When I pull into the driveway, after basketball practice, the house is shrouded in a damp, wispy mist. Calvin is chasing Argos around the yard while Zoe sits on the porch, watching. She is wearing a black-and-red-plaid jacket zipped to her neck, and as she stands to greet me, Moonie darts out from behind the swing. Zoe takes my hand, stroking it briefly before kissing me on the wrist. Today, her brother got into a fistfight at school and was required to sit in study hall for most of the afternoon. I do not tell her this, though.
“There is something for you and Calvin in the freezer,” she says. “It came a few minutes ago.”
“What do you mean, it came?”
“Delivery. I had to sign for it.”
Calvin knows about the package and he follows me into the kitchen, asking if he should get the scissors.
“This is what we do,” I say, looking at Zoe. “Work, play, and open packages from my mother.”
Inside the cardboard box, stenciled on all sides with the words Refrigerate immediately, is a Styrofoam cooler packed with dry ice and two cartons of automobile-shaped Popsicles.
“The middle of November,” I say. “People in Kansas do not eat Popsicles in the middle of November.”
Calvin’s hand is outstretched and I give him one, placing the rest back in the freezer.
“Before dinner?” Zoe asks.
I wave her off.
“It’s mushy,” says Calvin. He takes a bite and his purple Pontiac slides from the stick onto the floor. Instantly, Argos tramps over and licks it up. Calvin tries to push him away, but is not strong enough.
“He’s eating my pop,” he says, shaking his arms. “Ahh, my pop!”
“That’s all right, it wasn’t frozen enough. We’ll wait until after dinner when the rest have had a chance to get harder.”
I am convinced Calvin is going to complain, but he does not. He simply walks into the other room, jacket hanging from his waist like a furry tail.
“Tomorrow I’m going to Oklahoma,” says Zoe, lifting a dish of chicken parts that have been soaking in the sink. “A group of us are spending a few days on this guy’s ranch studying his cattle. It’s for a lab.”
“No ranches around here?”
“His livestock is diseased. We’re going with one of the professors.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Don’t know.”
Lying in the darkness, after Calvin has been put to sleep, Zoe asks me to tell her something good.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, just tell me something good.”
“Let’s see,” I say, rubbing the stubble on my chin.
“Well, Joyce and Rob Ives made their first payment to Gooland’s. This morning they walked in together and laid a check right down next to the register.”
“No, not like that. Something good.”
Argos ambles into the doorway and pauses before dropping in a heap beside the closet.
“How about this: my roommate in college used to put ketchup on his spaghetti when we’d run out of tomato sauce.”
“Yuck.”
“Yeah, yuck. So, is that good?”
“It wasn’t what I was hoping for—but it’s good.”
“What were you hoping for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you tell me something good.”
She combs her fingers through the shaggy hair that has spilled onto her forehead.
“Okay.” She exhales with force, so that near the end, just as she is about to curl her lips to speak, she lets out a short whistle. “This afternoon, while you were at work or basketball, Calvin and Meg were standing over on the end of the porch holding on to the railing, up near their heads. Really, I almost walked right past them until I noticed that both their pants were pulled down to their knees. Calvin was pissing over the side, into the flower beds. Meg was watching, and after a minute or two, she turned to him and said, ‘Well, you can’t do this,’ and she reached down and removed a nickel from her vagina.”
“Nooo.”
“Yep.”
“What’d you say?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Turning on my back, I let out a chuckle and then say, “You’re right, that’s good.”
Deep into the night, with Zoe sleeping soundly, I turn on the light so I can write the incident down on a piece of notepaper on the bedstand. This is something I want to remember, something I want to tell Calvin about when he is old enough to understand.
Once there is stillness again, it occurs to me how nice it feels to share stories with someone in bed. How pleasant it is to hear someone else breathing, to hear the unique rasp of Zoe’s breath as it drags through the tunnel of her windpipe and nose. With my vision still adjusting to the darkness, I stare at her bare shoulders until my eyes can tell the difference between her freckles and the burning, black splotches of light against my pupils.
From where I am lying in bed, facing the doorway, I can see the back of Zoe’s body as she leans over the sink in the bathroom to wash her hair. She has just finished and she twists her damp locks into a towel and then wraps the towel turban-like above her head. When she comes back into the bedroom she is quiet, careful, thinking I am still asleep. She slips on one of my sweatshirts, her blue jeans, and then sits down beside the window to pull on her boots.
“When are you coming back?” I ask.
“I didn’t know you were awake.”
“Mmm.”
“It should only take a few days—maybe Saturday or Sunday. We’ll have to go back again, though.”
Sitting up, I realize how little I know about what interests Zoe, about her classes, her work. It is not because I do not care, but rather because I have not had the time to care. While I was hacking out a breathing hole from beneath my studies at law school, Kate showed patience, too.
“Are you excited about this? About going?”
First, she shrugs and then, before reaching for her coat, she says, “No one wants to see animals suffer, to see them suffer and die.”
When she comes to the side of the bed and kisses me, I can taste toothpaste on her lips.
