The Life Before Her Eyes

by Laura Kasischke

  One of the girls slips quickly into the empty chair beside the other girl, who has been sipping chocolate milk from a tiny carton and waiting.

  "You're not going to believe it," she says before she says hello. She looks into her friend's chocolate-milk carton. It looks sweet and dark in there, and a thirst for chocolate milk—that chocolate milk—rises in her. She looks away from it and says, "He's in my homeroom—"

  Her friend looks up.

  "Nate?" she asks.

  "Nate," she answers. "He sits right next to me."

  "No way! Get out of here!" her friend says. "Did you talk to him?"

  She shrugs, smiles. "I said, I like your lip thing.'" She points to the place on her own lower lip.

  "And what did he say?"

  "He smiled."

  "Nate smiled?"

  "Nate smiled," she says.

  WHEN DIANA CAME OUT OF THE BATHROOM AND WALKED barefoot through the hallway, still wrapped in a towel, she saw that Emma was sitting up in bed. She wasn't smiling.

  "Where's that cat?" Emma asked.

  Diana tried to smile. She said, "Honey, I put him in my studio for the night. There's no reason to be afraid of the cat."

  Emma said nothing. But she looked as though she'd found out some secret of Diana's—had read her diary, had read her mind—and wasn't pleased, though she had new power because of it.

  Emma said, "I want that cat to be gone."

  Diana pretended not to have heard her and kept walking.

  Part Five

  Music

  THE THREE GIRLS SAT IN THE BACKSEAT OF THE MINIVAN while Diana drove.

  Sarah Ann Salerno was wearing a sundress and a little embroidered sweater over it. The sweater was white, and the roses were sewn with fat pink yarn all up and down the sleeves. It was, Diana thought, a very ugly sweater, but something someone had taken a great deal of trouble to make.

  "I like your sweater, Sarah Ann," Diana said into the rearview mirror at a miniaturized reflection of the little girl.

  "Thank you," Sarah Ann said.

  "Did your grandma make it?"

  "No," Sarah Ann said, putting her hands on the sleeves of the sweater as if to hide the roses from Diana. "My grandmother's dead," she said.

  "So is mine!" Mary Olivet chimed in as if with good news.

  "Mine, too," Emma said, and Diana inhaled in surprise before she remembered it ... remembered her mother...

  Before she had a chance to think any further, Emma began to sing—

  "A little bit of Sarah in my life ... a little bit of Mary by my side ... a little bit of Emma all night long."

  The other two girls began to sing along, and the sound of their thin voices, in unison, singing a song Diana only vaguely remembered having heard before made her feel ... what? Woozy? Anxious?

  She tried to listen to the words of the song as she drove the three girls down Roosevelt Avenue, which would take them directly to the zoo, but she found she couldn't listen to their singing and drive at the same time. She found herself gripping the steering wheel much harder than she needed to, harder than was safe ... gripping the steering wheel so hard she couldn't steer.

  The only other vehicle on Roosevelt Avenue that morning was an old station wagon, the kind of station wagon mothers used to drive when Diana was a child—paneled strangely, as if it had been intended to look like a den instead of a car. Her own mother hadn't owned one, but Diana could remember sitting in the backseat of such a station wagon, driven by another girl's mother, being taken to a movie or to a field trip to the zoo.

  The girls went on and on with their song. It seemed to culminate in one lyric: A little bit of———is all I need. A new girl's name was inserted every time. They sang out the names without hesitating, as if they knew exactly which names followed which. Diana glanced at them again in the rearview mirror.

  Her daughter was in the middle. On her right was Sarah Ann Salerno, and on her left was Mary Olivet—who, Diana had to admit, was much prettier than either of the other girls.

  Mary had black ringlets that fell almost to her waist, and which looked like an artist's romanticized vision of a little girl's ringlets. Her eyes were olive green and enormous, dark-lashed. Her lips seemed naturally, though strangely, red...

  And her teeth were perfectly straight and dazzlingly white against her somewhat dusky skin.

