Something Red

by Jennifer Gilmore

  Rachel swung her backpack to the ground, letting it sit by her ankles as she dipped her head rather ungracefully through the strap of her purse, extricating herself. “Hi there,” she said, shaking out her shiny hair and smiling at Vanessa and Sharon.

  Sharon warily wiped the corner of an eye with her third finger. “Well, hello,” she said, getting out of bed.

  “Don’t get up!” Rachel put out both hands abruptly.

  Sharon laughed. “It’s okay; we can’t lie in bed all morning, can we, kids?” She looked at Vanessa, who rolled her eyes, and for a brief moment Sharon felt robbed by this brown, pillowy creature of the tender, quiet moment the three of them had been sharing.

  “It’s getting warmer.” Sharon stood, opening the window.

  Outside, the water of the pond looked dark and heavy, as if covered by a black tarp. She could see to the other side of the quad, where kids were making their way into the dining hall, and Sharon felt relieved that the campus was finally beginning to stir. Thank God we are no longer alone, she thought as she wiped her hands on her jeans.

  She reached out to take the young woman’s hand. “You must be Rachel.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Goldstein.” Rachel shook her hand eagerly in both of hers.

  Sharon felt a shock, then the cold hardware of many rings against the bones of her own fingers.

  Rachel let out a little gasp. “Oh! Did you feel that?”

  “I did.” Sharon looked down and shook her hand. “I absolutely did.”

  “So nice to meet you,” Rachel said. She had a gorgeous smile.

  “Hi, Rachel.” Vanessa, sitting cross-legged on the bed, feebly waved a hand.

  “Hey,” Rachel said lightly. Then she looked over at Benji. “Hey,” she said to him, the letters on her chest rising and falling with each deep breath.

  He smiled. “Where are you going?” He pointed to her backpack.

  “You mean where are we going,” she said, clearly unfazed by the presence of his mother.

  Sharon watched Benjamin, a bemused look creeping over his face as he looked at this Rachel.

  “Okay.” He grinned at her, sitting down on his bed. “Where are we going, then?”

  “Well, the way I see it is like this.” Rachel placed her hands on her hips, swiveling around to face Sharon and Vanessa, as if they too would be included in her plan. “Getting the big project done for Schwartz was such a volcanic load off for you. I say we head out a few days early and go to the Baltimore shows before New Jersey.”

  As Rachel spoke, Sharon continued to stand by the window, her mouth slightly open. She thought of Tatiana, her delicate white wrists circled by cuffs. Rachel seemed so convincing, Sharon thought. Such a solid person. In build, yes, this was true, that sure was some bosom, but she could tell this woman would be difficult to say no to. Benji leaned back on his elbows and picked at the comforter with the tips of his fingers, watching her.

  “My bag’s in the car. Did you bring my stuff in, Mom?” Vanessa looked over by the door where Sharon had dropped her overnight bag.

  “Hold on,” Sharon said, dismissing her, waiting to see what Ben would do next. Then she turned slowly to face Vanessa. “Daddy’s got the car.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Vanessa said, leaning against the wall. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “Oh, what’s the big deal, Vanessa?” Sharon said, ignoring the language. “We’re going home soon anyway, you can just put on what you wore yesterday.”

  Benji sucked on his lower lip and stretched his eyes wide, blinking them purposefully at Vanessa. He turned to Rachel. “You know what? That sounds great.” He got up and went to his desk, where he picked up his jeans from the chair and pulled them on. He started flinging shirts and socks and underwear onto the bed from his bureau, not altering his rhythm in the least as he threw a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants at Vanessa, who let each one hit her in the face and slide onto the bed.

  Rachel clapped her hands. “Yaay! Yippee!” She went to the closet Ben and Arnie shared and knelt down, her white underpants and the crack of her exposed round bottom appearing above the top of her jeans. She fished out a backpack, which Sharon noticed beneath the tears and patches and bleeds of blue ink to be the same red L.L.Bean backpack she’d ordered for him his sophomore year of high school.

  “So we’re just going to forget school, then?” Sharon crossed her arms. “Is that it?”

  “For a week we are,” Benji said. “For a week or ten days we are, yes.”

