“Remember how she used to chew on your Pound Puppy?” her dad says. “Remember that time we left a box of eggs on the counter and she ate all twelve of them? Shells and all.”
“Remember how she liked to run into swamps and eat frogs?” Ursula says. “And sometimes when she came out of the water there would still be a frog’s leg hanging out of her mouth. And then she’d burp and it would be frog breath?”
“When you were born,” her dad says, “we worried she might be jealous. But she just lay there next to your little sleeper bed guarding you. Sometimes she’d lick your face.”
“Her farts were the worst, weren’t they, Dad?” Ursula says. They are laughing now. Also crying.
“Especially that time we gave her the garbanzos.”
“How old was she, Dad? In dog years?”
“She was ninety-eight, Urs. She had a good life.”
“All except the end.”
“You were always so good to her.”
“But in the end she must have wondered where I went. She must have wondered why we’d leave her like that.”
“I don’t believe dogs think like that,” he says. “She knew you would always love her.”
“She was my sister,” Ursula says. “The only sister I had. I’m an only child now.”
Claire and Sally are parallel parking. “One-half car length beyond your space, sharp turn in the direction you want your rear end to go, angle back, right your front end, pull up straight,” Claire recites. This is Sally’s fourth attempt at this particular parking space.
“Shit,” says Sally. “I give up. They hardly ever put parallel parking on the test, anyway.”
“Let’s just drive around the rotary again a couple more times,” Claire says. Sally turns sixteen and takes her test in a few weeks.
“If I don’t pass, I’ll die,” she says to Claire.
Claire can dimly remember a time when getting her license seemed like the most important thing in the world. In the end, she supposes, many things that once seemed so important to a person fade away. It’s just impossible to imagine at the time you’re going through them.
Four years ago, for instance, she would never have imagined herself spending her life with any man other than Mickey. And now look at her—pregnant, and planning to marry Tim. Sitting on her front porch with him last night, she felt so peaceful. At the time he was just telling Claire about bringing the salmon back to the Connecticut River. His department at the college has a grant from the state to build a couple of salmon ladders in Bellow’s Falls. He had this look of such pure joy on his face, delivering this news, that she had leaned over and kissed him. “I want to make you proud of me,” he said. “I want to be the best husband to you. The best father to our baby.”
This is a good man, Claire told herself. Don’t let him go.
A couple of years ago, in the middle of the custody hearings, Claire would have supposed she could never again look at her ex-husband Sam without wanting to spit, she hated him with such passion. These days she is like Mount St. Helen’s, back where she comes from, in Oregon. The entire top of the mountain blew off when the volcano erupted. The trees burned down. The animals died. The molten lava destroyed every living thing for miles around. But now there is this new green growth sprouting up. Forgiveness.
“You don’t have to blow so hard all the time,” Mickey told her. “Just blow.”
With Sally, too, Claire is recognizing that there is no longer any way to control what she does with her life. Her getting a license is only the beginning. No matter how old her daughter is, Claire will never stop worrying about Sally or stop being her mother, and she will never stop trying to guide her as wisely as she can. But she is also realizing lately that even as she embarks on this late-life pregnancy of hers, a particular phase of her mothering of this particular child is drawing to an end. Like the paper boats she used to make with her children every spring that they launched into the brook behind their old house, her daughter’s little craft will soon go bobbing out of sight. Then all Claire will be able to do is hope she stays afloat, or that when she takes on water, as she surely will, she’ll bail hard and swim if necessary.
“I was just thinking, driving around the traffic circle with you, how long it’s been since you and I had a chance to talk,” Claire tells Sally from her unaccustomed spot in the passenger seat.
“We talk, Mom,” says Sally. “You should see how it is in some kids’ families. It’s lots worse. Travis’s family eats their dinner in front of ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ every night.”
“Well, to me it seems as if we’re out of touch,” Claire says. “And now here you are about to get your license. You’ll be gone even more now.”
“You’ll still see me, Mom. It’s not like I’m moving out or anything.”
