The waiter came to take their dinner order. “And a bottle of the house red,” Anna added.
“I should call and check on Flynnie,” Marvin said, pushing back his chair.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Anna said, and patted his arm. “Greta has my cell number if anything comes up.”
Marvin nodded. “Is this the smoking section?”
“I don’t know,” Anna said, and looked around. One of the women at the next table was smoking. “It must be.”
Marvin reached into his pocket and took out a package of Drum tobacco. He rolled a cigarette, then one for Anna when she couldn’t do it herself.
“So,” she said. “I have to tell you how surprised I was to hear from you and Poppy after all these years.” She took a deep drag of the cigarette, let the smoke drift in her head. The tight bands in her chest began loosening a little. “I’d made up my mind years ago that my daughter and her family were gone forever.”
“Well,” Marvin said. “We thought it was time you got to know Flynn. She’s never known a grandparent. Do you think you’ll enjoy spending time with her? I mean, just the two of you?”
Anna said she would. “Sure. Maybe I’ll take her to the zoo. Does she like zoos?”
“No. Probably not. That would upset her, I suspect. Flynn has only seen animals wild, in their natural habitat. She would enjoy a boxing match, though. If you told her you were taking her to the fights she’d melt like cheap chocolate in your hands.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can do,” Anna said, and turned to the waiter who brought the wine for her to taste. She nodded. “It’s fine.”
“What I have in mind is more than, uh, day trips and outings.”
Anna looked up. “Pardon?”
“I said it’s more than taking Flynn to boxing matches. It’s more than that.”
“What is? All right, why don’t we stop tap-dancing here? What is it that brought you five thousand miles across the country in a van that shouldn’t have been driven farther than the grocery store?”
Marvin swirled the wine in his glass, took a long sip. “I’m at my wit’s end, Anna. Poppy has been disappearing like this for years. I can handle it, I’ve always handled it, but I can see now that it’s having a profound effect on Flynn. I’m worried that she thinks it’s her fault. I guess I’m asking for your help.” He searched Anna’s face, smoothed his hair back.
“What kind of help? What can I do?” Her head was swimming, her concentration filmy.
“This was all Poppy’s idea. It was Poppy’s idea that we come to visit you,” Marvin said.
Anna shrugged. “Fine.”
“And when she disappeared in Pennsylvania, that’s when I formulated a plan. Of course, I thought about turning around and going home. But I’m thinking of my daughter, of what Flynnie needs. She needs a mother. She needs her mother, but that’s not going to happen with Poppy. So, naturally I thought of you. Of you being the stable maternal influence in her life. Of the possibility of me and Flynnie settling here permanently.” Marvin emptied his wineglass, twirled it by the stem. He unfastened his hair so it was a cool, dark waterfall around his shoulders, ran his fingers through its silky length. Anna watched the women at the next table noticing him. In one smooth motion, he had it back in its ponytail again.
“I’ve never been a stable maternal influence, Marvin. I’m no good at nurturing little creatures.”
The waiter brought the food, refilled their water glasses. Anna leaned back in her chair.
Marvin nodded. “I know. I mean, I’ve heard Poppy’s side of things.” He paused. “But I thought maybe once you got to know Flynn…well. I had these great fantasies of the two of us moving to Boston. I know it’s unrealistic to expect that we can all live under one roof.”
“Yeah,” Anna said.
“Poppy has been extraordinarily unstable for about three years. We’ve moved from place to place, but nothing makes her happy. She is the great love of my life. But I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“You’re divorcing,” Anna said.
He shook his head. “No. I will never divorce her. I will take her back anytime she comes back. I mean, I’ve been taking her back almost from the time I took her away.” He smiled a little. “I gave her choices. I gave her ultimatums: me or the drugs. Me and the child or the drugs. In the end, Flynn and I always lost. She’d get clean for a while, then backslide. Even our daughter wasn’t enough. And then I realized nothing would ever be enough.”
