Anna was astonished: he’d already brought in enough stuff for two months. And not the ordinary things for a short stay, either. There was a carton of coffee mugs, one filled with pots and pans. Dishtowels. Both summer and winter clothes. They weren’t visiting at all; they were moving in. She felt strained to her bitter limits.
When Anna looked up, Flynn was standing in the doorway holding a giant cat. She had on a pair of ancient optometrist’s goggles—the old-style optimeter doctors once used to test vision—and a carrot stick in each nostril.
“You must be Flynn,” Anna said.
“I am the walrus.” She walked into the room.
Marvin walked in and dumped an armload of things on the floor. He looked over at his daughter. “I told you to put those goggles away, Flynn. Do you want a time-out?”
Flynn removed the goggles and the carrot sticks, frowned, and slumped cross-armed on the couch beside Anna. “Do you know that in a former lifetime I was married to Marvin, who is now my father, and that Poppy, my mother, was a blind cowherd who used to beg for grain. We were Hindu then. Marvin beat me.”
“What?” Anna instinctively scanned the girl’s body for bruises.
“He didn’t want children, and he beat me to make them disappear. In the tummy.”
“Oh,” Anna said, still a little stunned by the notion of being a grandmother, awed by the presence of this lovely child. Anna put her hand up to her head. Her headache was starting to shake free, but the knots in her head had somehow coiled in her chest. Anna hadn’t given much thought to the girl really; mostly she tried to imagine what she would say to Poppy after all these years.
Flynn was gorgeous, Anna noted, seeing a little bit of Hugh in the curve of her lips and jaw line, but mostly Flynn looked like the women on Anna’s father’s side: there was a spectacular resemblance to Anna’s second cousin Ella. Ella was the seventh and favorite daughter of the baker in a little village outside Warsaw. Sixteen in 1939, she had picked up her father’s new oven peel and was on her way to the shop that September morning when the blitzkrieg started. Ella rushed into burning homes and helped people to safety. Legend had it that she hit a German soldier over the head with the oven peel as he was getting ready to shoot a kneeling line of villagers who then escaped. Ella later died in the camps.
“My mother is mentally ill,” Flynn said, clutching the cat tighter as he struggled to get down.
“No,” Anna said, angry with Marvin for his apparent careless language. “She’s not.” But then before she could stop herself she asked, “Has she left you before?”
“Certainly,” Flynn said. “But this time she’s not coming back.”
“Only God knows such things,” Anna said in a voice that was so much her grandmother’s it made her head ache all over again.
“We’ve barely met,” Flynn said, though Anna didn’t know if it was a reference to herself, Poppy, or, given the peculiarity of this child, to God.
“What’s the kitty’s name?” Anna said.
“My parents are divorcing. They think I don’t know this, but of course I do.”
“Does the kitty have a name?”
“His name is Hoover McPaws. He just happens to be Irish.”
“Oh, yes? I can see a certain Irish cast to his features.”
Flynn looked back at her grandmother, smiled nervously. Something frightened her here. Her grandmother’s look pierced through her like the prickly spines of a cactus. “I think you and I were gladiators together under the rule of Caesar Augustus.”
“How old are you now, Flynn?”
“Ten. And you?”
“Fifty-three.”
“My mother is thirty. Have you met her?”
“Yes. She’s my daughter, the way you’re her daughter.”
“Oh, right.” She shifted the cat, which was yowling now, pinned belly up against her knees. “Did she seem mentally ill to you?” Flynn let the cat had go with a gasp, sucked her finger where the cat scratched her. “Because she was always a good mother until she left. She took very good care of me.”
Anna heard her husband’s tone in the girl’s words, the bewilderment without a trace of anger at Poppy’s behavior. “She said she would come,” were his last words. “I hope nothing has happened.” She couldn’t have this girl here. Her very existence was a kind of reproach, the flaws in Poppy that led her to abandon her child were, really, Anna’s failing as a parent. She’d buried the guilt long ago, and the last thing she needed was to have all the pain of attachment resurface.
