Acts of God (13 page)

Sometimes on purpose Margaret leaves dishes in the sink. She doesn't make her bed. Just to anger her mother. Or she'll make it, but not fluff the pillow just right. She does this just to drive her mother wild. Margaret is ashamed of who she is and where she lives. She doesn't want her friends to hear her mother speak with her cackly laugh or see her put on her uniform to go to work. When Clarice Blair goes to work for Dr. Reiss, the dentist in town, she dresses all in white—white stockings, white shoes, a white uniform.

Clarice Blair should not wear white, or yellow, or any of the pale colors. She should wear blue brocade, red taffeta. She should be presented at balls. Instead she lives with her daughter above a store. She never complains, though her daughter does. Still, this is a woman who once lived in a house surrounded by lilac trees and played the violin on a stage. Now she dresses in white and keeps a doctor's appointment book. She is paying for her many mistakes.

Vicky listened to all of this, aghast and enraptured as I described for her the strange and tragic life of Margaret Blair. “Elena told you all that?”

I was proud that Vicky had believed my fib. “That and more.”

Vicky nodded. “Well, it makes perfect sense.”

“I'm sworn to secrecy, so please don't tell anyone.”

Vicky crossed her heart and hoped to die, promising she wouldn't tell a soul.

*   *   *

That was the summer when the alewives died. They died by the millions. Their stinking carcasses covered the beaches and carpeted the sea for half a mile or more. The stench made its way up from the waterfront and the bluffs to the houses, such as ours, that were blocks away. No one knew why the fish died, but we knew that we could not go down to the beach that summer.

Day after day Vicky and I canvassed the neighborhood, trying to interest people in the Firefighters of America. Our search took us farther and farther from home, deeper into Prairie Vista than we'd ever been. We had more doors slammed in our faces, people shouting at us to go away.

After days of discouragement, Vicky wanted to ring Margaret's door. What's the worst that could happen? Vicky said. I hesitated, knew that all I'd told Vicky was lies, but then it seemed to me that perhaps I hadn't lied. That probably things were much as I'd envisioned them. It was a hot July day and the air stank of garbage and dead fish and the fumes from the repair shop across the way as we rang the buzzer at Margaret Blair's door.

Standing on the hot asphalt we waited a few moments and then I said to Vicky, “See, no one's home. Let's go.” We were starting to walk away when someone buzzed us in. We entered a dingy vestibule and Margaret called down to us, “Up here.” We climbed a flight of stairs and there at the landing was Margaret, nicely dressed in blue Bermuda shorts and a matching top and smiling as if she had been expecting us all along.

To our surprise the rooms were cheery. The walls were painted bright colors—rose and aquamarine; there was no grayness. No peeling wallpaper. The apartment smelled of soap and potpourri—nothing of what I'd imagined. No bacon-and-eggs smell. Vicky gave me a “I thought you said…” look and I shrugged back at her “I guess Elena got it wrong.”

“It's so nice to see you girls,” Mrs. Blair said, an apron around her waist, a wide smile on her face. Her jet-black hair pulled back, red lipstick on as if she had someplace to go. She invited us to sit at the table and poured for us tall, cold glasses of lemonade. She placed a plate of cookies in front of us, cut into the shapes of diamonds and stars, so buttery they melted in your mouth. It was hot but a fan blew and we felt cool and comfortable inside.

“Margaret, give them the grand tour,” Mrs. Blair said with her hearty laugh, so we got to see the rest of the apartment, which was four more rooms. Her mother's room was all white with big pillows on the four poster bed. The bed had a canopy and I'd never seen one before and Margaret let us sit under it for a few minutes. Then she showed us the living room, where there were pictures of horses chasing foxes on the wall, and the bathroom that had pink, fluffy towels. I asked if I could wash my hands so that I could touch one and it was very soft. When I asked Elena if she could make our towels that soft, she told me to shut up and mind my own business.

