Wide Blue Yonder

by Jean Thompson

  “I agree, it’s still distressing. Just in a different way.”

  “She said Jennifer and Tammy. I distinctly remember.”

  “Yes, they’re the usual alibi. If you’d like me to talk to her …”

  Teeny shook her head. “You’d think they could just do it in a car like everybody else.”

  “It was the pool. They wanted the pool. Aren’t you glad you don’t have a teenager?”

  Teeny said, “Well, even if it was a boy …”

  “I still would have wanted to know. Thank you.” Teeny had some apricot-colored makeup coating her face and throat. Elaine hadn’t noticed it at first, but now she was fascinated by the way it floated over Teeny’s features like a mask. There were orangy deposits at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Something stretched and frayed about the flesh beneath her chin. Teeny was twelve years younger than Elaine. Frank’s frisky filly. Teeny hadn’t caused the breakup of the marriage; she’d been more of a coup de grace. Now she was already showing signs of high mileage. But it was too easy to make fun of Teeny. It always had been. Besides, she had Josie to worry about. Josie and her new mystery swain. Elaine had no clue as to who he might be and that in itself meant trouble. Whoever he was, she’d gone to a lot of elaborate care to play house with him. Elaine only wished she could be there to watch when Josie finally remembered the sheet in the dryer.

  “I didn’t know Josie had a boyfriend,” said Teeny, in a new, sugary tone. “Do they spend much time over at your house?”

  Elaine stood up. “I’m glad we got to talk. And it would probably be just as well not to mention it to Frank. If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Teeny batted at the air, dismissing the thought. “Frank would have himself a cat fit. He doesn’t know how girls are these days. He thinks everything’s the boy’s fault, and the girls are just innocent victims.”

  “They’re just young. Part of being young is having bad judgment.”

  “Call it that if you want to.” Teeny stood also. She came up to the level of Elaine’s shoulder. “Good thing she’s not coming to Aspen with us. I wouldn’t want to try and keep track of her.”

  Takes one to know one, Elaine thought nastily. From some distant precinct of the house came the mechanical whine of a garage door ratcheting up.

  Frank home early from golf. The two women looked at each other. “Crap,” said Teeny.

  He would have already seen Elaine’s car, so there was no point in trying to escape. She decided she’d let Teeny handle it. They heard Frank in the kitchen, rattling ice cubes, then water running. “We’re in here, honey,” Teeny caroled. His feet padded along the corridor outside. He stopped at the doorway and peered in at them with the cautious distaste of a man lifting the lid of a diaper pail. He wore khaki shorts and another polo shirt, red this time. The sun of the golf course had newly boiled him. His nose, forehead, the upper surfaces of his arms and legs were a burnished, flourescent pink. Teeny said, “How was your game, dear?”

  The same thing Elaine would have said herself in years past, the same wifely, pretending-to-take-an-interest tone. She found it unnerving. Frank must have thought so too. He glanced narrowly from one of them to the other and said that the game had been not bad.

  “Elaine just stopped by to drop off the key Josie borrowed.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. Thanks for letting her have her pool party. It was nice of you both.”

  Frank said, “I figure, all the money you put into a pool, you might as well get all the use you can out of it.” Delivering an opinion seemed to steady him. He stretched luxuriously, rotated one shoulder, then the other, testing the muscles.

  Teeny said, “You didn’t strain your back, did you? Do you want me to walk on it? I do that sometimes,” she explained. “It works better than those electric massagers.”

  “Well,” said Elaine, trying to remember the way to the door.

  She was already getting into her car when Frank came out to the front porch and waved her down. “Hold up a minute.”

  Elaine pointedly checked her watch. Frank said, “It’s about Harvey.”

  “What about him?” Crap.

  “I was talking with George Ebersole today at the club.”

  Elaine made a “who’s George Ebersole?” face.

  “He’s one of the partners at the opthamology practice. Works with Bob Worthy.”

  She was busted. Goddamn this town, everyone always knew everybody else’s business. “I was going to tell you.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Just not right away,” she admitted.

