THE TRAP

by Tabitha King

  She had taken him by surprise. At the time, he had thought she had dragged the conflict off into irrelevancy. But what she’d said kept popping up at odd times in his life, forcing him to meditate on the whole thorny business of responsibility, and what the hell she had meant exactly by the word whore.

  So more than a decade later and a continent away, he sat in a rented car in pouring rain thinking of his mother, who was dead because of a drunk driver. Who might have been his father, had not his father died of pneumonia in an alkie ward in Bangor a few days before her. He ate as much of the Big Mac as he could before it turned utterly tasteless and began to choke him. Then he headed for his hotel room, to call Liv.

  It was three hours earlier there. Travis had gone to bed, but Sarah was still up. She had been waiting for him to call: that afternoon, she had made the winning basket for her team. As he listened to her bubbling over, he felt as he had when she took her first steps.

  At last she careened to a breathless stop, and said, “Well, you’re not saying anything. Don’t you care?”

  He laughed. “You didn’t give me the chance, kitten. I’m just stunned with the glory of you, that’s all.”

  She giggled and gave up the phone to Liv.

  “It’s raining hard here,” he told her. “I got soaked.”

  “Oh, Pat.”

  “Hey,” he said. “I flashed on that time we were coming back from Washington and we had the fight and you put me out on the interstate.”

  She said, “You went to see your mother.”

  “Yeah.” Pat fidgeted, hauled the blankets up to his chin. “I had a kind of fight with her that night.”

  “About girls,” Liv said. “You told me. She wouldn’t let you bring me home.”

  “Not exactly. She didn’t want me sleeping with you in her house.”

  “Different generation. She did the best she could. She was more accepting than my mother was,” Liv said. That’s what she had said then, too.

  Marguerite had refused to meet him at all until after they were married, had even stopped talking to Liv for several months. It was Doe who had quietly slipped them money without being asked, and who came around to see Sarah.

  It was weeks after that visit to his mother before Liv told Pat she was pregnant. Only then, counting back, had he realized she had known or suspected, had been in the grip of her own panic and confusion, and that the fight, ostensibly over an old girlfriend’s attentions, had happened because she didn’t want him to feel bound to her. Sarah became a test: He had to choose Liv because he wanted her, not because he had impregnated her and had some kind of duty toward her and the baby.

  Somehow, Ellen found out. He’d always suspected the fine and steely hand of Marguerite Dauphine in that. She waited a while for him to tell her, and then took matters in her own hands and turned up at their door, to claim her granddaughter and have a look at Liv. She went away carrying a piece of the soap that Liv used to bathe Sarah, to remember the way the baby smelled, satisfied that Liv was a good mother, though frankly puzzled at her refusal to do what Pat was willing to do, which was to make it all legal and proper.

  The wedding had been in Ellen’s house, and without Marguerite.

  Ellen took Pat aside. There had been no shortage of cheap wine, and she was not entirely sober.

  “I confess,” she said, leaning on him rather heavily. “I thought it was funnier than hell.”

  “What was that, ma?” he asked, putting an arm around her waist to steady her, and because he was tight, too, and if they couldn’t be affectionate on his wedding day, with a skinful, when could they?

  “That girl of yours,” she said. “Making you eat the cake you baked.”

  “Whoa,” he said. “One of us is drunker than I thought.”

  She poked him playfully. “You got already to do the right thing and she wouldn’t have you,” Ellen said, and snickered.

  It took him a minute to work it out, but once he got the joke, he laughed, too, and every time they looked at each other for the duration of the party, they were reduced again to red-faced giggles.

  “I miss her,” Pat said.

  “I do, too,” Liv said.

  “I miss you,” he said.

  “When are you coming home?” she asked.

  “Day after tomorrow,” he promised. “Break for the weekend. It’s looking good.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. It would be great to be looking at you.”

  “You will be,” he said. “It won’t be long, now. Halloween, maybe.”

  Of course, he was wrong, but there was no way of telling that then.