Anna saw Poppy in some seamy back alley with crusted hypodermic needles, the stench of sick bodies and sweaty need, of unwashed flesh and clothing. The bright sick yellow of heroin suns rising behind her eyes. “I don’t really understand,” she said. She pushed her food away, untouched. “I don’t understand how you can just disown your child. How Poppy can simply turn her back on her own daughter. What kind of drug can do that? What kind of substance takes precedence over your own child?” Anna glared at the table of women; they were getting louder and shriller. One of them in particular was driving Anna crazy, the heavyset brassy blonde whose laugh was like a donkey’s braying. She was the most unattractive of the group. Her tight silk dress printed with tropical birds and flowers rippled over layers of fat. The woman was looking at Marvin too intensely and too often. Anna stared her down.
“I’m trying, you see, to think only of Flynn. Her mother will never kick the habit. Poppy’s been using since she was fifteen years old. And now that Flynn is getting older, what she needs most is stability. My parents are dead. You and I are her only living relatives. You are the closest she can get to a true mother.”
Anna’s attention snapped back. “She’s been using since she was fifteen?” Anna recalled the long summer drives to cheerleading camp, Poppy with her mouth full of braces and her sulky adolescent silences. She was in cheerleading camp at fifteen. Marvin must be mistaken. But what did it matter now? “No. I will have none of this, Marvin. But what about you? What prevents you from successfully raising her alone? Many men do.”
“I am successfully raising her. Flynn is everything to me. But she needs more than just me. I realized this on the drive out here. On that long-ass hellish ride from Alaska, when I had a feeling Poppy was going to do what she did. Poppy’s idea was that we give you temporary custody. That you could be Flynn’s legal guardian until Poppy and I worked out what we needed to work out. Our marriage. Her drug habit. But it’s all an illusion. Things aren’t going to work out with Poppy, and Flynn is my daughter. It’s ludicrous to think I could leave my daughter for any length of time. And a child like Flynn….” He looked away, picked up his tobacco and rolled another cigarette.
Anna caught the waiter’s eye. She handed him a ten-dollar bill when he walked over. “Please bring me some cigarettes. Anything nonmenthol. Keep the change.”
“Certainly,” he said. “And may I ask if there’s a problem with the food?”
Neither she nor Marvin had touched their dinners. “No. No problem. We’re just slow.”
“Look, I’m an artist, which is more stable than being a drug addict, but not by much. I’ve traveled a lot, I’ve switched jobs. Flynn has no sense of stability or constancy. A child like Flynn needs a CPA for a father and a kindergarten teacher for a mother.”
“You keep using that phrase. ‘A child like Flynn.’ What does that mean? You make her sound like an alien.”
Marvin paused. “She’s imaginative.”
“Well,” Anna said, “that’s hardly the worst problem she could have. It’s not as if having an imagination is a lethal condition.”
“I’m not sure,” he said quietly. “Everybody says, ‘sure, my child is imaginative.’ But they have no idea. Imaginative to them means their kids make up conversation for their dolls. Or pretend they’re puppies. Flynn thinks she talks to dead people. She believes in reincarnation. She sees things that aren’t there. Hears things that nobody else can and is convinced they’re true.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem so ou
t of bounds.”
“Trust me, Anna. She can be frightening. And being around me…around the way I work and the creativity I need to work…this can’t be good for her. I have been awake for three straight days thinking about this. About what’s best for my daughter. And I’m leaving the two of us at your mercy. I don’t want to move to Boston, but I will. If it means that you’ll be in our lives, I’ll do anything.”
“Of course I don’t have a problem with you living in Boston. And I certainly don’t have any problem with getting to know my granddaughter. But I guess I don’t fully know what you have in mind. I can’t be her mother.”
“I am asking for your help,” he said.
“Do you need money?”
“No,” he said sharply. “I need your presence.”
“You need me to love the girl like a mother would. I can’t do that. I’ll be her grandparent, but I don’t want to raise her. I can’t. I don’t want her to live with me. You and she are welcome to visit, but if you move here, you need to find your own place.” He looked surprised, Anna thought, as if he’d expected she would be thrilled at having Flynn live with her.
