by Patti Abbott
“You told me the old lady was out of town for the holiday. You too dumb to know when Memorial Day is?”
“Used to be the 31st.”
“Like a million years ago.”
He sighed, and she saw that some the anger had gone out of him. The baby was the color of coffee with milk, she realized, drawn again to the photograph on the table. Why hadn't she noticed it? Both the blonde and the other kid seemed so white that she never gave the baby’s father a thought.
"What’re you gonna do?"
"That's what I gotta decide. At least the cops can't think I was in on it. I was still inside when you snatched her."
"You coulda helped me plan it though.”
“What’s my motive?” He shook his head. “You’ve got to be the dumbest little….”
Seeing the dangerous expression on his face, she added. "Well, you just had to see her, didn’t you? You kept bugging me!" She jiggled the baby again. "Did you tell your ... Ronnie… about it? About Madeline?"
"She'd freak if she knew you had my kid." He grimaced. "Of course, you didn't have it, did you?"
"No."
Madeline was squirming and she put her down on the floor. "I hated tagging that rotten merchandise for my brother, Charlie. Have to crawl around in his lousy warehouse getting dirty every day of your life. Listening to his stories. With just a little money, I could do things.” She tried to wipe the whine out of her voice, but it stuck.
Charlie turned away, the chair legs scraping noisily against the linoleum. "Don't even let me look at her," he said, softly. "It hurts after all these months of thinking.... Don’t know why I don’t bust your face wide open."
"So what should I do?" Melissa asked. She watched the baby hike herself up. The kid missed hitting her head on the table's bottom by inches.
"Guess the only thing's for you to take off," he finally said. "Nobody knows you're up here, right? Just take the kid and scram. Be glad I can't do nothing about it. Can't get a dime of my money back either! What does it come to anyway?" He didn't seem to expect an answer and she didn’t give one.
"Where should I go? You gotta help me figure it out. Should I drop her off somewhere?"
"I don't know," he said, throwing his hands up. "What did you think would happen? "
"She's not an infant, you know," Melissa said, ignoring his question. "I can't just set her down on some hospital steps in a basket. She could crawl—”
He grimaced, and then repeated himself. "Melissa, whaddya think would happen when you brought the kid up here. You must of had some plan. Were you gonna keep her forever?" He shook his head. “Or were you just gonna dump her somewhere? After I have a few hours with her and write you another fat check. I can’t bring a black baby home.”
“Why do you stay with the bitch then?” Melissa looked at the baby. Sierra. She’d located her discarded bottle between the cushions in the sofa and was drinking it, the bottle held at a cocky angle, her large, olive eyes on Melissa. When she saw Melissa's eyes on her, she held the bottle out, offering her a drink. Her unsnapped, overalled legs were wet, the exposed skin mauve from the cold and damp, but it didn't seem to bother her. She was the right kid to pick for a place like this, for a pair like them.
"Where’s her shoes?" Melissa asked. "Her feet are black from this filthy floor and it's freezing in here." She wrapped her arms around herself but didn't move.
"Now there's something to worry about," Charlie said, shaking his head. But he looked under the sofa anyway, coming up with the missing sneakers. Melissa watched silently as he walked over to Sierra and put her shoes on, tying each one with a double knot, the baby's feet small in his hands.
“Gotta pee. Then we’ll figure it out.” He stood up, patting the baby's head instinctively before going into the bathroom. Seeing the baby watching him, he waved, and then shut the door.
But she had figured it out. Melissa grabbed her coat, thinking only of the ten feet separating her from the door.
"Mamamama," Madeline rose, holding up her arms and teetering a bit.
"No can do, kiddo," Melissa said, putting a finger to her lips. "But Daddy’ll take care of you. He’s an old softy." She eased out the door, slipping a little on the icy top step. Then she was off, down the street before the baby's cries could bring Charlie out of the bathroom.
At the end of the block, she nearly tripped over a Christmas tree that had already been put out as trash. Its looping necklace of brown needles looked almost festive as she leaped over it. The Fiesta started on the first turn of the key and she was blocks away before she let go of her breath.
