by Laura McNeal
“Oh, Lizette,” Lisa said. “Don’t do that.” She reached for Lizette’s wrist. “Here—let’s go to that little picnic area. You know, where the pine trees are.”
Lizette allowed herself to be led across the street and up a smooth dirt path to a stone table that said IN MEMORY OF JOAN POKOJSKI. They sat down on either side of the table, and Lisa waited while Lizette wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“Okay,” Lizette said. “I’m fine now. See you next week, okay?” She stood up.
“Come on, Lizette,” Lisa said. She paused. “If you don’t want to tell me, okay, I understand, but you should tell somebody.”
Lizette didn’t say anything, but she didn’t leave. She picked up a pine needle and started poking it into Joan Pokojski’s plaque. Slowly, she started talking. “He makes me do things,” she said. “So I can keep this job and get catering work.”
“What do you mean, do things?” Lisa asked, looking up to see if an approaching car was her mother’s.
Lizette cleaned out an engraved letter and brushed the dirt off the table. “Well, right now he wanted me to clean his kitchen wearing just my underwear, and the worst part is, I started to do it, but then I just couldn’t.” She turned now to Lisa. “You know what he said as I was leaving? That I could say adios to the catering work.”
Lisa felt sick. She asked if there was other stuff, and Lizette just lowered her eyes and nodded.
“We have to tell someone,” Lisa said. Another car passed, slowly, like a big barge, but a tiny old woman was at the wheel, trying to keep the barge afloat.
“No,” Lizette said emphatically. “What I have to do is quit and get another job.” She began again to work dirt from the plaque with the pine needle.
Lisa looked at her and thought about it, but she couldn’t stand it. “No,” she said. “No, no, no. We can’t let him do this to people.”
“We?” Lizette looked up. “We?” she repeated and set her face with a bitter look that made Lisa wonder for a moment if she was doing the right thing. Then she pressed on.
“I mean that I’ll help you if you want. He shouldn’t be able to do this to you. He shouldn’t get away with it.”
“Well, he will. They always do.”
“Not if you tell somebody important. Like the owners. Or maybe you should take him to court. Sue him for harassment. Then he’d be embarrassed in front of everybody.”
“No, I would be embarrassed in front of everybody. I’m not going to tell a bunch of strangers what I just told you. Besides, they’ll say, ‘If it was so bad, why didn’t you tell us sooner, or why didn’t you just quit?’ ”
Lisa was quiet. It was true, those probably were the kinds of things people would ask.
“Just so you know,” Lizette said, “my family needed the money, is why I didn’t quit. My dad’s been in Mexico for seven months because his mother’s real sick, so the only income we have is from my mom’s cleaning houses and what I make.”
“And I suppose Maurice knew that?”
Lizette smiled bitterly and stared off. “Maurice knows everything.”
And he’s the one who gets to decide who’s a normal and who’s not, Lisa thought. Well, she didn’t feel normal, and it was plain Lizette didn’t, either.
This time, the car that cruised past the pines was her mother’s gray-green Camry. “There’s my mom,” Lisa said. “Please, please let us take you home. I have an idea, okay?”
Lizette stood up, and Lisa dashed through the bushes to wave down her mother’s car. “Okay?” she asked, turning back.
Lizette nodded, crunched the pine needle with her hand, and followed Lisa to the car.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Faces
Five-fifty Saturday night. A twenty-minute bicycle ride had brought Mick to the upper end of Teal Avenue, where he stopped to pull out the directions Myra had e-mailed him. Okay. Left on Rugby, right on Wendell Terrace, then straight to what Myra called the Dickensian mansion.
Mick folded the map back into his jacket pocket. It was funny, a few days ago he’d been really looking forward to this dinner thing, but now—now he just kind of wished he was over at Lisa’s making pfeffernoodles, or whatever those things were.
A few minutes later he wheeled up to the address, but there were two separate driveways, and beyond the broad, brilliantly green, and perfectly crosscut front lawn there were two buildings, one big and one small, both brick and Victorian looking. The big one was dark, but the small one glowed with yellow light, so Mick moved in that direction. As he drew closer, he could hear Pakistani music drifting from the open windows.
