Sugarland

by Joni Rodgers

  Humming a little, she got up and straightened the sheets on the other side of the bed, then went back to her chair.

  “We went down to the shop and had a locksmith drill the door open, you know, but there was nothing in there but some old dead animals. And the electricity had gone off during the storm, so the freezer was off, and it smelled real bad, Wayne. Mel paid somebody to go over there and clean it out. Some guy came to get some head off of something—a sheep or goat or something that he shot up in Montana, but they’d gone and thrown it in the dumpster already. He was awful mad, but—oh, well.”

  Kiki shrugged and pulled her feet up underneath her.

  “So, anyway. I keep calling that lawyer of yours, but he’s always in meetings or out of the office, and he just never calls me back. I don’t understand it. It’s been—what? More than a month now, and he still hasn’t called me. But I figure maybe he knows something about that insurance and everything.”

  She drew a lock of blonde hair over her shoulder and started making loops with it.

  “Yeah, so Lavina said it was just their starter home, anyway, and I told her, us too. We knew we couldn’t stay there forever.”

  Kiki rested her head back, trying to tip her plane of reality.

  “Remember when we moved out there, Wayne? It was right before Oscar was born.”

  The respirator next to the bed made a steady shah-sigh, and Kiki let her own breathing fall into rhythm with it. It made her feel sleepy.

  “They brought the house on two big trucks, half and half. Like that Barbie dream house you can open up and see inside. And I was so worried that it wouldn’t fit together right. That if we didn’t walk real careful and jump over the cracks, it would just break apart. And you laughed at me for being silly, but then you said we had to make love every night for a week when we moved in, to make the house have good luck. And it must’ve worked, because then we had Oscar.”

  She stroked her hand over her warm, turgid stomach.

  “We put the Christmas tree in the playpen so he couldn’t get at it, remember? You said, ‘I ain’t gonna cage up my child just so a tree can have its freedom.’ You said, ‘Let the kid run, Kiki-peaches; put the dang tree in the cage.’ I remember you saying that. And we were laughing. We were laughing all the time back then,” she said, and it made her laugh a little now. “I guess we’ll have to do that again for a couple years. Put the tree in a cage. Just when Chloe got big enough. Won’t be long though, and this one’U be big, too. Time goes by so fast now. It’s not like it used to be.”

  The baby turned and settled in her abdomen, not a kicking, just a gentle swim: the slow and inevitable growing, the deep whale-song evolution that draws the living being from the seed in a uniquely sexual, uniquely powerful, uniquely female process that began the instant her golden hair caught a flash of lightning that illuminated Mother and Daddy Daubert’s back porch in Sugar Land.

  “Now, that’s fireworks,” Wayne had breathed close to her ear, drawing her back against his chest. He’d stroked her hair and caressed her body as they lay together on the wooden swing.

  “I’m the sheik of Araby,” he sang, softly teasing, gently rocking, “your love belongs to me.”

  And Kiki had reached back over her head to pull him closer, touching his face, letting him warm his hands underneath her shirt, forgetting everything, forgiving him again.

  “At night when you’re asleep, into your tent I’ll creep,” and he’d walked his fingers downward, under the waistband of her skirt like delinquent boys stealing under a fence.

  Kiki put her legs over the side of the chair and laid her head on the bed beside him. From behind closed eyes, she followed the lightning to the touch, to the insemination, germination, unfolding, going forward.

  She let herself touch the smooth-shaven side of his face.

  “I’m the sheik the sheik the sheik of Araby...”

  That she could still remember him that way, that she could miss and mourn him, this was something she could not understand. She wondered if she would have felt any satisfaction if she’d bashed his head in when she had the chance, when she had him right there and the poker in her hand.

  But it was the moment she laid it down that she felt the power; the moment she remembered she’d fallen in love with Wayne not because she was stupid, but because there was a loving and good part of him that could be separated from the rest—the part that looked like Oscar sleeping and sounded like Chloe when he laughed.

