An Act of Love (17 page)

“Just minor kid stuff,” Owen hedged.

“Oh, come on, tell me. It couldn’t be any worse than some of the stunts we pulled as teenagers.” She ran her hand through her short blond hair. She cut it herself, and it fell in a shaggy golden mop over her shapely skull, framing her enormous blue eyes.

Owen looked at Linda. He cleared his throat. “Bruce got in a fight with another boy. Wouldn’t say why. We had to meet with the dean of students. He was given a
warning this time. He’ll be suspended if it happens again.”

“Good for Bruce!” Celeste exclaimed. “High time he got into a little red-blooded trouble.”

“I’m not sure I agree with you,” Owen said.

“Come on. Remember what we did at his age.”

“I think I’ll see how the game’s going,” Owen said, and rose, heading for the den and the group around the television.

“Huh!” Celeste sat back, surprised. She arched a brow at Linda. “Where’s his sense of humor?”

“I suppose we all lose it when our kids are concerned,” Linda told her.

“I guess,” Celeste replied halfheartedly, and rose and followed Owen into the den.

“It’s sort of pitiful, isn’t it?” Rosie asked in a low voice as she entered the room.

“You mean Celeste?” Linda asked, looking over her shoulder to be sure the other woman was far enough away. A roar exploded from the den and Bud yelled, “Touchdown!”

“They can’t hear us,” Rosie assured Linda, and settled in next to her on the sofa. “I just feel so sorry for her. Trailing around after Owen like a lovesick puppy.”

“She’s a beautiful woman. You would think she’d have hordes of men after her.”

“She doesn’t want hordes of men. She wants your husband. Besides, how would any man find her? She never leaves her farm.” She snuggled close to Linda. “Anyway, guess what?”

The glow in the other woman’s eyes confirmed Linda’s suspicion. “You’re pregnant.”

Rosie nodded. “Only just. Riley knows, but I’m not telling anyone else for a while.”

“I’m so glad for you, Rosie.”

“Thanks. It’s just what we wanted. It will be good for Sean to have a sibling around.”

The fire was warm and crackling, the room filled with its golden glow. Rosie was telling Linda about baby clothes, baby furniture. Linda listened, smiling, nodding, and thought of Emily.

They returned home
late in the evening. No messages on the answering machine; thank God for that much.

Linda was slightly melancholy as she moved around her bedroom. For a few moments she stood at her window, looking out at the night, thinking how everything had changed. Usually this time of year filled her with satisfaction and anticipation for the season to come, as if darkness and cold were luxuries. But it could be any season now. It could be spring or summer, still she would be numb with cold. What could she do to sort through the puzzle that her daughter had become? Her head ached from thinking.

She heard Owen enter. He was naked, and he crossed the room and took her in his arms. For a moment she held back, feeling irrationally that if she did not at this moment enjoy pleasure, somehow that denial would balance out a mysterious scale and keep her daughter safe from future harm.

But Owen mattered, too, and she could feel his need, here, now, physically real, more indisputable than superstition.

Everything else fell away. She let it fall.

The floorboards creaked as they moved to the bed. Linda lit a candle, and the flickering light threw all the aged, familiar sections of her room, the fading draperies, the scuffed floorboards, the cluttered bureau, the half-shut closet door, into shadow. This was their home. This was still their home, and here there existed many kinds of love. As she moved beneath Owen’s body, she was filled with certainty. She was exactly where she belonged, doing the one thing she should be doing in all this world. So ordinary, so profound: she was making love with her husband, in a bedroom of their home.

Chapter Fourteen

Friday Emily had
to see Dr. Bug-Man again. Well, why not? It was already a gross day. The windows were streaked with rain. The sky was gray, bleak. The leaf-stripped tree limbs shivered in the wind like living things, living things in pain. It was creepy.

“How are you doing today, Emily?” Dr. Brinton asked.

“Okay.”

On days like this on the farm, her mother would pull on old boots and a rain slicker and stalk off into the wind, exhilarated. She’d climb the hills, yelling at Emily: “Take a deep breath! Doesn’t it smell
rich
? Leaves and pine needles and wet earth and fresh air. The
planet
. Yum.” Later, she’d shower and build a fire and bake cookies and cajole everyone into a game of Scrabble or Pictionary. Those thoughts glowed inside her like little fires. She missed her mom.

