by Jill Malone
“And then she starts with the girls. Subtle, at first, she’d say she was tired and heading home. You know, like that. And then later . . .” Bailey waved her hand.
A woman brought their crepes with little side salads and fans of cantaloupe. Claire bit into the sausage potato and shut her eyes to hold in the pleasure. Miraculously, the second bite was more expansive than the first.
“I told you,” Bailey said, smiling. “Anyway, I had this thought recently. I think Liv hates herself. I think she’s doing this because she doesn’t know what else to do. Her behavior is a kind of manic self-loathing. Do you see? A way out of thinking about anything, a way to be only physical. She’s made everything physical: her work and her play. There’s no time left to think—no place for the brain at all.”
“No,” Claire said. “The brain doesn’t shut off when you’re physical. If anything, it ranges more widely, especially if you’re doing something you’re adept at, like Liv with construction. She knows exactly what she’s doing, so she’d have a lot of leisure to think while she’s working.”
“Then why?” Bailey asked. “Why is she doing this?”
“Have you asked her?”
“No. She’d think I was judging her. I’ve hinted about people being upset, Liv getting a reputation, but she doesn’t care about that.” Bailey fidgeted a moment, leaned across the table. “I think if you asked, she might tell you. I think she’s smitten with you.”
“Smitten.” Claire arched her eyebrows. “No. I’m not going to pry into her personal life.”
“But what she’s doing is crazy and reckless. I don’t want to say dangerous, but I think it is. I think it’s dangerous. She’s not twenty anymore.”
Liv fell off the ladder, straight backwards, and hit the deck. She’d fallen eight feet: the breath had knocked out of her and she’d nailed her head and back. Unconscious for only a moment, she woke to Simon pulling at her, terror on his face.
“I’m OK,” she said, moving her hand to touch his chest, to reassure him. “Simon, I need you to bring me my phone. It’s on the kitchen table.” The boy couldn’t seem to move. “Simon, can you get my phone, on the kitchen table?” Liv looked at the clouds and felt sick. For a moment, she closed her eyes.
When she came conscious again, Simon had the phone in his hands.
“Good boy,” she said. “Good boy, Simon. Let’s call Mommy.”
Stretched on the recliner to brace the bag of peaches against her neck, and the mixed vegetables to her shoulders, Liv held the frozen clown fish to her head. Now that she was upright and talking, Simon found the frozen bags draped all over her to be quite amusing. He ran Toby up her bare leg, and down again.
When Claire and Bailey ran up, Liv said, “I must have hit my head even harder than I thought.”
“What were you doing on a ladder?” Claire demanded.
“A bee hive. I was trying to dislodge it with a broom handle.”
“Why didn’t you use a hose to blast it loose?” Bailey asked. For a moment, they all looked at her, thrown by her unsuspected resourcefulness.
“I didn’t think of it,” Liv said.
“That sentence could be shorter,” Claire said. “You didn’t think.”
“Your appointment was with Bailey?” Liv asked.
Claire ignored this, said to Bailey: “So you’ll stay with Simon?”
“Sure. Hey, kid, you’ll love this.” Simon hovered over her purse, inspecting each item Bailey removed. “Ever played with nail polish?”
During the distraction, Claire helped Liv to the car. On the drive to the house, Claire had considered letting Bailey take Liv to urgent care; in many ways, that arrangement would have made more sense, but Claire knew she had to control the information, the back story, about her connection to Bailey. She drove too fast. Angry, unaccountably angry: Liv’s fall from the ladder felt like a ruse to smoke out Claire’s deception.
“Your appointment was with Bailey?” Liv asked again.
“Yes.”
“How did that happen—you two meeting?”
“Last week at the Mercury Café.”
Liv adjusted the clown fish on her head, and turned to stare out the window. They were both angry now. At Claire’s speed, the drive to the hospital took six minutes rather than fifteen.
Bailey went through the cupboards systematically, taking down various items as they appealed to her. She handed each selection to Simon and he made a pile on the counter.
“Your mommy’s a good shopper,” Bailey told him as she rooted through the refrigerator. She let him wash all the vegetables, and eat anything he wanted. “You like couscous?”