  “Ummm.” Sharon tapped her bare foot on the carpet. “Are you forgetting I’m your mother? That Dad and I are paying for this school, which is not exactly cheap? Oh, and did you forget that I’m standing right here?”

  Rachel went over to her. “Gosh, I’m so sorry.” Rachel reached out to touch Sharon’s shoulder. “I thought Benji had told you about our plans. It’s only a few days extra. And classes are winding down before spring break anyhow. You must think I’m a terrible influence!”

  Sharon let her head drop to one side and raised her eyebrows.

  Benji took the clothes from his bed and began shoving them into the backpack. “She’s a good influence, Mom. The best!” He laughed. “Actually, she really is.” Benji was terribly relieved that she had come. He forgave her, he forgave her, he forgave her! And he hoped that her showing up meant that he too was exonerated.

  “Okay, Mrs. Goldstein?”

  Ecch, she couldn’t stand this girl. Okay? What about breakfast! We need breakfast. A good one, that is, with nutritional value. Remember, Ben? She’d wanted to reach out to him and make him remember all those cold mornings she had stood over the stove because he had a game out of county, before Rachel had even been a thought. And what of the time together we haven’t yet spent? The weekend had been spectacularly different from what she’d planned, but she knew there was no getting it back. And she also knew that none of that was this rather presumptuous young woman’s fault.

  “What can I say? My son’s an adult.” My son, my son, my son, Sharon thought. She remembered holding him above the ocean at Rehoboth, and swinging him high into the air as the waves came in.

  “Well, good, because you’re never going to believe this, Benji. Gerald and Anthony are in town! Anthony’s girlfriend, Penelope, is a senior, and they’re coming over from western Mass.—remember how they were doing their own farming?—to get her and then head down to Baltimore. They called to see if we wanted to go! Well, they called Schaeffer, actually.”

  Benji stopped for a moment, then continued stuffing his backpack.

  “We’re meeting them in an hour in the Rosenthal lot. They told Schaeff there’s plenty of room for us on the bus.”

  “Wait,” Sharon said, the memory of Benjamin flying above the sea, screaming with unadulterated joy, fading. “There’s a bus going to Baltimore?” You know what? She would just tell her children later. Or, no, she wouldn’t. Let Dennis do it. Why shouldn’t Dennis bear the responsibility of such news? Perhaps, she thought fleetingly, this wasn’t even real.

  “It’s not really a bus, Mom.” Benji pulled on a bright blue T-shirt with a peace sign emblazoned on the front. “I mean, it’s not an actual bus.”

  “Yes, it is,” Rachel said. “It’s absolutely an actual bus, only it’s free.”

  “We need to get a ride back too.” Sharon shrugged, shaking off the burden of making a plan that would get Vanessa and her home. “Can we come too?”

  “On the hippie bus?” Vanessa slammed back against the headboard. “Mom!”

  Rachel giggled. “Oh my God, of course! Wait.” She turned to Sharon. “Let’s all go to the show together!”

  Vanessa sliced the air with the side of her hand. “No! No! We’re going to Washington.” She pressed her hand to her head. “Where we live,” she hissed. “Where I have school.”

  “Yeah,” Benji said. “They need to get home. Mom, I can get you to the train station real easy.” He looked purposefully at Rachel, even stamping his bare foot a bit.

/>   “What, Benji?” Rachel said. “It’ll be cool.”

  “Yes, it will,” Sharon said, warming to this Rachel. “Why shouldn’t we just jump on the bus with you guys?” It sounded fun, though she was also pleased to be torturing her children a little.

  “Absolutely! Come with us, and then, who knows, you two might change your minds,” Rachel teased, leaning toward Vanessa. “You might just catch the bug.”

  Vanessa pulled on Benji’s sweatpants. CIA, they said in white at the right hip, a gift from their father. These sweats were coveted—it was apparently difficult for civilians to get genuine CIA gear.

  “Where are your clothes?” Sharon asked.

  Vanessa shrugged. “I just feel like wearing something comfortable.” She pictured a busload of Deadheads, smelling of patchouli or, worse, BO, the seats covered in bong water and general freak grime, and was glad to be wearing her brother’s soft, worn sweats, clothing that did not define her.

  Sharon looked at Rachel’s chest—I Need a Miracle!—and felt her shoulders slacken a bit. I do, she thought. We all do. Because a miracle is the only possibility here.

