Are there mountains?”

  “Yes, little ones. And lots and lots of trees.”

  As the plane accelerates down the runway, Rhea takes Katie’s hand and holds it tightly. “It’s so noisy,” she whispers.

  They don’t speak until they are in the air and the ride is smooth. Rhea says, looking out the window, “I can see the ocean.”

  Katie asks her if she wants gum. Rhea takes a stick of Juicy Fruit, which Katie bought specifically to have for now. She thought about getting bubble gum, but she knew her mother would die if she thought Rhea blew bubbles on the plane, and though her mother would have no way to know, Katie quickly changed her choice. It made her realize that her mother would be more or less looking over her shoulder all through the visit, and though the thought initially bothered her, it didn’t take very long to realize it was helpful, in a way, to hear June’s voice in her ear, like an angel. It would help her decide whether it was okay to do something or not.

  Rhea rummages in her pink cotton drawstring bag and comes up with a bright yellow book with blue letters. “The girls in this series are always getting in trouble,” she says. “I love it.”

  “That’s what books are good for,” Katie comments. “Much better than real trouble, don’t you think?” She can’t think of the last time she enjoyed a book. Books on how to live your life aren’t a lot of fun.

  Rhea is puzzled. “I don’t know, Katie. I’ve never been in trouble, I guess.” There is a tiny fleck of jelly at the corner of her mouth. Katie reaches over and carefully wipes it off. “A little bit of breakfast,” she tells Rhea. She hopes Rhea didn’t mind.

  Rhea grasps her mother’s hand. “Flying is just like being in a dream,” she says. She lets go and leans to stare out of the window again. “I’m going to watch all the way.”

  Katie closes her eyes. “Wake me when we get there,” she says. “Or when you see a big mountain.” On second thought, she opens her eyes and leans over as far as she can to look out of the window, too. “Rhea,” she says. “What’s your favorite color, honey?”

  Rhea puts her finger against the window. “That out there,” she says. “The blue of the sky. Like when you sleep late in the morning, and you look outside and the colors from early are gone, and there’s just sky. There’s just blue.”

  Katie absolutely cannot believe it. She and Rhea come in from the plane and Fish is not there in the throng of people waiting. “They’re probably parking,” she tells Rhea, and says probably they should wait over by luggage. “We’ll take a quick look down the other way first, and then go to the carousel,” she says. They trot down past the airline counters, out to the sidewalk, but Katie doesn’t see Fish there either. When she goes back in she recognizes a woman coming in ahead of her. The woman is wearing a baggy “dropped-waist” dress in a blue and black print, and her short black hair is wet and pulled back in a one-inch-long pony tail. She turns a little and Katie sees that it is Joyce, who works for the theatre and who was at the Al-Anon meeting.

  Katie still hasn’t decided if it is okay to say something to Joyce when she sees her, if that violates the anonymity principle of the meeting. Of course they get their paycheck over the same signature, so that’s a bond of sorts. Thinking about this quickly, Katie is frozen just inside the door, and Rhea waits, looking all around, as if she would know her father when she sees him.

  Joyce spots Katie and rushes over to her. She squeezes Katie’s arm above the elbow, with both hands. She says, “I was hoping you would come again,” so that they could be talking about tennis lessons or anything. Katie smiles and says, “I just got here with my daughter.” She remembers that Joyce spoke at the meeting, but she can’t remember what she said. Joyce said, “If you didn’t like group, but you’d like to talk sometime, you could call me anyway.” She smiles at Rhea. “I’m Joyce Devlin,” she says. She looks back up at Katie. “I’m in the book, initial J.”

  Rhea rubs the front of her shoe on the back of her other leg. “My name is Rhea Fisher,” she says politely. Then she looks at Katie, as if for approval.

  “I’ve seen you at work a couple times,” Joyce says to Katie. “I thought maybe we’d run into one another, but I guess the costume shop is closed now.”

