Tigers in Red Weather (10 page)

“Our children,” her mother said softly. “Who knew they’d turn out so differently from us? Or maybe we wanted them to. I look at Daisy, so golden, just like her father. Sometimes, well, it’s odd to say, but sometimes I’m hard with her because I feel like a stranger in a house of the good and the golden and the heavenly. Which makes me the devil, I suppose.”

“Old Nick.” Aunt Helena laughed. “Oh, dear. I wish I had more of that in me. And less of the good and the golden. Although I do think that part of me is disappearing little by little.”

“And what’s there to replace it?” Her mother poked Aunt Helena’s shoulder.

“Other men?”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, you think you’re the only one, do you?”

Her mother looked at Aunt Helena and then took a drink out of her jelly jar, crushing the ice between her teeth. “Do you remember
that horrible fat woman who lived next to us on Elm Street? The one with a different sailor every night?”

Aunt Helena was quiet a moment and then said: “Loretta. What was her last name?”

“She was a cautionary tale, if there ever was one.” Her mother giggled.

“And the little skinny enlisted boy, the pockmarked one who would howl like a wolf outside her window?”

Her mother snorted. “Stop it,” she said. “I’ll split and we’ll wake our good little children.”

“We aren’t fit,” Aunt Helena said, breaking into hushed laughter.

Daisy had been holding her breath so long she thought her rib cage might shatter. But she was mesmerized. It was as if her mother and aunt had been snatched away by goblins and replaced with fairies of some sort. They looked so beautiful to her, and so different, the movement of their heads and their hands in the low light throwing graceful, arching shadows across the wooden porch. They could have said anything, and she would have loved them. Just the lilt of their voices, the smell of their mingling perfume brushing the air, was like a love song. She wanted to be with them out there on the porch, under the too-bright moon, crushing ice and letting a strap slide off her shoulder. She wanted to be part of that enchanted world they seemed to have made with hurricane lamps and music and laughter. And then somehow they got confused with the image of the boy Tyler and the smell of the boat fuel near the Quarterdeck.

Daisy slowly turned on the balls of her feet, so as not to make a sound against the polished wood floor, and silently ascended the stairs to her bedroom.

1959: JULY
I

I
t was only two weeks into the tennis program, and July had barely begun to impress the full weight of summer onto the island, when Ed stopped showing up for their lessons. He would leave the house with Daisy every morning at eight and they’d walk together to the tennis club. But that was the last she would see of her cousin until noon, when he’d reappear to pick her up and they’d walk back to Tiger House for lunch.

He didn’t say where he went or what he did during the hours that Daisy spent skidding across the hot clay courts, working on her backhand. There was no point asking him; he would either say “This and that” or nothing at all.

Daisy had mixed feelings about Ed’s disappearances. On the one hand, she didn’t really care. The only thing she did think about during those morning hours was winning the singles tournament at the end of the season. As she crisped under the hot eastern summer sun, as her thighs burned and her forearms hardened like the waxed-rope bracelet tightening around her wrist, all Daisy concentrated on was making her opponent cry in a practice match, making her drop shot
undetectable, her volley invisible, her step surer, making her swing move across her chest like a metronome.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, like a good little clock
. Trying to hit the sweet spot every time. And not having her cousin there was just one less distraction.

But his absence was also a problem. He was always her partner for the end-of-summer doubles round-robin. Ed wasn’t very good, but Daisy was strong enough to carry them, and while the doubles tournament was kind of a joke, you had to play in it to qualify for the singles.
Teamwork is God’s work
, or that’s what that shriveled prune Mrs. Coolridge always told them in her lecture at the start of every tennis season. Normally, Ed feared not participating in the doubles round-robin, because it meant an automatic holdback the next year. But this summer, anyway, he didn’t seem to care. For Daisy, not having Ed around meant she would have to rope in someone new to be her partner.

Because of her skill, Peaches would be the natural choice, but Daisy didn’t want to give up the chance to beat her twice. Anyway, she knew Trinny, Peaches’s stringy, blond sidekick, would scratch her eyes out if she even tried to get Peaches to defect. Still, Daisy couldn’t help imagining playing with her. Peaches moving across the court with her heavy, steady stroke, ponytail swinging, and Daisy moving into the service box to whip the ball into the ad court, invisible like a baby wasp in a piqué cotton dress. (The image instantly faded when she actually saw Peaches in person again, and then all she really wanted to do was slap her slanty little eyes out of her head with a hard backhand.)

