Saint Maybe (6 page)

He had expected her to look shamefaced at the sight of him. (Surely she knew she hadn’t played straight, going behind his back to his mother.) But when she opened the door, she just said, “Oh, Ian! Come in. I really do appreciate this.” Then Thomas and Agatha hurtled toward him from the living room, both wearing footed pajamas. “Ian!” they shouted. “Did you bring Cicely? Where’s Cicely? Mama said maybe—”

“Let him catch his breath,” Lucy told them. She was putting on her coat. She wore a red turtleneck and long, loose woolen pants that gave the effect of a skirt. It seemed unjust that she should be so pretty. “My friend Dot phoned at the very last minute,” she said. “I know it’s a Saturday night, but I thought maybe if you invited Cicely over—”

“She has to stay with her brother,” Ian said bluntly. He stood in front of her with his fists in his jacket pockets. “I’m supposed to go to
her
house. I promised I’d be there at eight-thirty.”

“Oh, well, that’s no problem. Right now it’s—” She slid back a sleeve and checked her watch. “Six-forty. I’ll tell Dot I have to be in early. Remember Dot? From the Fill ’Er Up Café?”

“Yeah, sure,” Ian said heavily.

But she didn’t seem to catch it. She was looking for something. “Now, where …” she said. “Has anyone seen my keys? Well, never mind. You be good, kids, hear? And you can stay up till I get back.” Then she left, shutting the door behind her so neatly that Ian didn’t even hear the latch click.

In the living room, Daphne sat propped in her infant seat in front of the TV. “Hey there, Daph,” Ian said, shucking off his jacket. The sound of his voice sent her little terry-cloth arms and legs into unsynchronized wheeling motions. She craned around till she was looking up into his face and she gave him a lopsided smile.
It was sort of flattering, really. Ian squatted to pick her up. He felt as surprised as ever by the fight in her—the wiry combativeness of such a small body. Even through the terry cloth, the heat from her tiny armpits warmed his fingers.

“Ian,” Thomas said, “
why
don’t you come over anymore?”

“Now we got no one,” Agatha said, “and Mama called Mrs. Myrdal and begged and pleaded but Mrs. Myrdal hung up on her.”

“Are you mad on account of I beat you at Parcheesi last time?” Thomas asked.

“Beat me!” Ian said. “That was just a fluke. The merest coincidence. Bring on the board and I’ll prove it, you young upstart.”

Thomas tittered and went off for the Parcheesi board.

While the two children were setting up the game on the rug, Ian phoned Cicely. “Hello?” she said, out of breath.

“Hi,” he said. He shifted Daphne to his hip.

“Oh, Ian. Hi.”

“I’m over baby-sitting at Lucy’s. Just thought I’d let you know, in case you find yourself desperate for the sound of my voice or something.”

“Baby-sitting! When will you be done?”

“It shouldn’t take long. Lucy promised—”

“I have to go,” Cicely broke in. “I’m following this recipe that says
Simmer covered, stirring constantly
. Can you figure that out? I mean, am I supposed to keep popping the cover off and popping it back on, or what? Do you suppose—”

She hung up, perhaps still talking. Ian sat down on the rug and settled Daphne on his knee.

It was true he liked all games, but Thomas and Agatha were not very challenging opponents. They employed a strategy of avoidance, fearfully clinging to the
safety squares and deliberating whole minutes before venturing into open territory. Also, Thomas couldn’t add. Each toss of the dice remained two separate numbers, laboriously counted out one by one. “A two and a four. One, two. One, two, three—”

“Six,” Ian said impatiently. He scooped up the dice and flung them so they skittered across the board. “Eight,” he said. “Ha!” Eight was what he needed to capture Agatha’s man.

“No fair,” she told him. “One douse went on the carpet.”

“Die,” he said.

Her jaw dropped.

“One
die
went on the carpet,” he said. He picked up his own man.

“No fair if they don’t land on the board!” she said. “You have to take your turn over.”

“I should worry, I should care, only babies cry no fair,” Ian singsonged. He pounded his man down the board triumphantly. “Five, six, seven—”

The phone rang.

“—eight,” he said, nudging aside Agatha’s man. He hoisted Daphne to his shoulder and reached up for the phone on the plastic cube table. “Hello?”

“Ian?”

“Hi, Cicely.”

“On your way over, could you pick up some butter? My white sauce didn’t thicken and I had to throw it out and start again, and now I don’t have enough butter for the rolls.”

