Wish You Were Here (27 page)

“I think you're all right on that one,” Margaret said.

“I don't know why I'm included in this. In ten years you'll just have to do it again.”

“Don't say that.”

“It's true.”

“Hell,” Margaret said, “I don't know where I'm going to be in two years, let alone ten.”

Ambushed, Arlene could only nod at the confession. Months ago, in the breathless humidity of Phipps Conservatory, stopped before a gaudy offering of orchids, Emily had speculated grimly on the odds of Margaret
and Jeff reconciling. Arlene disagreed. Now Margaret proved her wrong beyond a doubt, and yet she felt relieved and oddly gratified that she'd told her personally.

“I'm sorry,” Arlene said.

“It's best.” Margaret crushed her cigarette underfoot. “Anyway, it's not like I have a choice.”

Arlene wanted another cigarette, wanted to stay and talk, but they were done. The rain drummed the garage. They hustled across the spongy grass to the kitchen door. Inside, Lisa was shaping hamburgers and arranging them on a plate. Margaret asked if she needed help, and Lisa put her in charge of the children's french fries. Arlene saw there wasn't room for her and kept moving, into the living room where the boys were watching cartoons. Through the window, she could see Emily and Kenneth on the porch, Emily holding forth on something.

On her way past the set she turned it down, but when she closed the door to her room she could still hear it. The room was too cramped for a chair, so she sat down on the bed and looked at her hands, limp in her lap. She turned them over and examined the backs, the veins woven through the delicate bones, as if they were alien, not a part of her.

In all the world, the people in this house were the only people she had left. In a week she'd be back in her apartment, surrounded by memories, the sun climbing the wall above the couch as the day waned, painting it pink before gray filled the corners. They would not be back here next year. It made sense that she should choose something to remember it by. Ten years could be a long time. She sat there with the cartoons going in the other room and thought about what she wanted.

Sarah had to get out of the house, just bounce, go, get away from everyone—her mother mostly, telling her she needed to help and then yelling at her when she said there was nothing left to do (she'd checked, Uncle Ken said so).

“There's lots you can do. You can pour milk for everybody. We need napkins and silverware, and I don't see any ketchup or mustard on the table. You can ask whoever's on the porch if anyone's interested in having onions on their hot dogs.”

“I am,” Aunt Lisa chipped in from the sink, her accomplice.

“There,” her mother said, “you can chop an onion and put it in a dish for everyone. After you're done with that, ask me and I'll give you another job. Don't ever think there's nothing to do.”

“Where's a knife?”

“Where do you think one is, Sarah? In the drawer with all the other knives, right where they always are. Look, if you're going to be like that, then just go. That's not being helpful.”

“I
am,
Mom.”

“That's not how it sounds to me.” She pulled the drawer out with a clank, and then when Sarah had found a knife, closed it for her. “Use the cutting board on the dishwasher, it's clean. You remember how to cut an onion.”

“Yes.”

In half, so you had a flat side that didn't roll around, then half of that if it was too big for your knife. You cut it longways first, making rainbows, and then when you cut it the other way the inside pieces came out already chopped.

“Do you want to use the sink?” Aunt Lisa asked.

“That's okay.”

She'd cry anyway; the purple were the worst. She was careful
peeling it and didn't break the skin. She leaned back as she made the first crisp cut—crooked, but her mother wasn't looking. It was a big one, so she quartered it. To do the slices right she had to see. She held them together, her fingers stiff, the blade crunching, then hitting wood. White juice slicked the cutting board, and the hot scent made her turn her face away. A familiar sharpness tickled her nose, pinched her sinuses until the air seemed to leave them. She sucked a cool breath through her mouth, but it was too late, her eyes were burning, filling, tears catching in the lashes, breaking free and wetting her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed. It did nothing.

