Tigers in Red Weather

by Liza Klaussmann

  Her father stopped talking, as if he was expecting a response. Then she saw Ed, whose expression hadn’t changed, bend his head toward her father’s ear. By the time his lips had stopped moving, her father’s face seemed to have gone a shade paler in the moonlight.

  “Daisy?”

  Her mother’s voice made Daisy jump.

  “Mummy.” Daisy rushed at her, squeezing herself against her damp body. Her mother felt cool and clean, and Daisy wanted to climb inside her arms, her lap, her skin.

  She put one arm around Daisy, using the other to adjust the strap of her slip, soggy from having been put on wet.

  “What on earth is going on?” Her mother looked at Daisy, and then down toward the beach. “What’s your father doing? Is he the one who’s been hollering like some alley cat?”

  Daisy saw that only her father remained at the end of the lawn, staring out at the harbor lights. Suddenly, she didn’t care about Ed being a sex maniac, or her father’s craziness.

  “Mummy.” She started crying, choking against the silk, inhaling the faint odor of her mother’s lily-of-the-valley perfume and the sea.

  “Darling, what is happening?” Her mother sounded exasperated.

  “Oh, Mummy.” Daisy rubbed her face against her mother’s slip. “Everything’s awful. It’s all wrong. Tyler kissed Peaches. And then …”

  “Oh,” her mother said. “Oh, I see.” She sighed, and ran her hand across the top of Daisy’s head. “Why don’t we go into the boathouse for a minute, darling, and you can tell me what happened.”

  The boathouse smelled of linseed oil and mildew. A discarded towel lay in a heap near the picnic basket. Her mother pulled down two of the yellow boat cushions hanging on the wall. She sat down cross-legged on one and patted the spot next to her. In the gloom, Daisy could see her mother’s hair was only slightly wet, her dark glossy waves still brushed back from her forehead. The sapphires in her ears glinted as the beacon from the lighthouse on Chappaquiddick swept through the small windows, momentarily illuminating their faces.

  “So,” her mother said as Daisy sat down on the second cushion. “What’s all this?”

  Daisy put her head in her mother’s lap, feeling the warmth of her hand on the nape of her neck. “I saw them,” she said quietly. “They were kissing on the porch. Our porch. And Peaches had this horrid rose her mother wins competitions with. And she put her arm around him. And …”

  “A rose?”

  “It’s not about the rose,” Daisy said, impatiently. “It’s that I know I’m better than her. I just know it.”

  “I see. Well, it’s not always about choosing the best person,” her mother said. “Sometimes …” Her mother stopped, her hand going still on Daisy’s neck. “Sometimes people just get lonely, and then they do funny things.”

  Daisy thought about this. “But Tyler chose her. I wanted him and he chose her.” She buried her face. “Oh, Mummy, I could just die. How could he? Why doesn’t he love me?”

  “I know it hurts, darling. It’s so hard to be young and have all this wanting.”

  “But when you were young, you loved Daddy and he loved you back. You got what you wanted.”

  “First of all, we were older than you are. And then, well, we were very lucky.” Her mother sighed.

  “I want to be lucky,” Daisy said.

  “You’ll be better than lucky.” Her mother brushed Daisy’s hair off her forehead. “You’ll be strong. And all the Peaches and Tylers in the world won’t be able to hurt you.”

  Daisy was silent. She thought about growing tall like a giant and crushing a very small Peaches under her foot.

  “Besides,” her mother said matter-of-factly, “Peaches is a very nasty young girl.”

  “I know.” Daisy sighed. “But he loves her.”

  “Darling, I doubt very much that Tyler loves Peaches. Boys are just like that. Peaches is fast, and boys that age just take what’s offered to them.”

  “Oh, and then, Mummy, something else happened …” Daisy stopped, thinking about Anita’s big eyes and the taste of her breath. “It’s so awful.”

  “What else happened?”

  “Anita. She was giving me her handkerchief, and then, Mummy, she kissed me.”

  “Oh, well.” Her mother laughed. “That is interesting.”

