Mary Ann emerged from the bathroom. “I wondered where you were.”
What was she doing here? Hadn’t she planned on working late tonight? “Oh,” he said. “Michael and I drove out to the beach. Where’s Nguyet? She was here when I …”
“I let her go home. I thought she could use an afternoon off.”
“Oh.”
She added: “I took off early myself. Just said to hell with it. Feels good.” She rocked on her heels several times, a curious light in her eyes. “Guess what.”
“What?”
“You’re never gonna believe this.”
He looked around, unsettled, distracted. “Where’s Puppy?”
She frowned at him. “Will you let me tell this? She’s riding her Tuff Trike at the Sorensons'.”
He tried to look apologetic. “What’s up?”
“Well … here’s a hint.” She paused, then sang: “Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah … dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah.”
It made no sense to him whatsoever.
“C’mon,” she prodded. “I know you know it. It’s theme music.”
He shrugged.
“Oh, Brian.” She sang again: “En-ter-tain-ment To-niiight … En-ter-tain-ment To-niiight.”
“Right,” he said. “What about it?”
She beamed at him. “I’m gonna be on it, Brian.”
“On the show?”
“Yes! They’re doing a series about … you know, the best local talk shows. And they want me! Isn’t that fabulous?”
He nodded, doing his best to echo her excitement. “That’s really great.”
“They wanna tape us here for part of it.”
“Me, you mean?”
“Sure, you.” She did a sort of Loretta Young twirl around the room. “You and me and Puppy and our drop-dead apartment high atop the city.” She burst into triumphant giggles, flinging her arms around him.
He patted her shoulder and said again: “That’s really great.”
“I’ve been mentally decorating all day.” She broke away from him and began to pace. “I think we need lots more flowers. Orchids, maybe … in those planters made out of twigs and moss.”
He scarcely heard her.
She stopped pacing and scolded him with a little smile.
“Somebody looks out of it. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“Are you still having those headaches?”
“No. I’m fine now.”
“Good.” She surveyed the room, obviously checking camera angles. “I want everyone back in Cleveland to be eating their crummy little hearts out. Oh … Jed stopped by this afternoon.”
He grunted. He’d completely forgotten about the kid.
“Hey,” she said gently. “I thought you were gonna give him a second chance.”
“He’s not worth it,” he said.
“Well, he’s leaving tomorrow afternoon. If you’re gonna talk to him at all …”
“Look,” he snapped. “I’ll go see him—all right?”
She recoiled a little, shaking her hand as if she’d scorched it on a stove. “Somebody needs supper and a back rub,” she said. “I’ll fix us a drink.”
The back rub meant what he thought it would mean. When he felt the pressure of her knees, the cool rivulet of cedar-wood lotion against his back, he knew she intended this as a prelude to sex.
“Guess what my show is about tomorrow?” She smoothed the lotion across his shoulder blades, then swept downward toward his ass.
“What?”
“Foreskin reconstruction. Is that gross or what?”
He laughed into the pillow.
“I have a book I’m supposed to read, but to hell with it.”
He grunted.
“I’d rather play, wouldn’t you?” She leaned down and kissed the left cheek of his ass.
He smiled at her and petted her head and looked at her as lovingly as he knew how. “I’m not up to it, babe. I’m sorry.”
“That’s O.K.,” she said brightly, nuzzling his neck. “I like it up here too.”
“Mmm. So do I.”
“You’re the best company, Brian.”
“Thanks.”
“We have the best time.” She tightened her grip on him and sighed. “I can’t believe it, really. All this and Entertainment Tonight.”
They lay there for a while, drifting off together. Then Mary Ann retreated to the armchair with her circumcision book, peering around it from time to time to catch his eye sympathetically.
He slept fitfully, waking all the way when she turned off the light and climbed into bed next to him.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Almost midnight,” she replied. “Go to sleep, baby.”
It felt later for some reason. It should have been morning. He turned over several times, trying to find a position in which his muscles wouldn’t ache.
“Are you all right?” she asked, snuggling against his back.
“Just … kinda warm.”
“You’re burning up.”
“If you could just … move over a little.”
She did so. “I’m gonna take your temperature.”
“No. Forget it. I’m O.K.”
“But if—”
“I want to sleep, Mary Ann!”
A wounded silence followed. Finally, she patted his butt and rolled over. “Feel better,” she said.
He slept straight through until her alarm went off. She silenced it by saying “O.K.,” then sat bolt upright in bed. “Brian, these sheets are soaking wet!”
He felt the covers. She was right.
She pressed his forehead, reading his temperature. “I think your fever’s gone.”
He felt much better, he realized. Maybe the worst was over.
She climbed over him and got out of bed. “You lucked out,” she said. “It was one of those twenty-four-hour things.”
“I guess so,” he said.
She reached the bathroom and stopped, adding: “Change the sheets and get back into bed. You don’t wanna push it.”
“You’re right, though. I feel fine.”
“Never mind. Go to sleep. Nguyet can feed Puppy. I’ll leave a note for her.”
