"What I don't understand is what a piece of farming machinery was doing in your house," she said.
"Enough, Ma," Waldo said.
"For such a smart man, Waldo, you do some extremely stupid things."
Waldo's hands were deep in the pockets of his khakis.
"Even I could have told you that farm equipment belongs outside."
"Can we have some French toast now?" Henry said.
"Mr. Cicero spoke with Frank Flood this morning—you know he's the commodore this year?—and he said that the Coast Guard had boats out there this morning. I heard it all from Cathy Flood, and you know what she's like."
Waldo said, "I don't. But go on, Ma."
"Of course you do."
I said, "Tell us, Posey."
"Cathy said at least two people saw Wendy jump off the stern."
"Who?" Waldo asked. Posey sipped from her American Hosta Society mug, then shook her head wearily.
"What kind of person jumps overboard on her way back from her cousin's wedding?" I said.
"Sydney was a rather distant cousin, my dear," Posey said.
"It seems extreme."
"Bad timing," Waldo said.
"Suicide is more than bad timing," Posey said. There was a café au lait mustache lightly adorning her upper lip. "I'm sure she'll regret it."
"I don't think so, Ma."
"I mean she would have regretted it. It's a shame she can't. They always do, you know."
"Do what?"
"Regret it. After they've jumped."
"I know," I said.
"She wouldn't be the only one," Waldo said.
"Poor drowned Wendy. And while Dickie is on his first honeymoon," Posey said.
"His first?" Waldo grinned.
"You know what I mean."
"Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!" came the clarion call from the front of the house. It was Pompey Fairweather, come into Catamunk for the third consecutive day, a possible record for him.
"We're in the kitchen," Posey called back.
"We're the Kitchen Cabinet," Waldo said. "Conducting a postmortem."
Pompey had a copy of the Mid-Maine Gazette with him. It should have been no surprise what the headlines were, but we were surprised nonetheless: WEDDING GUEST OVERBOARD. The subhead read: "CG Searches for Body Thru the Night."
"Have you seen this?" He held the newspaper at arm's length, as if fearful of germs.
"I have not," Posey said. "Just tell me that Dick's name is not mentioned."
"I can't tell you that."
"I hope Dickie and Sydney aren't buying any newspapers."
"Sydney's a news junkie," Pompey said. "She brought along her laptop."
Posey looked furious. "Who told you that?"
"Her mother. Who should know. Don't get your knickers in a twist. Gabby and I had a lovely chat yesterday. I don't think we've spoken that much since before Veronica died."
"Watch out, Pomps. She always had her eye on you," Posey said. "Your Veronica never much liked Gabby Sweet, if I recall."
"Oh, you know women," Pompey said.
Since Veronica's death, Pompey had lived very much alone. Too much alone, according to Posey. Up in his own world, all those curmudgeonly traits that had lurked beneath the surface when the lovely Veronica was alive suddenly burst out and flourished in her absence. Posey considered she owed it to Three, whose devotion to his brother had been mysterious and wonderful, to regularly admonish Pompey.
Waldo said, "Poor Dickie. It can't be a good sign that she's brought a computer along."
"Don't be so sure," I said. "Things have changed since our romantic days and nights in an undisclosed location. Who knows what games she might have on that laptop?" Did Waldo remember our view of the Pacific and the bellowing of the elephant seals? Did he remember our game of full-contact gin rummy? The strip gin rummy? The Kamasutra gin rummy? Did he remember the forfeits?
"Solitaire is not a good choice for honeymoon card play," Waldo said.
He must remember.
Waldo said, "Ma, did you say who saw her jump?"
"I told you."
"No, you didn't."
Posey looked pointedly at him. "Sarah Dilly," she said.
"Would that be Edith's mother?" I said. But Edith had no mother. No longer had a mother.
"No, it's her sister. Her older sister."
