by Laura McNeal
“This African American woman I met in Buffalo, Mary Louise Jenkins, is going to sing a spiritual at the end. As a favor to me. She’s spectacular. I thought maybe your father would enjoy it.”
“I’ll ask him,” Lisa said, knowing her father wouldn’t come to a fireside if the speaker were the Dalai Lama. “That sounds great.”
“Okay, well, see you there?”
“Sure,” Lisa said.
“Who was that?” her mother asked when Lisa hung up, and her look turned even more dubious when Lisa explained that Elder Keesler was calling to invite her father to the fireside.
“Really,” her mother said. “Has he called you before?”
“No,” Lisa said, stung at the suggestion. Then, sliding the lasagna pan a little too forcefully into the cupboard, she asked, “Why do you hate him?”
“I don’t hate him.” A pause. “I’ve just seen his type.”
“I thought you wanted me to date Mormons.”
“I do. But he’s a missionary, Lisa. He’s not supposed to date anyone.”
“This isn’t a date, Mom,” Lisa said in a tight voice. “It’s a fireside. At church.”
So that night she sat trying not to stare at Elder Keesler while listening to a weirdly uninspirational story about a near-death experience and waiting for the stout black woman who sat near Elder Keesler to sing. When at last the woman stood, she cleared her voice and seemed about to open her mouth, but didn’t. She closed her eyes and left them closed and only after a complete calm came into her face did she begin to sing. As the woman’s voice took over the room, Lisa sat transfixed.
When you listened to a woman sing “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” without accompaniment or human assistance, and the woman made the song swell so far beyond normal human limits that she seemed to leave the chapel entirely, looking out and beyond you to some other place, and when you felt all the time that the other place was the place you wanted to be with Elder Keesler, what was that? It wasn’t a date. But it was a communion of some kind, and surely he felt it, too.
For Lisa, the following week slid numbly by. Spectacular weather, spectacular greenness and goldness and blooms. She ran, she wrote, she read, and she stared out the windows of buses and cars at blue Toyota hatchbacks in hopes one would contain Elder Keesler, but none did.
Then, on Saturday, the window she stared out of was Janice’s, and what she saw were the straight iron rails of Elder Keesler’s fire escape, which reminded her of a Mormon hymn. “Hold to the rod, the i-i-i-ron rod,” it went. It was about holding on to the rail so you wouldn’t fall into temptation. Lisa looked back at her history book, which was open to a page about the Iroquois. She tried to focus on the confederacy of the Five Nations.
All the windows of the Bledsoe apartment were open to catch a breeze, but the day was unbelievably hot and stuffy. Everything, including the air, hung still in the grainy, thick afternoon light.
“Want a burrito?” Janice asked. She had her history book open, too, but Lisa noticed that what Janice was really doing was doodling with a blue gel pen, and in the midst of some loopy flowers, she had written, in cursive, the name MAURICE.
“Sure,” Lisa said, trying to memorize the names of the five original nations by writing them over and over again in her notebook. Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca. “Moocs,” she said.
“Mooks?”
“It’s a mnemonic acronym for the Five Nations. M-O-O-C-S. Want me to teach it to you?”
“No,” Janice said. “But if you can get a cute Mohawk to take my test for me, I’d be grateful.” Janice stood up, stretched a little, then yelped. “Holy Helpers, Batman! Red phone to the White House! They’re doing their laundry!”
And they were. What Lisa had been pretending not to wait for had finally occurred. Outside on the fresh green grass of Home Park Gardens, Elder Keesler and Elder Pfingst, both in T-shirts and knee-length shorts, were draping white shirts over the community clothesline.
“It must be p-day,” Lisa said.
Janice gave her a look. “P as in pea pod or P as in men’s room?”
“P,” Lisa said, “as in preparation. It’s their day off.”
“Oh,” Janice said, directing her gaze back outdoors. Then, without any hesitation whatever, she stuck her head out the unscreened window and said, “Hey, kids. How’s the P going?”
Both elders turned.
“P as in preparation,” Janice said.
The elders still said nothing.
“Need some clothespins?”
After a pause, Elder Keesler said, “Sure. We’re actually running short.”