Marvin came back in, straining under the weight of a huge trunk. “I hope you don’t mind, Anna,” he said. “I, uh, brought a little work with me.”
“And just what sort of work do you do? Large-game taxidermy?” Already her house looked like a yard sale. Which she didn’t care about, except there was something underhanded going on here, something neither he nor Poppy had respected her enough to tell her.
“Are those the heads?” Flynn asked.
“Go get ready for bed, Flynn,” Marvin said, breathing hard.
“Heads? What?” Anna said.
“Clay heads. Busts. I’m two-thirds of the way though casting. I’m not sure about the humidity levels in the bus, so I didn’t want to leave them in there. Too much moisture and I lose the correct slip.”
“Yeah, okay whatever,” Anna said. She looked over at Flynn. “I have a bed all set up for you in the guest room.”
“Go brush your teeth, Flynn,” Marvin said.
Anna waited until she heard the water running in the bathroom then said, “What the hell is going on? What is all this?”
Marvin sighed, then pulled a bottle of vodka from his pocket, the same oversized trench coat she remembered him wearing all those years ago. “Let’s have a drink.”
“No thank you,” she said. “Look, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, mister, but I won’t have it. You tell me straight out what you’re doing here, or you can leave right now. I’m too old for this kind of crap.”
He nodded. “It’s late. Can we talk in the morning? I’ve been driving for sixteen straight days, mostly in circles looking for my wife. Okay?”
Anna didn’t answer. Flynn reappeared in the living room.
“Bedtime, young lady,” Marvin said.
“I have to feed Hoover,” she said.
“I’ll feed him,” Marvin said.
“But I need to. He has a delicate stomach. He needs consistency.”
Anna and Marvin both watched as Flynn took a pouch of cat food and a small bowl from her backpack, then watched, along with Flynn, the cat eating his dinner as though they’d never seen anything quite like it before.
All night long Anna lay awake. Flynn was in the guest bedroom, and Marvin had the foldout couch in the living room. Anna heard him get up numerous times, the front door opening and closing, the slam of the bus door outside.
Already it felt to her as if they’d been here years instead of hours.
At seven-thirty the next morning Anna stumbled bleary-eyed toward the kitchen to make coffee. She’d forgotten to ask what time they usually got up—late sleepers, she’d bet on it.
Marvin was snoring when Anna walked by him. His feet hung over the end of the mattress. He was uncovered, wearing only a pair of paisley boxer shorts that looked like silk. His hair, loose from its ponytail, fanned out over the white pillow as though it had been arranged like that: geisha-girl hair on the body of a Roman soldier. He was thin but perfectly muscled. His thighs and shoulders and calves were lovely. A perfect specimen, as Hugh once said. She looked away, a little guilty.
But this was Marvin after all. He had draped his clothing over her cello like it was a cheap chair. She tossed on the floor so he’d get the hint.
There were tracks all around the living room, chalky white footprints that stopped in front of the antique table she’d recently gotten out of storage—Duncan Phyffe, over a hundred years old—on which Anna saw one of the most gruesome sights she’d ever seen: twisted, grimac
ing busts of what looked like Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Gerald Ford. The Reagan was the worst, a face full of angry confusion, deep lines etched around the blank eyes and slack mouth, but which, drawing nearer, she saw was another face in profile. This one was unmistakably Jeffrey Dahmer. The clay was dyed reddish brown, Dahmer’s face smooth and peaceful-looking. The expression—beatific half-smile, eyes gazing upward in the classic manner of Catholic saints—was provocative in the manner of gruesome car wrecks. She tried to look away, but couldn’t.
“Horrible!” she said. And her table: smeared with clay, the finish no doubt ruined. She glanced at Nixon. The face of John Wayne Gacy—labeled on an index card—was superimposed on Nixon’s, a snake coiling out of Gacy’s mouth wrapped around the substantial jowls of Nixon. “Horrible, horrible,” Anna said, and stormed back to the couch. “I need to speak to you!”