  Kiki could feel that part of him growing inside her now. Now that he was sleeping peacefully with all the rage withered from his half-open hands and all the hard words evaporated from his slack mouth.

  sha-sigh sha-sigh

  “Wayne,” she whispered, her lips touching the rim of his ear, “I forgive you.”

  The flow of the feeling was so powerful, she fully expected him to open his eyes.

  Kit was unaccustomed to the sound of Neeva’s voice on the phone.

  On the rare occasions she heard it, there was always a weird moment of unbalance before she realized it was her mother-in-law and not some kind of prank call. Neeva never said “hello” or “hi, this is Neeva” or anything plain and civil like that. “Prizer residence,” Kit would cheerfully pick up, and Neeva would launch right into something like, “Well, I suppose they’re sending out those damn Easter seals even as we speak. Now I can’t even breathe without feeling guilty.” As if the conversation were already in progress, but Neeva had picked up the phone to dial in a second party as an afterthought.

  This time it was more direct.

  “And where the hell have you been?”

  But it still caught Kit off guard as she grabbed the phone and tucked it between her shoulder and ear so she could continue cooking Mel’s breakfast.

  “Umm... hello?” she stammered. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I should send you my answering machine for Christmas, since you’re never home and nobody ever calls me.”

  “Oh. Well, hi, Neeva,” Kit tried to sound like she wasn’t cringing. “How are you today?”

  “Same as I was four months ago. I’m not aging that rapidly.”

  “Wow,” Kit said, “has it been four months already?”

  “Time flies when you’re too busy to pick up the phone,” Neeva said. “I told the girls in the bowling league, ‘Well, I thought they were coming for the Fourth of July, but apparently the Second Coming is more likely than theirs.’”

  Kit twisted the phone cord around her hand, trying to stay cool, to think what she should say and not say.

  “Well... umm... it’s been a real busy summer is the thing and...”

  “Have you made plans for Thanksgiving?”

  “Oh ... Thanksgiving? Wow, umm ... we really haven’t looked that far ahead, but ... we’ll see how things go, you know, with everything. But I guess maybe— Sure, you know, yeah. We could make a—a tentative plan for that ... tentatively.”

  She’d eat Thanksgiving dinner at Jack-in-the-Box before she’d force her family to choke down turkey roll and tater tots at Neeva’s, but she decided to go along with it for now. The holiday was still months away, leaving plenty of time for Kit to either kill herself or come up with an excuse.

  “Have you found another job?” Neeva moved on.

  “Well, actually,” Kit said evasively, “Mel is doing so well now, there really isn’t any need.”

  “You’re pregnant,” Neeva stated without a shade of emotion or shadow of doubt.

  “No! No... don’t be silly.”

  “You most certainly are.”

  “Well, I—I mean, there might possibly be a—a remote ... possibility.”

  “How far along are you?”

  “Four months. But we really aren’t telling anyone yet, so—”

  “Well, I guess it’s easier than working.”

  “That isn’t it at all! We’ve been—we wanted—I’ll be going back to work as soon as ...”

  Kit gave up her protests. She knew she was
double damned on this topic. Neeva dismissed stay-at-home mommies as lazy and condemned corporate mommies for abandoning their offspring like lotus-eaters.

  “When I went into labor with Melvin,” she said, “I was flat on my back under an eighteen-wheeler. Barely finished changing out the bearing before my water broke.”

  “Really?” Kit tried to sound appreciative and resisted pointing out that Neeva’s generation of mothers took a ten-day “lying-in” at the hospital, while modern HMO mores told women it was hoo-hoo-hee and back to the rice paddies.

  “You never bounce back from that third one,” Neeva went on. “That third one leaves your stomach looking like an empty kangaroo pouch.” Kit moved her hand to her abdomen, just to make sure she could still contract the muscles there. “I don’t know how many times I wished I’d stopped with two.”

  “Well, considering Mel is your third, Neeva, I’m personally grateful you didn’t.”

  “Do you know that according to Jacques Cousteau, every major environmental problem on this planet can be traced to the overpopulation of the human species?”

  “No, I hadn’t heard that.”

  “It’s true,” Neeva assured her.

  “Well, hopefully someone old will die and make room,” Kit said baldly.

