Circle of Three (12 page)

Not me, I thought fiercely. I will
not
. Swear to God, I’ll jump off the Leap River bridge first.

A cold February twilight was settling in; the color of the sky through the sliding glass doors to a brick-paved patio made me shiver. I hate winter. I hate the end of daylight savings time. Outside, gray geese were marching around a frozen man-made lake at the bottom of the sloping lawn. This place wouldn’t be half bad in the summertime. At least you could get out. I watched a deer gallop across the lawn and skid to a stop not forty feet away. Pretty thing. A doe. It sniffed the air with its delicate snout, shivered, and bolted toward the patio.

That deer’s coming right at me
, I thought in a frozen part of my mind.
Of course it’s not
, my rational side scoffed.
The hell it’s not.
I had time to shout, “Look out!” and jerk an amazed Birdie out of her chair by her coat collar before everything went haywire.

Crash!
The shock of seeing glass suddenly shatter and fly at you was nothing compared to the sight of an
animal
blundering in right behind. A big, brown, naked
animal
with a lolling tongue and white-rimmed eyes rolling in panic. It made noises—another shock; I thought deer were silent—harsh fluttery neighing sounds through its distended nostrils. It bolted in one direction, butting over a table, another table, crashing its antlerless head against a wall. Nobody was screaming except Birdie and Debbie, the cheerleader; the rest of us were petrified, struck dumb. When it veered toward Helen’s chair, Calvin flung himself in front of her, arms spread wide, shielding her with his body.

Nobody was doing anything. I pushed Birdie away. “Baaaah!” I yelled. “Rawwwh!” The terrified deer skidded in front of me and jerked up on its hind legs. I shook my hands over my head. “Wraaah!” I kept shrieking while I went toward it in slow, fearful steps, trying to narrow the escape routes, herding it closer and closer to the broken door. Blood spotted its forehead and chest. It lunged again, overturning a folding chair, and I made a wild run straight at it. It pivoted clumsily—more blood on its dainty front legs—and smashed against the closed door to the hall.

Debbie stopped screaming and crept out of the corner, darting toward a metal floor lamp the deer had knocked over. She picked it up in both hands, like a lance. It had a cheap metal shade, open at the top; she pointed it headfirst at the deer, who was blowing its ribs in and out, panting, looking at—the lamp. I figured it out. Debbie thought she was stunning it by shining a light in its eyes.

Well, that was so stupid, it made me brave. I circled around the now motionless deer, moving toward a walker I
could see under one of the still-standing card tables. When I got close enough, I bent over and grabbed it.

“Yah! Go! Go!” I stabbed the air with the walker. “Beat it!” Beside me, Debbie echoed, “Beat it!” and together we took jerky steps toward the deer until the floor lamp went out—she’d pulled the plug out of the socket. The animal looked confused, exhausted, swinging its head from side to side. “Wraaah!” I shouted again, and shook my walker. Suddenly it turned. In one enormous bound, it leapt through the shattered door, over the glass shards and the valentines, and streaked away, white tail flying surrender.

I stood there with my chest heaving and my heart pounding. From her crouch in the corner Birdie called, “Dana?” in a cracked voice. Everybody looked dazed. “Who’s hurt?” Debbie said. “Anybody hurt?” A miracle—nobody was. A woman swathed in handmade shawls wept quietly while two other old ladies comforted her. “Okay, if everyone’s okay, I’m going to call security,” Debbie announced. “Okay? I’ll be
right back
.”

Calvin huddled over Helen, patting the hands she had gripped to the arms of her wheelchair. “Wasn’t that a sight, Helen?” he said in a cheerful tone, as if we’d just witnessed something pleasantly exciting, a balloon launch or a shooting star. “That gave me a turn, I’ll say. But we’re okay now, aren’t we. We’re—”

“You made Raymond go hunting.” Helen stretched her thin, cordy neck out accusingly, rheumy eyes blazing. “Remember? You made him go up to Bear Lake with you and that redneck friend, what was his name? Bobby Mahr. Ray was eleven years old and you called him a sissy because he didn’t want to hunt.”

Calvin stared at her stupidly, opening and closing his mouth.

“
Remember
?” she said impatiently.

“Yes.”

“And
damn you
if you didn’t make him shoot at a doe. He missed—but imagine making a boy like that shoot a
deer.
Imagine
it.” One balled fist smacked her padded wheelchair arm.

“Helen.” Calvin put his hands on his knees and hung his head.

“Oh, my,” quavered Birdie, realizing he was crying. I knew I should look away, but I couldn’t.

