Property of / the Drowning Season / Fortune's Daughter / at Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  They smiled at each other then.

  “I guess he owes me something,” Rae agreed.

  “I told you to get those bumpers for the crib,” Hal said. “I told you they weren’t too expensive.”

  “You know, you shouldn’t be here,” Rae said. “You should be out finding somebody of your own.”

  “That’s okay,” Hal said.

  “I really mean it, Hal,” Rae told him.

  “I know you do,” he nodded. “And I’m not expecting anything.”

  So Rae picked up the money he had given her, and she counted it twice. But she knew that you could easily say you weren’t expecting anything, and still not quite believe you weren’t really going to get it if you waited long enough.

  That night they went out for an early dinner to celebrate the crib. The restaurant had once been a guest house on the edge of the Sisters’ estate; they sat in the garden at a white wrought-iron table, and Rae insisted they order the most expensive items on the menu, since it was Jessup who was really paying. At first it was a joke, but by the time they had ordered dessert, Rae couldn’t get Jessup off her mind. She actually ordered apple pie, which she hated, just because it was Jessup’s favorite.

  “Not that I’d take him back,” she told Hal. “Imagine me having a baby with Jessup in the room watching. I’d have to worry about how awful I looked, and he’d be so horrible he’d probably ask me to jump off the bed and run out to get him a glass of ice water.”

  “You won’t look awful,” Hal said innocently. “You’ll be beautiful.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Rae said coldly. “You’re just the type of man who thinks a woman could be beautiful while she was up there on some hospital bed being tortured. I’ll bet you want the woman you’re with to be beautiful all the time—I’ll bet that’s why that girlfriend of yours left you.”

  Hal put down his fork. “Who said she left me?”

  Hal wasn’t the one she wanted to hurt, so there really was no point in this. “You know what?” Rae said tiredly. “I think I want to go home.”

  Hal looked so distraught as they walked through the parking lot, that Rae took his arm.

  “I’ll tell you how I knew,” she said. “I was left, too, and it takes one to know one.”

  “I thought I was giving you a compliment,” Hal said.

  “I know you did,” Rae said. “Don’t pay any attention to me. It’s living with Jessup for so long—it’s made me mean.”

  As they drove back on Sunset, Rae felt nervous. Everything was reminding her of Jessup—the sand on the floor of the truck, the shadows on the street. After a while she noticed that Hal was studying something in the rearview mirror. She leaned over and looked.

  “Oh, shit,” Rae said. “Is it him?”

  Hal nodded and kept on driving. “I can’t believe this fucking guy—he’s got my car,” he said.

  For some reason, they both had the feeling they had done something wrong, and they spoke to each other in whispers.

  “What are we going to do?” Rae said.

  “What can we do?” Hal said, because by then they were stopped at a red light.

  Jessup got out of Hal’s Ford and slammed the door behind him. He left the Ford idling hard and came up and knocked on Rae’s window. Rae looked at Hal and he leaned over and rolled her window down.

  “What the hell is this supposed to be?” Jessup said.

  “We went out to dinner,” Hal said.

  “Oh, really?” Jessup said. “How long has this been going on?”

  “There’s nothing going on,” Hal said. He looked at Rae for a second, measuring what he was about to say. “But you know, while we’re at it,” he said to Jessup. “How about Paulette?”

  “Paulette!” Jessup said. “Paulette is nothing.”

  “Come on, Jessup,” Hal said. “Who do you think you’re talking to—idiots?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’d really like to know,” Jessup said. Rae wasn’t looking at him, but she could tell by his tone that he was talking to her. “I’d like to know why you’re too afraid to look at me.”

  Rae turned to him then, and as coolly as she could she said, “I’m looking at you now.”

  “Yeah?” Jessup said. “Well, take a good look.”

  As they stared at each other the light turned green; behind them someone sounded a horn. Without turning, Jessup raised his arm and signaled for the driver to go around them.

