Crooked Little Heart (26 page)

Now Elizabeth lay thinking about Andrew, his lovely deep blue eyes, how he had given her Rosie, saved her here, and then died six months later. “There are holes out there,” Elizabeth called to Rae, who was walking around in the river up to her knees, big voluptuous chubby Rae in a black tank suit and baggy shorts. “Watch your step.”

“I stepped in one,” said Rosie. “When I was little I nearly died.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me the story again, Mama.” So she did, and this time a wave of something way deep down and long ago quivered inside her when she got to the part where Andrew’s arms found Rosie, and she swallowed it back and shuddered, stopped rubbing her child’s winglike shoulder blades and just gripped them, not breathing. She rolled over to look at James, like Rosie used to look back at her, making contact before she would venture further away. James lay on the mat with his eyes closed. She felt a wave of tenderness, looked over his head for a moment and imagined meeting ghostly Andrew’s eyes. She could almost feel him standing there on the other side of James, smiling approvingly at her,
and she smiled back at him. But then something like revulsion rose inside her. Memories rose out of nowhere like whales, coming to the surface for some air. First Luther broke through the water, smiling, shy, and then Elvin Thackery’s face appeared behind him, looking pasty, arrogant, amused. She couldn’t take her eyes off him for a moment—it was as if she were hypnotized—but she knew suddenly that there was something behind him, ducking down, hiding, and she tried to see around the corner. And she saw a pretty young woman with soft white skin, saying hello on the phone, letting the curly coils of the cord twist around her finger like a snake. The way Elizabeth always pictured the woman with the English accent at James’s that night—young, sexy, playful, all the things she herself had stopped being long ago.

She lay on her towel and fended off waves of distress. Maybe she had called the wrong number both times, like he claimed. But she didn’t think so. What was amazing was that after the ensuing fights, Elizabeth drunk and close to hysterics, James defensive and disparaging, they had stayed in love, he had kept on loving her,
wanting
her; and they had married six months later.

And as she lay baking in the sun, she listened to the silence and the sounds of the river, until like onions cooking so long that they caramelize, sharp turned to sweet. The billows of green hillsides here at the river went back behind each other like countless backdrops, always another behind the last one, slightly taller, back as far as you could see.

S
HE
opened one eye and studied the two men, who sat side by side. Lank was sitting up with one hand rather shyly on his little beer belly, in pale shorts, watching Rae, who was halfway out now, up to her thighs, with her head tilted all the way back, staring up at the sky. Nearer the shore two girls not much older than Rosie but buxom and brown, in bikinis, were just getting used to the water, and Elizabeth watched James watch them, taut and predatory. She watched Lank watch Rae and her soft droopy butt, in worn rolled-up khaki shorts, with her beautiful breasts and auburn hair, and his face was blank at first. She looked absolutely radiant, like a rose, plumpness filling in the lines of her face, giving the skin a newborn smoothness. Still in the water, she stepped out of her baggy shorts, revealing the whole of her
raggedy black tank suit underneath. She stood there in her swimsuit, her shorts tucked under one arm, and she drifted over toward the shore. She came up to where the rest of them lay, wincing at pebbles that dug into the soles of her feet.

“Hi, cutie,” said James. She ducked her head down, bashful.

“Come wading with me, boys,” she said, and Elizabeth smiled when the two got to their feet and followed her as she led the way back to the river.

L
ANGUOROUS
in the afternoon heat, comforted by birdsong, Elizabeth was drifting off when Rosie whispered, “Mommy? I need to talk to you.” Elizabeth was so close to true sleep that she could barely open her eyes. But when she did she saw that Rosie’s were closed, her face full of pain, as if a tooth had been aching too long. Rosie looked so tired that Elizabeth almost believed she had been talking in her sleep.

“Shhhhh,” Elizabeth whispered, like a wind, the way she had soothed Rosie to sleep as a child.

“Don’t shush me!”