  “So tell me what you saw today,” Liv said.

  With her father as her silent partner, Liv had acquired the building, which had been a multibay garage, when the oil embargo had forced its independent owner into early retirement. She had the gas tanks out front removed and replaced them with her own handmade sign, which served in season as a freeform plant box. Inside, the hydraulic lift had been taken out, and the pit enlarged into a proper cellar. The interior had been gutted and rebuilt into the pottery proper, with two large kilns, one of which was adaptable to wood in case of fuel shortage, or for purposes of special firing that could only be done properly with wood; a shipping and storage department, and a tiled shower and locker room, for the work was grubby. She employed two proficient and experienced women, and a recently hired male apprentice, as well as herself and her sister Jane. Liv shared office space, which was a narrow mezzanine overlooking the main floor, with Jane. At the end of the day, the place was noisy, because of the blowers which recycled the excess heat generated by the kilns and kept the air clean. They all wore Walkmen clipped to their pockets and earphones so they could listen to music if they wanted, or just to block out distracting noise.

  Liv, her earphones around her neck like a punk choker, left her apprentice, Misha, wedging porcelain clay, and trotted up the iron stairs to the office.

  Jane glanced up from the tiny patch of open floor space when Liv opened the door. Squatting by a large cardboard shipping carton, she spread her hands over it, and groaned theatrically.

  “I told them to wrap the damaged pieces separately!” she said.

  Liv stooped over the carton to see for herself. “Shit,” she said, “there’s at least five pieces in there.” She flicked the top of the carton. “It’s not even our carton. What do they think we go to the expense of our own cartons for?”

  “They didn’t send the tearsheet from the invoice either,” Jane said.

  “Wonderful.” Liv poked among the shards in the box. “I think there’s two large bowls and three dinner plates in this mess.”

  “Yeah,” said Jane, picking up a clipboard and making notes on it. “Me, too.”

  Liv straightened up and stretched. She glanced at the clock. “Hallelujah, it’s quitting time.”

  Jane jumped up. “I’ll say goodnight to the crew.” She slipped out.

  Two desks had been crammed into the narrow office, and every available wall space covered with shelving or cupboards. The room was piled with boxes, every surface cluttered and heaped with paper, files, color chips, manufacturers’ samples of earths, glazes, the myriad tools and substances that went into making pottery. Liv took a bottle of wine from a cupboard and two plastic coffee cup holders from a drawer. She dropped clean plastic cones into the holders and opened the wine. She was pouring it as Jane’s steps could be heard clanging on the iron stairs.

  “I locked up,” Jane said.

  Liv handed her a cup of wine. She pushed a book off her desk chair and sat down in it.

  Jane sank cross-legged to the floor and sighed happily.

  Liv raised her cup. Jane did the same.

  “Another day,” Liv said.

  “Ayuh,” Jane drawled.

  Liv threw back her head and laughed.

  Jane was the eldest of Marguerite’s and Doe’s children, six years Liv’s senior. Jane’s hair had grayed prematurely, and she refused to dye it, wear
ing it in a Gibson girlish upsweep. Her fragile porcelain-clear skin was delicately furrowed from the outside edges of her nostrils to the corners of her mouth and across her brow. Old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses obscured her dark eyes. She favored huge flamboyant earrings, low-cut peasant blouses that exposed her rather bony freckled décolletage, and tight blue jeans. It was a look declaring an unconventional, possibly artistic soul that caused people to mistake her for the potter. She liked that, for in the years of her first marriage, she had been the image of a banker’s wife, wearing silk blouses with ruffled fronts and discreet pearl earrings. Since her husband had left her seven years previous, she had come to identify the face she had worn then as the same species of fake as her ex-husband’s. It was only in the wake of the divorce that she had discovered her own talents and ambitions as a businesswoman, the equal of Marguerite’s.

  Jane snagged her handbag, an enormous handquilted fringed carryall, from under her desk and pawed at it. She produced an enameled tin box and, from that, a joint, which she offered silently to Liv.