  Frank stood there, visibly blistering, staring her down. He must have worn a golf cap out on the course because there was a line of demarcation just above his eyebrows, as if he had been dipped by his ears into some furious dye. Elaine wished he’d hurry up and get it over with. “That wasn’t a very good idea, was it, trying to sneak up on him with the eye charts and all?”

  “He didn’t bring an eye chart. It would have been a great idea, if it had worked.”

  “Well, since it didn’t, do you think maybe it’s time we let the professionals handle it?”

  Absurd as he looked, he had her on his own turf. And her knowledge of Josie’s indiscretion, or more accurately her witholding of that knowledge, made her feel guilty, at some further disadvantage. She said, “I suppose so,” resisting even as she gave way, not wanting to admit she had failed Harvey, lost the fight. But had he ever been hers to lose or save?

  “I’ll talk to Dave again”—Dave was the lawyer—“and get everything set up for when we get back from Aspen. Don’t worry. He’s going to get first-rate care.”

  First-rate sedation. Lots of nursies. Lights that were never turned off, doors that never shut. She would go visit Harvey in the hospital, bring him flowers and talk about the weather. She would take care of his smelly cat. There would be a further series of alarming and painful events, the surgery. Harvey would wear gauze patches on his eyes and when the patches came off, who knows what he would find to see?

  Maybe it would turn out all right. Maybe eventually he could go back home and live out the rest of his small life in peace. All he had ever wanted. Of course, she didn’t really know that.

  “Frank? Do you remember, did Harvey ever talk about anything like his plans, the kind of work he wanted to do, that sort of thing?”

  “He used to drive a cab.”

  “I know that. But nobody ever dreams of driving a cab. I mean things like goals, interests, ambitions.”

  Frank gazed up at the sky, which was becoming thinly overcast, its color draining away. “He used to run track,” he offered. “Back in school.”

  “Harvey? That’s wild.”

  “Track and field,” Frank amended. “You know, high jump, broad jump, discus and all. I remember my dad talking about it. Why?”

  “Just curious.” Oh run Harvey, run. “If I don’t see you before you go, have fun in Aspen.”

  “Yeah. Rocky Mountain high.” Even as Frank spoke he seemed bored by the idea of Aspen, as if he’d already gone there and come back. Unexpectedly he said, “I’ve been watching that Weather Channel. Just once in a while when there’s nothing else on. It’s kind of—not interesting, exactly. More like they give you all this information.”

  “That so,” said Elaine, her eyebrows held at neutral.

  “Yeah, you could see somebody like old Harvey, somebody who didn’t have anything better to do, really getting into it.”

  “But you’re not. Into it. You just watch it.”

  “I said once in a while, OK? I don’t know. Maybe I’m finally getting the wackos. The family wacko syndrome.”

  “What syndrome?”

  “Well, there’s Harvey. And granddad, when he got real old he used to sit in his big chair and wait until somebody got close enough. Then he’d spit at you and laugh like the devil if he hit you. Nice, huh? Even my dad had what he called his ‘low-down days.’ Times he wouldn’t get out of bed or talk.”

 
“You never told me any of this.”

  “I didn’t ever think much about it. Then you read stuff on brain chemistry and genetics. Like there could be some kind of hereditary time bomb that goes off when you reach a certain age. So what do you think, am I gonna end up being another crazy old man?”

  He was trying to keep his tone light, but there was a layer of anxious bravado that she didn’t know what to make of. Why was he telling her this anyway? Wasn’t it Teeny’s job? She said, “I think you’ll probably die of skin cancer before you get the chance to find out.”

  Frank looked down at his blazing forearms. “Yeah, I know, sunscreen. They talk about that a lot on the Weather Channel.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to go crazy, Frank. If it matters what I think. Maybe you should talk to somebody, it might make you feel better. Maybe the professionals you want to turn Harvey over to.”

  She drove away, leaving neither of them satisfied with the conversation. But she had to shift focus, she had Josie to worry about now. She needed to get back to the house and decide what to do about her. Lecture? Scream? Confiscate the car keys? Refuse to pay for college? Had she really believed she’d get away with such a brazen stunt?

