by Lila Shaara
Josie said, “He said use anything and eat anything. But we’ve got enough. And he was right about one thing. Those chickens look like they were frozen before World War Two.”
The enclosed porch contained only a daybed and two bookcases under jalousie windows filled with children’s board books, paperback thrillers, and romance novels. There were only three other rooms, the living room through the kitchen and two small bedrooms. Both the living room and the largest bedroom had sliding glass doors leading out to a screened porch on the ocean side. The walls were decorated with beach art, paintings of lighthouses and sea oats, a few stuffed fish, and a fishing seine laced with crab shells and conchs. The doors and windows were closed and the house was stuffy, so after putting their few belongings in the larger bedroom, Maggie opened the sliding doors to the sea air. The wind immediately picked up her hair, blew her T-shirt against her chest, and she smiled her big smile. “My God,” she said. “Oh, my God, this is the best thing.”
“Yes,” said Josie. “We’ve earned ourselves a little vacation.”
The girls wanted to go out to the beach at once, so Maggie helped them find their bathing suits. Josie took note of the wooden rocking chairs on the screened porch. “I’ll watch you all from here,” she said.
There was a dirty beach umbrella on the porch along with a half-deflated beach ball and some colorful plastic pails and shovels. The girls took the latter and Maggie took the umbrella, an armful of towels that they’d brought, and a bottle of sunblock. She put on her floppy straw hat and followed the girls out to the sea. She had on cutoffs and a T-shirt, not owning a bathing suit. Josie watched them work their way across the hot sand to the water and rocked in the chair, wondering where she’d put her flask and what liquor these rich lawyers kept in their vacation house.
She’d fallen asleep in the chair and was dreaming of Duncan, slapping her gently between the shoulder blades, saying, “Josie Posey Puddin’ and Pie,” the way he’d always done. It was a gesture that was as familiar to her as the scent of her baby, taken now as Dunc had been, the loss fast and terrible. She didn’t believe in God, something she tended to keep to herself since her clients had certain expectations of spiritual feeling from someone in her profession. She believed in what she did, believed that there were forces in the ether that shaped destinies and helped or hurt people, depending on the whims of Fate. But she didn’t believe in a consciousness behind it all, or at least not a benign one. Sometimes she thought she did believe in a god but saw him as evil, or at least capricious. He hates us, she thought. Or just thinks we’re interesting lab specimens. Or maybe there’s more than one and they sit up there laughing, pulling off our wings for sport. That’s sort of a quote from somewhere, she added to herself. Maggie would know.
She was so startled by the slam of the screen door and the wailing of a child that her legs jerked up and down before she was entirely awake. Maggie was carrying Charlotte, Tamara following close behind. There was blood dripping from the older girl’s left foot, falling in fat splotches onto the painted wood planks of the porch floor. “She ran her foot into a horseshoe crab,” said Maggie. “I hope they have something here, bandages or something.” Josie got up, horrified to find herself irritated at the noise and the fact that she hadn’t had an opportunity to grab a sip from her flask while they were on the beach.
Maggie took Charlotte into the small kitchen, hoisting her up onto the counter and putting the wounded foot into the sink so there wouldn’t be more blood on the floor. Josie took Tamara into the living room and turned on the TV while Maggie found a bottle of peroxide and a box of Band-Aids in the bathroom.
· · ·
Once the injured foot was cleaned and bandaged and the blood was wiped from the floor, Maggie got the girls comfortable on the couch in the living room. The house had satellite TV, so there were channels with perpetual cartoons, a treat so rare that Charlotte’s tears reduced themselves at once to a soft snuffling. Maggie brought two bottles of ginger ale from the cooler, and soon the girls were sitting side by side on the couch, entranced by colorful characters bouncing off each other on the screen. Maggie got up from Charlotte’s side, announced she was going to take a shower, and disappeared through the kitchen to the bathroom. She reappeared a moment later, a serious look on her face. “Did you bring any shampoo?” she asked Josie.
“No. I was going to use whatever they had. Harry said we could.”
“I forgot mine. What’s in the bathroom looks expensive. You sure it’s all right?”
“He said so, Maggie. It’s only shampoo.”
The sound of a car in the short sandy driveway didn’t surprise Josie, although she wouldn’t have said earlier that she’d expected any such thing. She knew it wasn’t Harry, although she couldn’t have said how she knew, any more than she could have said how she knew that she loved her niece or that she was never going to be able to stop drinking. She left Charlotte and Tamara in the living room and walked slowly to the front door of the little beach house. She could hear the water running in the bathroom, could hear Maggie singing the way she always did when she began to relax. Josie also knew that Maggie wasn’t going to get to relax for long.
The door was locked, and now the doorknob turned hard, back and forth as though it was angry. Josie pushed aside the white curtain that hid the window in the door and saw where the anger emanated from. A woman’s face met her gaze through the glass, a beautiful face, but with a mouth that looked as though it could do nothing but bend down in a scowl. Josie and the woman stared at each other through the window for a moment; Josie could see the colors dancing around the woman’s head, dark red spikes weaving through a cloud of dull yellow, expanding and contracting in a mass that looked like it had a life independent of the beautiful woman. She’s scared of us, Josie thought, and angry, and we’re about to piss her off a whole lot more.