“Sure thing,” Ian said. “So how’s our friend Stevie?”

“Stevie?”

“Is he getting ready for bed yet?”

“Not
now
, it’s a quarter past seven.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Oops!” she said.

She hung up.

Ian hoped she wasn’t losing sight of the important issues here. White sauce, rolls, what did he care? He just wanted to get that brother of hers out of the picture.

Daphne breathed damply into his left ear. He boosted her higher on his shoulder and turned back to the game.

They finished Parcheesi and started Old Maid. Old Maid was sort of pointless, though, because Thomas couldn’t bluff. He had that sallow kind of skin that reveals every emotion; whenever he grew anxious, bruiselike shadows deepened beneath his eyes.

The game went on forever and Daphne started fussing. “She wants her bottle,” Agatha said, not lifting her gaze from her cards. Ian went out to the kitchen to take her bottle from the refrigerator, and while he waited for it to warm he jounced Daphne up and down. It didn’t do any good, though; he seemed to have lost his charm. All she did was fuss harder and climb higher on his shoulder, working her nosy, sharp little toes irritatingly between his ribs.

When he returned to the living room, the other two had abandoned the card game and were watching TV. He sat between them on the couch and fed Daphne while a barefoot woman sang a folk song about hammering in railroad ties. Thomas sucked his thumb. Agatha wound a strand of hair around her index finger. Daphne fell asleep halfway through her bottle and Ian rose cautiously and carried her to her crib.

At 8:15, he started getting angry. How was he supposed to make it to Cicely’s by 8:30? Also he had to stop off at home beforehand—change clothes, filch some wine from the pantry. Damn, he should have seen to all that before he came here. He jiggled a foot across his knee and watched a housewife in high heels explaining that bacteria cause odors.

At 8:35, the phone rang. He sprang for it, already preparing his response. (
No
, you can’t stay out longer.) “Ian?” Cicely asked. “When you come, could you bring some gravy mix?”

“Gravy mix.”

“I just can’t understand where I went wrong.”

Ian said, “Did Stevie get to bed all right?”

“I’m going to see to that in a minute, but first this gravy! I pick up the spoon and everything in the pan comes with it, all in a clump.”

“Well, don’t worry about it,” Ian told her. “I’ll bring the mix. Meanwhile, you get Stevie into bed.”

“Well …” Cicely said, trailing off.

“Dad’s old rocker dull and gray?” two girls sang on TV. “Stain it, wax it, the Wood-Witch way!”

After he’d hung up, Ian turned to the children and asked, “Did your mother say where she was going?”

“No,” Agatha said.

“Was it someplace she could walk to?”

“I don’t know.”

He rose and went to the front window. Beyond the gauzy curtains he saw street lamps glinting faintly and squares of soft yellow light from the neighboring houses.

There was a wet, uncorking sound behind him—Thomas’s thumb popping out of his mouth. “She went in a car,” Thomas said distinctly.

Ian turned.

“She went in a car with Dot,” Thomas told him. “Dot lives down the block a ways and Mama went over to her house and got herself a ride.” He replaced his thumb.

A wail floated from the children’s room. Ian glanced at Agatha. A second wail, more assured.

“You didn’t burp her,” Agatha said serenely.

Thomas merely sent him the drugged, veiled gaze of a dedicated thumb-sucker.

From 8:40 to 9:15 Ian walked Daphne around and around the living room. Thomas and Agatha quarreled over the afghan. Thomas kicked Agatha in the shin and she started crying—unconvincingly, it seemed to Ian. She rolled her knee sock down to her thick white ankle and pointed out, “See? See there what he did?”

Ian patted the baby more rapidly and revised his plans. He would not go home first after all; they would do without the wine and butter and whatever. He would simply explain to Cicely when he got there. “I don’t care about dinner,” he would say, drawing her into his arms. “I care about
you.
” And they would climb the stairs together, tiptoeing past her brother’s door and into—

Oh-oh.

The one thing he could not do without—the three things, in their linked foil packets—lay in the toe of his left gym shoe at the very back of his closet. There was no way he could avoid going by his house.

The phone rang again and Ian picked up the receiver and barked, “What!”

Cicely said, “Ian, where are you?”

“This goddamn Lucy,” he said, not caring if the children heard. “I’ve a good mind to just walk on out of here.”

Agatha looked up from her shin and said, “You wouldn’t!”

