“Alice, am I right that you haven’t had a serious beau since that tall fellow?” Rose said. “Remind me of his—”
“Simon.” Again, I tried to smile agreeably, and then I did it, I gave her what I was sure she wanted—some admission of failure on my part—because I hoped it would get her to drop the subject. “I guess I’m in a dry spell,” I said.
“Frank has a real good-looking coworker at the DA’s office,” Jeanette said.
“Jeanette, that’s not nice to set up Alice with a felon,” Rose said.
Jeanette swatted her. “You know that isn’t what I mean. He’s another lawyer, and he owns a super place over in Orchard Ridge. You wouldn’t mind an iguana, would you?”
“I’m not sure if I’m the reptile type.” I stood. “I’m just getting a bit more wine. Do either of you need anything?”
“When you come back, remind me to tell you about the new principal at Katie’s school,” Jeanette said. “He’s a big, tall fellow, and he has the shortest little Chinese wife.”
I nodded several times and held up my empty glass, as if to offer proof that I wasn’t walking away because I found them intolerable.
On the deck, I passed Dena and Charlie Blackwell just as Dena set her fingertips on his forearm.
Good for her,
I thought. Once inside the house, I used the first-floor powder room, and on my way out, I almost collided with Tanya, the older of the Hickens’ two daughters.She held up a hardcover book. “Will you read this to me?” It was
Madeline’s Rescue,
the one where Madeline falls in the Seine and is saved by a dog.I looked around. There were a few adults in the kitchen, including Kathleen Hicken, Tanya’s mother, but we were out of their view, and I doubted anyone would notice my absence. “Sure,” I said.
We sat on the living room couch, Tanya next to me. She was a fair-haired little girl with a bob and large brown eyes. “Do you know my name?” I asked. “I’m Miss Alice. And you’re Tanya, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“And how old are you?” I asked.
“Five and one quarter.”
“Five and one quarter! Does that mean your birthday is in April?”
“It’s April twenty-third,” she said. “Lisa’s birthday is January fourth, but she’s only two years old.” Lisa was the Hickens’ other daughter.
“My birthday’s in April, too,” I said. “It’s on the sixth, seventeen days before yours.” I opened the book and began reading: “ ‘In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines—’ ” I paused. Tanya had squirmed closer to me, as if hopeful that she might be able to climb inside the book. It was an impulse I understood well. “I bet you know what comes next,” I said, and I repeated, “ ‘In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines—’ ”
“—‘Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines,’ ” Tanya said.
“ ‘They left the house at half past nine / In two straight lines, in rain or shine. / The smallest one was—’ ”
“—‘Madeline,’ ” Tanya cried.
I turned the page, which featured an illustration of Madeline falling over the bridge. “Uh-oh,” I said.
“She doesn’t drown,” Tanya told me reassuringly.
We kept reading, and when we got to the next page, Tanya added, “They name the dog Genevieve.”
She continued to inject these comments, either editorial or explanatory—“The fat lady is mean,” “Genevieve has puppies”—and when we’d gotten to the end, she said, “Will you read it again?”
I glanced at my watch. “All right, and then I should go back out and talk to the grown-ups. Your daddy’s grilling the meat for dinner, isn’t he?”
“I’m having fish sticks with tartar sauce.”
“Doesn’t that sound fancy,” I said.
As if comforting me, helping me to not be intimidated, Tanya said, “No, tartar sauce is like mayonnaise,” and I decided that I liked her even more.
We had neared the end of our second run-through of
Madeline’s Rescue
when Charlie Blackwell appeared in the archway of the living room. I looked up, made eye contact with him, smiled, and continued reading. It didn’t seem that what Tanya and I were doing required explanation, and besides, I believed that the secret of interacting with children—or it appeared to be a secret, based on the behavior of some parents—was that all you did was talk to them in a normal way. You didn’t let yourself be distracted by someone else, you didn’t perform above their heads, using them as a prop, nor did you coddle and indulge them. You paid attention, but not inordinately.He didn’t leave, though. I could feel him standing there watching us, and when we got to the last page, he set down his beer can and applauded. This applause concealed the sound of Tanya farting, which I was glad for, because she seemed self-aware enough, despite her age, that farting in front of a tall, unfamiliar man might have embarrassed her. “I have to go potty,” she murmured, and slid off the couch, darting around Charlie Blackwell in the threshold.
