More Than Allies

by Sandra Scofield

  “I haven’t eaten,” Dulce says.

  He sits up. “I’m still hungry.”

  “I heard from your father,” she says. She didn’t know she was going to say that. “From Texas.”

  His head jerks up. “What’s he want, Mom? Is he coming?”

  “He wants you—us—he wants us to come to Texas. To his folks.”

  “When, Mama? We will go, won’t we?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

  “Does it cost too much? On the bus?”

  “He sent money.”

  “I want to go!”

  “I don’t know yet. School’s not out. We’ll see then. In June.”

  “There are ways to get to Texas,” he says sulkily. It’s a dare. She has told him how her papa walked the last forty miles to the border, to save his pesos for the crossing, his first time.

  “I haven’t made any supper,” she says. “We could go for hamburgers.”

  He shrugs. She knows he wants to go.

  She reaches for his hand. “Let’s get through the school year,” she says. “You know how I am about you missing school.”

  He pulls his hand away and gets quickly out of the car and runs to the trailer. Sighing, she pulls away from the curb. She’ll get food and bring it back. She’ll tell him she knows he wants his father, though she wonders what he thinks that means. She will say he isn’t big enough to go all that way on the bus, but she knows he can do it, knows, too, that sooner or later he will. She will try not to think how that will break her heart.

  After supper the four of them—Polly, Maggie, and the children—lined up cozily on the couch to watch videos of cartoon movies. Jay slumped against his mother and played the little boy, until some idle gesture of affection on her part reminded him he was unhappy, and he inched away. Stevie, seated on her other side, pointed and called out “Mousie!” about a hundred times, whatever the nature of the characters. Polly, benign, put on her bifocals and worked a crossword puzzle, no doubt relieved at the relative peace.

  Later, Jay took his comic books to bed down the hall. Maggie bathed Stevie, getting in the tub with her, taking a long time, making a game of soaping and washing and rinsing. When Stevie was in her crib and quiet, Maggie went in to see Jay. She sat on the bed and put her hand on his knee over the covers. His cheek where the can had struck him was purple. He made a show of turning the page of a comic book—all his comics starred great hulking powerful men and dastardly villains capable of shocking crimes—and not wanting to be disturbed. Maggie sat quietly.

  Mo’s boyhood room, where she had lived for three years, had been changed a couple of times since then. As Mo’s father grew more and more ill with lung cancer, Polly stripped the room of its girlish frills, bought new green sheets, and installed him there to die. Maggie couldn’t help thinking of her suspicions about the room that day of her arrival. More recently, she and Gretchen had painted the room a pleasant peach color and hung posters of art by Matisse, Balthus and Gauguin. Little by little, Jay had deposited various toys and books in the room. He slept there often, times his mother stayed late talking with Polly or watching TV, or because he wanted to be in a room of his own. He knew it had been his father’s room. “Did Dad have his bed like this?” he’d asked more than once. “Where did Granny put all of Dad’s toys?” he asked another time. (The answer: the garage. Most of them, however, had been hauled out for Jay himself as a smaller boy.)

  “Would you like to skip school tomorrow?” Maggie asked.

  He glanced up, surprised, then tamped down his pleasure. “Whatever.”

  “I thought you could sleep in. I want to keep an eye on your eye.” She smiled. It did sound funny. He didn’t get it, though. He didn’t so much as blink. “And if you want, we could go for a hike or a ride or something. How does that sound?”

  She could see he wanted to be enthusiastic but wouldn’t allow her the pleasure.

  “Okay.”

  “Honey, is there something you want to say?”

  The sadness of his expression made her throat constrict. Then he tossed his comic book to the end of the bed and crawled down under the covers.

  “Would you like to call Dad tomorrow?”

  He flopped over, his back to her. “What for?” he said, his words muffled by the covers.

  “Sleep tight,” she said. She didn’t know what else to say.

