Family Night (30 page)

“The beat goes on,” Cam said.

“I think he cracked up. Tracy has lost it. He might
need some money to get back to Providence. He might be stuck out there without any cash,” she said. “I didn’t inquire.”

“Sometimes it’s better not to find out,” Cam said. “Isn’t that right?”

Margaret said Cam was right.

Elizabeth came into the room. She was wearing some lounge pajamas, something crazy. Her shoulders were bare and gleaming with dots of baby oil she hadn’t worked in. The gown was translucent and gauzy, it wrapped around her torso and flared at her ankles. The fabric was draped in taut folds, flecked with silver threads. She looked like the angel of a burn victim. “What are you wearing? What the hell is that?” Margaret said.

Cam touched his fingertips to his temples, he rubbed the bridge of his nose; he couldn’t look at his mother without massaging his face.

“Well, is he going to show up here?” Elizabeth said.

“Who?”

“Cam’s attention span is that of a flea,” she told Margaret. “I’m talking about Lewis, of course. Is Lewis going to grace us with his presence?”

“Your Better Half took the bus back to Chicago,” Cam told her.

“Lewis took the bus?” Elizabeth said. She looked pleased that Lewis wasn’t going to show up. “Lewis got on a bus? Really? He used to jet around, he did everything top shelf.”

“Circumstances change.”

“He’s down and out?”

Cam declined to answer.

“He doesn’t have to rehash this with me? Wasn’t that the whole point? He gets off scot-free—” Elizabeth moved to the picture window and stared at Richard smoothing the flecked marl at the edge of the terrace.

“You tell
me
,” Cam said, “what did he get away with? Oh, I wanted to thank you, thanks for removing that picture from the chandelier.”

“That picture?” Elizabeth looked confused.

“That embryo,” Cam said.

“Just an innocent victim,” Elizabeth told Cam.

“Who’s innocent?” he asked her.

“We are. Each one of us, innocent. To begin with.”

Margaret was disappointed. She was following what Elizabeth said; it sounded as if she was on the verge of soothing them, she was their mother. Then Elizabeth turned back; she had made a qualification; she told them, “Innocent.
To begin with
.” What could they say for themselves now? She had been sure Elizabeth was trying to evoke a sense of hope, but it wasn’t to be. It was like those days when they coasted downhill. They leaned forward on the vinyl car seat, they were refreshed by the new possibility. With help from the law of averages, it might turn out in their favor, they might glide all the way to the end. In that bright plunge, Margaret’s bangs lifted off her forehead, but then the vehicle stalled, her hair washed back over her eyes.

Elizabeth was laughing. She told Cam he was acting foolish. He was making a production. How did she deserve such a moody child? How did he get like that?

“Just born with it,” he told her.

“That’s what I mean. Why, though? It rubs off on people. Why make me suffer?”

Cam said, “Don’t ask me. The child is father to the man?”

“That’s stupid—that’s just an old saying.” She prowled back and forth on the carpet; her peculiar attire was beginning to unravel. One veil drifted behind her, catching on a chair. She tugged it free and fingered the folds at her waist, then smoothed them flat with the heel of her hand. She said, “That’s just it, I’m asking you a question. Who’s torturing who? Can either of you tell me that?”

Cam stood up; his foot snagged one leg of the piano bench and it toppled over. Yellowed songbooks and brittle leaves of sheet music fanned across the carpet. Everyone’s eyes searched for the bold print of the song titles, the familiar tunes, any of the old favorites. There was nothing. Margaret saw the parallel lines of the staffs, the dark, singular whole notes or ones in wild clusters.

Richard came into the room and told Cam that while he was away there had been a problem over at the apartments. The Edgemoor plant had released corrosive ash and the vapor had blistered the paint on the cars in the tenant parking lot. Du Pont was looking into it, but Cam had to take statements and get the vehicle ID numbers from the dash plates for a written report.

Margaret said her good-byes to her parents and she went with Cam to the apartments. From there, he would drive her and Celeste to the train. Cam tried to tell her what to do about Tracy. She asked him to whisper because of Celeste. Cam instructed her, “Put all of
Tracy’s belongings in boxes and put the boxes out on the sidewalk. Go down to the police and fill out a written complaint. They’ll put somebody on it. Don’t open the door without the chain.”

At the apartment complex, they looked at the damage to the cars, tiny veins and nickel-sized webs where the paint had crackled. The corrosive discharge from the chimney stacks had been checked, the vapor had cleared. There was nothing to worry about, but Cam thought he should test the water in the pool to see if the pH was altered. Cam took water samples and measured chemicals from his kit. The water was fine. Celeste wanted to swim and Margaret decided she would like it, too.

It was the three of them. The twilight made the water murky, and Cam switched on the underwater floodlights at either end of the pool. The submerged beams swelled in a golden crisscross as Celeste nosed back and forth on a Styro paddleboard. The water was silky; its surface tension seemed peculiar. Cam said that it was ironic, but there might have been softening agents in the industrial fallout. Margaret swam laps for a few minutes and halted at one end. She studied the skyline. Stars collected like froth, sudsing the horizon. The night was clean. Cam called to her from the opposite side. He was going to swim the whole length underwater and touch the floodlight. One breath. He sank below the gutterline and pushed off the tile. He followed the glassy funnel, glided toward Margaret. He drifted to the finish, into its phosphoric lens.

Maria Flook has published two collections of poetry. She teaches writing and lives in Truro, Massachusetts.