The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D (20 page)

From Mrs. Callum’s yard Piper’s voice went high and squeaky with excitement. Kate stood from the garden and squinted into the light, shielding her eyes with a dirt-covered hand. Both children were crouched with Mrs. Callum by her porch, looking tentatively at something under the shrubs.

“Careful how you touch them, dear,” she heard the older woman say. “They’re just babies.”

“Look at their ears,” James said. “They’re hardly even long yet.”

Kate walked across the lawn telling herself she was merely curious. Her pulse drummed in her ears.

“Look at their tiny noses. Their tails are sooo soft,” Piper gushed, then saw her mother approaching. “Mom! Look at the baby bunnies! ”

Kate came beside them and peered down at a nest of five or six tiny rabbits, their sides fluttering in the rapid panting of the small, or the unwell. Piper and James were touching them gently, each stroking a soft gray back with a single finger. Her thoughts automatically went to tularemia.

“Oh, kids, that’s not a great idea,” she heard herself say with a voice calm and steady as if it came from someone else. “When their mother comes back and smells that humans have been touching them, it will upset her.” The kids pulled back their hands reluctantly.

“They’re so cute,” Piper said again. “I wish we could keep one.”

“They’re not pets, sweetie, they’re wild animals.” Disease-ridden wild animals. “This is their home.”

“Well I wish their home was in
our
bushes,” said James.

“You can come over here and peek at them any time you’d like. We’ve always had so many rabbits here,” the older woman said, rising from her crouch and turning to Kate. “I guess they know a quiet place to multiply when they see one.”

“Mmm.” Kate forced a smile as she watched her children entranced by the baby animals. They were at a petting zoo. They were at a normal, sanitized attraction, and she was like any other mother who was smiling at her children’s enthusiasm and who did not have hot welts spreading below her right ear.

“We should get a pet, Mom,” Piper said. “Like a bunny. Or a kitten.”

“Or a hamster,” said James. “Robert in my class has two hamsters, and they chew boxes and hold food in their cheeks.”

“Maybe,” said Kate vaguely. “After the summer.” She stroked Piper’s hair, and her fingertips exerted pressure ever so gently away from the bushes and back toward their own house. “Did you kids tell Mrs. Callum about how well you played miniature golf the other day? About your holes in one?”

“Well, now, that’s not easy to do. Congratulations.” The older woman smiled. Kate could feel her desire for them to stay. “I don’t know if it’s too late for a snack, but I have some fresh cookies in the kitchen. Maybe when we come back out, the bunnies will be awake.”

“That sounds nice, but we have some early plans tonight.” Kate put her hand on James’s shoulder. “If we clean up and have an early dinner, we can go back and try again at minigolf tonight.”

She waited until they were in the house, then said what she’d wanted to say since she joined them by the bushes.

“Come on inside and wash your hands, let’s wash up really well.” She went into the bathroom with the pump of antibacterial hand soap from the kitchen, and began to rub it into each of their palms.
She glanced at the label
—kills 99 percent
—as she handed them towels. “I have an even better idea. Let’s take our showers early.”

“Showers? Now?” James wrinkled his nose. “It’s still afternoon. We haven’t even eaten dinner yet.”

“Oh, but let’s get all cleaned up so we can eat and play minigolf early, and maybe we can get in a round plus ice cream before it gets dark.” She was throwing out her whole arsenal. “Come on, take off your clothes, kids.” She pulled back the shower door and tugged down the towels hanging from their hooks.

Chris walked past the bathroom in the hallway. “They’re taking showers now?”

“Sure, why not?” She spoke nonchalantly, fiddled with the hot and cold shower handles.

“It’s barely four o’clock.”

“Well, we could get a jump on an early supper, and then since they were all washed up, we were talking about going to play minigolf in the evening.”

He looked at her as if she were suggesting dinner in Paris. “That makes no sense. Let’s enjoy the rest of the day. I was thinking about going to the beach. Kids, you want to go to the beach for a little while before dinner?”

They looked up, eyes wide. It kept getting better.

“Chris, I really don’t think …”

“Think what?” His tone had been merely perplexed, but now it was turning testy. “We’re on vacation, Kate. Don’t be rigid. And what’s up with your neck?”

She glanced in the mirror and saw that her hair had become damp with sweat, slicked away and no longer a drawn curtain. There was the red flush, center stage.

“Is there poison ivy in the garden?” Chris winced.

“I think so.” She touched it casually like a mild irritation. “It’s getting worse. I should probably pick up something at the store to put on it.”

“That came up fast.” He looked on with mild concern. “Well,
we’d better watch out where the kids are playing in the yard. Come on, let’s go to the beach.”