“Gordon,” she says, removing the towel from her head and draping it flat over the back of a chair. “I want you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“I’m taking the truck. I’m not sure, but Noah may need a ride home from practice today or tomorrow. Will you give him one?”
“Don’t you think he’d rather have one of the other players take him?”
“Probably, but I’d like it if you’d ask him—just in case.”
I nod.
There is nothing else and I stay in bed for some time, listening to Zoe speaking to Calvin downstairs, and then the sounds of her leaving: the slamming of the screen door, her footsteps in the loose stones of the driveway, the starting of her truck, and finally the cool, quiet of silence. Closing my eyes, I think of doing something nice for her, taking her away, only the two of us, leaving Calvin at Charlotte’s house for a few days. Perhaps someplace warm where we can watch our white, doughy skin turn the color of cinnamon.
Chapter Ten
About three miles or so north of the Tarent city limits, beyond a low-hanging concrete overpass leading to the Interstate, is a narrow, poorly kept stretch of road that serves as the driveway to Noah’s girlfriend’s house. For a while there is nothing but night, broken only by the faded yellow of my headlights. Finally, suddenly, we pull around a short, sharp corner and can see the glowing twin orbs of streetlamps. After we straighten out, Noah points into the windshield at a figure standing beside a rusted, stone-colored tractor.
“That’s Ann,” he says.
She takes a long, smoky drag from a cigarette and then taps off the ashes into the top of a soda can. Noah pauses for a moment before getting out of the car, and I’m not sure if it’s because he wants to say something. He does not, only closing the door lightly behind. Before I back out I roll down
the window, halfway, and ask, “It’s okay for you to be here?”
They glance at each other and then Noah nods. Of course, I know he’s lying, but I leave them alone. It is difficult to grow up with only one parent, I tell myself, switching on the brights for the drive back into town. “Some people have not had it so easy,” I remember my mother saying to me when I was younger as she packed up used clothing and flatware for the Salvation Army. “We need to give them every advantage we can.” Then who will provide living utensils, worn with age, for Calvin? I wonder. Where will they come from? Who will know that he has not had it so easy?
Today the air feels warmer and Calvin is sitting on the back stairs dressed only in jeans and a cotton sweater. In between bites, he pushes his Ferrari Popsicle precariously close to the ground, leaving behind a green juice trail of exhaust. He is making a motoring sound with his tongue. This morning Zoe returned, bringing with her red-and-white Oklahoma Sooner baseball caps for Calvin and me. I’m wearing my cap backwards, catcher-style, while Calvin carries his by its adjustable strap, like a purse. Rocking in the swing, I do the Sunday crossword puzzle, occasionally looking up at Zoe, who is repairing the muffler on her truck. The telephone sounds and I wait for three rings before rising to answer it. At first there is silence on the other end, but just before I prepare to hang up, Kate speaks.
“Gordon? I wasn’t sure if I dialed the right number. It didn’t sound like you.”
“It’s me.”
“Well”—she makes noises as if she is unwrapping something, cellophane. “I’m here.”
The other day, before I picked Calvin up from Charlotte’s house, I called Kate and told her it was all right to come, although I did not expect her to arrive so quickly.
“Where are you staying?”
“Amis Motor Lodge. Do you know where that is?”
She is in the southeast section of town, near the high school, not ten minutes from our house.
“Yes,” I say.
“I flew into Lawrence and rented a car. The drive was easy, like the man at the Hertz counter said it would be.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So … well.” She pauses, and then, “What should I do?”
The directions are simple, but I let her repeat them, to be safe. She wants to take a quick shower, clean up from the trip, and then she’ll come over. She waits, taking a breath before telling me she is excited, excited to see us both.
Outside, Calvin has finished his Popsicle and is now using its stick to dig a trough in the moist earth. Lying on her back, Zoe asks me to kick her an alien wrench. From above, only her legs are left unobscured, mysteriously twitching from beneath the truck’s corrugated metal bed.
“It was Kate,” I say, talking to Zoe’s boots.
“What was Kate?”
“On the phone. It was Kate. She’s here.”
“Where?”
“Here. In Tarent. She’s staying at Amis Motor Lodge.”
“I didn’t even know you told her she could come,” says Zoe, reaching blindly for a roll of copper wire.
“Yeah,” I say, running my hands along the smooth steel siding of the truck. “I told her while you were away.”
“She sure got here fast.”
I nod, but Zoe cannot see me. Some time passes and then she slides out from underneath. She stands and brushes the dirt from her ass and the backs of her thighs and calves.
“C’mon, Argos,” she says, opening the door on the passenger side of the truck and patting the seat.
“Where’re you going?”
“Home.”
“Why?”
“I shouldn’t be here when Kate arrives. Besides, you three need some time alone.”
“No,” I say, grabbing her around the waist and pulling her close. “I want you here. I need you here.”
“No you don’t,” she says, kissing me on the tip of my nose. She walks around to the other side of the truck, waving goodbye to Calvin before climbing in. “You’ll do fine,” she says through the glass. “Be nice.”
Then it is only Calvin and me, alone behind the house, waiting for the arrival of his mother. There is so much I had wanted to say to prepare him, but instead I choose only silence. We build a small fort using twigs and stones and then I take him inside and wash the sticky green Popsicle from his face and hands.