  Polly was watching a movie starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson. “Silly, aren’t they?” she said, but it was clear she was enjoying it. Maggie kissed her goodnight and went to Gretchen’s room. The big bed was piled with pillows and stuffed animals, quilts and magazines, shed clothing and brochures from wilderness travel agencies. Maggie fluffed pillows, folded the clothes, arranged the magazines on the bedside stand, and crawled in to wait for Gretchen. The theatre was dark tonight, and Maggie assumed she’d gone to Blake’s for what must be very close to the last night they would have before their ninety-day love affair came to a halt.

  Poor Gretchen, she thought, making herself comfortable against the pillows. She should have stuck with the river guide last summer, the one who ate gorp and built his own sweat lodge.

  She got back up and fetched a tattered copy of The Golden Notebook from Gretchen’s bookshelf. How she had struggled to read it for her book group last year! The discussion had been a volley between Nora and Rachel (politics and sex), until Lynn said she found Lessing humorless, and could they move on to something contemporary, please? Through it all, Maggie was thrilled to be there. She still thought it was amazing to have been asked to join such a clever group.

  As she was mulling over these things, weariness overcame her and she fell asleep with the light on. She was still lying like that when Gretchen came home around midnight.

  “Doris Lessing!” Gretchen picked up the book and waved it over Maggie’s face. “No wonder you were sleeping deeply.” She laughed and tossed the book to a corner of the room. Maggie didn’t think the laugh sounded merry.

  “You know what one of the actors said to me at the lounge last night?” she asked Maggie as she changed into pajamas. “He said, ‘Gretchen, you are looking wan.’ I laughed, of course, so he laughed too, but he felt sorry for me, you could see it in his eyes.” She slid under the covers. “Do you think everyone knows what an ass I’ve made of myself, fucking Phoebe Alex’s husband?”

  “I never thought actors were prudes.” Maggie envied Gretchen her job, which had opened up the very day Polly called in her cards after twenty years of volunteering at the theatre.

  “I suppose they’re not,” Gretchen said, lying back and staring straight up at the ceiling. Maggie remembered that there were fluorescent dots up there, a rendering of a summer’s night sky. She didn’t think Gretchen was ready for the dark yet, though.

  “I was at Blake’s.”

  “I thought you might spend the night,” Maggie said, though she was glad Gretchen had come home. It felt very sisterly to lie in bed and talk until sleep overcame them. They had done so hundreds of times over the years. They’d lain right here and sobbed half the night before Gretchen married dreadful Mark and went off to Alaska for two years.

  She would tell Gretchen about Mo’s letter and they would talk until she figured out what she felt about it.

  “We weren’t at the apartment. He’s moved everything out. We went to the new house.”

  “No!” The new house was Phoebe Alex’s house, and she would be in it any day now, arriving in Lupine from six months on location in Mexico.

  “He took me around to show me all the rooms, the deck in the moonlight, the kitchen. It has an island with a granite top. A pink sink.” Gretchen turned over onto her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows. “He didn’t have a bed yet. We were on some quilts on the floor. Then, while I was dressing, he lay there staring at me. ‘What?’ I asked him. He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t he say he’s sorry? He thinks he’s said everything. Phoebe is his wife. Phoebe needs him. He’s a stage manager for chrissake! Wha
t does she need him for? They’re not in graduate school anymore. She’s a movie star.”

  “An actress, anyway,” Maggie said, bored. She’d heard this a lot lately.

  “She’s going to be a star, all right. This movie has all the chemistry, I hear. And not from him. I hear some of the actors talking. She’s got nude scenes. Imagine that—being naked with a man all over you while a crew watches. God.”

  “Maybe he does love her.”

  Gretchen fell onto her back again. “Do you ever think how many times we’ve been here, talking about our lives?”

  “I remember speculating what would happen if a boy put his penis in and it got caught.” Maggie hoped she had successfully changed the subject. “I remember asking you if you were sure about Mark.”

  “Don’t rub it in,” Gretchen said, but not crossly. Whatever bad feelings she had about Unalakleet were old and forgotten. Since then she had sewn polarlite vests for Patagonia, in California. She’d been a waitress in Aspen. She’d come home to her mother, her childhood bed, her best friend.