  “Wheeee,” Neeva whistled, “sounds like those hormones are kicking in already.”

  “Who’s on the phone?” Mel asked, strolling into the kitchen, and Kit answered his question by holding up a raw egg-

  “I’m not here!” he mouthed.

  “Would you like to talk to Mel?” Kit offered. “He’s right here.”

  “Hi, Ma.” Mel took the phone, then covered the receiver with his hand and whispered, “One of these days, Alice— straight to the moon.”

  Kit giggled and opened the refrigerator to put away the milk and margarine.

  “No, we’re really excited about it,” Mel was saying, but then an odd expression crossed his face. “So? Why should I care what some French fairy scuba diver says about it? Well, I wish him good luck with that, but I’m gonna keep swimming upstream just the same.” He covered the receiver again. “Would you knock that off?”

  She had the egg and was miming a slapstick pitcher’s windup with it.

  “How’s Butchy?” Mel said. “Yeah, I hear it’s great over there. I’m sure he’ll do fine. How’s Pop? No. Yeah, just working. Same old same old.”

  He grabbed Kit’s hand as she moved to drop the egg down the front of his sweatpants.

  “No, she’s ... yeah, I know you did, Ma, but Kit’s ... No, it’s not that at all. She is, Ma. Well, taking care of the kids and all that, and—and she’s doing some painting. Something on the corners of the kitchen cabinets. I don’t know, little fruit things or something. She has fun with it. It’s a little something to keep her occupied.”

  Mel made a face at her when he noticed she’d quit goofing around.

  “No, but... I know, but there’s always somebody hiring. She won’t have any trouble finding some kind of work.”

  Kit went to the kitchen table and picked up Cooper and Mitzi’s cereal bowls, stacking them in the sink.

  “The Falcon? It’s umm ... it’s—it’s fine,” Mel was saying. “No, turns out it was a linkage to the transaxle. Yeah, that would be great, but I can’t. No, I won’t be able to drive it down after all. I just, you know, I wanna keep it close to home, just in case. Well, you know. Yeah, I guess maybe, but— What? You mean this weekend? Well, I’d have to check with Kit on that. No, Ma, but she still has things to do.”

  No no no, Kit shook her head, making forget-it, no-way, and absolutely-not gestures with her hands.

  “Yeah, Ma? Kit says this weekend would be great.”

  There was a gentle hand on Kiki’s shoulder, and that’s what awakened her, but the moment she smiled and pressed her cheek to it, the real world displaced the sounds of Sippie Wallace and the hum of the tour bus returned to the sigh of the respirator. Instead of the velvety back of Xylo’s hand, Kiki felt the spiky brightness of a diamond anniversary ring. She opened her eyes and noticed for the first time how much Mother Daubert had aged lately.

  “Were you sleeping, dear?”

  “Mm, just drifting a little,” Kiki said.

  “Sweet dreams, I hope.”

  “Yes,” she told the truth.

  “Oh! I almost forgot. I brought a little something to brighten up the room.” Mother Daubert drew a small, rolled up poster and a roll of Scotch tape from her purse. “Precious Sentiments. Don’t you just love Precious Sentiments?”

  “Oh, yes,” Kiki said. “They’re so...”

  “Precious!” Mother Daubert supplied with a giggle.

  She carefully centered the poster above Wayne’s bed. “A little angel is watching over you,” it said in soft printish letters beneath a large-eyed child who held a moppy little puppy with wings tied on its back.

  “It made me think of our little angel,” Mother Daubert patted Kiki’s stomach, and her voice broke with emotion. “It made me think how—how they might be together right now, just on this side of heaven...”

  Kiki managed to smile and nod, then moved quickly to the window while Mother Daubert pillaged her purse for a pink tissue and daintily blew her nose.

  “This must be a very difficult time for you,” Mother Daubert solicited.

  “Oh, well, it’s probably harder for you.” Kiki smoothed the front of her shirt. “Because he was ... you know.”

  “My baby,” Mother Daubert nodded, and her dangly earrings swayed beside her sad mouth. “My only child.”

