Commuters (18 page)

“Mom,” she began. She expected Winnie to be lying on her bed with a wrung-out washcloth covering her face. But the bed was empty and carefully made up.

“Shh,” Winnie said, from the chair tucked in the corner next to her dresser. Rachel was surprised to see her upright and alert, with a phone receiver held tightly to one ear.

“Who are you talking to?” And what were all these papers and folders, scattered on the floor in front of her? Rachel picked one up.
Isn’t it time you listened to your heart? A tropical paradise awaits…right in your own backyard.

“Damn,” Winnie said, and pressed a button. “They never make these menus detailed enough.”

‘ “In-ground
gunite
’?” Rachel read. “Is that a typo for granite?”

“Dry mixture of cement and sand,” Winnie said, still on the phone. “Then they add water and spray it against the interior walls. Wait, here it is. Holiday hours for the weekend.”

Each photograph in the brochures displayed a piercingly blue, crystal-clear swimming pool differing only in variety of shape: kidney-bean, amoeba blob, rectangle. Rachel sat on the edge of the bed and sorted through papers until she found what she was looking for: three typed sheets, stapled.
LuxPool Invoice for 50 Greenham: five consultations (first one
gratis),
preliminary underground utilities assessment, design options. LuxPool Invoice: soil test, depth measurement, project installation outline. LuxPool Invoice: ground and deck materials, equipment insurance, custom stairs, plaster finish, pebble application…
The zeros attached to the prices next to each item
racked up faster than Rachel could process them. Her head swam; this had gotten much further than she had thought.

Winnie hung up the phone. She made a mark in the notebook on her lap. “Well, they have it in the computer that we’re on for next week.”

“Mom,” Rachel began. Where to start? “Mom, it’s almost winter. You can’t put in a pool now.”

“It just so happens that early winter is the best time to install a pool, because the ground is hard and dry.”

“But—”

“And I’m not in the mood to hear any more opinions about what I plan to do with that tree. It’s coming down, and that’s that.” Winnie snapped her notebook shut.

“What about all these phone calls? These people are serious about—”

“So you think I should give in, just because they’re serious? Just because I’m getting harassed in my own home, on Thanksgiving? Seems to me that’s even more reason to go ahead with it.”

“It’s not just the crazies, Mom. You saw that piece in the
Bugle
, I know you must have. Don’t pretend you didn’t read it. The editors of the
newspaper
are writing about this tree, saying you should be ashamed to cut it down—and that means next week in the letters section it’ll be a free-for-all.”

“They dig up any old story to fill space in that paper. Tempest in a teapot.”

Rachel threw up her hands and went over to the window, pulling aside the curtain. There, through the window, was the long, gently sloping lawn in twilight, the grass still green in patches, though mostly wheat-colored, and scattered with wet leaves. Though a
long line of maples bordered the front wall along Greenham, and several thin conifers speckled the property’s edges here and there, the sycamore might as well have been the only tree around, right smack in the middle of the lawn, a soaring, bare-branched giant. It was so tall and assured it gave off the silent perception that everything else in its wake—lawn, house, street—had been arranged to showcase its own massive growth.

What was that mark, on its trunk, about six or so feet off the ground? Through the fading Thanksgiving afternoon light, she could barely make out two intersecting red lines, crudely slashed across the sycamore’s patchy bark: a big, spray-painted
X
.

“Jesus,” Rachel muttered. “Joan Baez herself is going to be out there.”

Winnie had tucked up her stocking feet underneath her, with a defiant look. As defiant as she could be, that is, with that turtleneck pulled up almost to her nose. Rachel wished her mother would grow to accept the darkened patch of skin, and stop with all the endless accessorizing of scarves, and shawls, and big throaty sweaters. What would she do when spring came? Once, Melissa had nervously asked Rachel if Nana’s new rash was catching, or cancer—it wasn’t clear which one unnerved her daughter more. Every so often, when she couldn’t take it anymore, Winnie would burst out in despair to Rachel—
It looks awful, doesn’t it? How can I go out in public?
—and Rachel would resolutely argue her down until her mother was calm again—
You’re being crazy, it’s hardly noticeable.
It was a carefully choreographed routine that never changed. Rachel suspected each of them knew the truth lay somewhere in the middle, that the stain was indeed noticeable but not entirely awful, and that their scripted questions and replies were a form of
mother-daughter catechism that she and Winnie had enacted their entire lives. Their long time habit was to seek a kind of comfort, and pleasure, in the expected.

