Until that moment, as she played and replayed the message, Lorraine had not thought that Delia was mean-spirited. She had believed her righteous to the point of fatuousness, but not unkind. But she caught herself trying to reframe, reclassify incidents with her son-in-law, Ray. Even Ray bordered on boorish in his insistence that Georgia be . . . obedient. No, that was wrong. Ray had adored Georgia, and it had been her daughter who gratefully assumed the role of devoted servant. Honey, want a piece of pie, it’s homemade? Honey, let me change her; she’s sopping, no you don’t have to bother with it. Honey, let me unpack for you.
Lorraine sharply stopped herself from following that train of thought.
No, there was no real malice in Delia, or how could Lorraine live knowing that she had the daily care of Georgia’s child, the responsibility to wash her and feed her and rock and read. Hadn’t the psychologist’s report noted Delia’s patience, her serenity? Delia was not a carbon copy of Diane, that smothering, pushy, self-pitying . .
On Saturday they would celebrate, all together, on Cleveland Avenue, the passage of the law and Keefer’s second birthday, which, though it did not fall until March ninth, would also not fall on one of the McKennas’ designated weekends.
They arrived home soon enough for Lorraine to teach her afternoon classes, but when she arrived in the art room, she was stunned by the silence. All the kids were there, but bent busily over their sketch pads, and Lorraine knew enough about seventh graders to look for ominous overtones in any kind of quiet. Without a word, Lorraine’s principal, Linda Fry nodded at Lorraine and took her leave. Gingerly, Lorraine approached her desk, where Linda had set up a mannequin, draped in scarves, for the unit in figure drawing they’d begun the previous week. Not a peep from even one of them, though the little Rooney girl couldn’t help but flash a full-metal smile at Lorraine. Something was wrong. Something was up.
“Attention,” the public address system, never state of the art, crackled and guttered, “attention, students and faculty of Tee Tee Em Ess. We have an important announcement to make.” Linda. The kids were stealing out of their seats. “Among us right now is a woman of history. A woman of courage. A woman whose love and devotion has today single-handedly changed the law of the state of Wisconsin to protect the welfare of families and children everywhere. Let’s all proceed—in orderly fashion, please—to celebrate Assembly Bill Six Hundred and our own art teacher and lawmaker extraordinaire, Lorraine McKenna!”
The kids galloped from the room, tugging at her arms, taking her hands. The banner reading “Way to Go, Mrs. M!” stretched from one end of the basketball court to the other. Not only were her fellow teachers there, but Dale and Sheila, Nina and Bud, the Wiltons, the Soderbergs and their banker son.
And when Lorraine finally arrived home, there was Nora in the doorway, beckoning Lorraine to a kitchen that looked as though a florist’s truck had unloaded its entire capacity on the table, and under the table, Keefer, who said, “Nana! Peep in poddy!” Keefer, whole and pink, thinner, but clearly healthy, carefully unpacking her dentist Barbie, her pilot Barbie, her Mozart blocks, her firetruck that made horrific blatting noises and flashed red and yellow lights, each for their amazed admiration. She was no longer interested in playing with the duck puppets. “One, one,” she told Nora with a pout, pushing them away, and though Nora was momentarily crestfallen, she responded with a hoot when Keefer twisted her chubby fingers together and nodded, urging Nora, “Itty bitty, itty bitty.” The “Itsy-Bitsy Spider” was the last thing Lorraine remembered saying as she drifted off with Keefer between Mark and her in their bed, and she awoke from a dream of Georgia climbing the drainpipe, tapping at the window, Mom, let me in, let me in . . . but it had begun to rain. Lorraine crept from the bed and to her desk, where she began to write a letter, “Dearest Keefer, What a year you’ve had! You have gone from a baby to a big girl who can talk and walk and only wears diapers for sleeping! You know many songs. You have been spending lots of time playing with your family, Delia and Craig and especially Alexis, and we are all excited to have you here with us tonight. The people who will come to your Tall Trees birthday are Gordon and Lindsay and Rob and Bradie and Aunt Nora and Uncle Hayes and Tim and his brand-new puppy named ‘Taxi’! Isn’t that a funny name for a puppy? Things have happened this year that Grandma and Gordon and all your family will explain to you when you grow up, but everyone loves our Keefer. . . .”