They had painted his fingernails and his toenails. He’d stayed perfectly still for her. She was blond like Cinderella, Simon thought. Afterwards, he’d shown her his trains and they had walked to the river. Then he had shown her his airplane, and Bailey had flown it while Simon ran underneath.
She chopped so rapidly he was mesmerized, as though this were a card trick instead of vegetables. “OK, I need a large pan and a small one. Right, good. We’re going to bake the fish. Do you like fish? I can do quesadillas for you as well.”
She talked a lot. Sometimes just to say what she was doing, and sometimes to ask questions, but rarely stopping either way. She showed him how to set the table after the fish went in the oven. They set for four, reverently. She hadn’t asked about Liv falling from the ladder, but she had taken the ladder down and rested it in the grass on the side of the house.
She put many different foods on his plate, in small portions. The colors bright and the smells complex, Simon held his fork and watched her eat. He smelled everything before he tasted it; then bolted his food like a stray cat.
At midnight, Claire’s car cruised down the gravel road with Liv—her mouth opened, head bent—asleep in the passenger’s seat. Inside the house, the kitchen light glowed. Claire helped Liv to her camper, and laid her, fully clothed, on the bed before covering her with a sleeping bag.
In the house, Bailey had fallen asleep on the couch, left a note asking not to be woken since she had to be to work at 4 a.m. Claire crept through the house, peeked in at Simon, slipped off her clothes before sliding into bed. Asleep and dreamless while overhead the fan hummed.
Liv woke with the headache still very much in residence. She took her time about sitting up, reflected on the grueling hospital gauntlet, all to discover that she had a concussion and some wicked bruises—and to obtain the prescriptions, of course, muscle relaxants and Hydrocodone. She and Claire had not spoken for hours. Each flipping through the stale magazines, or watching the grumpy children and short-fused adults as though preoccupation could stave off their fury. Fury was exactly what it had become. Fury distressed by the tedious wait and the confined space and the silence between them.
Why had Claire gone to the Mercury Café? To pick up someone? It had never occurred to Liv that Claire might—might, what? Have sex with someone else? Date? Liv pried the caps off her bottles, took two of each, then wished she’d eaten first. In her bag, she found a Clif Bar, and choked it down as well. Her back and shoulders were stiff. Her mind unfocused, and she fell asleep.
Bailey walked up the deck and poked her head in the doorway to the kitchen. “Hey,” she called, “your favorite guest.” In a moment, Claire came down the hallway, Simon trailing behind her like a tail.
“Hey,” Claire said.
“I thought I’d make dinner.” Bailey had a bag of groceries with her. “Shrimp and oysters and clams, and I brought a steak in case anyone’s anti-seafood.”
“Because you haven’t helped out enough around here?” Claire asked, clearing a workspace for her.
Bailey dragged Simon’s stool over to the counter, and began to hand him ingredients as though they’d had this routine for years. Claire sat at the table, and admired them.
“Well,” Bailey asked, without turning around, “how’s the patient?”
“Still sleeping. I’ve checked on her a couple
of times, left her a sandwich and fruit, but she’s slept all day.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“A concussion and bruises, no breaks. He said she could expect to be slow-moving and sore. And then he gave her a lecture about smoking. She loved that.”
“Smell this, Simon. It’s lemongrass; you’re going to love it. Well, who wouldn’t love a lecture after they fell off a ladder? Nearly as useful as being told you’re going to be sore. Tell me you love white wine.”
“I do.”
“Simon, I’m going to need those pans again, and that cutting board. Yes, perfect. Right, Claire, how hot is too hot for you?”
“I don’t like coughing while I eat.”
“So, just a couple of peppers. Good to know. I didn’t hear you come in last night. Simon, why don’t you start rinsing these, and we’ll just set the strainer here, and, yes, that’s perfect. Claire, if you’ll start the grill? Right, good. OK, I’ll chop chop these. And then we’ll need butter, vats and vats of butter. Simon, say ‘butter is delicious.’”
“Butter is delicious.”
“You are the golden boy. Right, now I’m going to give you kale to rinse. Perfect. Exactly so.”