“I scare her off?” He had a bit of a drawl, not the flat Wisconsin accent but something at once twangier and more educated.
“I think she had somewhere to go,” I said.
“Then I guess you just lost your excuse for hiding out.” He took a sip of beer and grinned.
“I’m not hiding out. We were reading a story.”
“Is that right?” He was undeniably handsome, but his bearing was cocky in a way I didn’t like: He was just over six feet, athletic-looking, and a little sunburned, with thick, dry, wavy light brown hair of the sort that wouldn’t move if he shook his head. He also had mischievous eyebrows and a hawk nose with wide nostrils, as if he was flaring them at all times. This lent him an air of impatience that I imagined enhanced his stature in the view of some people—implying that he had other, more interesting places to go, that his attention to you would be limited.
“Sometimes I find that the company of children compares favorably to the company of adults,” I said wryly.
“Touché.” He didn’t seem at all offended—he still was grinning—but I immediately felt remorseful because I knew I’d been rude.
“Or maybe it’s that I don’t always have much to say around adults,” I said.
“Not having much to say doesn’t stop most people.” His expression was impish. “Not me, anyway.”
His self-mockery caught me off guard, and I smiled. As I stood, planning to return to the backyard, I said, “I should introduce myself. I’m Alice Lindgren.”
“Oh, I know who you are. You think I’d forget the name of a girl who refuses to go on a date with me?”
“I didn’t—” I paused, flustered. “That was years ago. I was involved with someone. It wasn’t personal.”
“I thought maybe you’d heard some terrible rumor. Or, better yet, some terrible truth.” He grinned; clearly, he was accustomed to being considered charming.
“If there are terrible truths about you circulating, you might want to take care of them before running for office.” I could have played it cool and pretended I didn’t know who he was, but I didn’t see the point. Everyone at the barbecue knew who he was, whether or not we’d met him before. And he knew we knew; otherwise, he’d have introduced himself when I had.
“Before I run for office, huh?” he said. “Word travels fast.”
“Madison is a pretty small town.”
“Yet we’ve never met until now. How do you explain
that
?”I shrugged. “Have you lived here that long? I was under the impression—Isn’t your family more from Milwaukee?”
“Au contraire, mademoiselle. I’m a Madison native. Went to kindergarten and first grade at Duncan Country Day and came back for part of eighth grade.”
“Oh, I teach at Liess,” I said. “I’m the librarian.”
“Aha! I thought you showed authority when you were reading. Cliff and Kathleen’s little girl knew just who to ask, huh?”
“Now do you believe I wasn’t hiding out?”
“There was a boy on my street growing up who went to Liess,” Charlie said. “Norm Barker, but we called him Ratty. He was a good kid. Real pale face and pink, quivery nose, but a good kid. I don’t think I’ve laid eyes on the guy since 1952.”
“I suspect the school has changed since Ratty’s time.”
Charlie grinned. “You mean it’s not lily-white anymore?”
“Not exactly.” There was a silence, and I suppose it was to fill it—it was in the interest of preventing Charlie from implying that Liess’s non-lily-whiteness was a bad thing (I didn’t know if he would imply this, but I didn’t want to run the risk)—that I announced, “I bought a house yesterday.”
He raised his eyebrows. “No kidding? Just you, not . . . ?” Not at all surreptitiously, he glanced at the ring finger of my left hand.
I ignored the question. “It’s on McKinley. If you know where Roney’s Hardware is, it’s behind that a couple streets.”
“Congratulations—way to get yourself a little piece of the American dream.” He held up his own left hand, high-five-style; to slap it required walking toward him, which, a little self-consciously, I did. Our hands hit firmly, a satisfying slap, and he said, “It’s in decent shape? The pipes and the roof and all that jazz?”
“It seems all right, although the inspector hasn’t gone through yet.” I tapped my knuckles against the wall. “Knock on wood.”
“You run into any problems, I’d be happy to take a look.” He paused. “Not that I know a damn thing about house maintenance, but I’m trying to impress you. Is it working?”
Although I laughed, I felt a clenching in my stomach. No. This barbecue was about Dena’s interest in Charlie Blackwell, not mine.
And then he said, “How about if you let me take you out for dinner next week to celebrate life, liberty, and the pursuit of the ten percent mortgage rate—you free Tuesday?”