  “Yes,” Katie says. She scans the room over Joyce’s shoulder. “Are you getting a plane?” she asks her.

  Joyce looks sheepish. “I’m meeting my boyfriend, he’s been in Seattle, job-hunting.” She drops down to Rhea’s height, so quickly that for an instant Katie thinks she’s fallen. “You look a lot like your mother,” she says, which Katie thinks is only true on the nose. Look at Rhea’s light, curly blond hair, with its permed wings brushed back above each ear. Katie has never had such hair in her whole life.

  “I look like my daddy, too,” Rhea says, at the same moment Katie spots Fish and Michael coming in the far door.

  “I’ve got to go, there they are,” Katie says. She thinks she still feels Joyce’s handprints on her arm. Impulsively, she reaches out and touches the back of Joyce’s hand. “Thanks,” she says. “I hope your boyfriend had good luck.” At that, Joyce looks so forlorn, Katie remembers the meeting and how Joyce was unhappy because her boyfriend didn’t want to stay in the valley, and she feels foolish and sorry to have said anything at all, but she has no idea how to smooth over what she said. “Que será será,” Joyce says, and turns briskly away.

  Katie wants to call out, Come back, come back. Tell me what to do now. I don’t know how you introduce your daughter to her father. I don’t know how I could make my mother think we won’t all be sorry.

  52

  “What is it they’re doing?” Ursula’s mother asks. She is standing in the breakfast nook, watching the girls through the window. Ursula wishes she had thought to clean the panes.

  “Baton work,” Ursula answers. “Rhea was here about twenty minutes yesterday before she had it out.” She moves closer behind her mother and watches her daughter as Juliette puts her hands on Rhea’s chest and back and says something that makes the child raise her whole body, rather nicely. Then Juliette puts her own arm in front, lifts a leg slightly, and tips her head. Though she isn’t holding a baton, Ursula thinks she can just see her at the head of a band. “I guess it’s a big deal in Texas,” she adds.

  Clare turns back into the kitchen. “I like your new kitchen floor, Ursula. The fellows did a fine job. It looks quite European.”

  Ursula pours them coffee and they go back to the nook and sit down. Michael has gone for a bucket of chicken, Ursula has made salad. She only needs to pack up for their picnic at the park. She checks her watch. “I need to run Juliette up to the park in a little while. We’ll go back at six-thirty, so we get a nice spot.”

  “Where is the child’s mother?” Clare asks.

  “She’s gone to work a matinee. She’ll join us at the ballet.” Ursula sees her mother’s brow knit ever so little above her nose. Out under the sycamore, Fish dozes in the lawn chair. The girls begin to strut about the yard and then, laughing, sprawl on the grass.

  “They get on, don’t they?” Clare says.

  “Rhea slept with Juliette last night. I’d made up your bed but she never got that far.” Katie went home before Ursula went to bed. “Rhea wants to stay,” Juliette insisted. Ursula wondered if her daughter ha
d some fine-tuned sense, to pick up Katie’s nervousness. Katie agreed that Rhea should stay, with such obvious relief.

  “The little girl lives in Texas?” Clare says.

  “Since she was a baby. Katie took her down for a visit, we thought, and came back without her. I thought I’d die, almost like it was my child.”

  “She must have had her reasons,” Clare says.

  “We’d have taken Rhea, you know. We’d have been thrilled to have her.”

  Clare looks at her daughter. “But how awkward it would have been, think of it. It would never have worked.” She pushes her cup away from her. “Did you and Michael want another child?”

  Ursula, surprised at the intimacy of her mother’s question, says, “Not really.” She smiles. “We had a boy and a girl, isn’t that supposed to be perfect?” When her mother doesn’t comment, she goes on to say, “I’ve always wondered why I didn’t have a set of twins. Katie, either.”

  “What a handful that would have been!”

  “But special.”

  “I’d say you did very well, Ursula.”

  “Of course! I’m only speculating. And sometimes twins have twins.”

  “Has it been special, being married to one?”