Dr. Brinton looked at a folder. “So tell me. What’s the deal with your father?”

Emily shrugged. “No deal. He’s an asshole. I never see him.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“No anger? No regret?” When Emily didn’t reply, he prodded, “How did your parents get together? Do you know?”

“Yeah, a little.” She stirred deep into her memories. “Mom was getting her masters in English lit. My father’s a cellist. He’s on the music faculty at Leeds University.” This was like talking about a book her mother had read her as a child. She could conjure up the images in the same way, the way she’d envisioned things when she was a little kid, curled up in her mother’s lap at bedtime, both of them smelling of baby shampoo, her mother’s voice dreamy, spinning out a tale that Emily made pictures to in her mind. She had shown her photographs, too. Her mom had been pretty, in a kind of humorous way, in her dorky clothes, like shirts with long pointy collars and swirly vests, and her hair had been cut in a shag that surrounded her head like a fuzzy box.

“Where’s that?”

“Huh? Southern Pennsylvania somewhere. They fell in love, got married, had me,
got divorced.” Her mom had one album, padded blue leather, heavy pages, with photos carefully placed and annotated: Linda in an ivory wool suit, Simon in corduroys and a tweed jacket, and an ancient couple, friends from the music department who witnessed the marriage. A few photos of Linda and Simon on vacations, on the beach, in New York. On holidays, decorations for Christmas or a birthday cake in the background. Lots of photos of Simon in his tux with his chamber group before a performance. Linda huge with pregnancy, Simon with his arm around her and his mouth primped up with disdain. Linda with her newborn baby. Simon with his infant daughter, holding it out from him as if afraid it would pee on his clothes.

“Got divorced because of you?”

“No. Well, maybe, kind of. My father doesn’t like children. But Mom would have left him sooner or later anyway. He’s nuts.”

“Nuts? Certifiably?”

“No, just narcissistic.” She flashed a glance at Bug-Man, checking to see if he believed she knew what that meant. “Arrogant. Selfish. Ask Mom. She doesn’t talk about him much.”

“Do you miss him?”

“How could I? I never was with him. I mean, Mom left when I was, like, one year old.”

“You must wish now and then that you had a father …”

“Sometimes.” Emily squirmed in her chair. “When I see friends at school with their dads. Or those TV commercials of, like, a wedding with a father all happy to see his little girl getting married. But I don’t think about it much.”

“Have you ever tried to communicate with him?”

Emily snorted. “You don’t
get
it, do you? The man plays by his own set of rules. He doesn’t give a shit about having a daughter. He doesn’t want to know. I don’t exist for him. And all right, sure, sometimes I get all pathetic about it, but I mostly don’t even think about it. He doesn’t exist for me, either. It’s like having a father who’s dead.”

“What about grandfathers?”

“Don’t have any.”

“Why not?”

“They’re both dead. So’s Simon’s mother. I’ve got a grandmother, though. Mom’s mother. She’s kind of cool in her own bizarre way.”

“Where does she live?”

“Florida. We visit her sometimes.” Just the thought of her grandmother flushed Emily with warmth. Inches of sweet thick icing on cake, mashed potatoes, Jell-O salads, creamed corn, creamed everything. The constant beat of heat against the walls and windows. The drowsy exhalation of the air-conditioning. Shades and curtains pulled to dim the brassy sunlight, and pillows everywhere, the wall-to-wall carpet feeling three feet thick, everything so soft, as if you could fall asleep anywhere, any time.

“So, Emily, not a whole lot of males in your life, huh?”

She returned to the present. Shifted in her seat. Thought about the question. “Well, there’s Owen.”

“What kind of stepfather is he?”

“Okay.” She braced herself to be pried for more detail, but Dr. Brinton said, “Tell me about life in … what is it, Ebradour.”

Emily shrugged. “It’s okay.”

He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head, relaxed. Not hovering over a pad of paper, poised to write stuff down. “Do you like living on a farm?”

“I guess. Mom
loves
it.”

“So you tried to love it, too, right?”

