Delia said to Maddie, “You should do what your father says.”
“I don’t want to watch with him,” she said. “I want to watch with you.”
“These nice people don’t need to be bothered by little girls,” Bob said, grinning, clearly proud of his daughter. “C’mon, I’ll buy you a pop at the bar.”
“Will you take me down to the golf course? He’ll let me go if I’m with you, I bet.” Maddie looked at Delia with pleading eyes.
Delia glanced at Bob, who shrugged, then at Sam, who said, “You go ahead. Bob and I will stand right here and talk about the reign of Caligula and the last days of Roman influence.”
Delia smiled and touched his arm. Maddie took her hand. As they were making their way out onto the course, she heard Bob Robinson say, “What the hell’re you talking about? I thought Caligula was the name of a titty bar chain.”
Delia took off her shoes and followed Maddie into the dark, music and voices fading behind them. Pine trees rose up quietly in the warm night, and Delia could feel a band of sweat on her upper lip. After they had passed a second set of tees without seeing anyone else, Delia said, “Where is everybody?”
“I don’t know,” Maddie said. “They told me they’d be out here.”
“Who told you?”
“They did,” she said. “The rest of the kids.”
Delia stopped and looked around. She had the feeling for a second that she was being led into an embarrassing trap, like a surprise party or Candid Camera, but she couldn’t see anyone in the rough. She thought about her husband alone with Bob Robinson, wondered what if anything Maddie’s father knew for sure. It was a clear night, the sky riddled with stars. She said, “Well, the fireworks are going to start any minute. Should we just watch from here?”
“Okay.” Maddie sounded pleased.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do. The fireworks are gonna come up over those trees,” she said, pointing toward the clubhouse. “We’ll lie in the grass.” She stretched out, her feet facing the party. “And they’ll be right over our heads. You won’t be able to see them leaving the ground. It’ll be like magic.”
Maddie lay down beside her and took her hand. They watched the galaxies turning in the sky. Delia found herself thinking about Simon a second time, his face swimming up behind her eyes like a helium balloon. She could almost sense him nearby. His warmth and breath and the calluses on his fingers. She tried to imagine what her life would have been like if they had never met, called up the day she helped him unload his luggage from the car, then the day she’d found him following her on the golf course, and tried to rub them from her memory like markings on chalkboard. But she couldn’t do it. She could not imagine her life without his imprint on it. They had done what they had done, and she did not want to be sorry. The wind rustled in the trees. This beautiful little girl was lying on the grass beside her, looking at the stars, and she felt light-headed at the turn her life had taken. Like she had two lives, two skins and hearts.
“Do you know the names of the stars?” Maddie said.
“Some of them,” Delia said. “I used to know them, anyway.”
Maddie pointed and said, “That one, those three there?”
“That’s Fatty the Magic Pig,” Delia said. “And the next one to the right is Smokey the Bear. He’s the fire guy. He wears a hardhat and blue jeans and goes around saying, ‘Only you can prevent forest fires.’” She made her voice deep and bearlike. “You’ve never heard of Smokey the Bear?”
‘I think I saw him on television,” Maddie said.
“He’s a celebrity,” Delia said, “Everything in the world is named after a celebrity nowadays.” She closed her eyes and let the night wash over her, Simon and Sam and the nameless future, Without looking, she said, “You see that dark spot on the moon? It’s sort of bluish. That used to be called the Sea of Tranquillity, but now they call it the Sea of Al Pacino.”
“You’re joking,” Maddie said.
“You’re right,” Delia said. “Whatever you do, don’t listen to me.”
Reading the Signs
On my way back to the party, I found a wristwatch lying in the grass on the golf course side of the road, moonlight catching on its face, the hands turning toward ten o’clock. I hadn’t wanted to go back at all, but Betty Fowler insisted. She said if I stayed another minute, she’d start to cry, which I didn’t understand. I could still feel the terry cloth of her robe beneath my hand, could still smell the powdery way she smelled. I felt good, oddly content, as though something were going to happen soon, and I was ready for whatever it might be.
I stooped to pick the watch up, weighed it in my hand. It was a bulky, metallic number, the face white with Roman numeral digits. Dew was beaded on the glass. I was thinking of a girl I used to know who went around wearing men’s clothes all the time, pin-striped suits and fedoras and dinner jackets—she used to have a watch like this—and right then I heard voices coming from the fairway. I held my breath and listened.
“What’s that one?”
“That’s Oprah, The Patron Saint of Lovelorn Women. Are you lovelorn, Maddie? Do you have a boyfriend?”
Delia, her voice light and amused. I crept over the fence and through the knee-high grass and went slinking from tree to tree until I could see them—she was with the little girl, Maddie Robinson—lying side by side in the grass. Maddie said she didn’t think she was lovelorn, then laughed and fidgeted toward Delia like she wanted to get closer. Delia with her hands behind her head, her eyes on the stars. The moonlight made a patina on their skin, and I thought that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, the two of them etched against the silvery grass. I wanted to stay hidden and watch them, the night fading into the background.
“Did you hear something?” Delia said.