  Liv shook her head, as always.

  Jane winked and lit up. Sitting loosely cross-legged, she closed her eyes and toked deeply.

  “Oh, wow,” she said in a dry, gravelly voice, and opened her eyes wide in mock ecstasy. Both sisters laughed.

  “So,” she said, “how’s your tooth-that-isn’t-there?”

  “Happy in fairyland, I guess,” Liv said. “I’m okay.”

  Jane shook her head in desperation, and tried the joint again.

  “That’s what you kept telling me all summer, when I called,” she said. “I don’t know what you were proving. But I’m not going to believe you anymore when you tell me you’re okay. It’s like the boy who cried wolf.”

  “No,” Liv said, “the boy who didn’t cry wolf.”

  Jane giggled. “The girl who didn’t.”

  “Hmmm,” Liv agreed and sloshed her little cup of wine idly.

  “When’s Pat home again?” Jane asked.

  “Weekend. I talked to him last night.”

  “And when is it finished? The movie.” Jane finished her wine and tossed the cup at the wastebasket. “Two points,” she said, as it dropped neatly into it.

  “Halloween.”

  “That’s a long time,” Jane said.

  “Ayuh,” Liv agreed.

  Jane took another toke. “Think you can stand it?”

  “Guess I have to,” Liv said.

  Jane snickered. She pinched the coal of the joint, to kill it, and replaced it in the tin box.

  “To quote Marguerite,” Jane said. “ ‘You made your bed, so you have to lie in it.’”

  Liv scooched over to the plastic-lined wastebasket to place her cup, all but untasted, carefully into it. “Only some people make the bed,” she said, “and some people just lie, right?”

  “Right,” said Jane. “Here speaks the voice of experience, slightly stoned.”

  “You want me to drive you home?” Liv asked.

  Jane shook her head. “I’m okay.” Jane gathered up her handbag and dropped the tin box into its depths. “Are you?”

  Liv smiled. “Yes. So stop fussing.”

  Jane got up and patted Liv’s cheek. “You don’t take care of yourself, baby sister. Your husband’s never home. Someone has to look out for you.”

  Liv leaned on the desk and stretched her legs in front of her. She examined the toes of her sneakers, which were splitting.

  “Look,” said Jane, “if it was me, I’d leave him. What difference will it make? You’re not together. But,” she raised her hands to show her palms, “what do I know? I’ve got my prejudices. All I know is a woman has to look out for herself, baby.”

  “We talked a long time last night,” Liv said, “we talk a lot. We’re going to be fine. All we need is time.”

  Jane smiled and hugged her. “Just remember I’m around if you need me, don’t tell me you’re okay when you’re not.”

  Liv nodded.

  Jane picked up her sweater and headed for the door. She stopped to look back at Liv, and winked.

  Liv listened to her footsteps rattling down the iron stairway. She found her own bag and turned off the lights. Only a few tokes, a few ounces of wine, she should be okay. College for Jane had been a sorority; a cardigan worn backward with a string of pearls; a bouffant hairdo; being pinned to good old rotten Curt, who had eventually left her with four kids; and the gradual realization that what being a good girl had earned her was undeserved and very early termination, while everyone else was out there having fun, including Curt. The man Jane had lived with for three years was a mellowed-out ex-cowboy, who transparently didn’t give a shit about conventions and legalities of any kind. Unlike Curt the banker, who paid lip service to such things, but who did what he could get away with, Web was straight in his dealings with Jane. He loved her and was faithful to her, and with his example, he set her free. It was Web’s homegrown she carried in her handbag, and indulged in as if it were a Happy Hour martini. She and Web observed Liv’s strictures against the illegal weed in Liv’s home, and that was as far as Liv cared to impose her own concerns on Jane.

  Her own concerns, it came to her, were immediate. The market, home to the kids.

  Chapter 6

  “That’s enough. End it,” Liv shouted over the sound of the bickering.

  Silence was observed for a couple of seconds before they both burst out in simultaneous complaint against the other.