Marvin opened one eye. “Good morning, Anna.” He yawned, sat up and looked around him as though not remembering where he was. Anna registered this, and it gave her a strange pang. The slow to wake look of a child, which led her in a flash back to Poppy and her husband. All the Saturday mornings when Poppy awakened so slowly that she and Hugh had time for breakfast and uninterrupted lovemaking before Poppy in her Scooby-Doo pajamas stumbled in with her scent of baby shampoo and Dreft laundry soap.
She yanked her attention back, pulled this image behind her memory’s vision like a kite string.
“What’s the meaning of these clay heads?”
“Well, it’s a conceptual study linking presidents with serial killers. The idea is the slaughtering of Americans, either individually, as in the case of the killers’ victims, or as ordinary citizens—”
“I don’t mean that,” Anna said, forcing herself to keep her voice low and level. “I don’t give a damn about your artistic vision.”
“Oh,” he said, visibly disappointed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what the hell is it doing on my table like that? You’ve ruined the finish, do you realize that? That table has been lovingly taken care of for over a hundred years and you destroyed it in one day.”
He stood, reached for his pants. “I’m sorry, Anna. I didn’t know where else to set up. I’m at a critical moment in my work. I’m just rabid with creativity and I sometimes don’t sweat the details. I’m sorry. I’ll pay to have it refinished.”
He did look sorry, Anna thought, and she felt like a fool, like a petty, shrill matron. If anyone else had done this to her table she would have been irritated, maybe a little angry, but nothing the rage she was shaking with now.
“I’ll go take a look at it, and if it needs a professional I’ll get one,” Marvin said.
She looked back at him. “I have to go to work. And then I have orchestra rehearsal till seven.” She hadn’t planned on going back to the rehearsals, but something in her now wanted to attempt Rachmaninoff. And she needed a little more time away from Marvin and Flynn to think about why this broken family had washed up here. Why don’t you meet me for dinner at Davidé’s. She wrote down the directions on the back of a sheet of a Brandenburg concerto, the one she liked least and never played.
Anna gathered up her cello, put it in the back of the Volvo and jostled through the rush-hour traffic. She never left this early. But the place seemed airless with Marvin and Flynn and all of their junk. She didn’t feel well. She dodged in and out of lanes, sped ahead, slowed down. Calm down, she told herself. Had she had too much coffee? Her hands were shaking, her heart beating against her ribcage like a trapped bird. Food. Maybe she hadn’t had enough to eat. She sped toward an exit when it felt as though she might black out, pulled into the nearest gas station. Was she having a heart attack? Her breath was short. It felt like her heart was missing every third beat. A curtain of dread fell down. She went into the convenience store, wandered through the cool aisles, knowing if she collapsed someone would call the paramedics. She bought a package of black licorice and a box of Sudafed.
*
The alarm went off at eight-thirty in the room where Flynn slept. In the middle of her dream about Oscar de la Hoya—a good dream where Oscar scored a seventh-round knockout—the music from the clock radio seeped into the space between waking and sleeping. A retro music weekend, the DJ said, featuring music from the ’70s by those underground, where-are-they-now artists. The Bay City Rollers sang “Saturday Night.”
In her dream, Oscar smiled at her as she peered into the ring. He sang about Jeremiah being a bullfrog as he sent his opponent down for the count. Oscar held the other boxer against the mat, looked up, and blew her kisses that turned into yellow feathers.
SIX
ONE PIP IS WORTH A THOUSAND KNIGHTS
Anna waited for Marvin and Flynn in the corner booth of Davidé’s. The shakiness of the morning was still with her but the martini she’d just gotten was helping. She’d finished up some things at school, then went to orchestra rehearsal where she did better with the Rachmaninoff, but struggled with a timing problem. The principal cellist noticed, then the conductor. Anna was coming in too early, midway through the downbeat. She excused herself after the first run-through, said she felt ill.
The violinist next to her, a humorless woman who taught second grade and was self-consciously married to a garage mechanic, had never liked Anna. Anna never liked her, either, but now there was true animosity. “Some of us take this very seriously, Anna, and don’t look kindly on missed rehearsals or poor preparation.”
“Sorry,” Anna said, deciding she was done for the day. She waited until the conductor cued the woodwind section, then slipped out and drove straight to the restaurant.