"Oh." I knew from years ago that Edith had two sisters, like me. She also had brothers. What I wanted to say was Why couldn't she have been the one to go overboard? She and her sisters? Or, at the very least, why couldn't they all move to the Yukon and eat blubber forever after? Or Timbuktu? Why couldn't they all go to Timbuktu and be eaten alive by killer ants? Did they have killer ants in the Sahara? Anywhere but here in Catamunk with Posey and Waldo and all of us, here, where, sooner or later, sooner or later, sooner or later...
Edith was the past, and Sheila/Shirley was the present. It wasn't just the timeline that separated them. Even if I worried and wondered along the byways of VerGroot and in the waiting room at Don Eco's clinic and on the train and even in the hallowed rooms of the Hagiographers Club, I was oddly confident that Sheila/ Shirley was the last of her kind. The thing about the thing with Edith was that any other escapade paled beside it. Waldo and Edith busted my heart. Edith I would happily have watched sink to the bottom of the cold Atlantic. Waldo I adored, and clung to. I would have jumped in after Waldo, a thousand times.
In my versions of my life, Ezra and Henry mended my shredded heart.
"Exactly how many Dillys are there in this town?" I asked.
Posey said, "Quite a lot. Too many, if you ask me. Mostly they live around Boston, but some are here full-time now."
The screen door slammed open, and in walked Mr. Cicero.
Much later I said, "We have a long way to go today, guys. Bogumila's meeting us at home with the dogs. I promised we'd be back at a reasonable hour."
"Now there is something we can discuss all the way home," Waldo said gleefully. "The meaning of reasonable."
Ezra said, "Are we there yet?" He and Henry cracked up laughing.
23
Said Dick to His Sydney, Let's Fuck
IT WAS ALMOST DARK when we pulled into our driveway. A hundred miles back the boys had exhausted their enthusiasm for alphabet games and punnish license plates. Favorites were: WASSIT 2 U, IMB4 U, EYE CAN2, and AMA BRAT.
Bogumila was sitting on the back porch with the dogs. Flirt's head was in her lap, and Dandy lay at her feet. Bogumila had her cup of tea with her, so presumably she had been there awhile. No steam rose from her thick mug with the faded picture of a Polish castle. But that did not necessarily mean anything, because sometimes Bogumila drank tepid tea with garlic for medicinal reasons.
"Dirty Flirty! Handy Dandy!" Henry shouted. "Hey, Bogumila!"
The boys leaped from the back seat, and the dogs jumped all over them.
"Welcome back to little VerGroot," Bogumila said. Without another word, she handed over a large brown paper bag.
"What's in here?" Waldo said with a funny smile that made me think he already knew. But I was wrong. Henry and Ezra simultaneously took the bag from Waldo, opened it, and retreated with theatrical expressions of disgust.
Bogumila shook her head. "Yes, Mr. Gunnar Sigerson brought them over a very few minutes ago. He said you would want them."
I peeked at the mushrooms. It was not immediately obvious that they were edible.
Bogumila glared at Ezra's cut and said, "I will bring him some cream from my country. It is smelling bad, but it will help the skin." Bogumila had a vast supply of Polish creams, liniments, ointments, and unguents, all lined up on a shelf just beside her back door where they were ever ready for emergency visits to her neighbors.
"That's so nice of you," I said. "Did the dogs behave for you?"
We were getting into bed. Waldo said he'd called Gunnar to thank him for the nameless fungi. "He sounded strange. He may be getting as strange as Deb."
"Gunnar is sweet on me,
" I said. It just came out. Like a hiccup.
Waldo said, "You're pretty sweet yourself."
"Thanks." I climbed into bed, and then got right out to check on Henry and Ezra. Ezra slept curled up, his wavy hair barely visible on the pillow above the counterpane. Dandy was under his bed. Henry slept on his back, sprawled. Henry's sheets and blankets rarely survived the night intact. Flirt slept on the rug at the base of the stairs. So back to our bed, our place of coming together in passion and drifting apart in dreams, our mutual ground.
"What do you mean exactly? Sweet?" Waldo said.
"Just what I said. Sweet."
"Sweet as in sugar? Sweet as in he likes you? Sweet as in full of cavities? Sweet as in your new in-laws? Which is it?"
