The Loved Ones

by Mary-Beth Hughes

  Any word from the big cheese?

  She let her mouth look pleased, but she squinted out to the water, as if distracted.

  Seems like this is working out just fine for him. I hear good things.

  Do you really, Daddy?

  All the time.

  Now she was beaming at him, and he laughed and missed her mother. That exact expression.

  The only real deficit Clyde had as a driver was his neck. Always stiff. As a boy he’d had scarlet fever, and that left his body vulnerable in adulthood. And the vulnerability stiffened his neck over time, made the bones brittle and the muscles weak. A load of horseshit, said Clyde. Even so, his head wouldn’t turn. So at any crossroads he assured himself that his intentions were as clear to the other drivers as they’d always been in other circumstances, and sailed right through. The number of near misses involving Clyde Boll was becoming legendary in the county. He was a menace and Anthony Moldano had been dispatched for a discussion about the rules of the road. Why me? Anthony cried. Diplomacy was the answer. You could talk a monkey out of a banana. And Anthony understood this wasn’t entirely a compliment, so put off the warning, the admonition, week to week.

  I should go, sugarplum, Clyde said. He dropped his sunburned hands to his white duck trousers and cupped his knees. He watched her stand and move around the porch tidying up, long graceful neck, her mother’s slanted dark eyes, so lovely. I was thinking about how Huey nearly dropped you when Lily was born. Boy, I should have fired him on the spot.

  She laughed. You nearly dropped me, Daddy. Don’t you remember.

  Me? Not possible.

  Yes, it was you. You lifted me out of the car and carried me all the way into the hospital. I never felt so safe in my life.

  He let out a laugh. Come on.

  And she laughed, too. When you put me down, that is.

  He was delighted. This was his favorite story. She was offering the lead-in, and he wanted to tell it. The birth of Lily. He wasn’t there when Cubbie was born, so all his pride collapsed into the first arrival. He began, Doris called me at the office, stuttering like the house was burning down.

  But something shifted in Jean’s face. So little displeased her about her father, but this willingness to be happy about only Lily and to erase Cubbie, even for a moment, pained her, angered her. She went into the house before he finished speaking.

  She was a moody girl, always had been. He adjusted his glasses, waited a half minute to see if she’d come back, then pushed out the screen door, made his way down the painted steps. He was stiff from sitting so long. The white gravel drive was too sparkly in the sunlight; he blinked away the blinding flashes. In the car, he put on his straw hat, which created soothing squares of gray across his field of vision. He couldn’t see but at least his eyes didn’t feel seared, didn’t hurt. Everything hurt now, a nuisance. Though of course he never complained. He waited another minute for her to come and wave, but she didn’t.

  All along Navesink River Road the big car coasted through a sea of new green, all the leaves barely stretched. This was his season Clyde had declared, in a rush of poetry that made Doris and Ruby laugh. His fresh good ideas had burst right into the world, as quick and on time as spring. Radio Corporation of America. National Broadcasting Company. Clyde Henry Boll.

  Bart Canfield could dream all he wanted but he’d never make it into Clyde’s spot. That office is closed now. No one will follow him. No one could, so Sterling said. Clyde was a one-time phenomenon. The new guys coming up the line—Yes, sir!—all cogs, not a wheel in a carload.

  A screech of brakes and someone with no respect for a Sunday morning laid down on the horn and wouldn’t quit. Clyde glided through the stop sign onto the bridge. And the sunshine and the breeze ruffling up all the light on the water and sending it haywire into the windshield was a shock, but a pleasant one. The air rushed through the open window deafening and refreshing. What had Jean’s goat this morning? She was a prickly girl all right, but she and Lily would be over for dinner later and she’d be on to the next thing. Such a good stretch these last few months, no Nick blurring and refracting the picture. No hocus-pocus. Doris said he’d been gone too much, and Jean needed him. An irritating perspective. She has her family, he’d said, meaning himself. He thought about this, catching the tail end of the yellow light, and again with the horns. You’d think it was Midtown Manhattan. In the early autumn he’d fly to London and see what he could do to make her comfortable.

