Circle of Three

  “I don’t understand,” I finally got out. “How do you know—why do you think—”I couldn’t think of the simplest words. “Retaliation.” That was it. “What makes you think—Well, first of all, what’s that about a kiss good night?”

  “We can talk about it later,” Carrie snapped, eyeing Ruth.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Ruth exploded, “what do you think I am, Mom, eight? Here’s what happened. She wouldn’t kiss him good night—”

  “Well—it was a little more than that,” Carrie said, and we all ogled her. “But less than what you’re thinking,” she added with a laugh. “Something in between—the details aren’t important.” That’s what she thought. “The point is, I know it’s why he fired me.” When I shook my head, she glared at me. “I was good at my job, Mama, there was no other reason. You can ask Chris if you don’t believe me.”

  “I believe you.” I hated it, but I believed her. I’d had ideas about Brian Wright. I’d discovered him; a diamond in the rough, I thought. I was going to use him to make my daughter happy. I felt like throwing up. “Low-down son of a bitch. If he was here right now I’d kick him in the—crotch.”

  Carrie clasped her hands together and held them to her chin. “Mama, I love you. You’re so predictable.” Whatever that meant.

  Birdie said, “What are you going to do?”

  Carrie shrugged, but she avoided my eyes and I knew the answer. She was going to go to Jess Deeping’s and make ark animals. Full-time.

  Nothing to do then but have another drink.

  “Okay,” Carrie said, “that’s enough of that, can we please talk about something else?” She looked tired and angry and upset, but not very depressed. For somebody who’d just had her livelihood yanked out from under her, she looked pretty damn chipper. She took the beer her father handed her and lifted it in a toast. “Here’s to you, Mama. Many more.”

  I could hardly even smile. I knew the beginning of the end when I saw it.

  Birdie started talking about spring coming and wasn’t the weather wonderful and how lucky we were to be outside this early in the season. George never brought me my new drink, so I got up to make it myself. In the process I tipped the table, just a minor jolt, but Carrie had to say, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, I’m fine. Don’t I look fine?”

  And I was in love with Ruth. I perched on the arm of her chair and petted her pretty, curly hair out of her face, stroked the back of her neck, hugged her and pressed the side of her face to my bosom. “I could just eat you up, I could just eat you alive.” She even smelled good, sweaty and sweet and real. I buried my nose in her hair and inhaled.

  “Dana, for the Lord’s sake,” Birdie said, “leave that child be.”

  “Won’t. She’s too sweet.” I gave her a wet, smacking kiss on the temple, and she dropped her eyes, embarrassed. A second later she rubbed her knuckle across her cheekbone.

  Across the table, George caught my eye and frowned. He glanced at my drink, glanced at me, back at the drink. Who the hell was he, Carry Nation? “Well, excuse me,” I said, “but today I arrived at my eighth decade and I’m entitled to drown my sorrows. What are you, Ruth honey, seventeen?”

  “Fifteen, Gram.”

  “That’s right, I knew that. Wait’ll you get my age and then see what you’ve got to look forward to.”

  “Mama,” said Carrie, “you’ve got plenty to look forward to.”

  “What? Name something. Life is not such a rosy prospect at seventy, let me tell you. What’s something good that can happen to you? Something really good? Nothing, that’s what. Your joints hurt a little worse every morning. Bladder control—maybe you’ll get to wear a diaper like June Allyson. Then your mind goes, you can’t remember diddly-squat. Look at Helen Mintz—she’s a vegetable.”

  “No, she is not,” Birdie said, shocked.

  “Or maybe you have a stroke. Maybe it’s your heart, your arteries, or lung cancer or breast cancer, maybe you get your colon removed.”

  “Jeez,” Ruth said, snickering, “you sound like Raven.”

  “Ruth’s ghoul friend,” Carrie explained to Birdie.

  “Her what? Girlfriend?”

  “I’m telling you, it’s not a pretty picture, wait’ll you get my age and you’ll see. What do you think I’m going to do, take up a new career now? Suddenly start watercoloring? Beekeeping? It’s over.”

