Women & Other Animals (22 page)

thought sleepily that these other noises were probably just the ghosts of O'Leary's, too loud to be contained in the nether world: drunken, backclapping, overemotional ghosts, howling at their own jokes the way Martin's father did, their skeletons' elbows clacking as they nudged each other.

Martin's mother, poor Mrs. O'Leary, had been drugged halfnumb as long as Barb had known her, wandering in and out of rooms like a thicklimbed, badlywired Stepford wife. Barb had once seen Mrs. O'Leary carry an ashtray into the kitchen and dump it into the pot of beef stew instead of the garbage pail beside the stove.

Barb fished the cigarette filters out of the pot and never said a word. And for years Mrs. O'Leary had saved potato water, first in quartjars, and then in fivegallon pails. It was full of vitamins, she explained to Barb through badlyapplied orangish lipstick that did not suit her complexion.

"Why don't you dump them out?" Barb asked her fatherinlaw before Mrs. O'Leary died. Marrying into this family might well have been Mrs. O'Leary's downfall.

Barb had seen the pictures of Mrs. O'Leary as a young woman, looking as normal as Barb herself.

"That's her thing," Martin's father had said. "Let her do her thing." As Barb had turned away from him, he reached out and pinched her bottom. "Heehee," he said, like some retarded demon.

When Mrs. O'Leary died, there had been twentytwo buckets of potato water molding in the big kitchen. Barb had mopped every day since they moved in, trying to remove those sunken bucket rings from the kitchen's fakebrick white linoleum. Replacing the tile in the huge room was a job they couldn't yet afford when more pressing concerns, such as shingling the roof, lay before them. Now Barb had to make sure that Martin didn't get distracted and start building bat boxes instead. She closed her eyes and listened to his sweet, easy breathing.

Barb was up by sixthirty, and she had French toast ready by the time Rebecca ambled to the table. That smooth skin, those nearlyred lips, that thin, elegant nose.

How had such an exquisite creature sprung from her? Rebecca was taller than her, as tall as Martha already, which made Barb feel vaguely guilty, as though she had allowed the girl to grow up too quickly.

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"Mom, stop staring at me. I'm trying to eat."

Barb thought she could still see Martha's smoke drifting around from last night. She stared up at the ceiling, willing the paint chips—almost certainly lead—not to fall.

"Where's Dad?" asked Rebecca.

"He's getting up."

Rebecca turned and screamed, "Daad, hurry up!"

"Don't yell," said Barb. She envisioned a stormcolored paint chip shaking loose at the vibration from Rebecca's voice, failing in slow motion toward a bite of French toast en route to the girl's mouth.

"Coming!" floated down the stairway.

Then from the same direction, a woman's voice: "It's only four A. M. California time."

"Get up, MarthaMarmalade!" yelled Martin. "Rise and shine. Men are out searching for wives today."

"Then I guess I'd better stay in bed!"

"Aunt Martha!" yelled Rebecca. "Come on. Get up!"

Barb had been trained by her own mother to speak quietly, but in this house, people yelled from room to room, as though they wanted to fill all the excess space with sound.

Martin appeared at the table ten minutes later in green uniform Dickies. Martha appeared shortly after, draped in a ratty flannel bathrobe.

"Martha, do you want some French toast?" asked Barb.

"Oh, no, just coffee. Let me get it myself." In this light, Barb noticed Martha had dark halfcircles like faded bruises beneath her blue eyes.

When Rebecca finished eating, she plopped onto her Dad's lap and sat sideways, talking to Martha. Martin forked French toast into his mouth around Rebecca's back, holding her hair out of the way of the syrup. Martha blinked her eyes against failing back to sleep. Her robe was missing its belt and she repeatedly pulled the garment together across her cleavage. It would have been unkind of Barb to wish that her daughter hadn't inherited those fine bones, almost too feminine for Martin really, but on Martha, spectacular. Martha had married and divorced a drugabusing bully, and now Page 149

she was thirtythree and didn't even have an address. The older sister, Suzanne, was five years dead by suicide. Had their fates been cooked into the marrow of those graceful bones?

After work and before supper, Barb mopped the kitchen floor, and when she looked up the clock read 5:02. She searched for Rebecca outside the back door and in the dining room. She inhaled as if to yell, but instead parked her mop and walked up the stairs. Rebecca's bedroom door hung open, and she wasn't there. Barb knocked on the room Martha was using.