  Dennis hadn’t known, he’d promised her. She needed to be assured that they were on the same side. But, he’d said, and Sharon’s heart had stopped, I can see it now. Once Tatiana went with him to the office. Tatiana and Sigmund had been visiting—and she and Dennis and the kids were going ice-skating on the Mall. Sharon remembered it because she’d been so annoyed. She’d been browning beef for stew and Sigmund was reading the paper in the living room, and they’d all sort of trundled downstairs and into their jackets and said they were heading into town.

  What about me? Sharon had wondered as they all left her to cook dinner and tend to her father-in-law.

  I don’t remember why I left the office with the kids, Dennis said, the heel of his hand at his forehead, as if he were really truly stumped by it. They were teenagers by then, but when we came back in, Mother had a little Minox camera in both hands. He had made a square with four fingers. The kids didn’t see it. I know because I asked them later and they said they hadn’t seen a thing, that they hadn’t seen Mother slip the camera into the pocket of her coat when we walked in. You know, that hideous camel-hair coat, the one she always cinched so tight. They hadn’t seen this, so I thought I was imagining it. I had thought, I am a terrible son, to think my mother is stealing documents from me. I am falling prey to the notion that the Soviets are out to get us. I thought, This isn’t me. I’ve been working for the U.S. government too long. This was my mother; I couldn’t even tell you. He had wiped his nose and turned away from Sharon when he said this. But then it turned out to be true, Dennis had said. Didn’t it? He turned to face her. So of course this must mean I have a terrible mother.

  Sharon knew she should have reached out and touched him, even the lightest graze of his wrist, but she did not. She thought of Ethel Rosenberg—why hadn’t that woman spoken up after they’d killed her husband? She had a moment when she could have saved herself. Her husband was already dead; he would hardly have known. Had she no concern for her children? It seemed to Sharon, she’d need only have whispered a word and she would have been released. But what then would her children have thought? Because now they believed she was a hero. Still her children were on the news, fighting for their parents’ innocence. Perhaps, Sharon thought, Ethel Rosenberg had also been looking for a miracle. It was the very opposite of a LEAP!ism, but maybe we all have been searching for miracles, Sharon thought, only we’ve just been calling them wishes. Or prayers.

  “I like this expression.” Sharon ran her index finger along her own chest. “It’s what we all need, you know? Every day.”

  Rachel looked down at herself, pulling the cotton fabric out from her stomach to reveal a pleasantly round belly. “Oh, this?” She laughed, a little embarrassed. “It’s a Dead song. And it just means I need a ticket,” she said. “But let me tell you, Mrs. Goldstein, the Grateful Dead is the biggest miracle of all.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The Bus

  “Wild!” Sharon exclaimed when the bus pulled into the dorm parking lot. “Vanessa, look!”

  Vanessa closed her eyes and wished that she could keep them closed until this hateful day was over.

  “Isn’t it ferocious, Mrs. G?” Schaeffer, who had just come running out of his building, limbs flailing, said.

  “Mrs. G?” Benji said. “And good morning to you, Schaeff.”

  “I think it’s great,” Sharon responded, breathing in the warming air as she waited for the bus to stop. “You must be Schaeffer.”

  “In the flesh. And fair morning to you all.”

  Benji rolled his eyes.

  “Absolutely! You guys should join us for the shows,” Schaeffer said, looking over at Vanessa.

  She looked straight ahead at the bus. “I can’t speak for my mother, but I’m going home.” Vanessa saw Schaeffer without all his freak accessories—the stupid hat, the rainbow tie-dye, the dirty bare feet—as he was last night, and she felt a pang of affection for him, the smooth skin of his shoulder at her mouth, the way he held on to her so tightly.

  It was a small school bus—what as kids they’d referred to as the short bus, Vanessa noted, though the orange of the surface had been completely painted over with all the dirty clichés of hippiedom. It was covered with multicolored rainbows and waterfalls, and naked girls with flowering crowns, their hair streaming out into swirls of colors. Doves carried messages of peace in their brightly colored beaks, and ladybugs and butterflies crawled and flew over a backdrop of tropical trees and bright bursting suns and stars. Yin-and-yang symbols, peace signs, and a psychedelically rendered American flag appeared randomly throughout the lush portrait, and in huge bubble letters, the word LOVE arced over the windows. A sign hung over the large windshield. FARM, it stated in green print, stalks of corn and sunflowers peeking out from behind the letters and at the four corners.

