Beyond Deserving (12 page)

“Which part are you doing, son?”

Carter thinks she is joking. He laughs, a happy, loved young man. “Oh you know, Mom. I turn it in!”

She tries to wait up for Michael. She takes a folder of papers into the bathroom to read. The topic is interventions on behalf of babies born of addicted or diseased mothers. She sits on the tile, because the cold floor keeps her awake.

She remembers feeling Carter move for the first time inside her. She had just read an article in a women's magazine that listed a calendar of mileposts in pregnancy, and she kept it in her dresser drawer, checking it secretly. “The sensation of quickening may be like a bubble of gas, a touch of indigestion—” But it wasn't that way at all. It was as clearly wonderful as the sun coming up. She felt the rest of her life ripening. She hadn't even wanted to be pregnant until then. Carter, Carter, he would die to think she had such thoughts about him.

And these poor women, the subject of dry essays—do they think of the life inside them, too? Do they notice?

At two in the morning Michael wakes her with his snoring. She wakes him gently. “Michael, Michael,” she says, “you're making your funny noises.” He says, “Mmm.”

She puts her hand somewhere he will notice.

He turns and says sleepily, “Am I not to go back to sleep after a day's work and a long night's toil?”

“First you have to make it up to me.”

“You're mad about Carter's paper?”

“Not now. It's the snoring. This is twice in twenty hours. It's not even morning yet.”

He puts his hand on her nice round breast. “You make it awful hard on a man,” he says.

20

Ursula makes herself a cup of tea and switches on the television to wait for the news on PBS. This television, a little black and white, sits on their old highchair, against the wall by the basement door. The Friday evening summary of the financial news is on. Sometimes Ursula tries to listen and learn. She has left her father's investments in his same funds, just changing ownership, counting on her dad, even now, to know what he was doing—and what she ought to do. But she knows times change, investments should change, she will have to know more to get more. Only an inheritance seems a kind of free money, certainly a gift, and she trusts her father to have remembered that she would have no head for it all.

Juliette phones. “Where are you?” Ursula sputters. She hadn't realized that it was seven already. Michael has gone to River Cove, to do his duty.

“
Mom
, Dad wasn't home either when I got home from dance, and there wasn't a note or anything—”

“Answer my question. Where are you?”

“Other kids go places without checking in every fifteen minutes. You act like I'm a baby.”

“I'm waiting.”

“The mall.”

“The mall!” The mall is twenty miles away, in the next town. “How did you manage that?”

“Kristi's mom picked us up and then dropped us off.”

“Who's us?”

“Oh Mother.”

“Juliette, you can't go off with anyone without checking.”

“I tried! I didn't know where you were.”

“Then you should have waited.”

“And missed my chance?”

Juliette's high whine reminds Ursula that her daughter is feeling cornered. And her complaint is at least partially valid. Ursula did forget to make Friday plans with her daughter. She didn't even mind until Juliette called.

“Never mind. When are you coming home, and what are you doing at the mall?”

“It's too late for the bus, Mom.”

“Where's Kristi's mother?”

“I told you she dropped us off. Kristi, me, Darlene, and Brie.”

This is not Juliette's crowd. (Why would anyone name a child after a cheese?) Juliette doesn't run with a crowd. She spends times with Marina, another ninth-grader, who also dances, and there have been a couple of other girls around now and then. Juliette has never been one for “spending the night,” and she seldom goes to school events. Ursula has heard of these girls, though. They are “popular” girls. Within the last week Brie told Juliette her ends were split, and Juliette wanted to go to the beauty parlor as soon as possible. Ursula said their appraisal would have to wait until school was out, and Juliette seems to have forgotten.

“So how are you getting home?”

“Couldn't you pick us up? We probably would have come out here anyway.”

“I could not.”

“How am I supposed to get home then?”

“What are you doing?”

“Brie is looking for a prom dress. Kristi already found a bathing suit. I'm just—you know—. Mom, they're waiting on me, I've got to go. Aren't you going to pick us up?”

“I can't carry four of you in my car.”

“Someone can sit in the middle.”

“Not without a seat belt. Not in my car.”

