The Lion is In

by Delia Ephron

  “Tracee, get out here,” Clayton shouts. “You too, Lana. Tucker wants to talk to you.”

  42

  Lana and Tracee burst out the back door. Tracee, her arms flailing, has no idea where to go and stops for a moment before taking off after Lana, who is running hell-bent across the lot.

  She yanks open her new car door, slides in, jams in the key, starts it up, waits for Tracee to hop in.

  She speeds down the road, heading for the Tulip Tree Motel, taking curves and corners like a race-car driver—the blazing noon sun boring in the windshield causing her to blink and shift constantly, while Tracee, twisted around, keeps her eye peeled out the back, expecting a black-and-white to turn up at any moment, siren wailing, red light whirling. “Nothing, still nothing, nothing,” she squeals, an anxious, breathless commentary.

  Finally they are rushing up the stairs.

  “Where is it? Our room or Tim’s?”

  “Ours,” says Tracee. She trips on a thick shred of peeling paint, stubs her toe, and is hopping when she catches up with Lana, who cannot find her key. Lana dumps her purse on the concrete, locates the key, hands it to Tracee, and piles everything back inside while Tracee opens the door. Lana pushes her in, closes the door, and keeps watch through the blinds as Tracee rummages in the bureau drawer and comes up with the choker.

  “Let me see.” Lana holds out a flat hand.

  Pinching one end, letting it dangle, Tracee lowers the delicate chain into Lana’s palm.

  Lana plays with the necklace, moving it in snakelike patterns, watching the stones catch the light and reveal with the palest pink sparkle to be not false but true. Even the links amaze her. Not the bright yellow wiry stamped-out loops of a trinket, but each tiny link irregular, shaped by hand, twisted ropes of burnished gold. This little necklace is so powerful it takes Lana right out of reality. It stops time. She glances up to catch Tracee’s eye and they bond, an acknowledgment of illicit pleasure. An object of such simple beauty and value is something so out of their league.

  “I have to try it on,” she says in a hoarse whisper.

  She stands in front of the mirror while Tracee fastens the catch, which itself is a marvel. A tiny gold arrow that fits into a loop when turned sideways, and remains in place when the loop is turned.

  The necklace, snug, sits high on Lana’s neck. The half-moons stand up in a row. They are so bright that it seems to Lana like an optical illusion, some freak astronomical occurrence when a person sees not one moon but many. She shifts very slightly back and forth, causing them to throw off sparks in all directions. The light transforms. Her cheeks blush pink, her dark eyes flash, her coppery skin glows as if tempered with hot oil.

  “Oh,” says Lana.

  “I know,” says Tracee.

  “They’re like itty-bitty headlights. Only… magical.”

  “I know.”

  Lana swoops her hair up and, standing taller, lengthens her neck, angling her firm, strong chin slightly to profile. How fresh she looks and yet sophisticated. As if she comes from money. A city woman, not a small-town girl trying to pass.

  “Undo it,” she says with urgency. “They’re too powerful. I could get hooked on diamonds.”

  Tracee unfastens the chain and tucks the necklace back in the drawer. Lana snatches it out. “Not buried in your underwear. That’s the first place they look.” She sticks it under the bed pillow, fluffs the pillow, knocks it aside and grabs it back.

  She slips it under a chair cushion. Changes her mind. Stashes it under a box of tissues. The box falls over. Drops it inside the box. Digs it out.

  “Can they just come in and search?” says Tracee, keeping an eye out the window.

  “If they have a warrant. You know, ‘search,’ as in ‘search and seizure.’” Lana prowls, hunting for a hiding place. “You’re cooked.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “We both are. I’m an accessory after the fact.”

  “What fact? You know so much about the law.”

  “It’s true, I do. Tucker would love to arrest me.”

  “How could I do this to Tim?”

  “At least you’re not pregnant. Oh my God.” Lana rushes into the bathroom. “Where is it? I put it here. What did you do with it?”

  “What?”

  “The condom. I put it here. Next to the Noxzema. Standing up. Looking jaunty. I remember when I put it here, I thought, ‘This looks jaunty.’” Lana bends to see behind the toilet bowl. “It’s there, yes! Come here. Can you reach it?”