  “It’s not funny.” Daisy sat up. “Why would she do that? She knows I love Tyler and that I wanted him to kiss me.”

  “No, you’re right, it’s not funny,” her mother said, but she was still smiling. “Anita’s just a theatrical girl. And, frankly, Daisy, her family’s a bit bohemian. You know that.”

  “I don’t care. I hate all of them.”

  “Darling”—her mother took Daisy’s face in her hands—“I want you to listen to me. I’m going to tell you this because someday it may be very important for you to remember.” Her mother’s face was serious, her big green eyes like snakeskin. “If there’s one thing you can be sure about in this life, it’s that you won’t always be kissing the right person.”

  1959: AUGUST

  II

  Daisy unscrewed the wooden press from her racquet and laced her fingers between the strings, pulling on the gut. It was eleven in the morning and the sun was already burning her bare shoulders, the dust from the clay court creating a haze around her.

  She set the press on the spectators’ bench near the post and looked up at the tennis club’s big, cool porch, where her mother sat chatting with Mrs. Coolridge. She was nodding her head slightly at something the director was saying. Unlike her father, who had given her a good-luck kiss earlier that morning, Daisy’s mother looked fresh, as if the party had never happened. She saw Mr. Montgomery whispering into Peaches’s ear. Daisy turned back to the court.

  She scraped her Keds against the clay and then used the top of her racquet to knock them clean. Peaches came down the steps, her ponytail catching the sun. Daisy pushed her headband higher up on her head, and used the back of her wrist to wipe the gathering sweat off her top lip.

  She pretended not to watch as Peaches sat on the bench, pulled a chammy out of her bag and began polishing the already gleaming frame of her racquet.

  She’s cold, I’m hot. She’s cold, I’m hot.

  Daisy looked up at the porch again. Her mother’s eyes were on her, a small line creasing the smooth skin between her eyebrows. Mrs. Coolridge was now shaking Mr. Montgomery’s hand, smiling at something he was saying. The voices were just a murmur and they made her feel like the hot square of clay was a world away. Her head ached from the glare and she could hear a faint ringing in her ears.

  Hot enough to roast an ox.

  There was a small stirring on the porch. Daisy saw Mrs. Coolridge turn her head and squint toward the dark interior of the clubhouse.

  Ed stepped out, his eyes flicking momentarily over the program director, before taking a few easy strides toward her mother. Daisy breathed out. She hadn’t seen him since the night before and, although she couldn’t say why, exactly, she was glad he was there. Her mother looked up and smiled at Ed, who pulled one of the wooden deck chairs closer and sat down. Daisy fingered the arrowhead in the pocket of her dress. It was rough, like a small piece of coral, against her thumb and forefinger.

  Mrs. Coolridge descended.

  “All right, girls, you know the rules. First to win two sets,” she said.

  Daisy made a small crescent in the clay with the rubber tip of her shoe.

  Mrs. Coolridge dug in her pocket and pulled out a quarter. “Daisy Derringer, you will call the toss.”

  She looked up at the sky, wide and blue and bright.

  Mrs. Coolridge spun the coin up. It glinted in the sun.

  “Heads.” Heads I win, tails you lose.

  Mrs. Coolridge caught the quarter in her palm, and slapped it on the back of her hand. “Heads.”

  Daisy thought she could hear her mother say something, but she wasn’t sure.

  “Daisy?” Mrs. Coolridge eyed her impassively.
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br />   “I’ll take first serve.”

  “Peaches?”

  Peaches jerked her head toward the far side of the court and Daisy watched as she made her way around the post. Daisy picked up two tennis balls and stuck one in her pocket before walking across the clay to the center mark.

  Standing at the baseline, she watched Peaches spread her feet wide and drop her body low, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. It was as if the whole world had gone quiet, except for crickets rubbing their wings together in the heat. She stared at Peaches’s feet and the angle of her right hip, which was jutting a little toward the alley.

  Daisy tossed high and dropped her racquet behind her right shoulder. She could see the ball was straight, even though it hurt her eyes to look up at the sun. Bringing her racquet up, she hit a can opener, slicing into Peaches’s body on her backhand side, feeling her right foot come down with a hard thud as her weight moved forward.