  Ursula’s breath seems to burst out of her chest. “Oh heavens yes!” she says. “Sometimes I’ve felt I was married to both of them!”

  Clare puts her hand over Ursula’s on the table. She says, “You’ve been a good and fortunate mother, Ursula. To be together, and healthy, all of you.” Ursula fears for a moment that her mother is going to cry. Clare says, “Juliette is quite lovely. I feel a very special bond with her.”

  Ursula thinks it may have something to do with Juliette’s age. After all, Ursula was fifteen when her mother left. Maybe there’s a sense of unfinished business. She rises and calls through the window. “It’s time to go, Julie!” Both girls look up from the grass. It takes them a moment to find Ursula’s face at the pane. When they see her, they both stare, locked for a moment in stillness, like a photograph. Ursula looks at the younger girl’s unsmiling face and feels a shock of recognition. What is it I see? she wonders. Maybe it’s only Fisher blood, or the loveliness of a girl at nine. Tears spring to Ursula’s eyes. Maybe it is longing. Do Michael’s ley lines extend to Rhea? Ursula puts her hand up against the window, as if to signal to the girl. As if to send something to her, to make the connection.

  Brian makes an awkward speech about his decision to use some contemporary music this year. The program is “a mix of epochs.” There is to be a ballet scene inspired by Giselle and choreographed for the small stage, and another especially choreographed for the four young ballerinas. There is a dramatic interpretation of a French poem about the illicit love of a knight for his lord’s lady; Ursula fears for a moment that Brian is going to recite the poem, but the allusion is only for the audience’s enlightenment. And there is a bit of Gershwin, and a rock number borrowed from U2.

  Ursula has packed away the remains of their supper, and they all settle down for the performance. Rhea leans against Fish, and Katie sits close by. As the music begins, the audience hushes, and Ursula feels pride and anticipation rush through her on a shot of adrenaline. Her chest aches. She grasps Michael’s hand for a moment, and he leans over to say, “Remember how long they’ve been practicing.” Then the ballerinas flutter onto the stage, and as soon as she sees Juliette, she relaxes, for her daughter is so obviously at ease, it would be unjust to worry for her. She does not need her mother’s vigilant apprehension. She can manage quite well.

  At intermission, Clare asks Ursula if she wouldn’t like to walk for a few moments. They go past the edge of the audience, toward the parking lot and onto a path. There Glare takes Ursula’s hands. “Do you know how much talent Juliette has?” She seems so solemn, Ursula is relieved to hear the question. She thought for a moment her mother was going to tell her something terrible. She doesn’t know how to answer her mother, so she smiles and shrugs, the picture of the falsely humble mother. Clare says, “You should think how you can get her better instruction. She can’t be getting what she needs here.”

  “She has rehearsal every day, and performances all summer, now, once a week.”

  “Of course. And in the fall?”

  “She dances every morning, four days a week, and she has a class on Saturday. My God, Mother, she’s only fifteen.”

  Clare puts her arm across Ursula’s shoulders. “We’ll talk about it later. Let’s go back.”

  “No. What is it you’re telling me? What do you think I ought to do?” Ursula hears a shrill note of self-defense in her voice.

  “I think you ought to quit worrying about what Juliette says to you, and worry about her talent.”

  “God, Mother, what else am I supposed to DO?”

  “I have some ideas. Come along.”

  Ursula tries to watch Juliette with a stranger’s eyes, but of course she cannot. What she can see is that her daughter seems to float where the others dance, that her legs and arms go on forever, and that she seems utterly without hesitation. There are no false steps. It becomes apparent that Brian has choreographed rather wisely, to keep Juliette from dominating the company. His wife is the prima ballerina, and he has kept Juliette well away from her, mostly offstage when she is on. He has saved all the dramatic, large movements for his wife, and given the younger women the lively, cat-like moves. Two of the women are in their twenties, dancers who have come from San Francisco for the summer. They are more expert than Juliette; they have the steps that cause the audience to break into applause when they pause, as if to say, “Didn’t you like that?” But Ursula sees what her mother sees, even with Juliette’s restricted role. Juliette is the company’s angel. She is a dancer. The girl who has been whining and fussing and drooping around the house for two months is the picture of radiant confidence.