The cake fiasco was the only blot on the next day. Keefer had been tired, Gordon having insisted on taking her to the park to haul her around wobbling on the wee, double-bladed ice skates he and Lindsay had given her, along with a full set of the Madeleine books that came with a blank-faced, blue-felt-coated dolly. They’d all watched with amazement as Keefer used a grownup fork to carefully twirl and delicately munch at her spaghetti, and marveled when she’d held out her hand for a napkin to dab her lips. “Uckies,” she’d gravely explained.
What Nora wanted, when she hauled out the gargantuan double-chocolate cake with strawberry jam mortared between each of its three layers was to snap some of those tot-plunders-cake photos. But Keefer, though her eyes widened at the sight of the sparkler candles and the gooey roses, would not touch the cake with her fingers. She’d gestured, pleadingly, for a fork. “Go on, Keefer,” Nora urged her, “dig in on it. We don’t stand on ceremony here.”
And finally, experimentally, Keefer had dipped one fingertip into the frosting and licked it. They’d all cheered. “Mommy?” Keefer asked. Everyone glanced around, as if expecting Georgia’s wraith to have materialized in the kitchen. “Mommy?” Keefer said again, her little face collapsing into boo-boo mode.
“She means Delia,” Gordon announced, disgust curdling his voice. “What she wants is Delia.”
Nora leaned over and slapped a dot of chocolate frosting on Keefer’s downturned tulip of a nose, and the baby roared, jerking her head back from Nora’s hand, pushing hard at her high-chair tray, drumming her heels on the foot rest. “Uckie!” she screamed, and began to gag, and if Gordon hadn’t gotten her to the sink in time, she’d have heaved all her spaghetti onto the floor. As it was, she spit up only a mouthful or two, Gordon managing to distract her by squirting cold water onto her wrists from the hose nozzle on the faucet.
“I’m so sorry,” Nora begged them. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean a thing by it.”
“Nora, she’s always had a mind of her own,” Mark said. “Don’t even think about it. She’s tired is all she is. Worn out. All these new faces . . .” No one said a word, but the import of the sentence rang in the room like a blow. And by the time everyone left, Keefer was asleep, curled with one fist clutching Gordon’s shirt, on Lorraine and Mark’s bed, and neither had the heart to move them. Mark bunked on the couch. Lorraine alternated napping on Gordon’s old twin, and pacing.
Lindsay and Gordon had a regional tournament for the co-ed volleyball league they’d both joined and had to leave for Wausau late Sunday afternoon. Mark had reluctantly agreed to meet a group of Japanese investors at Medi-Sun for a tour. Lorraine was eager for the short time it would give her alone with Keefer, before Nora drove out to make the formal transfer to the Cadys. But Lorraine had just begun to read, “In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines . . .” when the doorbell pealed, and pealed again, and again. Craig Cady stood on the porch, a shivering Alexis beside him. The child was in a T-shirt and a skirt, no coat on her at all, and Lorraine’s reflex was to open the door and lead both of them inside. “My wife is ill,” Craig said. “She’s sick, and I think she needs to see a doctor.”
“Should we call an ambulance,” Lorraine asked, “or the sheriff?”
“No, I just need to get her to a doctor quickly,” Craig stammered. “Mrs. McKenna, I know that I shouldn’t ask you for anything, given what we’ve . . . given how things are, but can you please, please tell me how to get to a hospital . . . ?”
“Methodist is only about six blocks from here, Craig. You take Cleveland to Main and Main to Third. Tu
rn right on Third, it’s about a block, you can’t miss it.”
“Come on, Alexis,” Craig beckoned, and then seemed to notice the girl’s unwonted shivering. “Mrs. McKenna, can she stay here?”
“Of course,” Lorraine said, “don’t worry about it. Just leave her right here with Keefer and me. We’ll be just fine, won’t we, Alexis?” Craig shut the door and dashed back to his car.
“It’s Alex,” said the girl. “I guess so.”
“Lexie!” Keefer trilled, and the red-haired girl swept the baby up, jigging with her around the kitchen.