The door of the little house was rounded at the top, and an iron knocker in the shape of a hand holding an orange was affixed to it. Beneath the knocker was a note that said If it’s your birthday, come on in.
Beyond the door, Mick slipped into the soft throb of drums, sitar, and a beautiful voice singing words he couldn’t comprehend. He passed through the entry to the front room—leather furniture, expensive area rugs over oak floors—and from there he could see the kitchen, where Myra stood at a counter intently slicing red grapes. She was wearing a short black dress.
“Hi,” Mick said.
Her face immediately relaxed into a smile. “You’re here!” She glanced at the clock on the oven. “And right on time.” She wiped her hands on a dish towel, came over, and gave him a big hug. “Happy birthday, Mister Mick.”
When she stood back, Mick, beaming, gave her dress a look and said quietly, “Wow.”
Myra laughed. “Yeah, well, Pam gave me this dress, but I don’t wear it out in public much. Gives too many characters too many big ideas.”
They both stood smiling, and then Myra turned and looked out the window at a rose garden that reminded Mick of trimming roses with Lisa all afternoon. “Nice view, huh?”
Mick gazed out. “Yeah,” he said, turning back to Myra. “It really is.” Then, scanning the house again, “Whose place is this, anyhow?”
“Pam’s rich boyfriend’s rich parents. His name’s Kelso, and this little guest house is where Kelso lives now that he’s a collegian. ”
“Kelso’s his last name?”
“First.” Myra smiled and shook her head. “Guess if you’re rich enough you can call your kid whatever you want.”
Mick laughed. “So where’s Kelso now?”
“New York City with Pam. Dining out, going to plays, staying someplace very deluxe.” There was a faint sourness in her voice, but then she brightened. “The nice thing is that Kelso offered his place to us for your celebratory dinner! So. Are you feeling celebratory?”
“I guess so,” Mick said.
“Good. Because I guess I am, too.” She handed him a glass of lemonade. “Okay,” she said, “these are your jobs. Shed your coat, go sit on the deck, and drink your lemonade while I finish up in here.”
Mick hung his jacket on the back of a chair, then wandered out to the brick patio, where an iron and glass table had been neatly set for two. The lemonade was good—fizzy, with a strangely pleasant tang to it. Nearby, under a gazebolike roof trailing honeysuckle, there were benches and a round sunken tub from which steam rose. Mick walked over. The water gave off the faint smell of chlorine. Mick bent, put his hand in the water, and pulled it quickly out.
Myra, materializing behind him with a cooking platter, laughed.
“Kinda hot,” Mick said.
Myra lifted the barbecue cover and forked two steaks onto the grill. “That’s why they call it a hot tub.” She set a timer, and then, in the most casual voice possible, said, “I thought we might jump in later.” She gave him a quick smile. “Would you like that?”
“I guess so,” Mick said. He tried to sip more lemonade, but there was nothing left but ice.
Myra poured him some more.
“Lemonade’s pretty good,” Mick said.
Myra laughed and was about to say something, but the timer beeped and she began to turn the steaks. When she leaned over, Mick
, from behind, caught a fleeting glimpse of her underwear. It was black.
Suddenly Mick said, “Lisa asked me to bake some kind of German cookies with her this weekend. Pfeffernougats or something.”
At once, Myra turned, beaming. “Really? A cookie date?”
Mick gave a ducking nod.
“This is good, Mister Mick. In fact, this is gooder than good! When?”
Mick glanced down. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“You know what this means? It means we have even more to celebrate than your birthday!”
They ate the steaks with asparagus and a salad that had walnuts and grapes in it, and some kind of cheese Mick had never heard of before—something like “Chevrolet,” he thought she said—and everything was delicious. It was as if Mick had entered a world where the senses were more alive than in the normal, boring everyday world—and things were moving in a smooth forward momentum that carried him easily along with it.
He opened the present she’d wrapped for him. A Pakistani CD, which she slid into the player for him.
