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Catching Heaven

Page 15

by Sands Hall


  They listened again. “If you’ve come to talk, talk,” Lizzie said.

  Jake stared down at the beer, which he held clenched in both hands. He jerked his bottom jaw forward and back several times, lifted his bottle and took a long swallow. “I suppose I deserve this.”

  Lizzie shrugged.

  “When’s he wake up?”

  “Any minute. Summer will be home soon.” Lizzie sucked beer through the lime. “Don’t expect her to remember you.”

  “Jesus, Liz, of course she’ll remember me. Hannah too.” But he sounded doubtful.

  Night after night, for weeks after Jake had left, Hannah had cried herself to sleep, asking for him, wanting to know when he was coming back. Lizzie, remembering, pulled her heels against her buttocks and shook the hair back from her face. Just yesterday Hannah had looked up from cutting construction paper into paper doilies as a present for Maud and had said, “Remember when Jake carried me on his shoulders to the waterfall?”

  “Me too,” Summer chorused. “Remember?”

  Lizzie had said no. Though she remembered distinctly.

  “Hannah’s got gymnastics. She gets home late.”

  “I bet she’s good at that!”

  “Pretty good.” Another long silence. Lizzie stared at Jake’s profile. That round jaw, the nose that turned up ever so slightly at the end, giving him, despite his most serious efforts, a mischievous, elfin quality. He cleared his throat. “So. Maud finally did what she kept saying she was going to do and left L.A. I hear she’s got a place on Emerson?”

  “This is the smallest fucking town.”

  “I was having dinner with Willy and Sue. Some customer told Willy she’s working at the Red Garter.”

  “You come over here to talk about Maud?” Lizzie tipped her bottle to her lips again, though it was empty.

  “This is called small talk, Liz. It fills the voids on the way to big talk.”

  Lizzie showed him her teeth, where she had stored her lime wedge.

  He cleared his throat. “I’d been thinking a lot about this. I mean, I always think a lot about you.” He didn’t look at her. She watched his Adam’s apple bounce as he swallowed. “And then when I was visiting Sue—Johnny was watching TV. We ate dinner. None of that’s important.” He sipped beer. “Johnny’s gotten so big. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Of course I’d believe it.”

  “So many changes. He wants to play drums.” Jake’s eyes flashed, sharing a joke. “You can probably imagine Big Bad Willy’s response to that.”

  Lizzie almost laughed, imagining indeed Big Bad Willy’s response to that, but she said nothing, running thumb and forefinger up and down the cool, wet neck of the beer bottle.

  Jake watched her fingers, looked away. “Anyway. I took Sue’s advice and climbed Fable last week, thought about you, about us, and Theo. And I just feel so rotten, Liz, I can’t tell you. I just thought we could maybe—”

  “Another beer?”

  She headed for the kitchen without waiting for an answer and yanked open the refrigerator door. As she cut two more slices of lime she heard Theo calling. “Ma? Ma!”

  She carried the beer bottles out to the table. “Theo’s up,” she said. “I’ll just get him.”

  As Jake stared up at her, startled, anticipatory, Lizzie saw her son there. Theo had already developed the wide-open, almost black eyes of his father. She pulled away from whatever emotion this stirred in her. “Don’t expect him to reach out his hands and say, ‘Dada.’ ”

  Jake hovered between standing and sitting, clearly unsure as to whether he could come with her.

  “Ma!” Theo’s voice left the arena of demand and headed into panic. Lizzie ran up the stairs. Jake, heavy-footed, followed. She was reminded of certain afternoons, with the girls at school, when she’d lead Jake up to the bedroom. He would put his hands on her hips, rocking them back and forth as if in climbing the stairs he was climbing into her.

  Flushed, she stopped outside Theo’s room. “Stay here for a sec,” she said. “Since he’s never laid eyes on you, he has no idea who the fuck you are.”

  She slipped into Theo’s room before she could see the response to this register in Jake’s dark eyes, eyes that always looked ready for wounding, and which made wounding both difficult and at times gratifying. Theo was holding on to the edge of the crib, rocking violently, about to unleash an unholy yell. Lizzie swooped him up, muttering nonsense syllables, bouncing him until his mouth turned up at the corners. He pointed to his minuscule sneaker in a corner of the room and said, “Ssew.”