She could barely see to cube the rest of it, but that was the only way—fast. Sniffling, she drew the blade through the four quarters, all thought of neatness forgotten, blinking to keep from cutting herself. Why did her mother have to be so mean? It had nothing to do with her. Her whole life Sarah had watched her go off on people, and still she didn't understand it. Her only defense was that she'd done nothing wrong, but she'd grown tired of being yelled at, and at some point (she couldn't remember when) had begun to hate her, so in truth she wasn't innocent. Now, instead of coolly appealing to her own blamelessness, she felt a hot combination of shame and anger, a stinging helplessness. The feeling would pass as quickly as these tears, but unlike them, it was real.

She finished sloppily, hacking at the last pieces where they fell. She scraped it all into a bowl and set it on the table, washed her hands and dried her eyes with a paper towel. They burned as if she'd been swimming.

“Thank you,” her mother said, as if things were square between them.

“What else?” Sarah asked.

“Silverware.”

She counted out nine sets, spoons included, whether they needed them or not, and grabbed a stack of paper napkins. Salt and pepper shakers, mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, brown mustard, relish, hamburger relish, three different kinds of pickles.

“Why don't you tear up some lettuce,” her mother said, and when she was done with that, said that people might like tomato. “You'll need a sharper knife for that.”

I know that.

Sarah had patience. She would outlast her. She couldn't go anywhere in the rain anyway. She thought of writing Mark a letter, but he still owed her one. The tomato fell in see-through wheels. She washed the seeds off the board, scrubbed it with a sponge.

The burgers were almost ready when the smoke alarm went off, peeping from the ceiling. Aunt Lisa used a broom to knock it down, then pulled the battery out.

Sarah poured the milk without being told. Were any of the adults going to have milk?

“I'm not,” her mother said.

She had to go out onto the porch to ask. None of them were.

“What else can I do?” Sarah asked as sweetly as she could.

Her mother looked her work over. “We'll need serving spoons for the coleslaw and the potato salad, otherwise I think we're set.”

It couldn't be easy. There were no big spoons in the drawer. She had to get them from the dishwasher. While she was reaching in, her mother said, “Rufus needs to be fed.”

It's Justin's job, she wanted to say, but didn't. That would be cheating. This was just between the two of them.

In the middle of dinner, Rufus threw up. He'd been sniffing the children's plates, padding across the porch floor whenever anything fell. Emily had just told him to stop begging when he paused beside Kenneth's rocker and coughed, stretched his neck and hung his head like a horse, then silently upchucked a yellow pile.

“Ewww!” the boys accused, pointing.

“Take him outside,” Arlene ordered, and Kenneth jumped up, plate in hand, and got him by the collar.

“Bad dog!” Sam scolded.

“He's all right,” Emily said, “he is not a bad dog,” because she knew what the problem was. He wasn't used to people food, and the children had been feeding him chips all afternoon. She could see undigested pellets of his dry food in the pile.

Kenneth put him out, and Rufus stood at the door looking in at them.

“It's all right,” Emily comforted him, and left her plate. “I will take care of it,” she told Kenneth. “You sit and eat your dinner.”

Arlene stood.

“I've got it,” Emily insisted.

“I'm not eating out here now,” Arlene said, as if there was no question.

“Oh please,” Emily said, but when she came out with the paper towels, everyone had fled to the living room. Rufus stood at the door, watching her sop up the mess.

“Really,” Emily said. “You'd think it was toxic.”

She swabbed the boards and deposited the ball in the trash, washed her hands and returned to her seat.

“Feeling better?” she asked Rufus. “I imagine so.”

She opened the door for him. He eyed her guiltily, then sniffed the spot she'd cleaned until she told him to lie down.

She had just started on her coleslaw when Ella came out with her plate, and Sarah. They sat down and ate as if nothing had happened.

“Two hardy souls,” she remarked.

“It's just barf,” Ella said.

“They're being weenies,” Sarah agreed.

Emily expected Kenneth and the boys too but someone had turned on the TV. It didn't bother her, and honestly it wouldn't have bothered her to sit out here alone to show her loyalty to Rufus and make a stand for levelheadedness. That Ella and Sarah had come to her rescue was an extra pleasure. She was happy to have such brave allies.