  Of course, she almost had gotten away with it. Elaine supposed she should be glad that she’d found out what Josie was up to, but truthfully, she would have been just as happy not to know, since it seemed there was no way she could prevent or control anything the girl did. It frightened her to think of Josie out there in the vastness of the world, thinking she could take it on, make it do her bidding, escape not only unharmed but triumphant. Elaine remembered feeling that way herself. Years and years and years ago. Not invincible; any number of things had made her suffer profoundly. But she’d felt as if anything she did would come right in the end, no matter how reckless or foolhardy, because life was meant to be lived, seized, met head-on. Like the time she and her girlfriend had gotten into the car with the Italian men they hadn’t known for two minutes, strange men, strange car, strange country, motoring off into the hills outside of Florence on some forgotten excursion. And in fact it had turned out all right. The men had not been rapists or murderers. They’d treated them to Oranginas and bolted upright from their seats the instant Elaine and her friend had said they wanted to go back. Which proved exactly nothing, except that whatever bad luck was floating around that day had settled on different people.

  She had done other things she liked remembering less. Risky, histrionic, self-destructive things—even before AIDS there were such things. Wild oats, people called them. She’d taken a kind of pride in them. They had been her credentials, her merit badges, her proof of citizenship in life. Now she would rather not dwell on them. Was that the difference between youth and not-youth, the difference between pride and shame? Why was shame supposed to be better for you?

  So it was with some confusion of feelings that Elaine reached home and went to look for her daughter. Josie wasn’t in her room nor was she parked in front of the television. Elaine found her out in the backyard, sunbathing.

  She was sprawled in a lounge chair, face up, her knees raised and lolling apart. She wore a pair of cutoffs and a pink halter top and a new pair of red plastic sunglasses with squared lenses, a fashion that made anyone wearing them look like a robot from an old sci-fi movie. Elaine let herself noiselessly out the screen door and stood watching her from a few yards away.

  Josie had not, thankfully, inherited her father’s skin. Her tan had deepened layer by layer over the summer, gold on gold. Where she had oiled herself there were patches of brightness that glinted like mirrors. The secret places of her body, the soft folds at the bends of knees and elbows, slope of her breasts, rise of thigh, were damp with sweat.

  Elaine watched her silently for a few moments, then Josie became aware of her, jerking her head and knocking her sunglasses loose. “Jesus Christ.”

  Elaine said nothing. Josie reached for her sunglasses, but they had fallen beneath her chair. “You know, if you’re going to sneak up on me, you could at least warn me.”

  Still Elaine didn’t speak, couldn’t. Some mix of anger and yearning was lodged in her throat. Josie resettled herself. “Was there something you wanted? Or are you just going to stand there looking weird?”

  It was as if an electric current had her paralyzed, staring down. If electricity were cold.

  “Mom?” Josie sat up in her chair and wrapped her arms around her elbows. “Mom, you’re creeping me out.”

  She stared and stared. Her brave beautiful idiotic lying damn-fool daughter.

  “I’m going in, OK? You can stay out here and be all spastic.” But Josie made no move to go. Her gaze met Elaine’s and locked there. “What?” She waved a hand before her face. “Quit looking at me!”

  Josie’s mouth began to shake. Then her face went rigid, trying to keep the tears back. “What do you want? What did I …” She stopped and her eyes flickered upward, caught. “All right, I’m sorry. OK? I’m …” She hunched over and hugged herself tighter, weeping in high-pitched bursts.

  Elaine waited out the crying. Josie tried to mop at her eyes with the strap of her top, gave up. Elaine said, “Who is he?”

  Josie shook her head. “Can’t.”

  “I want you to tell me.”

  “I can’t talk about him. You can’t make me.”

  “Come on, Jose. You know I’m going to find out sooner or later.”

  “No.” The tears had only softened her partway. “I just can’t. I just can’t. I wish you’d accept that.”

  “Why, is he black or something you think I’d object to?”

