by Sands Hall
Lizzie almost had to laugh at the expression on Summer’s face. Hannah kept her head bent. “And Maud is family.”
“So’s Jeep,” Lizzie said.
“So’s Sam,” Summer added.
“It was a very odd thing to do, Hannah-hoo.”
“We didn’t want to be alone,” Summer said, in what was probably the first time in two years that she’d sided with her sister. “And anyway, we think if you aren’t going to like Jake anymore, then maybe Aunt Maudie will.”
“Ah. I see. Off you go. I’ll tell you the moment I hear anything.”
The pillows were back on the sofa and in the kitchen the kettle began to whistle. “Quite like old times,” she said as she sat at the counter. She sounded sarcastic, caustic, all the things he used to try to cajole her out of being.
Jake’s look at her was filled with a kind of disdain. He shoved the box of tea bags back into the cupboard. “This has been a rough evening,” he said. “But it is awfully easy not to like you when you’re like this.”
Lizzie felt as if she’d been slapped. “Well, maybe you should try Maud. Hannah’s right. You would like her.”
“I already do. So?”
“More than you like me, I mean.”
Jake stared at her, then, weary, shook his head.
“She reminds me of a wounded doe.” Lizzie opened the refrigerator, debated between orange juice and beer, chose beer. “She has these brown eyes that look as if she’s barely overcoming this mammoth sorrow in her life. I swear to God that’s what got her work in L.A. She even has a name for it: Bruised Innocence, she used to call this picture of herself. Years ago. She used to get more work. Maybe the look is more appealing in a younger woman. Or maybe after a while the look stops being innocent.”
Jake got his jacket. He let it hang off a crooked finger. She tipped the bottle to her mouth, felt the beer course through her veins, an elixir of clarity. “She’s folk music but wishes she were rock and roll. She wants to stand by her man but she wants her independence. She says she wants commitment, children, but she’s scared to death they’ll cramp her style.”
Jake scratched at the back of his neck. His eyes looked red and dull and hooded. “Sounds like someone else I know.”
Lizzie shook her head. “Not me. She wears this panic in front of her face like a catcher’s mask. I keep telling her, ‘Just get pregnant. So what if the guy doesn’t know. At least you’ll have what you want.’ ” She looked at the bottle of beer in her hand, wondering when she’d gotten drunk.
“I can’t believe you sometimes, Liz. I came out here to mend some fences, not pull more of them down.” He moved to the window, although there was nothing to see out there in the darkness but the black shapes of trees and bushes against snow. She had stared out the same window many times at night, waiting, though she would not have been able to say for what.
“I don’t want to talk about Maud,” he said. “And we should be talking about Sam. But what I wanted to talk about, what I came over to talk about, was you and me and what in hell we’re going to do. But it’s too fucking late.”
“Too late,” Lizzie echoed, dazed, agreeing.
“I mean that it’s too late at night.” He turned to look at her, in his eyes that look of hangdog despair that used to irritate her so much.
Lizzie looked out the window. Their faces were ovals of white in the glass. She thought of Sam, in the car with Maud and Sue, on the way to Marengo. “I should have gone,” she said, suddenly appalled that she had not.
“We could use my car. No. I could stay with the kids. You could—” Reflected in the window, Jake’s eyes were dark holes. He cleared his throat. “I’d been wondering . . . This will sound absurd. I wondered—” He walked a few steps away and then returned, as if he needed this anonymity, this staring into the darkness side by side. “If maybe you’d be at all interested in trying things again. It’s no good, of course. I can see that.”
Lizzie shook her head at their reflections. “I just don’t think I’m made for this man-woman stuff.” This was not what she’d meant to say.
Jake groaned. “What a load of crap.”
“Maybe I just don’t know how to love steadily, you know? I want a hot, fast burn. You want something different.” Somewhere, without knowing, she’d been thinking about this.
“How can you say that?” The anguish in his voice turned it dark. “You have three kids. They require pretty damn steady love.”
“Kids are different. They need me, they love me.”