  She rested her fingertips on Wayne’s forearm, stroking from his constricted biceps to the wrist he kept drawn up to his chest.

  “He very well could come out of it, you know. That’s what it means when they say ‘higher brain function.’ That means he’s still here.”

  “Yes,” Kiki said. “That’s what they told me.”

  “It would take some time. It would take some effort, but he could be as strong and vital as he ever was. I listen to their predictions and their statistics, and I say Pff! They don’t know my Whipper, that’s what. They don’t know what a dynamic person he is.”

  “No.”

  “Such an active little boy. Oh, he used to run Lorenza ragged!” Mother Daubert laughed, relaxing into the nostalgia. “When we had our Lorenza,” she smiled, “those were happy times. She and I would take him to the park and the swimming pool. Why, we could barely keep up with him once he learned to swim.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Kiki nodded, trying not to drift toward the window.

  “We taught him to swim, Lorenza and I. Do you know what we did once? We took him camping.” She covered her coral pink mouth with her dainty hand, eyes shining with the long-kept secret. “Daddy was in Atlanta for ten days. No one was ever the wiser! We took him to the state park in Huntsville, and oh, oh my, we had such a time!” She laughed again. “We sang, and we paddled the canoe, and we lay on the sleeping bags with the tent flaps wide open, and the air was so full of jasmine at night. I was afraid Daddy might put up that tent next time he was out hunting and still smell the jasmine.”

  Mother Daubert fell silent, and a long time went by before a nurse came in and fussed around Wayne’s bed a little and left with only small hellos spoken between them. Kiki noticed that Wayne’s nails had grown. She wondered if she was supposed to trim them or if the nurse would do it.

  “And then, of course, he was so athletic in high school,” Mother Daubert suddenly picked up an invisible conversation. “Outdoors all the time with his fishing and his hunting. Just like his daddy. Vital and vigorous. You see how vigorous Daddy is yet today. Seventy-seven he is, and he’s as vigorous as a man half his age. Twenty-one years older than I, but he’ll probably outlive us all. He’ll probably—oh, what is it, dear?”

  “Are Chloe and Oscar still outside?” Kiki craned at the window.

  “Now, you just relax, honey. I can see them just fine from here.” Mother Daubert went to the win
dow and raised the blinds. “It’s actually a lovely view they gave him.”

  “It is nice here. Do you know ...” Kiki hedged. “I mean, is it being paid for by... somebody?”

  “Oh, good heavens, don’t you worry about that,” Mother Daubert said. “Daddy doesn’t permit me to worry myself over any such thing. I’m sure he’s seen to it.”

  “Oh,” Kiki said. ‘“Cause I thought maybe there was some insurance or something like that.”

  “Well, I’m sure there is,” Mother Daubert raised her eyebrows as though it hadn’t occurred to her.

  They stood side-by-side at the window, watching Oscar struggle to boost Chloe onto the low branch of a crab apple tree.

  “He’s so gentle with her,” she said. “He wouldn’t hurt her for the world.”

  “He’s a good boy,” Kiki said.

  She envied them out in the sunlight and wondered how much longer Mother Daubert intended to stay and how much longer she expected Kiki to stay with her.

  “It’ll be so much more convenient for you to bring the children now that he’s here, as opposed to the hospital,” her mother-in-law went on. “It’s just too bad you won’t be able to go back to Orlando for your mother’s—Oh. You weren’t still planning to go to Orlando now, were you, dear?”

  Kiki started to stammer denials and reassurances, but Mother Daubert was at the window again, waving to the children.

  “They grow up so fast,” she said. “I remember when you and Wayne were first married. So young. So full of hopes, so much in love. But so young. Even so, he was a good father. He was so happy when Oscar was born, happy and proud.” She pushed into her purse and came up with another tissue.

  “He was,” Kiki struggled out of the chair and went over to her mother-in-law’s shoulder. “He was a good daddy.”

  “Women just don’t understand the pressure and—and that a man has needs and for such a young man to have so much responsibility—”

  “Mother Daubert—”

  “But he supported his family. Even at the age of twenty-three. He accepted that burden like a man.”