  “Mama, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Jeez, Gram, you’re not a hundred.”

  “Drama queen,” Birdie said smugly.

  George shoved his chair back and muttered something, patting his pocket.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Just have a smoke. Right back. ’Scuse…” he trailed off vaguely, shuffling away in the direction of the garage.

  I sat back. “And there you are, aren’t you. There—you—are.” I toasted his shadowy retreating back, but my drink tasted bitter. “Don’t think you can get old with somebody, either,” I said, wagging my finger in Ruth’s face, “just ’cause you’re married to him. Don’t make that mistake.”

  “Mama,” Carrie said sharply.

  “I don’t care, needs to be said.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Be careful who you pick, Ruth honey. They look good when you’re young, they act right, you think you’ll never be lonely again, but they fade away. You don’t even know it till they’re gone, and then it’s too late. You married a ghost. Right, Carrie? You’re the one who—”

  Carrie stood. “All right, we have to go. Kiss your grandmother and come on, Ruth, it’s getting late.”

  I didn’t move except to blink fast. I let the shock wear off while I went back over what I’d said. Well, let ’em leave. I meant every word, I didn’t take back one. When Carrie touched cheeks with me and said, “Good night, Mama. Happy birthday,” I didn’t say anything back, just sat there stone-faced and unrepentant. By God, you’re allowed to tell the truth on your birthday.

  “’Night, Mrs. Costello,” Carrie told Birdie.

  “’Night, sweetheart. You take care.” I didn’t look, but I didn’t have to—all kinds of secret looks were going on over my head. Carrie said something about going out the back way to say good night to her father. Fine, have a party out there for all I care. Have a love-in.

  Then I waited for Birdie to start in. It wouldn’t take long; silence is her worst enemy. “Well?” I said when she actually kept her mouth shut. “No words from you for the drama queen?”

  She stood up slowly, using the table for support. “You’ve had too many of those whiskey sours, so it’s no use talking to you.”

  “Good.”

  “But I’ll say this.”

  “Here we go.”

  “My Chester was no angel, and there were some things about him I’ve never even told you. But I most certainly would never have told them to my children. I didn’t try to get sympathy for myself by running down Matt and Martha’s father in front of them.”

  “Well, aren’t you just wonderful.”

  “No, I’m not wonderful. I just know there are rules. And drinking too much and feeling sorry for yourself because you’re seventy doesn’t give you permission to break them. A child doesn’t need to know her father’s a failure, no matter how old she is. That’s just common decency.”

  “That’s just crap. A mother and child are the closest two people in the world. If you can’t tell your own flesh and blood what your life is like, what’s the point of anything? I didn’t cross any line.”

  “Yes, you did and you know it. Using Ruth as an excuse, too. ‘Be careful who you pick, Ruth honey,’” she mimicked. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Oh, go home.”

  “I am.”

  “When?”

  “When I finish my say. You have problems with George, then you should tell them to a therapist or a marriage counselor.” I snorted. “Reverend Thomasson, then.”

  I reached for Carrie’s half-finished glass
of beer. “Oh, say, that’s what I’ll do, Bird, I’ll go visit the pastor. What a wonderful idea, and so like me, just the kind of thing I’d do. Boy, you sure do know me well.” Sarcasm’s lost on Birdie unless you hit her over the head with it. “I thought you were leaving.”

  “Okay, don’t, then, just stay home and fester.” Leaning forward, she said earnestly, “I’m sorry, but you’re getting sourer all the time, and I’m not the only one who’s saying so. I just—I just think you could use some help, and not from your own daughter, who’s got enough problems of her own.”

  “Thank you.” Warm beer stuck in my throat; I almost spit it back in the glass. “Don’t slam the door on your way out.”

  Birdie sighed. She came around the table, smiling and frowning. “You’re the hardest friend I have. I love you, Dana, but you sure are a pain in the neck sometimes. Happy birthday, honey.”