Josie was reaching to turn the small latch on the doorknob when it turned by itself; the door opened, revealing that the woman had a key and had used it. She walked over the threshold and closed the door behind her with a bang. “Who the hell are you?” she said.
“I’m Josephine Dupree,” said Josie calmly. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Ann Sterling,” the woman said. “I own this house. What are you doing here?”
“I thought Harry Sterling owned the house. We’re friends of his. He offered it to us for a day or two.” The colors hadn’t changed to anything less hostile. Josie went on, “We’re not doing anything wrong,” then was irritated with herself. That’s the truth, she reminded herself. We have a right to be here.
Ann Sterling said, “Where is he?”
“He’s not here. It’s just us.”
“Is he coming? I need to talk to him.”
And then Josie saw it as clearly as if it had been acted out in front of her. His ex-wife had thought she would find Harry here alone. She wanted him back. Josie felt another stab of relieved sorrow on Maggie’s behalf. A woman like the one in front of her always got what she wanted. Maggie never did. It seemed to be a law legislated by the capricious, psychopathic gods.
“Well, you can’t,” Josie said. “He’s not coming.”
Ann lowered her head, looking at Josie with speculation. “Who else is here?”
“My niece. Two children, our neighbor’s granddaughters.”
“Just the four of you?”
“Yes.” Josie wasn’t sure what to do next, thinking it probably wasn’t a very good idea to suggest to this woman that she leave them alone in what was after all her house, even if it was perfectly legal and moral for them to be there. But Josie didn’t want to have to entertain Ann Sterling, and she didn’t want to leave the house just because the woman was intimidating and used to having her way in all things. Before she could decide what to say next, the bathroom door opened and Maggie came out in a cloud of steam like someone returning from another dimension; she wore a faded green chenille robe, pushing her hair up into dark blond spikes with a towel, l
ooking like a teenager. As soon as Maggie saw Ann, she stopped and stared, her blue eyes crackling.
“Maggie, this is Ann Sterling,” Josie said. “Harry’s wife.”
Josie could read Maggie’s expression easily enough, guarded pain and a hint of resignation.
“Hey” was all she said.
Ann said nothing, staring at Maggie with dark, angry eyes. She sniffed the air; Josie thought she looked like a golden retriever after a hard rain. Then Ann said, “That’s my shampoo. Camellias. It’s made with essential oil. I buy it specially in Orlando. It’s very expensive. I can’t believe you thought it was all right to use it. It’s mine.” She said the last part as though Maggie wasn’t bright enough to have gotten the idea from the rest of her speech.
“I’m sorry,” Maggie said, lowering the towel, eyes widening, clearly at a loss.
Josie said, “It’s not like she can give it back, you know. Harry said we could use anything here.”
“Well,” said Ann, “Harry was wrong. I guess you could use his things if he really did give you permission, but he doesn’t have the right to give you carte blanche to use mine. We own the house jointly. I assume he told you as much. The right to use a property is called usufruct. You don’t have it.”
“You’re a lawyer,” Maggie said, the towel now clutched between hands with whitened knuckles.
“Yes. A good one.” Her eyes moved to the scene beyond in the living room, where Tamara and Charlotte cackled with laughter at something bright and loud on the television. Ann’s eyes widened, and Josie realized that she was registering that the children were black. Josie wasn’t sure if that made things worse or not.
It wasn’t easy prying the two girls from the television, harder still to make them understand that they weren’t going to be spending the night in the beach house. But Josie and Maggie managed to get their possessions back into the grocery bags and the girls out of the door without making too much of a scene, and they were headed back to Stoweville by the time the sun had set.
The next morning, Harry got up early, having slept only about three hours. He put a few things in a small duffel bag, then drank some coffee as he sat at his kitchen table. The window faced east, and he could see the sun glaring orange only a small distance above the horizon. Fortunately, he thought, by the time he left it would be high enough not to blind him as he drove to the coast.
When he got to the beach house, neither the Celica nor Josie’s dented Chevy was in the sandy driveway. He thought, Maybe they went for groceries, maybe they’re out just driving around. He brought in his duffel, not sure if that was a good idea. Inside the house, there were signs that someone had been there as recently as an hour or two before: clean dishes drying on the dish rack, damp streaks and the scent of camellias in the shower. He tried using his cell phone to call Maggie’s house, to see if for some reason they’d decided to leave early, but the battery gave a silent digital sputter and died, and he cursed his procrastination in not replacing it. There was a land line, but it had no long-distance service; renters tended to abuse the privilege, and they all had cell phones these days anyway. For the first time, he cursed his real estate agent’s attention to detail.
He found a can of ginger ale in the pantry and took a clean cup from among the drying dishes on the counter. He was glad to find the ice trays full so he could drink it cold. He took it to the screened porch on the ocean side and sat for a while, watching the pulsing of the waves and thinking about Emily Ziegart. I need a picture of her, he thought. I need to see her face.