“You can think about things. We can see how comfortable you and Flynn are together. How much involvement you want with her, ultimately.”
She didn’t need to think about it. She didn’t want them here. Why should she? After so many years, what she thought she had lain to rest was coming back like an awful reprise. She’d gotten through motherhood, cobbled together a way to deal with Poppy as bes as she could, and closed off that part of her life when Poppy disappeared. And now, this nut bar, Marvin, who both took away her daughter then failed to deliver her as promised, wanted her to reopen everything, take on that heartbreak all over again.
“Did you expect that I would welcome you all with open arms?”
He sighed, poured the last of the wine between their two glasses. “I imagined the years might have softened you a little bit. I hoped for maybe just a bit of forgiveness toward Poppy and me.”
She shook her head. “No. No forgiveness. I’m not capable of that charitable quality.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough. At least I know where I stand. But don’t take it out on my girl. Flynn had nothing to do with the choices her mother and I made.”
“That,” Anna said, and reached for the check, “I of course know.” She took out her wallet, put some bills on the little tray. Neither one of them had eaten. “And incidentally, even if I did agree to become Flynn’s temporary guardian, what makes you think I’d be a more stable adult for her than, say, you? I was a terrible mother.”
“Yes,” Marvin said. “I know.”
Flynn had been listening to the radio all day, the ’70s weekend of underground stars, first in her grandmother’s house, then with Greta in her kitchen. Greta fed Flynn an early dinner of couscous—which Flynn knew to be Italian for excuse me, please—with chopped-up vegetables and currants—as in events—and some black dots that Greta said were capons. Or did she say they were capers? Flynn couldn’t remember now, but she thought there might be a secret message in this strange food: couscous; currants; capon; capers. She translated it to possibly mean, Excuse me, I know no current events, and must put my cape on to do my capers. There could be an Italian superman around here somewhere.
“I’ll eat with you,” Greta said. “I’m starving these days.”
“Are you, dear?” Flynn said, and smiled.
Greta smiled back. “Tell me what it’s like living in Alaska.”
Flynn swirled her couscous in the bowl, looked up at this woman who made her long to start her life over again. Start over as a tiny baby with this woman as her mother. On the drive out here, her father said that she would be getting a new mother. Or, someone who could act more like a mother to her. She didn’t quite understand the difference. Maybe this was the woman he’d picked out for her. Someone who would treat her as an adopted daughter.
“Do you believe in hell?” Flynn asked.
“Pardon?” Greta said, and Flynn smelled her fear. Greta was probably afraid to die; in her last lifetime, Greta was a Cuban drug dealer. Somebody shot her—though in that lifetime she was a man—and dumped her body in the ocean. When people died like that, it took hundreds of years before violence was erased from the spirit.
Flynn shrugged. “Alaska is hell. It’s cold as hell. It’s dark as hell. Hoover McPaws frostbit the end of his tail and his ears. That’s why he looks so hip-hop.” Hip-hop was something the DJ said this morning. A kind of music. A song called “The Midnight Train to Georgia” was playing in her head.
“It’s too cold for kitties to be out, probably.” Greta took a large helping of couscous and ate very fast. Flynn wondered about the baby inside Greta. If it died would it go to heaven or hell? It wasn’t true, as her mother told her, that all babies go to heaven. Some were punished and then forced to come back as new souls on earth. Her mother was one of them. Flynn knew Poppy had been to hell and back, and Flynn had followed her. And Flynn’s father had followed her. The heart was a wheel. And here she was again.
“Do you believe in reincarnation?” Flynn asked.
“No,” Greta said. “Do you?”
“You and I were great friends in the Second World War. We were Japanese. You were small then. I was a general, and I played the bassoon. When I died, you held my head. You wrote a letter to my wife and daughters.” Flynn’s heart was pounding. Her palms got sweaty just thinking about the pain of this.
“Interesting.” Greta took a sip of her coffee. “Do you think that means we’ll be good friends now?”