“Mom,” she tried.

“I don’t care! Yes, it’s a big, beautiful tree, but it’s just a tree, and it’s going to get cut down in a week or two!” Winnie burst out, looking for all the world like Melissa used to, when she was a belligerent preschooler.

“I’m not going to argue with you about this tree right now,” Rachel said, exasperated. “It’s just that—putting in a pool is a huge commitment, and I’m not sure you’ve thought this all through.”

“Please. You know how I operate.” Winnie gestured at the phone, the notebook, the folders and brochures (each pasted with several sticky notes covered in her handwriting).

“All right, fine. You’ve thought it through.”
Without including me.
“But this house needs a lot of work, Mom. Maybe it would be better to tackle some of the more pressing problems, rather than, you know, the fun stuff. Like a pool.”

“Jerry’s back is a pressing problem!”

“You two aren’t going to enjoy the pool very much if the ceiling falls through in this hallway.” Winnie was prepared to counter this, so Rachel moved quickly to her real subject. “Also, a pool right in front of the house isn’t what everyone wants in this kind of property. You know most people in town belong to the club.”

Winnie sat back, astonished. “Who gives a fig what other people want?”

“Well, I’m just saying that it would be smart to get a clear idea of what the potential value is for this kind of major undertaking.”
Her mother was silent, so Rachel went on. “The fact that Jerry is leaving this entire property to you means—”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“You might not want to talk about it, but you need to face it. This is a major development, and we have to carefully consider anything that might—”

Winnie stood up. “I need to use the restroom. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“Mom, come on.” But she had already disappeared into the powder room and shut the door with a definite
click
. “Mom?”

Rachel heard the squeal of pipes opening, and then the rush of water in the sink. She sighed, and glanced down at the pile of pool brochures scattered on the floor—all those chemical blue spheres, each blindingly sunlit, each blank and empty, as if daring someone to take a running jump in—
cannonball!
—and break the smooth surface of the water.

Downstairs, it was eerily quiet. In the den, images flickered silently on the mute TV screen. Melissa gave a wave and then went back to texting; Lila was asleep on the couch next to her, hair spilling over the pillows in a shining mass. Rachel went through the darkened kitchen and let herself out the side door. It was impossible to see anything in the blinding light over the garage, but a noise in the front of the house led her along a path through high, thick bushes.

Suddenly, she came up on Bob, crouched down in the shadows on Winnie and Jerry’s front steps.

“Are you okay?” Her heart was racing. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he grunted, pushing himself upright. “I’m fine. Just some trash.” He held a half-full garbage bag in one hand and nudged
his glasses into place with the back of the other. There was a light on above the door, and its harsh orange glow lit up Bob’s shiny head and the dead-white skin of his scar, a long, puckered rope that began at a spot above his right temple, trailed down behind the ear, and back behind his neck, to disappear under his shirt collar. At times Rachel thought it made him look like a Secret Service agent or a bodyguard: someone who wore an earpiece with discreet wires.

Something about the freshness of the cold air, and the way the two of them were standing there together, right in front of this huge, impossible, beautiful house brought it back to Rachel, that earlier buoyancy. Happiness.

“Well?” she said. “So what do you think?” Sometimes, it was easy to forget how handsome Bob was—he had always had a professorial air, but in a Clark Kent, hiding-behind-spectacles way. Now the bare head and even the scar made him appear more rakish, a bit dangerous. She should really
look
at him more. As if to underline the idea, a flicker of bodily desire rose within Rachel for the first time in months.

“What do I think about what?”

“About the whole—” Rachel swirled her hand vaguely at the house, the lawn, the tree. “This is good news for us! I’m allowed to say that, right? After all, he’s got to leave this place to someone…why not Mom?”

But Bob had turned away while she was talking. He was wearing yellow rubber gloves and was stuffing something—paper towels?—into the garbage bag.

