Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  “He came back all right,” Rae told Lila. “Only he left that same night, and he took all my money with him.”

  “How could you let him do that to you?” Lila said.

  “I didn’t let him!” Rae said. “He just took my bankbook and left.”

  Lila sat down in a kitchen chair. She intended to tell Rae that she couldn’t go through with it—Rae would have to find another labor coach. But out of the blue she started thinking about names again, and the most beautiful of the names—Catherine and Jessica and Claire—made her feel like weeping.

  “You think I should go after him and get that money back, don’t you?” Rae said.

  “I don’t know,” Lila said. She felt dizzy, she really didn’t feel very well at all.

  “You know, you’re right,” Rae said admiringly. “I let him get away with everything, but I’m not going to do it this time.”

  After she’d hung up the phone, Lila put some water up to boil. She needed something comforting and plain: a packaged teabag, two spoons of sugar, a chipped blue cup and saucer. As Lila poured the water in, the teabag split apart, and she had to wait for the tea leaves to settle before she could drink. She sipped the tea slowly and listened as the rain began. At first there were only a few hard drops hitting the highest leaves in the lemon tree, and then it came down faster. The weeds on Three Sisters Street had gone wild this winter; each time it rained they crept farther into the vegetable patches, they wound themselves around the chain-link fences and around the lowest telephone wires. Tonight, the birds in the trees shivered, and husbands and wives turned to each other in bed beneath extra blankets and quilts. It was the kind of night when no one should be up past midnight, alone in the kitchen.

  Lila had finished only half the cup when she realized that there was something wrong with the tea. It left a strange aftertaste in her mouth; her tongue was coated and numb. When she looked down into the cup, the outline of a child was already forming. Lila ran to the sink and spilled out the tea. She stayed there, leaning against the sink for balance. The rain was coming down harder than ever, but Lila couldn’t hear its echo on the roof or in the rain gutters. She suddenly knew exactly what she wanted; she didn’t even have to think about it, she felt it the way a mother feels her baby’s cries somewhere just beneath her skin. It seemed so simple now, she could hardly believe she had waited this long. She was going back to get her daughter, and before the rain slowed down, before the moon returned to the center of the sky, Lila went into the bedroom, and she quietly dragged her suitcase out of the closet and packed nearly all her clothes.

  That night Richard dreamed of his mother. She was in the parlor of the old house in East China, with her hands in front of her face, weeping. Somehow, sparrows had gotten into the house; they flew everywhere and got tangled up in the drapes. There was nothing Helen could do to help them; she could only watch as more and more were caught in the heavy fabric, trapped inside billows of linen. As Richard dreamed, Lila packed her suitcase. Then she left the bedroom and closed the door behind her. She put her suitcase in the front hallway and went to make coffee. At exactly three a.m. the birds outside began to sing, and Lila went to the window. But already she was seeing only the things she imagined her daughter saw: bare white birch trees, a thin layer of ice smoothly covering the cement, the morning star in the east.

  She was still thinking about her daughter when Richard woke up in the morning and found she wasn’t in bed. He went into the living room. Lila was sitting on the couch; her coat was draped over the rocking chair. Richard sat down next to her, but instead of taking her hand he kept his own hands folded in his lap.

  “What’s happening to us?” Richard said.

  Lila knew she should have told him the day she met him, or the night before they got married. She should have asked him to take a walk with her on the East China Highway or told him in the car on the way to California. There were a half dozen times when she nearly begged him to turn back to New York—every time they saw a little girl, in the back seat of a car, at the counter of Howard Johnson’s, on a billboard high above the interstate. On each anniversary, during every full moon she could have told him. But all of those chances slipped away, just as this one was slipping away from them now.

  Lila turned to him and rested her head against his shoulder. Richard was wearing a blue bathrobe that Lila had given him for his birthday one year. He began to stroke Lila’s hair, and each time he did Lila held him a little tighter. But by the time the blackbirds in the yard had flown to the highest branches of the lemon tree, Lila had missed another chance completely. All the way to the airport, in the back seat of the taxi, she kept one arm on her suitcase and thought about the way he’d asked her, at the very last minute, not to go. He never asked why she was leaving, just asked her not to go. After the taxi dropped her off, Lila stopped thinking about Richard, and, after all, she had to. Once the jet had taken off, it didn’t really matter if she missed him or not: in less than six hours she’d be back in New York.