"Come in," shouted Martha. "You don't have to knock."

Martha sat crosslegged on the floor beside Rebecca, who handled a stack of envelopes.

"Look, Mom, love letters from Grandma's boyfriends. We found them in the wall."

"From Grandpa?" asked Barb.

"No. Other men," said Rebecca. "One was a soldier."

Martha looked on approvingly, as if letters from other lovers affirmed, or perhaps increased, the value of their common pedigree.

"Rebecca," said Barb. "Muffin's been outside for two hours, and your dad's going to be home in a few minutes."

"Dad is not going to run him over."

"Rebecca, I shouldn't have to remind you. If anything happened to Muffin, you'd feel terrible."

Barb returned to the kitchen and took a few last swipes at the floor. She'd done wonders in the beginning, but no matter how much she worked now, the improvement was only minuscule. The same with the wood floors in the rest of the house. She'd scrubbed and polished them, but they needed to be sanded and refinished. The downstairs walls and ceilings needed to be scraped and plasterpatched. Most of the bedrooms upstairs would have to be gutted and reconstructed with drywall. And all this on their regular paychecks. Barb stood frozen, mop in hand. A good solid rain, and water would run under those blue roof tarps and flood their bedrooms.

When she looked up, Rebecca stood in the kitchen doorway with

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Muffin on a leash. "Mom?" she asked. "You've got love letters, don't you?"

"You are so lucky," said Martha at supper. Barb had insisted they eat in the dining room instead of the kitchen. Martin had brought home a bottle of wine.

"To have the house, you mean?" asked Martin.

"And to have a daughter like Becky. I wish I could have a daughter like this without having to have a baby. I wish I could give birth and then, boom, she'd be this age.

None of that crying and breastfeeding—although maybe the breastfeeding part would be okay." Martha winked at Barb. "This is the daughter I want. Smart. Can take care of herself. Look at that face. She looks like you, Barb."

Had Martha meant that as a joke?

"You don't usually get brown eyes with blond hair. I used to have blond hair, but now it grows with these dark roots." Martha put her hands on either side of the part in her hair and bent her head for inspection. Then she put her arm around Becky's neck and squeezed her. "Don't be embarrassed about being beautiful, kid."

"She is a beauty, isn't she?" said Martin. "Just like her ma." Martin winked at Barb.

Barb smiled back. As always she was grateful for Martin's compliments but couldn't help thinking they came too easily to him.

"Cut it out," said Rebecca, blushing.

"You guys are like a real family," said Martha. "You're like Mom and Dad now." She gulped from her wineglass. "Only you're totally sane."

"You haven't seen Mom scrubbing the kitchen floor," said Rebecca.

Barb looked at Rebecca, but the girl wouldn't meet her gaze.

"It's like she's possessed." Rebecca laid down her fork and moved her hands in a scrubbing motion. "Scrubbing and scrubbing."

"A regular Lady Macbeth, aren't you, Barb?" added Martin, grinning.

Barb felt the stab of betrayal twice. "We need new tile," she said apologetically. "That floor is ruined."

"Did Mom leave all those buckets?" asked Martha. "You know,

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once she read how healthy potato water was, she wouldn't throw it out anymore." Martin joined in laughing.

How could they laugh about it? Why hadn't Martha dumped the buckets? Barb wanted to scream. Why had everyone let that poor woman keep all that stinking, molding potato water? Hadn't anyone cared about her?

"It is sad, isn't it?" said Martha. "Four of us kids, Martin, and the next generation is down to one, little Becky." Martha reached for the wine bottle and filled her glass halfway again. "It's all up to you, Becky, to carry on the O'Leary name."

Rebecca asked: "Aren't you going to have any kids, Martha?"

"I don't think so."

"Weren't you married?"

"Sure, but O'Leary women aren't much good at picking husbands."

"I might not ever get married."

"Good girl."

Martha emptied her wine glass, then worked at her pork chop in silence.

"What's the matter, Martha?" asked Martin.

"It just makes me sentimental to be here. I miss them so much." Martha was suddenly wiping away tears. "I miss Mom and Jack and Suzanne." Barb hadn't known Jack, the oldest, who'd died at seventeen in a car wreck.