In Margaret's room the shelves were filled with blue-eyed dolls wearing lacy dresses. Stuffed bears and rabbits and dogs covered her bed. We played with Margaret's dolls and she introduced us to each one and they had names like Deirdre and Gruswalda. Strange, foreign names. Margaret wanted to know about the Firefighters of America and we explained to her what we'd learned about putting out fires. How you never throw water on a grease fire. How if a person is burning, throw a blanket on top. We told her about the “dead man's room” and she seemed very interested in this.

“You mean there's no way out.”

“There's only one way out, but if there's a fire, then there's no way out.”

“No way out,” Margaret said, running her hands up and down her arms as if she had the shivers. “Explain it to me again.”

Vicky and I sighed, thinking she was dumb. “You're trapped,” I told her.

“Oh, I get it now.” After that, Margaret said she wanted to volunteer for Firefighters of America. She wanted to help us the next time we went house to house. We said sure, though Vicky and I soon lost interest in our organization and never went house to house again.

We played until it was dark, when Clarice offered to drive us home. Margaret came along for the ride and she told her mother exactly where to turn. She knew the way to our houses as if she had been there dozens of times, not once or twice.

When she dropped me off, Clarice commented on how beautiful our houses were. “You live in a very pretty house,” she said, holding my arm with her long red nails. “Oh, it must be so lovely to live here.” As I opened the door, she said, “Say hello to your nice father for me.” Then she begged me to come back again. She said it so many times that I found myself racing to the door.

15

Spices filled the air. Cardamom,
cinnamon, cilantro. Jade was testing me to see if I could name them. She was cooking something, some kind of stew. “You have to try it, Mom,” she said. I took sips, dipped into the savory broth. It was spicy, hot. Jade had become a vegan, announcing she wouldn't eat anything that moved. Nothing with arms or legs.

When Jade wasn't home, I sneaked ham sandwiches, cheese, but lately, since Ted now spent most of his time with Cherri up the coast, this cooking filled the house. Now my daughter brought these savory smells. “So I saw him again,” Jade said as she stirred the pot. She said it slowly so I wouldn't think she was crazy.

“You saw whom again?”

She nodded slowly. “You know, the old sea captain. On the cliffs the night you were in town. He was holding his compass.”

I wanted to take Jade into my arms, hold back the tide of her fears. Two or three times she had seen this old captain walking the bluff past our house. I'd always attributed this to Jade's wild imagination and to the fact that she's never liked to be alone.

Yet I had a sense, since I'd returned from Winonah, that things weren't quite as they'd been before. I am still, though not to the extent that I was as a girl, an orderly person with an archival sense of where things belong. So it surprised me when I found small objects out of place. A slip of paper was missing from a drawer, shoes were not on their shelves. I found sweaters draped over chairs. There was a scent of perfume. Once in the shower, I felt hands coursing my body. Hands that knew where they were going. For an instant, I couldn't catch my breath.

Jade served me her vegetable stew, which she poured over curried rice. I was taking my first bites as she warmed her hands over her food, said a prayer. She had explained to me something about how she was transferring the energy from the food into her body and how she was thanking the vegetables for sharing themselves with her, but I didn't quite understand it. “This is delicious,” I told her, and it was.

“Thanks, Mom. I want to be healthy. I want to eat better food.”

“Well, that's a good idea.” We ate in silence for a while. “So do you have plans for this weekend?” I asked her.

“Maybe,” she said, her head bowed over her steaming rice, “not sure.”

“I was thinking we could do something. Drive up to San Francisco. You could see Dad.”

She shrugged. “I don't know … Weren't you just in San Francisco the other day? Didn't you see one of your old pals?”

“Yes, I saw a man named Nick Schoenfield. His father was a famous quarterback.”

“That's nice. You gonna see him again?”

“Maybe. When he comes back to town.” I found that I wanted to talk about Nick and our time together, but I didn't think she'd understand. Could I tell her about his bad marriage? About the hopes he'd once had of being a great athlete like his father? Jade would find these things quaint, like old pictures she discovered in dusty frames that were charming but not quite relevant to her.