“You may not be going anywhere,” says Claire. “But your life is changing. Mine too.”
“Can you believe what he did there?” says Sally. “Guy changed lanes without even putting his blinker on.”
“You haven’t told me much about what’s going on with you and Travis, but I figure it must be pretty serious by this point,” Claire tells her. “I hope you’d always feel you could talk to me about that.”
Sally is concentrating hard on the road. She checks the rearview mirror and adjusts it slightly. Claire is suddenly struck by her daughter’s extraordinary beauty. She is not quite sixteen yet, but for a second Claire catches a glimpse of what she will look like as a woman. A heartbreaker.
“I trust you to make good decisions for yourself,” says Claire. “I just hope you make your choices based on what feels right for you. Not anybody else. I didn’t always do that myself at your age. I was so eager to please everybody.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” says Sally. “I’m fine.” Just pregnant, probably.
“And the other thing is, if the moment comes where you and your boyfriend become sexually active—whatever boyfriend it might be at that point—and it’s something you want to do and you feel you’re ready, it’s so important that you protect yourself. I know you hear that all the time at school, but sometimes in the heat of the moment, people don’t always behave so sensibly.” Claire should know.
“Mom,” says Sally. “I know this stuff.” This would be the perfect moment to tell her mother that as a matter of fact, there isn’t much point anymore in having this conversation because the very thing her mom’s so afraid of has happened already.
She might just tell her, too. For a second there she thinks with longing of what it would be like to lay her head on her mother’s shoulder and cry her eyes out the way she used to when she was younger.
“I wouldn’t want you to ever think because I’ve got a boyfriend myself these days that I don’t care about what’s going on in your life,” says Claire. “Nothing matters more to me that that.”
Sally is silent. Just driving.
“I know you and your brother aren’t crazy about Tim and Ursula,” she says.
“What you do is your business,” says Sally. “I don’t have to love the guy. Or his kid.” Here’s a whole new thing to dislike about Tim and his kid, Sally thinks: The way the two of them keep popping up right in the middle of something that’s going on in her family, taking up everybody’s energy. She was actually having a decent conversation with her mother just now. She might even have pulled the car over and collapsed in her mother’s arms and told her that she’s scared out of her mind, too scared even to take the home pregnancy test that has been sitting in her closet for almost two weeks. But now it’s like those two red-headed idiots in their bike helmets just hopped in the backseat of the car to join the conversation.
“I was wondering how it would be for you if Tim and I, you know, made it more official,” her mother is saying. She’ll save the baby part for another day.
“What do you mean, Mom?” Sally says. She stares at the road.
“We’ve been thinking we might move in together before long. Get married.” She wi
shes Sally would say something, but she just grips the wheel and stares straight ahead. She’s supposed to concentrate when she’s driving, but this is different.
“Do what you want, Mom,” says Sally in a flat voice. “I’ll be gone in a couple of years, anyway.”
“There’s lots of wonderful things about him if you’d give him a chance,” Claire is saying. “Ursula too …”
“It doesn’t matter,” says Sally. “I’ll be going to college soon, anyway.”
Pete’s in luck: The spacey blond cashier is at the register at Coconuts.
“New Elvis Costello tape come in yet?” he asks her.
“Nah, I don’t think so,” she tells him. “It’s not supposed to come out till next week.”
“I didn’t mean that Elvis Costello tape,” Pete says. “I meant the other one. The one before that. The one where he sings country.”
“Jeez, I never heard of that one,” she says. “Take a look in the C’s.”
“Would you mind checking it for me?” Pete asks her. “I have this problem with my vision today. Pinkeye.”
She looks at him a little oddly, the way his sister does when he tells her he didn’t touch her Rollerblades. But she goes to check.
“I was thinking it could be in the E’s, too,” he says. “At some places they put them there.”
“We keep him in the C’s,” she says. Never mind. He takes out a Baggie with a dog turd inside. He sets it on the carpet. This is part of the plan Pete thought up to distract her later.