Janice snatched a cotton bag of clothespins and, checking her hair in the mirror, said, “Ask not what you can do for your girlfriend.”
The concrete steps felt smooth and cold under Lisa’s bare feet. After the concrete came sharp gravel, then hot asphalt, then the cool tongues of grass. When Elder Keesler smiled at her, Lisa dropped her eyes, and her stomach wadded together like gum. She reached down into the basket and lifted up a wet, white, clumped-up shirt. Without saying anything, she shook it, held it upside down, and pinned it precisely in four places.
“Well, that looks tidy,” Elder Keesler said. “After we’re done, we’ll have a quiz to see who pinned what.” He picked up the next shirt, extracted some clothespins from the cotton bag, and hung it exactly as Lisa had done hers. They continued until the basket was done, and Janice, who had been introducing herself to Elder Pfingst, asked where the underwear was.
Elder Pfingst blushed. “Indoors,” he said. “It’s kind of sacred.”
Janice raised her eyebrows at Lisa, and Lisa said, “You know. Like your Miracle Bra.” She could just imagine what Janice would later have to say about sacred underwear. For now, though, everyone laughed, and Janice climbed the rungs of the metal spider, where she perched and asked Elder Pfingst what he and Elder Keesler had done for fun last night. Elder Keesler had read a book but Elder Pfingst had watched The Wizard of Oz. “We’re not supposed to watch videos,” he said a little sheepishly, “but someone had left it in the apartment and it’s rated G.”
Janice said, “It shouldn’t be. I mean, it’s a girl and three men on an overnight, right?”
Elder Pfingst laughed and said it wasn’t actually overnight, or actually anything since it was technically all a dream.
“Seriously, that green witch gave me nightmares,” Janice said. “And I still can’t watch that monkey part.” She climbed a little higher and said, “I liked the I-wish-I-had-a-brain song, though.”
Lisa and Elder Keesler sat on the swings and talked about their favorite books (his was something about bushmen in Africa, which he called a “postcolonial masterpiece”), the weather, his aunt in California, and how his mother had taught him to iron.
“My mom says that a shirt dried outdoors looks nicer when it’s ironed,” Lisa said. “It’s like the sun starches it.”
They were quiet a few seconds, then Elder Keesler said, “When we started hanging the clothes I was hoping you’d see us and come out.”
Lisa didn’t know what to say. “Oh,” she said, trying to ignore the whirling in her stomach. “Really?”
“It’s been really distracting, knowing you,” he said. “I can’t keep my mind on my work now.”
This was easily the most wonderful thing anyone had ever said to Lisa.
“I’ve been distracted, too,” she said, staring at his dry, bony, surprisingly delicate hands. She didn’t know what else to say. Distracted seemed like a safe word, not sinful or bad.
“I’m going home next week,” he said. “President Atkins, our good-old-boy Southern mission president, doesn’t like us to talk about departure dates. He says, ‘Brethren, there are but two answers to the question, “How long have you been out?”: “Just ova a year” and “Just unda a year.” ’ ” Elder Keesler was grinning, and then he wasn’t. In fact, he turned almost somber. “I didn’t want to just vanish on you.”
“No,” Lisa sai
d.
Elder Pfingst looked at his watch, climbed down from the spider, and walked their way. “Ready to go? We’ve still got the marketing to do.”
“Yep.” Elder Keesler stood up and offered Lisa his hand. She took it and stood up, aware of his warm palm, his smooth hard ring, and the stupefying heat that was either her own response to his touch or the general stickiness. “See you at church, okay?” he said.
Lisa nodded. The forest across the street was dense and still, full of leaves as soft as rose blossoms. She could feel the watchful deer in it, even though she couldn’t, from where she was sitting, see them.
“Toodle-oo,” Janice called. “Can I see the miracle briefs next time?”
“No,” Elder Keesler said good-naturedly, and when he waved for the last time, he looked directly, sweetly, unswervingly into Lisa’s eyes.
PART THREE
The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes,
Along came a blackbird,
And nipped off her nose.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Alarm Systems
Mick lay awake in the middle of the night. His bedside digital clock said 4:08 and then, as he stared at it, 4:09. He tried to think what day it was. Saturday night, now Sunday morning. At least he could sleep in.
