They were all alone, just Roy and Esther and the crew. What do I know about anything. Roy sat down, crossed his legs, took her hand. Thank you, he said. For what? I’m just getting to that. But then he was distracted by a lump floating in the water. A log? A body? Roy suddenly had everyone on board, Esther, Captain Peeko, Dirk, leaning over the rail shouting out what they could see, pointing flashlights and yelling. Darkness and a ripple and a long familiar shape, something like a water ski, floating away from them, that’s what she could see. And Esther never got to say: Roy, you’re very welcome. What else could I have done.
A lot of people wanted to know why they weren’t married. It was on the tips of many tongues. And when she looked at all these men, these prosecutors, up front, huddling around like tired football players, drained like they had no blood left, Roy stood out. Nice hair, nice tan, nice hands that could be counted on to stay where they belonged. What more could she want, really? But deep inside she worried about some things, things she couldn’t safely discuss with anyone. Even her mother had mentioned a word or two about Dora Cohn’s little Roy. Esther should have been paying attention. Now her mother was dead and Esther had Muddy all to herself.
You owe her, Sylvia Kinder had said to her daughter, and Muddy certainly acted that way, but for the life of her, Esther didn’t know why. A little information her mother took to her grave. Esther asked Roy. She tiptoed around it: I have this feeling, I get this sense.
You and your feelings, he said.
But this one, this is something that happened.
We all owe Muddy. What can I say.
He was no help whatsoever. Muddy let Esther hang around, she’d known her mother after all. But she made it obvious that Esther wasn’t what she had in mind for her Roy, Esther was marked in some way. And this was frustrating. You’ve got love, affection, a lifelong friendship, you have the roots and the background, the attraction to the nice things about a man, the fine shape of his hands, the back of his neck, the blue in his eyes, even when sunburned, even shot red from the sun. You like all these things and are willing to provide a son. Think, with all your brothers, you’ve got to be loaded with boys. Esther felt she could have a dozen sons. And in this Roy was interested, when he could pay attention. But with the trials, now two, when one was hard enough, a burden, a nuisance, an assault on any kind of tenderness. And then Muddy with her nose that always seemed to smell something a little off when Esther was around, would point out the new hand soaps, for godsakes, it was a miracle they were still friends. Well, a lot of things were miracles.
Roy turned around and gave her a wink. He was adorable. Just like that, he cleared the air, made a promise. Okay. She had fingers crossed, toes, legs, they’d get out of here, he’d be declared innocent, and then the rest would be history. Esther twisted her ankles closer and hugged her huge black bag. This jury was taking a dog’s age.
This business with Muddy. There was an odd day when Esther was a very small girl and her brothers were all in school, but she wasn’t, for no particular reason that she could recall. What she could remember, right there, Roy’s hair the same dark shiny brown, smoothed back like a helmet away from his face. Such a beautiful face. Esther’s mother, a tall woman, a woman of grace, her father said. Imagine all those sons passed through those narrow hips, her aunts whispered; Esther watched her mother’s surprising hips slip down into Mrs. Cohn’s deep green silk brocade chair. She barely made a dent in the cushion. Esther thought of her own hips, little pins and sharp bones.
Her mother had a look on her face that made Esther want to go home. Mrs. Cohn was very small, big dark eyebrows quivered on her forehead like black moths, her mouth a serving-spoon shape, flat across, turned-down edges. Between us, she said to Esther’s mother, I know these things, in my own family, my own brother had such problems. There are places she can go. And Esther with the sharp bones knew Mrs. Cohn meant her. Mrs. Cohn nodded at Esther. Send her into the kitchen, she said, as if Sylvia Kinder needed special words to speak to her daughter. Words that Dora Cohn, with all her family experience, didn’t know. Into the kitchen, precious, her mother said. Esther left the room to show she knew how to listen.
But she had no desire for the kitchen where an unhappy woman sat on a low stool polishing silver with a torn shirt. Esther looked through the door at the long, sad face. From the sitting room, she could hear her mother crying now. She went away from that sound too, down the hallway, through the special door to the area off limits to guests, the bedchambers of the family, to Roy’s room, where the door was closed. She did not knock, merely twisted the knob, and inside, as she knew he would be, was the boy, as beautiful as he was today, his pajamas buttoned up, his feet in slippers, even on the bed. No books, no toys, nothing on the bed but him, he was watching her. She asked him if he was sick. He shook his head without lifting it from the pillow. She asked him what he was doing here all by himself on a sunny day. He said: Thinking. I’m thinking. And she felt safe. Everything would be fine. Even if her mother was crying.