RE: UNIVERSITY PROTOCOL ON INCIDENTS OF STUDENT PLAGIARIZING
Dear Dr. Goodman:
I know you've told me I must not email you again, and that you won't, in fact, open emails bearing my name. And, if you happen to open one and discover it's from me, you'll immediately delete it. Your snippy departmental secretary also informed me that you've opened a new email account and access is off-limits to mail from student email addresses. How do you expect me to get a hold of you?
By chance, I came across your blog today on a google search for badminton sets. Who would have guessed you'd choose the name “Badman” for your blog? It is you, isn't it? Although the sexual references in your posts initially threw me off, I eventually recognized your list of "favorites." You do talk about Godard films a lot in class, and I know your favorite composer is Arvo Part. His music was often playing during your office hours before I was forbidden attendance. Yes, the Arvo Part references really gave it away.
I couldn't resist using the comment portion on your blog to remind you that I didn't plagiarize my paper. I know you found a somewhat similar essay on the Internet using your sophisticated spy software, but my occasional use of the essat, "Women Who Lie in Bed in the Literature of Dickens" by Gavin Brighton was strictly an homage. In case, you are unfamiliar with the literary term, please consult Wikipedia).
Another thing to keep in mind is I'm not an English major, Dr. Goodman. For eighteen years, my mother placed increasingly difficult words on my pillow in preparation for the SATs so please don't hold my facility with language against me and say I can do better.
I'm only enrolled in your course to fulfill my humanities requirement. To expect me to meet standards designed for English majors is unfair. In case you've forgotten, I am majoring in Phys. Ed. I can wrap my legs around my neck. I would be glad to demonstrate this during your next office hours if you will just send that security guard away. I think you've witnessed my agility in class. (I am referring to the unfortunate incident that led to student complaints about the inadvertent display of my genitalia).
Dear Dr. Goodman:
Removing my comments from your blog doesn't mean you didn't read them. A brief response to what extra credit I could undertake to raise my grade is not much to ask. I am hoping to enter medical school in 2010 and need a 4.0 to assure admittance.
Another point to consider: there's a distinct possibility my participation in the vault and floor exercise will enable Team U.S.A. to defeat the Russians in the 2012 Olympics. A blemish on my record might prohibit this. I know you don't want to act unpatriotically, thus playing into the hands of international terrorists and the Romanian team.
P.S. You get some very unusual comments on your blog, Dr. Goodman. I wonder if Mrs. Goodman ever reads it.
Dear Dr. Goodman,
I came to your office hours on Monday, but again you were absent. The security guard, Moe Albani, and I had an interesting conversation about what constitutes temporary insanity. We agreed it differed from state to state, but certain aspects remain constant.
I must remind you that the precise time of your office hours was on the syllabus you handed out in September. This document functions as a contractual obligation. I had a new paper on hand to replace the one you insist is plagiarized. And although Moe Albani and I had shared our innermost thoughts on insanity minutes earlier, he stubbornly insisted I must hand the paper to you directly. S
tanding outside your office has definitely soured him and I am not so sure that we will remain friends.
Dear Dr. Goodman:
I think it's unfair of you to appeal to readers of your blog to come to your defense. Pasting my paper there was unprofessional. There must be university regulations on student privacy that forbids it. That comment by Molly A. was especially cruel although I do think you solicited such remarks by going on too long about my egging of your office door.
I admit my original paper for your Victorian Literature class was sophisticated for a freshman, but please remember I worked for several years at Sports Authority before beginning college. I also competed in gymnastic events across the state, possibly picking up a veneer you might not expect to find in a girl of twenty.
You're making me angry, Dr. Goodman. Am I the one who created a blog or sought a public forum for my grievances? Perhaps your chairperson would want to know how blithely you've addressed student concerns. I'm sure he/she would find your blog most interesting, “Badman. “
Dear Mrs. Goodman:
I was released from police custody today and am back in my dorm room with my beloved stuffed animals and photographs of my favorite gymnasts. Right now I am gazing at a picture of Olga Korbut and wondering if her legs were as strong as they look.