  He had a headache now, and something put his stomach in a red twist. Nick, no doubt. The idea of Nick. Why hadn’t he stopped the bastard in his tracks long ago. Big regret. Big, big regret. Nothing else like it. He couldn’t think about pastrami right now. He just kept going down Ocean Avenue, then in through the gates to the beach road. The dune grasses waving, the river on one side, the ocean on the other, the roar of the waves filling his ears. Then a truck ahead pulls a U-turn out of nowhere and Clyde can’t find the brake with his foot. The floor of the car is all air, the numbness climbs up his leg, and for a moment he closes his eyes, but opens them and the rusty pile of junk is in his rearview mirror. He takes a quick turn into the next parking lot, an empty space right there up against the dune. He lets the car coast to a stop, then pulls up the hand brake. Cuts the ignition. Rolls up the windows, and in the quiet assesses the numbness in his feet, both feet now, and the tips of his fingers. He opens the door, lifts both legs out, and tries to get the sensation of the spiny shells and jagged rocks through the soles of his shoes. There you go, a nervy pinch comes in the right side. There you go. He grabs the side door and hefts himself upright. He can walk, certainly. No problem. But Doris is right about the weight; he’ll attend to that. He can see her point. And he never picked up his rod, and his folding chair is still back at the house. But he better keep walking, moving. The circulation is good now; he can feel the sand on the beach path slipping nicely under his soles.

  All the way to the top of the dune, he’s panting now, and though the breeze is strong and cool and ripples his shirt, he’s sweating and breathless. The waves break hard in his ears, make a dizzy thudding sound. A woman’s encampment right at the end of the path. He sees the basket of knitting and magazines, two pastel recliners set on a beach blanket. The dry hot sand whirring in the wind, clotting up the yarn. He’ll rest right here. He’ll have a nip and a rest and be fine. No one will mind and when they come back from the water, he’ll probably know them by sight.

  It’s a long way down to the sand. He falls over sideways before he can get into the chair. He’s curled over like Jean when she was a baby, and only he could calm her in the night; at least that’s the way he remembers it. Her poor mother already gone. Jean so tiny all alone. She’d wake up screaming, screaming, and Clyde would tiptoe in with a flashlight, pretend they were on their own private sailboat: Just you and me, and you have to snuggle tight into the bow of the boat, curve in tight to feel the waves rock, and she would do it, so concentrated, her tiny body curled against the ribs of the sailboat he conjured just for her, the Jeanie B., and her breathing would calm down. Her cheek to his big hand, she’d fall back asleep and never remember in the morning the night sailing they did together.

  6

  Lily held still, caught her breath, closed her eyes, and felt the sweep of the rented disco ball come over her, lighting the inside of her eyelids with a pulse of pink, then all was black and loud again. She opened her eyes with a laugh to Margaret opening her own eyes at the exact same instant. They collapsed toward each other with swift joy then fell back as Margaret assessed their audience. A cool trickle of sweat slid down Lily’s side under the gray flannel maxidress, borrowed from Margaret in a last-minute negotiation while Tommy Foley idled the car outside. Lily’s mother had rationed something white that looked like a baptismal gown with puffed sleeves and pin tucks. The only outfit she was willing to pry from Lily’s already packed clothes. Margaret’s gray flannel Christmas dress, bought on sale two sizes too big and never worn, had leg of mut
ton sleeves, heart-shaped buttons as reflective as mirrors, an empire waist, and a long gathered skirt with green lace near the hem. Her mother would snort with derision at this dress, but her mother wasn’t here.

  Across the dance floor a jumping skirmish shook the floor, bodies lit up then unlit. Dead center in the tangle was Russell Crabtree throwing an elbow and calling it dance. Now out of the pack in one leap, caught off balance, a fantastic crumble, his khakis slipping down, yanked back up. His oxford blue shirt flapping, a tiny fringe of black hair on an exposed belly one instant, covered the next. He was beyond beauty. Lily looked away, dizzy, took a long stabilizing sip through a straw of a warm diluted Tab. From her low angle, she observed his shoulders, in a near constant shrug, wide and framing his ears. Like a vulture, said Sister Charitina. A vulture!