  Tracee, with her slender hands, manages to coax the small square packet from where it fell, wedged between the wall and a plumbing pipe. Lana tries to tear it open. “God, what’s with this plastic?”

  “Guys use their teeth,” says Tracee.

  “Oh, right.” Lana bites the edge and rips it. She slips out the condom, unrolls it, and pulls to stretch it. Very gently. “It’s not too elastic. It must be old. Older than us.”

  “What are you doing, anyway?” says Tracee.

  “You’ll see.”

  She manages to enlarge it a little more. “Okay, hand me the necklace.”

  Lana tries to thread the choker into the condom, but, like a balloon with no air, the rubber sides stick together. Gingerly she attempts to widen the rim while Tracee threads it in. No success.

  “Wait, I know.” Holding the condom under the faucet, Lana lets water trickle in until the condom becomes a half-filled saggy and soggy balloon. She holds the rim open and the choker slides in.

  She swings the condom cheerfully. “Would you ever know? No, you would never know.”

  She tears back to the bed. “Rumple, Tracee, rumple.”

  “It’s unmade. It’s already a mess.”

  “Make it more.”

  Tracee shoves the covers around, jumps on the bed, rolls, kicks a bit, and rolls off.

  Lana slips the condom between the sheets. “Not quite in plain sight but practically. Are they here?”

  Lifting a broken blind, Tracee peeks out. The lot is quiet, empty. Every so often a car passes by on the street. “Not yet.”

  “Throw a thong on the floor.”

  Tracee takes one from the drawer and flings it. It lands in front of the bed.

  “Perfect,” says Lana.

  43

  A Toyota creeps slowly along Winstead Road and turns into the parking lot. It passes Tucker’s patrol car and Clayton’s Chevy Bel Air and swings around to the front door, where it stops abruptly. Rita gets out. “Thanks for the ride, Debi.”

  “Anytime you want to go to the library, just call. I love to drive. I’ll drive anywhere. Tell Marcel hi.”

  Rita hefts out some books and nudges the door closed with her backside.

  “Need help?”

  “I’m fine. Thank you again.”

  She walks into The Lion and stops cold.

  She knows who he is before he turns around. Of course she does. Every woman knows her own husband. Besides, thirty years together breeds a lot of familiarity.

  Tucker and Clayton see her before Harry does, and when they fall silent, Harry swivels on his bar stool. “I found you,” he says.

  The books tumble from her arms onto a table. She busies herself a moment stacking them, straightening the edges, and when she looks up, Harry is ambling toward her. In his middle age he’s grown slow-moving and bowlegged, she’d forgotten that. Even the discovery of his missing wife doesn’t produce a lot of speed. “You look different,” says Harry, “with your hair and all, but it’s still you.”

  Rita gets a feeling of helplessness, a sickness in the pit of her stomach that maybe she doesn’t know her own mind, or if she does, she doesn’t have the nerve to speak it. She focuses on Marcel and that helps, making a beeline for the big cat, who, in expectation of her company, strolls over to the cage door.

  “I’m not coming home, Harry. I’m a lion tamer now.”

  “I heard that. From Tucker here.”

  “I put some keywords into Google and
up popped your disappearance,” says Tucker. “In the church monthly.”

  “I guess there’s no hiding these days, is there?” says Rita.

  “Amen to that,” says Harry.

  She bolts for the cage.

  It’s a standoff—Rita, her key out, ready to unlock the cage door, Harry wondering if one step closer will drive her inside.

  “I brought the kids,” says Harry. “And your grandkids. They went off to the Truck Museum. Should be back by now.” He abruptly changes directions, moving in his molasses-like way to the front door, which he opens. He lifts an arm and waves.