They did the dishes. She washed, he dried, they chatted happily.
She put ice in a silver bucket, and asked him to set it beside the hot tub.
She showed him how to ease the cork from a bottle of champagne.
He stared at the sunlight between the tiny, tiny leaves of the immense backyard hedge. It was a liquid orange.
She filled their glasses and said, “To sweet sixteen.”
They drank the first glass fast.
When Mick set the empty glass down, he did it with extreme care. His head was swimming slightly. “Whoa,” he said. “That hit kinda fast.”
Myra laughed. “That and the hard lemonade you’ve been gulping.”
He quizzed her with a look. “Hard lemonade?”
Another big grin from Myra. “Yeah. The stuff with the teeniest bit of alcohol in it. Of which you liberally partook before dining.”
“Oh.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re all right. Just go slow with the champagne.” She poured herself another glass, and let out a soft laugh. “Besides, that’ll leave more for me. Kelso left us the good stuff.”
She drank another glass, then said, “Shall we get in the tub?”
Mick wasn’t sure what exactly this entailed. What, for example, would he wear when getting in the tub? “Sure, I guess so.”
She switched on a pump that began to swirl the water. “I brought a swimming suit or I can just wear my underthings. It’s up to you.”
“It’s up to me?”
Another easy laugh from Myra. “It’s your birthday. You get to make all the big decisions”—she kept smiling—“as long as you don’t get any big ideas.”
No manhandling, in other words, Mick thought. “Whatever’s easiest,” he said.
Myra reached behind to unclasp the dress closure behind her neck. Then there was a zipping sound and she was stepping out of her dress, which she hung neatly over the chair. Both her briefs and bra were black and nearly sheer.
She turned and, seeing Mick, gave a quick full laugh. “You look stricken,” she said.
Mick didn’t know what to say. “Yowza,” he said. “And I should tell you, I’ve never said yowza in my entire life up to now.”
Myra laughed and slipped into the tub with absolute ease, like, Mick thought, a goddess in a Greek myth except he didn’t really know a Greek myth where a goddess gets into a hot tub. Once submerged, Myra gave Mick a grin. “C’mon in. The water’s great.”
Mick wanted to get in, but he didn’t want Myra to see the effect she’d had on him, and he guessed she understood this because she turned away and took her time pouring another glass of champagne. He quickly stripped to his boxer shorts and stepped into the tub opposite her.
“Wow,” he said, settling in. “It’s really hot.”
Myra made a slow blink, took a deep breath, and smiled lazily. “You’ll get used to it,” she said, and she was right. He did. Pretty soon his whole body felt as lazy as Myra’s smile.
After a few minutes, Myra reached behind her and switched off the aerating jets. Everything turned quiet. The Pakistani music no longer played. Crickets chirred. Far away, a truck changed gears. Myra sipped from her champagne. “Nice, huh?”
“Nicer than nice,” Mick said and after a minute or so of pleasant silence he said, “Can I ask you a question?”
She sat up slightly and her breasts rose just above the water line. “Shoot.”
“How come you’re doing this?”
She gave a laugh and slipped back down into the water. “I just thought it would be fun. Not just for you, but for me, too.”
Mick closed his eyes. Somewhere a dog was barking.
Myra said, “My last birthday Pam and I were going to drive up to Stowe and just hang out for the whole weekend. We’d planned it for ages, and then at the last second she flaked out. It was just a pretty bad birthday, and then when I heard yours was coming up, I just felt like doing something nice.”
Mick opened his eyes. “This is pretty nice, all right.”
Myra rose from the tub, went into the house, and came back with another bottle of champagne, which she handed to Mick to open. After he had, he said, “You know you’re really really beautiful.”
Myra smiled, poured, and sipped. “Okay, tell me what Lisa said today.”
Mick did, and when he was done, Myra seemed to consider it for a few seconds. “So when exactly did she want you to bake these pfefferdoodles with her.”
“Today.”
Myra stared at him. “Today?”
“Tonight actually.”