Lizzie watched as Jake’s reflection turned to her, holding hands out, palms up.
“But you see,” Lizzie said, as much to her reflection as to his, “there’s no question of them wanting, at least right now, a different mother than the one they have. Or—more to the point—of me wanting anyone different from who they are.”
Jake fit himself into his jacket. Lizzie walked ahead of him to the door. Blood hammered at the inside of her chest. She put a hand there to make it stop. She looked forward more than she could say to this being over, to closing the door, to leaning her forehead against the cool glass of the front window after his taillights had disappeared.
“Liz. Please just look at me. You haven’t looked at me once all night.”
“I can’t,” she said, but she did. And there they were, arms around each other, lips finding home, with the ease and sweetness that had always startled them both.
From upstairs came a wail from Theo. Lizzie drew away. “Sometimes I wonder if they’re psychic,” she said. The wail died to a whimper.
“Psychic which way,” Jake whispered. “He does want this, or he doesn’t?”
“See, you would like Maud,” she said, although maybe what she meant to say was that he was like Maud. She stooped to pick up a miniature plastic tractor that lay on the floor between them. With some awe she observed her hand shaking, felt a shiver deep within her.
“I should go.”
She nodded.
“I’ll call from the hospital.”
She took a shaky breath. “What if Sam—” She stopped.
“You’re shivering.”
“I’m fine.” She folded her arms across her chest.
“Are you cold?”
She shook her head. “Yes. But go, Jake. Go.”
CHAPTER 22
MAUD
Weary with toil I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired
But then begins a journey in my head . . .
—SONNET 27
When Maud invited Rich to dinner he only reluctantly agreed to come. “Just don’t feed me dirt food.”
“Dirt food?”
“Alfalfa sprouts. Rice cakes. Tofu.” He said this last with protruding lips, swinging his hands up in imitation of the name of an oriental defense system. “You eat like that, I bet you do. But don’t feed me that shit.”
Maud wondered if pasta was considered dirt food. She settled on steak and salad. She also bought potatoes, and splurged on a good bottle of cabernet. Simple enough, she thought as she pushed red candles into candlesticks, nothing he could complain about: It was a he-man, cowboy dinner, and elegant and classic too, wasn’t it?
As she was putting the potatoes in the oven a knock startled her. She smoothed her hands over her hair as she crossed to open the door. Rich had not struck her as the sort of person who would be early.
It was Noah, lurking out by the edge of the stoop. He wore gloves and a muffler. His thin parka, clearly too small for him, was frayed at the cuffs and collar.
“Hi, Noah.” Maud pulled him inside. “Get in here before we let all the heat out.”
She squatted beside him and Noah put his arms around her neck. After a moment Noah said, “Our snowman melted.”
“Darn rain.” Maud squeezed him. “But it was a good one. Those the shoes Santa brought you?”
Noah shoved a foot out, nodding. The shoes were high-topped, way too big. Maud felt the toes. “Santa’s a
good guy. Can you run fast in them?”
“Can I!” Noah opened the door and sprinted down the steps. He ran around the lawn two or three times, holding his arms out from his sides, yelling, “Whooo! Whooo!” as he circled. “I can beat anything!”
“I just bet you can,” Maud laughed. “Now get back inside. I’m freezing.”
He came and pressed against her. “You have eye stuff on again.”
“I’ve invited a friend to dinner. He’ll be coming along in his red truck any minute. You want to walk down the street to meet him?”
Noah leapt away from her. “I can race his truck,” he said. “I can beat any old red truck!”
Maud took the apron off, lit the candles, and got her mittens and coat. She’d bought red plastic peppers that snapped on over the bulbs of a string of tiny Christmas lights. The season was long over, but she plugged them in every night. They glowed merrily.