“What? Jerry knows the score—he’s older and it’s much more likely that he would…Look, if he can face facts, why can’t we all talk about this? About what it means? For Mom—for
us
?”

Still, he went on with the papers and that bag, and the way he was shaking his head started to irritate Rachel.

“
What?
I’m just looking into the future. She won’t need this huge place—she couldn’t possibly! We could sell it, definitely, or we could just—”

“Move in?” Bob said. “Take over?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Rachel said, caught off guard by the way it sounded out loud, her half-formed thoughts. “Maybe. Why not?”

“Ray,” Bob sighed. “Don’t get caught up in some big fantasy. None of this is going to happen.”

“Why are you saying that? You heard what Jerry—”

“Jerry is an elderly person who is in the middle of a heated family dispute,” Bob explained in an overly patient tone, as if he were speaking to one of the girls. Any desire Rachel had felt for him whooshed away, like air from a pricked balloon. “His daughter has already filed a
lis pendens
—that’s like a lien on the property. Even if he dropped dead tonight, every asset would essentially be frozen until it could all be sorted out. And then any ownership would be in jeopardy until the original claim is resolved.”

“Frozen for how long?”

“For years. And that’s just for starters. That’s not even addressing the related matter of this last-minute amendment to his will, which cuts his only biological child out of her birthright…” Bob wiped his hands on a towel and let out an obnoxious whistle. “That’s going to get very ugly, in court, when she challenges it. For years and years—probate court is notoriously slow. Frankly, I’m surprised he could convince his lawyers to put it through.”

“We don’t know she’s going to challenge it!” But even as she threw this out, Rachel heard how stupid it sounded. Wearily, she
had to admire the way he sounded like a lawyer again. In a tiny way, she was reassured, even as frustrated tears stung her eyes.

Bob moved closer to her. “Ray. There’s no magic here, for us. We’re just going to have to stumble through.”

She nodded, suddenly ashamed by her childish hopes and the ugliness that had risen within her so quickly. Had she really been thinking along these lines, about how the house would pass to her? For to follow that to its logical conclusion meant Jerry dead—and then her own mother—

No. Rachel blew her breath out, hard. Bob was still watching her carefully.

She straightened up. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

He half turned and regarded the garbage bag with a wry smile. “Cleaning up a special delivery. Dog shit in a flaming brown paper bag, tossed up on the stairs.”

“Dog shit…Are you kidding?”

“Ten minutes with Clorox and a now-contaminated scrub brush says no, I am most definitely not kidding.”

“How do you know…? And it’s from—them? Those crazy people?”

Bob stripped off the rubber gloves and tossed them into the bag. “I heard the doorbell ring and came out to find…this. There was a nice note taped to the bag, something along the lines of ‘Tree killer,’ et cetera, et cetera.”

Rachel couldn’t understand how he was so calm. “Shouldn’t we call the police? This is insane! What if one of the girls had been out here?”

“I’m going to report it. I just didn’t see the use of the police coming out when I knew I was going to clean it up anyway. And
your mother doesn’t need more drama tonight. I’ll call it in tomorrow.” He motioned for her to go with him, back into the house, but Rachel stared out at the lawn, whose great size and dark shadows now seemed full of hidden malice. From inside came the faint sounds of music. Still she stood at the top of the stone stairs, rootless and worried.

“I just don’t get it,” she said.

Bob shrugged. “They want to save that tree. Environmentalists aren’t exactly going to see eye to eye with your mother on the need for a pool for Jerry’s back.” He shifted the garbage bag from hand to hand. “A lot of people don’t.”

“But—here? It just seems like the kind of thing people would get worked up about in the city, at NYU or something. Not here. Not up in
Hartfield
, for God’s sake.” She just couldn’t fathom that anyone she knew would go to these lengths just for one tree. Yes, it was a big tree. But this was the kind of thing you read about in L.A., or in the redwood forests—protesting the loggers or some hippie girl camped out in a treehouse for weeks at a time, giving interviews, posing for camera crews. Rachel felt the way she often did when they attended a production of
King Lear
or
Macbeth
put on at the high school by the local adult theater troupe—watching their neighbors in robes and makeup, weeping and cursing. That same sense of misplaced drama, of scale gone all out of whack.