Tigers in Red Weather

by Liza Klaussmann

  “Stealing what?”

  “I don’t know. But my grandmother says it was probably Mrs. Wilcox’s fault. She said it’s a bad mistress who can’t keep her help.”

  The idea of Elena Nunes stealing made Daisy feel heartsick. She changed the subject.

  “Do you live with your grandmother?”

  “No, I just stay with her during the summer. My mother’s an actress and she’s always away in the summer,” Anita said.

  “Your mother’s an actress?” Daisy was beginning to think Anita was a lot more interesting than she’d given her credit for.

  “Uh-huh. In the theater. She’s doing The Crucible right now, off-Broadway.”

  “What’s that?” Daisy asked.

  “It’s a play about the Salem witch trials, although my mom says it’s really political.”

  “Oh,” Daisy said. They had reached her driveway on North Summer Street. “Come on.”

  Daisy led Anita into the summer kitchen, which had grown stuffy in the day’s heat. There were some bologna sandwiches in the icebox and a note on the counter from her mother telling her that her parents were picnicking at the beach. “Here.” Daisy handed Anita the plate and grabbed a pitcher of lemonade, her mother’s special recipe. Presumably, one of the sandwiches was for Ed when he got home, but she didn’t care. “We can take this out to the front porch.”

  As they passed the blue sitting room, Daisy saw Aunt Helena asleep in her chair.

  “Take these out,” she told Anita. “I’ll be right there.”

  She walked over to her aunt and put her hand on her shoulder. “Aunt Helena?”

  Her aunt didn’t move. Daisy could hear her snoring lightly, her soft mouth slightly open. The tumbler in her hand had tipped where it rested in her lap and a dark stain spread on her navy sundress.

  “Aunt Helena,” Daisy said, a little louder this time. She shook her gently.

  Her aunt opened her eyes and seemed to be trying to place Daisy.

  “Aunt Helena. You look really tired. Don’t you want to go upstairs and lie down?”

  Without a word her aunt stumbled out of the chair and disappeared toward the stairs. Daisy watched her climb the staircase, leaning heavily on the curved banister.

  “That’s my aunt,” Daisy said when she returned to the porch. “She’s really tired. I think it’s the heat.”

  Anita didn’t say anything, just looked at Daisy while she took a bite out of the sandwich.

  “She’s related to your mother?” Anita asked, chewing.

  “Uh-huh. I mean, she’s not her sister. She’s really her cousin. But I call her ‘Aunt.’ ”

  “My mom has some acting friends she calls her sisters. But I don’t call them my aunts,” Anita said.

  As she ate her sandwich, Daisy wondered if, from inside the house, she and Anita looked like her mother and her aunt, glamorous and feminine, having grown-up conversations about plays and New York and dead bodies.

  By the time Ed got home from the Scouts, Daisy had shown Anita her secret hiding place, with the Archie comics and the pink, striped shell. She had even shown her the unicorn, and Anita hadn’t laughed. She had admired its mane. They were playing War on the floor of her bedroom when Ed walked in, wearing his funny khaki uniform and a bandana around his neck. In the shorts, his legs looked like pale stilts.

  “Hello,” Ed said.

  “Oh,” Daisy said. “Hi.”

  Anita jumped up. “Hi, I’m Anita. I guess you’re the one that found the body.”

  Ed didn’t say anything, just stared at Anita.

  “Daisy’s told me a lot about you,” Anita said, smiling at Ed.

  That wasn’t true. Daisy felt a bit disgusted with Anita.

  “How’s the nerd brigade?” Daisy asked.

  “It’s actually quite interesting,” Ed said. “We spent the day at Gay Head, looking for arrowheads.”

  He bent down and carefully placed a small pointed gray stone next to Daisy’s pile of cards.

  “It’s for you,” he said quietly. “I’m the only one who found one.”

  Daisy suddenly felt sorry she had been so mean. “Thanks.”

  “Wow,” Anita said. “Cool.”

  “And I got to use my new knife,” Ed said, turning the red Swiss Army knife Daisy’s father had bought him in his hand. “Cutting saplings.”