The younger guy Pete was expecting to see in the stereo equipment section must be off today. It’s this real geezer-ish person. Even better.
“My grandfather sent me money for my birthday,” he tells him. “I was thinking I might get a portable disc player.”
“They’re in the case,” the guy says. “We’ve got Aiwa, Panasonic, and Sony. All pretty much the same unit, only the Sony runs an additional twenty bucks, and in my opnion all you’re getting for your money is the name. There’s not much to see.”
“I’d just like to take a look at them up close,” Pete tells him. “I got pinkeye.”
The geezer hestitates a moment, then sets the three disc players on the counter in front of him. When Pete asks to see the headphones, he takes those out, too.
“The most recent Elvis Costello we have is this one,” the blond cashier calls out to him. “I never heard of any country album. You’ve gotta be thinking of someone else.”
“No, it’s him, all right. My friend saw it here the other day.” Now he leans over closer to the geezer. “Would you mind checking for me?” he asks. “Sometimes I’m not sure about her.”
Amazingly enough, the guy doesn’t argue with this. He heads over to the C section. Pete slides the Discman into his backpack. Like clockwork.
This is where Pete is supposed to step in the dog turd and act upset. He is walking over to the turd when he sees her. The kid from hell. Ursula. She is wearing her bicycle helmet and those thick glasses as usual, and she is looking in the video section with that geek father of hers. He’s wearing a helmet, too.
“We’re looking for the temporary tattoos,” he’s saying to the blond cashier. “For Halloween.”
Pete wishes they weren’t here, but there’s no turning back now. He slides into the dog turd and falls flat on his face. It’s even more dramatic than he’d intended.
“Shit,” he says. “I can’t believe you have dog turds in here.”
“It’s Pete with poop all over himself,” Ursula says in that deep, husky voice of hers that sounds like some porn star or a phone sex person.
Tim is rushing over to him now, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Here, son, let me help you,” he says.
Son. Give me a break.
“These were new shoes,” Pete is saying, though nobody seems to be listening but Tim. “My mom will kill me.”
“No she won’t, Pete,” Tim says. “She’ll understand it wasn’t your fault.”
“You don’t get it, Daddy,” Ursula is saying, louder. “He put that piece of poop on the floor in the first place. He did it on purpose. He put something in his backpack, too.”
Ursula stands over him like a toadstool, with that blank-eyed pink face of hers. He wishes his eyeballs could shoot out laser beams. He would like to smear dog poop all over her. Instead he bursts out crying. The gray-haired man is coming over to him now. Also the blond cashier. A crowd has formed.
“You’d better open up that backpack for me, my boy,” the gray-haired man says.
“You want me to call the authorities, Mr. Ellis?” the girl says.
“You better believe it,” the gray-haired man says. “Just because he’s a kid doesn’t mean we can afford to let him off easily. We’re looking at a serious juvenile offender here. Maybe he can set an example that will discourage some of his buddies.”
The most sickening part of all is that at this point Tim actually puts an arm around Pete and whispers to him, “Don’t worry, Pete. I’ll help you.”
Right. With any more help from him and that daughter of his, Pete might as well go jump off a bridge.
They have actually locked Pete in a cell like a criminal. It’s police policy with juvenile offenders like him, the sergeant explains to Claire, to treat these kids like any other offender. “Give them a taste of what they’ve got to look forward to if they keep up this way of life,” he told her. “Scares some sense into them sometimes.”
“Kid have a father?” he asks her. No, I’m the virgin mother, she thinks of saying.
“We’re divorced,” she says. “I called him. He’ll be over, too.” Before she’s even got all the words out, Seargant Donohue is nodding as if he assumes he knows the whole story. Broken home. Troubled child. No consistent male role model. Weak, ineffective, defeated single mom. Kid’s sure to be a mama’s boy or a hood. She’s on trial again.
