by Abby Bardi
“Poor little Roy,” I said. “Would you like some more beef?”
“Boeuf,” Puffin corrected me.
“Oui, où est la boeuf?” Roy said.
“La boeuf est ici,” Puffin said, actually passing it to him instead of just sitting there waiting for someone else to do it.
We all ate some more, then Mary Fred and I brought out a chocolate cake that she had made and we sang “Happy Birthday” to Puffin and gave her some presents, which she seemed to like, even though they weren't French. When she had finished opening everything and sat in a large mess of crumpled wrapping paper, she leaned back in her chair and smiled, which made me feel warm and relieved, at least for a moment. Then Mary Fred and I went into the kitchen and did all the dishes while Roy sat in the living room, listening to jazz, and Puffin came into the kitchen every few minutes and stood leaning against the wall, watching us work, then went out again to go look at her presents. Though I was very relieved now that she was back home, I kept feeling waves of such sadnessthat at times I had to lean against the sink to keep from just collapsing onto the floor. Mary Fred was scampering around, putting the clean plates away, and every so often Puffin would come help halfheartedly (Puffin always put everything in the wrong place so I had to move it all again when she was done), and they were chattering about a pair of shoes Puffin had seen a few weeks ago at Nine West. She said to Mary Fred that she just had to have these shoes, they were awesome, and Mary Fred said they sounded like really nice shoes. As Puffin went on describing them in copious detail, I felt worse and worse because I knew that I couldn't afford them, and that Peter would probably buy them for her, or maybe even Jemma.
When the dishes were finished, I excused myself, gave Puffin a Happy Birthday kiss (she let me without protesting), and went up to bed. I lay down and propped the print she had given me against my knees. As I looked at it, I tried to just dissolve into the painting, into its colors. I could see Peter and me in Jeu de Paume, the museum next to the Louvre, where we had spent most of three days with bags of bread and cheese, which we ate while the guards weren't looking. I had stood in front of this Renoir and refused to leave; there was something about it that made me feel incredibly happy, like if life could be the way it looked in the painting, with its sea of dancing couples, clearly Peter and I were destined for heights of ecstasy that were beyond the possibilities of ordinary life. I could hear our voices. “Look, Peter, look at the color in their faces. That's the color of happiness.”
“Kind of a pink,” Peter said, “like they're wearing too much makeup.” He put his arms around me and we kissed in front of the painting. I closed my eyes and tried to make the image go away, but it wouldn't; instead, we stood there entwined in themidst of all the Renoirs and Monets, the room full of colors and light. I noticed that I was crying, though I wasn't making any sound, but tears were streaming out of the corners of my eyes.
I still had the postcard he had bought me that day when we finally left the museum, somewhere, along with his letters to me, letters that had promised undying love and faithfulness.
When I finally fell asleep, I could see the colors of the Renoir painting behind my eyelids.
Puffin spoke fractured French to us for a few days and seemed to feel that our house wasn't quite exotic enough for her, and she reset her clock to European time and made me buy croissants, then complained that the American ones weren't any good. She and Mary Fred appeared to be glad enough to go right back to their intensive TV-watching schedule, but after a week or so they both seemed bored. “We can't keep doing this,” I heard Puffin saying one afternoon when I had just come home from work. “If I see Real World one more time, I'll go insane.”
“Well, let's think of something else to do,” Mary Fred said. I wondered if she had sat there patiently by the TV all these weeks just waiting for Puffin to grow restless. “Why don't we go for a walk?”
“Geeze, M.F., it's about a million degrees out there.”
“How about a swim? Is there a lake around here?”
“A lake? No, there's no lake. Not even a puddle. Nothing but suburbs.”
“There's the community pool,” I chipped in, though I probably wasn't supposed to be listening.
“Oh, God, Mom, it's so gross there. The entire top of the water is covered with dead bugs. And I'm sure I saw a boy peeinging in there. The whole pool is practically yellow. What about shopping?” They both looked hopefully over at me.
“I'm sorry, girls, not tonight. I'll take you somewhere on Saturday, I promise.”