  “Shoe.” She lowered him onto the towel-padded bureau she used as a changing table. “Come on in,” she called.

  Jake paused in the door. With the edge of the diaper she wiped at the poop clinging to Theo’s bottom. “Don’t be shy.” She pushed the diaper into the plastic pail and reached for a diaper wipe. Theo circled his legs in the air. To the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel” Lizzie sang: “Someone has come to see you, ah-ha. Yes, someone has come to see you.”

  Jake stepped closer. Lizzie encased Theo’s bottom in a new diaper and hoisted him onto one hip. She turned so that they both faced Jake. “Look, Theo,” she said, bouncing him a little. “Take a good look at this guy. He sends you money.”

  Jake held his hand out, palm forward. The gesture looked like one she’d known in grade school, when her class had studied Native Americans and learned to say “How.” Theo stared. Lizzie looked back and forth between the two sets of dark eyes examining each other so carefully.

  “Hey. Theo.” Jake’s voice was pitched high. “Hello there, little fellow.”

  Theo turned his face into Lizzie’s shoulder. She bounced him again. “Come on, Theo. Take a good look. You never know when this guy will grace us with his presence again.”

  “Give it a break, Liz.” Jake’s voice was low. As if picking up the anger that swirled between the two of them—an ugly red wind filled with pieces of debris, blowing paper, grit—Theo began to cry.

  “Oh, great,” Lizzie said, although this was fairly usual behavior after a nap until he had nursed. Theo tugged at the neck of her shirt. She sat on the low couch next to the crib and pulled her shirt up, so used to this action—shirt up over the breast, unhooking the nursing bra—that it was only as she exposed the breast, before Theo, butting with his head, fastened onto her nipple, that she thought to look at Jake. He was watching, or rather watching without watching, not knowing where to look.

  “Sit there.” She pointed with her chin to a chair across the room. “Or you can wait downstairs.” She maneuvered Theo’s legs and bottom into a more comfortable position and leaned back. Jake lowered himself into the chair. A rectangle of sunlight molded by the window stretched across the floor between them. Theo periodically left off sucking to gaze around at Jake. One foot prodded at the couch, the other waved in the air, landing on Lizzie’s shoulder, pushing at her chin. Pudgy fingers pushed her shirt still higher, as if Theo were doing this for Jake’s sake, revealing, she knew without looking down, a white dome of flesh, the blue of veins delicate as tracery beneath the skin.

  She kept her neck bent and her face averted to hide the heat that climbed her cheek. Jake had been in almost the same position as Theo was now. She’d held him, just so, as he sucked on her breast and moved his fingers within her moistness so that she could come.

  “Men are lucky,” she said, her voice loud.

  “Not necessarily,” Jake said quickly, as if he’d been following her chain of thought. “Not at all, in fact.” He held his hands pressed palm to palm between his knees. This was a position she remembered as habitual, and unexpectedly dear, making him look thoughtful, careful, too slow for his own good.

  “Yes.” Lizzie caught Theo’s flailing hand. “Men get to return to this. When they’re older.” Theo’s eyes were closed, his red lips pouted over her nipple. She smoothed his hair. “A woman, unless she’s gay, doesn’t get to do that.”

  Jake said nothing. Theo let go of he
r breast, creating a popping sound. He pointed at her. “Eye.”

  “That’s right.” Lizzie hugged him. She pointed across the room. “Jake.” She would not say “Pa” or “Dada.”

  Jake wiggled his fingers at Theo, who pushed away from Lizzie. She tugged her blouse down and scooping Theo up onto one hip, walked ahead of Jake out of the nursery and down the stairs. Theo twisted in her arms to look over her shoulder at Jake, who stumbled once on the stairs behind them. She told herself it was fine to ignore the hollow, burned-out look in Jake’s eyes, that he had brought this upon himself, but she had to stop herself from turning around and pulling him to her with her free arm.

  He insisted on spending some time looking for Luna, and crashed around through the bushes and undergrowth in the field and gulch back of the house, calling Luna’s name until Lizzie thought she would go out of her mind. It was clear he wanted to stay until the girls got home, but feeling like a sheepdog, she hinted and nudged and corralled him in the direction of his car. “But poor Sam,” he said. “We’ve got to find her.”