I held my breath again, my heart beating in my stomach and behind my eyes. I pulled myself tight against a tree, the bark biting my cheek. Delia sat up and looked in my direction.
“I think I heard something, Maddie. Maybe we should be going.”
“No, I like it here,” she said. “Teach me another one.”
I didn’t want Delia to worry, so I stepped out from my hiding place and held my hands out, palms up in surrender. Delia laughed and touched a hand to her chest and said, “Simon? Jesus.” She put her finger to the side of her mouth. “This scene is awfully familiar to me.”
“I was in the neighborhood,” I said. “Hi, Maddie. It’s just me.”
Delia said, “Maddie, maybe you should run back to the party. If you hurry you can still watch the fireworks with your friends.”
“I don’t want to go,” she said. “I want to stay here with you.” Then to me, “That looks like my father’s watch. He thought Mom threw it away. He’s been looking forever.”
I hadn’t even realized I was still carrying it, but there it was draped across my open hand. I said, “It does? Well, here. You take it to him. If it’s not his, maybe he’ll let you keep it.”
She hesitated a moment, glanced from the watch to Delia and back to the watch, then slipped it gently from my fingers and took off running back toward the party. We watched her until she was in the periphery of the clubhouse light, then Delia said, “Hey,” and kissed me on the mouth. She took my hand and pulled me toward the road. I said, “What? Where are we going?”
“We can’t stay here,” she said. “Sam might come looking.”
I let her lead me back into the rough, then across the road toward her house without speaking. There was a high wooden privacy fence around the yard, and she unlatched the side gate, waved me through ahead of her. I shrugged, and she shut the gate. When I reached for her, she ducked my arms and ran around me, her calves bright as ice in the moonlight, headed toward the back of the yard, beyond the range of the porch light. I stood there for a second, watched her disappear into the shadows. I wondered suddenly what Sam Holladay had gotten her for their anniversary. The dress she was wearing or the earrings or the ribbon in her hair.
A giant magnolia bush loomed at the rear of the yard and Delia had gone around behind it somewhere. I shut my eyes, then opened them again. I still couldn’t see her. I walked in her direction, feeling dizzy and awkward, and when I found her she was sitting in a grassy clearing behind the magnolia with her arms circling her knees.
“Hey,” I said. I sat beside her in the grass. “Whatcha doing back here?”
The music from the party sifted through the air, faintly, like it had blended somehow with the darkness. I could almost feel it on my skin. Delia took my hand and played with my fingers, like This Little Piggy. She said, “What’s it like to be an orphan? Is that the right word? It sounds so Oliver Twisty. Has that word gone out of fashion—like ‘midget’?”
Her voice was matter-of-fact, curious. I didn’t think she was being mean.
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said.
“I mean you’re completely unattached,” she said. “Think about it. You could pick up tomorrow without a care in the world. You could drive to Wisconsin and become a dairy farmer or something and you wouldn’t be leaving anything behind.”
“Isn’t that a movie?” I said.
She said, “You’re thinking of the one where the guy goes off and pretends to be Amish to get away from the mob.”
“I’d be leaving you behind,” I said. “Wouldn’t you miss me?”
She tugged at the hem of her dress, smoothed the fabric over her knees. She said, “You know, when Maddie and I were out there on the golf course, I had a feeling you were close. Do you think that’s possible? For me to have sensed your presence or something. I’m pretty sure that I knew you were out there.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.”
I heard a muffled thump in the distance and both of us turned to look. The sky was tracked with red streamers. The fireworks had started without us.
“Yes,” she said after a moment. “I’ll miss you.”
The sky bloomed a second time, three separate bursts, the reports staggering over to us an instant later. I turned to Delia, but she was watching the show. There had been something I was going to say, but now I couldn’t remember what it was. The colored flares played faintly on her forehead and on the bridge of her nose. She looked different somehow than I had imagined she would.
Clairvoyance
A light came on in the kitchen. Delia could see it through the leaves of the magnolia and she knew what it meant—Sam was home, looking for her—but she didn’t react right away. The fireworks were still going, one after another now, glittery concussions in the darkling sky. She could feel the pulse in her throat. She edged forward so she could track her husband’s progress through the house, watch his shadow playing on the glass. The windows in the living room, then the master bedroom, filled with yellow light. She said, “Sam’s here. Or else we’re being robbed.”
“What? Shit. We’ll go over the fence. We can hide at my house.”
“No,” she said.
Her husband was standing at the bedroom window, one hand holding the curtain back. She watched his eyes scanning the yard, his gaze moving directly over her, registering nothing. She almost stood and waved, as if trying to flag a passing car. The separate halves of her life were bending toward each other at this moment, like convergent time lines in a textbook, and she felt this with a sort of relief. Sam could open the window and say her name and everything would be understood. He could let her go or call her inside, whatever he wanted. If he would only open the window, the weight of making a decision would be lifted from her. Simon touched the back of her wrist and she squeezed his hand. The sky continued to open with light. While she watched, the curtain fell shut, the window went dark, the night closed over them like a shroud.
