The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D (29 page)

She opened and closed the refrigerator door without registering
its contents, and opened it again.
She could have at least asked to see my portfolio
. There was no iced tea, no yogurt, no ice cream. Kate had failed to pick them up last time she’d gone shopping.
She just isn’t willing
. Her cell phone sat on the kitchen counter, where she’d allowed its battery to run out again. She felt suddenly defined by everything she had not done.

Kate plugged the phone into the wall and it showed two messages. The first was from yet another locksmith declining to work on a tiny lock on an old trunk. So busy these days, housebreaks on the increase, what with the insane cost of living … She erased it and advanced to the next one.

“Hey, Kate. I know we just spoke, but I have a new work development.” It was Dave. His voice was slow and loose. “The company wants me to go to Boston tomorrow, and I thought maybe I’d bring the kids and we’d come out the next morning on our way home. Just a little day-trip diversion, if it’s not an inconvenience for you all. I’m thinking midmorning. Call me.”

Dave, coming to Great Rock. She would have thought spending the day with her was the last place he’d want to be. She pulled a beer out of the refrigerator and stood a moment in the chill of the open door, considering what it would be like to have him here while Chris was not.

He blamed her for the loss of the key. Stolen, lost, it didn’t make a difference to him. Kate took a long sip. She wanted to be past that hurdle, to be able to say she had it under control.

She opened the front door of the bungalow, looked out into the clear night. She walked, feet bare on the damp grass, around the back of the house to the shed where the tools were kept. Gardening hoes and trowels, hammers, an ax. She picked up the claw-handled hammer and brought it up to the loft. The photo-covered journal was still folded open on the chaise; she was about two-thirds of the way through. She took a long draw from the beer.

She raised the hammer and brought it down on the lock, a glancing blow that skittered off to the side and left barely a scratch. She
raised the hammer higher and slammed it down, and it railed against the side of the lock in a splinter of wood. She brought it down again and again, metal on metal. The old lock dented, became bent and off-kilter, but still did not spring. If it had been a boxer, it would be kneeling dizzily at an eight count and struggling back up, resisting to the bitter end. She bashed it once more and the lock gave way, the defeated lid hanging unevenly on dented hardware.

She lifted it and saw inside, on the far right stack of books, the plain tan cover of Elizabeth’s last journal, the one she’d written in before she’d gone for the flight to Los Angeles.

There was a cry of alarm from downstairs, Piper calling for her, afraid of the strange sounds. Kate went down the stairs to find her daughter standing at the bottom, flushed with interrupted dreams and midnight need. It would take time, coaxing her back down.

S
ATURDAY MORNING BREAKFAST
was interrupted by feet on crushed stone, the sound of running on the driveway. Jonah and Anna appeared at the side of the house and ran up the porch. Dave Martin came along more slowly, following Emily as she walked crookedly through the grass.

Kate watched their approach and startled at the sight of Dave. His hair had grown long, curling over his ears, and he’d lost weight. The shoulder seams of his shirt drooped like a jacket from a too-small hanger, and folds of cotton sagged on his chest. He approached the porch with Emily and paused while she navigated each stair in thick-soled toddler sandals. Kate held the screen door and waited.

“Hey there,” she said, squinting into the morning sun.

“Look at you, all tanned and lovely.” He leaned in to kiss her cheek, cupping her right shoulder in his hand. His eyes had the dark circles of someone who’d worked the night shift. “This is quite the place you’ve got here.”

“That’s why we keep signing on every year.” Kate leaned down to Emily, wobbly in the doorway. “Hello, you big walker.” She held the door open as the girl toddled inside. “You guys eaten?”

“A little. Not really. Some junk on the ferry.”

Kate went into the kitchen and pulled three more plates off the
shelf, and since there were no longer baby toys at the house, put out some measuring cups on the floor for Emily to play with.

“Coffee?”

“No thanks. Got any Coke?”

Kate gestured to the refrigerator as she piled pancakes on the plates. He pulled out a soda and cocked the tab, then took out milk for Emily’s sippy cup. He did it naturally, as if they spent time in one another’s kitchens every day, the way the women in their playgroup had behaved in one another’s homes. They exchanged small talk as the kids played on the other side of the room. Maybe this would be fine.

“Do you see the playgroup families much?” Kate asked.

He took a long drink from the can and rested it on the counter. “Sometimes. But as far as regular playdates go, the group had kind of dissolved already.” They both understood
already
to refer to the time before Elizabeth died. “You know, with kindergarten and preschool there are plenty of other activities going on. But we just had a cookout last month with Regan and Brittain.”

Brittain. Hearing the name was like a wake-up call; Kate should telephone and check in. Just before Brittain had her second child a few years before, she’d found out her husband was involved with a woman at his office. She had been miserable, swollen and ready to burst in every way, but still keeping up appearances. Kate would never have known if it hadn’t been for something odd in her expression watching Elizabeth and Dave banter warmly at the margarita party, a look both envious and sad. Later in the living room, while Kate was nursing the baby and Brittain was resting her legs and making snide observations about Elizabeth’s security system, Kate had asked the most basic question.
Is everything okay?
And Brittain had cracked. Her relief had been palpable, as if she were just waiting for someone to ask.

Snap
. There were flashes of light from the sofa where the kids were playing, James taking pictures of Jonah and Anna.

“Careful with that, James,” Kate called. “That’s our good camera.”

“I know how to use it,” he said, and zoomed in to take a photo of Jonah’s tongue.

Emily whined, and Dave pulled a spatula and measuring spoons from the drying rack and handed them to her. “You talk to Chris lately?” he asked Kate.

“A few days ago, just a quick call while he had cell connection at the airport in Jakarta.”

