The Lion is In

by Delia Ephron

  “I’m going back to bed,” says Gil. “Hope that’s okay.”

  “Sure, Gil,” says Tim.

  “How’s everything? You all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Nothing to worry about?”

  “Better than that.”

  “Good.”

  “Who’s that?” whispers Tracee as soon as he disappears.

  “Gil’s the only one that can fix Clayton’s Chevy. He and my mom have been together ages, ever since she started keeping the books at his repair shop.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Hard to tell with Gil, he’s pretty preserved. Works out too. I don’t know. Younger than my momma for sure.”

  May sticks her head over the banister. “I mean it, don’t show her around yet.”

  They hang out just inside the front door, both of them tongue-tied, Tim because this is such a momentous occasion, Tracee for the same reason and because her stomach is in knots. She sneaks a peek into the living room. “So pretty and stylish you wouldn’t believe it,” she imagines telling Lana. “White walls with a big window in front, and it seems like the flowers on the front porch—these hanging red flowers—are actually inside.” She even imagines Lana scoffing and Tracee insisting she knows what stylish is, she’s in a position to judge, she’s seen lots of different living rooms at Clarkson’s. There’s a striped rug, the furniture is wicker, which explains why Tim favors it, with big square red cushions, and there are sunflowers. Tracee counts three vases full. The room is neat, but every available surface, several small tables and a three-tiered shelf hanging on the wall, is chock-full of objects and photographs artfully arranged, all of which turn out to have special meaning.

  May comes clattering down the stairs in clogs, blue jeans, and an oversize T-shirt advertising Gil’s Auto Repair. She’s dolled up now, her wavy shoulder-length hair brushed, a slash of bright orange lipstick. “My eyebrows are on but not my lashes. I hope that’s okay.”

  She takes Tracee on a guided tour through a parade of Tims, snapshots from infancy—May groggy in a hospital bed holding her fuzzy-headed newborn—to his graduation from Raleigh Community College, where Tim, grinning in his cap and gown, is flanked by Gil, his ripped body stressing the seams of a slim black suit, and his mother, glamorous in a turquoise minidress and sunglasses, her hair blowing backward in the wind. A photo of Tim, a toddler sitting on his dad’s shoulders, makes Tracee want to cry. His dad is in his army uniform and Tim is holding on to his dad’s head, squishing his hat. There’s a clay ashtray that Tim made in third grade, with a clay blob in the center that May tells her is a tree, a heart-shaped red candy box with a felt top, and a small wooden box with “To my mom” burned into it. “Woodworking class, how old were you?” says May.

  “I don’t know,” says Tim. “Ten, I guess.”

  Tracee is particularly struck by one photograph of Tim as a teenager. Although she can’t articulate why, she understands how alike she and Tim are, which gives her an additional surge of affection and belonging, from seeing him standing under goalposts in his football uniform, the shoulder pads like huge weights on his skinny frame, his face in shadow lost inside the large helmet.

  “I kept the bench warm,” says Tim.

  “He played two games, don’t listen to him.”

  Tracee picks up a color eight-by-ten in a silver frame. She can’t believe what she’s seeing: May Wilson, younger than Tracee, posing in a white one-piece swimsuit with a tiara on her head and a banner across her front: “North Carolina.”

  “Wow,” says Tracee.

  “Long time gone,” says May.

  “You really were Miss North Carolina?”

  May mimes the same radiant smile in the photo.

  “You were so gorgeous, well, you still are. Can I have your autograph?”

  “You’ve got my son, isn’t that enough?” May breaks up. She has a bright, loud voice, and her laugh is loud too, like she’s not afraid to be heard far and wide.

  Tracee looks to Tim to see if maybe she was out of line asking for an autograph, but Tim is only beaming, because his mom and Tracee are getting along. “Did you try for Miss Universe?” says Tracee.

  “Miss America,” says Tim.

  “I got eliminated on the first round. I never had to sing. What a relief, I was terrified.”

  “Was that your talent?”