I went into the kitchen and started dinner. Because it was so hot, I was broiling salmon filet and making a big salad. Roy had said the other day that since Mary Fred had been here, he had eaten enough fish to stock the National Aquarium. “The entire ocean has been denuded,” he said.
“I don't think you can denude an ocean,” Puffin said. “That was one of our SAT words.”
“And the vegetables,” he said. “I think I'm turning green.”
“Vegetables are good for you,” Mary Fred said.
“That's the problem,” Roy said. “I hate things that are good for me.”
“It's true,” I said. “When we were growing up, Roy refused to eat anything but pizza. Our mother used to carry a can of tomato paste and a bag of mozzarella wherever we went.”
“She'd put it on everything to get me to eat it,” Roy said. “Toast. Steak. Ice cream.”
“Ice cream?” Mary Fred said, sounding appalled, then she said, “Oh, you're kidding again, aren't you, Uncle Roy?” and let out a little shriek of laughter.
“It was so clever of us to find ourselves a new family member who would laugh at my jokes,” Roy said, taking two sticks of celery and inserting them in his mouth like fangs. Mary Fred laughed again. “I don't know why, M.F., but Al and Puffin don't think I'm funny.”
“Of course you're funny,” Puffin said, and she and I both said, “Funny- looking.”
Mary Fred laughed at this too. When she laughed, she looked like she was having the time of her life.
When I came back out into the dining room, carrying the salad in a huge wooden bowl that someone had given Peter and me as a wedding present, I could hear the girls talking. “Okay, it's all settled then,” Mary Fred said. “Oh, Alice, I'm sorry, can we help? Come on, Heather.” They jumped up and brought everything else out from the kitchen for me.
“What's settled? Have you figured out something to do with the rest of your summer?”
“Mary Fred thought of something,” Puffin said, sounding less than thrilled about it.
“What is it?”
“Community service,” Mary Fred said, bringing two candles over to the table and lighting them. “Heather told me she needs to do seventy-five hours before she graduates, and I thought heck, this is the perfect time to do it. I told her I'd do it with her.”
“And she agreed?” I looked over at Puffin, who nodded, though she did give a little trademark Puffin eye roll.
“So, what are you girls going to do?” Roy asked over dinner. “Will you volunteer at NASA to help them plan their routes to the moon?”
“We thought we might be able to find a day-care center,” Puffin explained, chewing. “That doesn't sound too bad. Not as bad as, like, old folks.”
“I'll ask Diane,” I said. “She knows all about that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, Diane will hook you up,” Roy said. “She knows how you can serve the community. She probably knows a day-care center for lesbian three-year-olds.”
I tried to kick him under the table, but missed and hit thetable leg instead. “It's nice of Mary Fred to offer to do it with you,” I said to Puffin. “Thanks, Mary Fred.”
“It's not like she's got anything better to do,” Puffin said. “Plus, if she stays at Mount Pleasant for the next two years, she'll have to have seventy-five hours too.”
“Two years?” Mary Fred's face froze, and she turned to me. “Alice, you don't think I'll be here two years, do you?” She looked
absolutely horrified.
“Oh, no, I'm sure you'll be home way before then,” I said, though I wasn't sure of this at all. Later, when I was going to bed, staring at my Renoir print again, I thought about Mary Fred and how bright and cheerful she always seemed, though inside, something entirely different had to be going on. It was hard to imagine just how divided she must feel. Then I thought of myself at work, and how I sat at the desk in the reference area talking to people all day, smiling and helping them use the databases, and no one ever knew that I had lain awake the night before, staring into a copy of an old painting, wondering how I had ended up like this.
On the weekend, the temperature fell below ninety, so I decided to do some gardening. I took the girls to Kmart and we bought a bunch of annuals on sale. It was so late in the season that they were all pot-bound and overgrown, but Mary Fred and Puffin found lots of wilted impatiens, petunias, and nicotiana and put them all in my cart, plus a tray of plastic Popsicle makers, two pink beach chairs for when they wanted to sit in the yard (I think that was Mary Fred's idea), a citronella torch (ditto), two pairs of Martha Stewart–brand gardening gloves, in case they wanted to help me garden, and more of those pink sugar beads that they liked. They went and looked at clothes for a while, but Puffin told Mary Fredin no uncertain terms that it was not cool to buy clothes at Kmart, or even to be seen in the clothes section there—after all, what if someone they knew came in? Mary Fred pointed out that she didn't actually know anyone but Puffin, and that Puffin was already there. Puffin said it was the principle of the thing. I stood near them, pretending not to listen, laughing to myself.