  “When Summer gets home we’ll go looking,” Lizzie told him. “If anyone will know where she might be, it’ll be Summer.” She felt dizzy with confusion. She had called Jake to come precisely because of what he was trying to be—practical, kind. But now that he was here, she wanted nothing more than for him to go away. She stood adamantly by while he climbed across the gearshift, feeling her body shake with something she refused to name.

  The car bucked away from her over the rutted, graveled road, the movement curiously reminiscent of making love. It also made her remember times she’d stood waving goodbye on frosty mornings. She didn’t want him to look in his mirror and make any connections, so she headed back to the house, whispering against Theo’s cheek, “I love my Theo, I love my Theo,” until he pulled away from her in protest.

  Summer arrived home a few minutes later, having walked in the half mile from the main road where the school bus dropped her off. “I saw Jake out there,” she said from the top of the basement stairs.

  “Did you.” Lizzie, dealing with laundry, shoved her head further into the washer to get at a tiny sock. When she pulled her head out she was confronted by Summer standing with her hands on her hips, eyes shiny with tears.

  “What?”

  “You made him go away, didn’t you?” Summer said. “You made him go away again.” She turned and ran out of the house, pounding down the stairs. “Luuuna!” she called.

  “Summer!” Lizzie yelled. “I need to talk to you.” Summer was halfway up the hill. Lizzie started up after her, calling for her to wait a second, to please wait. But Summer didn’t stop. “I need to tell you something.” Her voice screeched, black crows spewing out of her throat. “Summer! Before you see Sam.”

  Summer turned to look at her, puzzled. Her face shifted, altered, convulsed into a rictus of comprehension. “Luna!” she cried, and veered off to the right, slipping and sliding downhill through bracken and underbrush, running as if pursued by a monster. Lizzie followed, but Summer tore ahead, a terrible keening rising from her throat. Suddenly she sat, crumpled into a faded denim heap. Lizzie slowed. Summer had her legs drawn up to her chest, her face buried in her knees, an arm flung over her head. Her body shook.

  Lizzie squatted beside her. She knew better than to touch her. Summer lifted her head. “Luna’s dead, isn’t she? Isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know. Sam can’t find her.”

  Summer threw herself sideways to the ground, sobbing. “He told me this would happen. He told me. Just not so soon.” She pushed Lizzie’s hand away. “Let me alone. I hate you. You sent him away and now Luna’s dead.”

  The chill wind rasped through sage and tumbleweed. Dusk was upon them. The sun, the season, her very life, Luna’s life, dear Sam’s life—everything was heading into night, into winter. She put her forehead against her knees. After a long moment she tried, “It’s cold, Summer. Let’s go home.”

  Summer’s breaths were audible and had a hitch in them, a little hiccup of air. “I’m going to see Sam,” she said, scrambling to her feet. She looked down at Lizzie, superior, distant. “I need to talk to him all by myself.”

  Lizzie watched her clamber back up through the bracken, find the path, head towards the caboose, a silhouette against the light of evening.

  At dinnertime Lizzie found a working flashlight, put Theo on her hip, took Hannah by the hand, and climbed up to Sam’s to ask him to dinner and to fetch Summer. The merry light that usually gleamed through the caboose window was unlit. When Lizzie knocked and then opened the door, Sam called out he was in bed, trying to get some sleep. Summer, he said, had left an hour ago.

  Lizzie felt her heart turn to a granite lump. She met Hannah’s wide eyes with raised eyebrows and kept her voice steady. “Can we bring you some dinner?”

  “I want to sleep. Leave me alone, Lizard.”

  Hannah stayed quiet as they headed back down towards the house and nodded when Lizzie told her to watch Theo while she went looking. “You want to call Aunt Maud?” she said as Lizzie found a parka. “Her and Summer took a lot of walks.”

  “She and Summer,” Lizzie said, examining last year’s ski lift tickets and a Chap Stick she found in the parka pocket. She felt cold all over, frozen. She was reminded of the time Hannah was three and had fallen backwards off a stool onto the tile floor. In spite of blood seeping from what had, in fact, turned out to be a superficial head wound, she had commanded Hannah to get up and not be such a baby. The memory could still freeze her blood.