  “God, Mom.” Instantly she was back to being scornful. “What a jerky thing to say.”

  “Then at least tell me what questions I should be asking.” Elaine had a terrible thought. “My God, is he married?”

  Josie sniggered, though there was a thickness in it, a residue of tears. “No. Quit asking, OK?”

  “I’m glad to hear you have some standards.”

  “It’s not standards. He’s just not married. If you really want to be with somebody, being married doesn’t stop it.”

  Elaine felt a headache crawling through her brain like a neon worm. Pain strobed red and bitter blue behind her eyes. She told herself it was a good thing they were talking frankly, or with some approximation of frankness. She said, trying to shape the words to push them past the horrid colors, “You forgot about the sheet.”

  Josie didn’t get it at first. Then she flung her legs over the side of the chair so fast it nearly capsized. “Shit.” She shook her head and kept shaking it. “Shitshitshit.”

  It didn’t please Elaine as much as she’d imagined, catching her dead to rights this way. It only made her think with despair how childish the girl was still, how hopeless it was to expect of her any sort of clearheadedness or restraint. The worm in her brain throbbed.

  Josie looked up. “Does Dad know?”

  “Teeny covered for you. She told me instead. There’s no excuse for treating their house that way. Since you don’t even like them to begin with. That’s really crass.”

  “So what are you gonna do, kill me?”

  “I don’t think it matters what I do anymore. It matters what you do. You’re the only one who’s going to kill you.”

  Josie’s mouth flattened, ready to turn down. “God, Mom. You wouldn’t want to be happy for me, would you? No, that would be way too radical.”

  Elaine tried to shake her head but it was made of glass. The pain was going to drop her where she stood.

  “Because I’ve got somebody and I’m happy. I’m really really happy.”

  Elaine saw her own hand rise before her face; it blurred and flopped away. She stumbled to the backdoor.

  “You can’t stand that, can you? Are you jealous? Huh? I bet you don’t even remember the last time you—”

  The house enveloped her with its own sounds, air-conditioning, refrigerator rattle. In the bathroom upstairs she swallowed three T
ylenol and wrung out a washcloth in cold water. Her reflection floated in the mirror but she resolutely kept her eyes from it because that would be the final defeat, to see all the ways her face had become that of an old woman.

  In bed she tried to relax her toes, ankles, knees, bleeding heart, exploding brain. It must be a migraine, she never had them but she thought this was the way they were supposed to feel. One more bodily failure. She was coming apart like a cheap doll. Who needed sex when you had such a fascinating new hobby, dying by pieces? She wasn’t as wounded by Josie’s taunts as she might have been because she couldn’t hold the concept of sex in the same skin as her writhing pain. She couldn’t even remember the last time she did. That part of her life was probably over anyway. There were times she mourned this and other times she simply forgot to be mournful. Josie or anyone else young couldn’t be expected to understand.

  A rolling wave of sweat and nausea seized her and even though she was lying down, the room revolved in a whizbang spin like a planet torn loose from its orbit. Josie was at the door, pushing it open. “Mom?”

  She stood in the doorway, pulling the room even further off balance. Its edges threatened to flip, exchange places. “I’m sorry I said some of that stuff. It was really vile. There’s some of it I meant but not the stuff about you, all right? Mom?

  “Go away.”

  Josie closed the door behind her.

  Elaine got out of bed once to throw up. A long string of filth that left her empty and shaking. Migraine. Had to be. Some kind of negative biofeedback, her hapless life trying to squeeze out through her ears. She rinsed her mouth and went back to bed and slept somehow and by the time she woke up and was able to move about the house it was already dark and Josie’s car was gone.

  In the backroom of Trade Winds, Elaine sat on the floor leaning against the wall. All around her she had unfurled a dozen bolts of fabric and was trying to empty her mind of everything except their patterns and colors. There was a pale green paisley with a border of pink. Next to it, a crimson and blue batik. A yellow sunburst print. A turquoise and sky blue scroll. Stars of deep orange stitched together with silver. She took those holy deep-down breaths. She breathed in red and orange, breathed out blue and green.