“Everything’s stone cold,” Cicely said.

“Well, don’t worry. The dinner’s not important—”

“Not important! I’ve been slaving all day over this dinner! We’re having flank steak stuffed with mushrooms, and baked potatoes stuffed with cheese, and green peppers stuffed with—”

“But how about Stevie? Did Stevie get to bed all right?”

“He got to bed hours ago.” Ian groaned.

“Is that all you care about?” Cicely asked. “Don’t you care about my cooking?”

“Oh! Yes! Your cooking,” Ian said. “I’ve been looking forward to it all day.”

“No, don’t say that! I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.”

“Cicely,” Ian said. “Listen. I’ll be over soon no matter what. Just wait for me.”

He hung up to find Thomas and Agatha eyeing him reproachfully. “What’re you going to do? Leave us on our own?” Thomas asked.

“You’re not babies anymore,” Ian said. “You can take care of yourselves.”

“
Mama
never lets us. She worries we’d get into the matches.”

“Well, would you?” Ian asked him.

Thomas considered awhile. Finally he said, “We might.”

Ian sighed and went back to walking Daphne.

For the next half hour or so, they played I Spy. That was the most Ian could manage with Daphne fretting in his arms. Agatha said, “I spy, with my little eye …” and her gaze roamed the room. Ian was conscious all at once of the mess that had grown up around them—the playing cards, the twisted afghan, the strewn Parcheesi pieces.

“… with my little eye, as clear as the sky …” Agatha said, drawing it out.

“Will you just for God’s sake get on with it?” Ian snapped.

“Well, I’m trying, Ian, if you wouldn’t keep interrupting.”

Then she had to start over again. “I spy, with my little eye …”

Ian thought of Lucy’s gray eyes and her perfect, lipsticked mouth. The red of her lipstick was a
bitter
red, with something burnt in it. She had had things her own way every minute of her life, he suspected. Women who looked like that never needed to consider other people.

Daphne finally unknotted and fell asleep, and Ian carried her to the children’s room. He lowered her into the crib by inches and then waited, holding his breath. At that moment he heard the front door open.

His first concern was that the noise would disturb Daphne. That was how thoroughly he’d been sidetracked. Then he realized he was free to go, and he headed out to tell Lucy what he thought of her.

But it wasn’t Lucy; it was Danny, standing just inside the living room door and screwing up his face against the light. Ian could tell he’d had a couple of beers. He wore a loose, goofy smile that was familiar from past occasions. “Ian, fellow!” he said. “What’re
you
doing here?”

“I’m going out of my mind,” Ian told him.

“Ah.”

“Your wife was due back ages ago, and anyhow I didn’t want to come in the first place.”

“Thomas!” Danny said fervently, peering toward the couch. “And Agatha!” He seemed surprised to see them, too. He told Ian, “You sure did miss a great party. Good old Bucky Hargrove!”

“Look,” Ian said. “I am running late as hell and I need you to give me a lift to Cicely’s house.”

“Huh? Oh. Why, sure,” Danny said. “Sure, Ian. Except—” He pondered. “Except how about the kids?” he asked finally.

“How about them?”

“We can’t just leave them.”

“Take them along, then,” Ian said, exasperated. “Let’s just
go
.”

“Take Daphne, too? Where’s Daphne?”

Ian gritted his teeth. The Kent cigarette song sailed out from the TV, mindless and jaunty. He turned to Agatha and said, “Agatha, you and Thomas will have to stay here and baby-sit.”

She stared at him.

“Seven minutes, tops,” Ian said. “Don’t open the front door no matter who knocks, and don’t answer the phone. Understand?”

She nodded. Thomas’s eyes were ringed like a raccoon’s.

“Let’s go,” Ian told Danny.

Danny was swaying slightly on his feet and watching Ian with mild, detached interest. “Well …” he said.

“Come
on
, Danny!”

Ian snatched up his jacket and gave Danny a push in the right direction. As they walked out he felt a weight slipping blessedly from his shoulders. He wondered how people endured children on a long-term basis—the monotony and irritation and confinement of them.

Outside it was much colder than before, and wonderfully quiet.

Danny bumped his head getting into the car, and he had some trouble determining which key to use. After that, though, he started the engine easily, checked sensibly for traffic, and pulled into the street. “So!” he said. “Cicely lives on Lang Avenue, right?”

“Right,” Ian said. “Stop by home first, though.”