  “Do you have to swear allegiance to the flag and all that?” Anita asked. “My mother says all that stuff is brainwashing.”

  Ed looked at her more closely now. “No, Mr. Reading doesn’t believe in that. He says he’s a renegade and that the Massachusetts Scouts won’t even allow him to be a real leader, at least not by their rules. We follow the traditional methods of Ernest Thompson Seton, the way of the Indians.”

  “Indians are cool,” Anita said. “Did you know they don’t believe in God?”

  Daisy felt annoyed listening to the two of them jabbering away over her head.

  “What are you talking about, Mr. Reading doesn’t believe in God?”

  “Not everyone believes in God,” Ed said. “A lot of people in Hollywood don’t.”

  “You two are crazy,” Daisy said. “And if he’s not really a Scout leader you won’t get any merit badges, then.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Ed said. “I’m learning how to do ancient wood carvings and use my knife on rabbits, like the Indians in Gay Head do. Survival techniques. It’s much more useful.”

  “You’re killing rabbits?” Daisy was horrified.

  “They don’t suffer. You wring their necks first.”

  “So you really have to choke them?” Anita seemed fascinated.

  “Well, actually, you just dislocate the neck,” Ed said evenly. “You hold it and then pop its neck back. After that, you hang it by one of its hind legs and cut its head off, to let it bleed out.”

  Daisy suddenly felt dizzy.

  “Are you all right?” Anita asked. “You’ve gone all pasty.”

  “I don’t feel so good,” Daisy mumbled. She felt the bologna rise in her throat.

  Ed watched her.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” Daisy said, getting up. She put her hand over her mouth and ran.

  In the bathroom, she vomited into the powder-blue toilet.

  * * *

  Over the next two weeks, preparations for her mother’s party seemed to take up more and more space in the house. Little American flags were scattered across the dining room table, waiting to be sewn onto their ribbons; invitations, with TIGER HOUSE printed on the front and overlaid with a long, sinuous Indian tiger, covered her mother’s desk; wooden crates packed with the best crystal had been hauled up from the basement and lined an entire wall of the green sitting room; scraps of paper with telephone numbers, addresses and names, some of them crossed off, floated around the rooms like large dust motes. Soft bags filled with silver to be polished lay in heaps across the counters of the summer kitchen, while her great-grandmother’s embroidered linen could be found draped over chairs and sofas, awaiting attention from the housekeeper. And the phone rang incessantly. It was either the flower man reporting that no peach-colored peonies could be found this time of year (white hydrangeas were settled on instead) or the man from Crane’s warning that the engraved place names for the early supper might be delayed a day or two. Disaster had been narrowly averted, Daisy’s mother had announced to the household, when the man who painted the Japanese lanterns called back to say that he had finally found a truck with ample space to take the shipment over from the mainland in time.

  The anticipation gave the house an electric quality and Daisy half expected the candlesticks and flags and spoons and forks to get up and start marching into place by themselves, like in The Nutcracker, when all the toys came alive after the people had gone to bed. She felt so infected with the magic of the party that she didn’t mind the constant scolding not to leave her tennis racquet lying around, or to eat on the porch so crumbs wouldn’t attract ants into the house. She noticed that
even Ed pitched in, constantly checking the mousetraps in the kitchen and the pantry.

  And even though Daisy and Anita had wound up losing in the doubles round-robin, she decided to ask her mother if Anita could come to the party. After all, it wasn’t Anita’s fault if she wasn’t up to scratch.

  “Yes, yes,” her mother had said distractedly, before looking up from another round of furious list making and adding, “But she can’t come to the early supper.”

  “I’m not even invited to the early supper,” Daisy said loudly.

  “No, that’s right.” Her mother chewed her pencil and stared back down at her pad. “When you’re sixteen …”

  The early supper was reserved for her parents’ closest circle of friends, who would come at six and dine with them before the party got into full swing. The meal seemed to cause her mother as much anxiety as the main event, although Daisy couldn’t fathom why, given that she didn’t even cook it herself, just fussed at the women she hired from Vineyard Haven to help.

  “Simple,” her mother always explained. “Simple, but tricky and impossible to copy.”