He had just put the cup in the sink when he heard a car’s tires crunching the scrub and gravel on the driveway. He was stunned when it turned out to be Ann.
“Is something wrong with Dusty?” were his first words at the sight of her.
“No. He’s fine. Well, he’s not entirely fine, but nothing like what you’re thinking. That’s part of the reason I’m here.” She was wearing white tailored pants and little gold sandals, beautifully pedicured nails peeking out from underneath little paper flowers on the straps. Her shirt was sleeveless and cool, mauve with green stripes and small pearl buttons, open at the neck, just barely hiding smooth tan cleavage. Her makeup was perfect, as was her hair, curled and brown and long. He’d thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen when he met her during his first year in law school, and she was still stunning. He felt a flip of amazement in his chest; he’d been married to her, had sex with her, been intimate with her in ways that he’d never imagined before meeting her. He still felt a vestigial electric zing of attraction, even though she’d tossed him aside like garbage as soon as Lawrence had been buried. Nothing had prepared him for how painful the death of his brother had been, and the subsequent disintegration of his marriage had sunk him so much further, he had never expected to feel anything like pleasure again. Only his son’s need of him had kept him from killing himself, and he sometimes wondered if that had been merely an excuse, since Dusty rarely seemed to need him at all. Harry had to remind himself of what Maggie had said: it’s not Dusty’s job to make you feel real.
“I thought you’d be here yesterday. Some people were here. Not renters. They said that you’d let them use it.” She saw the duffel on the couch. “Were they telling the truth?”
Harry’s chest grew cold. “You came here before?”
“Yes. To find you. I got a shock, let me tell you.”
“You talked to Maggie? Or Josie?”
“I guess so. I can’t remember what names they gave. They looked so guilty about being here, I thought they might be squatters. Their clothes were in grocery bags, not anything like suitcases, so I wondered.” She stopped, and Harry opened his mouth to ask what else had happened, what their reactions had been to her arrival. But she spoke before he could. “Is she the Waitress? The blonde?”
“How did you know about that?”
“I talk to Amelia, Harry.” She walked into the kitchen. Harry followed three steps behind. She looked around, opened the cutlery drawer, then closed it, as though checking to see if anything was missing. Then she looked him full in the eyes for the first time.
Harry wanted to ask her again how Maggie had reacted to a stranger barging in on them, this particular stranger especially. But he found himself saying, “Why’d you come all this way? Is your father okay?”
“He’s out of the woods. Back at home. Dusty’s with them.”
“Good.” He moved to the table. “You could have called. You haven’t let me talk to Dusty much the last few weeks. I don’t like to be cut out this way. I worry all the time.” He sat down, trying not to lose his temper, trying not to start yelling. He’d thought that he wasn’t angry at her anymore.
“I’m not trying to cut you out, Harry.” She sat down in the chair opposite him, the other end point of a diagonal line. “It’s just that I thought maybe we could see you more this summer.” A pause. “The two of us.”
There was a heavy silence that lasted a minute or more. Then Harry said, “What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. Dusty has a lot of fantasies about us getting back together. I’ve been thinking, maybe he’s not so far off the mark. I don’t know about you, but as I get older, I think about real life more. About the kinds of things that matter. You and I were married for a long time. I know you better than I know anyone else in the world.” At Harry’s expression, she spoke faster. “I miss certain things, you know? I bet you miss them, too. Being a family. Being the kind of couple we used to be. We don’t have to make any decisions now. But I thought maybe you could stay with us for a few days after you’re done for the term. I have plenty of room. You’re just renting in that town.” She waved her hand as though his house was smoke she could propel away. “You could keep it, or not.”
“I’m committed to teaching next year. I’ll need somewhere to live.” Harry didn’t tell her that the term had already ended. He felt like someone else was speaking. He had no idea how he felt about what Ann was saying. He had no idea i
f he was understanding her at all.
“Okay. I just wanted to plant the idea. How about we talk in a week or so, and see what you think then?”
Harry’s mind finally focused and he said, “Ann, what’s going on with Dusty?”
She sighed. “Nothing really. I mean, I think it’s normal teenage boy stuff. He’s so flat affect and gloomy, it’s hard to say what’s going on in his head.” She looked down and started scraping at a hardened crust of something on the surface of the table with her fingernail. “I don’t think he’s depressed. Not in the clinical sense, anyway.” She looked up. “He needs you, but he needs me, too. That’s why I thought it might be better if you come down and stay, rather than waiting till he’s done in June and coming up here for a visit. You could spend, you know, ‘quality time.’ ” Ann never used clichés. Harry felt completely unmoored. Who is this person? he thought. I’ve never met her before. A very small, almost microscopic part of his brain whispered, Yes you have, yes you have, but Harry couldn’t hear it.
28
NINE OF PENTACLES
REVERSED
Be careful; a friendship is at stake
Harry felt the dead cell phone lying like a tiny corpse on the passenger’s seat as he drove back into town. It was after ten o’clock; he didn’t know when Maggie and Josie went to bed, but he cut over to Highway 21 anyway on the chance that he’d see lights in their window.