This had been happening lately. At night he’d fall asleep at ten or eleven and then he’d awaken five or six hours later, still tired, but not tired enough to empty his mind and go back to sleep. He scooched to the edge of the bed and reached a hand down to Foolish, who raised his head for a quick scratch, then resumed his tight-tuck sleeping position. Mick got up, found his flashlight, went to the window, and shined its beam toward the gap in the chimney brick where the nest had been wedged. The light caught the blinking eyes of an adult phoebe. Maybe it was the male, waiting for the female to come back. Or maybe it was the female, back from wherever she’d been to lay her small white eggs. Hang in there, pal, Mick thought, and then wondered who he was privately talking to.
Almost three weeks had passed since Nora had come home late from the fake spinning lesson. The green disk was still in Mick’s jacket pocket. School had that itchy, get-it-over-with feeling: fifteen endless-seeming days to go.
The house had turned quieter. Everyone acted more or less normal, talking about fixing the garage roof (they hadn’t), planting the garden (they had), and the first sheep-to-sweater class (a big turnout), but it seemed to Mick they were all merely impersonating their former selves—it was as if the real versions of himself and his father and Nora had withdrawn to their own corners in a strangely adult game of wait and see. Mick’s father hadn’t started whistling the slow songs again, but he’d taken the happy songs and slowed them down so it was hard to tell what they were anymore. The couple of times Mick had seen Nora around Melville, she’d seemed cheery as ever. One day he’d seen her bustling into the art wing, talking and laughing with Wes Eaton, a student teacher who, Mick noticed, was carrying Nora’s bag of carded wool for her. Another time he’d seen her standing in the Melville parking lot with Mr. Duckworth, a youngish widower, Nora waving her arms and talking while Mr. Duckworth rolled out his deep thunderous laughter.
But then, in the last week or so, something odd had occurred. Nora had turned quiet, a strange, deep-down, un-Noralike quiet. It was as if her mind was someplace else, and if anyone spoke to her, she would start slightly and say “What?” And a few days ago Mick had seen her outside his history room at the high school looking almost lost. It was just after the final bell and he was filing out of the room with the other kids when he spotted her standing still, a rock in the stream of passing students.
Mick was going to duck his head and slip by, but he thought she’d already seen him. He said, “What’re you doing over here?” and it was as if it took her a second to remember. “Delivering something to a Mrs.”—and here she looked at the name on the manila envelope she was carrying—“Eckstein.” Mick turned and pointed. “You’re close. She’s two doors down.” Nora nodded, but didn’t move. Mick raised the paper in his hand. “Got an A from Cruso on my muckraker paper. A-minus actually. The minus was for being late.” Nora said that was great, really great, but she was glancing beyond him, as if she was waiting for him to go. “I better keep moving,” she said, and they’d parted. When Mick glanced back from the head of the stairs, Nora had disappeared, into Mrs. Eckstein’s room, he presumed.
Lisa Doyle was talking to Mick at work, joking mostly, and every now and then they would talk on the phone, but he could tell she was intent on keeping a certain distance between them. If Mick talked about how it was fun to ride bikes to Green Lakes this time of year, or if he said he didn’t usually go to dances but the band at this year’s underclass prom was supposed to be really good, Lisa would fall silent for a second or two and then steer the subject somewhere else, to Maurice Gritz, say, who was such an idiot, or to her friend Janice, who she couldn’t believe was hanging out with such an idiot, and pretty soon Mick and Lisa would be back in the safe zone, talking and chuckling. Mick thought of it as exercycle talk—it was easy, and gave the appearance of movement while going absolutely nowhere.
