by T. Greenwood
Frankie snickered. “That must be why he’s got that showy car. Sales. Humph.”
He and Ted Wilson had pulled into our respective driveways at the same time that night. I’d watched Frankie looking at that car, which made our Studebaker look like a shabby brown shoe.
Frankie smacked the table. “We should invite them over for drinks. A barbeque. He drinks, doesn’t he?”
“I would imagine,” I said. (It turned out that drinking was one of two things Frankie and Ted had in common. The other was the Red Sox: both of them afflicted by that crazy, futile love for a team that would always, always let them down.)
But despite Frankie’s interest in the Wilsons, I was not so keen on the idea of a barbeque. After that first visit with Eva, I had no desire to go back to their house. I’d left that first morning feeling like a dissected frog: splayed open, prodded, and studied. And the idea of having them over seemed downright dangerous. What if Eva slipped up? Frankie would be furious I’d kept the pregnancy from him, and even angrier that I had shared it with a total stranger. And so I made excuses and studied the Wilsons from the safety of our kitchen window. I still hadn’t even met Ted Wilson yet, though I had watched as he disappeared out the front door every morning, straightening his hat and tie and getting into his car. I also heard him when he pulled in each night; he always honked three times and the children would come running from their respective perches: in bedroom windows, on the porch swing, and, for little Johnny, up in the enormous dying elm tree in their front yard. When Ted Wilson pulled up, Johnny would shimmy down from whatever branch he was clinging to and then swing, like some sort of wild monkey, to the lowest branch from which he could drop almost directly into his father’s open arms. Ted was, like Eva, stunning to look at, with dark hair, a wide square face, and broad shoulders. Eva always greeted him, throwing her arms around his beefy neck, kissing him, right there on the front porch for the entire world to see. Something about this made me uncomfortable, but I still couldn’t seem to turn away.
I had also watched as the boxes slowly disappeared from the porch, and curtains went up in the bare windows, as the loose boards were repaired. A young man showed up with a ladder and buckets and brushes to put a fresh coat of paint on the house. There were plumbers and repairmen of every sort in and out of the house those first couple of weeks. And, thrilled by a change of scenery, I watched them come and go from the window in the kitchen where I spent most of my day.
Despite my reluctance to start a friendship with her mother, Donna Wilson and Francesca became fast friends, disappearing together into the Wilsons’ house or up into Chessy’s own bedroom each day, whispering and giggling, lugging around an old red train case of mine filled with their collective doll collection. Mouse and the little dark-haired Wilson girl, Sally, also paired up. They did cartwheels in the yard and tossed their baby dolls onto the Wilsons’ roof, watching them roll down again, which seemed to provide endless hours of entertainment, each plunge from the shingles causing them to erupt into explosive fits of little girl giggles. Johnny, however, was a lone wolf. With not another single little boy on our street, he was left to his own devices. You never knew where he would turn up, though he spent most of his time pretending he was some sort of sniper, shooting off his rifle from the safe camouflage of the elm tree foliage at his moving targets below.
I started to think maybe I was overreacting, that I was just being paranoid. Eva had promised to keep my secret, hadn’t she? She’d given me no reason whatsoever to distrust her. And admittedly, I longed for a friend. It would also be great if Ted and Frankie hit it off, if our families could be friendly with each other. Maybe I was just being silly. And so once the traffic in and out of the Wilsons’ house finally slowed, I sent Donna back to her house just before suppertime with a handwritten note, inviting her family to join us in our backyard for burgers and franks that weekend. She returned only moments later with a delicate piece of scented stationery that said, “We’d be delighted.” I looked out the window then and saw Eva standing on her porch, waving at me. Embarrassed, I waved back and then wondered if I’d just made a terrible mistake.
The Wilsons arrived that following Saturday night after a family trip into the city. They’d taken the children to the Franklin Park Zoo, and Johnny was doing his best monkey imitation on our front porch, scratching his armpits and swinging from the railings.
“Settle down, fella,” Ted said. His was a booming, warm voice, one that came from the gut rather than the throat. A voice that shook the floorboards under my feet as I stood there watching Johnny’s primordial display.