"As in he likes me," I said.
"Since when?"
"I don't know."
"Then how do you know?"
"He told me."
"He used that word? Sweet?"
"What's with the third degree? I'm sorry I said anything," I blurted.
"Don't be," he said. "I assume you're trying to make a point. To let me know it can go both ways."
"It certainly does not go both ways," I almost shouted. "I just felt like telling you that Gunnar likes me. It was a bad decision on my part apparently, but there it is. I did it. And that's all there is to it."
"Well, it's kaput with Shirley, if you want to know."
"Kaput?"
"Over. Tutto finito."
"I thought it was over before."
"It's even more over now. I just checked my e-mail."
"What? And she dumped you? By e-mail?"
"If you want to put it that way. She dumped me."
"That seems awfully tacky. You liked someone who could dump you in an e-mail? What happened? Did she meet the guy who invented pantyhose?"
"I deserved that, Al. I know. I could have not mentioned it. She said I was much too married."
"What other way can you be married? She sounds like a moron," I said.
"I am so very, very sorry. Can we put this behind us? What can I do? Anything. Tell me anything."
"Everything."
I dreamed that Waldo brought Edith and Sheila/Shirley home to live with us. They had two dogs, and one of the dogs called Edith Mother. "Where is Mother?" the dog said. It sat on a stool in a cluttered kitchen. I was waiting for the dog to get off so I could sit down with Waldo and tell him that Edith, Shirley, and the dogs would all have to move out and take all their half-eaten cereal boxes with them. Waldo could talk to the dogs, but I could not.
At breakfast, Henry told Ezra, "I dreamed of the lady who went overboard last night. Ask Mom."
Ezra avoided my face. "I thought you never had dreams."
"'It's the exception that proves the rule,'" Henry quoted.
"Everyone dreams," I said, not for the first time. "It's just that not everyone remembers their dreams."
"We know, Mom."
"Then you know that if you didn't dream you wouldn't be sleeping properly; plus, you'd have huge piles of unprocessed images and memories accumulating in your brain, taking up too much space and collecting dust."
Waldo walked in. "And that, boys, is science for you."
"Your father doesn't know everything," I pointed out.
"Just about, though," Ezra said.
Was it possible that for almost four years I'd listened to dreams and said things that dreamers wished to hear? How many times had I said that a body of water symbolized the unconscious? The unconscious we would drown in as the undulating waves of repression closed in over us; the unconscious we would swim bravely through, slicing the waves with the strokes of our imagination; the unconscious that was filling up the basement. But not to Henry would I say that.
I don't know how much later it was that Gunnar Sigerson called. "Waldo sounded rather strange on the phone last night."
"Funny," I said. "He said the same thing about you."
"Why would there be anything strange about me?" Gunnar said.
"I don't know. How would I know?" Dandy came over and nuzzled my leg and so I took the opportunity to check his gums. I pushed with my fingertip, because Donald had shown me that what really mattered was how quickly the gum refilled with blood after being depressed.
"So I was wondering how things are with you two."
"They're fine," I said. "We just got back from his brother's wedding. Did he tell you that? I thought his brother would never get married. I didn't think he even liked women."
Gunnar said, "Did you like the horse mushrooms?"
"We only got home last night. I haven't eaten them yet," I said. "What would I do with them?"
"Sauté them with shallots, or pine nuts, or just olive oil. And Alice? Don't worry about me saying anything. Anything at all." Gunnar was kind and reassuring, more than I could bear.
"I don't worry about you," I said. "I worry about me. Screwing up, that is. I told Waldo you were sweet on me."
"No wonder he was a little strange on the phone."
"I didn't tell him until after."
"But still."
"Do you think it will create a local scandal? Do you think we'll be written up in the Sentinel ?"
"Don't get your hopes up!" He laughed. Gunnar thought I was funny?
Posey called. "There was another piece in the paper," she said. "They think it was an accident. Her mother said that she was a sleepwalker, and sometimes she lost her balance. Sleepwalkers do, she said."
