Child of My Heart (24 page)

I stood up—Macduff’s eyes following me, expectantly, I thought—and said I would just call home to get a ride. He nodded. When I came back from the phone in the hallway, he had lit a cigarette and he was watching Daisy sleep on the couch. As I began to bend over her, he said, “Oh, do you have to wake her up?”

“My father will be here,” I said, and he waved his hand.

“Just wait a few minutes. I can’t remember the last time I saw a kid asleep like this.” He leaned forward, his chin in his hand, the cigarette burning. The shadow of his beard had grown darker and it had made his hair and eyes seem that much darker still.

“It’s so pure,” he said. I sat down beside her again, uncertain if it was the right thing to do, to let him watch her like this, but a few seconds later he drew on his cigarette and then said, moving it around, “Does he sleep out there, in the studio?”

I shrugged.

“I think he takes naps,” I said.

“During the day.”

He laughed through his nose.

“How much is he out there?” he asked.

“I mean, on any given day?”

I shrugged.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“A lot.”

He nodded, touched a finger to the tip of his elegant nose.

“And how much does he drink?” he asked.

I shrugged again.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I’m at the beach all day. With Flora.”

He nodded.

“Flora,” he said, and tapped his chin, considering this.

“Does he spend much time with Flora, you think? I mean, when you’re not here being the babysitter.”

I shook my head.

“I don’t know,” I said once more.

He crossed his legs, tucked one hand under his elbow.

“What do you think possessed him,” he went on, “to finally have a child, at his age?” I shrugged again, and he said, for me, running the words together, his eyes opened wide in imitation, “You don’t know.” He leaned toward the wide coffee table between us, flicked his cigarette, shaking his head.

“I don’t know either.”

He looked around the room.

“Four wives and God knows how many girlfriends, and finally, at seventy, he has a child.”

His eyes fell on the painting of the woman. He looked at it fondly, as if it were a recognizable portrait of someone he knew.

“The wives and the girlfriends I can understand. He loves women.

Truly. All shapes and sizes.” He glanced at me.

“Insatiably. I don’t think he could paint without them, you know, without his daily allowance.” His eyes went back to the painting.

“But a kid, at seventy? And after all the abortionists he’s helped put through medical school.” He laughed deeply in his throat and then looked at me and put his fingers to his lips.

“Sorry,” he said. He fanned his fingers in front of his mouth again.

“Just stop me when I get offensive.” He nodded toward the wall.

“What do you think of his paintings?” He pointed the two fingers that held his cigarette toward me like a gun.

“And don’t say you don’t know. This is an opinion question.”

His slicked-back hair had begun to fall a little, over his high forehead and his large and sleepy-looking eyes. I strained to hear my father’s car.

“I don’t think I understand them,” I said.

“You don’t like them.” He stepped over my words.

“That’s always what people say when they don’t like them. That’s okay.” He took another drag of his cigarette and looked at me through the smoke.

“What I really want to know is what he thinks of them, these days.”

I shrugged, keeping my hand on Daisy’s shoe. I wasn’t going to say, I don’t know, again.

He leaned forward, his cheek against his wrist, as if we were exchanging secrets in school.

“I think he’s feeling kind of desperate, to tell you the truth,” he said, whispering.

“I think that’s why he had the kid. I think it’s beginning to occur to him that the work’s not going to last, not the way he thought it would.” He looked at me, a little smug, a little too proud of his own insight. He reminded me of the gossiping girls at school, the tiny, plain-faced ones, or the overweight and acned ones, even the conventionally pretty but dumb ones—all of them who talked behind their hands, behind my back.

“I think his confidence failed him,” he went on.

“I think maybe he looked at his career, at fifty years of work, and realized it was all laid down, it was pretty much done—and it wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t going to last.” He raised his eyebrows, nearly delighted.

“So he had a kid, in desperation.” He flicked his cigarette toward the ashtray again.

“I mean, at least that’s something. A kid. Even if the art ends up being worthless, you can always say, well, there was a kid.”

I had a brief recollection of Aunt Peg and Uncle Jack’s neat bedroom, the high, tightly made bed, the sympathetic eyes of the Sacred Heart.

“He’s still painting,” I said softly.

Macduff squinted at me through the smoke.

“Yeah,” he said.

“And drinking like a fish. And balling the maid while his beautiful young wife is God knows where. Don’t you think that’s desperation?”

I resisted saying, I don’t know. I said instead, “He gave me one of his drawings once. Just a small one. My parents had it framed. The framer offered them a hundred dollars for it.”

He chuckled.

“They probably should have taken it,” he said, and then he waved his fingers in front of his face again.

“No, I’m being mean. Who knows what will happen. Lots of great artists die in obscurity, right? He might just be in a slump now. His prices will probably soar after he dies.”

It was quiet for a minute and I could hear Daisy’s soft breathing. I imagined I could hear Flora, too, in her crib, softly breathing.

“Are you writing something about him?” I asked.

And now his dark eyes flashed.

“I am,” he said, sitting up rather primly, brushing something from his pant leg.

“It started out as an article, but now I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. If he dies in the next two or three years, it will be a biography. If he hangs on till ninety, I’ll have to make it a novel.” He laughed that deep, back-of his-throat laugh again.

“Either way, I figure I’m his last best chance at greatness.”