When we got home, I went out in the backyard. I hadn't been out there all summer, and the grass was almost a foot high. I dragged the lawn mower out of the shed and managed to start it up after a few tries. Puffin and Mary Fred put on their new gardening gloves and pulled out a bunch of dandelions, leaving the roots behind. Mary Fred showed Puffin how to make floral chains, which they put in their hair; then they danced around the yard in them. When I had finished mowing, which took over an hour, I dug a little trench beside the fence and the girls put the new flowers into the ground, where they sagged, listing to the side, their leaves drooping. I got the hose out of the shed, hooked it up, and handed it to Mary Fred, and the two of them took turns watering the flowers and squirting each other.
“Let me guess— The Patty Duke Show,” said a voice from the other side of the fence. It was my neighbor, Paula. “What's wrong with Puffin? Is she sick? I've never seen her outdoors before. And who's the farm girl?”
“That's Mary Fred,” I said.
I explained the situation to Paula, who nodded and said, “Oh, Alice, you're so good.” She gave a little shudder. “You'll have to let me do her chart. What is she, Libra?”
“No, Sagittarius.”
“Like you? Oh la la—too much sincerity for one house. I'd go mad.”
“I think she's a good influence on Puffin,” I said, lowering my voice.
“Evidently. Look at her, she seems to be having fun. How odd.”
Paula asked me all about how Mary Fred had ended up with us, and I told her about how Diane had sort of talked me into it—she knew Diane, and didn't like her. Paula looked thoughtful the whole time I was speaking. Finally, she said, “Alice, I think I saw all this on Dateline.” She looked over at Mary Fred again, squinting as if trying to remember her face. “Was that her family?”
“It might have been. What did they say?”
“Were they called the Something-ians?”
“I think so. I'm not even sure. Diane didn't give me too many details. She just said the parents were in jail.”
“And you don't know why?”
“I sort of know why. She said they were being accused of child neglect or something.”
“Child neglect?” Paula gave a little snort and shook her hair, which fell in tight brown curls around her face. She was short and stocky, and was wearing a little crocheted cap to cover the fact that her hair was thin on the top. At one time, before I met her, Paula had been a man. “Hardly. They're being tried for second-degree murder.”
“They're what?”
“Apparently the D.A. is holding them responsible for the deaths of their two sons.”
“Mary Fred's brothers? I knew they had died, but I didn't realize . . . How did they die?”
“Evidently, the Whatever-it-is-ians don't believe in medical treatment. I remember now—they were living down in Virginia on some big farm—”
“The Compound. Go on.”
“And one of the boys got sick. Just appendicitis or something. They wouldn't let him get medical treatment, just stood by the bed praying for about a week. Then his appendix ruptured and peritonitis set in.” Paula was a nurse. “The authorities in Virginia were just starting to investigate, so they all moved up to Maryland, right near Frederick.”
“The Outpost.”
“What?”
“That's what they call it.”
“So you do know some of this.”
“Just smatterings. Go on.”
“Then the other boy got sick. Pneumonia or something— again, something that could easily have been cured. More praying, and then boom, he dies too. The DA in Frederick County was a lot quicker to act than the one in Virginia.”
“Apparently they lived in Frederick County, Virginia, too,” I said.
“That was it. The Fredians. Named after the counties?”
“No, I think they must be named after some guy named Fred. Fred Brown. That's why they wear so much brown. I guess. That's all I know about it.”
“Alice, you really don't pay much attention to details, do you?”
“I guess not. I don't know, it didn't seem to matter. All I knew was she was a child who needed help.”
“Oh, Al ice. Please, I'll be sick.” Paula looked over at the lawn where Mary Fred and Puffin were still squirting each other with water and laughing. They were both drenched, and Puffin's hair was lying flat across her face in a way I knew she hated. “Well, I hope you know what you're doing. She's a cute girl, in a sort of Pippi Longstocking way. Listen, if you needsome guidance, I'd be happy to do your cards for you. I'll use the Osho deck.”