She still felt that way. Now when she saw Roy was thinking, staring ahead, not giving anyone any heat, she felt safe, because his mind worked in ways hers did not, and hers worked in ways his did not, and that was a good thing. So why weren’t they married? Time would tell. Already they were like inhale and exhale, weren’t they?
You’d have expected a band or something, a little fanfare. But when it happened, everything went very fast and dry, like a rehearsal for a school play, a cast without talent. The members of the jury shuffled in, looking tired and unkempt. Roy tried not to look but could not help himself. No one looked back, a very bad sign, he said later on the steps outside the courthouse to a crowd of reporters all taking down notes. The whole jury, every single one of them, looked like they could use a vacation. Esther hoped the summer wasn’t over for them. And then there was the back-and-forth walk, not a fraction of grace or hope from the bailiff. The judge coughed. He read the slip of paper without his glasses. The judge looked at no one but the bailiff. Another bad sign, Roy said later. And then the jury foreman stood, Esther didn’t hear anyone say it was time. He read out the verdict like he’d lost interest in the whole damn thing. There was an indication in barely audible terms that yes, Roy was acquitted of all charges. When Esther understood for certain, she felt that thrill in her body, and she thought of him with his beautiful brown hair, and the boys they would have, and she would teach them how to sail, or find someone who could. While right away the prosecutors packed their briefcases and looked like men on an ordinary day when the office is hot and no one is happy, Roy put his head down and whispered something to Frank, who had his head bowed too. And when the reporters asked him later what he had said, what he had whispered, what were his very first words when he knew that he was a free man? Roy replied, God bless America.
July 19
Lou-Lou didn’t like Andrew Maguire’s bedroom, though Gert made a big deal about Lou-Lou sleeping there, sending Andrew to bunk with his younger brothers, Toby and Nathaniel. Gert wanted to save the guest room for adults. It was an all-lavender room with bed skirts and, in Lou-Lou’s experience, untouched like the Virgin. From Andrew’s stone-hard green plaid bed, Lou-Lou could see her stuff, all tangled up together under Andrew’s desk chair. Lou-Lou liked to keep things concentrated here. Unlike home, where her mother was always on Lou-Lou to rein it in. Like Bo. Bo’s room was a tight ship, her mother said. A place for everything; everything in its place. Here at the Maguires’, Lou-Lou applied a related concept: Everything in the same place. Always in a place she could grab it all and go.
Gert didn’t know this about her oldest son, but he was a pervert, that’s what the Sullivan twins said. The Sullivan twins told Timmy Mooney they caught Andrew Maguire in the un-remodeled ladies’ room at the beach club. The twins saw Andrew in the last stall, the one with the big cracks in the wainscoting, whispering really loud, Can you see anything? They never found out who he was talking to, but whoever it was didn’t see much after tha
t. No one went into the unremodeled bathroom now, except the mothers.
Andrew was the one who kept the fort down by the water. Lou-Lou was invited on a provisional basis, and then only allowed in the quarantine lean-to section with the dirt floor. The true club had a triangle patch of orange indoor-outdoor carpet. The two sides, quarantine and true, were divided by a beach towel. The walls of the fort were made of plywood, warped and buckled by rain. Through the wide cracks, the grass, trees, and water were visible. Inside Lou-Lou’s part the floor was sticky and damp. When she sat, dirt caked onto her stretch pants.
Lou-Lou stamped on her floor to make it harder. Andrew opened the flap and said Lou-Lou had to leave now for good unless she wanted to come into his side and relax. Those were the choices. Lou-Lou saw a flush in his cheeks and around his eyes, like he couldn’t make himself stop laughing, but he was not laughing. He lifted the flap until it was horizontal. Above the elastic of his surfer bathing suit, Andrew had his equipment out for an airing. Lou-Lou looked at the little brown nozzle, then looked up. Are you going to relax or what? Andrew asked.