Claire was sent to the camper to retrieve Liv. Since she hadn’t helped with dinner, she had no argument to avoid this. Again, she was struck by the Spartan arrangement of the camper. Surfaces clean and clear, clothes folded or hidden away, only a faint suggestion of patchouli incense, and the seemingly naked girl on the bed, striped by the sleeping bag.
“Hello?” Claire said, easing into the camper. She left the door opened, crept toward the supine girl. “Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Would you like to come up to the house for dinner? Bailey’s cooked a beautiful meal.”
Liv, her face blank, stared back at Claire.
“Oysters and shrimp and kale and some kind of exotic potato.”
“I’ll follow you back,” Liv said. “I just have to get dressed.”
“I shouldn’t have brought wine,” Bailey said when Liv joined them. “You can’t have any on your meds. Well, you and Simon can have mango Odwalla. You’ll share, won’t you, Simon?”
Liv’s mouth tasted metallic; she’d taken another couple of pills before she left her camper. Her brain stretched and retracted like silly putty around Bailey’s monologue and the hot, bright evening and the robust food. And Simon, glowing beside her, biting into a shrimp with relish. And Claire dressed in a purple tank top and short pale shorts. Claire, for whom all fury had drained away, like Liv’s headache. Liv blinked slowly, fought herself not to giggle. She noticed, perhaps for the first time, how much Simon resembled his mother: their thin, angular faces, and bold marmoset eyes, pianist’s fingers, and small, beautiful ears. The table was quiet, and Liv focused on each of them. Waiting.
“Headache gone?” Bailey asked, a bit slowly, Liv thought, dramatically.
“Quite gone.” Liv beamed, and ate an oyster. Remembered a trip to Pike Place Market, the men in their aprons, the crowded stalls.
Bailey talked for the entire meal. Next to Liv, Simon kept Murdoch beside his fork, and studiously ignored both his train and his utensil. Claire and Bailey drank the bottle of wine, and opened another. Strips of steak, sweet peas, sautéed kale, Liv feasted on every dish Bailey served them.
“Bailey,” Claire said, “this food—I can’t even describe it. I feel like I’ve never really tasted anything before. There’s taste beneath the taste, if you know what I mean. Does that sound crazy? I mean it as a compliment.”
“Then I’ll take it that way,” Bailey laughed.
There was coffee, of course, and a dessert of pineapple, cream cheese, and toasted almonds whipped together and plated hot.
Liv let her mind boomerang around the meadow like Simon’s little plane. She thought of the first time she’d worked demolition. Paired with a baby dyke from North Portland, they’d been unleashed on three rooms with sledgehammers and no restrictions. At the end of the day, when the crew chief returned, they’d been dirty, bleeding, and joyful. She could smell those rooms, and feel the tears to her skin, and the grime.
For a moment, Liv’s mind became so lucid that it leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the mouth, and she understood that along the way her joyfulness had been lost. And her sense of wonder, wonder as an effortless bliss, the kind that Simon carried with him everywhere, Liv had dropped at some past moment, in some place she could no longer even recall. She wanted that delight back, to carry on her shoulders, or cradle to her chest.
“Yeah,” Liv said suddenly, the fingers of her hand elastic, blossoming here at the table as she reached for her coffee cup. “Wow.”
Eleven
Claire in bed
Two days after her slip, Liv, stoned on the recliner, rolled the tobacco Bailey had brought her. Swirling the beer in her bottle, Bailey glanced again at her watch. Claire had disappeared three-quarters of an hour ago to put Simon to bed.
“Here,” Liv said, handing a cigarette to Bailey.
“Thanks.”
They smoked. Liv watched the smoke pillow into the night. “So, you met her at the Mercury?”
“Yeah,” Bailey said, “you’ll laugh when I tell you how.”
“Make me laugh.”
“They thought she was you, all those girls you fucked. They came one after another trying to hook up with her and she’s just sitting there all confused, trying to drink her gin while girl after girl approaches, and stomps away a second later pissed or disappointed. Fucking sad, dude. I had to intervene.”