  Diana looked hard at the little girl singing in her backseat Mary Olivet Diana only looked away from her to be sure there were no cars pulling out or slowing down in front of her.

  That beauty...

  Whose beauty was that?

  She recognized something in the girl that reminded her of ... who?

  "Mary?" she asked.

  "Yes, Mrs. McFee?" Mary responded politely.

  "Have I ever met your mom?"

  "I don't think so," Mary said.

  "What's your mom's name?"

  Diana knew the answer before it came.

  "Amanda," Mary said.

  "Amanda Greenberg?" Diana asked.

  "Yeah!" Mary said. "That was her name before my daddy!"

  "I knew her in high school," Diana said. "You look—"

  The station wagon with the pine paneling slowed down in front of the minivan, and then it came to a stop, and Diana slowed behind it, though she couldn't see any reason for the station wagon's stopping. They were in the middle of the road. There were no traffic lights, no stop signs, no other cars.

  Diana pulled the minivan all the way up to the station wagon's bumper. There was nothing where the license plate should have been. She was just about to honk when the girls began to sing again..."A little bit of Diana's all I need ... A little bit of Amanda's all I need—"

  "Girls!" Diana shouted over their singing. "That's enough. Sing a different song if you're going to sing."

  Behind her they went quiet for a moment. The station wagon ahead still hadn't moved. Diana considered swerving around it to the right, but that would have meant driving up onto the curb with the minivan. There was no shoulder here. And she was afraid to pull around the station wagon to the left, even though no cars were coming in the opposite lane, because she didn't feel she could be certain that the driver of the station wagon wasn't planning to make a left-hand turn and had, perhaps, no turn signal with which to indicate it.

  Finally Diana honked.

  The huge noise of it startled her, and she felt embarrassed ... apologetic. Behind her the girls began to sing again. It seemed spontaneous, yet they'd all three begun at the same time, singing even more loudly than before, as if to irk Diana.

  "A little bit of Sandy's all I need ... A little bit of Maureen's all I need..."

  It was, Diana realized suddenly, a song that had been popular when Diana was in high school, though the girls had altered the lyrics, substituting new names for the ones diat had been in the old song.

  How long had it been since Diana had heard that song, and where had the girls learned it? Diana had a vivid memory of being in the passenger seat, beside Maureen, with that song on the radio in the morning on the way to school. They were singing along, but as they got closer to the school, they lost reception and had to sing without the radio.

  Listening to the girls now, it seemed to Diana at that moment that the song she'd been singing twenty-two years ago with her friend in her friend's car was the last song she'd heard in...

  How long?

  How long since she'd heard ... not just this song, but any song?

  How long since she'd heard music? Surely—

  She felt frightened ... the headache. She put her hand to her temple and honked the horn again impatiently, holding it down harder and longer this time than the time before. Still the station wagon didn't move, so Diana stepped on the gas and pulled around it to the right, faster than she should have, but she was trying to make a point, and she was shaking, her heart was racing. The minivan went up over the curb, and as it did, it tipped hard to the right. Diana could feel the grass and dirt give way under her t
ires, and she saw a spray of it—black and green—spin into the air as she accelerated.

  The girls continued to sing, and when Diana was directly beside the station wagon, she honked again and shot an angry look at the driver, who turned and looked back at Diana slowly, without expression.

  It was an old woman.

  She was wearing some kind of hat with long hat pins in it, and a little veil of lace, and Diana felt ashamed, driving away. The old woman looked serious, and wise, and when Diana looked back at her in the side mirror, she saw that the old woman had stepped out of the station wagon.

  Why?

  She was leaning on a cane and ... what?

  Waving?

  Was she trying to call Diana back?

  Did she need help?

  Or was she shaking a fist in anger?

  The old woman receded, with her station wagon, in the rearview mirror, but Diana could see that she was wearing a print dress and a long rope of pearls, a little fox stole around her neck, and the hat...

  Eleanor Roosevelt.

  Eleanor Roosevelt, Diana thought, though she continued to drive faster down Roosevelt Avenue, and the girls continued to sing behind her.