  “I was going to sing ‘Moon River,’ such a pretty song. I had a warbling way of doing it, lonely and sad. I practiced for hours. Do you know that song?”

  Tracee shakes her head.

  “Come on, let’s have pancakes.” May herds them into the kitchen. “Tim, set the table. Tracee, you sit and relax. The sponsors, supervisors, I don’t know what to call them—they boss the contestants around much more than you know—thought I should do ‘Moon River’ because it was unusual and had a story—my daddy taught it to me when I was a little girl. They said that was better than ‘Stand by Your Man.’ Who knows, because I never sang either.”

  “Wait till I tell Lana,” Tracee says, certain that Lana will not call Tim a rube when she hears about his mother.

  “Who’s Lana?”

  “My best friend.”

  “Tim, honey, get out the griddle.” May scoops flour out of a canister and sets efficiently to whipping up a batter. “I got this new griddle from credit card points. I’ve been waiting for you to come home to try it.” She cracks eggs with a clack of a knife and beats them with a fork. “Isn’t there buttermilk?—thank God, yes—and take that melting butter off the flame before it burns.”

  “Tim told me how popular you are.”

  “Me?”

  “She’s everyone’s favorite,” says Tim.

  “Oh, no, Rita is.”

  “Hey, you’re the most popular one at The Lion and everyone knows it,” says Tim.

  Could that be true? Tracee wonders.

  “Well, I’m glad business is booming,” says May. “Clayton finally caught a break.”

  She lets the batter drip off the spoon, seems to decide it’s ready based on that, and turns on the heat under the griddle. “Now we wait,” she says. “Nothing worse than a pancake cooked on a griddle that isn’t hot.” She puts a tall pitcher of sun tea on the table and also offers beer. Tim takes one. “Pancakes and beer, why not?” says May. Tracee is relieved that Tim’s mom keeps the conversation going, because she is worried about doing or saying the wrong thing, even though she isn’t sure what the wrong thing would be in such a friendly place.

  “I used to watch Wheel of Fortune,” says May. “I wanted to be Vanna White in the worst way. She got so far on what? Nothing but looks, and I figured the pageant route was the way to go. I could win money, be famous, and see the world. Wanted to visit Egypt and sail down the Nile. I wanted to go on a safari. Then I won Miss North Carolina. Spent the year being a spokesperson, telling teenagers to follow their dreams, doing the parade thing waving from cars. Met Tim’s dad at a harvest festival in Raleigh. The next thing I knew I’d settled down. Tim, you always wanted bear pancakes, didn’t you, and now you’re bringing Tracee home. How fast is time?”

  “What’s a bear pancake?” says Tracee.

  “One big pancake and two little ones for ears,” says May. “I’ll make you one.”

  Later, when they are in Tim’s bedroom, lying under a Star Wars poster, squished into Tim’s single bed, Tracee marvels about it all. “You never told me, why didn’t you, you’re modest. So is your mom. If I won Miss anything, it would have gone to my head.”

  They make love silently, not wanting to be heard or to disturb. Their bodies undulate only slightly, a ripple in water, and the struggle to contain their passion to the smallest of movements heightens it. Their climax is a shudder that seems to go on forever.

  Afterward they lie together, sticky with sweat and blissful.

  Tracee pokes him. “Tim, don’t fall asleep. You can’t sleep here. Your mom made up the couch.”

  Tim moans and pulls her c
loser.

  She wants to tell him her deepest fear. She wants to confide about her parents, about how disappearing they were, taking off, never bothering to leave a note, as if she didn’t exist. And how, now that they’ve moved away from Fosberg, she never hears from them. What she doesn’t understand the most, what really gnaws at her—if they could forget her so easily, isn’t that her fault? She wants to ask Tim, “Am I forgettable?” She wants to ask him because she knows he’ll say, “No way,” or, “Hell, no,” or, “Where’d you get a crazy idea like that? I could never forget you.” But all she says to Tim is, “Your mom was so happy to see you.”