Elizabeth reached for her shoulder, but the moment her hand touched the soft brown skin, Rosie stiffened, as if about to arch her back.

“What did you want to talk about, darling?”

Rosie glowered. “I hate it when you shush me. Don’t you think it makes me feel like a baby?”

“I’m sorry. Please tell me.”

Rosie shook her head.

What could she do? She looked up at James on the river, and so did not see that Rosie’s forehead was furrowed with the effort of holding back tears. James looked over his shoulder, knee deep in the river, and waved to Elizabeth like a child. No, he did not look like the grown-up handsome man she’d imagined as her husband, the husband she had had in Andrew. But she loved him. Lank was talking to Rae a few feet away in the green water, dappled sun, and she studied his sweet unveiled face, the transparency of those pale blue eyes and all that forehead. You felt like you could rest in all that brow. Maybe, Elizabeth thought, it helps to stop longing for huge significance, meaningful new memories; maybe it helps to be satisfied instead with these little mosaics
of connection. That was all she wanted right now, but after a moment she turned back to see how her child was doing. Rosie was sitting up, staring at an empty stretch of slow-moving river. Her bottom lashes had been combed together with tears into thick black lines.

“Honey, honey,” Elizabeth whispered, reaching out to touch her daughter’s impassive face. “Please tell me now. I’m sorry I wouldn’t listen before,” but Rosie just stared off at the green river, hard and distant as the rocks on the other side.

J
AMES
and Lank flew off for a few days on the Green River, as they did every summer. James loved camping out, he loved the roaring river, the rock faces scrolling past. Elizabeth suspected that he loved being away from them, too. She couldn’t blame him, especially this year, when she was feeling so odd, ingrown and strangely haunted, and Rosie was acting so hard and furtive, except when Simone was around. And Elizabeth had hoped that James’s absence would give Rosie the space she needed to trust her again, to take her into her confidence, but so far, Rosie had deftly skirted every effort to tell Elizabeth what was troubling her. She was gone a lot, off with Simone to the mall, the club, the boardwalk, and when she came home, she went to her room and listened to rap on her headphones. Sometimes she deigned to lie in bed with Elizabeth, each reading her own book, but on one such occasion, when Elizabeth had asked her directly what she had wanted to talk about at the river, Rosie said it had not been important.

“Is it something you’ve done?”

“Mommy. Just drop it. It’s not important.”

“Is it about Luther?”

“Luther? God!! Is that what you think?”

“Is it about Simone?”

“No.”

“Why is she gaining so much weight?”

“Why is Rae gaining so much weight?”

“I don’t think Rae’s gaining weight, is she? But Simone is.”

“Well. Why don’t you ask her yourself?”

So one afternoon, when Simone had stopped by, Elizabeth decided to bring it up. The three of them were sitting at the kitchen table, folding
laundry together, listening to the Beatles on the tape player. Sunlight the color of butter poured in through the lace curtains. Simone wore one of the gigantic T-shirts she had taken to wearing, and Rosie was wearing one of the tiny tube tops Simone used to wear. Elizabeth looked at them, brown as nuts, and she practiced her opening line: Simone, I noticed that you’ve gained a little weight, and I’m wondering if there are more problems than usual at home? Simone, I’m wondering, does your mother have some horrible new man, and is the horrible new man too attentive to you? Is the new flesh a way of putting a wall around yourself, between your body and his? Simone? I was just noticing you’ve gained a little weight.

“Elizabeth?” said Simone, holding up one of James’s tattered black T-shirts. “I guess you’ve noticed I’ve gained a little weight.”

Elizabeth nodded, startled. “Yes, you know, I have.”

Simone folded the black T-shirt carefully, smoothing out the wrinkles. Rosie picked absently at a tiny bump by the side of her nose, feigning nonchalance.

“Simone? Is there something going on that I could help you with?”

Simone looked at Rosie, and Rosie almost imperceptibly shook her head: No. No. Both girls turned to the dust motes floating in the broad current of sun, little specks of dust revealing the brilliance of the light.