Emily could be such a pill sometimes. Arlene knew that people expected it of herself, the crabby old schoolmistress, but every teacher she'd worked with had had a sense of humor. Secret ballots! Arlene was tempted to give her a blank sheet but knew she'd be offended. Henry would have found the whole process ridiculous, would have found a way to be absent when Emily announced the lucky winners.

She still had not come up with anything. She was getting the TV, not that she needed it. The dresser, maybe, but that was somehow unsatisfying. She felt dull from being inside all day, housebound, the stale air drugging her. The rain, so comforting at home, here cast a hazy purposelessness over the day. It did feel like a Monday, the sense of having gotten nothing done, the promise of a long way to go yet.

She tried to read but the TV interrupted her progress, the live dialogue trumping her printed words, hauling her in against her will like a sideshow barker. The living room was full, everyone in sweaters. The cold and dark had driven them inside, and to keep the children entertained they had compromised and chosen a perennial favorite,
The Third Man.
It had become a rainy-day staple, a puzzle of sorts for the children, pointing out the now obvious devices they knew from cartoons. Through the years Arlene had seen it at least ten times, the monotonous zither music part of Chautauqua. The boys were on the floor, absorbed. The actors had to contend with the dishwasher, barreling away in the kitchen. Kenneth was laying a fire, stuffing crumpled newspapers under the grate, the folding screen set aside. Later, for a treat, they would roast marshmallows and make s'mores. She sat in one corner of the couch, Lisa successfully reading beside her, and then Margaret—three monkeys. Emily had pulled a kitchen chair up to the gateleg table and fussed over a puzzle of Buckingham Palace, a lamp pulled close so she could see.

Joseph Cotten was running down a wet alley in Vienna when the lights died. “Hey!” the boys hollered at once, and Lisa shushed them. The TV blinked off, the dishwasher stopped with a dripping. Arlene looked up from her page at the blackness.

“The power's out,” Sarah observed, invisible.

“It's not raining that hard,” Margaret argued.

“Good old Niagara Mohawk,” Emily said.

A match flared in Kenneth's hand. The disembodied sleeves of his sweater appeared, then his face. He touched the flame to the newspaper and the room warmed.

“Nice timing,” Lisa said.

None of them moved, as if paralyzed by the lack of light. Arlene was still holding her book open as if she might keep reading. Rufus looked up from his spot on the floor, confused.

In seconds the fire leapt up, the flames reaching into the flue.

“Well,” Emily said, “isn't this cozy?”

Outside, a bright light popped on. “Intruder alert,” the robotic voice warned, “intruder alert.”

“Not again,” Arlene said. “Is it going to be like this every night?”

“Call the police,” Emily instructed Kenneth, already on his way to the phone.

They were all quiet while he spoke to someone, listened in on his end of the conversation. “Yes, for the second night in a row.”

“Intruder alert, intruder alert.” The chirping in between seemed louder because there was no other sound. Arlene hoped people up and down the road were bombarding the police with calls. At home, she had to deal with car alarms going off in the parking lot behind her building. She shouldn't have to put up with it here.

Kenneth hung up. “They're going to send someone over.”

“You don't sound hopeful,” Emily said.

“All they're going to do is look around. It'll go off by the time they get here, but there's no way they can disarm the system, only the security people can do that.”

“I think I'll be giving the Lerners a call tomorrow.”

“Intruder alert, intruder alert …”

Margaret got up and made her way to the kitchen, as if she could
escape the racket. The boys theatrically stuck their fingers in their ears. The fire had settled, and Kenneth replaced the screen, throwing a floating net of shadows across the walls.

“Let's sing,” he suggested, projecting over the noise. “Ella, how does that
Titanic
song start?”

Ella pleaded ignorance.

“You know. ‘Oh, they built the ship
Titanic
to sail the ocean blue, and they said it was a ship that the' … something could never go through.”

Both boys popped up on their knees and raised their hands, as if in class. It was a camp song, they all knew it. Ella was just being shy. Arlene and Henry had sung it sixty years ago around a fire taller than their father, sparks sailing into the night sky.