The police pathologist decided Dr. Goodman was strangled by an unknown assailant. Since my hands were badly bruised from my fall from the balance beam, it couldn't have been me. He didn't once consider the use of thighs as a weapon.
Finding your blog and its discussion of Dr. Gs favorite sexual practices was fortuitous, Mrs. Goodman, and I'm glad we became friends. Who knew my homage to an obscure (or so I thought!) paper on Dickens would bring us together?
I have filled out the paperwork to transfer to a school in Oregon noted for its gymnastics program. BTW, I see you have removed both Dr. Goodman's blog and your own from the Internet. LOL, Goodwoman!
Yours truly,
Student 146098.
SOURIS
Ben slides open his bedroom door and steps out into the California sunshine. Clamping a bony arm over his eyes, he grimaces. The pool’s blue-green water shimmers in the sunlight. He searches for the word that describes its shape: kidney. Living in Portland with his mother, he has no need for such words. His chest loosens incrementally when he sees his father and the Frenchies have disappeared. That’s what his father calls his stepmother’s family, “the Frenchies.”
They arrived last night at dinnertime. Through the window, Ben could make out a large limousine idling at the curb while the uniformed driver unloaded suitcases. Claudia hurriedly began clearing plates as Frank prepared for their imminent assault by wolfing down the last of his swordfish. It was left to Ben to answer the door, which rang with a repeated bleat till he got there.
“Bin, Bin,” a woman he’d never seen before said, pushing by him.
The room grew loud with their greetings. Claudia flew around, bestowing kisses. It was never clear, from year to year, which ones were coming—whether it might be the difficult Suzanne or the gregarious Bernard. Whether it would be the women who used up all the water in the house. Or the men who used none.
The Frenchies can never be pinned down on an arrival date either, showing up whenever the mood strikes them. It pisses Frank off that they spend the thousands of extra francs necessary to come on the spur of the moment and then don’t contribute a dime to the household coffers.
“Frunk, jou never change,” the Frenchies say when he mentions it. “Jou say the same sing every year.” The men shrug, the women exchange glances. Scarves in place, freshly perfumed, none look like they’ve just completed a twelve-hour flight. The baby’s eyes are wide with excitement.
Ben’s been in LA a week. Two days ago, he put on his swimsuit and was struck dumb by the bulges at his crotch. Parts of him have grown without his knowledge. He doesn’t dare put it on now that the Frenchies have arrived. He will claim he’s gone off swimming should they ask. Ben is endlessly amusing to the Frenchies. He particularly dreads hearing his name roll off their limber tongues. If he were Tom Ripley, he’d already be planning their deaths, plotting what means might work best on a crowd of unwanted visitors. Perhaps Ripley would pump poisonous gas into the pool.
“They’re your family now,” Claudia says if he complains. “Families tease each other.” But he can’t imagine his mother mentioning his genitals under any circumstance—joking or not. He especially can’t picture himself tunneling out of her vagina twelve years ago; would she have made way for him or crossed her legs in a fit of stubbornness?
Six Frenchies have come to spend the summer—same as Ben. Last year when the Frenchies came, Fabienne, Claudia’s daughter, and Ben drifted from room to room, untethered for the entire stay. This year, after a barrage of off-season complaints from Fabienne, the pool house has been expensively remodeled and most of the Frenchies are housed there.
Only a teenaged girl will sleep inside with Fabienne. She doesn’t speak English at all and dresses in black, an oddity in southern California. Her patent leather boots, thick headband and cinched-waisted coat excite Ben when he can bring himself to look at her. Fabienne cannot take her eyes off of the girl either and has altered her dress already, tossing her orange swimsuit in the garage trashcan, hunting in her closet for more suitably hued clothes. Ripley might permit this French girl to live, finding a way to send her away when the mass murder takes place.