“So he’s in Jakarta.”

She thought she heard relief in his voice. Kate cut a plate of pancakes into tic-tac-toe lines and glanced at him to see if he’d say more. He took a piece of pancake for Emily and crouched to offer it to her. She turned the bit in pudgy hands, considering it.

“How’s your nanny working out?” Kate asked.

“You know, she’s pretty great.” He stood and leaned against the kitchen island. “The kids love her. She’s just out of college and has tons of energy, and she comes with a whole backpack of crafts and stuff. She has dinner going when I get home, and if I have to work late she gives the kids their baths. It makes everything more or less manageable.”

Kate delivered plates of pancakes to the children at the table, and put one in front of him as well. “It sounds like that agency got you a good match. I’ve heard that doesn’t always happen with the first try.”

She sipped her coffee and leaned back against the counter opposite him. What would it be like to be a young woman working for a recently widowed dad, she wondered, moving all day through a house filled with pictures of the mother of the children she cared for daily. Hugging her children, disciplining them. She imagined Dave coming home at dinnertime and stepping into the kitchen, where the kids were eating their chicken nuggets,
Hi family, I’m home
. There must be awkward moments working in the intimacy of a house, brushing against one another accidentally in the small kitchen. Oh, sorry, they’d both say politely, backing apart and busying themselves with the children. Would she think of him as just an
employer, or could she not help seeing him as a single man? The fact that he was a widower might make him untouchable, or it might have the opposite effect, the potent loss so poignant, irresistible.

A bright flash snapped in Kate’s face. “Cheese!” said James.

“Okay, that’s enough with the camera,” Kate said. “Here. I’ll pack it to bring with us today.”

“Are we going to the beach?” Piper asked.

“Sure. Everyone have their suits?”

“Yes!” said Anna. “I have a pink one with a skirt.”

“I have pictures of sandals and ice-cream sundaes on mine,” said Piper.

“Actually, now you have real ice cream on it too,” Kate said. “You dropped your cone on it yesterday and we haven’t washed it yet.”

“Well, now, that’s no matter,” Dave said, his Georgia creeping in. “It’s all going in the drink one way or another.”

The late-afternoon sun came through the high trees and striped the lawn like a game board. Kate sat on the porch step molding hamburger patties as she watched the children play croquet, already dressed in pajamas for the long drive. Emily followed behind them on the grass like a small fairy in a pink nightgown, pulling up wickets and trying to make off with the bright balls.

Dave lit the grill, then sat beside her on the steps. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees watching the kids in the yard. Sea salt dusted his forearms and clung to his dark hair. Dense freckles overlapped one upon the other, making him appear even more tanned than he was.

“That’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

“What’s that?” Kate plopped a rounded patty on the tray.

“When the kids notice that Emily’s stealing their balls and messing up the course all hell’s gonna break loose.”

“Maybe.” She picked up another handful of meat. “Or maybe
she’ll get bored with it. I have some books in the house for her to read. Well, to look at.”

He winced as Jonah swung his mallet and narrowly missed Anna’s shin. “Reading. Man, that’s something I haven’t done in a while. I stopped reading the newspapers and magazines last fall because they depressed me to no end, and I never got back in the habit. I should probably pick up some biography to stretch my brain, something besides watching TV every night.”

“I know. I have a whole stack of books I brought out here that I haven’t even cracked open.”

The moment it was out of her mouth she regretted it. The reason she hadn’t read any books was that she’d been consumed with other reading.

“I forgot the rolls. Would you like a beer or something while I’m up?”

He nodded. She walked through the patio doors into the house, trying to remember whether there were, in fact, a few bottles still in the refrigerator. On her way into the kitchen she noticed her cell phone, which she’d forgotten to bring to the beach. There was a message.

“Hey, hon. I just wanted to call so you wouldn’t worry. That bombing in Bali was nowhere near us. We were out by the beaches. Anyway, we’re all done here. I’m connecting through Seoul tonight and should be back tomorrow night. And then I’m not gonna leave the beach for the whole last week we’re there. Give the kids kisses for me.”

Bombing? She reached for the edge of the counter. She hadn’t turned on the TV or radio all day. Maybe that’s why Dave had acted oddly when he’d asked if she’d talked to Chris lately, and was relieved when she’d said he was in Jakarta. Ten days he’d been gone, but it felt like months. She hadn’t even known he’d left Jakarta for Bali.

Let it go, she told herself. It’s over, he’s on his way home. She took two bottles of beer from the refrigerator, popped off their lids,
and put one against the side of her neck. The cool penetrated her skin like an epidural.

When she returned to the porch, Dave was on the lawn showing Piper the way to hold a croquet mallet. He stood behind her, holding her arms so that the mallet swung forward and back cleanly between her ankles. Kate picked up the camera from the patio table and focused the lens on them, a pendulum of large and small limbs. They sent the yellow ball a smooth seven feet or so to rest against the next wicket, and Piper’s eyes widened in disbelief. Dave gave her a thumbs-up. Then he took a step backward and swung the mallet broadly, a pantomime of a slow-motion drive in miniature.

Kate had never seen him play golf. But she could imagine it in his stance, feet planted slightly apart as he held the mallet like a club, and in his muscular swing, free and easy as an afterthought. There was a smooth confidence in the way he moved, and she wondered whether he’d always been that graceful, or if grace came with being a professional athlete, years of practicing something tied to the performance of the body, and then years more of doing it in front of crowds and cameras. She could probably make a pie crust in her sleep, but even on her best days, there was nothing physically grand about the rolling of dough. She had never before thought of golf as elegant. But watching Dave on the lawn she could see that it was.