So Much Pretty (12 page)

Claire liked Cutting. He was thirty years old and still driving ambulances, which he had started doing in high school. Still helping people every day, not proofing textbooks, like she was. And it showed.

Cutting had crazy eyes and a huge gap-toothed smile, and he did not seem to assess the politics of every resident in the pancake line. He also did not pantomime “femininity” while wearing an apron. Something about him was completely engaged and completely detached all at once; he was a real studier of people, which might have been unnerving if he hadn’t been so obviously dedicated to his job.

The other thing Claire admired about Cutting was that he was happy where he was, even though he’d been transferred there, the only paid employee affiliated with the Haeden VFD. He talked to everyone. If he didn’t know someone’s name, he asked. He asked about their grandparents or dogs or uncles.

When it was Alice’s turn in line, he asked her how to restart a heart. “I need to know, I need to know!” he told her, flipping a pancake onto her plate. “Quick!”

“CPR will not restart a heart!” she said as fast as she could. “Its-goal-is to-circulate-oxygenated-blood-to-the brain-and-vital-organs, until-an-automated-external-defibrillator-is-ready-to-use-or-advanced-medical-help-arrives-and-takes-over-the-victim’s-care.”
She took a breath. “Nevertheless—once you begin CPR, you should continue uninterrupted until the scene becomes unsafe or a trained rescuer arrives or a miracle happens and a heart that technically couldn’t have been restarted starts again!”

“Al’s my best student,” he said to the next person in line. “When she turns ten, I’m going to let her teach the class.”

“Really?” Alice called back to him.

“No way!” He smiled. “You’re just a kid! Didn’t anybody explain that to you?”

Alice and Claire sat at the long folding conference table that was covered with flimsy red-and-white-checkered plastic tablecloths. After a minute Gene came to sit with them. It was stuffy and greasy, and the noise of forks and knives and several different conversations echoed in the hall.

The television was on in one corner, beaming CNN into the room—the familiar voices of newscasters and commercial jingles blending into the separate conversations like a song everybody knew. Everybody but Alice.

The Pipers had no television, and she sat transfixed. Staring at the screen, her mouth slightly open. Gene waved a hand in front of her face. Snapped his fingers right near her ear, and she didn’t respond. “Better than dope,” he said quietly.

Claire and Gene surveyed the room together: familiar unknowns and some faces with accompanying names. It was a very round, blond population, sporting a variety of baseball caps, work boots, floral prints, and sweats.

A tall, sandy-haired man in a polo shirt, docksiders, and jeans came over to their table and clapped Gene on the back. “So here’s what our scientist does on his day off, huh?” Gene looked up and smiled, offered his hand to the man, who gave it a firm shake. “This must be the missus!”

Claire looked at Gene and almost laughed. She smiled up at the man.

“This is Claire,” Gene said.

“Weeell, pleased to meet
you
, Claire. I’m Bob Dyer. Gene here is helping us out, taking some soil samples up there at our property.” He winked at Gene. “Got the first fifty acres pretty well taken care of by now.”

Claire nodded encouragingly at the man.

“Is that your pretty little gal?” he asked.

“That’s Alice,” Claire said. Alice was still staring at the television, absently eating her pancakes.

“Well.” Dyer grabbed Gene’s hand again and clapped him on the back. “I better be getting back over to
my
little ladies—wouldn’t want to get in trouble, now. Get DeeDee jealous on Mother’s Day.” He winked at Gene and somehow moved his mouth over to the side of his face to grin. He pointed a finger at him before walking away.

“Wow,” Claire said. “My God.”

Gene raised his eyebrows and nodded. “It’s fascinating, really, if you think about it. Remind me to tell you later about that male pointing behavior. Everybody does it here. I have a theory.”

“Is it related to tiny little penises?”

He laughed. “The term,” he said in a hushed sarcastic tone, “is micro-penis, and in this case, it’s likely the result of environmental toxins. Mr. Dyer’s land borders the dairy.”

Claire laughed. She loved her husband.

Alice was staring at a commercial for My Little Pony. “I love My Little Pony and new Pinkie Pie Plush Pony!” a little girl was shouting ecstatically at another little girl.

“I’m taking Newborn Pinkie Pie to visit Crystal Princess in her Curtsy Carriage!” The other girl replied. Alice’s mouth hung open. Then she said the words “Pinkie Pie” out loud.

