“Nope. It’s me in the flesh.” Chloe walked down the steps and opened her arms. The two hugged tightly.
“What are you doing here?” Amy asked.
“Surprise.”
“But you said you weren’t coming until late October.” Amy opened the back door.
“I still am. This is a sneak preview.” Chloe rolled her luggage into the kitchen with precision.
“You just showed up out of the blue? Without notice? What if we’d been gone?”
“Aims, I haven’t seen you since you two bought this house. Show me around.”
The suitcase was abandoned in the guest room for a tour through the home. Chloe stopped to admire the bookcase, pressed her hands into the luxurious fabric of the living room sofa, and rubbed her fingertips along a textured wall. As Chloe commented on Amy’s knack for interior decorating, she looked for signs of disorder and found none. They finished the tour in the kitchen. Chloe went to the bathroom, and Amy got two glasses of water.
Chloe entered the living room. “Fine little trapping of domesticity you got here.” She dropped into Scott’s chair and grabbed her drink. From the shallow bowl on the coffee table, she took a few marbles and rolled them in her hand like dice.
“We like it. Quiet neighborhood, lots of trees, good property values. We’ve been so sucked in that we make sure we’re in town whenever there’s a tax vote.”
“The creep of Republicanism?”
“Blatant self-interest, perhaps.”
“Same thing, yes?”
“Depending on your definition.” Amy sat still in a way that she hadn’t in weeks.
“Hey, that’s a cool necklace. Where’d you get that vintage beauty?”
“My great-aunt Twolly. That jewelry chest you saw in the bedroom is full of beautiful pieces like this. You’d like digging through it.”
“Will do. So, where’s Scott? I miss hugging men whose pants will stay loose at the crotch.”
She laughed. “He won’t be home until about ten.” Amy paused. “So you really came without telling anyone?”
“Okay, Captain Jigsaw is responsible. He thought you’d be happy.”
Amy’s eyes softened, and her mouth bowed up. “No kidding.” Then she looked at Chloe without a blink. The smile ebbed back.
“He said he’s still enjoying the pharmacy biz.”
“He’s talked about going for an MBA to work in the pharmaceutical industry.”
“The big money. The time is now. Baby boomers are getting older, and they’re going to want drugs, drugs, drugs to cure it all, especially aging itself. Somebody will make a killing.”
“My mom had one hot flash and dashed off for hormone replacement therapy.”
“Pill or patch?” Chloe asked.
“Pill.”
“Mine’s patch. I tried to get her to think about soy, herbs even, but she’s so conventional—what are you smiling at?”
“Same old admonition of the woman who bore you after twenty-five hours of labor,” Amy said.
“And the always maternal Nora Richmond, from which you sprung, has become a paragon of a new wave?”
“Hardly. She’s clamoring for grandchildren. But that’s a topic for another day.” She began to twist her wedding ring in a way that made Chloe anxious.
“Well, you know what? I’m hungry. What about you?” Chloe asked.
“I could eat.”
“Take me somewhere nostalgic. I’m in the mood. I actually drove around LSU for half an hour before I got to your place. Strange sameness and strange changes in this city. The student ghetto is pathetic as ever, but the new apartment buildings south of campus are amazing. Who’s got money to live there?”
“It’s called credit—or Daddy.”
Chloe jerked up, dropped the marbles into the bowl, and smoothed her pants. “Shit, everyone should suffer the way we did. Builds character. Makes you appreciate what you get once you’ve worked for it.”
“How very Republican.”
“Shut up.”
Amy washed each glass, dried them, and placed them in the cabinet before they left for dinner.
SCOTT CAME HOME to a quiet house. He knew Chloe had arrived because her rental car was parked in the front and a tightly packed suitcase was on the guest bed. He showered and dressed for visitors, choosing shorts that zipped and a T-shirt instead of clean underpants alone. With a half-read book and a glass of orange juice, he sat in his chair, a nervousness drumming at his fingertips. He read paragraphs three and four times over and glanced at the time. Around eleven o’clock, he paced between the kitchen and dining room, peeking out of the windows.