  I pulled back when she leaned down to kiss me, but she kept coming and got me with a hard one on the cheek. I said, “Hmph,” and didn’t smile. “Maybe you should write an advice column, get paid for all that wisdom. You could call yourself Miss Buttinsky.”

  She laughed on her way across the patio. She had on a too-summery print dress, pink on white. The white glowed in the murky twilight—Carrie was right about that. “I take it back, you’re not a pain in the neck,” she called from the doorway. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

  Oh, naughty, naughty, coming from Birdie that was like cursing the Lord. But she’d hissed “ass” in a stage whisper, like a little girl, so the effect was spoiled. She did slam the screen door, though.

  I stared around vacantly, listening to the night sounds, trying to figure out what I was feeling. Guilty? Mad? Both. But mostly tired, tired in my mind, too tired to sort out who was right and who was wrong. It just didn’t matter. Tomorrow I might wake up sorry and embarrassed for committing a family faux pas and driving my loved ones away, but tonight all I could dredge up was sullenness.

  The moon was exactly half full. Chilly, sweet air. Turned earth and fertilizer, a real spring smell. It made me nostalgic for a time I couldn’t remember, maybe hadn’t even lived. I got up and went to find George.

  The streetlight in the alley filtered through the budding branches of the locust tree behind the garage, dappling his bald head as it swayed slightly—he was sitting on one of the swings of the rusty old swing set we put out here years ago, then never called anybody to take away. He had his back to me, his head tilted sideways, resting against the chain. His stooped shoulders looked dreamy; he was watching the smoke from his pipe drift up into the tree branches, musing over something, at peace. I felt keyed up just looking at him, out of sorts, ungainly somehow. He heard me and pivoted, twisting the swing chains over his head. “’Lo,” he called, wary.

  I strolled over, hands in the pockets of my red dress, watching where I put my feet. Lot of roots around here. If I tripped on one, he’d say I was drunk.

  “Hey,” I said, and squeezed into the other swing. “I’m leaving all those dishes till morning.”

  “That’s dirty—you’re going to get your dress dirty.”

  “Don’t care.”

  He glanced at me, trying to figure out what mood I was in now. The streetlight reflected off his glasses, dazzling me; I couldn’t see his eyes. Presently he said, “Isn’t that something now, about Carrie.”

  “Crazy. Of all things.”

  “I’ve known Brian since he was the registrar at Remington. Never liked him, but I never would’ve guessed at anything like this. Not in a million years.” He shook his head, baffled. “Maybe she should sue him.”

  “Suing’s tacky. Goddamn sonofabitch.” I meant it, but I regretted saying it. He doesn’t complain, but George hates it when I swear. But that’s how reckless and mad I was feeling. And foolish. Tricked, and old, and hornswoggled. I felt like one of those old ladies you read about who get their life savings swindled away on the telephone by some smooth-talking con artist.

  “Carrie will have to find another job now, I guess. She can always help me with my research. I’ve told her that before. Not forever, but in the interim.”

  “I don’t think she wants to,” I said dully.

  His pipe went out and he relit it, making the bowl glow. “No, I don’t believe so,” he said with a wistful, flickering smile. I looked at him curiously. He pulled on his pipe and stared off at nothing.

  An owl hooted; not the homey hoo-hoo one, but the one that sounds like somebody gasping or hissing, that eerie, raspy sound that prickles the hair on your arms. I concentrated on the friendlier sound of the traffic in the distance, and the familiar, semihysterical barking of Maisie, the neighbor’s dog.

  “You think we’re like George and Martha?”

  “George and Martha?”

  “You know, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The old married couple were George and Martha. He was a college professor.” She was the college president’s daughter, though, so that’s where the parallel broke down. I married my George to get out of an old life, but I never learned how to fit into the new one.

  George grunted.

  “They hated each other,” I said. “But they loved each other, too.” I let that hang, let the words float in the silence like an invitation. An advance.

  George said nothing.

  Such a sadness came over me. “Oh, God, what’s going to happen?”

  He scooted his swing a little closer to mine. Lightly, he patted the side of my thigh.