  “Do you know what today is?” Jessup said to Rae.

  The driver behind them leaned on his horn. Jessup jumped away from the pickup.

  “Drive around us, you asshole,” he called.

  Hal leaned over toward Rae. “We don’t have to sit here and take this from him,” he said.

  Jessup stuck his head in Rae’s window again. The muscles in his jaw were tightening, the way they always did when he was upset.

  “Today’s my birthday, Rae,” he said.

  “Do you believe this?” Hal said. “Who does this guy think he is?”

  “Do you really want me to spend my birthday alone?” Jessup asked Rae.

  “What about Paulette?” Rae said before she could stop herself, and anyone could tell how interested she was no matter how cool she sounded. Next to her she could feel Hal sink down a little behind the steering wheel.

  Jessup knew he had just had a small victory, and he grinned. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go celebrate.”

  Rae swallowed hard, then turned to Hal. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s his birthday.”

  Jessup was walking around to the driver’s door. He opened it and waited for Hal to get out.

  “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Rae said to Hal.

  “I don’t need your appreciation,” Hal said.

  He got out, and Jessup stood aside so that Hal could walk back to the Ford. Then Jessup got into the truck. He pulled the door closed and took off. Rae leaned over to look in the rearview mirror and she could see Hal getting into his Ford, waving his hands at the line of cars waiting behind him.

  “Well, I did it,” Jessup said. He lit a cigarette and rolled down his window. “Just under the wire, before I turned thirty. I made it.” He reached into his pocket, and for a moment the truck veered into the oncoming lane. “Take a look,” Jessup said. He held up a billfold and smiled. “Thirty years old and I’m a success.”

  “Congratulations,” Rae said.

  “I told you I would be,” Jessup said.

  “I don’t know,” Rae said. “I just feel terrible about Hal.”

  “Let me tell you something about Hal,” Jessup said. “He wants what anybody else has.”

  Rae gave Jessup a look.

  “Or used to have,” Jessup amended. “You know what I mean—whatever happens, we’ll always be involved. It is my baby you’re having, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “You’re not mistaken,” Rae said.

  “There you go,” Jessup nodded.

  He pulled the car over when they passed a liquor store.

  “Wait right here,” he said, and he was gone before she could tell him not to.

  Waiting there for him felt wrong. She had the feeling that this had all happened a hundred times before, only she’d been a different person.

  Jessup jumped back into the pickup and put two bottles of Spanish champagne under his seat.

  “What is that?” Rae said.

  “That is champagne,” Jessup said. “We’re going back to the apartment to get drunk.”

  “I can’t drink,” Rae said. “I’m pregnant.”

  Jessup turned to her, annoyed. “It’s my birthday,” he said.

  “I know,” Rae said. “You keep reminding me.”

  “Yeah, well you sure didn’t remember on your own.”

  Then Rae felt contrite—she had never forgotten his birthday before, but lately the only date she could remember was her baby’s due date.

  “All right,” Rae said finally. “Let’s go home.”

  They didn’t
talk for the rest of the ride. Once, Jessup caught Rae staring at him, and they both laughed, and it almost seemed like it was going to be all right. But as soon as Jessup had parked the car, Rae could tell it just wasn’t the same as it used to be. She simply didn’t trust him.

  Jessup followed her across the courtyard, a champagne bottle in each hand. He was studying her as she unlocked the door and finally he said, “You sure do look pregnant.”

  Rae looked at him briefly, then pushed open the door.

  When Jessup saw the crib, he put the champagne bottles down on the bureau, then walked over and ran his hand over the wooden bars. Rae had the strongest sense that he was about to say something important. But when he spoke it was only to tell her he was dying of thirst.

  She went into the kitchen for glasses. Later she managed to act as if she was drinking by occasionally raising her glass to her lips. She was right to assume that Jessup wouldn’t even notice that the only glass he kept refilling was his own.