“I really would like to help somehow if I could.”

“You do help me, Elizabeth.”

“I do?”

“Uh-huh. But sometimes I get afraid. I have bad dreams. And sometimes I’m just totally freaked out by all the things in the world.”

“Oh, honey. But is that why you’re eating more? I mean, I assume you’re trying out new things with boys, and that must be scary, even though it also probably feels good. Right?”

“Right,” said Simone. Rosie gave her a long sideways look.

“Why do you look so sad?”

“I don’t know,” said Simone, setting down the pair of shorts she was folding. Her eyes narrowed. “I can’t believe anyone has a good life.”

“Oh, darling. Listen. You know—”

“Please, Mom,” said Rosie wearily. “Please don’t give us a little talk.”

“I just want Simone to know, and you too, that if and when you need to talk to someone about—birth control, then that someone can be me.”

Simone blushed, lay the folded T-shirt down on the proper pile.

“Okay, Mom.”

Simone lifted up a pair of Elizabeth’s baggy, ratty old underpants out of the laundry basket. She held them up, and Elizabeth for one awful moment thought she might be checking for stains. Simone looked first at Rosie and then at Elizabeth with innocent curiosity. “Do they even
make
bigger underwear?” she asked.

W
HEN
the girls went upstairs to change for their match, Simone pulled Rosie into the bathroom and locked the door. She stood looking at Rosie and panting as if she had just had a terrible fright. Her cheeks were flushed and a thin sheet of sweat covered her face and chest.

“You have to help me,” said Simone. She took a long deep breath. “I want you to cancel my appointment at the clinic.”

“What?” Fear began to go off inside Rosie like a steeple bell, ringing low, swinging in silence to the other side of the steeple, ringing, silent, swinging.

“I can’t go through with it.”

“What do you mean?” Rosie felt like slapping Simone across the face. What are you
talking
about? “You’ll feel different by the end of the week. You don’t have any choice.”

“Oh, yeah? I do have a choice. I can have the baby.”

“You can’t have a baby, Simone. Are you stupid?” Panic flowed through her, and she remembered kids at school who said Simone was dumb, and she wanted to scream, force Simone to come to her senses. “That’s ridiculous,” she said, shouting.

“Shhhhhh,” Simone pleaded, glancing at the locked door.

“Don’t you dare shush me.” She imagined shaking Simone like you’d shake some kid who’d been drinking at a dance, slap them across the face, get them to gasp back to consciousness in the moments before their parents came to pick them up. “This is so unfair,” she hissed. “This is so unfair of you to do this. This is a total fuckup, Simone.”

“Rosie, I need some time!”

“You don’t have any time when it comes to this, Simone. Don’t think! There’s nothing to think about.”

But a few minutes later, scared and confused, Rosie stood at the phone in the hallway, whispering the words “Planned Parenthood”
to the voice on the other line and then dialing the number she was given.

“I have to cancel an appointment for Friday,” she began. “Something’s come up. Duvall? Yes, Simone. No,” said Rosie. “You can’t call me here; I’ll call you.”

J
UST
before four, at a club half an hour from Bayview, Rae and Elizabeth watched the girls walk away through the parking lot and toward their first doubles match of the tournament. Simone had developed a walk somewhere between a flounce and a lumber, while Rosie moved like a wild animal with a slight injury. Elizabeth saw that they were very close, their shoulders touching as they moved, almost without ever losing the connection of their skin.

“The girls are so beautiful today, creamy, like pearls, aren’t they? Look at them,” she said.

“Oh, God, yeah,” said Rae. “They’re like little warm puppies. That’s why the perverts love them.”

Elizabeth felt a sudden darkness insinuate itself into her field of vision, like the shadow in the darkest forest or deepest water, a shadow of such hardness and depth as to be like a mirror. And she knew without turning toward it that it was Luther.