  Lily understood him perfectly, felt her own shoulders rise up and in toward her chin, and then lowered them fast, for fear she would catch his notice. She’d just close her eyes again and clock his dance that way. It was a technique she had and she explained it once to Margaret. This way of being able to get the whole feeling of someone as if she were a radio. But human. Her brother had called her Lilio; it was his idea about her. That’s retarded, said Margaret. No offense. But it is.

  But Lily knew what Cubbie meant. Oh, shit, said Margaret, and Lily opened her eyes.

  Margaret stared in a freeze at their tiny table littered with plastic cups and soaked pretzels, then lifted her eyes and jerked them. Lily followed the gaze. Margaret cried, Don’t look! But it was too late. Russell Crabtree walking toward them, if walk was the way to think about all that movement. The stiff high-shouldered slouch. The shuffle that seemed to happen from the knees down. The bounce of his hair. He stopped, hovered nearby, not looking at them, but through the French doors, until Greg Kiernan, red-faced and sweating, punched his back and shouted, Case!

  They tumbled left and out the doors onto the terrace overlooking the first hole. Somewhere on the dark velvet golf course boys had secured some beer. Beer, according to her mother, meant a choice. Lily was choosing between a future she could be proud of—giving nice dinner parties—or something murky and full of misery. Everyone was interested in her future. Even Momo imagined Lily keeping up her garden later on. Things had narrowed in the last two years and all the people predicting her adulthood were anxious. If she was going to plant tulip bulbs and serve crab dip, she needed to shape up.

  Russell came back into view, stopped still in the doorway. There he was, a silhouette, and she felt herself go bright in her gorgeous dress. He’d noticed her. Jesus, whispered Margaret. He patted down his caved-in chest and found a crushed pack of Winstons, his trademark, put a bent cigarette to his lips, and turned sideways, so that they could get the full impact of his insurrection, then vanished under the rose pergola of the terrace.

  I have to tell Mrs. Flaherty something, Lily said.

  Now?

  She’s with Mrs. Shea on the terrace.

  Probably, but now?

  Only for a minute.

  All right, I’m coming, said Margaret, pulling down on her minidress. Anthony Moldano made an observation about Margaret’s knees the last time he gave them a ride in the patrol car. Chunky, he laughed. And she’d given him a complicated smile. Lily in the backseat watched Margaret’s face try on different expressions in the rearview mirror. Proud, hopeless, indulgent. Happy.

  I think I may be cramping or something. Don’t come, said Lily.

  You need Flaherty’s permission?

  No. Something else.

  Don’t wreck the maxi. Like it could be a costume or something.

  Save my seat?

  Fine. Margaret made an acute adjustment to the ribbon holding back her dark blond hair, brought it forward without creating any ripples in her smoothed-back bangs.

  Nice, said Lily. It looks good now. But Margaret was studying the dance floor and nodded without looking. Lily almost sat again. She couldn’t bear these moments with Margaret. Something caught her eye, a ping of a light all the way through the doors and out on the black course. Russell lighting his Winston. She could smell the first tang of smoke already. She turned to go, but Margaret tugged on her sleeve.

  Be back in ten minutes, she said. Anthony’s meeting us on the putting green at eleven. You know, so he can drive us home.

  What about Tommy?

  Tommy’s a jerk. He’s unreliable.

  But thanks to Tommy a miraculous thing had happened to Lily back in March. Lily went over it again and again. As usual, she was spending the night at the Foleys and Tommy had boys over down in the passion pit, something his father had built in the basement. Round banquettes in red corduroy and quadraphonic stereo speakers. After their parents “retired” for the night, Tommy could invite the whole world, Margaret said, and they’d sleep right through it. Boys came and went all the time through the cellar door, but they were mostly boring, said Margaret. This night, only three boys huddled around a long purple plastic bong. Lily listened to the burbling and the coughing and didn’t like it. No, said Margaret. Stay. There’ll be others soon.