He drifted off in the damp sheets, sleeping for another three or four hours. When he woke, he heard Nguyet singing to Shawna in Vietnamese. Mary Ann’s foreskin forum was blaring away full tilt on the set in the kitchen.
He eased the Princess out of its cradle and punched Michael’s number. He answered with a breezy hello on the first ring.
“Let’s go somewhere,” he said, without identifying himself.
“Where?” asked Michael.
“Anywhere. I gotta get outa here, man.”
“Are you watching her show?”
“The maid is watching it,” said Brian.
“It’s too fabulous. A new low. I love it.”
“Michael …”
“You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“No.”
“You’re going to, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Soon. I gotta sort it all out first. Look, if we could just haul ass for a few days … go to Big Sur, the Mother Lode, whatever …”
“Just you and me?”
“Yeah.”
“Brian …”
“I won’t spend the whole time talking about it. I swear. I just need some company … some laughs.”
“Ten days, Brian.”
“Four, O.K.? Five. How’s that?”
“Are you feeling O.K.?”
“Sure. Fine. Never better.”
Michael paused, then asked: “How do you feel about the Russian River?”
“Great. What’s up? You know a place?”
“I think so,” said Michael. “A cabin in Cazadero. A friend said I could use it.”
“Yeah? And you wouldn’t mind … you know …?”
“Putting up with a dork like you?”
Brian laughed. “We’ve talked about doing this.”
br /> “You’re right.”
“So let’s do it.”
“O.K.,” said Michael. “You got a deal.”
The Road to Wimminwood
THEY WERE HEADING NORTH AT LAST, DOROTHEA AT the helm of the station wagon, DeDe in the navigator’s seat. The children were in back, burrowed in a warren built of camping gear, arguing bitterly over ownership of the Nerds. “Mom bought them for me,” Edgar declared. “She bought them for both of us,” said Anna. “Didn’t you, Mom?”
DeDe had heard enough of this. “Lay off me, you guys. I’m about to crack some heads back there.”
“Ooooh,” mugged Anna. “I’m really scared.”
“I mean it, Anna.”
“Well, Edgar ate all the Nerds, and you bought them for me.”
“I bought them for both of you.”
“Well, he ate all of them.”
“You bought them Nerds?” asked D’or.
“I told her she could have some,” said Edgar.
“You did not!” said Anna.
“What’s a Nerd?” asked D’or.
DeDe knew what was coming next. “Never mind,” she said.
“Let’s see the box.”
“D’or … don’t read to me, please. I know they’re disgusting.”
“ ‘Sucrose, dextrose, malic acid and/or citric acid …’ ”
“All right, D’or.”
“ ‘Artificial and natural flavors, yellow dye number five, and carnauba wax.’ Yum-yum … carnauba wax … one of my personal faves.”
DeDe let it go. There was no point in arguing with D’or when she was soapboxing about nutrition. DeDe addressed the children instead: “Can’t you guys just cool it? We’re almost there.”
“How much further?” asked Anna, always the stickler for details.
“Not much.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know, Anna. Less than an hour.”
“If we hate it, can we come home?”
“You won’t hate it,” D’or put in. “They’ve got a special duck pond just for kids.”
“Big deal,” said Anna.
“What’s blue and creamy?” asked Edgar.
“Shut up,” said Anna.
“And,” D’or added, still on her sales pitch, “we get to sleep out under the stars, and eat our meals in the open air, and meet lots of—”
“What’s blue and creamy?” repeated Edgar.
“Edgurr,” whined Anna. “Shut your big trap.”
“It’s a riddle,” said Edgar, leaning over the seat to confront D’or. “Give up?”
“Sit down,” ordered DeDe. “You’re gonna make D’or drive off the road.”
“O.K.,” said D’or, “what’s blue and creamy?”
“Smurf sperm!” said Edgar, laughing triumphantly.
DeDe stared at him in horror. “Where did you hear that?”
The boy hesitated, then said: “Anna told me.”
“I did not,” said Anna.
“Yes you did.”
“Liar!”
“All right, both of you! Let’s keep it down back there!” This was D’or, raising her voice above the din. There was just enough menace in her tone to command the silence of the twins. DeDe both admired and resented D’or’s flair for authority. Why couldn’t mothers invoke such terror?
As they drove through Monte Rio, D’or turned to DeDe and said: “I guess ol’ Booter’s around here somewhere.”
DeDe nodded. “Across that bridge and to the left.”
“To the left, huh. Must be tough for the old fascist.”
DeDe shot her a nasty look meaning Not in front of the children.
D’or persisted. “That’s fair enough, I think. He laid a wreath on a Nazi grave.”
“It was a reconciliation ceremony. You know that.”
“Sure.”
“And it was part of his official duties.”
“Mmm.”
“It was also a peacemaking gesture,” said DeDe tartly. “Aren’t you supposed to be in favor of that?”
D’or shrugged. “I don’t notice him making peace with the Russians.”
DeDe frowned at her lover, then turned and gazed out the window. She was hardly Booter’s biggest defender, but she hated it when D’or used him to pick a fight. What was going on, anyway? Why was D’or looking for trouble?
“Mom?” said Edgar.
“Yes, darling?”