* * *

Later, in the car, Claire said, “Okay, you were right about the
Wild Kingdom
aspect of it all.”

Gene laughed. “What’d you think of the VFD, though?”

“Nice. They’ve done a lot of work,” Claire said.

“Those didn’t really taste like pancakes,” Alice said.

“It was an incredible turnout, baby,” Claire said. “Where was Ross?”

“They were a different kind of pancake. Made from a mix,” Gene told Alice, then “Why would Ross be at the Mother’s Day breakfast? He’s out shooting.”

Claire shrugged.

“I’d like to go out shooting,” Alice said.

“Ask Ross. I’m sure he’d show you how to shoot targets,” Gene said, and Claire squinted at him and shook her head in disbelief.

“I’m going to make a papier-mâché centaur,” Alice said, thankfully moving along to her next idea. “I need to get those kinds of dog-chew toys that look like hooves for the hooves. What are they made of?”

“Actual hooves,” Claire told her.

“Really?” She was silent, thinking about it for a minute. Then said anxiously, “I have to check on my toad.”

“We’re almost home.”

“Wait, though. Can we stop and get hooves?”

“I don’t know where you saw them, honey,” Claire said.

“Agway. They’re in a plastic candy jar in the checkout line, and they cost a dollar thirty-five for two. Theo has a G.I. Joe, and we cut him in half for the upper body.”

“What will you do with the G.I. Joe legs?” Gene asked her.

“Is it G.I. because it’s gastrointestinal?” Alice asked. “Gastrointestinal Joe?”

“No,” he said, glancing at Claire and trying not to laugh. “Government-issue.”

“What’s the issue?”

“Issue also means like to release or send out,” Claire told her.

“Oh, I get it. Well, I’m using the legs. I’m making a doll with a toad’s body and human legs.”

“How will you make the toad part?”

“Green leather change purse and a mitten! Those pancakes tasted like papier-mâché. I tasted that stuff once and they really did, seriously.”

Alice stopped talking, and they were quiet for a while, driving into Elmville to the Agway. Claire was happy for the quiet as it was rare these days. Alice had so much she wanted to do and talk about, seemed to have left behind the contemplative, private world of her babyhood, the seriousness of watching and assessing. Now everything had to be discussed and explained.

Claire was content just driving with her husband and daughter together in their separate thoughts, but the silence was short-lived, because Alice began to sing Woody Guthrie songs. Lying flat in the backseat, she sang.
Let’s go riding in the car, car
. Then she sang it again in a different key.
I’m gonna send you home again, I’m gonna send you home again, boom boom boom, rolling hooooooommmmmeeee! Take you riding in the car
. When she was done singing, she said, “Hey! Can you really spin straw into something you can sew with?”

“I doubt it. Not too easily,” Gene said.

“Can you make a unicycle out of a bicycle?”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s doable.”

“
You’re
doable,” Claire said to Gene softly. He touched her hand on the stick shift, and she glanced over to see him looking at her thigh as she pressed in the clutch. She could smell his hair, a faint waft of tea-tree oil. Claire knew Gene would want to take a nap when they got home, make love and fall asleep while Alice was out in the barn building centaurs and frogs and checking on toads. He would make the day’s bread dough first and let it rise while they lay. And she
would feel his weight and warmth, her cheek on his shoulder, their arms and legs entwined even in sleep. And when she woke, she would smell his skin, and seeing his face would be a gift. It was because of Gene that Claire knew she could want the life they had. She could have faith that it would all work out.

Alice and Theo

HAEDEN, NY, 2001

A
LICE’S LEGS WERE
long and nearly the same width from ankle to thigh. She looked down at them and thought about how walking worked, wearing her swim cap, chewing a huge wad of bubble gum, headed to meet Theo after school at the bridge on Rabbit Run Road. It was early June. In three weeks she would be free of third grade. Tomorrow Constant was coming for dinner and to stay for a while, like he had done every summer since she could remember.

Constant is Alice’s uncle and Theo’s cousin, but somehow none of them are related, really, in the genetic way. Constant was Ross’s ex-wife’s nephew. And Ross is Theo’s mom’s stepbrother. And Constant is kind of Gene’s brother. In this way, it is like she and Theo are cousins. They look alike, too. They can pretend to be cousins.