“Oh, the rate isn’t nearly that bad anymore,” I said. “It’s closer to seven percent.”
“What, the other fellow’s still in the picture?” His voice remained game, but I could tell he was rattled that I hadn’t immediately accepted his invitation—I could tell by the way the corners of his smile collapsed a little. “You want me to challenge him to a duel, that’s what you’re trying to say?”
I had no desire to hurt Charlie Blackwell’s feelings. I attempted to sound as sincere as possible when I said, “Unfortunately, I have a busy few weeks coming up—lots of lesson plans.”
“You can’t do better than that? Lesson plans in July, hell, that’s on the order of needing to wash your hair.”
“It’s not you,” I said. “It’s really not.” We were standing a few feet apart, and I was tempted to set my palm on his cheek. He was more vulnerable, less smug, than I had initially thought. Then I did close the space between us, but all I touched was his elbow, through his pink oxford shirt. This close to him, I could sense his clean soapy warmth, the way he smelled of beer and summer. I tilted my head. “Should we go back to the party?”
I HAD THOUGHT
I’d leave shortly after the food was served, but we started a game of charades that was lengthy and quite a lot of fun and, just before my team’s last turn, Dena pressed up against me, her lips at my ear, and said, “I’m gonna be sick.” I pulled her arm around my neck and placed my own arm at her waist, and I walked us briskly into the house; at the two steps leading up to the deck, she stumbled a little, and I hoped that the other guests were preoccupied by the game. It was after nine o’clock, still over eighty degrees and only now getting dark. The mosquitoes were out, but Kathleen Hicken had lit a few citronella candles that were semi-successfully keeping them at bay.In the first-floor bathroom, I lifted the toilet seat and said, “Lean over it.” Already, Dena had arranged herself so she was supine on the floor, her head as far from the bowl as possible. “Come on, Dena,” I said. “You need to cooperate.”
“How is it we’re thirty-one years old and neither of us has a husband or children?” she slurred. “I was supposed to have
three
children by now. Mindy and Alexander and—What was I planning to call the other one?”“I don’t remember,” I said.
“Don’t
tell
me that.” She was as petulant as my students, the first-or second-graders, when it had been too long since their last snack. “You do remember!”“Tracy?” I said.
“Tracy’s not a special name.”
“Dena, if you’re going to throw up, you need to lean over the toilet. Can you take my hand and I’ll lift you?” Dena hadn’t gone up for charades in several turns, but even so, if she was this drunk, I was surprised not to have noticed outside. In an uncharacteristic act of compliance, she raised both her arms, and I tugged on them until she was sitting up. “Scoot your behind forward,” I said.
“You haven’t even been married once,” she said.
“You know what, Dena, I’m all right with that.”
She looked at me, her eyes glassy. “But you’ve been pregnant. Do you ever wish you’d kept the baby?” It had been only a couple of years earlier that I’d finally told Dena about my long-ago abortion; she was the first person I’d ever mentioned it to, and she seemed to see it as considerably less significant than I did. She said, “At TWA, I knew a girl who had three.”
In the Hickens’ bathroom, I said, “Dena, do you want me to help you here or not?”
“Did I ever tell you, when you were dating Simon, I used to picture him having a really long, thin penis. Because, you know, he was such a long, thin person.”
This was not actually inaccurate, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of saying so.
“Have you ever noticed,” she continued, “that every time we see Rose Trommler, she’s either gained or lost twenty pounds?”
“She does look a little heavy tonight,” I admitted.
“It’s like Superman going into the phone booth. She walks out of the room a size six, and she walks back in a size twelve.” Dena belched then, and I was crouched so near her that it was a warm, sour wind on my face.
“Come on, Dena! Be considerate. Should I wait outside?”
“Here it comes,” she said, and at last she did lean properly over the toilet bowl. We both were quiet.
Perhaps a minute had passed, and I said, “It’s Theresa. That’s your other daughter’s name. I just remembered.”
Dena seemed about to respond, but instead, she belched again, a smaller belch that seemed unequal as a harbinger to the monstrous chunky gush that erupted from inside her. I held her hair back and looked away as she finished retching. Working with children had made me less squeamish—they were constantly presenting their grubby hands to you, having accidents—but at some point, disgusting was still disgusting. Especially with an adult woman.