Eva stood behind Ted, her girls like bookends on either side of her, both looking uncomfortable, as if they hadn’t been playing on this very porch themselves for the past three weeks. As if I hadn’t fed them a steady diet of cookies and Kool-Aid every day of July.
“You must be Ted,” I said, reaching out my hand, but instead of shaking it, he bent down and gently kissed the back of it.
“Enchanté, as they say,” he rumbled, and I felt my face grow hot.
“Oh, stop it, Teddy. You’re embarrassing her,” Eva said, playfully pushing Ted aside and coming toward me. She embraced me, which was difficult considering the enormity of her belly, and then kissed my cheek. I felt my skin flush, and I returned her hug awkwardly, noting the strong scent of her perfume and, surprisingly, my lack of a nauseated response to it. I actually hadn’t felt my stomach perform its awful acrobatic queasy tumble in a few days; I’d even eaten eggs for breakfast, with bacon, instead of my usual favored Melba toast soaked in warm milk.
She backed up then and pushed the girls inside. “Go find Chessy and Mouse,” she said, and they happily obliged, disappearing up our stairs.
“Frankie’s in the backyard getting the charcoal started,” I said to Ted, and he lumbered past me through my house as though he too already knew the way, and I heard the back screen door slam followed by the muffled sounds of their conversation.
“This is for dinner,” she said, handing me a Jell-O mold inside which several green grapes were suspended like tiny planets. “And this is for you,” she said, pushing a little vial into my palm and closing my fingers over it.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Shhh,” she said, and ushered me into the house, glancing around to make sure we were alone. “It’s unicorn root. An herb. I have a friend in San Francisco, an herbalist. I spoke to him after we talked, and he told me where I could find some in Boston. The Indians discovered it, used it to prevent . . . bad luck”—she said quietly, squeezing my arm—“with pregnancies.”
“Thank you. That’s very thoughtful,” I said, slipping the vial into the pocket of my apron. She clearly hadn’t told her husband anything, but I still felt my stomach tighten into a knot.
Outside Frankie was standing in his favorite bowling shirt and Bermuda shorts at the grill, enclosed in a cloud of smoke. Frankie’s fire pit was his pride and joy. It was enormous, made of cobblestones he’d salvaged in the city when the old streets were being torn up and paved. It was a wonder of masonry, with an enormous grill he’d also made himself. You could have barbequed an entire side of beef on it if you’d wanted to.
Ted was sitting in a lawn chair next to the grill like a foreman overseeing one of his workers, as Frankie flipped and checked the meat. Ted had one of our cocktail glasses perched on the ice chest next to him. It was almost empty already. Frankie had opened a gallon jug of his favorite Chianti and poured himself a tall tumbler full. He was never one for liquor, but he liked his wine, drinking nearly half a jug every night. He’d grown up drinking wine instead of water in his house; he insisted that it was one of the major food groups, that the Surgeon General would likely make an announcement to that effect any day now. Una cena senza vino e come un giorno senza sole, he had said. A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine. I was not a wine drinker myself, especially not the sour Chianti Frankie favored, but I did like a good cold ’Gansett every now and then. A nice d
irty martini on special occasions.
“Can I get you another cocktail, Ted?” I asked, gesturing to his glass.
“Brought my own.” He smiled slyly and pulled a flask out of his shirt pocket. “Didn’t know whether or not you might be a couple of goddamned teetotalers,” he said boisterously as he sloshed some sort of amber-colored liquid on top of his melting ice.
“Well, let me at least get you some fresh ice,” I offered.
By the time I spread my mother’s hand-embroidered picnic cloth on the table and put that bright yellow Jell-O mold at the center like some sort of shining, jiggling sun, Ted and Frankie were both glassy eyed and half soused. Ted had drained his flask, and Frankie had finished the open jug of wine and broken into the dusty collection of bottles we kept for the entertaining we almost never did.
“So what’s your line of work, Frankie?” Ted asked, adding two franks and a blackened burger to his paper plate.