  It was a command, which Lily found both comforting and worrisome. The stay or else. You’ll get used to the smell, she said. Margaret was educating her because she had no brothers of her own. No, she wouldn’t stay. Margaret could do what she liked. And soon she was upstairs; the dark kitchen felt creepy with the green stove light hissing and the dope smell still seeping up, so she went out onto the porch with its ghost furniture and the plastic sheets coating the screens. An eerie bubble with little halos glimmering from the streetlamps and the neighbor’s garden lights two acres away.

  Lily sat at the round covered table on a cold rounded bench and considered walking home. She’d done it before. It seemed since Anthony entered the picture, she’d become a big walker. She took a breath and felt the clingy vegetable taste at the back of her throat.

  When Lily was very small she shared a bedroom with her brother, so their parents could find them both easily in the night her mother said. Cubbie’s bed had safety sides because he was too young to know how to sleep neatly. When they were that little, Cubbie began to cough. Everyone thought it was an allergy. They went all together to Dr. Polk’s and Cubbie had to say the letter k over and over, while Dr. Polk looked up into the inside of his nose. K k k k k. Cubbie cried a bit, just because the stick Dr. Polk put through his nostrils was stiff and pointed. But otherwise, and this was something her mother liked to stress, he was very brave and never complained. Except once, much later, during a long stay in the Philadelphia children’s hospital, when the need for a second spinal tap, because the first had gone badly, made him cry. For her mother this crying was unbearable. Lily with all her heart wanted to keep her mother from knowing that Cubbie cried all the time. And that when he was very sick and his body became brittle, they would sleep close to one another as they had when tiny, and she would hold his coughs in her own chest, and cry for him, so his tears wouldn’t shake him or disturb their mother who needed her rest. One thing was true. Cubbie never talked to her about all the many things that happened to him, what he felt inside his body. She had to figure this out for herself. She was still figuring it out.

  Maybe tonight it would just be better to go home she was thinking, when the door creaked open and Russell Crabtree in Margaret’s old pink ski parka stepped out, a flame already wobbling on the steel lighter cupped in his hand. Damn! he cried out, and the tip of blue licked his fingers. He shook out his hand, capped the lighter. Christ, I didn’t see you! When did you get here?

  Sorry.

  He shrugged, looked toward the streetlamps as if captivated.

  Are you okay?

  He blew on his fingers. Yeah, I’ll live. And he used the wounded fingers to tap out the bottom of the soft pack, a display of three cigarettes. Here.

  She smiled and plucked one from the pack. He sat across from her and held out the lighter. Cold as a witch’s tit out here.

  She felt a small shock
at the word. She didn’t choke, just took another small puff and looked toward the plastic sheeting as if there were a view.

  He was flicking the ash of his cigarette on Margaret’s mother’s painted cement porch floor. She knew from her own mother the apple green was a ridiculous color and that the paint was porous and wouldn’t last through the spring. Wait, she said. There was a beanbag ashtray in a drawer of one of the wicker side tables. She and Margaret had looked inside everything one bored afternoon. Wait, she said. And felt Russell watching her every move as she retrieved the stuffed watermelon slice with a metal dish squashed into the middle of a fabric rind. Use this.

  He studied her carefully as she sat down again. This sitting back down was so important her legs were knocking into each other. He took another long drag and let the ash lengthen and hover, as if he were undecided. She waited, not hopeful. Later, in London, when she was trying to untangle all the trouble, she would think of him in the bubble and remember him as her first mirage. She was imagining Russell while he was right here in front of her. But instead of the shadowy blur and the gray backlight from the streetlamps washing over the deeper gray of his vague head, she saw his shiny black hair, and the surprise blush of his pink cheeks. Even sitting, his body seemed to rocket up from the soles of his feet. He had a small red mouth and nearly black eyes. Black Irish, her mother had said, neutrally, and, from her tone, Lily understood this was something desirable. He was hunched over his cigarette now, and his hunch and his silence told her he was a little sad, but he wasn’t going to discuss it. That something had hurt him, but it was not within his power to reveal that hurt. He grinned above the glowing tip, just a few shiny teeth, his nostrils lit up then dark again. His eyes, she imagined, searched her face for some sense that for all that had happened to him, whatever it was, she got it.