A Simple Thing (18 page)

Chapter 18

Susannah 2011

Susannah was drunk. At least she
felt
drunk, although she hadn't had more than a glass or two of Barefoot's blackberry wine. Maybe the homemade wine had a bigger kick than she'd expected. She needed to eat. She hadn't eaten anything since lunch, except for a cupcake. And she was
starving
now. But just as she was contemplating whether or not to stand up and find a piece of bread, Jim carried over a huge platter and set it down on the table, on top of a thick dishtowel. He stood back.

“Voilà,” he said. “My paella.”

“Yes!” Baker said. He pumped a fist in the air.

The old pine walls of the Laundromat glowed with the soft light from the fireplace and the woodburning stove. Jim had offered to cook dinner for the Delaneys as a way to thank Susannah for the posters. Betty had suggested the Laundromat, with its big room and long table, as the perfect venue for a party.

“What's in it?” Quinn asked. He eyed the platter with suspicion.

“Chicken,” Jim said. “Shrimp. Squid. Clams. Mussels. Bacon. Many herbs, thanks to Barefoot.” Barefoot was here, too. He'd helped Jim and the kids plant an indoor garden at the school in the fall.

“Smell that,” Betty said, closing her eyes and inhaling the steam from the platter. “Incredible.”

Susannah felt a little sick at the thought of eating squid. It was the chewing that was so hard with squid, because it gave you so much time to
think
about what you were chewing. Something about the idea of chewing squid struck her as funny, and she giggled.

“Something funny about paella?” Jim said with a smile.

Susannah shook her head. “No, no. It looks amazing.” She looked at the paella, thinking about all those mussels and clams and shrimps, not to mention the squid.

“Is SpongeBob SquarePants in there, too?” she said.

All at once she found this so funny that she couldn't stop laughing. She laughed so hard it brought tears to her eyes, and she collapsed into Betty, who sat next to her. “I'm sorry,” Susannah said, wiping her eyes. “I don't know what's wrong with me. Too much wine.”

“Oh, my God,” Katie said.

Susannah straightened up and took a sip of water. “I can't wait to try it,” she said. She spooned a large helping onto her plate and avoided looking at it, so she didn't start laughing again.

“So how's work going?” Jim said, as he passed the wooden salad bowl to Katie.

“Fine, I guess, if you don't mind working for someone who is
crazy,
” Katie said, with an impish smile across the table at Barefoot. “Did you know Barefoot had a pet boar when he lived in Iran? It weighed five hundred pounds.”

Susannah paused, her fork in midair, awaiting an outburst from Barefoot, but he smiled.
He likes her,
Susannah thought.

“That's cool,” Quinn said.

“It's a
pig,
” Katie said.

“The most intelligent of all creatures,” Barefoot said.

Susannah looked at her paella. “So I'm about to eat smart bacon?” she said, and then, helpless, she started to laugh again.

Barefoot turned to her. “What is so funny now?” he said.

“I don't know,” she said. “Nothing.”

Susannah closed her eyes and slipped a forkful of the paella into her mouth. The buttery flavor of clam hit her tongue, followed by a rich hit of garlic, and the delightful saltiness of bacon. It was the best thing she'd ever tasted.

For the first time since she'd arrived on Sounder, she felt totally relaxed. She took another sip of wine and leaned back in her chair, nodding and smiling but not really paying attention. It felt good to not pay attention for once, to let her guard down. She stared at Jim's face across the table as he debated something about Søren Kierkegaard with Barefoot. Jim had a lively, interesting face, she thought. She was intrigued by his ears, which stood out at a slight angle, making him look boyish in spite of the lines in his forehead, the creases around his eyes.

“So, how's your art?” Jim said. It took Susannah a moment to realize he was talking to her.

“What do you mean?”

“Mom told me you amassed quite a collection of junk from the junk pile.”

She didn't want to talk about her “art,” if you could even call it that. “It's not really art,” she said. “Just a kind of project I've been fooling around with.”

In the days since she'd picked over Betty's junk, Susannah had set up a studio in a corner of the barn. With Betty's blessing, she had cleared out the old gardening tools and fishing tackle and piled all her found junk in one corner, filled with light from a small, south-facing window. She had sorted the junk into piles of broken pottery and glass and metal pieces and bits of rubber from tires and hot water bottles. She was happy to be working with her hands again, away from the confines of the small house. She had to pace back and forth in the cold and jump up and down once in a while to stay warm, but she relished even that, running in tiny circles or doing silly dances there in the barn, with no one to see her but the goats.

She had borrowed a drill and soldering gun from Barefoot and bought wood glue and paint and other supplies in Friday Harbor. She had been nervous about using the soldering gun, but Barefoot had given her a careful demonstration.

“Good God, woman,” he had said. “Is there anything you're not afraid of? You should have stayed in your tidy house in the suburbs and knit doilies!”

“I'm trying, aren't I?” Susannah had said, and Barefoot had given her a smile of acknowledgment and said, “Yes, you are.”

Since there were no store windows to decorate on Sounder, she'd decided to make garden spikes, little sculptures to add a bit of whimsy and color to the many gardens on the island. But her first few attempts had been laughable—copper tubing with bedsprings soldered on like crazy petals, looking more like junk than what she'd started with. She had stuck the small spikes in the dirt outside the barn and stood back, hands on hips, to contemplate them. These little sculptures were small and safe, like her whole life. She wanted to create something big and bold and dramatic, something completely unlike her, unlike her life in Tilton.

“Are you going to tell us about your project, then?” Jim said.

“I'm making a scrap metal scarecrow,” Susannah said.

Barefoot's wiry eyebrows rose.

“Good idea,” Jim said. “The crows are always in our corn.”