  It took Rae three full days to track him down, and at the end of that time she felt as though she could commit murder. It had been bad from the start—when she drove out to Barstow there were dead animals all over the road: snapping turtles with their shells cracked open, lost dogs, hawks with wingspans of nearly two feet. Every time she passed something dead on the road, Rae closed her eyes and pressed her foot down harder on the accelerator. Then, when she got into town, she found he wasn’t listed in the phone book, and she had to waste forty dollars on two nights at a motel where the lumpy mattress made sleeping impossible.

  He didn’t have a box at the post office, and there wasn’t a car registered in his name at the Department of Motor Vehicles. It was almost as if he had never existed. By the third day Rae had just about given up hope of ever finding him again when she heard a waitress mention his name at Dunkin’ Donuts.

  “Is that my Jessup you’re talking about?” Rae said without thinking.

  The waitress turned from her friend and looked Rae up and down; even when she was seated anyone could tell Rae was pregnant.

  “I don’t know,” the waitress said carefully. She was eighteen years old and she had the feeling that she might have gone out with a married man. “It’s the Jessup that took me out to dinner last Saturday night.”

  “How many of them do you think there can be?” Rae said.

  “One,” the waitress agreed.

  It didn’t take much to talk the waitress into divulging Jessup’s Hesperia address, and once she’d gone that far the waitress went on to give Rae exact directions, writing them down on the back of a paper napkin.

  On the drive over the hills Rae saw two coyotes turning over crushed turtles with their paws, inspecting the shells passively. It was night when she finally got to Hesperia, and she had to pull over and switch on the light so that she could study the directions. For a while she thought she was lost, but after another twenty minutes of driving in the dark she knew she had found the right place—she saw a flash of silver. Jessup’s trailer. She pulled the Oldsmobile off the road, then cut the lights and headed down the long dirt driveway. It was so quiet that she felt herself straining to hear something. There was an old Ford convertible parked near the trailer, and Rae thought bitterly, Jessup’s buddy’s car. She parked and turned the key in the ignition, and when her eyes adjusted to the dark she made out Montana license plates on the Ford; she could see a row of shovels and hoes leaning against the trailer, and Jessup’s old leather boots, the ones she’d bought him, caked with mud, set out on the porch.

  A huge antenna was balanced over the trailer, but the air out here had to be too thin for TV frequencies, and when Rae turned on her radio to find out the time, all she got was static. Whatever time it was, it felt late. The lights in the trailer were out, and anyone could tell that whoever was inside was already asleep. Still, when Rae listened carefully she could hear noises. Beyond a small barn was a corral; Rae leaned toward the windshield and narrowed her eyes
to see the horses. Jessup was right, they weren’t any bigger than dogs, but somehow that didn’t seem funny now. They moved in a group along the wooden fence, restless, raising a thin layer of dust. Rae found herself wondering what would happen if somebody opened the gate for them. Probably they would race toward the hills and you’d be able to hear them for miles as they moved like one dark creature, the sound of their hoofs steady in the night.

  After two nights of not sleeping well, she just couldn’t face Jessup yet. While she was deciding on the best place to look for a motel for the night she fell asleep behind the wheel, and it was Jessup’s partner, Hal, who found her when he went out to feed the horses at five thirty the next morning. He hadn’t had his coffee yet, and it was still dark, so he didn’t notice the parked Oldsmobile until after he’d dragged the bales of hay out of the barn. The horses were waiting impatiently at the gate; Jessup had shut off the alarm clock and turned over, leaving everything to Hal, just as he did every morning. A stranger’s parked car just meant one more thing for Hal to attend to while Jessup slept, but when he walked over and saw it was only a woman asleep, he couldn’t wake her. He went to feed the horses, and it was the sound of their running to greet him that woke Rae. She knew right away she shouldn’t have slept in the car: her legs were riddled with cramps and her ribs hurt, as if the baby had been pressing against them all night long. When she got out of the car she stamped her feet; it was much colder than she’d expected and she wrapped her arms around herself. She went over to the corral, leaned against it, and watched Hal drag the hay inside. The air smelled like peaches, but it was cold enough to give you goosebumps.

