The Stories of Richard Bausch (50 page)

“Hey,” Meg says. “It’s your show.”

Milly says, “We’ll see them tonight and then we’ll leave in the morning and that’ll be that, okay?”

“I wonder what they’re doing right now. You think they’re watching the four o’clock movie or something? With their only grandson two miles away in a motel?”

In a parking lot in front of a group of low buildings on the other side of the highway, someone sets off a pack of firecrackers—they make a sound like small machine-gun fire.

“All these years of independence,” Meg says. “So people like us can have these wonderful private lives.”

Milly smiles. It’s always been Meg who defined things, who spoke out and offered opinions. Milly thinks of her sister as someone who knows the world, someone with experience she herself lacks, though Meg is only a little more than a year older. So much of her own life seems somehow duplicitous
to her, as if the wish to please others and to be well thought of had somehow dulled the edges of her identity and left her with nothing but a set of received impressions. She knows she loves the baby in her lap, and she knows she loved her husband—though during the four years of her marriage she was confused much of the time, and afraid of her own restlessness. It was only in the weeks just before Wally was taken from her that she felt most comfortably in love with him, glad of his presence in the house and worried about the dangerous fire-fighting work that was, in fact, the agency of his death. She doesn’t want to think about this now, and she marvels at how a moment of admiration for the expressiveness of her sister could lead to remembering that her husband died just as she was beginning to understand her need for him. She draws a little shuddering breath, and Meg frowns.

“You looked like something hurt you,” Meg says. “You were thinking about Wally.”

Milly nods.

“Zeke looks like him, don’t you think?”

“I wasted so much time wondering if I loved him,” Milly says.

“I think he was happy,” her sister tells her.

In the pool the boy splashes and dives, disappears; Milly watches the shimmery surface. He comes up on the other side, spits a stream of water, and climbs out. He’s wearing tight, dark blue bathing trunks.

“Come on,” Meg says, reaching for the baby. “Let me have him.”

“I don’t want to wake him,” Milly says.

Meg walks over to the edge of the pool, takes off her sandals, and dips the toe of one foot in, as though trying to gauge how cold the water is. She comes back, sits down, drops the sandals between her feet and steps into them one by one. “You know what I think it is with the Harmons?” she says. “I think it’s the war. I think the war got them. That whole generation.”

Milly ignores this, and adjusts, slightly, the weight of the baby in her lap. “Zeke,” she says. “Pretty Zeke.”

The big woman across the way has labored up off her towel and is making slow progress out of the pool area.

“Wonder if she’s married,” Meg says. “I think I’ll have a pool party when the divorce is final.”

The baby stirs in Milly’s lap. She moves slightly, rocking her legs.

“We ought to live together permanently,” Meg says.

“You want to keep living with us?”

“Sure, why not? Zeke and I get along. A divorced woman and a widow. And one cool baby boy.”

They’re quiet a while. Somewhere off beyond the trees at the end of the motel parking lot, more firecrackers go off. Meg stands, stretches. “I knew a guy once who swore he got drunk and slept on top of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. On Independence Day. Think of it.”

“You didn’t believe him,” Milly says.

“I believed he had the idea. Whole culture’s falling apart. Whole goddamn thing.”

“Do you really want to stay with us?” Milly asks her.

“I don’t know. That’s an idea, too.” She ambles over to the pool again, then walks around it, out of the gate, to the small stairway leading up to their room. At the door of the room she turns, shrugs, seems to wait. Milly lifts the baby to her shoulder, then rises. Meg is standing at the railing on the second level, her kimono partway open at the legs. Milly, approaching her, thinks she looks wonderful, and tells her so.

“I was just standing here wondering how long it’ll take to drive you crazy if we keep living together,” Meg says, opening the door to the room. Inside, in the air-conditioning, she flops down on the nearest bed. Milly puts the baby in the Port-a-Crib and turns to see that the telephone message light is on. “Hey, look,” she says.

Meg says, “Ten to one it’s the Harmons canceling out.”

“No bet,” Milly says, tucking the baby in. “Oh, I just want to go home, anyway.”

Her sister dials the front desk, then sits cross-legged with pillows at her back, listening. “I don’t believe this,” she says.