  Clayton is watching as if this is a play unfolding. It might not even be happening to someone he knows, much less someone he fantasizes about day and night. He doesn’t like Harry. His face is like granite. He’s barely cracked a smile, although why would he smile, having arrived to corral his renegade wife? Before sitting, he dusted off the bar stool, and Clayton felt his disgust as he eyed Lana’s artful arrangement of liquor bottles. He asked for a lemonade, as if The Lion looks like a place that serves lemonade, not a man’s drink, and Clayton doesn’t trust anyone who squints indoors, where there is no sun. Harry sat with his back to Marcel, who roared when he entered. Perhaps Harry understood what was apparent to Clayton: Marcel took an instant dislike. That roar had bite. It wasn’t like any sound Clayton had heard from the animal before. Marcel’s ears pressed back; his lips curled in a snarl. And while Harry didn’t acknowledge the lion, Marcel’s eyes settled on him and stayed there until Rita came in. While they waited, Harry mostly let Tucker do the talking. He sipped his ice water (his second choice), adding only religious punctuation, a “God willing” or an “Amen.” Tucker wondered how Lana, Tracee, and Rita had “joined forces,” as he put it, but Harry wasn’t curious. “God has his reasons,” was all he said, and then asked his only question: “How do you keep the place sanitized?” Clayton explained the hosing system. Then Harry asked a second question. “Has my wife been imbibing spirits?” Clayton only shrugged.

  All color drains from Rita’s face when Harry swings the door wider to let in her three grown sons, their wives, and three grandchildren under the age of six. They remain bunched together in the doorway, not certain what exactly is expected of them and silenced by the large, peculiar tentlike environment that includes a lion and their grandmother, looking unfamiliar. “Hi, Grandma,” shouts the youngest, a pixie in denim overalls.

  Rita gets in the cage with Marcel. She does it so swiftly and unself-consciously that it produces barely a ripple of astonishment. “Go away, because I’m not coming back.”

  “You want to leave us all?” says Harry.

  “You can come visit anytime. Although not too often. My life is very busy.”

  “Your sons have to pay for babysitting now. A stranger takes care of your grandchildren.”

  “I’m sure not a stranger,” says Rita.

  “The garden’s all weeds.”

  “All the gardening books are on the second shelf directly below C. S. Lewis. Just look up ‘weeds.’ Everything here is blooming.”

  “Stop being foolish. It’s time to come home.”

  Rita knows what’s next: a death knell. She says it along with him. “All is forgiven.”

  Marcel rises up behind her.

  Everyone screams.

  His enormous head looms over hers and his bushy mane hangs down, grazing her shoulders, a thick, hairy cloak. Except for Clayton, no one doubts he will bite her head off.

  Tucker draws his gun. “Come on out, ma’am.”

  “No,” says Rita.

  “This is for your own protection. Come out or I’m going to have to shoot the cat.”

  Marcel starts sniffing her hair—a medley of deep, noisy snorts and dainty sniffs. The grandkids start giggling. The youngest tugs her mom’s hand, trying to pull her closer.

  “I got this,” says Tucker. “I’m taking care of this.” He holds the gun now with two hands, as if to take better aim, although what’s really going on is that his gun hand is shaking and he needs the other to steady it.

  “Don’t go shooting Marcel to prove you deserve your badge,” says Clayton.

  “Stay out of this.”

  “Just ’cause you passed out drunk and let a girl steal your police car.”

  “That wasn’t my fault.”

  “Whatever,” says Clayton. He drops some quarters in the jukebox and hits “Bamboleo.”

  “Bamboleo, Bamboleo.” Come dance with me, go wild, fill my heart with fire—Rita doesn’t have any idea if that’s what the Spanish words mean, only that the words mean that to her. They are an imperative. She begins to salsa, undulating and swiveling a do-si-do around Marcel. His tail snaps back and forth, whisking now and then across her bouncing, swaying, unmistakably no-bra breasts.

  Her family is transfixed. Harry flinches every time Marcel’s tail brushes across his wife’s bosom.

  Tucker lowers his gun.

  When the song ends, Rita places her finger on Marcel’s nose. A gesture of peace and respect. She turns toward her family, distant, clustered together on the other side of the room, and bows.

  “The devil is at work here,” says Harry.

  Rita sags, the life socked out of her. She might as well say it, he probably won’t get it, he might even interpret it as a compliment when for her it’s the ultimate tragedy. “Oh, Harry, you’re so unpoetic.”

