Crooked Little Heart (17 page)

“Why do I always have to ask for help? I’m making the goddamn dinner.”

“Lank is sick.”

“Well, I’m sorry Lank is sick. But he’s not always sick, and I always have to ask you or Rosie to set the table.”

“No, you don’t, Elizabeth. I almost always set it.”

“But I have to ask half the time.”

“Because when you ask, I know it’s time for dinner. That’s how I know it’s time for me to set the table.”

“Why can’t—”

“Elizabeth? Just stop. Let’s choose our battles more carefully. Okay?” After a moment, Elizabeth nodded and sighed.

“God, Rosie can be such a pain in the butt.”

“Yes,” he said. “She can.”

Yet during dinner she was so friendly, so really interesting, that Elizabeth shook her head in wonder. And when Elizabeth got a headache that night out of the blue, it was Rosie, not James, who noticed first that she was not quite right. As usual Rosie was frustrated that this mother who was supposed to be taking care of her was such a mess, needed in fact to be cared for, but she came through with such maternal caring and sweetness that it left Elizabeth close to tears.

“Mommy, you need to lie down,” Rosie said. Elizabeth stretched out on the couch. Rosie wiped the sweat off her forehead with a napkin, took off the hated ratty black loafers without a word, and rubbed
her feet. She brushed some stray hairs off Elizabeth’s face, was doggedly protective when the phone rang. She picked it up and listened for a moment. “No, I’m sorry, Rae,” she said into the mouthpiece, “she’s lying down right now. I’ll have to have her call you later. You can talk to James if you want, but not to my mom. Okay, then; she’ll call you later. Okay, okay, that’s very funny. I’ll tell her that,” she announced stiffly, and hung up.

“Rae says to tell you she saw a bumper sticker today that said, ‘Real women don’t have hot flashes; they have power surges.’ Are you having hot flashes, Mommy?” Elizabeth shook her head. Rosie was watching her with the concerned, proprietary look that Elizabeth recognized as her own. Her heart was stirred with tenderness and once again with a sense of Rosie’s wounded psyche, of the corrupt government inside her daughter’s head that accompanied and protected and condemned her, was stirred again by this most familiar of strangers.

S
HE
drove Rosie to a tournament over at a park in the East Bay several days later. Simone had the stomach flu. At the park, Elizabeth sat down on a folding chair near the closest court, while Rosie checked in at the tournament desk. Elizabeth watch Natalie Reynolds draw Rosie aside, confer intently for a moment. Rosie looked over, slid her eyes off Elizabeth twice. Elizabeth wondered if they were talking about her for some reason. She felt very old in the unforgiving sunlight and looked around for shade.

But Luther had seized the shade. He was sitting down on a folding chair at the other end of the court, in the shadow of an alder tree. Oh, God, she thought anxiously. She was frightened by the fact that he wore a black windbreaker on this hot summer day, by the sadness and tension in his vagabond face. He doffed his Giants cap at her when he noticed her watching him, and something inside her wobbled, like a gyroscope inside her had just tipped over off its string.

Rosie came over to say hello on her way onto the court.

“You’re playing right here?” said Elizabeth. Rosie nodded. Her opponent, no one Elizabeth recognized, walked up from behind, and the two girls stepped onto the court.

Rosie moved about the court as seamlessly as a trout. Elizabeth watched Luther watch her. His dusty dark eyes were narrowed in pride.
He looked over to the side suddenly, caught Elizabeth studying him, looked like he was about to wink. She glared at him. She didn’t mean to, but she glowered with reproach. You were there, weren’t you, she thought, across the street from our house. He looked at her kindly, and she was sure he shook his head. Yes, she thought, you were; you rolled in, like an unexploded bomb, and you rolled away. But how did you leave hoof marks in the grass? She glanced at his shoes, high top black sneakers, like shoes that a flasher would wear. I’m losing my mind, she thought. Maybe I have tumors. Maybe I’d better go call James.