It turns out
that there are two calls: one from the Harmons, who say they want to come earlier than planned, and one from Meg’s estranged husband, Larry, who has apparently traveled here from Champaign, Illinois. When Meg calls the number he left, he answers, and she waves Milly out of the room. Milly takes the baby, who isn’t quite awake, and walks back down to the pool. It’s empty; the water is perfectly smooth. She sits down, watches the light shift on the surface, clouds moving across it in reflection.

It occurs to her that she might have to spend the rest of the trip on her
own, and this thought causes a flutter at the pit of her stomach. She thinks of Larry, pulling this stunt, and she wonders why she didn’t imagine that he might show up, her sister’s casual talk of the divorce notwithstanding. He’s always been prone to the grand gesture: once, after a particularly bad quarrel, he rented a van with loudspeakers and drove up and down the streets of Champaign, proclaiming his love. Milly remembers this, sitting by the empty pool, and feels oddly threatened.

It isn’t long before Meg comes out and calls her back. Meg is already trying to make herself presentable. What Larry wants, she tells Milly, what he pleaded for, is only that Meg agree to see him. He came to Philadelphia and began calling all the Harmons in the phone book, and when he got Wally’s parents, they gave him the number of the motel. “The whole thing’s insane,” she says, hurriedly brushing her hair. “I don’t get it. We’re almost final.”

“Meg, I need you now,” Milly says.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says her sister.

“What’re we going to do about the Harmons?”

“Larry says they asked him to say hello to you. Can you feature that? I mean, what in the world is that? It’s like they don’t expect to see you again.”

“Yes,” Milly says. “But they’re coming.”

“He called before, you know.” “Mr. Harmon?”

“No—Larry. He called just before we left. I didn’t get it. I mean, he kept hinting around and I just didn’t get it. I guess I told him we were coming to Philly.”

The baby begins to whine and complain.

“Hey, Zeke,” Meg says. She looks in the mirror. “Good Lord, I look like war,” and then she’s crying. She moves to the bed, sits down, still stroking her hair with the brush.

“Don’t cry,” Milly says. “You don’t want to look all red-eyed, do you?”

“What the hell,” Meg says. “I’m telling you, I don’t care about it. I mean—I don’t care. He’s such a baby about everything.”

Milly is completely off balance. She has been the one in need on this trip, and now everything’s turned around. “Here,” she says, offering her sister a Kleenex. “You can’t let him see you looking miserable.”

“You believe this?” Meg says. “You think I should go with him?”

“He wants to take you somewhere?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about the Harmons?”

Meg looks at her. “What about them?”

“They’re on their way here, too.”

“I can’t handle the Harmons anymore,” Meg tells her.

“Who asked you to handle them?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well—are you just going to go off with Larry?”

“I don’t know what he wants.”

“Well, for God’s sake, Meg. He wouldn’t come all this way just to tell you hello.”

“That’s what he said. He said ‘Hello.’”

“Meg.”

“I’m telling you, honey, I just don’t have a clue.”

In a little
while Larry arrives, looking sheepish and expectant. Milly lets him in, and accepts his clumsy embrace, explaining that Meg is in the bathroom changing out of her bathing suit.

“Hey,” he says, “I brought mine with me.”

“She’ll be through in a minute.”

“Is she mad at me?” he asks.

“She’s just changing,” Milly tells him.

He looks around the room, walks over to the Port-a-Crib and stands there making little cooing sounds at the baby. “He’s smiling at me. Look at that.”

“He smiles a lot.” She moves to the other side of the crib and watches him make funny faces at the baby.

Larry is a fair, willowy man, and though he’s older than Milly, she has always felt a tenderness toward him for his obvious unease with her, for the way Meg orders him around, and for his boyish romantic fragility—which, she realizes now, reminds her a little of Wally. It’s in the moment that she wishes he hadn’t come here that she thinks of this, and abruptly she has an urge to reach across the crib and touch his wrist, as if to make up for some wrong she’s done. He leans down and puts one finger into the baby’s hand. “Look at that,” he says. “Quite a grip. Boy’s going to be a linebacker.”

“He’s small for his age,” Milly tells him.

“It’s not the size. It’s the strength.”