"When they're awake? I've never heard that."
"That's what Margo Dilly told the police."
"Waldo's not home yet," I said. "Can he call you later?"
"I wanted to know about Ezra's cut. Mr. Cicero says you should be using arnica."
"We know that," I said. "And Bogumila agrees with you."
The boys went to bed, and still Waldo wasn't home. On his dresser I found some crumpled-up pieces of paper I didn't recognize. They were not in the trash basket. They were right on top of Waldo's dresser, in full view of me, or the boys, or anyone who happened to be in our bedroom. I knew I shouldn't look at them, but I did anyway. I had looked at his papers before, letters from the odious Edith Dilly, letters full of sex and longing, letters that I could never forget. I had read them and would always regret I had. Yet I would read them again if they were sitting there on the dresser top, calling out, Read me! Read me! I expected these crumpled-up papers to be something from Sheila/Shirley, something on her monogrammed stationery, or perhaps on a DSG memo pad. I hoped it would be something referring to the absolute end of their relationship. No, not a relationship, but a fling, a dalliance, a mistake.
I uncrumpled and smoothed out the papers. The Bug Harbor Yacht Club burgee was at the top of the page, and I read, written in pencil, in Waldo's handwriting:
There was a fair girl from old Maine
Whose tastes were a tad profane
Of Dick she was fond,
More than fond, but beyond.
That lovely young girl from Maine.
There was a young man called Dick
Who fell in love very quick-
Ly, Sydney was the girl
Who made his hair curl
And stroked the dick of young Dick.
Young Dick he loved his plants
Till Sydney came and put ants in his pants.
She fluttered her eyes
And breathed deep-felt sighs
Till Dick left his plants for her pants.
Richard and Sydney will soon be wed,
And after that they'll go to bed
Where we hope they will frolic
In settings bucolic
So it will be once the fair pair are wed.
Young Dick fair Sydney woo'd
Leave now if you don't like it crude.
For they screwed and they screwed
It was wonderfully lewd
They hoped for a Fairweather brood.
Said Dick to his Sydney,
Let's fuck. Life's too short
to trust to luck.
For your body I lust
It's an absolute must
Therefore I repeat, Let us fuck.
There were lots of erasures and cross-outs, the creative process made manifest. Apparently he had tested out woodchuck, horror-struck, and cluck as rhymes for the irreplaceable fuck.
Were these all? I had expected—hoped for?—something racier, dirtier, something to warrant Posey's parental consternation.
I left the papers on top of Waldo's dresser, all smoothed out. They would say to him, We've been read! Go to bed!
Downstairs I sniffed and stroked the horse mushrooms Gunnar had left with Bogumila. They were more than usually rank and fungal. I stuffed them into the garbage.
I needed to get back to the Hagiographers Club. No, I needed a job.
Finally, finally, it was the morning of the last day of school, the longed-for day of no more school.
The telephone rang.
"Good morning, Posey," I said.
"Alice! Just the person I wanted to speak to! They found her body. Can you tell Waldo? He'll want to know."
I said, in a voice loud enough to be heard by both Waldo behind his newspaper and Posey in Maine, "Waldo, your mother wants you to know that they found Wendy's body."
Waldo said, "Who found it?"
I said to Posey, "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Posey said.
"Waldo," I said. "Your mother is dying to talk to you." I handed him the phone.
Henry said, "Where did they find her?"
"Ask your father," I said.
Waldo spoke into the phone. "I'd love to talk, Ma. But I have to get to work. Today I'll be inventing cold fusion and a wind-proof umbrella. Can you give Al the details?"
The back door slammed behind him, and Posey was still there.
"She washed up on Slow Island," she said. "She was naked. There was an eel in her mouth."
I told the boys. Better to know than to spend the day with images of the floating body, the drowned body, the sunken body residing upon a shipwreck, the abandoned body eaten by fish and lobsters, ensnared by eels, inhabited by hermit crabs and barnacles, and cushioned by jellyfish.
Absent a Miracle Page 26