  She stands motionless and weak as he approaches. He leans in, his face inches from the bars. She sees his eyes clearly. Because they are deeply set, she hadn’t noticed the sleepless dark circles under them. His face crumples. His lips are trembling like a child’s. He starts to cry.

  She was expecting to be lectured or bullied. She wasn’t prepared for this. She feels sorrier for Harry than for herself. She always has.

  The youngest grandchild yanks free of her mother, streaks through the bar, runs up and sticks her skinny little arms through the bars and around Rita’s legs. “Please come home, Grandma.”

  “Honey, don’t,” says Rita, disentangling. “Don’t put your hands in a lion’s cage.”

  44

  The clan piles into the van. The children argue about who gets to sit in what seat and next to which mom, dad, aunt, uncle, or cousin. Inside The Lion, Rita collects her stuff. There isn’t much, a sweater on a hook in the kitchen, a mug she picked up for tea between shows.

  She wraps the mug in paper towels and then, puzzled, stares at the lumpy object as if she doesn’t recognize it. She lays it on the counter; it rolls sideways. She unwraps it and sets it down again.

  Behind her Clayton watches, leaning against the door. “Divorce the stinker, marry me.”

  Rita turns. “I didn’t realize you were here. I don’t think I need this. I guess I have all the dishes I need.”

  He straightens up and scratches an eyebrow.

  “I have to talk to you about Marcel,” she says.

  “There’s an offer on the table.”

  “I appreciate that, but…” She shakes her head.

  “It stands.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rita pushes open the screen door, steps into the sunlight, and takes in the view. In the beginning, when she first worked at The Lion, she would look out the kitchen window in this direction, appreciating the pale blue late-afternoon light, occasional feathery wisps of pink clouds, while she set out the glasses, getting ready for the bar to open. Later, when she walked Marcel, this was also her vista: the field of wild grass, the rise beyond that she and Marcel climbed each morning, settling at the top, ready to greet the day. She always had a hopeful feeling, a surge of happiness at hearing the birds. Their liveliness was infectious. Marcel’s ears would flick forward. The first time she wondered, Was he hearing something new, or rediscovering sounds he hadn’t heard in years? Sometimes Marcel buried his head in the wet grass, the way a person might thrust his nose into the petals of a fragrant rose, letting the scent overwhelm his senses.

  “Not out her
e,” she says, changing her mind. “I can’t bear to talk here.”

  She turns back inside, takes a seat at the kitchen table, waits for Clayton to take the chair across, and addresses him solemnly. “Marcel needs the great outdoors. He needs a garden. Will you fence in the back field outside the accordion doors?”

  “Why are you leaving?”

  Rita simply stares at her hands, which are clasped together in front of her, resting on the tabletop. “Perhaps you could build a pathway from the cage so he can get from his cage to the outdoors easily. He likes to be outside, especially in the morning.”

  “Harry is a deep, cold grave.”

  “I married him,” she says flatly.

  “Not a federal crime.”

  “He’s lost without me, he often tries to pretend not, you know, inside he’s a small and lonely man, I think. This has been… it’s been a vacation. A dream. Extraordinary. But I’m not young. I made choices. I have responsibilities. I was pretending I didn’t. That I had no past, no commitments. But I do. Everyone does. Will you do those things for Marcel? Give him a garden?”

  “I’ll start tomorrow.”

  His hands close over hers. “‘Did you ever see a robin weep / When leaves begin to die?’”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Hell, if I knew it was poetry you wanted.”

  “Was that poetry?”

  “Hank Williams.”

  “Oh. I like that.”

  She slips her hands out from under his. “Thank you for everything, Clayton. Do you think you might return my library books? There’s one called Cat Watching. It’s about house cats, but maybe there is something useful in it. You might understand Marcel better. If you want to read it, it’s not due for two weeks.”

  “I’ll read it cover to cover.”

  “And…”

  “What?”

  “Marcel might like a chicken with the feathers on. He could pluck it before he ate it and that would keep him busy.”

  “A live chicken?” says Clayton.

  “No, not live. I’m worried that he’s bored. He might enjoy plucking. It makes sense. You know lions rip the fur off their kill.”