When Ben looks out the window, the Frenchies have returned. The tall one is wearing a suit even skimpier than his own, and every few minutes his soft, white hand slips into his suit where he makes a leisurely adjustment. Ben can see a flash of purplish flesh. His mother has told Ben repeatedly he cannot adjust in public, but Bernard, at seventy, is untroubled by this dictum. The women continue to talk to him as he pointedly sets things right. The women’s bikinis are scanty, too, and they tug repeatedly at the fabric covering their bottoms and breasts. The older woman’s undulating belly glistens as she laughs. The unblinking navel at her center seems deeper than Benedict Canyon. She’s over sixty-five, Ben discovered. Just another damned French thing—this willingness to expose themselves—his father would tell him if he were here, which he never is.
The Frenchies may not get dressed today. They wake up late, put on their suits, and spend the day poolside. Le petit dejeuner, eaten at two, is mostly bread soaked in evaporated milk and sweet, milky coffee. Sometimes Bernard or his son-in-law picks at a chicken leg. Occasionally, the younger woman sucks on an orange slice that she absentmindedly leaves behind for an unsuspecting person to find. Sometimes, they buy strange cheeses with marbled blue veins and lumpy olives swimming in spicy brine. Emptied wine bottles festoon the tabletops.
The Frenchies sit down to a meal late at night. Ben and his father don’t participate in these feasts, although Fabienne and Claudia, French themselves and released from their obligatory American regimen, join in. Frank continues to go to bed at eleven, sleeping with the air cranked up, a white-noise machine blocking the clamor. Ben stays up watching horror movies until he can’t keep his eyes open. His father owns every horror movie ever put on video, and Ben watches them uncensored, one a night for the sixty nights of his visit. Occasionally, there is a grainy pirated tape that hasn’t even made it to the theater yet. Whole days go by and Ben doesn’t utter a word, but no one seems to notice. Probably he will direct horror movies some day. He will leave Jane and Portland behind and move to California to make films about zombies.
Sometimes, the Frenchies are still in the pool at midnight, and last summer, Ben regularly drifted off to sleep watching them float by various windows on brightly colored rafts. More than once, his last waking sight has been one of them perched energetically on the diving board. The diving board is directly opposite his bed this year, and it occurs to him that a misplaced dive could practically send them through his window. He can imagine the glass cascading inward, the body, sliced in half in the fall, staining the white sheets. O
r perhaps, the water coming into the pool might be poisoned by too much chlorine. The six of them might float about on their rafts for hours before anyone knows they’re dead. Did he see that in a movie? Ripley would know what to do.
Last night, Ben smelled pies baking. He woke up early and sneaked into the kitchen where three cherry pies were sitting on the counter. He bit into one to find no one had removed the pits. Is it possible the French eat pies this way?
He hasn’t caught the name of that girl yet (he’s calling her Marge in his head) and it would be death for him to ask.
“Bin is in love,” they’d probably say. “Bin has a girlfriend.” Ben wonders why the French murder rate isn’t higher. It is just as well they have strict gun laws because nearly every Frenchie deserves to be murdered.
“Looking for Sandrine?” Fabienne says, coming up behind him.
He jumps, eliciting a giggle. She’s wearing her mother’s favorite amber earrings, which look too big on her tiny earlobes. Seeing his pointed stare, she claps her hands to the sides of her head.
“Don’t tell!” she pleads, raking her short, dark bob over her ears. Ben shrugs, offering no assurances. Grabbing the swimsuit Claudia has started for him from the sewing table, Fabienne rolls her eyes and pokes a pinky through the fly. “Not even big enough for my finger! Sandrine will be so disappointed.” Saying this with a French accent, she makes a face, and throwing the suit down, leaves the room.
One night last summer, she crawled into his bed, stuck her hand down his pajama bottoms and yanked at his chain. “Too bad,” she said after a minute. Before he could move, she was gone. So the girl’s name is Sandrine, he suddenly realizes. Sandrine will be spared, but Fabienne has joined the ranks of the soon-to-be victims.
A car door slams. Looking out the window, Ben sees Fabienne has hijacked Frank’s Crown Vic. She backs down the driveway in the shuddering style of driving she’s learned somewhere. The car stalls in disapproval in the center of the street, and she hops out barefoot to beg help from a passing motorist.
