In the lane cutting back to the Grounds, some little boys had squatted by a puddle, fighting over some taffy. They’d gawked as she passed, then returned to their game. Rock paper scissors! Their shrillness following her. The lane narrowed to a track lined by tiny bungalows nothing like the houses lost in Richmond; vines crept over verandas piled with junk. Then more woods, the mossy path bordered by rattling-dry ferns, opening into an orchard with stooped trees; the air had smelled of rotting apples. Ahead lay the barn and the Big House, the back end falling in: she’d somehow walked in a loop, ending up almost where she’d started. Harry would wonder where the heck she’d got to, his day eaten up with babysitting. Peering up at the roof’s sagging ridgepole, she thought of Dad’s carpentry, Mama’s sewing, that lost world where things had been square: joists and stitches.
The veranda had rotted; a rope dangled from a post—a clothesline? Doves cooed, conjuring the music Harry could make blowing into a bottle. Along the path straggled the ruins of a garden: wild rose poking from the grass, day lilies, aster. Just the thing, lilies, to spruce up a dog-patch yard: who’d notice if she helped herself? Hoisting herself up, she peered over a rotting sill: the room inside soot-black, a pool of glass glinting from the floor. The stone foundation loomed through a hole. What kept you? she imagined Harry’s sigh. Them catlicks tie you up, or wha’?
No sense crying. Crying won’t bring anyone back, she’d almost heard a voice coaching, as she inspected the lilies. A caw from the orchard, and glancing up she caught movement. A man huddled under the branches, his greenish coat sweeping the grass as he scrabbled for something—windfall—like a deer; stuffing his pockets. When he looked up, her heart had raced. But before she could turn and run, he’d sunk behind the trees, covering his face.
THERE’S POLITENESS, AND THERE’S NECESSITY. Refusing to wait, as soon as it’s light she calls. Luckily Jewel picks up the phone; she never knows how Rebecca will be, especially before she’s had coffee. Her fix, she calls it, which reminds Lucy of Harry tinkering at his workbench. Maybe Jewel’s the same, as hooked to coffee as he is to cigarettes! He asks what time it is, sounding like he’s still in bed. Or maybe Rebecca’s been putting him through his paces, ahem, her paces; she never lets up, that one, always at him to fix this or that. Yes, she’s a big one for fixes.
“Were you sleeping, son?” Now she feels guilty; patience, after all, is a virtue.
He’s gruff more than groggy, explaining that Bucky was out all night with the car. “At least the little bugger’s asleep now. But he could get into trouble unconscious, swear to Christ,” he adds. Watch your tongue, she wants to say, biting hers. No need to curse. His voice deepens: “Anything new?” Expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed: that attitude of his father’s is some gift, especially now. “You’ve pulled another all-nighter, have you?” he asks flatly, his tone indulgent but not quite kind. Does he need to hear her premonition? Better to say than stifle it, though, even if it is crossing over into doom and gloom: “I have this awful feeling, dear.”
More resigned than alarmed, twenty minutes later he arrives with two cups of takeout coffee in a tray for ice-cream cones. Better they were ice creams—she doesn’t even like coffee, though the heat through the Styrofoam is a comfort. Wherever did he find it, so early? “Thank Christ for the Cove.” Mr. Jimmy’s store, he means, up the road and across from the marina. Then he has to tell her who was there. “Your pal—Benny?—and his lady friend.” Stocking up, he explains, buying anything that comes in a can. As if she needs to know, he describes them getting into the rowboat. “The size of her!” he says, and she supposes he means the friend, not the dinghy, going on about how she looks unwashed. “Living like that, a woman. Though from what I’ve heard, she comes from somewhere. Money.” You hear that all the time, he snorts, people living off cat food, their mattresses stuffed with money. Nobody she knows of; Jewel’s great for talking through his hat. Shooting the shit, as Harry’d been known to say quite rudely after a beer or two. But who feels like arguing? Jewel’s just being chatty, unusually so, the sound of his voice as soothing as tea.
“Each to their own,” he shrugs. “Live and let live.” Never mind their nerves; his grin reminds her of when he was five, maybe six. “For all we know, our friend Benny’s the same.” Loaded, he means, and not liquored up, ranting then about the type who get rich by sitting on it, and he laughs as if nothing is wrong. A laugh that reminds her of thumbtacks being shaken around in a jar, the thought of which makes her cringe. It’s as though he’s telling himself a joke, one he can’t let go of. “Yup, poor old Jimmy was scared those birds would capsize and we’d have to haul them out.”