“Blood relationships are weak relationships,” she remembered her mother saying. Brain relationships are the ones that really matter. Sometimes you’re related to people you have good brain relationships with, sometimes not. Being related by blood isn’t the same as being a family. Alice thought about this as she walked to the bridge.

Genetics only make a difference because if you have sex with your relatives, you will produce babies with screwed-up bodies or brains—having sex with your relatives is what kings and queens and rich people do, which is one reason rulers tend to be crazy. Gene and Claire told her all about DNA and how humans are all made of the same stuff, and animals are made of mostly the same stuff, too. So the craziest thing in the world is believing you
can tell other people what to do—or thinking that some people deserve better care or more things than other people—because all humans have the same biological needs and deserve the same essential things. Kings and queens and rich people try to make those with less than they have give them things. They also think they can tell people what to do and how to act, which proves they are crazy, maybe even from inbreeding or something like that.

She and Theo are not related. But sometimes they would tell each other what to do. And she knew that wasn’t good. Sometimes she wanted to tell him what to do so badly she felt like she might scream. She asked Gene about it while he was splitting wood one day, and he said, “Go ahead, tell him what to do, he’ll do it or he won’t. That’s up to him. Then there’s nothing more that can happen. What do you want him to do, anyway?”

She had thrown her head back and groaned in frustration. “To catch the
second
trapeze on the
second
swing! NOT the third—the third gets everything off to the WRONG count if you’re playing Peter and the Wolf!” She shouted because it was obviously so easy to catch on the second swing that she was still mad he wouldn’t do it.

Gene had raised his eyebrows at her and laughed. “Yeah,” he had said. “It would be a different count if you’re playing circus to that CD, and you want the upward swings to be on the downbeat.” He set the axe aside and handed her some split wood and lit his cigarette. “I wonder what sounds right with the third swing?” He seemed to ask himself, though he said it loud enough for Alice to hear. “Not Prokofiev, that’s for sure. You called that one.” Then he hummed. He picked up his own pile of wood, and she walked beside him toward the house carrying hers. He shrugged. “Theo could practice it and get it right or not. Or you guys could find something that has a different tempo; there’s only a million circus songs in the world, punkin. Everything can be a circus song. It’s not that big a deal.”

When he said it, she was amazed that she hadn’t thought of other songs herself. It was like she had completely forgotten other songs existed. She could tell Theo what to do, but then she would only be right about this one trick and this one song. Which didn’t seem worth the bad feeling of wanting to tell a person what to do. It was like the scope in Uncle Ross’s gun. It blotted out the entire world and placed a cross over the thing you wanted to see most clearly. The thing you want to look at up close. It was the opposite of Gene’s old microscope.

She snapped her gum, still thinking about it as she walked toward the riverbank and saw Theo waiting on the bridge in the afternoon sun. He had a way of having all the right things. Magnets, matches, marbles, rubber erasers shaped like animals, a harmonica, beeswax, rolls of caps. Today she hoped he had brought a jar, because she didn’t have one. They had planned to wade out into the river and catch crayfish, but they always forgot to bring a jar. He waved at her and stood on the rail of the bridge.

“Connie is coming tomorrow night!” she called to him.

He nodded. “Why are you wearing your swim cap?”

“Can I sleep over?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“In the yurt?”

“No. Ross said he quit his job. He’s going to stay in the yurt for a while.”

“
Really?
Why does he have to stay in the yurt if he quit his job?”

Theo shrugged. His hair was always tangled, and it stuck up in the back and was a little too long in the front. He brushed it out of his eyes.

“I wanted to make mobiles for Con,” she said.

“We can make crayfish mobiles. Do you have any more gum?”

Crayfish mobiles are a genius idea
, she thought, even better if there was a way to keep the crayfish alive. She reached into the pocket of her shorts and handed him the whole pack of gum as they made their way along the trail that led beneath the bridge and
out along the muddy pebbled bank of the river. They crouched, looking into the shallow water for tiny gray-and-green-mottled lobster bodies camouflaged as stones. They wandered in up to their ankles, looking straight down. Seeing the armored insect-like bodies darting away got their hearts pounding. They were hunting, grabbing the crayfish fast, just behind their front claws so they wouldn’t get pinched.