Flynn said that she did think so, and poured herself a glass of Tang, a drink she didn’t like so much, but, as the jar said, it was the drink of the astronauts. Flynn thought she might want to be an astronaut someday, if she lived that long. “Have you considered adoption? Of a girl?”
“What?” Greta said. “How did you know that?”
“It’s true, then?” So, her father hadn’t been lying. Greta was to be her new mother while her old mother got better and Anna would be around to love them both. Her grandmother, Flynn knew, was someone who would listen. Anna would believe her. She wouldn’t get mad or make her change the subject when Flynn talked about building the Great Wall of China and what it was like to work in such heat with cut up feet and hands.
“Yes,” Greta said, and smiled. “We’re adopting a special little girl. As a matter of fact, we’re going to have two children. I have a baby growing inside me. Did your grandma tell you?”
“No, not yet. My mother is ill. She’s mentally ill. Did she seem mentally ill to you?” Flynn reached for the optometrist’s goggles and set the meter to 20/20. This helped her stay in the ordinary world. If she was feeling just a little visionary, she adjusted the lenses to 20/40. Right now, Flynn didn’t want to know too much. Just to be safe, she turned the settings to 20/200, the numbers of blindness.
“I never met your mother, dear. But she’s probably fine. Do you think you and your father will visit with your grandma for a while?”
“I believe they’re discussing that topic even as we speak,” Flynn said, cocking her head to one side as though she could hear them. A radio somewhere played “The Ink Is Black.”
“So, tell me what you like to do for fun, Flynn. What you and your friends do in Alaska.”
“Oh, I don’t have friends. I’m a freak show. I’m freaky Flynnie, the mental case. Freaky Flynn with the head of a pin, that’s me.”
“You must have some friends.”
Flynn shrugged. “Spirit friends. I’m well-known and greatly admired in the spirit world.”
Greta sipped her coffee, but didn’t look mad the way Flynn’s mother got mad when she spoke of these things. Greta was going to be an ideal adopted mother and her grandma, Anna, was going to help her make sense of the spirit world. Her grandmother knew things, Flynn believed, because there was light all around her. Spirit light, the light of six angels, maybe more.
“But
you must have at least one friend who isn’t imaginary.”
“I do,” Flynn said.
Greta smiled. “See? I thought so. What’s her name?”
Flynn cleared the setting on the heavy glasses and looked at Greta with normal sight. “Greta. Her name is Greta.”
Greta filled Flynn’s glass with milk and didn’t speak for so long that Flynn began to worry. She knew she confused people. Made people afraid. Not scary-movie afraid, but the way you drive around a cardboard box on the highway because it might have glass or sharp things inside. “Well, you have a good imagination. Maybe you’ll be an artist.”
Flynn shrugged. “My father’s an artist. I’ve been an artist in other lifetimes. In my next life, I’m scheduled to be an artist who makes things in blue glass.” She took a sip of the milk and asked if she could have more Tang.
Greta mixed up a new batch and Flynn watched as the orange crystals swirled around in the cloudy water like tiny astronauts trying to get to the moon. “My father is probably also mentally ill. My mother is definitely mentally ill.”
Greta said softly, “Do you think you are?”
Flynn smiled but didn’t answer. How could she answer? She explained to Greta about how in a previous life she and Marvin were husband and wife, and Poppy, her mother in this life, had been a blind cowherd named Ahmed who Marvin got jealous of. “He killed both of us in that life.” Flynn stopped. This was what people didn’t like to hear. This was why they called her freak show and mental case. She saw things. She knew things. But it wasn’t her fault. Just before her mother disappeared from the International House of Pancakes in Pennsylvania, she got mad at Flynn because her father asked her to tell him a story to pass the time and Flynn told him about when he was Sarti, her husband. Poppy had turned around then and said, “Why can’t you just pretend you were once Cleopatra or Queen Elizabeth? If you’re going to believe in other lifetimes why do you invent such poor and unhappy ones? Huh? Why do you turn me into a blind cowherd?” Flynn remembered her mother asking.
“I don’t make them up. I see them. I see things,” Flynn had told Poppy.
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