  Peaches was late stretching for the backhand, and the ball didn’t make it back over the net.

  Someone clapped from the porch.

  Daisy moved to serve to the ad court.

  “Fifteen-love.” Her voice sounded small in the open space.

  On the second point, she hit her serve slightly wide and the spin on the ball brought it straight into Peaches’s body. She squinted to make sure Peaches had missed it before turning her back on her opponent and repositioning herself.

  “Thirty-love.”

  She sliced her serve again, but this time Peaches was ready for her, hitting a low ball that forced her to the net. Daisy slid up and tried to volley into no-man’s-land, but Peaches was already there. She returned with a slightly weak forehand, and Daisy skittered backwards, her racquet already dropped low at her left thigh. She hit a backhand straight down Peaches’s alley. Her heart pounded as she watched Peaches stretch for the ball. Stretch and miss.

  Daisy knew the game was hers, she could taste it now, feel it vibrating in her muscles like the thrumming in the brush behind her. She pulled out the collar of her dress and blew down it, feeling the sweat running down her stomach cool under her breath.

  Peaches positioned herself close to the alley, already protecting her backhand. It was a mistake and Daisy knew it.

  Always punish a weakness.

  Daisy felt her feet move instinctively toward the center, the ball go up, the racquet drop back, arc and then slam a cannonball, flat and hard, down the T. It was in. Too late, Peaches shifted her weight, reaching for the forehand. Her wrist turned slightly as she made contact with the ball. It caught the top of the net and dropped back into her own service box.

  Daisy’s fingers reached for the arrowhead in her pocket. She looked up at the porch and saw Ed, a small smile curling his lips. Her mother was gripping his arm tightly, even though the game was over. Daisy passed her hand over her face, which was feverish and smooth to the touch, the sweat so thin it slid right off.

  They switched sides. Peaches gave almost as good as she had gotten, winning the game, although Daisy managed a couple of points. They continued like that, back and forth, tit for tat, each winning on her own serve. At times Daisy felt like they were dancing together, tight and uncomfortable, like when she danced with the boys from the Park School at Mrs. Brown’s class, their faces in frozen concentration as they tried not to step on her toes. The soles of her feet ached when she stopped running, but as she slid and skimmed across the court, her arm muscles straining to give power to her shot, her thighs extending, she felt no pain.

  She watched Peaches move, watched the ball move, but her mind had almost disengaged. Images of the dead girl, of Peaches and Tyler under the Japanese lantern and of Ed’s white knuckles as they listened at the dining room door, spooled through her head. And Daisy played to make them disappear. If she hit harder, reached farther, moved quicker, they would fall like ducks in a row.

  So she hit harder and moved faster, hit and ran and hit and ran, until she broke Peaches’s serve. She took the set. Then she took her next game, and the next and the next after that, until there was only one last game for her to win. And she was going to win, and once she did, she would never be hurt again; she would be armored for life.

  At 30-40, Daisy watched Peaches getting ready to serve. As she made contact, the ball looked sluggish, and Daisy was already on the move. She chipped the return to Peaches’s backhand, moving quickly through the shot to set up for a volley. Peaches’s expression changed as she saw Daisy charging the net. As the return came back, Daisy delivered the final blow—a hot, sharp volley to Peaches’s forehand. It might as well have been Timbuktu. It was over.

  Daisy let her racquet drop to the clay, with a soft thud. She stood on the hot court looking at Peaches. Her ponytail was in disarray and her round face was bright pink, as if she had been slapped. For a moment, Daisy felt sorry for her, and somehow sorry for herself, too. But then her mother was there, taking Daisy into her embrace, and she was panting into her mother’s cotton blouse. She felt Ed standing close by.

  She knew she had to go shake Peaches’s hand. But she just wanted to enjoy the cool shade of her mother’s body and the blankness in her mind.

  The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.