“How much longer?”
“Oh, two or three miles at the most. Do me a favor, will you?”
“What?”
“Don’t tell that joke when we get there.”
After Monte Rio, the landscape opened up to the blazing blue sky. The river wound lazily toward the Pacific, flanked by summer-humming thickets and shiny white thumbnails of sand. They crossed the bridge at Duncans Mills (groaning at the self-conscious Old Westernness of the storefronts), then turned left on the river road.
“ ‘Moscow Road,’ “ said D’or, reading the sign. “Now, here’s a road worth turning left on.”
DeDe smiled, feeling mellower now. She reached over and squeezed D’or’s leg. “What an adventure,” she said.
They followed the road into a small stand of willows, which obscured their view of the river. Next came an imposing hedge of evergreens and an equally imposing redwood fence. “The security looks good,” said D’or.
It reminded DeDe vaguely of the approach to the Golden Door, her favorite fat farm of yesteryear, but she decided not to say so. She turned to the kids instead.
“So,” she said, hoping her newfound enthusiam was contagious. “You guys are gonna have your very own tent.”
The twins said “Yay!” in unison, their Nerd dispute all but forgotten.
“Look,” chimed D’or. “Here we are.”
A young black woman stood by the roadside, flagging them into the entrance. D’or slowed down, turned left, and spoke to the woman. “Registration?”
“All the way down,” said the woman. “Park first and unload your gear. There’s a shuttle to the land.”
“The land of what?” asked DeDe.
The woman laughed and leaned into the car. “The land of Looney Tunes, if you ask me.” She stuck out her hand to D’or. “I’m Teejay,” she said. “Welcome to Wimminwood.”
“Thanks. I’m D’orothea. These are DeDe, Edgar and Anna.”
Teejay smiled and raised a pink palm in the window. “Hi, guys.” Turning to D’or, she pointed at DeDe. “Tell her about the land,” she said.
D’or gave her a high sign and drove on.
“Well,” said DeDe. “Tell me about the land.”
D’or smiled. “It’s just a term for the encampment. It fosters a sense of community.”
Maybe to you, thought DeDe.
D’or parked in a dusty clearing that was already chockablock with cars. Several dozen other arrivals were in the process of disembarking, hooting hellos, hoisting their bedrolls to their shoulders.
“We just leave the car here?” DeDe asked.
“You got it,” said D’or. She turned to the kids. “O.K., gang, here’s the deal. Everybody grab a handful of stuff. Mom and I will get the tents and the heavy things. You get the bedrolls and whatever’s left.”
The twins tackled this chore with uncharacteristic vigor. DeDe cast an optimistic glance in D’or’s direction, then threw herself into the team effort.
Judging from the other new arrivals, their own paraphernalia was quite Spartan indeed. Some of these women were weighed down like pack animals, toting coolers and lawn chairs, Coleman lanterns, fishing gear and guitars. They converged, along with the Halcyon-Wilson household, on a central loading dock, then stood in line for registration.
“Pick a duty,” said D’or, when their turn came.
“What?”
“What work duty do you wanna do?”
“Wait a minute,” said DeDe. “Nobody mentioned any work duty.”
“It’s in the brochure, Deirdre. Don’t be su
ch a damn debutante.”
DeDe would have put up a fight then and there, but the children were watching, and she didn’t want to inaugurate their stay by setting a bad example. “What are the choices?” she asked icily.
D’or read from a list posted at the registration table. “Kitchen, Security, Garbage Patrol, and Health Care.”
“Which one are you picking?”
“Garbage Patrol.”
DeDe grimaced, but the choice made perfect sense for D’or. The woman loved to clean more than practically anything. “What’s Security?” DeDe asked.
D’or shrugged. “Patrolling, mostly. Keeping an eye on things.”
That sounded tame enough. Better than Kitchen, certainly, and a lot less icky than Health Care. “Put me down for that,” said DeDe.
They were issued orange wristbands—plastic hospital bracelets, actually—which indicated they were festivalgoers rather than performers or technical people. This smacked of concentration camp to DeDe, and she couldn’t help saying so.
“I know,” said D’or, “but there’s a reason for everything. All of this has evolved from past experience.”
After registering, they walked back to their gear and waited with the other women for the shuttle. It arrived ten minutes later in the form of a flatbed truck—much to the delight of the children, who invariably applauded any form of transportation that promised to place their lives in jeopardy.
As they bounced along a rutted dirt road into the wilderness, DeDe shouted instructions above the engine noise. “Hold on to something heavy, Edgar. Anna, stop that…. Sit down this minute.”
D’or threw back her head and laughed, a strange primal glint in her eyes.
Ten minutes later, the truck lurched to a stop in a clearing near the river. DeDe hopped down first, grateful for release, then gave the children a hand. Readjusting the belt around their double sleeping bag, D’or said: “Now we’re on our own. Where you wanna camp?”
DeDe shrugged. “Someplace pretty.”
D’or scanned the map she had picked up at registration before pointing downriver to a clump of trees. “The party-hearty girls are over there. The S and M group is half a mile behind us.”
“Swell,” said DeDe dryly. “What else?”