On May 2 Mick had received a birthday card from his mother in San Francisco. It included a note saying Sorry I haven’t called in a while—things so frantic here—think of you often—much love, Mom. The card included a computer-generated check for five hundred dollars made out to Michael C. Nichols. His mother’s signature was a hasty scrawl. He’d watched her sign her personal checks once during a visit. She had a service who went through all her bills, and they would write the checks and present them to his mother for her signature. The time Mick was there, she’d kept talking on a conference call while she hurriedly signed each one after the barest glance, and then pushed them aside (the service sealed, stamped, and mailed them). He supposed that she’d registered his birthday and the amount of money to be paid with the company, but either his mother or the service had gotten the month wrong, because every year he got the card and check exactly one month before his real birthday. He had never forgotten his father telling the attorney that day in the courthouse that he and Mick didn’t need any of his mother’s money, not one penny, and this year, as with prior years, Mick folded the check back into the birthday card and slid the card into its envelope and put the card into his old plastic-covered Fisher-Price record player, where the others lay. There were eight of them now.
Reece’s big news from Connecticut was automotive. His uncle Arnold had restored an old VW bug and gotten tired of it. If Reece got straight As on his spring report card, his uncle said he’d register the VW in Reece’s name on his sixteenth birthday in July, free of charge, a proposition that had turned Reece into a studying fool as the term neared its end. “The bug is black,” Reece reported, “and with the right rims and sound system, it’ll be the perfect vehicle for touring the many-splendored streets of Reeceville.” When Mick asked him about the copy of Moll Flanders he was carrying around, Reece said, “World Lit. Extra credit.” Mick had widened his eyes in mock surprise and Reece said, “Dude, for a free car, the Reeceman’d read War and Peace in Latvian.”
The big news at Village Greens was the recent run of houses that had been broken into, a fact that for some homeowners was made more alarming by sketchy evidence that the housebreakers were black. Someone thought they’d seen two black men in stocking caps, and twice the burglars had spray painted the same message on living room carpets: World been white way too long. Another time they left a note in Marks-A-Lot on a kitchen cabinet that said You got too much good stuff. We be back for rest. A number of the Village Greens seniors had put up FOR SALE signs, and the homeowners’ emergency meetings at the community room had turned tumultuous. Etta Hooten, the chairwoman of the homeowners’ association, appealed for calm. She cautioned against letting the discussion rely on racial stereotypes or, worse, turn racist. The color of the intruders, she correctly noted, was incidental; what mattered was that there were intruders.
She noted that the thieves were thought to enter the property on foot since they took only such items as jewelry and cash, which could easily be hidden on one’s person. On this basis, Etta Hooten said, the board had authorized expenditure for the installation of motion-activated lights on all perimeter fencing, as well as the provisional hiring of Vigilance Patrol Service, “who come highly recommended.”
This temporarily satisfied the senior homeowners, but the burglaries increased dramatically during Vigilance Patrol’s first two weeks of operation, and the night after the motion-detecting lights were installed, five different homes were broken into. More FOR SALE signs went up, but there were suddenly no buyers. At the next association meeting, a woman stood up to say that she was eighty-eight years old and for the first time in her life she was spending her nights in fear. A salesman from Jocko’s Unsurpassed Security signed up more than seventy residents for installation of state-of-the-art alarm systems, and another thirty for installation of security bars for doors and windows. All but a few paid an extra hundred dollars for expedited installation. Mick knew all this because he’d heard it from Lisa who’d heard it from Janice who’d heard it from Maurice, who attended the meetings.
Saturday work was okay. Mick had begun to learn his way around, and Maurice, who had seemed intent on keeping Mick away from Lisa, no longer bothered. He was also nicer to Lizette Uribe, calling her by her real last name and even pronouncing it more or less right. One day Mick had overheard Maurice ask her if she was interested in some fast-cash catering work and when she’d nodded, he’d said, “Okay, then. Stop by my place after work and I’ll go over the details with you.” None of this seemed to improve Lizette’s attitude toward Maurice, though—she kept her eyes down when he was around, and when he would turn to go, her eyes would follow him with a kind of sullen, smothered hatred. And she wasn’t that friendly with any of the other guys, either. Once when Mick was working near her pulling oak seedlings from the clubhouse ground cover, he’d noticed she was moving like a zombie and said, “You okay, Lizette?” and she’d glanced at him for a second and said in a low flat voice, “I’m fine,” and then she’d turned and begun to work with her back to him. The only one she would talk to at all was Lisa, which made sense to Mick. Who couldn’t get along with Lisa? Getting along with Lisa Doyle was easy—getting close to her was the problem.