  “I’m Rae,” she said when Hal faced her, but she could tell from his puzzled look that her name didn’t mean anything to him.

  Inside the corral, the horses were so excited as they ate hay that their bodies seemed to shake. They were shaggier than most horses, and even when they ate they stayed crowded together, as though they were afraid to be alone. Rae couldn’t take her eyes off them; the longer she watched them, the more difficult it was for her to breathe.

  “It takes a while to get used to the air out here,” Hal said after he’d walked out of the corral and shut the gate behind him.

  He took her inside the trailer. The place was a mess—kitchen cabinets left open, clothes tossed all over the floor—and everything was so tiny that Rae felt more uncomfortable than usual about her size. She had to turn sideways to get into the kitchen and sit down. At the rear of the trailer was a set of bunk beds; Rae could tell that the person asleep in the lower bunk was Jessup just by his shape beneath the blankets.

  “I can’t believe this is what he spent my money on,” Rae said.

  Hal poured himself a cup of coffee and offered one to Rae, but she refused with a wave of her hand.

  “I could kill him,” she said.

  Hal handed her the sugar bowl. “We’re out of milk,” he said. “We’ve got Cremora, but I never use it. It always gives me a terrible headache.”

  Rae looked at him as if he were the stupidest person on earth. “I’m upset,” she said. “Can’t you tell how upset I am? Don’t you talk to me about Cremora.”

  Hal took some orange juice out of the small refrigerator and poured her a glass. He sat down across from her without saying a word and watched her drink.

  “We’ve been together for seven years,” Rae said. “That’s not even counting high school. I don’t suppose he ever mentioned me?”

  Hal shook his head. “The longest I ever lived with someone was two years and seven months,” he said. “Her name was Karen.”

  Rae nodded, expecting more, but Hal clammed up.

  “I left her,” Hal said finally. “I guess I’ll always regret it.”

  Jessup moved in his sleep, and Rae and Hal looked at each other.

  “He never gets up on time,” Hal said. He took a sip of black coffee. “And of all the things he never told me, he certainly didn’t mention a wife who was pregnant.”

  “We’re not married,” Rae said. And to herself she thought: This is really it. I really could kill him.

  In his sleep, Jessup heard Rae’s voice, and he dreamed that he was talking to Rae on the telephone in his mother’s apartment in Boston. Whenever he used to talk to her, he’d felt as if there was nothing he could not do. Back then, all they’d needed was enough money for gas. Everything was out in front of them, possibilities were endless. Jessup woke up, but he lay in the lower bunk bed without moving and he counted the weeks until his thirtieth birthday. He had been born in the dead center of March, in one of the worst snowstorms ever to hit Boston. He just couldn’t wait to be born, his mother had told him. She could feel his head moving downward as the taxi drove to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and he’d been born in the elevator, between the third and fourth floors.

  Rae had admitted to Hal that she was starving, and he’d decided to drive into Barstow and get food. Jessup stayed in bed until he heard the trailer door slam and Hal’s car start. Then he got up and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater. Rae heard him coming up behind her, but she didn’t look at him, not until he navigated around the table and faced her.

  “I was just thinking about sending you my new address,” Jessup said.

  “I’m here for my money,” Rae told him. “You couldn’t possibly have spent it all on a down payment for this.”

  “I’m just curious,” Jessup said. “How’d you find out where I was?”

  “If you really want to know,” Rae said, “from a waitress in Barstow.”

  “Paulette,” Jessup said. “Well, I think I ought to tell you that she’s nothing to me.”

  “Look,” Rae said, “I don’t care what she is. I want my money.”