  “She’s my mom,” says Tim, swinging his long legs over the side of the bed and sitting up. He strokes Tracee’s hair. He could look at Tracee’s face forever, she’s so beautiful, and everything she feels shows right up on it. “Do you know the Theory of One?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, sit up.”

  They shift back against the headboard, naked, with the blankets pulled up to their chins, facing Tim’s bureau with his robot collection on top, including a vacuuming one he showed her earlier that can Dustbust a table. The Theory of One, he explains, means that all you need is one person to make a difference in your life. “You can have the world’s most awful life,” says Tim, “but if one person believes in you, you’ll be okay. With me it was my mom. She’s my champion, always in my corner. It was her idea to start the driving school.”

  Tracee struggles over the theory. Did I have a one? She reasons it out. Lana did. Her dad was her one.

  “Are you sure about the theory?” says Tracee. “Because Lana—”

  “According to the Discovery Channel it pretty much works. She’s sober, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but her one doesn’t speak to her.”

  “How come?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It usually works,” says Tim.

  “Is someone being there for you the same as being your champion? I didn’t have a champion but I had Lana.”

  Tracee doesn’t want to be someone without a one. She doesn’t want to be someone with zero. It seems doomed.

  “I would like to be your one,” says Tim.

  “Isn’t it too late?”

  “Hell, no. I’m your one.”

  41

  The first call Lana gets on her charged-up cell is from Bill. He wakes her at eleven thirty in the morning. He has to tell her who he is twice because she’s still logy from a Tylenol PM. And thank God for it or she would have obsessed about Tracee and the necklace all night.

  “Your car is ready and waiting,” says Bill.

  He picks her up and drives her to the gas station. Even though she’s fifty dollars short on the repair costs, he tells her to forget it, and watches with pride as she circles the car, strokes the gleaming new front grille, opens and closes the new driver’s-side door, exclaiming at how perfectly it works. “What a beautiful job. It’s newer than when I bought it.”

  “I was able to match the paint too,” says Bill. “Got lucky.”

  He hands her the keys. She slides in behind the wheel and rests contentedly for a moment, the vinyl familiarly hot against her bare legs. She turns the key, gives it gas, and listens to the motor hum. It’s like she has a friend back.

  “I owe this to Rita,” she tells Bill. “If it weren’t for Rita… I’m in her debt.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find a way to pay her back.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  She waves and drives off, heading for The Lion. Her mind starts buzzing the way it always does when she drives, flitting from one thought to another, how she lost it last night, how she went utterly south. She needs Marcel. She needs a visit. She needs to hang out with him before confronting Tracee. Before last night’s backward slide, Lana had gotten in the habit of talking to Marcel even when he wasn’t around—she doesn’t call it praying. She tries it now. Marcel, help me turn my brain off. Slow me down. Marcel, please help me not get in a total fucking rage—desires that fly right out the window when she reaches The Lion and finds Tim’s car in the lot (along with Clayton’s), which means Tracee must be there too, since she and Tim are glued together.

  Lana pulls in and steams.

  Inside, Marcel is chewing on a beef bone that May brought him, and May, Tim, Tracee, and Clayton are gathered at the bar. Tim is setting up the bar for later, when they open, while May, having a beer and tossing back peanuts, regales Clayton with the events of the night before. “I’ve got to say, I’ve never seen anybody as suited as these two. We talked until practically dawn, didn’t we?”

  Tim and Tracee nod.

  “Then we all went to bed.”

  “The beds were amazing,” says Tracee. “Tim’s dad made the springs.”

  “Clayton knows that, honey. He’s got one of Kyle’s beds too.”

  “And we picked blackberries this morning.” To prove it, Tracee shows off her hands, still stained purple.

  For Tracee it was a sweet night and a sweet morning, maybe the sweetest of her life, until Lana charges into The Lion and without so much as a hello announces, “I have to speak to you, Tracee.”

  “This is Tim’s mother,” says Tracee. “May Wilson. May, I’d like you to meet my friend Lana Byrne.”