  “I remember asking you what your brother was like. Before I ever met him.” It was pointless, but Maggie realized suddenly that what she wanted to do was tell Gretchen everything she already knew: how she rode the bus to Texas and fell in love with Mo. How everything came together in her life when Jay was born. “He wrote me an amazing letter,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “I can’t believe he hasn’t told her,” Gretchen said, as if Maggie hadn’t spoken at all. “They go ahead as if everything is the same as it ever was. Is that possible? Have I been dreaming? He’s put a birdfeeder on the deck. Their furniture arrives from L.A. tomorrow. The house has this thirty-dollar-a-yard carpet they’ll have to pay someone to vacuum every other day.” Inevitably, she started to cry.

  Maggie whispered, in return. “Polly’s new baby is a girl. She heard this morning. They’re bringing her Wednesday. A baby with special needs. What can that mean? All babies have special needs. Sometimes they don’t go away. What about Jay? I can’t believe the way he looks at me. What about Stevie? Does Polly hope we’ll disappear? Is all this so I’ll have to go to Texas?”

  Gretchen sighed noisily. “He tells me, ‘you knew it all along.’ I hate him when he says that. We’ve been lovers for three months. Okay I knew, like I know about the ozone layer. Like I know about taxes. It threatens, but it’s abstract. I saw her in Retribution. It wasn’t great, but she’s a movie star. What does she want with Blake? Why does she want a house in Lupine?”

  Maggie said, “I didn’t really think he’d go without me. Why does he want to live so far away from home? Doesn’t he understand that kids need family? They talk funny in Texas. A letter’s not enough, not when he’s not even sorry about leaving. What does he think marriage is?”

  “If anyone said to me the whole thing is just sex, I’d bust them in their loud mouth. Bust her, I guess.”

  “It’s a lot more than sex. It’s everything.” Finally, they were talking about the same thing.

  “Mo thought you’d go, you know. Right up to the last minute. So did I. It was double-dare. You should go, what’s here?”

  Maggie switched off the light. Stars twinkled on the ceiling. She and Gretchen had put them there their senior year in high school, using a paper stencil. She could make out Cassiopeia.

  Maybe they would talk tomorrow. She moved close to Gretchen. “Blake has a weak chin,” she said.

  Gretchen snickered. “He’s pathetic. I’m pathetic.”

  “Join the club,” Maggie said.

  Gretchen moaned and tossed so, Maggie moved out to her own bed in the cottage sometime in the night. Mo woke her at seven.

  “I worried about Stevie all night,” he said.

  “She’s fine.” Maggie was still sleepy, and glad the call wasn’t one of the schools. “We’re all still in bed,” she said, though she didn’t know whether her children were awake or not.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I get an early start, while it’s cool. The mornings are pretty.”

  “I’m keeping Jay home today. We’ll do something. He seems so moody, I thought maybe he’d talk to me.”

  “I feel torn in half, Maggie. I want to come home, it’s crazy being away from you. But the job is great. Austin’s great.”

  “I don’t want to do this now. I’m not all the way awake.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Both of them sour again. But Mo said, “I’m going to come up sometime in the summer. If you don’t come here, I mean.”

  “Jay misses you a lot.”

  “And we’ll figure it out then.”

  “If it can be figured out.” Her same old stubbornness was stiffening her neck. “This is home, Mo. This is where we live.” Why couldn’t he understand?

  “I’m not going to argue on the phone.”

  “What’s to argue about?”

  “Only our lives. All four of us.”

  “I’m going back to sleep.”

  “Maggie. Don’t hang up mad.”

  “What’s the use, Mo?”

  “The use is only everything. The use is we have two kids and I love you.”

  Maggie gulped. “I love you too,” she said, but very quietly. She hung up before he could make too much of it.

  Jay stumbled out to eat cereal about nine, then went back to bed. Maggie looked to Polly for a hint of what to do with him, but Polly was writing out bills. Maggie had already had breakfast with her, and fed Stevie, and was finding it difficult to keep from brooding about Mo’s phone call. She was relieved when Polly said she had to dig some things out of the garage to get ready for the new baby.