Liv flicked her lighter awake, asleep, awake. Claire and the girls in the Mercury, one after another like some marathon job interview under Bailey’s observation. A psych experiment, a case study, and Liv could see them, all their hopefulness, and their youth like a sword they’d fall on.
“That’s hilarious.”
“Dude, I told you this was a small town. Fair warning and all.”
“Bailey, what is it you want? Claire, do you want Claire? You signing on to be the personal chef here?”
Bailey laughed. It sounded hysterical to Liv.
“You hit your head super hard, Liv. Just keep mellow and watch the pollen blow or the grass sway or whatever the fuck.”
Liv inhaled something bitter, held it a moment, and let it go. It hovered above the trees like a dazzling helicopter. Wow, she thought. She knew already, not to say it out loud.
In Simon’s room, Claire had grabbed a thin blanket from the closet and uncovered a box of Denise’s papers. Cross-legged on her bed now, she riffled through the box, and found, mixed in with legal documents and tax forms, the sketches of Amanita varieties that she knew to be her aunt’s missing research. How had this box ended up in Simon’s closet? She set the research aside, and emptied the box onto her bedspread. More documents, a photograph of Claire’s parents, a brochure from a lecture series, and then she read the following, typed letter: We admire what you have taken on. We are grateful. Claire will always hold herself apart. She is steadfast without loyalty, and loving without demonstration of feeling. She is, always, patient and controlled. You may find her difficult. We believe that she is difficult. We hope that you will understand her better than we. We hope she will thrive there with you.
Her mother had signed the letter for both of them. Claire read it until the words shuffled together, meaningless. A harsh letter, wasn’t it? Not untrue, certainly, but unkind. Laying the letter aside, she flipped again through the sketches. It wounded her, that letter. She felt as though she might be bleeding.
Bailey would still be out there, prattling on. So Claire stayed in her room, re-packed everything but the sketches, and ignored the box—particularly the letter. She wished for Liv. Much later, she wondered if her aunt had answered, and if so, what she’d written.
Claire crept into the camper. Stood, trying to quiet her breathing, her heart. Spooled in her bag, Liv slept on. Looking about her, Claire considered dropping a water bottle
, or slamming a cupboard door, anything to rouse the girl. Instead, she climbed into bed and put her hands on Liv’s bare torso. Even then, the girl only groaned and curled into Claire.
“Wake up,” she whispered. “Please. Wake up.”
It hurt to speak. It hurt to have her hands on Liv. It felt like pressing bruises. It hurt as she bent lower and kissed Liv’s mouth. It hurt to pull the girl into her and kiss her and cling to her and weep. God, finally to weep, and that hurt worst of all. The tears covering both of them and still coming, and Liv had woken; her arms flexed around Claire and brought more tears yet. And then the noise began, guttural and ragged as though it came from Claire’s very cells, some ancient voice from her conception; it shook through her viciously, and left her shivering harder.
Liv had reared up on her knees and braced herself against the wall of the camper to hold onto Claire. They were wedged too tightly in the narrow bed to rock, but Liv sang, the way she would have to Simon, and Claire felt herself cradled as the noise, almost a possession, drained away from her. Everything drained away from her. Liv held fast, sang until the shivering stopped, kissed Claire’s damp face.
Twelve
A kind of awareness
Paint spattered Liv’s hands. Chronically incapable of painting without mess, she’d worn her grubs, and reveled now in the tangy smell, the texture of color on the wall, the feel of the brushstroke along her entire arm. She’d promised Claire, no power tools until she was off the meds, and so they’d spent the morning choosing colors for the basement. Mauve and a kind of husky blue—not as accents—but as unique colors for the downstairs rooms; accents would remain white, but be repainted in the spirit of newness. It had taken the better part of the week to dismantle the wood paneling, and clean and patch the walls.
All the downstairs windows thrown open, overhead fans whirring, and the rooms lightened by the removal of the paneling, Liv could almost convince herself she were in an outbuilding, in the garage perhaps, or her father’s workshop. She applied a first coat, and thought of her father at his table, gluing together crafted pieces of wood to create trains and planes and racecars for the grandkids.