  I picked up his hand and studied it in the meager light. Veiny old hand, wrinkled old hand. Yellow nails that smelled like nicotine. I wanted to lay my cheek against it, but it looked so foreign, like a machine, a device, not quite flesh; the longer I stared at it, the less it even looked like a hand.

  I set it on my knee. “Have you been happy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate the happiness of your life, George?”

  “Oh.” He laughed.

  “No, I mean it. What would you say? What’s your answer?”

  He sighed. “Seven.”

  “Really? Me, too. And here I thought we had nothing in common.” We smiled, not looking at each other. We rested our temples against the cool, rusty chains of our side-by-side swings. If we sidled a tiny bit closer, we’d touch.

  “Tonight I’m a four, though, George. I’m not doing so hot tonight.”

  “You had a little too much to drink.”

  “Maybe. But…I wanted something. Some feeling. I don’t like this getting old business.” I gave a mock shudder. “Hard to believe we used to celebrate our birthdays.”

  He gave my leg a pat and took his hand back to rub the side of his stiff neck. He lit his pipe again.

  I didn’t even want him to talk to me. I outgrew that long ago, the way a child outgrows expecting her stuffed dog to talk back. I just wanted…something. Tonight. Some kind of a connection.

  “George.”

  “Hm?”

  “You know, you don’t have to smoke outside. You can smoke in the house if you want to. I don’t mind anymore.”

  He nodded, looking thoughtful. “I think I’ll keep it out here,” he said slowly. “It’s not so bad. I’ve gotten used to it.”

  Down the alley, somebody’s garage door groaned before it slammed shut, crack, metal on concrete. A nice, final sound. I got up. “Butt hurts. I’m going in.”

  “I’ll be in in a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  “Happy birthday,” he called.

  “Thanks.”

  I went in the empty house by myself. Something I’ve done a million times before, but tonight it felt like practicing for the future.

  18

  Good, Good

  “CAREFUL, WATCH HIS head. Look out for the door!”

  “I got it, I got it. He’s fine.” The tinge of exasperation in Mr. Green’s voice was what clued me in to the possibility that I was being a pain in the ass. Nobody was more even-tempere
d than Mr. Green.

  “I can probably get the rest,” I told him, “I just needed you for the big ones. Well—if you could help me with the polar bear, that would be great. Then go, you must have a thousand things to do.”

  Good humor restored, Mr. Green stood back to admire his placement of the giraffe, eleven and a half feet tall, against the sunny side of the ark barn. We were moving the animals outside so Eldon Pletcher could look at them in natural light. Landy and Jess were taking him to the river this morning to see the almost-finished ark; then he was coming here to check out the animals. He’d be here any minute.

  “Looks good,” Mr. Green said. High praise—he thought the whole ark project was ridiculous. But he regularly attended a church called the Solemn Brethren of the Bleeding Lamb, so I wasn’t sure where he got off. I told him that to his face—we had very lively debates; arguments, really. He liked to play devil’s advocate even more than I did.

  “Do you think Mr. Pletcher will like them?” I asked, eyeing my colorful animal lineup against the wall.

  “Oh, sure.” I must’ve looked dubious, because he added kindly, “I bet he’ll be real pleased. You don’t have a thing to worry about.” He gave me a bracing pat on the back, and I realized I was twisting my hands together. “Which one do you like best?” he asked.

  “Me?” I liked them all. I loved them all. Which wasn’t to say I wouldn’t have loved a chance to do every one of them over again. “I don’t know, which one do you?”

  He glanced over the double rows of cutout kangaroo, cheetah, porcupine, llama, panda, ferret, goat. “What’s that one?” he asked, pointing.

  Uh-oh. “Can’t you tell?”

  He scrunched up his leathery face, peering. “Anteater?”

  “Yes!” Relief. “That’s your favorite?”

  “No, this is. I think. This here donkey.”

  “Really? How come?”

  “’Cause of his face. Looks like one we had when I was a kid, name of Larry. Patient as the day is long. Something about the eyes,” he said, going closer. “Just something restful in his eyes. How many more you got to do before D day?”