Myra slowly shook her head. “Tonight? My God, Mick, you’re killing me here. I go and decide you’re a smart guy, and it turns out you haven’t heard of prioritizing? We could’ve rescheduled. We could’ve done this anytime.”
“I didn’t want to cancel. And, besides, I know how you hate it when Pam does that at the last minute.”
Myra’s face clouded slightly. “Pam’s different.”
Mick was trying to make sense of that when Myra said, “Okay, here’s a question for you, Mick. A simple little question. Tell me what it is about Lisa.”
Mick closed his eyes and waited for the right answer, but it didn’t come. “I don’t know,” he said finally, “it’s just that she gets to me. I mean, really gets to me, like she’s pulling my insides out, only in a good way.”
Myra made a low, appreciative murmur. “I think you’ve been smitten.” Then, “Or maybe you’ve been smited.” Then, “Or maybe you’ve just been smit.”
Mick laughed and wondered if he’d ever been happier than he was at this moment, sitting in the water with Myra Vidal, talking about Lisa Doyle. Out of politeness he said, “What about Ethan? Is that how you were smit by him?”
Myra, who’d been gazing up at the night sky, raised her head. “Who?”
“Ethan. Your boyfriend in California.”
“Oh,” Myra said, and she looked vaguely off. “You know what? To be absolutely truthful, I don’t think I was ever really smitten by Ethan.”
“How come you’re waiting for him then?”
Her eyes grazed Mick’s for just an instant, then floated off again. “A good question.” She turned again to Mick and smiled. “I’ll get back to you when I have the answer.” She took a sip of champagne and slowly, almost dreamily, closed her eyes.
A silence stretched out then and as Mick stared at the skies, the first reaches of dark clouds started to cover the stars—it was like putting out lights. There was a wind coming up, too, and as it moved through the hedge it made a shivery sound. It was still beautiful, but somehow the giddiness Mick had been feeling began to give way to something more somber. He said, “Is it supposed to rain?”
But Myra didn’t answer. She sat very still, the water at her neck, her head tilted back, her eyes still closed. For an instant, Mick wondered if she was asleep or unconscious or even dead, but then—finally, slowly—she lifted her hea
d and looked at Mick. “Remember when I told you there was a face behind the face behind the face?”
“Yeah.” He wondered what she was driving at. “In fact, I think about it every now and then.”
Myra took one deep breath, and another. Then in a quiet voice she said, “Can I tell you something I’ve never told anybody in my life?”
Something about this scared Mick a little. “I guess so,” he said.
“And you promise you’ll keep it to yourself?”
“Yes,” he said, and made his voice firmer. “Yes. I do promise that.”
“Close your eyes.”
“What?”
“Close your eyes. I don’t want you to look at me when I say this.”
Mick closed his eyes. For what seemed like a full minute, it was absolutely still, just the sound of shivering leaves and the lapping of water, and then Myra said, “The thing is, I don’t think of Pam as just a friend.”
Mick opened his eyes.
Myra was staring directly at him. She said, “The face behind the face behind the face is of a girl who likes girls.” She said this in an even voice, as if it were something she’d said in her mind many times before, but once she’d finally said it out loud, her face turned rubbery and misshapen, and then she was crying.
Mick didn’t know what to do. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.” He moved closer to her, and she kept crying while he kept saying, “It’s okay, it doesn’t matter, it’s okay.”
Perhaps five minutes passed in this way and then, at last, Myra began to snuffle and wipe her cheek and catch her breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I mean, it’s kind of mean passing something like this on to someone as nice as you, but, I don’t know, I’ve had it cooped up inside me for so long.” She tried to smile. “Anyhow, it’s weird, but I feel a little better now.” She leaned over and kissed Mick on the ear. “So, thanks.”
“What’re you going to do now?”
Myra shrugged.
“Tell Pam?”
She tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a snort. “I’ve got this letter I wrote to her about two weeks ago, and I’ve been carrying it around in my backpack ever since. I keep thinking I’ll give it to her at just the right time, but the right time never seems to come up.”