That morning an unexpected late February rain had melted much of the snow along the sidewalks and lawns. In the afternoon the temperature had dropped, and now the frozen surfaces touched by the street lamps glinted and gleamed. A deep blue permeated the darkness, draping the street and houses with melancholy. She reached for Noah’s hand, wondering if women had children so that they could have someone to love—someone who wouldn’t mind the immensity of that affection. Children didn’t know, yet, that so much love blazing in one direction could be perceived as shameful, an embarrassing manifestation of need. Children took it as their due, received it without running away. At least at first, she amended, thinking of Summer’s battles with Lizzie, of Lizzie’s battles with their father, and her own.
“My mom gave me a stirrup gun!” Noah let go of Maud’s hand to run ahead of her, backwards. “At Kmart! Pow!” He mimed the motion, sighting into a tree. “Pow!”
“Is this him?” Maud whispered at the sound of an engine. “Is this a red truck?”
Noah looked to see what was coming. “Nah. That’s just an old Plymouth.”
“How do you know it’s a Plymouth? How do you know that already!”
“My dad.”
“You want up?” Maud held her arms out, surprising Noah as much as herself.
Noah stared at her speculatively. “Okay.”
“You weigh a ton.”
“I’m a growing boy.” Noah nodded happily. At the sound of an engine he cried, “Put me down! I have to race!”
The red pickup swerved around the corner and slowed. Noah dropped to the ground and bent his knees, putting one hand on the ground in imitation of Olympic runners. Rich rolled to a stop beneath a street lamp. Maud walked around to the driver’s side.
“Hey,” Rich said, not smiling. Beneath his coat he wore a knit shirt with a collar. It was the first time Maud had seen him in anything other than a T-shirt. She was touched, embarrassed too, that he had chosen to dress up.
“That’s Noah,” she said. “We came to meet you.”
Noah, fists against the ground, flexed and straightened his back leg. “I can beat you,” he said. “I bet!”
Rich frowned. “What is this?”
“He’s going to race your truck,” Maud said. “See, in his new shoes he can beat anything.”
Rich drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You want to ride with me, or you want to watch him?”
Maud stared at his profile, puzzled. “I guess I’ll stay out here and watch the race,” she said. “Ready, Noah?”
Noah nodded, adjusting a foot, cocking a hip.
“Ready, Rich?”
He gunned the engine. Noah giggled.
“First one to the end of the block. On your marks! Get set. Go!”
Noah leapt into a run. Rich took off, tires squealing dramatically. Maud grinned; he was playing the game. But the truck didn’t slow. Rich reached the end of the block. Leaving the truck running, he climbed out and lounged against it, waiting for Noah, still halfway down the block.
Noah slowed to a trot and then stopped altogether. Maud jogged to catch up with him. “Pretty darn fast!” she said. “Those are some shoes!”
Noah’s chest heaved. He held his mouth screwed tight and blinked his eyes over and over again. Maud whispered, “Stupid red truck!” but Noah just shook his head. She held his hand as they walked towards Rich, who leaned against his truck, hands in his pockets, one booted foot crossed across the other. “Congratulations,” she said, dry as she could muster.
Noah squirmed his hand out of hers. “I’ve got to go home.”
“Home?” Rich said.
“Well now, wait,” Maud said. “You deserve some cider or something after all that!”
Noah shook his head. His eyes were red. Small wrinkles formed around his lips with the pressure of keeping them still.
Rich wiped a hand across his chin. “Maybe he wants to ride in my truck?”
Noah shook his head. “Naw.” He headed up the sidewalk.
Maud followed. “Those are good shoes, Noah.” She squatted beside him. “Rich just didn’t play the game.”
Noah’s shrug was a tiny gesture inside the threadbare parka.
“Come see me tomorrow, okay? We’ll do more playing on the piano?” But he didn’t look back.
Rich slouched by the door, hands in his pockets. “You look nice.”
Maud waited until they were inside before she looked at him. “Why couldn’t you let him win? Or at least let him think he had a chance?”
“Who’s going to beat a truck? He might as well learn early.” Rich shrugged out of his coat, looking around the room. She’d draped a shawl over the top of the upright piano, which Miles had finally shipped, replacing the one she’d rented from Mountain Music. The candles and pepper lights cast a cheerful glow. Brie and crackers waited on one of the Portuguese plates, and the wine was open.