Chloe and Amy walked in the back door, laughing. His face relaxed when he greeted them.
“Catch me.” Chloe ran into his arms, and he lifted her off the ground. When he placed her down, she kissed his cheek with an exaggerated smooch.
“Look at you. Man, you’re in shape. But otherwise, you haven’t changed a goddamn bit.” Chloe whapped him in the belly with the back of her fingers.
“Goddammit, neither have you.”
Chloe laughed. Amy busied herself with putting her purse away.
“Had a good time, girls?”
“My guts are gummy with cheese fries from Louie’s, and I got to embarrass a row of underage kids at the movies. Banner evening,” Chloe said.
Scott made eye contact with Amy, who removed her watch and necklace. Chloe thwarted the silence by announcing she was going to the bathroom.
“I found her on the doorstep,” Amy said.
“Did you brush her and offer a saucer of milk?” Scott asked. “Can we keep her?”
Amy grinned slightly and shook her head. “Just for the weekend.” She moved as if she were about to reach for him but turned around toward the cabinets instead. “Thank you, Scott. I’m glad to see her.” She stretched for a glass.
“You’re welcome.” He ran his fingers along the back of her head and gently squeezed her neck. She poured water from the tap. “You guys had fun?”
“You know Chloe. It’s hard not to have fun with her.”
“She seems like she’s doing well. She looks great.”
“I think she’s hit a stride. It suits her.” Amy faced him, took a sip, and placed her drink on the counter.
She looked fragile. Her clothes were too well pressed, her hair was too well coiffed, and her face was too appropriately painted. Amy stood with her arms down and wrists tilted like a doll about to toddle across the room. Her fingers splayed out to stretch away the residual tension of working at a computer that day. Before she could grab her glass again, Scott trapped her against the sink, hugging her.
“Scott.”
“I’m glad you had a good time.”
Amy patted his back. “Let me go. I have to bathe.”
He stepped away as she walked past.
“Bath time,” Amy said on her way to the front of the house.
Chloe walked in a second later. “We have—what?—twenty minutes alone now?” She was barefoot. She wore a thin cotton robe over men’s pajamas, and her hair was held back with a thick headband. Her face was shiny clean.
“Want something to drink? A snack?”
“No, thanks.”
“How much did you guys talk?”
“I did most of it. Catching up, that sort of thing. I figure I need to ease into the territory, you know? We haven’t seen each other in almost a year. It didn’t seem appropriate to bust out with, ‘So what’s with the obsessive-compulsive thing again?’”
“It’s no better than when I talked to you—and now she lives in front of the computer.”
“She doesn’t know you called about—whatever this is?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“I’m really worried. I’ve tried to think if I did something to start this or exacerbate it, but I don’t think I have. Something happened after her grandparents died. Something she won’t tell me.”
“Did you try to
talk to her at all?”
“She was evasive. She said she’s having to work out some things in her head, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Chloe pitched herself up to sit near the sink. “That’s it?”
“She gave me some explanation about seeing some pictures that made her remember things she’d forgotten.”
“What pictures?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Photographs or something else?”
“She just said pictures.”
“Oh.”
He stared at her until she met his eyes. “What?”
“She didn’t mention a video?”
“Spill it.”
Chloe sat bent forward, her hands curled around the counter’s edge. “I didn’t think it was a big deal, so I didn’t tell you about it when we talked. I sent her this video I found in storage.”
“When was this?”
“Three months ago. Some tape we made about our nefarious political days. Our impressions. I thought it was kind of nostalgic. There’s a part where she talks about her grandparents. She couldn’t believe old Sunny was a pro-lifer and that her grandfather was pro-choice. She thought he was really conservative—he had a yard sign for every Republican presidential candidate since she could remember—so that was, well, out of character.”
“That seems harmless enough,” Scott said.