She has to stop and think, who? Ah, Benny, the knife-sharpener, and his lady friend. The one that Robert… It hits her how she should’ve asked him more, what he really thought of people living in a floating shack. Not gossip exactly: friendly research. Now Jewel’s looking at her, his eyes full of concern, and without warning the gnawing starts in her stomach again. Will they think she’s off her rocker if she calls again? But he’s already picked up the receiver, dialling in that violent way of his. “Nothing new?” he finally murmurs, cupping the mouthpiece. Hanging up, he looks almost embarrassed, but of what? “Oh, Ma,” he swallows. Her boy—this greying man, that wrinkled golf shirt stretched over his belly. His breath rank as he busses her cheek, saying he’s going home to shower. “Becky could take you shopping,” he offers, “how about that?” The last thing she wants, not a thing she needs. But his sigh echoes everything to be fretted or fussed over, not just the respirator’s wheeze, but the teasing of a comb through Rebecca’s perm, Robert’s lip over school. “Suit yourself,” he says, jingling his keys, and she thinks again of Benny the traveller, wondering aloud, “My Dinah, how on Earth does he manage on that boat?” It’s a question, and to think of two people on board! A miracle it floats, and that the spirit of good taste hasn’t cut its moorings.
“Houseboat, Ma.” That laugh again, just like when he was younger, rubbing his chest as she observes a little slyly that there can’t be plumbing. But the thought sparks guilt; she could’ve hired the fellow for something: to do the fence, if Robert won’t. Then Jewel says there should be laws against squatters: what’s the difference, if they live on the land or sea? “Though you can’t legislate taste—or craziness,” he concedes, and a coolness fills her, a longing. Not much anyone can do to stop people from doing what they want. Doing their own thing, as they say on TV, and she thinks again of Robert, living off the land or going back to it or whatever. It’s not that hard to imagine him rocking off to the horizon in an ark like Noah’s, only the size of an outhouse and with no critters. Maybe that’s his problem, the root of what Jewel calls his don’t-give-a-crapness, the fact that the kid never had a pet, growing up. No responsibilities. Though he got the moon in every other respect, being an only child—like his dad in some ways. Then she thinks of Benny; at least he has company, and no wonder a woman like that would charm him, considering the one he’d popped out of.
Jewel eyes her oddly, sighing again, “Just say the word, when you wanna go back to see the old man,” as if Harry’s orchestrated all this bother. It occurs to her then, why hold off? Find out now what Harry was going to, before everything changed. Clearing her throat, she asks after Robert’s plans. “Plans?” He pulls a face, as if it’s her fault—it’s somebody’s!—that the boy is like a whirligig. As he crumples his cup, she grabs his hand, his fingers huge and clumsy in hers. “For chrissake, Ma. One worry at a time. Wait’ll Dad’s…” But he doesn’t sound very hopeful. Squeezing his thumb, she tugs even as he pulls away, reminding him that it’s wrong to give up on anybody, that despair’s—“A sin against God.” He rolls his eyes, saying Becky’ll think she’s lost her marbles, talking that way. Heaven forbid.
IDA TROTT WAS THROWING BREAD to her hens and a flock of blackbirds, a rippling, pecking wave of feathers, as Lucy’d stumbled up. The wind rattled the knotweed,
shaking its dead flowers. “Good God, missy—ya seen a ghost, or wha’?” A couple of hairs sprang from Ida’s chin. Her eyes were the colour of tinned beans, warming. “Come and sit,” she’d said. “The young fella, is it? Teething?” Lucy shook her head. But Ida’d steered her inside. Her house sloped and angled everywhere, as if on a dime it could be folded and moved. Not the clutter though: dishes and pots on the rusty stove; mountains of papers, rags; and in the middle, a couch spread with blankets, a bouquet of drying weeds hung over it. Take a load off, she’d muttered, filling the kettle from a bucket, saying Lucy looked pale, and that there’d been flu over at the jail—Nature cleaning its oven. Her mouth full of stumps, her breath foul.
When the kettle boiled, Ida spooned tea into a cup, splashing in water then sliding it over. Her eyes like augers as she patted Lucy’s hand, saying, There there, the worst was behind her. That leathery touch opening a floodgate as she said to drink up, but not be greedy and leave a bit. Telling her to swirl the cup three times and make a wish, then overturn and spin it on the cracked saucer. For a long time Ida’d said nothing, peering inside, then a smile creased her face. Near the rim lay her future, she said—well, that afternoon, or the next morning—and at the bottom, Lucy’s past clear as mud. Flecks like bits of seaweed at high tide. Not so lucky, but full of promise, at least at the top.