  Hippie vomit, Vanessa thought, laughing for a moment at how vicious she felt about it. But Sharon had never seen anything like it. It’s just perfect, she thought as Anthony, the planetary-science MIT-grad-turned-organic-soybean-farmer, opened the doors from the driver’s seat. Music and the smell of incense and sandalwood and pot spilled out.

  “Climb on!” Anthony said, grinning widely. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his stiff hair hung just below his shoulders.

  This, Sharon thought, gathering up her bags and following Schaeffer up the steps, was what I meant all along.

  Vanessa took a deep breath—she hated the smell of patchouli; it was heavy and overly sweet and, worst of all, contagious—and followed her mother onto the bus.

  “Isn’t this just fantastic, honey?” Sharon walked toward the back of the bus. “They have everything they need, right here. A kitchen! On the bus!” She grinned crazily at Vanessa.

  When Vanessa reached the top step, she saw a few kids already on the bus: a girl with two long, brown braids and a flowing dress who was wiping down the sink, and three guys, one of whom reached out behind Vanessa and gave Rachel a huge hug.

  “Hey, Rayche, man, how’s it hanging?”

  “Great. Just great! Hey, so, this is Benji’s little sister, Vanessa.” Rachel pulled on Vanessa’s sweatshirt a bit. “And that’s Sharon, his mom.”

  “Hello,” Sharon and Vanessa both said.

  “This is Gerald,” Rachel said. “And Roy, right? That’s Roy.” She pointed to a young man seated in the front wearing a macramé beret, who was whittling a small block of wood into a sailboat.

  “Welcome!” Gerald said, looking up from his work.

  “Hey, where’s Sarah?” Benji asked about their companion from the fall.

  “She ended up hitching out West not long after we saw you guys this fall. She’s living in a tepee outside of Santa Fe, with her boyfriend, Chunta, that Native American guy who was always grilling all that pre-show corn?”

  Sharon thought of Elias hitchhiking out West and camping out with an Indian woman
along the banks of the Rio Grande. A long time ago, that could have been she.

  “Yeah, I remember him,” Benji said. “I’m sure it is amazing out there. Wow.”

  “This is Penelope,” Gerald said, pointing to the girl with the braids, who turned around, revealing a swollen belly. “She and Anthony are going to have a baby!”

  “Whoopee!” Anthony said, turning the massive bus wheel and guiding them out of the lot.

  “I’d say,” Roy said. “A lot of it.”

  “Don’t I know it!” Anthony said, turning up the tape deck strapped to the dashboard. “Off we go!”

  Someone hit the tape deck: I lit out from Reno, I was trailed by twenty hounds. Didn’t get to sleep that night till the morning came around.

  “How far along are you?” Sharon asked, grabbing a seat for balance.

  Penelope rubbed her belly in a gesture of confirmation. “Early June.”

  “Ah, a Gemini then. I have one of those.” Sharon smiled at the girl, then brushed Vanessa’s hair out of her face.

  Vanessa reflexively jerked her head away.

  “How cool is that! A baby!” Rachel, said and Vanessa turned then to see Schaeffer, the first to board, seated in the last row.

  Sharon turned back, nearly knocking into Vanessa. “Don’t you get any ideas!” she said to Benji, but it came out more to Rachel. Vanessa noticed a slight mania to her mother’s laugh that indicated she might not be quite as comfortable on this bus as she wanted everyone to believe. “Please, God,” Sharon said again, sliding into the next seat. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  “Hey, Vanessa!” Schaeffer called out from the last row. “Come sit back here with me!” He patted the seat next to him.

  “Hey,” he said as she slid in next to him.

  “Hi, guys!” Sharon turned to face Vanessa and Schaeffer. “Isn’t this wild?” she said, but the cast was softer, tinged with the nearly undetectable note of fear.

  Vanessa tilted her head back.

  Schaeffer reached out and massaged her neck. “You sore? Sometimes the acid gets me in the spine.”