“Thanks, Paula. Maybe next week some time—we're pretty busy.”
“I can see that. Okay, I'd better run—massage appointment. Tell the girls to come by if they'd like a facial. It's on me.”
“Oh, Paula, that's sweet. Thanks, I'll bet they would.”
“I've got a new cream I think they'll really like.”
“I'll tell them.”
Paula started back toward her house, then turned around, said, “White light, honey,” and went away.
The girls did go to Paula's for facials the next day. That's what I had started to call them, “the girls,” as if they had become an entity. When Roy and I were growing up, our parents had called us “the kids,” and on some level I knew both of us still thought of ourselves that way—no matter how old we got, we would always be the kids. Roy had been nine when our father died, I was twelve, and sometimes it felt to me as if we had just frozen at that age. My mother had been so bewildered at first, and then so resentful, and we had not been able to figure out what to do to cheer her up. She took a job she hated and went to a crummy law school at night, and she walked around the house snarling and smoking Kents for what seemed like an eternity. So Roy and I entered a little world of our own at that time, and sometimes I had the feeling that's where we still were. Our mother had finally finished school, gotten a better job, started making money and having what she felt was a glamorous life, but it was too late, we were already stuck in our weird other world, as if we lived, forever young, on the opposite side of an invisible panel and could see her through it, reading legal briefs and smoking (though she finallynally quit when she turned sixty), but we never really talked to her again.
Since the day she finished law school, my mother had always had her hair done in a perfectly dyed helmet, a
nd her makeup was always a little too heavy. Sometimes I was afraid Puffin was going to turn out like her; the two of them were so conscious of their appearances, so vain, really, that it always shocked me. Now Puffin came prancing back into the house with her hair piled up on top of her head. She looked like a waitress from the fifties, but I told her it looked magnificent. If I said anything less than glowing about the way she looked, she would begin to shout at me, so I was always sure to praise her. “How's my skin?” she asked.
“Breathtaking,” said Roy, who was sitting in the living room watching golf. That was about as athletic as Roy got.
“Very nice,” I said, though actually it was a little spotty. “And Mary Fred, yours is nice too.”
“Alice, is it true what Heather says about Paula?”
“What did she say?”
“I told her that Paula's a transsexual,” Puffin said, looking at herself in the mirror above the mantelpiece and sucking in her cheeks.
“I mean, I've seen that on Jerry, but I didn't know people really did it.” Mary Fred looked at me hopefully.
“They really do everything, Mary Fred,” Roy said. “There's nothing people don't do. That's what a strange and wonderful world we live in.”
“Then it's true?”
“Yes, it's true,” I said. I expected Mary Fred to make a face or something, but she just said “Oh,” and went over to where Puffin was standing and said, “Okay, you win the bet. I owe you fifty cents.”
“Lucky you won, Puff,” Roy said. “Puffin doesn't have fifty cents, Mary Fred. Plus, she's a welsher.”
“What's a welsher?”
“Someone from Wales?” Roy said, looking at me to see if I was scowling at him, which I was.
“Oh, Uncle Roy, you're so funny,” Mary Fred said, walking over to Roy and tapping him on the arm. He winced, as if the tap had hurt him. I don't know why, but my attention suddenly zoomed in on Roy's face. He didn't look well. His skin was pasty, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He never combed his hair anyway, but it looked particularly unkempt today, and his beige Mexican cotton shirt was wrinkled and grubby. I looked over at the girls—Mary Fred had gone back over to Puffin and the two of them were looking at themselves in the mirror. Paula had put some eye makeup on both of them, and because of the heat it had already started to run, so Puffin looked like a raccoon, a look she seemed to favor. But the startling thing was that in the mirror, she looked so much older than I pictured her. She had just turned sixteen, but when I thought of her, or when she appeared in my dreams, she was considerably younger, sometimes only about eight, the age she was when Peter and I got divorced. It was clear that while I was not paying attention, things constantly changed around me.