  “Why are you staying so far away from me?” Jessup asked her.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed. Rae was in the easy chair, watching him drink.

  “I’m comfortable here,” Rae shrugged.

  “Like hell,” Jessup said. “You’re afraid of what might happen if you come a little closer.”

  Rae got up and went to sit next to him; balancing on the edge of the bed with nothing to support her strained her back. As he leaned toward her Rae thought about the first time he had ever kissed her. It was so cold that icicles had formed on all the streetlights. She really hadn’t expected it; Jessup had been waiting for her outside the high school, and Rae left the girls she usually walked home with on the steps and ran to meet him. They walked along in silence, Jessup didn’t even look at her, and Rae had to struggle to keep up with him on the slippery sidewalk. Then he’d turned on her, for no reason at all.

  “Did you see the way they looked at me?” he said.

  “Who?” Rae asked. They hadn’t passed anyone on the street.

  “Your friends,” Jessup said. “That’s who. You’d have to be blind not to notice.”

  “They didn’t look at you,” Rae said, although she expected they had, and that, by now, they had already dissected him right there on the steps of the school.

  “Don’t give me that crap,” Jessup said.

  “All right,” Rae said. “They looked because they’re jealous.”

  Jessup looked over at her.

  “They are,” Rae insisted.

  “Bullshit,” Jessup said, but she could tell he was buying it.

  “I swear,” Rae said, “they are.”

  “There’s nothing to be jealous of,” Jessup said then. “We’re nothing to each other.”

  Rae looked down at the sidewalk.

  “I’m warning you right now,” Jessup said, “so you don’t get hurt.”

  When he kissed her Rae knew that she was supposed to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. She had to look at him to make certain it was really happening to her because she knew that when this first kiss was over, Jessup would back away and act as if nothing between them had changed.

  This time, Rae was the one who backed away. Jessup looked at her, then reached down and pulled off his boots.

  “What are you doing?” Rae said.

  Jessup stood up and unbuttoned his shirt.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” he said.

  “You really do think I’m stupid,” Rae said.

  “Go ahead,” Jessup said. “Try and tell yourself you don’t want me here.”

  “You should have gone out with Paulette,” Rae said. “You would have had a much better birthday with her.”

  “Will you just forget about Paulette?” Jessup said. “In the first place she just got engaged to some cowboy.”

  Rae bent down and got Jessup’s boots, then she walked across the room, opened the front door, and threw them out into the courtyard.

  “Wait a minute!” Jessup said.

  Rae stood at the open door and fanned herself to cool off.

  “I told you this was going to happen to you,” Jessup said. “I told you if you went ahead and got pregnant everything would change. You’re not even thinking straight.”

  “You selfish bastard,” Rae said. “If you think selling a few crummy horses means you’re not a failure, you’re wrong.”

  Jessup looked at her for a moment, then he buttoned his shirt and tucked it in. “Nobody talks to me like that,” he said, and he walked right past her.

  “Get out!” Rae said, even though she knew it sounded ridiculous—he already was standing in the courtyard. As she was about to slam the door behind him, Jessup grabbed it so it wouldn’t budge.

  “You had to go and do this on my birthday,” he said. “You had to get back at me.”

  He spoke softly, almost in a whisper, but all the same Rae could tell that his voice was breaking. That was when she knew that he had come back because he needed her. On any other night it would have felt like a victory, but tonight she just felt sorry for him, and feeling that way about Jessup was the worst sort of betrayal there was. When she watched him walk across the courtyard he seemed hunched over, and Rae had the urge to run after him. But instead she closed the door and listened for his truck to start and drive away. She wondered if on that night in Boston when he told her he was leaving he had been holding his breath, desperate for her to beg to go with him. He had hidden it so well, all Rae had seen was endless courage, hot nights, a look that could make her do anything. But tonight Jessup was a thirty-year-old man who couldn’t stay still long enough to last in one place. Someone who, when there was no one beside him in the passenger seat on the long ride out into the desert, wound up talking to himself for comfort. Someone who was totally exhausted when he got into the lower bunk bed in his trailer and found he still couldn’t sleep.