“For a moment there I thought you’d tricked me.” He coated a cracker with a thick wedge of Brie and pointed the knife at her. “Like maybe you just happened to never mention that you had a kid.”
Maud sank onto the piano bench. “He lives next door.”
“Yeah, well.” Rich dusted cracker crumbs from his hands as he moved around the room inspecting the pictures on the walls. He had to stoop from time to time, squinting. In the midst of her irritation she was aware of what those long thighs in their faded jeans could do to her, the wide shoulders so neatly descending to that narrow waist. She and Rich had seen each other in a vacuum of beer at Farquaarts and a few nights in bed. They had never, not once, talked of past relationships, not even of families. It had been a tacit agreement: To bring these subjects up meant they were discussing, however obliquely, the potential of permanence. To avoid them meant they could go on as they were.
“I was just thinking that maybe you’d been acting, is all,” Rich said, turning. “Not telling me something pretty damn important. Like you had a kid or something.” Flecks of cracker fluttered on his lower lip.
Maud looked away. What sex will do, she told herself, picking up the bottle of red wine.
“None of that fermented grape juice for me,” Rich said. “You got beer?”
“I don’t. I’m sorry, I didn’t think. I have water. Apple cider?”
Rich shook his head and reached for one of the glasses. “This stuff gives me a headache.”
In spite of this, he managed to drink more than half the bottle. He liked his steak but barely touched the salad. Maud, frustrated with her inability to take him to task regarding his treatment of Noah, had a hard time thinking of topics of conversation. They had depended on the loud music at Farquaarts or the humming silence they created in his bed to cover these holes. She talked of the Red Garter, babbling to fill the silence.
“You and Jeep must work together a lot,” he said.
“Yes.” Maud felt her teeth moving up and down on a piece of steak. She swallowed and sat back with her glass of wine in her hand.
“Where were you today?” he finally said.
“Visiting Sam.”
“ ’Cause I called to cancel.”
“You could have left a message on the machine.”
Rich put a last bite of meat in his mouth and grinned. His lips glistened. He pointed at her plate with his knife. “Only thing better than steak is pussy. As my father used to say. You going to eat that?”
She forked her steak over to his plate and watched him plow his way through it, thinking of Sam, sallow and thin and pathetic in the backless hospital gown, lying against white sheets with his face turned to one side, those long wrinkles like gashes down his face.
“You visited him yesterday. Why doesn’t Lizzie take a turn?”
Maud wondered that herself, but she said, “Every day the nurses say he might be able to go home soon, and every day they say it won’t be tomorrow. I just want him to know he’s not alone.”
He’d had a stroke. One side of his body could barely move. He didn’t say much, although his black eyes glinted when Maud babbled on about Hannah and Summer, Theo and even Noah. She’d taken to telling him the sonnets she knew, reciting monologues from all the plays she could remember. Today she’d taken a book of poetry with her, read things to him that she once had used for speech and voice exercises: Oh sylvan Wye, thou wanderer through the woods. He listened with his eyes closed. Turning and turning in the widening gyre. When she paused, his eyes flicked open, fathomless and black. She hoped that meant he wanted her to continue, since that’s what she’d done.
Like Eagle that morning over Salt River . . .
Sundays, too, my father got up early . . .
I have seen them coming with vivid faces . . .
When his eyes finally stayed closed she tiptoed away.
“I read him poetry,” she said, and then wished she hadn’t tried to explain it. She got up to clear the plates. Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
Rich took hold of her wrist. “The little boy, Moses, whatever his name is—”
“Noah.”
“Biblical bullshit. He’ll survive.” He moved a fingernail against the inside of her wrist.
Maud let her hand linger in his. Like a moth and a flame, like a cat having its forehead stroked, she was mesmerized, entranced, against her better will, against her better sense. “I just think you could have played the game,” she said. “Noah’s not stupid, no child is, he knows he can’t beat a car. But why not help him create his fantasy, why not let him enjoy it?”