  HELENA

  1967: AUGUST

  I

  Helena padded over to the mirror and looked at her reflection in the early morning sun. Her blond hair stood up in a ball of graying frizz, like a hideous crown. She was reminded of a line in one of Nick’s poetry books. Somebody’s something had been “exquisite and excessive.” Excessive indeed. A whole box of Nick’s books had been accidentally shipped to Los Angeles when they had left Elm Street after the war. She had meant to send it directly on to St. Augustine, but when she never quite made it to the post office the first week, or the second, she began to rummage through the volumes.

  She looked in the mirror again, pushing her heavy breasts up with both hands, then turning to view them in profile. She let them drop. She looked at her cheeks, once apples, now just plain old round. Delicate frown lines snaked across her forehead, papery in the brisk light.

  The room she had woken up in was nothing if not bright and cheerful, with its airy proportions and starched, glad colors. Yet, somehow, it depressed her. It felt accusatory. She had grown up in this kind of shimmery, reproachful eastern light, but she did not feel bright and cheerful.

  Helena sighed. It was never any good, all this thinking about things. Too much thinking and then too much not thinking had started most of the trouble, anyway. It was why she had woken up in this room with the bluebirds on the wall in someone else’s house.

  She sat down at the dressing table. Her eyes trailed across the smudged glass surface, resting on a photograph of herself standing between Hughes and Nick. Nick had put the picture there. They were facing into the sun and her own eyes were partially hidden in the shadow of her brow line. Nick was looking off to the side, as if something there had caught her attention, putting her features into starker relief.

  Helena nudged the frame a little, and then a little more until it clattered to the floor. When she bent to pick it up, she saw the glass was broken. She pulled the photo out and straightened up. She looked at the picture awhile longer before taking up the small sewing scissors on the top of the vanity and, ever so slightly, trimming an edge of Nick’s face from the photograph. She held it out and inspected it. Then she cut away another sliver, erasing her lips and the tip of her nose. But it still didn’t look quite right, so she just went ahead and cut Nick’s face out entirely. Satisfied, she put the picture back in the frame and brushed the broken glass into the wastepaper basket.

  It was only then that she remembered: It was her birthday. She was forty-four.

  “Aunt Helena.” Daisy came rushing out of the kitchen as Helena approached the door. “Oh no. We were going to bring you breakfast in bed. We’re too slow, Mummy,” Daisy called over her shoulder.

  “Tell your aunt she’s not to co
me into the kitchen.” Nick’s voice had a mock seriousness to it that made Helena cringe.

  Daisy turned back to her aunt, smiling. “Well, you heard the general. Stay there and I’ll get your tray and keep you company on the porch.” She kissed Helena on the cheek. “I almost forgot to say it. Happy, happy birthday.”

  Daisy was wearing a pair of minute shorts, and a T-shirt. Helena could see the outline of her niece’s nipples through the fabric. Daisy’s breasts were small and pointy, and Helena thought of her own, heavy in her hands only minutes before. The girl was tiny, so light and blond, like her father. Helena was reminded of something Nick had said once about living in the house of the good and the golden. She understood what her cousin had meant. It was unnerving.

  Daisy set the tray down on the rickety white table on the front porch. Eggs Benedict. Toast. One slice of cantaloupe, with a wedge of lime. Orange juice.

  “Ta-dah,” she said, spreading her hands over the tray. “Mummy’s making you your birthday surprise.”

  It wasn’t really going to be much of a surprise, if Helena judged correctly. When they were younger, she had loved angel food cake. But she had lost her taste for it years ago, although no one had bothered to ask her. So she ate it every year, and every bite tasted of disapproval.

  Helena dipped her fork into the hollandaise sauce and licked it. She had to admit, one thing you couldn’t reproach Nick for was her cooking, when she got around to it. The sauce was delicious and creamy, shot through with lemon.

  “This is just too sweet of you, dearest,” she said. “Really, you shouldn’t spoil me so.”

  “It’s your birthday. Everyone deserves some spoiling on their birthday.”

  “Well.” Helena cut into the English muffin. “So, when did you get down last night?”

  “I just made the last ferry. Ty couldn’t get away from work, but he said there’s no way he’s going to miss your birthday celebration tonight.”