Anna ordered a martini right away, and an appetizer plate to have something in her stomach. Other than a few strands of licorice earlier, she hadn’t eaten all day. Even the fragrant bouquet of garlic and sweet basil marinara didn’t seduce her. Maybe she had some sort of eating disorder. Well, it would pass. Perhaps not until Marvin and her granddaughter left, but it would eventually subside.
Marvin walked in just as Anna got out her phone to call him.
“Sorry I’m late,” Marvin said, and sat down. He had on a white shirt and a red tie. His hair was pulled back, sleek as onyx, his face freshly shaven.
“I suppose I’m used to it,” she said, then felt a little sorry for being so bitchy. She downed the last of the martini, chewed the olive. She would have to try harder to get along with this man. He was her son-in-law, after all, the father of her only granddaughter. In that way, family. “Where’s Flynn?”
“She’s with your neighbor, Greta.” He picked up the menu.
“What? You asked her to baby-sit?”
“She wanted to. We were on our way out and she came over and introduced herself. Offered to watch Flynn. She and Flynnie hit it off right away. It was uncanny. Like they’d known each other for years.” He looked around the dining room. “Where the hell is the waiter? I need a drink.”
Anna looked over at him, was ready to say something sharp, like, where did he think he was, The Olive Garden? But he smiled at her so sweetly that she backed down.
“What are you going to have?” Marvin said, looking at the menu.
“Probably the lobster ravioli.”
Marvin fiddled with the candle on the table. “I can’t ever go into a restaurant without thinking about Poppy. I always have to order for her, if you can believe that. She’s the most indecisive person I’ve ever known. She’ll read the whole menu twice, pick something, then the minute the food comes she looks at my plate and says, ‘I should have ordered that.’”
Anna smiled. “She was always like that. Her father used to call it entrée envy and tell her she was neurotic.”
“Really? I was going to ask you, Anna, if you have any pictures of Poppy as a girl. I’ve put images together in my mind of what I think she must have been like, but I would love to see photos.”
Anna nodded. “I’ll look for some.”
His eyes sparkled. “I would really appreciate t
hat. Was Poppy shy as a child? What did she really love? I mean, activities, toys.” He leaned toward Anna, his eyes wide.
“Well, I wouldn’t have called her shy so much as wary. She was quiet, watchful. Sensitive.” Anna laughed, embarrassed by these generic descriptions. She could have been talking about anybody’s child. Marvin was still looking at her, hanging on her every word. “Poppy was strong-willed. And she had definite ideas about things. She used to insist that we take her to Sunday school, though Hugh and I never could figure out where she got that notion. We were not church-goers ourselves.”
“Was she imaginative?” Marvin asked.
“Sure, I guess. Aren’t all children?”
“Yeah, well, I’m just thinking of Flynn. Flynn is off the charts. Her imagination is positively frightening.” He paused. “She draws things in too deep. Last year when she took ballet, her teacher was trying to get them to use the entire floor when they danced. She told them to be space hogs. Flynnie was convinced there were pigs in the sky and refused to go outside after dark because she was afraid they’d fall on her head.”
Anna chuckled. A silence fell between them. Anna glanced around, looked at the overdressed women at the table next to theirs—mid-management types, women-taking-control-of-their-own-social needs-post-divorce type thing—and felt a sudden fearful anxiety mixed with distaste. Their exaggerated hilarity, forced gaiety, was apparent even from here. It was bad enough pretending to be cheerful, but being dressed up like that somehow made it even worse. After Hugh died, she met a group of women once a month for dinner or drinks. Anna liked a few of them a great deal, but she grew tired of the formality. The pleasure of female company was in part the freedom from artifice, from spangles and beads and lipstick. Sitting around with coffee or lemonade watching a video, drinking wine and listening to music.
She looked back to Marvin, who was watching her in return. Anna’s heart started to pound, despite the alcohol she’d thought would be soporific. He began to fidget. Moved the salt shaker and sugar bowl and breadbasket as though they were materials for a sculpture.
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