She is driving a white Ford Taurus and I watch her from my upstairs window. She sits still for some time, long enough to check her face twice in the rearview mirror and look into a large brown purse at her side. Calvin yells out that someone is here, someone is in the driveway.
I call him to the stairwell. “It’s your mother,” I say, tucking in the front of his sweater. He pulls back, complaining he doesn’t like it that way. “Listen, keep it in for me.”
He huffs and the two of us walk to the front door. He looks surprised, because normally we use the back entrance. But normally his mother does not come to visit.
“Hello,” she says, clinging briefly to the door handle of her car before walking up the pathway.
“Say hello,” I whisper to Calvin. He does not seem terribly thrilled by Kate’s arrival until he sees that she is carrying a dictionary-sized package beneath her arm.
“Is that mine?” he asks.
Kate smiles and nods. In two years she has not changed much physically. Her hair is lighter, blonder, and her skin is dark from sun. A small silver cross hangs from her left earlobe and she has a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses clipped through an open buttonhole of her denim shirt. She is wearing no makeup, save a gentle rub of lipstick the shade of blood oranges. The hollows of her cheeks seem deeper, slightly. Leaning down, she will not surrender the package until Calvin gives her a hug. She lets out a moan, from her diaphragm, and then wraps her arms around Calvin’s back, dropping her chin over his shoulder. Calvin seems to know this is important and he does not struggle, as he does with his grandmother or strangers, or sometimes even with me. Kate runs her fingers up his spine and neck and through the feathery ends of his hair. When she turns her face to breathe, like a swimmer, I can see she is crying. Slowly, she releases him, blotting her wet cheeks with the heel of her hand.
“Okay, now enough of this,” she says, reaching for the box at her side. “I didn’t really know what to get.”
Hurriedly, Calvin scratches through the wrapping paper to reveal a miniature DC-10 airplane.
“The batteries are supposed to be inside.”
Calvin peels back the ends of the box, pulls free his aircraft, and accidently flips the switch that turns a set of red wing lights blinking.
“Enamored,” I say, watching him clutch the flashing toy against his chest.
“Really, I had no idea what to get him. I mean, little boys are so hard to shop for.”
I nod, walking onto the grassy hump of soil that is our front yard. Kate starts to follow, then stops midway, between Calvin and me, as if waiting for an invitation. Turning to face the two of them, to face the house, I raise my arms as if nailed to a crucifix, opening one palm and gesturing upwards, outwards.
“This is our life,” I announce. “This is how we live.”
Mostly, Kate spends the evening observing Calvin: watching him run his new airplane across the floor, eating half a bowl of alphabet noodle soup or a piece of bread smeared with strawberry preserves. These are things she has not seen him do, things he was almost too young to do alone before she left. When he puts on his pajamas, she reaches over and rubs his round belly, seemingly fascinated by its gummy, resilient texture. She sits on the edge of his bed and tells him about her trip to Bali, about how people had to watch the ground while walking, otherwise they were bound to step right on a lizard—squishing it. Finally, she tells him how she would wheel him in a shaded carriage to a park in Ann Arbor when he was a baby and talk to him, just like she’s talking to him now. Before we turn out the lights, she kisses him on his forehead, cheek, and then hard on his neck.
“I had nearly forgotten how sweet he is
,” she says in the hallway.
We sit at the kitchen table and I pour out two glasses of Scotch, with lots of ice, the way Kate likes it. She rolls the tumbler quickly between the palms of her hands, beads of perspiration flicking from the glass, catching the light like dust motes.
“You look well,” she says, between sips.
“This place agrees with me.”
“It’s not too small?”
I shake my head and walk over to the sink, running some cold water into my glass.
“You and Harper getting along all right?”
“Sure. Work’s fine. Quiet.”
“Not much need for the great litigator out here, huh?”
“Things change,” I say, stirring my drink with one of Calvin’s abandoned Popsicle sticks. “You never know how life’s going to jump up, fuck with you.”
“Like maybe a wife leaving.”
“Or a mother,” I say, turning to peer out the window at her clean white car in the drive.
“Or a mother.”
Walking to the table, I spin a chair and straddle it, backwards, laying my forearms across the top of the headrest.
“How’s your life?” I ask, looking directly into the almond-hued irises of her eyes.
“Different. Different than when you knew me.” She stops to take another drink. “I’ve seen a lot—been so many places I never knew, never even imagined existed. Bali, Zanzibar, Beijing, Toledo—”
“Ohio?” I ask, smirking.
“Spain. Toledo, Spain,” she says, missing my attempt at sarcasm. “That’s education. Semesters, summers—whole years abroad should be required curriculum at all colleges.”
She quiets, suddenly, fingering a torn page from one of Calvin’s coloring books. It is a picture of a baker holding a tray of freshly made cakes, pies, and sticky buns. Calvin has crayoned the confections mostly orange and pink.
“Last March we drove to St. Louis,” I say.
Kate smiles, uncomfortably. She is another person, someone I no longer truly know.
Dance Real Slow Page 15