  Polly brought in an old crib, and Maggie scrubbed it while Polly went off for a tin of paint. They moved it out onto the patio and painted it white with a turquoise trim. In a burst of creativity, Maggie drew tiny flowers on the headboard. She could feel Polly’s pleasure and excitement building. Babies.

  “What do you know about the baby?” she asked her.

  Polly said she was the child of an addicted mother, and wasn’t going to be easy at first. Maggie chewed on her lip. She could see it now: Polly rocking and walking an infant, Gretchen pouting and playing poor-me recluse, Maggie and her kids suddenly odd ones out. Polly was humming to herself. The sunshine gleamed on her short black hair. “Kendra,” she said.

  Jay wandered out, still in his pj’s, rubbing his eyes. He went straight to Polly for a hug, glowering at his mother. Maggie felt a twinge of envy and hurt. “How about a real breakfast now?” she asked, trying to sound cheerful. She had read somewhere that if you refused to let your child cloud your spirits, he learned—what? She couldn’t remember, and she couldn’t imagine. She felt what he felt, not the other way around. He clung to Polly, who extricated herself and patted him on the back. “I’ve got a little more to do here, Jay-Jay, but you could fry some bacon if you like.” Jay looked at his mother, his chin up.

  “I’ll make some cinnamon toast,” Maggie said. “Stevie loves it.” Stevie, hearing her name, ran across the patio and flung herself at Maggie.

  Sometimes children are like great huge sacks of flour to be lugged and handled and lifted and kept. Sometimes Maggie would like to close her eyes and think there was nobody out there who needed her.

  “I like it too,” Jay said.

  “Then why don’t you help me make it?” Surely they could manage that. Making a mess was always therapeutic.

  After breakfast they played a board game, Space Agents. It was the simplest of games—roll the dice and move—but he loved it. He thought being an astronaut was a real possibility. They played until Maggie’s space ship got ahead of Jay’s for the third time and he accused her of cheating.

  “Cheating!” She couldn’t believe the anger that flashed in his eyes. “I rolled the dice and counted the moves, you watched me all the time.” She didn’t know why she was arguing with him. His anger had nothing to do with Space Agents. She felt a na
useating wave of helplessness. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do to make him feel better. What was so terrible, anyway? She doubted half the kids in his school lived with both parents. It wasn’t like his dad was dead.

  They exchanged more words, silly words between a child and his mother, and then Jay stood up abruptly and tipped the board off the ottoman and sent the pieces flying onto the floor. When he saw what he had done, he squeezed his eyes into ugly slits. “I hate Space Agents!” he cried. “It’s a boring baby game.”

  Stevie was grabbing pieces in her little fists, and Maggie was trying to watch that she didn’t eat them or toss them under furniture. She wasn’t really looking at Jay.

  Jay kicked at the board, and though his kick didn’t hurt anything, it scared Stevie and made her howl, and shocked Maggie, who lunged for him and barely caught his sleeve, then lost it as he turned. He ran down the hall and slammed the bedroom door behind him.

  Polly was standing in the kitchen doorway. Maggie began crying, which escalated Stevie’s distress. Polly came over and sat down on the floor beside the baby. “There, there,” she said. Maggie glared at the both of them. What about me? she wanted to say. Gretchen appeared at the end of the hall and asked what the hell was going on, then turned and slammed her door.

  Maggie threw herself on the couch and sobbed.

  The day was beautiful. The sun shone. The temperature was in the mid-seventies. The lightest breeze blew. They couldn’t stay unhappy.

  “I have an idea,” Polly said a little before three. “Why don’t you take Jay for an ice cream? Stevie and I will walk down to the park for a bit. How’s that sound?”

  Gretchen, glowering and speechless, had already dressed and made it out of the house. She hosted the members’ lounge before the matinee. Wouldn’t she be the gracious one today?

  Jay seemed to perk up at the suggestion, and Maggie, her eyes stinging, agreed that ice cream sounded good. They headed off for the Dairy Queen.

  “Tell you what,” she said when they were in the alcove to the store. “You get me a single cone, vanilla. And you can have whatever you want.” She handed him a five dollar bill.