“Pete never did anything like this before,” she says. Never mind the incident at school with the graffiti, though they will probably find out about that one now, too. “He’s a really good boy. There must have been some unusual circumstance.”
“This guy who was there when the arrest occurred—the one with the little girl?” he says. “He tells us he’s your fiancé?”
“Tim was there?” she says. This is news to Claire.
“Oh, sure,” says the sergeant. “It was his kid that alerted the store manager to the problem. Then you probably don’t know that your son assaulted her.”
“Assaulted?” says Claire.
“Punched the little girl in the stomach, as I understand it,” says the sergeant. “The father could have chosen to press charges, but he didn’t. The whole thing will be in the police report. The little girl is talking to the social worker right now, as a matter of fact. We don’t want to release her until we’re confident she hasn’t experienced a traumatizing level of harassment.”
Social worker. Harassment. Press charges. Police report. No.
“My son has had a difficult relationship with Tim’s daughter,” says Claire. “But it’s not entirely his fault. Sometimes Ursula has a way of manipulating a situation to make herself look like the victim.”
Claire’s experience of the last five minutes has taught her something: In a true crisis, she will always defend her child above all others. If it means abandoning Ursula or Tim she will. In a burning building the ones she’d rescue first would be her own children.
Sergeant Donohue has led her into the squad room now. There is Ursula, wearing several of the items the two of them bought at the St. James thrift shop (orange turtleneck, purple flowered shorts with red tights), sitting at a desk across from another officer, her hands folded in her lap. Her voice is deep, hushed, serious.
“I bet Pete didn’t really mean to punch me,” she is saying. “Even though he did tell me one time he was going to kill me. It was probably just a accident.”
“Has he ever assaulted you in the past, Ursula?” the officer asks her.
> “Well, not exactly,” she says, taking a slow sip of her milkshake. “Unless you count pinching. But he did make my dog die.”
Only now does Claire catch sight of Tim, standing a few feet behind Ursula listening to what she says. “Stop her!” Claire wants to scream. You know it isn’t like that. He isn’t saying anything.
“Sweetheart,” he says, catching sight of her. “It’s all going to be all right. We’ll iron this out. Pete just needs a little help right now. Same thing you’re always reminding me about Ursula. You and I both know he’s not a bad kid.”
She looks at him as if he were a stranger. For a moment she understands precisely the way Pete must have felt when he punched Ursula, because that’s what she feels like doing to Tim.
Claire expected Sam to make this all her fault but he didn’t. He just said he wishes he’d understood sooner what was going on with Pete. Clearly their son has been going through some hard times. He must be terribly unhappy to do something like this.
“I didn’t tell you, but he called me last week to say he’d like to stay with me for a while,” Sam tells her. “I told him to tough it out. I figured you’d just get mad.”
“Maybe it would be a good thing,” she tells him. She feels incredibly tired all of a sudden, and not just because of the pregnancy.
“I’m on a big framing job right now,” he says. “But as long as he doesn’t mind lots of spaghetti for dinner, he’s welcome to bunk in with me.”
Claire doesn’t want to talk about it right now. She just wants to get Pete out of here. But she isn’t fighting him, either. “Can we see our son now?” she asks the sergeant. Tim just stands there watching the two of them go. Her and Sam.
I felt it was only fair to warn you,” Vivian is saying. “Everybody wanted to know why you weren’t at last night’s board meeting naturally, and it turned out Marjorie Saunders’s daughter was over at Coconuts when this alleged incident or whatever took place yesterday. So there was no keeping Pete’s arrest from the board at that point. You know what Marjorie’s like. Then, of course, Doug Weintraub wanted to know what this could mean for the museum’s credibility with donors, that our director’s son was involved in events of this nature. I said, ‘This makes no difference whatsoever as far as I’m concerned, Doug. I’m behind Claire a thousand percent. Two thousand.’ But you know the board. Doug’s word always shakes everybody up, probably because he’s an attorney. So the question was raised whether you’d be able to provide the kind of leadership we need at this point in time.”
Where Love Goes Page 28