  After school, they walk around the neighborhood

  It's one of the last warm afternoons of autumn. October. Behind the orange leaves, the tree branches are coal black. There's a smell in the air. Fermentation. A tree has dropped crab apples all over the grass, and bees are buzzing in circles around their softness. A gray-bearded professor pedals past them on a red Schwinn bike. He says nothing, but he smiles and nods at the girls, and they wave flirtatiously at him and smile back.

  One of the girls says to the other, "I have to tell you something."

  It startles her friend, to whom it's never before occurred there could be anything left unspoken between them. What they do is talk. They talk on the way to school, after school, and from their mothers' apartments at night on the phone. She has never waited to tell her friend anything. "What is it?" she asks.

  The other girl breathes deeply, then says, "Nate Witt asked me out."

  There are footsteps behind them, and both girls turn around fast. It's the mailman. He smiles. He's young and handsome. He looks Cuban, maybe Puerto Rican. He has curly black hair and dark eyes.

  "Excuse me," he says, walking around the two girls. He smells like cigarettes and aftershave as he passes.

  "His name is Randall," one of the girls tells the other.

  "How do you know?"

  The other girl shrugs. "I asked him once, when I was a kid," she said.

  They watch him walk up the steps of a white clapboard house, the kind the girls wished they lived in—bric-a-brac, wood floors, front porch with two wicker rockers rocking emptily on it. There's a wild patch of daisies growing in the side garden, and a black butterfly rises from them and passes into the neighbor's yard.

  A blond woman comes to the door just as the mailman steps onto the porch.

  "Hi, Randall," she says, and takes a manila envelope from him. "Thank you."

  One of the girls shakes her head, remembering what her friend has just told her.

  "Nate Witt asked you out?" she says.

  "Yeah," her friend says.

  "Oh my god! When? And why didn't you tell me?" she asks, putting her hands on her hips, pretending to be angry.

  "I don't know," her friend says, shrugging. "I ... Are you jealous?" she asks.

  "Hell, yes, I'm jealous," the other girl says, but there's a frenetic glow around her blond hair as if she is purely and simply happy for her friend.

  The mailman walks across the lawn, stepping widely over a shallow ditch between one property and the next. He's whistling. It's a song both girls have heard on the radio, a song they've sung together.

  "So where are you going with Nate Witt, traitor?"

  DIANA GRABBED THE HANDLE TO THE BACK DOOR OF THE minivan and slid it open to let the little girls out.

  They spilled from the backseat, laughing.

  "Girls!" Diana shouted after them as they ran into the parking lot without bothering to check whether any cars were coming. The girls slowed down, turned around, and Emma motioned with her arm for her mother to follow, then turned and continued to run.

  Diana threw her purse over her shoulder and went after them.

  It was only ten o'clock in the morning but already warm. The sun had spread a deeply yellow melted light all over the entrance to the zoo. The other mothers who'd driven, along with Sister Beatrice, were there waiting at the ticket booth, looking toward Diana with what seemed to be impatience. Diana felt indignant. She'd driven there straight from Our Lady of Fatima. Except for the station wagon stopped in front of them, she'd come without delay. How had the others gotten there so much more quickly?

  "Here," Sister Beatrice said handing four tickets to Diana. "These are yours."

  Diana took the tickets and handed one to each of the girls, who took them and, without saying anything, slipped past their classmates and their mothers to the gate.

  Diana followed.

  The gate to the zoo was wrought iron and old-fashioned, tipped with spears. As she passed through it a small ugly man stopped her by touching her arm.

  "Ticket," he said.

  She handed it to him, and he ripped it in half.

  "Thank you," Diana said.

  A loud cackling exploded from a tree near the duck pond just ahead, but when Diana looked toward the branches, she could see nothing but leaves. There was that smell—the smell of sperm—coming from those leaves, and it mingled with the other zoo smells. Sawdust. Dung. Wet feathers. Fur. It was, Diana imagined, what Earth would smell like from heaven.