“Motherrr!”

“I will pick you up.
You
, Juliette.”

“I told them you'd give us a ride!”

“You can't make commitments for me. I'm not happy about this at all. I'm going to listen to the news before I do anything. Hostages. National defense.” She sighs. “Gary Hart.”

“I'll leave here at eight, and I want you to be at the Meier and Frank bottom entrance at eight-thirty sharp. By the shoe department. Got it?”

“What am I supposed to tell them?” Ursula can hear tears.

“Tell them to call
their
mothers. Eight-thirty.”

Driving to the mall, Ursula feels herself softening. She knows what happened. Her sweet Juliette was standing around when those girls were making their plans, and she got swept up in them. Going to the mall with the local Valley Girls. It is understandable. Unusual for Juliette, but not so unusual for an adolescent.

She tries to recall the faces of the girls Juliette named. All she can bring to mind is hair and glare, the standard teenage girl. So these are the desired companions.

She tries to imagine them prancing around the mall, looking at clothes, handling jewelry, scarves, purses, little stuffed doo-dads in the Hallmark shop.

She hopes none of them shoplift.

She tries to concentrate on the state of the world, but thinking about it makes it worse. Sometimes she wakes at night in the classic cold sweat, and realizes she has been dreaming about Chernobyl or Star Wars.

It is eight-thirty when she arrives, and there is no sign of Juliette. She waits in the car five minutes, then gets out and goes inside. That part of the store is almost empty. A very skinny sales clerk stands slouched against the frame of the arched entry into the storeroom of the shoe department. In Electronics, across the aisle, a much older man, tired and fleshy in a polyester suit, is watching the shoe clerk. Two women about Ursula's age sit on one of the mattresses talking intensely, their heads close together. They reach behind them several times to push against the mattress. Ursula walks past them, past the escalator, to look in Misses. Not a likely place, but if Juliette were early she might have wandered around.

With no sign of Juliette, Ursula goes up the escalator and walks through the store quickly, then looks out into the mall center to see if the girls are sitting somewhere, or coming toward the store.

By now Ursula is worried that Juliette will be at the agreed place, wondering where her mother is, so she hurries back. The couple on the mattress is gone. The girl in Shoes is straightening the displays and yawning, without bothering to cover her mouth. The man in Electronics is not in sight, and neither is Juliette.

Ursula sits in a chair in Shoes, facing into the store, and waits. Twice she gets up to look outside. Her unlocked car sits in plain sight.

I should be angry, she thinks, but already she is imagining horrible things. Small towns are not safe from monsters of madness. You have to move to another country—Canada, New Zealand, Japan—for that. Juliette is naive and vulnerable and dear. Ursula picks up a pair of forty-eight dollar huaraches, dyed bright blue, and examines the sole, the thickness of a crepe.

Juliette comes through the door from outside. Three girls come in with her. There is something formidable about them
en masse
. Juliette breaks from the others and runs to her mother.

I won't embarrass her, Ursula tells herself. It can wait. This is not a serious infraction. She forces herself to smile.

“I was worried, honey. Let's go.” Ursula reaches for her daughter's hand.

Juliette jerks away and speaks in a hoarse, venomous whisper. “Don't you dare humiliate me!”

Ursula smiles at the other girls. “G'night,” she calls. They smirk.

“Bye, Brie,” Juliette mews as Ursula pushes the door. Outside, she says, “I hate you!”

Ursula keeps quiet as she pulls onto the freeway. Juliette is rigid in her seat, her face pulled into a paroxysm of anger.

“I will not be angry,” Ursula says sweetly. One good whack is lurking in her hand, but she has never struck a child yet.

“How could you talk to me like that?” Juliette demands.

“Now you just shut up, Juliette. I am the one who ought to be mad here, after cooling my heels for half an hour. Where the hell WERE YOU?”

“You weren't there at 8:30. I looked everywhere.” Juliette is unconvincing.

“That isn't so and you know it. You should have waited where we agreed.”

“Where you said.”

“I said. Right.”

“They were going to go and leave me there by myself. I said, ‘Can't you just wait until my mom comes?'”