“Boston Post Office. Main philatelic clerk,” Frankie said proudly. He had started in the mail room of Simon & Monk, where I met him, and then took the Postal exam when I got pregnant the first time. He’d slowly worked his way up at the post office until he was in charge of all of the commemorative stamps. Now he dealt mostly with the collectors, and was involved in the “first day of issue” commemorative stamp releases. Frankie liked to know the history of things, and he researched the story behind each and every stamp he encountered so that he could share that information with his patrons. His work was something he was proud of.
“Worry about dogs much?” Ted said.
“What’s that?” Frankie asked.
“Dogs! German Shepherds. Rotties.” Ted slammed his drink down on the table. The Jell-O wobbled. “Beware of dog!”
“Not sure I understand your question,” Frankie said.
“I’m asking if you ever worry about the dogs! Back in San Francisco, I heard there was a mailman got his face eat off by a Rottweiler, poor fellow just trying to deliver the electric bill.”
“Oh, no, I’m not a mailman,” Frankie said, stiffening. I felt my heart plummet. Frankie’s shoulders tensed. He clutched his knife and fork in his fists.
“Well, what are you then?” Ted guffawed.
“Teddy,” Eva said, reaching for his hand before he could grab his glass and take another drink. He shook her off like one of the many flies that had been landing on the food and on the table all afternoon.
Frankie’s face was turning red, his jaw grinding. “I’ll tell you what I’m not . . .”
“What’s that?” Ted laughed. Eva tugged on his arm.
Suddenly, I peered at Johnny through the yellow gelatin. He was sitting directly across from me, and he’d been shoveling food into his face steadily since we sat down. He was up to four franks and two hamburgers as well as two ears of corn by my count. Through the Jell-O, he looked a little green. And just as Frankie opened his mouth to answer Ted, Johnny threw up. All over my mother’s embroidered strawberries and vines. All over the plate of deviled eggs, splattering the Jell-O salad with undigested hot dog meat. All over the platter of dogs and burgers.
“Well, Jesus Christ,” Ted said.
“Oh dear,” I said, rising from my seat and rushing to the other side of the table. Eva was trying to get out from between the bench and the seat, no small feat given her girth. “You stay,” I said to her. “I’ll take care of him.”
As I whisked Johnny into our downstairs bathroom to clean up, I prayed that both men would just drop the argument. Here I’d been so worried about being able to trust Eva, so concerned about whether or not to pursue a friendship with her, I hadn’t thought about what would happen if Frankie and Ted didn’t get along. I certainly didn’t need them to be best friends, but it would have been nice to have a couple we could spend time with. Someone our own ages. And our children got along so well. I already had so few friends, so few people I could talk to. Suddenly, as I wiped Johnny’s face and removed his soiled cowboy shirt, I was mad at Frankie. He was a mailman after all. It was wrong of Ted to make fun, but it was the truth, wasn’t it? He’d only been teasing.
“How’s your tummy?” I asked Johnny. His eyes were red from crying, and his breath sour. I dug around in the drawer until I found a bottle of Listerine. I rubbed his small back as he swished the mouthwash around his mouth, his eyes watering, and I thought about boys. About how terrible and primitive they are. About how violent, how dangerous. Even a little boy like this one: a little boy who would be happier living in a zoo among the other animals. What if Eva was right? What if this baby was a boy? And I realized that this was the first time I’d let myself imagine a baby. A living, breathing, crying, hungry being. The revelation nearly took my breath away.
I still don’t know what magic Eva worked in that backyard while I was gone, but the two men had settled down into a more polite banter: Ted talking about the garden he planned to grow, and Frankie offering tips to keep aphids off the roses and deer away from the green beans. He even took Ted on a tour of the labyrinthine garden of our own that Frankie had cultivated, and I was careful to make sure they left their drinks behind.
While they were gone, I said to Eva, “Sorry about that. Looks like Ted accidentally pushed one of Frankie’s buttons.”