She says nothing. She wishes Meg would come out of the bathroom. Larry pats the baby’s forehead, then moves to the windows and, holding the drapes back, looks out.

“Pretty,” he says. “Looks like it’ll be a nice, clear night for fireworks.”

For the past year or so, Larry has worked in a shoe store in Urbana, and he’s gone through several other jobs, though he often talks about signing up for English courses at the junior college and getting started on a career. He wants to save money for school, but in five years he hasn’t managed to save enough for one course. He explains himself in terms of his appetite for life: he’s unable to put off the present, and frugality sometimes suffers. Meg has often talked about him with a kind of wonder at his capacity for pleasure. It’s not a thing she would necessarily want to change. He can make her laugh, and he writes poems to her, to women in general, though according to Meg they’re not very good poems.

The truth is, he’s an amiable, dreamy young man without an ounce of objectivity about himself, and what he wears on this occasion seems to illustrate this. His bohemian dress is embarrassingly like a costume—the bright red scarf and black beret and jeans; the sleeveless turtleneck shirt, its dark colors bleeding into each other across the front.

“So,” he says, turning from the windows. “Are the grandparents around?”

She draws in a breath, deciding to tell him about the Harmons, but Meg comes out of the bathroom at last. She’s wearing the kimono open, showing the white shorts and blouse she’s changed into.

Larry stands straight, clears his throat. “God, Meg. You look great,” he says.

Meg flops down on the bed nearest the door and lights a cigarette. “Larry, what’re you trying to pull here?”

“Nothing,” he says. He hasn’t moved. He’s standing by the windows. “I just wanted to see you again. I thought Philadelphia on the Fourth might be good.”

“Okay,” Meg says, drawing on the cigarette.

“You know me,” he says. “I have a hard time saying this sort of stuff up close.”

“What sort of stuff, Larry.”

“I’ll take Zeke for a walk,” Milly says.

“I can’t believe this,” Meg says, blowing smoke.

Milly gathers up the baby, but Larry stops her. “You don’t have to go.” “Stay,” Meg tells her.

“I thought I’d go out and meet the Harmons.”

“Come on, tell me what you’re doing here,” Meg says to Larry.

“You don’t know?”

“What if I need you to tell me anyway,” she says.

He hesitates, then reaches into his jeans and brings out a piece of folded paper. “Here.”

Meg takes it, but doesn’t open it. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

“I can’t read it with you watching me like that. Jesus, Larry—what in the world’s going through your mind?”

“I started thinking about it being final,” he says, looking down. Milly moves to the other side of the room, to her own bed, still holding the baby.

“I won’t read it with you standing here,” Meg says.

Larry reaches for the door. “I’ll be outside,” he says.

Milly, turning to sit with her back to them, hears the door close quietly. She looks at Meg, who’s sitting against the headboard of the other bed, the folded paper in her lap.

“Aren’t you going to read it?”

“I’m embarrassed for him.”

Milly recalls her own, secret, embarrassment at the unattractive, hyenalike note poor Wally struck every time he laughed. “It was probably done with love,” she says.

Meg offers her the piece of paper across the space between the two beds. “You read it to me.”

“I can’t do that, Meg. It’s private. I shouldn’t even be here.”

Meg opens the folded paper, and reads silently. “Jesus,” she says. “Listen to this.”

“Meg,” Milly says.

“You’re my sister. Listen. ‘When I began to think our time was really finally up/My chagrined regretful eyes lumbered tightly shut.’ Lumbered, for God’s sake.”

Milly says nothing.

“My eyes lumbered shut.”

And quite suddenly the two of them are laughing. They laugh quietly, or they try to. Milly sets Zeke down on his back, and pulls the pillows of the bed to her face in an attempt to muffle herself, and when she looks up she sees Meg on all fours with her blanket pulled over her head and, beyond her, Larry’s faint shadow through the window drapes. He’s pacing. He stops and leans on the railing, looking out at the pool.

“Shhh,” Meg says, finally. “There’s more.” She sits straight, composes herself, pushes the hair back from her face, and holds up the now crumpled piece of paper. “Oh,” she says. “Ready?”

“Meg, he’s right there.”

Meg looks. “He can’t hear anything.”

“Whisper,” Milly says.