“Where were you, honey?”

Juliette begins to sob violently. Though the energy subsides, she cries all the way home. Ursula, provoked but puzzled, bites her lip.

As soon as they are in the house, Juliette screams, “You don't CARE that I don't have any friends. You don't CARE that I look DUMB in my STUPID clothes and STUPID hair.”

Ursula reaches for Juliette. She has always dealt with tantrums by touching and holding and waiting them out.

“I hate you!” Juliette runs to her room and slams the door.

Pajamas scratches at the basement door in the kitchen, whining to be fed. Ursula opens the door and calls down into blackness: “Fish, you there?” Of course not, she didn't see his van. But she wishes for company in the house. That was something she liked when she and Michael were first married. They lived in a dump, but their friends crashed for a night, for a week. Carmen lived with them over a year. Not Fish, not then. He was gone those first years. By the time he got back, the marriage was real and solid, their lives had become stable, there was Carter.

She turns on the light and goes down to feed the cat. A spider floats in the water dish. Ursula washes and refills the dish. She squats down beside Pajamas. The cat attacks the food.

“Couldn't you be a little bit of a pal, huh?” Ursula says. The cat moves around so that Ursula is talking to her back-end. “Couldn't you nuzzle up to me when I feed you?” Sometimes at night Pajamas climbs on Michael's lap and rubs him all over with her head, pushing into his chest and his belly, then licking his hand or arm, finally settling against him. When the children were younger, Michael used to make them laugh by taking Pajamas' paws and making her “dance” as he “spoke” for her.

The cat is getting old. There is a bald place on her rear from a scrape.

Ursula goes back upstairs and through the living areas, turning on lights. She has read that light is a great balm for depression. She isn't exactly depressed, but she is a little lonesome. It used to be that Fridays were what you lived for all week. It used to be Ursula cooked great pots of stew or chili, and friends sat around listening to Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin, and talked about living in Alaska or Belize, as if any of them were likely to make such big moves.

Winston lives now in Seattle and drives a school bus. Two hours twice a day, this is his career. Funnier yet, he lives with Carmen, who always preferred exotic men from foreign countries before Winston. Harry Dayton is dead of a violent allergic reaction to some damned mushroom, in Mexico. The Lutters live in Portland still, in a much nicer house than this one, with their four kids. The Edsons have made country life work. In short, nobody is around anymore but Fish. And Katie.

They have friends, of course. But you call before you drop by. You make plans for dinner. You reciprocate. She can't imagine how she would get by, if not for coffee and commiseration at work. Social workers always empathize.

Carter has brought his computer downstairs and set it up on the old receptionist's counter, left over from the days when this was the chiropractor's waiting room. They meant to take the desk out, but it is oak, and they haven't got around to it. It looks silly, but there it is, a perfect place to type, too. Ursula keeps little potted begonias and ivy on top, and stacks magazines on the floor behind it.

One summer day she found a half-empty Coke can there. There were ants all over the top, all over the counter, running down the sides and into the corner of the walls. She yelled at Carter, who said blithely, “The ants were already there, hiding, Mom. I did you a big favor flushing them out.” It turned out he was more or less correct. She began to see ants on the windowsills, upstairs and down. There were ants in her closet, in the pockets of her dresses. She called an exterminator in. The family left for two days. They drove to Newport and stayed in the new Sylvia Beach Hotel. Carter got the Edgar Allen Poe room, with heavy drapes around the bed. They had an expensive weekend, but a great time. When they came home, they left the windows open, even when a thunderstorm blew in. Michael said next time he would leave something out for the ants, that it wasn't necessary to poison the whole family, but after that there weren't any more ants.

In the dining room, books are spread all over the table. Wads of yellow paper litter the table and floor. It dawns on Ursula that Carter spent the day there rather than at school. She takes a sack from the kitchen and gathers up the discarded wads. Drafts? Notes? Whatever they were, he is through with them. All of his—and his father's—work is now on floppy disk. She carries the sack and the kitchen garbage out to the can in the alley. On her way to the bathroom she notes that the trash cans lined up outside Carter's bedroom are still full.