  "Have a good time," the ugly man said, handing the ripped half ticket back to Diana.

  He sounded, perhaps, sarcastic.

  Diana was barely past the entrance and had already lost track of the girls. They'd run ahead, and Diana thought she saw Emma skipping up the path to the monkey pit She was too far away to hear her if Diana called, so Diana just hurried after.

  When she was Emma's age Diana had come to this zoo with her own elementary school. She'd come on other occasions with her mother. She'd come with her father on the Saturdays she saw him when she was still very small. Once, her father had brought a girlfriend along with them to the zoo. It was a chance for the girlfriend, who could only have been about twenty-three years old, to pretend to be Diana's stepmother. Dress rehearsal. Diana let her. She held the girlfriend's hand and asked her to help put a barrette, which had fallen out, back into her hair.

  The girilfriend ate it up. She bought Diana a stuffed lion cub at the zoo gift shop. She hugged and kissed Diana good-bye, as if she were already her stepmother, but Diana never saw that girlfriend again. Her father had never remarried.

  And Diana had come to this zoo with boyfriends. She'd come here with Maureen. She'd come here with Paul. She'd been pregnant here. She'd pushed Emma in a stroller through this zoo...

  Headed toward the monkey pit, Diana knew before she reached it exactly what the pit would look like and what the monkeys would be doing. There would be one monkey swinging from a rope between one boulder and the next. There would be a mother monkey and her baby lounging on one of those boulders. The mother would pat the baby absently when it rolled close to her, but she'd be looking at the children who were looking at her ... distantly, not worried, but not apathetic either. She'd be taking it in. She'd be thinking. There would be many thoughts in her primal mind. Some curiosity. Some terror. Maybe a bit of hatred.

  Diana noticed, ahead of her, that the other mothers, children, and Sister Beatrice were taking the path toward the snake house, but Diana stayed on the path to the monkey pit because • she was sure she'd seen her daughter headed in that direction.

  The path was sticky.

  It seemed freshly tarred.

  The heels of Diana's sandals stuck to it and came out snapping at her feet.

  She'd worn tight jeans—too tight, she realized now.
A man who was emptying garbage cans, looking in them for returnable bottles, looked at her legs and ass as she walked by. He was about forty years old and had a camera around his neck. As she passed him he made a clicking sound with his tongue, and Diana pulled her shirt (a short-sleeved top, red) further down over her stomach. It had begun to creep up her torso in her hurrying.

  The man looked familiar, but she gave him a blank look.

  She was growing concerned.

  She'd already let the girls get away from her, and who knew which direction they'd go in after the monkey pit? It wasn't a large zoo, but it sprawled, and it could easily take a whole morning to track down the girls if they didn't stay in one place for long.

  Diana started to sweat. She could feel it on the back of her neck like blood. She touched herself there, then looked at her fingertips, but there was no blood on them.

  Diana exhaled in exasperation when she got to the top of the rise and saw that the girls weren't there.

  The monkeys, however, were doing exactly what Diana knew they would be doing. For only a moment she paused to look into the eyes of the mother monkey, who pursed her lips and looked back.

  It reminded her, absurdly, of Mrs. Mueler....

  May I please look in your purse, young lady?

  Or her mother...

  Your friend Maureen called, her mother might have said with that very expression.

  Diana nodded.

  "I like Maureen," her mother said She had a sponge in her hand and began to wipe it in circles around the Formica-topped kitchen table.

  "We're going to the zoo," Diana told her.

  "Now there's a wholesome way to spend a Sunday afternoon," her mother said sarcastically. "I don't suppose that was your idea, was it?"

  "No, it was Maureen's," Diana said.

  "You're not wearing that—" her mother said, nodding at Diana's T-shirt. It was black, tight, ripped.

  "I'm going to wear a sweater over it," she said.

  "Oh, great. Well, I hope it doesn't get hot and you have to take the sweater off, because this hole here"—she put a finger in the ripped seam of the shirt and pulled it away from Diana's chest—"is an advertisement for something I hope you're not planning to sell."