“I have to be honest, though. I didn’t watch the whole thing. I stopped at some point when we were waxing philosophical. Our intensity got excruciating. And then I dropped the tape off at a friend’s who dubbed a DVD for me.”
“Maybe that had nothing to do with what’s going on.”
“The timing is suspicious. Sounds like she started to wig out around the time she got it. Might have been a bad judgment call on my part. I thought she might get a kick out of seeing it. I guess I was wrong.”
“Your intentions were good.”
“They led right to hell.” Chloe lightly kicked her heels against the cabinets. Her lips parted, but what came from her was a tinge of Jem. Hmm, she murmured, too low for anyone to hear. “I’ll do what I can, but don’t expect me to blab if she opens up. If she swears me to silence, she’s got it. All I can promise to do is convince her to tell you.”
“That’s more than I had when I woke up this morning.”
“No guy’s ever gotten teary-eyed over me. Not like this anyway.” Her comment made him tuck his chin near his chest. “If I have any influence on the big scheme, I’m not letting you guys fuck this up. Nobody is going to chicken out of dealing with whatever’s going on. Not you. Especially not Amy.” She pitched her head against the cabinet and stared at the ceiling. “When you lose your nerve to face things, you lose more than what you didn’t get.”
“So what did you lose?”
“Aside from my self-respect now and then and a couple of jobs? Might have been a man named Ephraim. But the timing was all wrong. Somebody ought to figure out how to synchronize that shit.”
WHILE SCOTT AND AMY got ready for bed, Chloe wandered into the front room. She parted the bookcase doors wide. Her fingers dipped into the separations among the spines as she read them carefully, novels, biographies, essay collections, a dictionary, and reference books. Of those that interested her, she glanced at the covers, back and front. She chose a well-worn favorite of Scott’s and placed it on the little table near the rocker. Chloe then sat in front of the drawers, running her fingers along the deep, straight carvings on each one. When she opened the right drawer, she traced the arcs of the dovetailing and tapped her finger on each peg that held the wood together. A century-old breath, the one all could detect, blew out. Chloe smiled at the odd scent, an aroma like good tobacco and spices. The only items inside were candles of all sizes and a matchbox. With both hands, she pushed the drawer closed and leaned to open the other.
It stuck a little as she pulled. She didn’t know the trick that Amy had discovered, one that Andrew always used—an even tug up at the handle and a smooth slide out. Chloe moved the drawer until it was nearly out of the bookcase. She held the bottom with her left hand and ran her fingers along its sides. Her touch was slow, exploratory, sensuous. I backed into a corner, vibrating, chilling the room against my will. Never had Amy or Scott left the drawers open so long, and the smell was unusually powerful, overwhelming me. I could see Andrew’s bloodstains within the interior—cold, brown, lifeless.
Chloe’s left hand slipped. The drawer knocked flat to the floor. As she lifted it up to replace it, she tilted the back in first and tried to close it all the way. It wouldn’t fit. She pulled it out again and inspected the rear side. A thin panel of wood jutted from the bottom. Oh, shit, she muttered, looking inside to see what was damaged. She held the drawer on her lap and jiggled the panel, which began to slide out. A paper rectangle fell between her legs. Chloe pulled out the false bottom slowly, and photographs dropped to her thighs like petals. Drawer aside, Chloe held a fan of photographs before her.
Each one was of me.
“Aren’t you freezing in here?” Amy walked in and glanced up to notice that the fan wasn’t on. Then she looked at Chloe. “What happened?”
“These fell from under the drawer.”
Amy sat next to Chloe and took the photos one by one.
“I was admiring how well this bookcase is built, and I accidentally dropped the drawer. A panel came out—along with all of this.”
There I was, bare. Shadow and light, my body curled into itself, curved along the roll of the earth, blurred by wildflowers, silhouetted against the sky. I remembered Andrew’s fingertips nudging the arch of my back, pushing the edge of my heel, meeting the cup of my palm. At times, he blended me into the landscape as if I’d sprouted from the very spot on which I lay. Other times, I was as exotic as a bird of paradise among weeds. When he looked at me, I felt a radiant nakedness deeper than my skin.