I heard a car on the driveway and I went to the kitchen to make sure it was my father and not Ana. It was, and I waved through the glass and then returned to the living room to get Daisy. She was limp and perspiring, heavier than she would have been awake, and much to my surprise Macduff rushed forward to help me with her, gently moving her arm onto my shoulder, whispering, “Have you got her now?” as I hoisted her a bit to get a better grip. He put his fingertips to the back of her calf as it dangled over my hip, stroked her flesh, and said, “Ooh, bad bruise.” I looked over her shoulder to the bruise that rose up out of her white anklet, spreading across her skin. I knew it had not been there this afternoon.

He opened the screen door for me and lifted the beach bag from the porch and carried it down the steps to my father’s car.

He opened the passenger door, said, “Good evening, sir,” to my father, like a seminarian taking me to the prom, and then kept his hand just under my elbow as I got in with Daisy and settled her on my lap. He opened the back door to put the beach bag in, then closed the front door for me.

He leaned into the window, his face right next to mine.

“Lovely to meet you,” he said, and to my father, “You have a lovely daughter.”

My father, tired even in the dim light of the dashboard, a pale windbreaker thrown over his pajamas, leaned toward the steering wheel and said, “Thank you,” pleased, and puzzled, and uncertain, it was clear, which expression was the proper one to show.

As we backed out, I said, over Daisy’s head, “A man writing an article about Flora’s father.”

“A reporter,” my father said, impressed—the circles I traveled in—and then after a moment’s thought, “I hope you weren’t in there alone with him.” I gave him my “Oh honestly” look and said, no, they’d all just come back from dinner.

“There’s the great man himself,” my father said. I turned to see Flora’s father standing in the door of his studio, a dark silhouette with one arm raised against the doorframe, the other in his pocket.

Macduff was sauntering toward him. I thought to say to my poor father,

There’s more in heaven and hell than in your philosophy, Horatio, but instead I put my lips to Daisy’s wiry hair. In a day or two, at least—at most—I knew I would have to tell someone, my mother, my father, perhaps Dr. Kaufman himself, and already I felt the loss of her, taken from my arms.

I woke next morning to the sound of hammering, coming from the Morans’ side yard. And when we passed their house on the way to Red Rover’s, Petey came running down the drive to ask what time we’d be home. I said, the usual, around dinnertime.

He was shirtless and breathing hard, his eyes wider and even paler, it seemed, with his own brand of excitement.

“But don’t go crazy if we’re late,” I warned him.

He suddenly grabbed my fingers with one hand and my wrist with another.

“Come here for a minute,” he said, and then to Daisy, “Wait here just a minute,” and began to haul me up the driveway. Over my shoulder I told Daisy I’d be right back. She shrugged and sat down cross-legged on the grass.

Today, out of that lingering homesickness, perhaps, she had agreed to wear the plaid shorts set her mother had bought her, and as she sat, it seemed to bloom up around her shoulders.

There was a long Chevy parked in the Morans’ driveway, and as we came around it I saw that the young policeman, once again shirtless, was standing over a sawhorse table, fitting together a couple of pieces of wood. Tony was sitting at his feet with a hammer and another piece of square wood in his lap.

There was sawdust around them and the smell of new pine.

“Can I show her?” Petey said, and the policeman smiled.

“Is she the one?” he asked.

“The rabbit lover?”

Petey pulled back his head and said, “No,” as if such things should be obvious.

“She lives right next door,” which should be more obvious still.

“It’s Daisy,” he said.

“Oh yeah, Daisy,” the policeman said, nodding. It occurred to me that I’d seen him in the village, in his uniform, a new recruit as of this summer. He was broad-shouldered and muscular, with a crew cut and small eyes. An altogether optimistic face. I introduced myself and he said, “Oh yeah, I met your dad,” and then Petey was holding up a small wooden box, pushing it into my hands.

“Look at this,” he said.

“We just made it. We’re making three of them.”

It was, I quickly gathered, an expert rabbit trap with a hinged door and two wire mesh windows in front and back, and a little latch swinging from the top.

“I’m going to man one,” Petey was saying breathlessly.

“And Tony’s going to man one, and the girls are going to man one. We’re going to spread them out to different locations so we increase our chances.”

The policeman reached over and rubbed Petey’s head. He suddenly seemed bashful, as if a little chagrined to hear himself so enthusiastically quoted.

“The way I understand it,” he said, “no one’s keeping any rabbits. Just showing.”

Petey nodded.

“Yeah, I just want to show her.”

“For her birthday,” the policeman said, and I saw Petey glance at me, to see if I would expose his lie. Daisy’s birthday, like mine, was in April. He nodded, “Yeah,” and ducked under the policeman’s arm to pick up a scrap of wire mesh.

“See?” he said to me, and held the mesh up to his eyes.

“We can see through it now. See if it’s really in there.”

I touched the wire.

“Good idea,” I said, and the cop laughed and clapped Petey on the shoulder. Also shirtless, the two boys might have been his sons.

“Quite a Casanova here,” he said, smiling at me.

“Whatever his lady love wants, his lady love gets.” Petey ducked his head again and Tony snickered, fitting a piece of mesh to the board in his lap.

“Hey, don’t laugh,” the cop said.

“Knowing how to keep your girlfriend happy is an art.” And then he leaned down and showed Tony where to place the tack, gently moving his hand to the right spot. I thought of the discarded bracelet.

Beside us, the house was quiet, most of the shades still drawn. I gathered that the cop must have arrived early this morning, bringing these supplies. I had heard the hammering well before I got up. Or maybe he had been here all night and the rabbit traps were only his excuse to linger—this battered place, these ragged kids, transformed for him by the presence of his lady love, asleep behind one of the crooked shades.

“I better go,” I told Petey, and he grabbed my arm again and said, “Don’t tell.”