  Ursula thinks she knows what her mother has in mind, and as she watches Brian’s aging wife wilt before her young lover, she feels tears, on her cheeks. She wishes the dancers were more convincing and able. She would like to weep.

  53

  At the house, there is a celebratory air. Rhea dances around on her toes, attempts an arabesque, and falls laughing onto Katie’s lap. Michael pours wine for everyone. Carter and Annabel arrive, too. Ursula is amazed when Annabel says, “Where’s Juliette? I want to tell her how wonderful she was. We loved it!”

  “You went to the ballet?” Ursula asks Carter.

  “Sure. I traded nights at work.”

  “Why didn’t you come down to our blanket, son?” Michael asks. “We had chicken.”

  Annabel replies, “We got there a little late and sat up on the hill. It was nice from where we were. Where’s Juliette?”

  “She’s bathing,” Ursula says. “Carter, there’s soda in the frig. Have you introduced Annabel to your Texas cousin?”

  Carter’s girlfriend is lovely, Ursula thinks. She kneels beside Rhea and talks to her in hushed tones for several minutes. Rhea giggles, Annabel squeezes her hand, and goes back to Carter. “We’re going swimming out at the lake tomorrow,” she says. “Maybe Rhea and Juliette could come.”

  “I don’t know,” Ursula says, because Annabel is looking at her. “Katie and Fish may have plans.”

  “I’ve got to work,” Fish says.

  “Whatever,” Katie says.

  “Oh boy,” Rhea says.

  Clare stands up. “I’m going to look in on Juliette,” she says. In a little while she returns and says, “Ursula, you’d better come up.”

  Juliette is on her bed in a nightgown, her knees drawn up and a sheet pulled over her feet. She is sobbing.

  “Darling, what is it!” Ursula cries and sits on the bed. She tries to take Juliette into her arms, but Juliette stiffly pulls away.

  Clare comes close, and Juliette moves over to make room for her beside her. “It’s all right, Juliette. But I want you to show your mother, so she won’t see accidentally and get all upset.”

  “
See what!” Ursula asks. “What is going on?”

  Slowly Juliette peels back the sheet and reveals her feet. She turns one to the side, and Ursula gasps. The foot looks as if it has been chewed.

  “What in the world!” Ursula says.

  Juliette sobs more loudly.

  Slowly Ursula touches Juliette’s feet. All along the sides, the skin has been peeled away somehow. There are large raw pink spots. She slips her hands under the heels and feels the rough broken texture there, too. In places along the tender center of the sides of the feet, there are a few scabs.

  Clare puts her arms around Juliette and pulls her against her. “Shhh,” she says. “It’s okay now.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ursula says. Her hands are trembling.

  “I just—I just scratched them a little,” Juliette whimpers.

  “A little!” Ursula cries.

  “Shh,” Clare says.

  “It’s all OVER.” Juliette says. “They’re HEALING.”

  “All over?” Ursula looks at the feet again. She cannot imagine that they were once worse. “How did you do this, baby?” she whispers.

  “Sometimes—I—picked—at—them.”

  Clare reaches down and pulls the sheet up. “There’s no infection,” she says to Ursula. “And Juliette is telling the truth, they’re healing. She’s just peeled the skin, picking at it.”

  “So that’s why the socks, the feet always hidden.” Ursula touches her hand to her forehead and shuts her eyes for a moment. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?!”

  Clare reaches out to touch Ursula. “It’s all right now, Ursula. In a way it’s too bad you have to see, because it’s all over, isn’t it, Julie?” The child nods miserably. “So please, go back downstairs. I’ll see to Juliette and be down shortly. She’s exhausted. She just needs to sleep.”