"I do too, kid," said Martin. This was a pain in which Barb wasn't a full partner.

Rebecca watched her aunt in admiration, as if laughing one minute, crying the next, changing emotions without warning, was a marvelous feat.

"Stay with us, Martha," said Martin. "I miss you when you're gone."

Martha pushed herself away from the table. "I'll be right back. I just need to go outside." She pulled the door closed behind her, but it didn't latch, and with ghostly slowness it swung open again. Barb knew that Martin would have loved having lots of kids, a big, loud family like the one he grew up in. They heard Martha's car start up and pull out of the driveway.

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Later, after deciding not to wait up for Martha, Barb closed the bedroom door tightly and climbed into bed beside Martin. "Aren't you worried about your sister?"

"She's a big girl. She can take care of herself."

"You think everybody's fine all the time."

"They're not?" He laid his hand over Barb's stomach and moved it across her rib cage. She put her hand on his to push it harder against her small breasts. She didn't mind him a little drunk. He negotiated his hand under her nightgown, and desire for him struck her like heat lightning, at once uncontained, unrestricted. She pushed his hand between her legs and wrung its electricity. When he slid a finger in her, she cupped his wrist and tried to push his whole hand after it. She twisted around him, until her face was in his lap, and she took him so deeply into her throat that she had to fight not to gag. The whole house swirled around them, blue vinyl tarps flapping like skirts in the night wind, doors banging open on their hinges, plaster walls crumbling.

Barb had been sleeping for several hours when she awoke to laughing and footsteps. She recognized Martha's giggle and a lower voice, a man's voice. She heard them enter Martha's room, their gritty shoes scraping the raw pine floors that had never been properly finished. There had never been a strange man in the house in town. The clock beside her ticked incessantly.

Barb extracted her nightgown from the tangle of sheets and put it on. The floor groaned beneath her with each step. At night, this long hall felt like a public place, the hall of a boardinghouse. She tiptoed to her daughter's room and pushed the door open slowly. Through the top of the sixfoottall window, she saw a threequarters moon. Her daughter's skin shone both pale and bright, except where branches outside the window projected moonshadows onto her, junglebird shapes with wings flapping. Rebecca had covered some of the ruined plaster with a poster of a messyhaired guitar player. Through a few holes in the wall, one could view the empty bedroom next door, and the girl had painted around these disturbances with red and gold. Barb picked up two shirts and a pair of jeans and underpants from beside the bed and dropped them in the hamper. Like Martin, Rebecca slept soundly. Rebecca's shoulders seemed Page 153

small in the sheets. Her bones pressed outward against her veneer of skin. Barb wished she could babypowder and swaddle the girl and keep her safe from every crazy thing. Something thudded. If only she could lock Rebecca's room from the outside, thought Barb, and carry the key herself.

"Stop it!" said Martha, from her room.

"Just relax, baby," said a man's voice.

Martha's door was cracked, and when Barb peered through, she saw Martha with both arms handcuffed together to the metalframe headboard. A man with a dark pony tail sat beside her, fending off halfhearted kicks. Vomit rose in Barb's throat. She didn't even want to know people like this.

"These are too tight," complained Martha.

"So stop pulling on them," the man said, slurring his speech.

"Take them off. I'll handcuff you instead."

The man grabbed both of Martha's bare legs and held them affectionately. "Are you sure, baby?"

Martha tucked back her legs, then with full force kicked the man off the end of the bed. His head clunked against the heavy glass dresser top, and he slid down and lay sprawled on his back.

"Martha, are you okay?" Barb whispered through the door.

"Barb, is that you?" Martha threw back her head and laughed.

Barb hesitantly entered, the floor creaking beneath her. She smelled the mildew from the stained and yellowed walls. Martha's forehead was scraped and some blood had crusted on one side.

"Martha, please don't wake Rebecca."

"Barb, I need your help." Martha slurred as much as the man had. "I'm locked to this damned bed."

"Let me get Martin," said Barb.

"Let's just keep this between us women," Martha said. "Get his key. Isss in his front pocket. Hurry, before he wakes up."

"But," said Barb, but she didn't know how to finish her sentence. But I'm not a member of your family? But I can't help crazy people? But I don't want to be here at all? I want to be in my small brick house in town with the fencedin backyard.