“I see a ball,” she said, “and a baby.” Birds, too—good news—and an anchor, which meant a decent night’s sleep. Then she spied a suitcase, no, a sack, meaning somebody’d flown the coop. “Lock your doors!” she joked, spotting an eye, too: “Beware, missy!” Except, there was an envelope: more good news, and a dish and a duck and a circle. But the tea’s bitterness lingered. A child, tossing a ball? “The young fella,” Ida said. A duck? Money coming, she foretold. And a dish? Trouble at home. Then something had crossed Ida’s wizened face as she hedged, saying the ball could be an apple, a girl munching it. “Cute little thing, pretty as a pitcher.”
Ida’s prediction about trouble proved correct. Harry lit into her the second Lucy stepped in, barely waiting till she’d cuddled Jewel, accusing her of running off, priests and nuns waylaying her. The place was upside down, laundry everywhere. Lifting her hat, he said, Well, at least she still had her hair; those nuns shaved theirs off, didn’t they? She’d yelled at him to stop, but he’d snatched up her apron and flung it, his nightshirt hiking up to show his parts so vulnerable-looking that she thanked God women’s were like central heating. Oblivious, he’d asked for his dinner. There were apples by the sink. “Fill your face,” she’d flung back, and he’d slammed outside, but not before the damage was done. Forget it, he’d hollered, saying Lily would feed him.
6
OH, GLORY, THIS TIME IT’S Rebecca who answers, telling her to hang on a sec, as a windy sound blows over the line. “My nails, just did ’em. Still there?” In spite of everything, a peevishness pushes her sigh. “What’s wrong? Pop’s not… You haven’t heard—?” All she wants is to hear Jewel. But Rebecca doesn’t know where he’s taken off to. “Around the cove, visiting, maybe? Seeing one of Pop’s old buds?”
Of all the times to go off tooling around! And they wonder why Robert has no sense. “It’s fine—really.” Sorry for interrupting, she almost adds; why this feeling all the time of needing to plead? This met with Rebecca’s dodgy silence. She’ll see Jewel at the hospital, she says, telling Rebecca to have a lovely day.
Time’s wasting, after all; if she waits around, it could be supper-hour by the time she makes it to town. There’s a bus in fifteen minutes; it stops in front of the church once an hour, less often on Sundays. What day is it? Racing to get ready, she pulls on the gauzy dress, fixing the collar under her dark blue cardigan. On a whim she adds Harry’s diamond earrings, and a slash of lipstick for good cheer. Her glasses have weakened—the glasses, not her eyes—and she has to squint applying it, the way Robert did as a tyke colouring, struggling to stay inside the lines. Back then she would’ve been just as happy watching him scribble on paper bags, but oh no, his mother had insisted on colouring books full of wide-eyed children and animals. The pages smelling of the drugstore with its dusty cold cream and emery boards. Never enough just to let Robert doodle; Rebecca would make sure he didn’t go over the lines; how unlike her, too. But somebody’d said it was good training: for what, though, Lucy was never quite sure. Anyway, it hadn’t worked, seeing how the boy loves being out of bounds.
Outside St. Columba’s she sees women ferrying things from the parking lot into the basement. Oh, Lord, she’s completely forgotten the raffle and sale; hadn’t they said Monday? But before anyone notices her, the Fifteen arrives, whisking her off, saved—for now. Clutching her purse on her lap, she’s sitting back for the ride when a little boy points to her knees, their bluish stain showing through her nylons. “Ooh,” he says, crying when his mother yanks his arm.