The kids abandoned the shower and headed out the doorway, dropping their towels on the floor. Kate looked at the ground and breathed deeply. Then she rehung the towels and followed.

The beach was quiet in the late afternoon, peopled by walkers and kite fliers, fishermen setting their tackle and young couples napping. The kids threw down their sand toys and headed to the water’s edge. Kate laid the blanket beside her beach bag, a tote filled with her regular accoutrements. Bottled water and grapes, sunscreen and wallet, a novel that probably would not be read, though she brought it every time.

Chris joined her on the blanket and watched the kids with an expression of satisfaction. “Man, I love it here.”

Chris was a man easily contented. It wasn’t that he was simple or easygoing, because he was not; he was irritated by people who stood in the way of his goals, and people who made things more complicated than they had to be. But he recognized small pleasures, appreciated things gone right, and basked in the moment rather than focusing on what should be or hadn’t been. He possessed naturally a balance others sought in the chairs of shrinks and the arms of lovers, an innate equilibrium that kept him from the shaky highs or debilitating lows. The downside was that he had trouble sympathizing with people when their troubles derived from something intangible. He called them complicated.
They need a hobby
, he’d say,
something to look at besides their own navels
.

He pointed his chin into the breeze and closed his eyes as if he might fall asleep upright, leaning back on the palms of his hands. This was one of his favorite places anywhere, and he’d been to beaches all over the world. Kate had accompanied him to some. But none of his travels had spoiled his ability to enjoy himself in ordinary
places, even shoddy ones. Shortly before they were engaged, they’d gone to the Bahamas to check out the investment potential of an old resort just outside of Nassau. He’d been given a tip from a new source but it had been a bust, the hotel so down-at-the-heels that it was beyond rehabilitation. They had stayed for only one day and one night, and gone to dinner downtown, their cab passing faded pink Colonial-style buildings padlocked with chipped wrought-iron gates. The fences were papered with public-service posters, “Give blood, Mon!” and “Protect ya ting: Wear a rubba all de time!” They’d dined in an expat place in Parliament Square, eaten overcooked lobster tails in sour champagne sauce on a veranda near a party of Americans exuding entitlement as loud as tacky laughter. Afterward they’d sat on the beach behind their hotel in the dark, opting to sit in the sand rather than on rusted loungers, wordless under palm fronds that flapped like party streamers. And he’d had that same smile he wore now.

Where’s this good mood coming from?
she’d asked that night, surprised that he wasn’t disappointed by the wild-goose chase of a trip.

What’s not to be in a good mood about? I’m here with you
. And then he’d smiled as if it were a given that that would be enough.

If she had gotten sick before they were engaged, if she had gotten a diagnosis like Elizabeth’s, Chris would have dropped whatever he was doing and come to her. She leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees, and studied the grains of sand in the russet hair of his leg. She was certain of this.

“What was going on with you?” he asked, drawing her out of her thoughts. “Back there at the house.”

Kate was surprised to hear his voice. She’d thought he was nearly asleep. “What do you mean?”

“The business about the early shower. You getting all Lady Macbeth, scrubbing the kids.” His tone was light, flippant.

She tried to think of a wisecrack. She always had some fallback line. But nothing came. What if for once she didn’t cover her tracks, and simply told the naked truth? She tried to imagine it; each day
he’d be gauging her condition, watching to see evidence of paranoia winning out over logic, and his regard for her as an equal would be contaminated. Sympathy, even well intentioned, would set her apart, and he would treat her with kid gloves. She shivered in the sun.

But what if she was underestimating him? What if she started with the tularemia and kept on going? He would furrow his brows because he wouldn’t understand but he would be concerned, because he did love her and what happened to her happened to him, and to all of them. All that energy and effort to conceal, released.

She took off her sunglasses and turned. “Remember tularemia?”

He shielded his eyes with his hand, watching the kids at the waterline. Piper shouldn’t go in above her knees without one of them there. He turned to her and tilted his chin up, an acknowledgment of her comment, and gave a small grin.

A grin was not what she’d expected. She waited for his question or comment, the one that would open the door to all the rest, or for him to recoil as he saw that she’d become complicated. But he kept watching the kids.

Slowly, she realized she’d been misunderstood. He thought she’d made a joke,
Remember tularemia
. His grin said,
Good one
. She was that pathetic, with her paralyzing fears. She put her sunglasses back on and faced the water as well.

The kids called out to them from the shoreline, “Come play, come play with us in the waves.” Chris stood slowly, stretching his arms overhead and then twisting his back with a light crack.

“You coming?” he asked, and smiled, held out a hand to help her up.

She sat for only a fraction of a second, then took his hand. “Of course,” she said. She stood and tossed her book in her beach bag, followed him to the water, leaving the beach bag open in the sand.