  With the singles final set to take place the day after the party, Daisy was practicing furiously. She had started biting her nails again, a habit she had given up years before when her mother, in a fit of rage, had started applying Tabasco to her fingertips twice a day.

  Pretty is as pretty does.

  She had even found herself crying at the end of each tennis lesson. She wasn’t sure why, only that it felt so good to sit down and choke out the tears, biting the damp collar of her shirt between her teeth. At the end of the week, she played Peaches in a first-to-two practice set.

  Peaches did her worst, winning quickly on her own serve and then handily breaking Daisy’s. Daisy felt numb, and yet strangely, her heart was beating so fast she thought it might come crashing out of her chest.

  “Not your best tennis,” Mr. Collins said when she reached the clubhouse. The tennis instructor then put his hand on Peaches’s shoulder. “Nicely played, Peaches. Very efficient. OK, girls, shake hands.”

  Daisy walked straight through and out the front door onto the street, dragging her racquet behind her. She didn’t even want to cry, just to be home under her own cool lavender sheets.

  She heard the sound of feet behind her, but she didn’t speed up. Even if they tie me up and use Chinese water torture, Daisy thought, I won’t shake hands with that fatso.

  A warm dry hand caught her arm.

  “Hey,” Tyler said. “Wait up.”

  Daisy turned.

  “Hey, it’s OK,” Tyler said. “Don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying,” Daisy said and sped up her pace.

  “All right, all right, you’re not crying,” he said. “Hey, come on. Wait up a little.”

  Daisy stopped.

  “Look, I just wanted to tell you I think you played great.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Daisy said, furiously. “I lost.”

  “It wasn’t even a real match,” Tyler said. “You only played two games. And anyway, you looked great out there, just made a few mistakes, that’s all.”

  “Did Mr. Collins send you? Because I’ll tell you right now, I’m not shaking hands.”

  Tyler laughed. “You’re a prickly one, aren’t you?”

  Daisy continued to eye him, pushing the top of her racquet into the gravel.

  “OK, OK. Look, I’m not Collins’s spy. You just seemed to take it so hard, that’s all.” He held out his hand. “Give me your racquet, it doesn’t deserve that kind of abuse.”

  Daisy handed it over, the top now scratched from all the dragging. They started walking.

  “You can’t take these things to heart. Anyway, you’re the better player.”

  “She still won,” Daisy said, her voice cracking a little. “Not me. She’s the better player.”

  “Nah, I was watching you. You’re mean out there.”

  “Not mean enough.”

  “You’re hotter, and she’s colder, that’s all,” Tyler said. “Two different styles. But I prefer yours.”

  Daisy chewed her lip, turning this over in her mind. I’m hotter, she’s colder.

  “I can’t believe she broke my serve,” Daisy said.

  As they turned down Morse Street, the heat of the match began to lift and Daisy realized with a swift, sharp happiness that Tyler Pierce was walking her home. The dusty sidewalk seemed to rise to meet her feet, and the white shutters looked as crisp and clean as fresh laundry against the cedar shingles of the houses. She smelled the honeysuckle trailing near the tips of her tennis shoes. She ached to put her hand in his; she couldn’t imagine anything finer.

  Tyler had her racquet slung over his shoulder and she could see a sweat stain under his lifted arm. His hair was damp and pushed back down. He was pretty, like a girl, with his high cheekbones and long lashes. But really, he was a man with his sweat and his tan, strong arms, carrying her racquet so lightly.

  Daisy didn’t take the shortcut on North Summer Street that led to the back of the house. Instead she walked the long way around to North Water Street, trying to think of something to say that didn’t have to do with tennis or Peaches. She was still thinking when they reached her front gate.

  “Well,” Daisy said, slowly pushing the latch down.

  “Well,” Tyler said, smiling. He handed her the racquet and looked up at the house. “So this is where you live.”

  “Uh-huh,” Daisy said, peering up too, wondering what it looked like through his eyes.

  He passed his hand over the tops of the red roses climbing the fence, and the movement released the fragrance of the fat blooms.

  “It’s big,” Tyler said. “It’s nice.”