Lou-Lou wasn’t sure what he meant and patted down the damp dirt in a flower pattern of handprints. Her palms were brown with mud. I might relax, she said.
Well, then you should come in here. Wait. Look at this. He had some art papers stuck under the carpet. Andrew wasn’t much of an artist, but he wanted her to see and held one up in front of his chest as if the nozzle weren’t there. Can you do that? Andrew had drawn a picture of a fat girl naked, bending backward, standing on her feet and her hands. He made her breasts point up like a single rocket. You think you can do that?
Lou-Lou thought she could do that. Sure, she said. She had to start on her back, then put her feet and hands flat first and push her stomach up. She lay down on the dirt.
No, I mean naked. Can you do it naked, because it’s more relaxing that way.
Lou-Lou considered this. She thought about how she would be different from the drawing. There were many people she knew who would have opinions on this idea, but she couldn’t remember them. Something in Andrew’s breathing close by, holding up his paper, the closeness of his naked thing, was sort of relaxing. Fine, she said. She unbuckled the strap on her sandal.
Andrew let the beach-towel flap drop. When he pulled it up again, his bathing suit was gone. His thing stuck sideways and up, the nozzle was dark pink now, and his brown pouch had a coat of white dust on it. Maybe baby powder. Andrew had a smell like a pizza. Lou-Lou held on to her sandal. Hurry up, Andrew said.
Lou-Lou worked the sandal off the other foot. She pulled off her shorts and underpants. Her pink sleeveless mock turtleneck was a little tight and got stuck going up over her head. Ouch, Lou-Lou said, get me out of here. Andrew threw a small dirt-bomb at her. It disintegrated and tickled her bare belly. She laughed, then he threw another that smacked her chest. Lou-Lou held still, she must be making some mistake, then another dirt-bomb hit her on the arm. She could hear Andrew panting for breath, and she kicked out a kind of fan kick, an exploratory kick, wide and slow in the direction of his breathing, and felt his weird powdered pouch with her toes. Gross, she said, and tried to pull her turtleneck back down so she could see. You killed me, screamed Andrew, you’re trying to kill me. And he threw something hard at her, like a rock. Lou-Lou grabbed for her clothes, scrambled out of the fort, and ran up through the yard, bare-bottomed, and blindfolded by her mock turtleneck.
Andrew yelled after her, Get out, get out. He threw another dirt-bomb, which missed, but she heard it land. Lou-Lou hurled back her sandal, which was a mistake, now she’d have to sneak back down later to get it. She ran almost all the way to the house before she stopped, stepped into a forsythia bush, and yanked her mock turtleneck back down off her face. She looked out to see if anyone was around. Only the Ruddys’ handyman, riding a mower in the opposite direction. Lou-Lou put her underpants and her shorts back on. Her belly had a round brown dirt mark, but her chest was cut, a tiny crescent scratch. The blood formed a small blotch now like a red Jujube on her mock turtleneck. When her mother came home, she would kill Lou-Lou for messing up her good clothes again. In the meantime, Lou-Lou would roll it up in her ball of stuff, and Gert would never see anything.
At dinner that night, Red Maguire was silent. Reflective, Gert called it, and the boys were in no mood to talk either. Gert smoked and sipped her Tom Collins, and barely touched the American chop suey or the iceberg lettuce with Russian dressing. As soon as Bonanza started, the boys were excused from the table to go watch with their father in the den. It was a ritual to watch the show about the Wild West father raising three sons, each apparently born from a different mother. All the mothers were dead and gone now. Let ’em fantasize, Gert said. She didn’t get up to scrape the dishes, she lit another Winston instead. Listen, porky pie, I have a bone to pick with you.
Lou-Lou gave Gert her full attention, as Gert so often asked her to do.
Gert stubbed out her new Winston. She reached into the deep pocket of her lime-green capri pants and pulled out some white lollipop cotton panties from her pocket. Look familiar?
Yes, Lou-Lou said, they’re mine. It was the only kind she wore, and pretty much the only color.
I thought we talked about this.