“Let’s rock around the clock, Keefe! Let’s do the hand jive!” Alexis sang. Keefer’s head tilted back with shut-eyed bliss.
“We were reading,” Lorraine said uncertainly.
“Okay,” Alexis said, sitting Keefer down on her feet, “let’s go read. I read to her all the time. I read to her every night, don’t I, pickle-toes?”
“Tory, tory,” Keefer urged, pulling Alex into the living room.
“That’s her name for my son,” Lorraine explained. “She calls Gordon that.”
“No, that’s her word for ‘story,’ ” Alexis told Lorraine. “She means, tell her a story not from a book. I tell her stories not from books. I tell her about this mouse child, his name’s Eddie, and he got apart from his litter when he was just a newborn baby, and he was raised by the rabbits, so now he’s a mouse that goes hop, hop, hop, and he feels bad because his ears aren’t growing like his brothers’ ears . . . what kind of manger scene is that?”
Lorraine was abruptly aware of how many Christmas decorations she’d simply never managed to take down. The tree, when they’d finally gotten around to it, had been a veritable skeleton. She tried to see the ancient manger through Alexis’s born-again eyes. The one at their house probably featured a Mary and Joseph who looked like June Carter and Johnny Cash. The carved figures in Lorraine’s crèche were unpainted, primitive, the faces of the kneeling kings seeming to emerge organically from the knots and burls of the wood that made them. “It’s Hungarian,” Lorraine explained. “It’s from my grandmother.”
“I know where Hungary is,” Alexis said. “World geography. In the mountains, the Oral—”
“Carpathian Mountains,” Lorraine said. “What is the matter with Delia? Does she have flu?”
“She gets sick,” Alexis shrugged. “She gets pain and shaky, from what’s wrong with her.”
“She has . . .” Lorraine prompted.
“She has MS, we think, but it’s more . . . it’s more than that right now.” Alexis studied her chewed nails. “She’ll be okay.”
“You must be worried about her.”
“No, she gets better after a day or two. It’s like a spell or something.”
“Does she have to stop working?”
“My mom? Not if there were a hurricane! God! My mom would work if they were like, building a highway through our house. All the nail ladies would die without her. She does the chancellor’s nails. She does facials, too. For professors. Girl professors.”
“From the university?”
“Yep. French manicure for the chancellor. Every week,” Alexis’s eyes swiveled back to the mantel. “I think that thing is kind of cool-looking.”
“You can take it down if you like.”
“Mary looks a little . . . damaged.”
“Oh,” Lorraine laughed, “those are marks where Georgia gnawed on her when she was a baby.”
“Your girl.”
“My daughter, yes. Keefer’s . . . mom.”
“Can I see her picture?”
“Right there,” Lorraine said, pointing to Georgia, beaming in her high school graduation gown, Gordon beside her, laughing at the camera.
“Gordon’s handsome. He looks like a movie star.”
“He hates when people say that.”
“Well, he does.”
“He. . . . hates it! Anyhow, it’s just his smile that makes people think that. Lots of teeth.”
“Well, I hate it when people call me Carrot Head.”
“You’ll be glad when you grow up that you have that hair. Red’s really in now. Gordon’s girlfriend Lindsay has beautiful red hair. Georgia tried to dye her hair red about ten thousand times when she was your age. And the Hungarians, the Magyar people, well, this probably isn’t true, but it was said that when a child was born with red hair, the gypsies considered her a goddess, the flame-haired child.”
“Huh,” said Alexis, settling on the couch beside Lorraine. “Go ahead.”
“You’ll just be happy, about your hair. It’s a woman’s crowning glory, my grandmother Lena said.”
“Now, that’s in Transylvania, right? Hungary?”
“The other way around.”
“Where Dracula came from.”
“So they say.”
“And did kids tease you?”
“About . . . ?”
“Did they call you Dracula’s daughter?”
“As a matter of fact, when I brought in some of my grandmother’s ceremonial dance clothing, yeah, they did. For weeks, it was ‘Leeenaaah, ve vant to bite your neck.’ ”
“Who’s Lena?”