“H
I
, he said when he picked up the phone. “Why aren’t you here?” She smiled. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

“I’m so afraid of Luther, James. It makes me feel crazy.”

“Oh, honey. He’s such a creep, but I actually think he’s harmless. You know, I think he functions like some desk organizer for all of your fears: your fear of Charles dying, of losing Rosie, of Rosie being a teenager. It’s like the way some little kids are afraid of dogs; all the terror and mystery of the world can be laid on anything with four legs and fur.”

Elizabeth thought this over for a minute. What he said made sense. She glanced over at where Luther had been sitting, but no one was under the alder tree now.

“Well, he’s gone again,” she said. “Maybe I like it better when I can at least keep an eye on him.” It was just that there were so many ways to lose your kid, so many threats, so much evil. She stood at the pay phone, slightly embarrassed, and James gave her a cool glass of affectionate small talk: there had been a deer in the garden, nibbling at her wisteria! And he had chased it off in the most manly possible way!

“Oh, my brave honey,” she said. She said good-bye and settled back into watching Rosie play. She was slaughtering the other girl, as the kids would say. But she had gone from the thing with Mr. Thackery, from his shadowy study, to the world of tennis, of clubs and lessons and matches and practice and pretty, accomplished children—and then Luther appeared, and Elizabeth could see again that the snake was everywhere.

He was watching the match again. She felt as though a Peeping Tom were watching her child, putting her at psychic risk, and there was
nothing she could do. She noticed Rosie avoiding Luther’s gaze, concentrating fiercely, but then flouncing past him during the change of sides in a way that made Elizabeth wonder if her child was finding power in ignoring him. She felt scared of her having any connection with him at all. She wondered again if Rosie missed Luther when he didn’t show. She wondered if Rosie felt more drawn to him now that Peter was away, now that Peter had left her for his national boys. Maybe it felt like he was abandoning her. Elizabeth licked her lips and scowled, then looked over to discover that Luther was gazing at her with worry, worry and kindness. Then he turned back to the match, where Rosie moved in to the net like a skier, dipping down on a backhand volley and chipping the return back over the net crosscourt, so low and crisp and unexpected that it got lost on everyone’s radar for a moment—everyone’s but Rosie’s and Luther’s, who watched it catch the line on the other side of the court. Rosie grinned, Luther smiled, and then they looked at each other for a moment. As Rosie bent down to tie her shoe, a chill raced up the back of Elizabeth’s neck. God almighty, how rich children’s dark sides are, beautiful and slinky as coral snakes. She looked over at Luther again, sitting in the shadows, lost in thought, and she felt that somewhere an invisible noose was tightening.

T
HAT
night after dinner Rae was sitting in the old easy chair, wearing a worn denim jumper with nothing underneath, and she looked tan and ripe and beautiful. Her hair was loose, spilling down her back in waves of dark light, and she wore black espadrilles that tied at the ankle. James and Elizabeth had gone for a walk. Rosie and Rae had declined their invitation.

They were playing catch with a roll of toilet paper that Rosie had secured with rubber bands so that it would not unfurl. They had been throwing it back and forth in silence from ten feet away without missing.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Rae asked eventually.

“Talk about what?”

“Is anything troubling you? Besides Charles?”

“Are you spying for my mother?”

“Uh-huh.”

Rosie tossed the toilet paper roll at Rae. “Simone told me about something she did the other day, I can’t tell you what, but I’ll tell you this. It is
not
very good news.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yep. But I really cannot tell you what it is.”

“Okay,” Rae said finally. She seemed to ponder her own knotty weaving on the wall; the room was silent, as if waiting for something. Finally Rae gave Rosie a long sideways look. “Can I tell you
one
quick story?” she asked. Rosie, watchful, nodded.

“Long ago,” Rae began, “there was a farmer who lived in the hills of China. And one day out of the blue, several wild horses crashed through the gates of his farm, causing a great deal of damage. ‘Oh, no,’ cried the neighbors. ‘This is terrible news.’