“She’s beautiful.” Chloe stared at each picture, turning them over to find no writing or marks.
“Who’s beautiful?” Scott appeared in the doorway.
Amy extended her arm and handed him a small stack. Scott didn’t blink for several moments. His smile was ever so coy and serious. How strange it was to see a man look at me that way again.
Chloe passed another picture to her. “How old do you think these are?”
“Twenties, probably,” Amy said.
“Look at this one. You can tell her hair is bobbed,” Scott said.
For a long while, Amy studied me. I lay on the ground, my breasts and pelvis covered with flowers. My face was in profile, softened by late-afternoon light and the hangover of a nap. I remembered that day, what happened after he took the photo, his heat below me, the breeze above.
“It’s so naughty. Some cute little flapper posing for someone,” Chloe said.
“I wish I knew who she was.” Amy studied four others. “She almost looks familiar.”
“There’s not even a studio mark,” Scott said.
“Last one, my porno pals.” Chloe passed the photo to Amy.
I came close enough to see it was one of the last photos he ever took of me. I am naked, a length of beads between my breasts, one hand curled at my left hip, my eyes closed, the corners of my mouth soft with content. I trusted him when he said that no one else would see me so completely.
SATURDAY BEFORE Valentine’s Day, 1928. Twolly says I look moony-eyed. I can’t deny it. Everything is bathed in spectacular brilliance. Everyday aromas have transformed into magnificent perfumes, and the simplest meals are delectable. Ordinary noises are symphonic. My flesh is as sensitive and responsive as the silk of a spider’s web. I won’t say it—can’t say it—but I know exactly from what I suffer.
The surprise Andrew has promised for Tuesday thrills more than frightens me, and Twolly knows it. She’s almost as anxious to find out what it is.
“Dinner at Commander’s.” Twolly lies flat on her back on my bed.
“Too public.”
�
�Flowers.”
“Expected, don’t you think?”
“Candy. Really big box.”
“Too predictable. I’m telling you, you can’t judge this book by its cover.” Andrew, underneath his reticent smile and tailored suits, is a work of unexpected whimsy. Two weeks after the first amazing kiss, he sent me a crossword puzzle that he’d made himself. Several boxes had thicker lines than the rest that indicated a secret message would be revealed. Once I solved it, the staggered boxes spelled out, left top to right bottom, U R C A T S M E O W. For Christmas, he gave me a cricket box that housed a real cricket. The Chinese believe it represents a fighting spirit, he said. In January, he mailed a tiny package containing an origami crane. Its tail had a narrow note attached to the end that read, “Flatten me.” I hated to ruin the delicate folds, but I followed the instructions. The enclosed message was, I’m breaking a cardinal rule to be this earnest, but itswanderful to beak around such a good egg. That’s no tail—feather you believe me or not. Affectionately, Andrew.
Twolly rolls to her stomach and kicks her heels in the air. “Jewelry.”
“Too soon.”
“Razi, you’re positively goofy over each other.”
“I don’t wear enough baubles to give him a clue that I’d even like that.”
“Would you?”
“Wouldn’t mind.”
“Dinner on a riverboat, dance afterward, dark corners for necking.”
“Tempting. But he’s going to pick me up at three o’clock. Too early.”
“Didn’t he give you any hints?”
“No, and I begged him. He can be so secretive. It’s awful charming.”
“You never tolerated such games from other boys.”
“Other boys weren’t so clever.”
“So what do you have for him?”
I jump to my feet and scamper to my dressing table. “It’s a bit of a treasure hunt without the map. He’s forced me to compete with his creative flair.” I find the red thread in the same place I’d left it. I twist the thread around my headboard and loop it around my room. “I’m going to run this throughout the house. He’ll start in the front parlor and make his way in and out of rooms until he finds his gift.”
The Mercy of Thin Air Page 16