  “You know how Summer has all those hiding places she won’t show anybody?”

  Lizzie shook her head. She was biting down so hard on her back teeth that her whole mouth ached. “I’ll be back.”

  The flashlight made the darkness more dark. She finally switched it off, trying to see by the light of a slim moon as she scrambled and called and climbed and slid in and around and through the various bifurcations of the gulch in the acres behind the house. She called for Summer. She called for Luna. Once she called for Jake. It was after midnight when she finally phoned Maud.

  Maud, just home from work, arrived within fifteen minutes. She seemed to have a good idea of where to go and had the foresight to suggest that Lizzie bring Summer’s red wagon. Carrying flashlights, leaving Hannah with Theo, they set off. It seemed to Lizzie that Maud knew the branches and forks of the gulch as well as she might know the streets of a city. She led them to a secret overhang. Summer called it Narnia, Maud told Lizzie. Summer was asleep, her arms around Luna, who was curled up in a ball, dead.

  Maud carried Summer, who wouldn’t let Lizzie touch her. Lizzie followed behind, dragging Luna in the wagon. Summer had her arms around Maud’s neck, face turned into her cheek. As they stumbled back towards the house Lizzie heard Summer say, “Sam told me it was going to happen. He told me this was one of those times to catch heaven on the fly, that I needed to be grateful for every minute of time I had with her.”

  “And Luna was very lucky she had you to hug her like that,” Maud said. “She went away feeling peaceful, I bet. Sam will be glad of that.”

  Dragging her sad load behind her, lifting the wagon and its occupant up and over the rough and steep spots, Lizzie wished there were some way to take possession of this incident. Maud, rarely so capable and in charge, held the reins, and she hated herself for being petty enough at this moment to want them back. She wished she had let Jake stay. She wished Luna had not died. She wondered how on earth she would get through what she now had to go tell Sam.

  CHAPTER 18

  MAUD

  What is love? ’Tis not hereafter.

  Present mirth hath present laughter;

  What’s to come is still unsure.

  In delay there lies no plenty.

  Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty;

  Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

  —TWELFTH NIGHT

  The uniform at the Red Garter was a costume Maud could have worn for
a Hollywood Halloween party: satin corset with plunging neckline, pushup bra, high-cut legs. Fishnet stockings, stiletto-heel ankle boots. A red garter high on one thigh completed the outfit.

  It had been Jeep, baby-sitting the kids one night for Lizzie, who told Maud they were looking for a piano player at the Red Garter. Maud said she didn’t know enough popular songs, but Lizzie and Jeep persuaded her to try. She auditioned one morning. Barney sat in a far corner of the empty bar and said, “You’re hired,” when she finished. “But just play straight-ahead tunes. No artsy stuff. You look a little artsy to me.” Barney gelled his black hair, wore a leather jacket, and spoke quickly. Maud thought he might be putting some of the restaurant’s profits up his nose.

  Taking a break in the small changing room on the second floor, she stood before the mirror fussing with her antennae—as they had been dubbed—of blue beads, which matched the turquoise of her corset. The door banged open. It was Ginger, whose corset was green. Ginger never moved but sprang, never entered a room but shouldered her way in, never set a glass down but “delivered” it. Her red hair swarmed and curled, her breasts bulged wantonly; her hips were wide, her thighs ample, her calves long. She sat on a bench and unlaced her boots with quick, practiced gestures, then hoisted one foot onto the thigh of the opposite leg. “Goddamn boots!” she said, pressing thumbs into arch and heel. She threw her head back, eyes closed, mouth open in a grimace of pained and ecstatic relief. The gold feather in her hair, surrounded by stiff wires supporting green glass beads, teetered dangerously. She stood up and yanked open her locker, allowing the door to bang against its neighbor. “Shit night,” she said, rustling a pack of cigarettes out of her purse. She lit up and lay back on the bench, crossed one ankle over the other, and closed her eyes.

  Maud tried to read on her breaks, but found herself obsessed with time. Barney was ruthless on the subject of time cards and breaks. Nine minutes left. I measure out my life in coffee spoons. She found herself studying, again, the hand-printed poster that presented Barney’s Rules of Conduct.

 

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