“The only problem is I don't know if my scarecrow is scary enough,” Susannah said. She giggled. “Actually, it's more of a friendlycrow. I don't think you could call it a
scare
crow.”

Katie gave her a nervous glance.

“So technically it would be a
reassure
crow,” Jim said.

“Yes!” Susannah said. “Exactly. But I don't know who it's reassuring—the farmer or the crows.” She mulled this over in her mind. Was the scarecrow reassuring the farmer? Or was the scarecrow reassuring the crows? It seemed very complicated.

“Mom.”

Susannah looked up at the insistent tone of Quinn's voice.

“Mom, I've been talking to you for like ten minutes,” he said. “I'm going to walk down to the beach with Toby, okay?”

Susannah nodded. “Yes, just don't go on the dock in the dark.”

Toby barked at the mention of his name, and Quinn went to the door, with the dog at his heels.

“Don't you want to wait for dessert?” Betty said. “I thought I heard someone mention cupcakes.”

“I don't like chocolate,” Quinn said. “And Katie made chocolate cupcakes, of course. Someone else can have mine.” He disappeared out the door.

Barefoot caught Susannah's eye. “Toby'll keep an eye on him, don't worry,” he said. “Smartest dog I've ever had.”

“I'll get the cupcakes.” Katie jumped up from the table and brought the cupcakes out now, arrayed on a bright orange plate. She had given one to Susannah to sample as they drove over to the Laundromat in the truck. But just as Katie approached the table, she tripped over the braided rug and tumbled, dropping the plate and scattering cupcakes across the floor.

“God! I'm sorry,” Katie said. “What a mess. We can't eat these now.” She started to pick up the cupcakes and pile them back on the plate.

“Where did you get those?” Barefoot stood up.

Katie looked up at him, her voice oddly shaky. “I made them. This morning, while my mom was here doing the laundry.”

Barefoot leaned over and picked up one of the cupcakes from the floor. “These look a lot like the cupcakes I made yesterday, the ones you saw on my counter that I told you not to touch.”

“They're not,” Katie said. “I made them.”

Barefoot stuck a finger in the icing and licked it. He opened his eyes wide and then reached over and grabbed Katie by the shoulder.

“Those are my cupcakes, you lying little fool! Unless you expect me to believe that you somehow spontaneously came up with an identical recipe for chocolate-lavender frosting with thyme. What the hell is going on? You knew those were not for you. Those cupcakes were for someone else!”

Katie stared at him. The entire table stared at him. Barefoot muttered to himself as he picked up the cupcakes, piling them in a crumbled, messy heap on the plate. Then he stood up and hurled it all into the fireplace. The plate smashed against the back wall of the fireplace, and the sugary icing made a hissing sound as the cupcakes hit the flames.

“Jesus Christ, Barefoot!” Betty said.

“Those were not to be shared,” he said. He glared at Katie. “And you knew it. You're fired!”

“What's the problem?” Jim said.

“I don't know,” Barefoot said, his eyes still on Katie. “But it stinks like rotten seal. I've got a friend on Orcas who's got multiple sclerosis—Walter Katz, you probably know him. Marijuana works very well in controlling some of his symptoms. I bring him cupcakes every week. Katie knows it; she saw 'em in my house, and I told her to leave 'em alone, that they were medicinal. I've told her not to touch
any
of my stuff.”

“Pot cupcakes?” Jim said.

“Oh, my God,” Susannah said.

Barefoot looked at her. “Did you eat one?”

“Yes.” Katie had offered her one before dinner. It was so good she'd sneaked another one while Katie was helping Betty set the table. Susannah looked at her daughter. “Kate?”

Katie turned her head toward the wall. “You were so crazy about my poem, and so
judgmental
about smoking pot, I thought—” She pulled her lips together. “I dropped the plate on purpose, so no one else would eat them.”

“That explains why the paella was so funny,” Jim said.

I'd be really mad,
Susannah thought,
if I weren't so stoned
.

“You've definitely gone too far,” Jim said.

Barefoot turned to Susannah. “You'll be fine. But
no one
should ever be given any kind of medicine without his or her knowledge or consent.”

“Actually, I ate two,” Susannah said. She found this funny, and covered her mouth with her hand to hide her smile.

“
Two
?” Barefoot said. “Well, you'll still be fine, but you may feel a little fuzzy tomorrow. Goddamn it, Katie!”

Susannah had never liked the sensation of losing control—she never drank too much, or smoked pot, or tried any other kind of drug. But now, she had to admit, she felt very pleasantly relaxed and removed. The thought that she should be angry—or even scared—floated into her head and floated right out. She watched the thought pass like a wisp of cloud across a blue sky.

Barefoot continued to yell at Katie, and Katie started to cry. Jim was trying to sweep the broken shards of plate out of the fireplace without catching the broom on fire. Betty was picking up the smashed bits of cupcake from the floor. The whole situation was funny, really. Susannah pulled her lips together and tried not to laugh, because Katie's behavior was truly appalling. She tried to think about something else, so she wouldn't laugh, but the only thing that came into her head was the image of SpongeBob SquarePants dancing in the paella. She laughed. And once she started, she couldn't stop. Finally, she gave in and sat back in her chair and let the laughter roll out of her, like water burbling up from a kettle.

“Oh. My. God,” Katie said.

“I'll drive you guys home,” Jim said.

She heard Quinn shout from outside. “Mom! Mom!”

Susannah wiped her eyes, and tried to still her laughter.

“Yes!” she said.

“Mom! Come here!”

Susannah got up and walked out onto the porch. Quinn stood in the road in front of the Laundromat, yelling for her. She could barely make out the white stripe on his jacket in the darkness. Toby stood next to him, barking over and over again at something farther down the road that Susannah couldn't see. Quinn ran toward the dock and disappeared.