“I’d rather live in a neighborhood on a normal street. Where I could walk to friends’ houses or to a coffee shop or to school. And Ebradour is a stupid town. You can’t do anything there without everyone knowing. Can’t buy cigarettes, can’t even buy a candy bar without Rosie knowing and making some kind of deal out of it.”

“Not much privacy?”

“Well … when Mom and I lived in Arlington we had to live on the second floor of an apartment house above a wicked mean nurse. She worked at night and slept during the day and totally freaked if we, like, walked on our floors.” Day and night traffic hurtled past their house at such dangerous speeds that Linda wouldn’t allow Emily to roller-skate or ride a bike even on the sidewalks. There was not much of a front yard, and the backyard was small and perpetually darkened by neighboring garage walls.

“So it must have been nice to live in a house.”

“Mom thought it was paradise, all that space, all those rooms.”

“And you thought …?”

“Boring.”

“How’d you get along with Bruce?”

She considered, then answered honestly. “When I first moved there, we both really hated each other for a while.”

“How old were you?”

“I was eight, he was ten. I don’t mean real hate. It was just, suddenly we had no choice, there I was in his house, we couldn’t avoid each other, and we had all these dumb rules.”

“Rules?”

“Yeah, Mom and Owen made a list and sat us down and talked it over with us, like it was the United Nations peacekeeping laws or something. They kept it on the refrigerator. We had to help clean the table and do the dishes every night. Take turns feeding the old dog. Mom even kept track of who rode to the grocery store with her and helped carry in the groceries. She’d go, ‘Bruce, Emily helped me last time, it’s your turn now.’ ”

“Doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.”

“Maybe not. It was kind of anal. I mean, each week we all had to make plans for when we’d watch TV.”

“Probably kept the friction level down.”

“I guess.”

“So you and Bruce were adversaries then?”

“Not adversaries. Just … strangers.”

How could she explain it? That first year, the new place, the males so large, so loud … even when they were just talking normally, their voices boomed. They were like extraterrestrials. They didn’t shut doors, they slammed them. They didn’t put the bread in the bread drawer, they tossed it in from across the room, as if they were making goals in a basket, and her mother didn’t stop them. Their movements were fast, jerky. That first year she’d still played with dolls and stuffed animals, and Bruce teased her relentlessly about that, crying
wa-wa-wa-wa
like a baby, making farty noises when he passed by her room. Once when he said he’d play with her, he put pants on her baby’s head and a hat on the bottom and went into a frenzy of laughter that accelerated as Emily grew more and more angry, until he was rolling on the floor laughing, accidentally kicking over her carefully arranged dollhouse.

But it wasn’t that they were bad or anything, it was just that they were
there
. They
were always there. She’d had her mother to herself all her life, now suddenly Linda was either gazing cowlike up into Owen’s eyes or going into raptures over Bruce’s homework. The very air around her smelled different: their apartment had smelled so pretty, a mixture of perfumes and scented soap and almond body lotion and Cling Free sheets from the dryer. Owen and Bruce and their house smelled like sawdust and hay and male sweat and old dog with an underlying acrid tang like wild grape jelly that Emily eventually figured out was from the constant scratches, scabs, and cuts on Bruce’s skin. At first Linda had fussed over him, but Owen had said, “For God’s sake, Linda, leave the boy alone or you’ll make him a sissy.”

Until they lived on the farm, Emily had thought her body was all one soft and supple piece, like a wide ribbon of flesh, but once she was around the men with their knobby, bony, hairy limbs, her own body had transformed itself into parts, parts that needed to be kept covered, parts that suddenly possessed undertones of meaning. Even her clothes took on different significance. Suddenly she found herself sick with mortification if she left her underpants on the bathroom floor instead of in the clothes hamper, and now Emily remembered a humiliating time when she first moved to the farm when she had gotten all agitated to discover her clothes in the hamper all shoved together with Bruce’s. It had seemed too intimate to bear, yet impossible to explain in words. Her mom had come through that time, though. Her mom had understood. She’d gotten each person a plastic clothes basket for them to keep in their rooms, and she made them help her do their own laundry separately in spite of the fact that Owen complained it was not energy efficient.