  “She changed the channel!” Travis said.

  “He’s watched that tape a hundred times!” Sarah countered.

  Liv put the bag of groceries down in a chair and switched off the TV.

  “I have not,” Travis said.

  “You have too,” said Sarah.

  “Stop it,” Liv said. “Sarah, there’s a television upstairs. Go watch that. Travis was running his tape before you came in. He’s entitled to finish it. You want to watch MTV, right?”

  “The color’s better on this one,” Sarah said.

  “The other one doesn’t have a tape player on it,” Liv said. “If you watch MTV on this one, then Travis gets zero. You can watch upstairs, he can’t.”

  “It’s not fair,” Sarah said. “You always take his side.”

  “That’s not true and you know it. And aside from that, life’s not fair. You’d better get used to it, kid.”

  Sarah picked up the books she had strewn over the couch. She could have carried them on her lower lip. She took a vicious swipe at the top of Travis’ head as she stomped out, but he ducked routinely.

  He did not react at all. “Would you start my tape again, Liv?” he asked.

  “Come here,” she said.

  He climbed off the couch and stood next to her.

  “This is Play,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Push it,” she said.

  He placed one fingertip on the button and pushed down on it.

  “Just remember it’s the one with the green stripe.”

  He trudged back to the couch.

  “Stop has the red stripe on it.”

  He nodded.

  This was not the first time she had tried to teach him these simple operations. She knew he was going to ask her to do it, just the same, when he wanted it off. He didn’t seem to want to master the controls, simple as they were, the way he didn’t seem to want to learn to read, though he knew his alphabet backward and forward. He wanted her to go on running the tape machine for him, and reading to him. It was a way to cling to her, and she didn’t know what to do but be patient.

  There was a list of phone messages and a note pinned to the refrigerator. Liv scanned the messages, found Pat had called about the time she was standing in line at the supermarket, but when she rang him back, there was no answer. She dropped the receiver back into its cradle with an impatient thunk: They kept missing each other. There was a note from Mrs. Fuller, her housekeeper, saying she would have to go as soon as Sarah was home to look after Travi
s, to have her gum treatment. Which was where Liv had come in.

  Liv drew a glass of cold water and drank it down, hoping it would open up her throat. She rolled her head and tried to relax her shoulders. There was still too much to do today to give in to the tiredness she felt. Her hands, wrists, arms, and back ached with unaccustomed use—about what was to be expected for a week or two, after months of idleness. The mental tiredness, though, was just coming home to a pair of screaming kids. She had to shake that off.

  Her parents were due for dinner. If she started it now, she might be able to have a brief soak in the tub before they came in.

  Forty-five minutes later the scalloped potatoes were in the oven, and the Caesar salad only wanted dressing. The fish—mako shark steaks she had lucked upon at the market—she meant to sauté at the last minute, and then douse in light cream. There were two bottles of California wine chilling in the fridge. She was just taking off her apron when she heard the Cadillac in the driveway.

  “Shit,” she muttered. “There goes my bath.”

  Another thing she should have expected. Marguerite and Doe had spent the summer in Canada and hadn’t seen the kids since June.

  Travis shot off the couch and opened the door for Marguerite, who came in bearing a pie-shape wrapped in aluminum foil.

  “Darling,” Marguerite said and scooched down to kiss Travis.

  Travis submitted, and then shot around her, asking, “Where’s papa?”

  Marguerite Dauphine straightened up with an expression of heroic resignation on her face. Liv’s children always managed to remind her that being a grandmother was as unglamorous and thankless a task as being a mother. Doe drew Travis like a magnet, as once he had drawn Liv herself. Watching Travis hustle his short legs out the door after Doe, she could certainly see the resemblance between grandfather and grandson, and of course like called to like, but she couldn’t help feeling like a rock in white water, something to go around. Between Travis’ blissful ignorance of her and Sarah’s barely restrained insolence, she felt quite battered, when she allowed herself the luxury of useless railing against reality.