The only other player who wasn’t a total goof was the new girl, Anita. Daisy had been giving her a mental tryout for a couple of days when she decided to approach her. The points against her included the fact that she had pierced ears, not that Daisy really had anything against it, but she couldn’t help thinking about her mother’s comments about the Portuguese girl who waitressed at the yacht club and who apparently dated too many boys.

Nice girls don’t pierce their ears
.

Also, Anita looked a bit like a Beat, with her very straight black hair and bangs cut across her forehead. But she could return a smooth backhand from the right side of no-man’s-land, and as far as Daisy was concerned that far outweighed the pierced ears and possibility of bongo playing.

She had meant to ask Anita during their midmorning break, when all the kids went to catch some shade under the back porch of the clubhouse. But as she made her way from the back courts to the large expanse of lawn, she spied her mother playing a match with Aunt Helena, who had turned the color of a Red Hot candy with the exertion. Her mother moved coolly across the court, spinning up tiny clouds of clay in her wake. Her skin was brown and her hair, normally a glossy black, was taking streaks of honey from the sun. Yet what struck Daisy most was how dispassionately she played the game. She didn’t seem to feel any of the rage that drove Daisy back and forth from the baseline to the net; her body didn’t seem to hum with the kind of energy that made Daisy feel like she would jump out of her skin. Daisy couldn’t imagine how her mother could hold her racquet so lightly, as if it weren’t a weapon, how she could look at her opponent as anyone other than the enemy. She just seemed to go through the motions, even if they were perfect.

Daisy caught sight of Tyler Pierce sitting on the spectators’ bench in front of the court. Tyler, whose sea-grass hair had been accompanying her in her daydreams, was following the game with what seemed to be intense interest. She thought about going over and talking to him, telling him that the woman who played such a cool game of tennis was her mother, but she was afraid they would tease her later for fawning over an older boy. Reluctantly, she went up the steps to the clubhouse porch, and leaned over the white, painted railing, watching Tyler watch her mother.

Her concentration was broken by something cold and wet on her
arm. Daisy turned to see Anita smiling at her, pressing a glass of lemon water against her shoulder.

“Hello,” Anita said, holding the glass out for Daisy.

“Hey,” Daisy said.

Hay is for horses
.

“She’s far-out, isn’t she?” Anita said, scanning the court where her mother and aunt were now picking up stray tennis balls.

“Who?” Daisy said, confused by Anita’s sudden appearance and the shock of the chilled glass on her skin.

“The dark-haired one.”

“That’s my mother,” Daisy said, squinting at Anita, but taking the lemon water anyway.

“Really? You don’t look anything alike.”

“I know,” Daisy said, feeling irritable and crowded. Anita was standing so close their shoulders were touching. “I look like my dad.”

“Oh,” Anita said. She sipped out of her own sweating glass. “Well, I’m sure he’s nifty, too.”

“I don’t know about that,” Daisy said, shifting her feet.

Daisy had to admit that Anita’s bangs, cut straight across her forehead, were glamorous, in some old-fashioned way. Like the photograph of that 1920s film star she had found in one of her mother’s scrapbooks. “Look, I’ve been meaning to ask you, do you want to be my partner for the doubles tournament?”

“Sure,” Anita said, as if it was nothing at all.

“We’ll have to practice a lot,” Daisy said severely. She felt suddenly quite cross with Anita for being so cool about the offer. “I mean, like every day.”

“We’re already playing every day. But sure, why not? Can I come over to your house?” Anita asked.

“I guess,” Daisy said, caught off guard. She wasn’t sure she wanted her hanging out at her house. She wondered what her mother would say. “We should get back. Break’s over.”

“I’ll catch up with you,” Anita said, still staring at her mother.

As Daisy walked back across the lawn, her mother waved from the court.

“Hello, Daisy.”

“Hello, Mummy,” Daisy said. She could feel her own racquet like a sleeping weapon in her hand and wondered again about her mother’s perfect game.