After dinner Jade took her dishes to the sink. “You cooked; I'll clean up,” I told her, so without a protest, she left them there and headed to her room. After a little while I got up and rinsed them, washed the pots. Wiped the counters clean. Then I went and sat in the living room, thinking I'd read for a while.

The den felt chilly. A draft seemed to be coming from the stone fireplace. In some of the rooms of the house—the ones where the light never gets in and the walls are always dank—I kept blankets on the backs of chairs. The blanket from Winonah's centennial was one of these.

I didn't, in fact, like to sit in the den that much, even though, along with the kitchen, it has the best coastal views, because the chill never leaves these walls. There is a dankness to certain rooms and at times I have kept one or two locked. Still there is always a draft and the wind around the house is a relentless howl.

Wrapping the Winonah centennial blanket around me, I sat in the den, sipping my tea. On the coffee table was a volume of Francis Eagger's poems and I leafed through it until I came upon the poem Bruno had liked, entitled “Old Hat.” I remembered how that was a favorite expression of Lily's. I read a few lines: “sleepers swathed in gauze; a young girl dashing naked through city streets; wild swans attack children who feed them, engulfing them in their wings. These are just bad dreams.”

These lines surprised me. Once my brothers and I were attacked while feeding wild swans. They swooped down on us, battering us with their wings until our parents chased them away. And just recently I'd had a dream of me chasing Jade, who was running naked down a city street. It was as if the poet had read my own dreams, written them there.

I was shivering so I wrapped myself tightly into “Home of the Winonah Wildcats.” The train station and Winonah Summer Festival graced my lap. Trying to get warm, I felt restless now and wished Jade would come and bother me. My visit with Nick was on my mind. Our talk over dinner, a sadness that seeped into his blue-gray eyes. I felt uneasy as I thought about Margaret. It seemed she was drinking too much and her marriage was on the rocks. She's not my problem, I told myself. She never was. Other things were my problem—like how I was going to make ends meet.

Money seemed tight and there were bills I had to put aside. I thought of calling Jeb and asking for a loan, but Jeb has a way of making me feel I have mismanaged my life and so I don't like to ask him for anything unless I have to. In the end he always tells me—as does Charlie—to sell my house, which is now actually worth something. It does no good to argue with either of them that this is my home. Instead of calling him, I sat curled up, making income and expense lists on pads of yellow paper. The sea pounded below my house in a way that was almost frightening and made me think about the reunion and what it had been like being back home. How it had felt, parking my car on the beach, being there once more. I felt a funny kind of longing that I can't quite remember ever feeling before though I'm sure I felt it a million times when there was someone I wanted. I sat there, thinking I missed something I didn't even know mattered.

The house felt lonely and cold with Jade in her room with the door shut, listening to music. There was no one I could talk to. I decided to call Shana and see if she'd meet me for dinner the next night. But when I picked up the phone, I heard the voices on the line. The same voices I'd heard a few weeks before. This time the woman, whose voice was still familiar to me, had a problem. A fight with her husband, who was jealous over her friendship with another man. “Excuse me,” I said. I tried to shout at them that they were on my line, but once again they could not hear me.

“Well, does he have a reason to be jealous?”

“Oh, I don't know.”

“Well, if there's no reason, then what's the point?”

Because the voice was familiar, I continued to listen as they went on to share a recipe for Moroccan chicken, which required lime pickle, purchased from a spice store in Saratoga. Then the conversation went back to some difficulty the woman was having.

As I listened, I suddenly placed the voice. It was my nearest neighbor, Betsy Bernhart, a person I hardly knew, except that she sometimes got my mail and now, it seemed, I got her phone calls. Once I had to return her cat to her and once or twice she'd complained when the kids played their music too loud. But now I listened as she told him that things hadn't been too good lately. That she had been having second thoughts about her childless marriage. “Don't let appearances fool you,” she said to the man.

“Really,” the man said, “I didn't know.”

When I hung up, I decided that the next time I saw Betsy, I'd have to tell her that our wires were crossed. It was not long afterward that the phone rang again and I decided that if it was another crossed line I'd have to go and discuss the problem with her now.