  Rae had been sure that she wouldn’t be able to sleep either, but she was in bed and fast asleep long before Jessup reached the freeway. It wasn’t that she didn’t care any more—she did. But everything was different, in spite of what she felt. As she was falling asleep, Rae tried to picture Jessup’s face and couldn’t. Instead, she kept seeing the crib that was pushed up against the wall. With her eyes half closed the slats of the crib cast blue shadows across the room, and every time the headlights of a car out on the street flickered the shadows moved like water.

  Sometime near dawn, Rae dreamed that she was with her mother at the house in Wellfleet. It was low tide, and you could hear the birds in the salt marsh beyond the house. They were out on the porch, and Carolyn was wearing a white summer dress, one she had owned years earlier, before Rae was born. They were facing the channel beside the marsh. It was an inlet, which whales sometimes mistook for deeper water; often, they got lost among the reeds and beached themselves, one after another. Now the channel was empty, and as smooth as glass. After a while, Rae realized that her mother was no longer beside her. When she found she was alone, Rae felt unusually calm. She leaned over the porch railing and listened to the birds, and when she looked again toward the reeds she saw that her mother’s white dress was in the water, floating at the edge of the marsh, luminous as the moon.

  In the morning, Rae woke up slowly. There was already the echo of traffic out on the boulevards, and a buzzing sound from one of the kitchen windows as a bee bounced against the screen. It wasn’t until she got out of bed that Rae began to feel that something had changed: swinging her legs over the mattress was more difficult, walking across the room to get her robe was treacherous. Even when she looked at herself in the full-length mirror in the bathroom, it took a while before Rae realized that it was her own body that had changed. Before, all her weight had been high up, her belly pushed up toward her breasts. But sometime in the night everything had moved down—the baby had dropped, its head was down so far Rae could feel it resting against her pelvic bones. Rae let her bathrobe fall onto the tiled floor just so that she could look at herself. She st
ayed there so long that anyone would have thought she was terribly vain, but it was just that for the first time that she could remember she didn’t wish for anything other than what she already had, and what she had was less than four weeks to go before her baby was born.

  Lila and Richard had learned to be polite to each other, but their civility was so chilling it made their skins crawl. When they really tried they could actually manage to have a meal together in the same room. All they had to do was remember not to look at each other, not to ask each other for the simplest favors, not even to pass the salt, and under no circumstances could they even begin to think about what they had once had.

  Nothing on earth could have made Lila turn to her husband, nothing could force her to go to him now and admit that something frightening had begun to happen—she had begun to have visions. These were no orderly prophecies that appeared when beckoned, they came suddenly, at odd hours of the day and night, and they turned time into a wicked thing. There was no way to tell if something was about to happen, or if it had already come to pass. Lila never knew if she was really in her own kitchen, pouring juice into a glass, or if she was on the banks of a frozen bay, watching her first lover, Stephen, walk past the ice fishermen on his way home. In the afternoons, when she went out to water the geraniums, Lila saw her mother out on the patio with two other girls, all of them so young you could practically hear them counting the days until summer. When she dusted in the living room there was Rae, leaning over a bassinet to croon her restless baby to sleep. Each time she went into the bathroom and turned on the light she saw herself putting the stopper in the sink and running the cold water, before she reached for the straight-edged razor and studied her own submerged arm.

  These visions brought blinding headaches and a peculiar chill that wouldn’t go away. Now Lila knew why Hannie had always worn too many layers of clothing: black skirts, leather boots, sweaters, shawls. Time, Hannie had told her, grew more delicate as you got older, it was so tissue thin you could hold your hand up to the light and see how tapered the fingers had been at twenty-five, how the palms had been scratched by a fall into the brambles on the morning of your eighth birthday.