She brushed her hand dismissively, and shook her head. “You don’t have to tell me about buttons. Ted’s got more buttons than a telephone switchboard.” Despite this kind attempt to make me feel better, I found that hard to believe. Ted and Eva had seemed like such a happy, playful couple the few times I’d seen them together. He was a drinker, that was obvious, but he also struck me as more bark than bite.
When the two men emerged from the garden, Ted was slapping Frankie on the back. “Well, it seems like they made up,” I said.
Eva nodded. “Come here, Teddy,” she said, and reached for his hand, pulling him to her and pressing her body against his.
Ted seemed to soften around Eva, turning from a grumbling bear into some sort of puppy. It embarrassed me to watch her flirt with him, and the way he responded to her. All afternoon I had kept thinking that there was something familiar about Eva. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. But as she leaned into Ted’s shoulder and he circled her with his arm, nuzzling his big, square face into her neck, I realized it was that she reminded me of Marie Bilodeau from back home. Marie lived down the road from me growing up, the only girl in a family with six boys. She didn’t look anything like Eva, wasn’t nearly as pretty, but she had the same ease as Eva, the same comfort in her own skin. The same way of making a man feel like he was the only one in the entire world. Of hanging on his words, and on his arm, while still clearly being the one in control. Of seeming to offer herself, pressing herself close, while somehow simultaneously rendering him powerless. Of crushing him. I had always been riveted by girls like this: girls who knew how to use their bodies, their beauty, as a way to control situations. My body had always been such a utilitarian device, something made simply to get me from one place to another. It was like the difference between our Studebaker and the Wilsons’ Caddie. Girls like this, like Eva, both fascinated me and made me feel clumsy and awkward. Girls like this had no use for girls like me.
As the sun went down that night and the kids chased fireflies, Eva helped me clean up while Ted and Frankie sat by the fire pit and lamented the Red Sox season thus far, making plans to catch a game together, maybe bring Johnny along, one weekend. Then when the air grew chilly, and the children sleepy, the Wilson family said their good-byes and made their way back across the street.
I sent Frankie upstairs to bed, told him I was feeling a little under the weather (a tired excuse, worn out as the dishrag in my hand, but one I knew he had no power to refute and no choice but to accept). And as he lumbered upstairs, I lingered at the sink washing the charred remains of our dinner from the spatulas and platters, peering at the house across the street.
From the kitchen window, I watched the downstairs lights at the Wilson house click of
f one by one. And then Eva’s and Ted’s silhouettes appeared behind the closed drapes in one of the illuminated upstairs windows, their separate shadows merging into one before this last light went out. I felt my skin grow warm as I imagined them making love. Wondered if they still did with Eva’s belly so very big. I could barely remember the last time I had made love to Frankie; the only reason I had any recollection of it at all was because I had racked my brain trying to figure out when it was that I got pregnant.
I clicked out our own lights and went upstairs into our bedroom, where Frankie had, thankfully, already fallen asleep. I slipped into our bathroom and studied the vial that Eva had given me. It touched me, suddenly, that she’d gone to such trouble. Inside was a brownish liquid that looked similar to whatever had been in Ted’s flask. I touched my finger to the opening and then my finger to my tongue. It was bitter. But I took the prescribed dosage anyway and imagined what would happen if this one actually stuck.
I also thought about how nice it would be to have a friend to share this experience with. Someone to share my troubles with. My secrets. For the first time in a long time I thought I might not feel quite so alone.
In the morning after my swim, after a hot shower, and after my usual cup of coffee and scone at Daybreak, I head to the library where I volunteer in the children’s room three days a week. I’d always dreamed of working in a library, and now I finally do. It’s a small branch library, but I love it all the same. Our tiny beach community is self-sufficient; we have a post office, three banks, four churches, and this library. I never go into the city; I don’t have to. Everything in the world I need is here.
There are good people in this little beach town, as all little towns, and I feel taken care of. I think about poor Mrs. Macadam sometimes, how long her dead body sat inside the house across the street from us before it was discovered. I suppose I have spent the last few years ensuring that this won’t happen to me.