As the week wore on, Daisy avoided having to invite Anita over by staying back at the end of the session. She was leaning against the chain-link fence that separated court 7 from the grassy paths and marshes that led up to the ice pond when her cousin rattled the metal behind her head.

“How’s your backhand coming along?” Ed said, mimicking the clipped tones of Mrs. Coolridge.

“Hell’s bells, Ed, what on earth are you doing here?” Daisy said, spinning around and lacing her fingers through the fence. Ed towered above her and she had to peer up into the sun to meet his eyes. “If Mrs. Coolblood catches you, you’re dead meat.”

“You’re supposed to walk me home now,” Ed said. He was wearing his tennis clothes, still pristine except for his shoes, which were muddy and scuffed. His blond hair was the color of bleached wheat.

“You’re such a baby,” Daisy said. “Why don’t you just tell your mom you don’t want to play?”

“Because I’d hate having to spend the morning with her,” Ed said, without any real passion. “Come on, let’s go for a walk. I found a good path to the pond, one that no one knows about.”

“I’m hungry,” Daisy said. “Let’s go back home. Mummy’s making deviled eggs.”

“I stole two cigarettes,” Ed said. “From Tyler Pierce, actually.”

Daisy imagined smoking a cigarette with Tyler Pierce behind the old ice cellar in the backyard, his hand in her short blond hair.

“All right, but let’s make it quick. I might starve to death.”

“Only the Chinese are starving to death,” Ed said.

“Hell’s bells,” Daisy said.

“You should stop saying that,” Ed said. “It doesn’t sound grown-up.”

“As if you’d know anything about that,” Daisy said, opening a side door in the fence and joining Ed. “Come on, hurry.”

When they were safely behind the tall marsh grass and cluster of old oaks that made up the lush backlands of Sheriff’s Meadow, Daisy slowed her pace. Now Ed was leading her, and Daisy noticed that whatever it was he was doing during his mornings off had tanned the back of his neck.

“We have to go left behind the old shed,” Ed said, taking Daisy’s hand and pulling her deeper into undergrowth.

“There’s nothing behind the old shed,” she said, feeling cranky and hungry for lunch. “I don’t want to get my shoes all muddy tromping around in the marsh. Besides, there’s hundreds of mosquitoes back here.”

“No, there’s a path I found,” Ed said. “It leads to an old shelter. We can smoke the cigarettes there.”

“I thought you said cigarettes were disgusting,” Daisy said. “And anyway, how did you steal them from Tyler?”

“From his tennis bag. And the cigarettes are for you.”

“You have to promise to smoke one with me, or I’m going home right now.” Daisy stopped, her tennis dress caught on a raspberry bramble.

“It’s this way,” Ed said, carefully removing the cotton from a thorn.

They had reached the dilapidated shed that belonged to a defunct camp house off the ice pond. As they moved off the well-worn path, they passed a stone marker whose face had been eaten by lichen. Daisy would have stopped and picked at it if Ed hadn’t kept his grip tight on her wrist. He pushed through a cluster of
bushes, pulling her in his wake. Normally, she would have told him to stop yanking her around, but she wanted to know what he got up to on his secret mornings. Also, she liked him like this, when he was purposeful and had things to show her, instead of just mooning around staring at people and making them feel weird.

They emerged onto a small winding path, bordered on both sides by a wild, high hedge. The air was still and quiet, and only the sound of crickets purring in the heat broke the
hush-hush
of their feet in the damp grass.

“Hell’s bells,” Daisy said before she could check herself. “Ed, how on earth did you find it?”

“Just walking,” Ed said, but with a slight inflection in his voice. He sounded pleased. “I knew you’d like it. I knew you’d understand it,” he added, looking at her intently.

“Is there a clearing anywhere?” she asked.

“A ways up.”

“Well, let’s smoke the cigarettes here,” Daisy said, putting her hand on his arm, feeling the ropy muscle underneath.

“Let’s go a bit further,” Ed said. “The shelter’s just around the bend.”

At the next turn stood an old rotting oak, its roots resurfacing like a winded swimmer. Daisy put her back against the tree’s crumbling bark and slid down to rest on one of them.

“I’m tired. Let’s do it here. I hope you brought matches,” she said.