“The old farmer shrugged. ‘Bad news, good news—who knows?’ ”

Rosie closed her eyes and smiled, seeing in her mind’s eye the ancient Chinese hillside, the nosy chickenlike neighbors.

Rae continued. “The next day the horses came back, and the farmer’s twenty-year-old son managed to capture one.” Rosie saw it—a stallion, fiery and exquisite. “All the neighbors ran over to admire it,” said Rae. “ ‘Oh, how wonderful,’ they cried. “ ‘What good news.’ ”

“ ‘Good news, bad news—who knows?’ shrugged the farmer. And then, several days later, the farmer’s son, attempting to break the steed, was thrown and his leg badly broken. The neighbors rushed over, peering in at the young man in bed. ‘Oh,’ they cried. “This is
awful
news.’ ”

“The farmer shrugged,” Rae said. “ ‘Good news, bad news—who knows?’ ” Rosie blinked. “And then? A few weeks later, the Chinese army came by, conscripting all the area’s young men for a war raging in the south. And of course, they couldn’t take the young man with the broken leg.”

“ ‘Oh,’ ” Rae cried. “ ‘This is
wonderful
news.’ ” Rae glanced at Rosie, who nodded, as if in surrender. “The story goes on—but maybe it’s time for you to tell me what your not-good news is.”

Rosie shook her head, seeing Simone. “No,” she said finally.

“But you’re positive it’s not good?”

With a sidelong glance at Rae, Rosie shrugged. “Good news? Bad news? Who knows,” she muttered to herself. She tossed the roll of toilet paper back and forth from her left hand to her right, then looking up impishly, she heaved it to Rae.

E
LIZABETH
asked James to change the lightbulb in the kitchen one morning in late May, because she had so many things to do to get ready for the picnic with Rae and Rosie that day. He sat at the table still reading the paper. She was doing half a dozen things at once, trying to get everyone ready for the day, and besides, she hated changing lightbulbs in this one particular fixture. You had to do it by braille, unscrewing unseen screws that held the glass globe in place, while your arm started to fall off and your neck got stiff. And then, when the screws finally came off, there were all those dead flies glued by sticky dust to the underneath brim. She felt like she was doing almost everything around the house but this one thing that would illuminate her work area so she could do even more for everyone else. James, sitting there reading the paper, could see just fine and so did not think to leap up and change the bulb. But Elizabeth knew that by the early evening the room would be filled with shadows, and preparing dinner would be hard and annoying, and so she said this to James, who said with slight irritation that he was going to change the lightbulb in a minute.

“Please will you just do it now?”

“You want me to leap up onto my little stepladder with my toolbox and coveralls and change it? Right this very second?”

Elizabeth nodded.

He sighed and wandered off, and she thought he would return in a moment with the ladder. She watched him out in the front yard on his way out to his shed to get the bulb. But first he stopped to unscrew something on the manual lawn mower, and amazingly, he got distracted. She swallowed her annoyance; he would eventually get around to the lightbulb. He liked to fix motors, to putter with his car, or take
apart the lawn mower. He liked to do things outdoors, in his manly domain. It was part of his hunter-gatherer legacy. He didn’t like to change lightbulbs. Don Knotts could change lightbulbs. It occurred to Elizabeth, as she prepared the picnic basket, that she liked to put things away, while James liked to haul things out and create huge projects over which he could then look so serious; it seemed to her that James liked projects that, as someone had once said about artichokes, looked like there was more when they were done with than when they were begun.

He finished with the lawn mower, and went out to his shed, and still had not reappeared by the time Rae stopped by to pick up Elizabeth and Rosie. Elizabeth, for everyone’s sake, had stopped by the shed on the way out, and reminded him with extravagantly good-natured noblesse oblige to please change the bulb before they got home from their picnic.

They had the loveliest day at the national park, stretched out on towels on the banks of the creek, reading, talking, wading, eating, dozing again, and Elizabeth tried not to think about the morning. But when she and Rosie walked into the kitchen that evening and she threw on the light switch, holding her breath, nothing happened. She looked at Rosie, who shook her head.