Lou-Lou was confused but at the same time not. From the serious expression in Gert’s eyes, Lou-Lou had an idea of the subject, if not the cause. When she first started staying at Gert’s, Lou-Lou made the mistake of going into the den during Bonanza and curling up on the sofa, right beside Andrew, so her body was touching his, much like she did with Bo when he was home. Gert happened to perch in the doorway for a second, saw Lou-Lou, and lifted her by the arm off the sofa and right out of the room. You’re not pulling any of that kind of stuff here, madame. You can just forget about that.
But Gert didn’t forget. The next time Lou-Lou’s mother was home, she was very serious with Lou-Lou, just as Gert was now, serious about not letting boys touch her, ever.
Maybe you can give me a clue about how these turned up in Andrew’s pajamas.
Lou-Lou felt very sad, because she didn’t know. And that was an answer Gert generally didn’t accept.
I think I deserve better than this from you, Lou-Lou. I think this whole family deserves better than this from you. Maybe you should get an early night. What do you say?
Lou-Lou looked up at the kitchen clock. It was six-twenty-five. Outside, it was still completely daytime.
Extra sleep never hurt anyone. I think this is for your mother to handle. Gert lit another cigarette. Exhaled a wide, flat ray of smoke. She picked up her drink, jiggled the ice. Yes, I’m going to pass on this. It’s better that way. You go to bed now.
Lou-Lou stood up. The Bonanza theme was pounding out. She could hear Andrew giggle and say Shut up. Gert took a long thoughtful drag.
All right. I just want to say one thing. Maybe, just until your mother comes home, until she can talk to you, maybe you should just steer clear of the boys. Don’t even talk to them. Okay, peanut? I think there’s a little mix-up happening, and until it gets straightened out, that just seems the best solution. Do you think you can handle that?
I think so. Steer clear of the boys. You mean Andrew, Toby, and Nathaniel?
Right. Just pretend you don’t even see them, leave them alone. Who needs ’em anyway. Right? It’s better for everyone.
Okay.
Good. Good. Sweet dreams, now. Good night, lamb. Gert stroked Lou-Lou’s cheek with her knuckles. Her hand smelled like smoke and lettuce.
In bed, in Andrew’s room, even with the curtains closed, it was so bright, Lou-Lou could see all of her things perfectly. It didn’t look like anything had been touched. It was a mystery, then, how her lollipops got into Andrew’s pajamas. Maybe he bought a different pair for himself with his allowance. The sun made a milky line cutting through the curtain right down the center of the bed, right over her face, cutting her face in two. Always an asset wherever she goes, Mrs. Westerfield said, a
young lady should be an asset, all the time.
Across the creek, that little girl from the house of woe was probably already in bed too. Lou-Lou put her hands over her own heart to determine how she was feeling. Better! it turned out. Much better. And Bo? Lou-Lou put her hands on her head, over her eyes. No headache. Bo was sleeping. Feeling okay. And Rufus? Her feet kicked away the stupid plaid blanket. Rufus was running hard, even in sunlight. Timmy was blowing smoke rings like hula hoops. And her father? He was sleeping, just like Bo. And her mother? Her mother was dancing. Singing and dancing, and twirling around in a beautiful pink dress, more beautiful than even Merrill had ever worn. And when her mother saw Lou-Lou? Even though Lou-Lou was wearing the ugly cowgirl pajamas that her grandmother had given her, even so, Kay stopped dancing, stopped singing. Tears of happiness dropped on both cheeks. Lou-Lou started running to her, running like a speed demon. Kay bent down to catch Lou-Lou, lifted her up, held her deep and strong. Her mother’s neck smelled of warm pancakes. Lou-Lou tucked her face there and she listened hard when her mother whispered, You, my love, only you. Always.
July 23
Kay edged back into the orange vinyl seat, propped her elbow on the wood veneer armrest, and sank her cheek into her gloved fist. She leaned down and tried to rub the gray city ash off her white sandals through the plastic bag. She looked up to watch her son watch a television bolted into the wall. Long days of chemotherapy, three of radiation, the bone marrow transplant, which wasn’t so bad in itself, and the aftermath, everyone suited up like they were in outer space, and here he was laughing at the Stooges so hard his eyes were tearing. Bo looked at her to see if she was laughing too. She grinned hugely behind her mask, and when he looked away, she watched him settle his round face back into the pillows. She watched to see if he had any trouble doing that.
Wavemaker II Page 17