  Jessup lit a cigarette and leaned against the refrigerator. “I don’t have it, Rae. I used half as a down payment, and the rest went to fix this place up. We’re going to build a new corral, and we’re buying a pickup truck—we’ve got expenses.”

  “Get the money back,” Rae said stubbornly.

  “Let me just tell you my plan.”

  “Get it from that waitress,” Rae said. “She must save her tips.”

  “I told you already. She’s nothing,” Jessup said. He seemed pleased every time Rae mentioned Paulette. “Let me just explain my plan. These horses we’ve got are the perfect pet for people with money. Compared to one of these horses, a dog is nothing. What I’m saying is you’ll have to just wait a while for your money. But I intend to pay you back.”

  “How could you do this to me?” Rae said. “What did you think I needed money for, a trip to Tahiti? I’m having a baby, Jessup.”

  “Let me just show you the place,” Jessup said.

  He got her a heavy sweater and opened the trailer door.

  “Come on,” he urged. “Just take a look.”

  They went out to the corral; the horses were now huddled at the far side. When he showed her the barn, Rae put her hand to the small of her back and rubbed the muscles that had been aching all morning. She realized then that the baby was pushing down on her bladder and that she’d never make it back to the trailer. She went out behind the barn, crouched down, and peed, and when she got up she saw Jessup watching her.

  “Don’t look at me,” she said.

  “Why not?” Jessup said. “You look really good. I never saw anybody pregnant look so good.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Rae said.

  “It’s a compliment. But then I always thought you looked good,” Jessup said. “I picked you, didn’t I? Didn’t I ask you to leave Boston with me?”

  Actually, he had, and afterward she’d wondered if she’d imagined it. He was walking her home one night; as usual they had stopped on the corner before Rae’s block. That was the night he told her that he planned to leave Boston. He hadn’t been looking at her, but as she watched Jessup, Rae felt as though she could see the shell around him crack open, and for a second she could see inside him.

  “I mean, it
’s totally up to you,” he had said casually. “I’m used to being alone, but if you want to go I’m not going to stop you.”

  “Maybe I will leave with you,” Rae said, trying to sound just as casual. After that she kept sneaking looks at Jessup, searching for that crack in his shell, and at certain angles she could almost see it. But she never again had the sense that she was looking inside him, and it began to seem ridiculous that she had once imagined she could see past his skin to a thin band of light.

  Whatever had happened, she had certainly never felt chosen by Jessup, and now it didn’t matter who had done the choosing.

  “I’ll never forgive you for this,” Rae said.

  “I guess not,” Jessup said.

  They were at the corral when Hal drove up with the groceries. They turned to watch him carry the bags into the trailer.

  “Don’t you care that this is your baby?” Rae asked Jessup once Hal had gone inside.

  “What if I did?” Jessup said. “What good would it do me? Even if I wanted to be his father, how could I be? I’d just ruin it—I’d end up disappearing and the guy would hate me in the end, so I might as well get all that over with now.” Jessup lit a cigarette. It was windy, so he had to cup the lit match in his hand. “If we had planned it, it might have been different,” he said. “I could have gotten some place like this ranch before, and by the time the kid was born I would have been rich.”

  She knew he wasn’t going to give her any of the money back, and somehow Rae didn’t even care any more. She gave him back his sweater and walked over to the Oldsmobile. The engine took a while to turn over, and once it did Rae had to pump the gas to keep it going. Through the closed car windows she could still smell the horses. If she hadn’t been pregnant she might have actually considered moving here, in spite of the waitress and the fact that he hadn’t even asked her to stay. Usually, she didn’t take up much space—she could have slept beside him in the bunk bed, her spine against the metal wall. It would have been easy enough to wash all the dirty dishes with boiling-hot water, and the clothes left strewn on the floor would have taken a half hour at most to hang up. At night, the horses would run in circles, and the coyotes would come down from the hills to watch them, a little braver and a little closer to the corral each time. But, of course, she was no longer really alone, and Jessup would never be able to understand her putting somebody before him.