At the very next stop a young fellow gets on. She recognizes the greenish jacket before recognizing him. What a treat! More so because unexpected, a Taverners drop from heaven, sweet but hard, because he doesn’t see her at first, not till she slides a Tender Tootsie into the aisle, and he looks up, his teeth sunk into his bottom lip, starting to sneer. “Fffuuuhh—Gran!” Robert looks surprised, not altogether pleasantly. She pats his knee when, reluctantly, he slides in beside her. “Nice scenery,” he smirks as they rumble past a couple slouching along the shoulder, the wiry, reptilian Benny and the woman, who’s a foot taller and wider by a mile. “Gross!” Robert nudges her. “Grouse,” it sounds like, and at first she thinks he’s spotted a bird, a wood grouse? They used to be plentiful in the Grounds, once. Then he says it again, “Some grouse, that one. Nothin’ like a chick with a beard, eh?” She pokes him back; all this bird talk. But then she thinks of poor old Ida Trott and her chin hair. “It’s pretty beead,” he draws out the a the way his dad does, asking if she can guess what he’s seen. “Her skinny-dipping. Right in the cove. Now there’s some-thin’ grouse.” He cranes back, they both do, as the pair shrinks from sight, poking along. But then she can’t resist, even if it is catty.
“I thought you’d admire that,” she casts around for the word: lifestyle. It’s fun to tease and Robert’s so easily ruffled, at least with his folks. But not her, he’d never hold a joke against her, or rebel, as they say nowadays about anyone young enough not to be grey. Which causes a pang, when she thinks how Harry once had hair so black it shone blue. “Ain’t there stuff chicks can do about that?” The beard thing, he means, eyeing her chin, and she wants to laugh, never mind Harry, and the Ferris wheel that’s become her stomach. “Isn’t, dear.” Suddenly she’s his Grandmother Frog again, he’s her Robbie, and they’re riding the bus to the midway, the sticky tangle of rides that would come to town each June. But then she’s curious. “What do you mean, anyway?”
It blows his mind, he says. In this day and age? That a girl would let herself have facial hair. “Like guys aren’t gonna notice. Even an old pit like Benny.” A pit? “Grease pit,” he says, as if she’s stupid, then relenting, “Okay, so he’s more of a geezer, you’re right.” She’d like to give his wrist a slap, as she would’ve years ago babysitting. A little reminder of who was who: respect for the pecking order, as Harry would say. But enough of that, especially in public, she reminds herself; he’s going on eighteen, treat him like the young man he is. How long, though, since they had a real conversation, about something besides that blessed fence and his father’s rules? Straightening her purse on her lap, she says, “So. Will it be Mars next, you think?” He stares as if she’s completely senile. The moon, she explains, asking where he supposes they’ll land next.
He’s blushing, even his forehead through that stringy hair, teasing, “Jeez, Gran, you scared me,” saying he’d give fifty trips in space to have gotten to some show instead. Some big thing down the States, on somebody’s farm. “The Dead were playing, and friggin’ Hendrix,” he says, and might as well be speaking Swahili till she remembers th
e news: mud, and thousands of kids on drugs doing unspeakable things, and noise, godawful screeching noise. All in the name of—? “Peace, Gran.” Abruptly he’s getting up, flashing a crooked grin that fades to uncertainty. “Give Grampa a hug, all right?” But before she can shake his hand or squeeze it, or, God forbid, give him a kiss, he’s swinging like a large monkey up to the doors, and as the bus jerks to a stop he’s gone, as if she’s only dreamed him.
By the time she arrives at the hospital, her dress looks mussed in the elevator’s chrome, her lipstick faded. She feels raw, suddenly, and more than a little uneasy for coming ahead alone, without waiting for anybody. Her reflection only makes her edgier; there’s no time to find the Ladies’ and primp. Her knees and back ache from the bus, her stomach lagging a floor behind as the elevator rockets upwards.
Harry’s door is closed; he’s being bathed, says the nurse, a young gal. “You want him all nice and sweet-smelling, don’t you?” Beaming, she has bouncy red hair, a gap between her teeth. “Ta-da,” she announces, pushing back the curtains as if Harry is a prize, or a gift. Setting her purse down, Lucy takes pains not to disturb his wiring. “Dear?” Her voice is a froggy whisper, his cheek papery. It’s like kissing a dead leaf, and his skin is so grey, as grey as the corners of the room—a dinginess rife with germs? Gently massaging his hand, she’s startled by its warmth.
“He didn’t have such a great night,” the nurse says evenly, her tone neither cheerless nor encouraging. Tidying up, she dumps greyish bits of gauze into a kidney-shaped dish, saying the doctor will be in later, and is going to want to talk with her. The room goes stuffy then, the machine attached to Harry bleeping out its endless, ominous signal. It’s as if Lucy’s on the ceiling looking down at herself, a blue dot on the avocado chair. Patting her arm, the spit-holed little nurse murmurs about a chaplain. “Okay, love, you know where the buzzer is,” she finally says, tiptoeing out with her basin.
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