  “It was my great-grandmother’s.” Daisy couldn’t think of one interesting thing to say. She desperately cast around for some small tidbit to offer up to him. “It used to have two kitchens.” She immediately regretted it. Why would a boy care about kitchens? “My cousin brought me a real Indian arrowhead from Gay Head. Do you want to see it?”

  “Sure,” Tyler said. “Actually, I’m kind of thirsty.”

  “Oh,” Daisy said. “Do you like lemonade? My mother has a secret recipe.”

  “A secret recipe, huh? That would be great.”

  “Come on,” Daisy said, leading him up the front path to the porch. “You can sit on the porch and I’ll bring some out.” She didn’t want Tyler to see her aunt Helena snoring in her favorite chair.

  The house was still when she walked in. In the kitchen, she hurriedly poured the lemonade into two big tumblers ringed with bluebells. Walking carefully back, she checked the blue sitting room. There was no sign of her aunt. She turned on the old radio, loud enough so that music would float out onto the porch. The sound of Little Anthony singing about the tears on his pillow filled the room. She pushed the screen door open with her hip, relieved to find Tyler where she’d left him.

  “Here.” Daisy handed him one of the tumblers. She watched as he turned the rim slightly, looking at the bluebells etched into the glass, before drinking out of it.

  She was memorizing him. His white collared shirt had the tennis club insignia stitched onto the breast and droplets of sweat beaded up at his hairline. The laces of his tennis shoes were neatly tied, but not double-knotted, as if he knew there was no way they would come undone at the wrong moment. She liked the way he had looked at the bluebells, like every detail mattered to him.

  “It’s good,” Tyler said, setting the empty glass down on the wrought-iron table between them. “What’s the secret?”

  “Only my mother knows,” Daisy said. She almost added that her mother had promised to tell her when she was older, but stopped herself. “Do you want to see the arrowhead?”

  “Sure,” he said, but he was looking out onto the street.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Daisy tore up the polished stairs to her room, pulled out the unicorn, and began rummaging through her secret drawer. She
sifted through the shells and money cluttered at the bottom, but she couldn’t find it. Had she put it in there? Frantic, she tried to think. What had she done with it after Ed had given it to her? Anita had held it for a minute, but she had given it back. She looked under her bed and on the nightstand, then, getting down on her stomach, under the painted radiator below the window, but there was only a dead fly and an abandoned spiderweb.

  She decided to go back down, afraid that if she spent any more time looking, Tyler might give up on her and leave. She hopped the stairs two at a time and barreled out to the porch.

  There, she found her mother leaning over Tyler and whispering something in his ear. She was wearing a pair of poppy-colored shorts over her strapless bathing suit. Her dark hair, still wet from her swim, brushed Tyler’s cheek.

  Daisy froze. Slowly, her mother straightened and smiled at her.

  “Hello, darling,” her mother said.

  Daisy knew her mouth was open, but no words would come out. She looked at Tyler, who was smiling up at her mother.

  “Daisy.” Her mother laughed. “Are you all right, darling? Cat got your tongue?”

  “I was looking for my arrowhead,” Daisy finally said. Heat was rising from the very tips of her fingers and spreading across her cheeks, like a sunburn. “What have you done with it?” she demanded too loudly.

  “What?” Her mother was still laughing, as if she was being ridiculous.

  “Where is it? You shouldn’t have touched it. It wasn’t yours. Ed gave it to me.” She stamped her foot, causing the bluebell glasses to shiver on the iron table.

  “Daisy,” her mother said, a bit sternly now. “I haven’t done anything with it. I only put it in your top drawer so you wouldn’t lose it.”

  “I wanted to show it to Tyler,” she said, trying to push back the tears threatening to spill out. She felt confused and changed tack. “What were you talking about?”

  “Well, now, don’t be mad,” her mother said, her smile returning as she glanced at Tyler. “But I was telling him the secret recipe for the lemonade. He pestered me so.”

  “It’s true, I did,” Tyler said, beaming up at Daisy’s mother. “Mrs. Derringer said you were the only one who she could really tell. But I told her you wouldn’t mind, seeing as we’re friends and everything.”