  “Tracee, right now,” says Lana.

  “I’m busy.”

  “Tracee.”

  “It must be an emergency. Excuse me.” She goes to join Lana, who has moved some distance away. “How rude are you?” whispers Tracee.

  Lana only glances at the group and moves farther off.

  Tracee follows. “I’m not speaking to you.”

  Lana walks into the kitchen and disappears from sight. Tracee throws a confused look to Tim and follows her in. “What is it?”

  Lana closes the door. “Diamonds.”

  It takes a second to register. “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “I forgot about them.”

  “You forgot?”

  “It slipped my mind.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. I guess.” She rubs her chin, hesitating before apologizing. “I’ve been happy.”

  “Do they know you took them?”

  “Tim and his mom?”

  “The store. Did they see you? Did they catch you on some sort of camera?”

  “It was a stand. A booth. You know, that antique mall on Route 9. Fifty dealers.”

  Lana sighs with relief. “So no camera. Not in town. Nobody we know.”

  “The Hofstadder booth.”

  “Karen Hofstadder’s parents? Did they see you, Tracee? Think.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lana’s heart is racing, a familiar feeling, the excitement that comes from Tracee’s messes. Lana has to solve the problem. She is needed. She is alive. “How much is that diamond thing worth?”

  “It’s very small. Short. A choker, kind of.”

  “How much?”

  “They always jack up the prices at those antique places.”

  “Tracee?”

  “Three thousand dollars.”

  “Three thousand dollars? That’s burglary. That’s a felony. They’re going to come and get you.”

  “I know.” Tracee swerves one way, then the other, a crazed animal in a small pen. “What about Tim?”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “He’s nice, he’s so nice, and I’m—I’m going to throw up.”

  “Please don’t,” says Lana.

  A loud, guttural blast. Marcel. His roar doesn’t blow the door open but it seems as if it should have.

  “Weird,” says Lana.

  They listen. They wait. Nothing more.

  “He almost never roars,” says Tracee.

  Lana laughs. “Rita probably just walked in.”

  “It didn’t sound friendly.”

  “Like you’d know,” says Lana, although it didn’t sound friendly to her either.

  “You know how Marcel wore my veil and now…�
��

  “And now what?”

  “First Tim put the veil on his head, okay. And now his mom is there and Marcel roars. That’s that thing, what do you call it?”

  “Nothing. It’s called nothing. If Marcel’s doing anything it’s because of Rita. Or me.”

  “You?”

  “He’s my higher power.”

  “Huh?”

  “If you weren’t with Tim all the time you’d know.”

  “How does that work?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Why can’t it be about me? Why isn’t anything about me?”

  “Everything’s about you.”

  “I don’t still steal.”

  “Of course you still steal. It doesn’t go away.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a compulsion.”

  “Yours went away.”

  “It didn’t go away. It’s always there. And drinking’s not a compulsion. I don’t think. I’m not sure. It’s not the same.”

  “But you don’t do it anymore.” Tracee struggles, trying not to get defeated the way she always does when Lana argues with her. “Why can you not do yours but I can’t stop mine?”

  “I’m not discussing this. Look, you’re safe for now.” Lana opens the refrigerator, finds a peach, and starts devouring it in quick, squirrelly bites. “Let me figure this out.”

  Tracee cracks open the door, wincing as she turns the knob, hoping it won’t make a sound.

  “What are you doing?”

  Tracee puts her eye to the sliver of a view, needing to see Tim’s face, missing him suddenly and awfully, needing something like forgiveness when he doesn’t even know the crime. All she sees is Marcel’s big head, those piercing eyes staring. At what? She shifts. Is that Tucker? In his uniform? Tucker with another man, older; his back is to her. Who is he? Perhaps the police chief? Perhaps a plainclothes detective from up north, like Maryland?

  Tracee backs away.

  “What?” says Lana.

  She raises a limp finger to point. She has lost the power of speech but then she finds it. “Police.”

  Lana shoves her aside and leans in to look. “Not necessarily for us.”