“Lena was me. Back then. I changed my name in high school to Lorraine.”
“Because of the Dracula bit?”
“No, because I thought a person named Lena should have three chins and a big hind end. It was just such an . . . old-country name. I changed it after my grandma died.”
“Awwww,” Alexis said. “I’m sorry she died. I’m going to change my name, too, though.”
“To what?”
“To Alex.”
“But it already is Alex.”
“No, it’s really Alex-isss. Which I hate.”
“But that’s a pretty name. It was the name of the last czar of Russia, a little boy whose mother’s name was Princess Alexandra, the czarina. And she was murdered, you know, with all her children, even the little prince, Alexei, by the revolutionaries. . . .”
“Oh,” Alexis said, “I didn’t know that. That’s cool. So, do you have a radio?”
“Yes, we do. You want to hear something?”
“Do you get Zee One Oh Four?”
“No, that’s just in Madison, I guess. We have a station that plays oldies. Like, the Beach Boys.”
“Umm, no, that’s okay.”
“What do you like?”
“I like Annie Lennox.”
“That’s pretty sophisticated.”
“Well, there are pretty severe limits on what I can listen to.”
“Right.”
“They have the God station on all the time. Oh, Jesus, touch me. Oh Jesus, thanks for everything. I can only listen to rap when I have my earphones on in the middle of the night.”
“Some of that rap is pretty sick, anyhow.”
“It’s totally sick. It’s like, ‘I want the world to suck my—’ ”
“I know, I know. I teach seventh grade. I’ve heard it all.” Keefer woke and whimpered.
“Can you get her a washcloth to chew on? She likes to go to sleep chewing on a washcloth. Mom won’t let her have the bottle ’cause she’ll need braces.”
Lorraine went to fetch a cold cloth and Keefer chewed beatifically, snoozing.
“Well, so, go ahead with the story,” Alexis urged.
“It’s not a story.”
“The one you were telling before. About the red-haired girls.”
“It’s not really a story.”
“Well, don’t you know a story?”
“I know . . . one.”
“Tell,” Alexis said. Keefer inserted her thumb, high in the left corner of her mouth. “Someone’s getting sleeeeeepppyyy.”
“Well, there was a poor woman, in my grandma’s stories, everyone was poor, who had a beautiful daughter, a beautiful daughter with red hair that was the envy of all the other mothers in the country,” Lorraine began. “And it was said that this girl, by virtue of being the flame-haired child, possessed magi
cal powers. Girls who wanted to woo a man to fall in love with them would come and ask to purchase a locket of the daughter’s beautiful hair, to tuck into their sweetheart’s pocket, and . . . oh, mothers who wanted to have babies and couldn’t have babies—”
“Like my mom,” said Alexis. “She only ever had me, with my dad. He’s Jack Tyson. But now we have pickle-nose—”
“Uh, well,” Lorraine said, “well, all those women would come to touch the girl’s beautiful hair to their tummies, so that they would conceive a child, and in hopes that this would also be a flame-haired child, a lucky child. Of course, this was fine with the poor mother, because she needed all the pennies people gave her.”
And then, Lorraine continued, as Keefer’s eyes drooped and finally closed, there was a great famine in the land. The lord who ruled the land, Lorraine called him Vlad Dracul, for the sake of flourish, summoned his gypsy soothsayer to give him wisdom on the plague that had savaged the crops and dried up the cows’ milk and poisoned the fish in the streams. Seek out the flame-haired girl, the gypsy wise man advised. Only the flame-haired girl can heal the land. Fill this girl with your son, the soothsayer promised, and when that child is born, the mountains and rivers will bloom with new life. The lord sent out his minions, who listened to the tales of the country folk and finally came to the poor hut where the flame-haired girl lived with her poor mother. They seized the girl and brought her before the lord, who instantly summoned his priests and married the girl, who wept bitterly for her mother. Though the lord was rich and powerful, he was also cruel. He gave the girl, Sofia, jewels and fine clothing and all the food she could hope to eat, but the girl wept and begged for her mother. She would not eat the food, and as the lord realized that Sofia would soon have a child, in desperation, he summoned the mother from her hut to attend to her daughter.