It was then that Delia realized she was trembling. Simon put his arms around her and pulled her against him and said, “It’s all right. He’s gone. No need to be afraid.” She let him hold her, pressed her brow against his throat. Her hands felt heavy, her shoulders weak. Beneath the fireworks and the rustle of his clothes, she could hear crickets whispering in the grass.
“My mother used to jump out of closets to scare us.” His lips moved against her hair. “Me and my dad. She liked being afraid, said it cut through all the crap, though I don’t think she ever used that actual word. ‘Crap,’ I mean.”
She pulled away, one hand still touching his chest.
“That’s a strange thing to say right now.”
He dropped his eyes, shrugged. The light glancing through the leaves made him look young, his skin smooth, his lashes delicate. In his face, she could see the image of every boy she had ever known—all the desperate hands and reckless kisses and urgent loving—and she adored him for the memory. She let her fingers run along his neck, his cheekbone, the line of his jaw. She took his hand and kissed his knuckles.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was a fine thing to say.”
“I guess it was out of the blue.”
“No, she was right. Your mother knew what she was talking about.”
Delia stood and brushed the back of her dress. She could hear a dog barking down the street, manic over the fireworks. An airplane passed overhead and she looked at the sky until she found the wing lights, imagined the passengers, some of them reading the paper, some of them asleep, oblivious to the bedlam on the planet down below. Simon reached over and circled her ankle with his thumb and forefinger and she said, “I need to get back. Sam’ll be worried.”
He nodded but didn’t let her go.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” she said. “When we get back from church, Sam always goes out for breakfast supplies. He loves a big Sunday breakfast. I’ll call when he’s gone. Okay?”
“All right then,” he said. “Tomorrow.”
He released her ankle, and she moved back a few steps, then opened and closed her hand and turned away, trying not to hurry across the yard. The night felt humid, quiet behind the fireworks, the way it felt before a rain. Her footsteps sounded lonely on the empty street. She found Sam in a wrought iron chair on the country club patio watching the pyrotechnics with a drink. He started when she appeared, but she put a hand on his shoulder to keep him in his seat. Before he could ask where she had been, she told him she was just out walking on the golf course—it was peaceful there and she wanted to be alone for a while. Apparently, Maddie hadn’t mentioned why she left. Sam said, “Is everything all right? I saw the little girl come back.”
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “Is she here?”
Sam pointed and she could see Maddie on the grass beside her father, her eyes on the grand finale, her mouth slack with amazement and delight. She was still young enough to be dazzled by fireworks. At that moment, the choice that she would have to make came back to Delia. She couldn’t for all the world see a way to love them both. What she wanted, more than anything, was a way to plot the courses of their lives, like navigating by the stars, a way to see into two separate futures. When she was a girl, she would ask her mother what she thought had become of her father. Her mother would stop whatever she was doing and cover her eyes and a ghostly sound would escape her lips as though she were slipping into a sort of psychic trance. I see a man, she would say, a man drunk and in prison, a thief and a killer and a womanizer. True or not, imagining that her father was a heartless man was a way to understand what he had done. That’s what Delia wanted. Second sight, the gift of clairvoyance. She wanted to understand what was going to happen to them.
She told Sam she was ready to leave, and he didn’t protest. On their way back, the rain started up, fat summery drops, and Sam took off his jacket and held it over their heads while they ran, shoulders bumping, to the door. He kissed her in the foyer, and she could feel the warmth of his skin through the fabric of his shirt. He led her down the hall to the bedroom, stopping to push out of his shoes. She didn’t see how she could refuse him this. She didn’t want to refuse him. He was her husband. They made love with the kindness of an ending, though Delia co
uld not have said for certain that it was. Their wet clothes were strewn across the carpet. For the first time in a long time, she tasted the salt on his neck, smelled the musty and familiar way he smelled, felt the gentle consideration in his hands. When they were finished, she lay with her head on his chest and listened to his heart beat until it began to slow, falling off into the steady rhythm of sleep.
“Are you awake?” she said.
“No,” he said after a moment, “I’m sleeping, dead to the world. I’m dreaming of you right this minute.”
“What do you see?”
“Wait,” he said. She traced her fingers through the hair on his chest, ran her instep along his calf. He said, “Yes, here it is. You’re riding naked down the beach on a white stallion, wearing a headdress made entirely of ostrich feathers. You look very important.”
She yanked a hair on his chest, and he groaned, clapped a hand over hers. She rolled away from him, her head still resting on his outstretched arm. She said, “I was hoping you might be dreaming of my future.”
“I was,” he said, and she kicked him under the covers with her heel. Through the window, she could see the magnolia bush, the rain pattering on the leaves. She thought of her husband standing in this very room, looking at her beyond the glass and not seeing anything. The half-circle of porch light stopped just short of where she’d been. Gradually, his breathing slowed, grew more shallow until she knew he was asleep. She waited a moment, then sat up and looked at him, the lines in his face relaxed, his lips parted just slightly, the covers bunched at his fleshy middle, his skin mottled and wan. He was as vulnerable as a child, completely open to her. She wondered what she could possibly have done to deserve that sort of trust.
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