Helen sat back. The piercing look faded; she stretched out a trembly hand and gave his bent, balding head one sad pat. “We lost him,” she said. “That’s when it started. Our baby. Where is he, Cal, is he dead?”

“No, no. No, he lives in Miami.”

“But where is he? Where is he?”

“He’s in Miami.”

She wilted, just clicked off, a lightbulb going dark. Cal Mintz got a wrinkled handkerchief out of his back pocket and stuck his face in it.

On the drive home, all I wanted to do was brood, but Birdie never met a silence she couldn’t fill. “Do anybody’s children ever turn out right?” she wanted to know.

A dumb question I had no patience with. “Mine turned out fine,” I said.

“Oh, I know ours aren’t drug addicts or drunks or thieves or what-have-you. I’m saying, do anybody’s children really care about them once they get grown?”

“What are you talking about? Of course they do.”

“But not enough, Dana. Don’t you feel that? It’s not enough. All we do for them, what’s it turn out to be for? I would’ve lain down and died for Mattie and Martha, I’d’ve done
anything
for them. My babies. And now look, they can’t come see their own mother at Christmas. Me a widow, and I haven’t seen my grandsons in eighteen months.”

I wanted to say soothing, sympathetic things, but I’d seen Birdie with her children. She could not shut up, would not
listen
to them, and her incessant nervous chatter made them roll their eyes. She never stopped talking long enough to hear what their lives were like, so she had no idea in the
world what kind of adults her own children had turned into. She exasperated them—they broke her heart.

What is it
I
do? Carrie only came back to Clayborne because she had to—Stephen’s job. It’s not that I talk too much, I don’t think. Something else. The worst is that she wants to be close again, too, but neither of us can punch through the wall. It’s sad and it’s wrong, two people who ought to be the closest, a mother and her daughter.

I think daughters want too much, though. Carrie wants me to approve of every little thing she does. “Unconditional love,” that’s called. But what kind of a mother doesn’t try to steer her child in the right direction when she sees her veering off the track? I don’t even want credit for it—I just want tolerance and understanding and decent treatment.

“I don’t even know why we have children,” Birdie said. “I think it’s because we get pregnant. Did you and George plan for Carrie?”

“No.”

“No, most people don’t. What do kids
do
for us?”

“Bird, you’re just in a mood.” I reached over and gave her skinny shoulder a pat.

“You think they’ll make your life better,” she said, “you think they’ll make you happy.”

You think they’ll give your life meaning, I corrected to myself. And for a while it works, but then they grow up and leave you, and there’s nobody left to soften the blow that there isn’t any meaning. Not your husband, that’s for sure.

“But happy families are only on TV,” Birdie was saying. “In real life your kids can’t wait to get away from you. It’s so unfair.” She sniffed and blinked her eyes fast. “Because all you ever wanted was a little love in return. And to try to make their lives happy.”

And maybe you can’t do both, it occurred to me. In fact, maybe the second one cancels out the first.

C
LAYBORNE
H
IGH
S
CHOOL’S
parent-teacher conference day carried over into the evening, 7 to 9
P.M.,
for the convenience of the mothers and fathers who worked. A thoughtful accommodation, but I was running late before I started. My plan was to leave the Other School at the usual time, go home and grab a sandwich, change clothes if there was time, pick Ruth up at the health store at six-fifteen, drive her to her grandparents’ house, where she was to have dinner, and make it to the school no later than seven—right on time so I could be finished in an hour and a half, pick Ruth up, go home, and collapse.

Nothing worked out. At noon, Brian realized he needed
today
, not tomorrow, the final autumn course offerings list, to include in a small business grant application that had to be postmarked by 6
P.M.
We made it, just barely, but by then it was too late to go home. I’d missed lunch, so I stopped at Creager’s for a quick bite, where I got the world’s slowest, dimmest waitress and a case of indigestion. And a headache. By the time I double-parked in front of the Mother Earth Palace and Natural Healing Salon, where Ruth was supposed to be waiting
outside
but wasn’t, it was already quarter to seven.

I’d met Krystal once before, not long after Ruth began to
work for her. It was easy to see why Ruth liked her. She was young and hip, undemanding and laid-back; she said “fuck” with great casualness. But she was a kind of throwback, wasn’t she? Or were hippies back in style now? Ruth’s reaction to my tentative, extremely reluctant question concerning the possibility of dope smoked, or possibly even sold, on the premises was predictable. “
Jeez
, Mom. Like—
no
. God!”

“Hi, Krystal,” I called, spying her in the cozy back area, slouched in an easy chair next to the humming woodstove. “Is Ruth here? I’m picking her up.”

“Hi, Carrie.” She had a low, husky voice, very soothing. She’d have made a good hypnotist. “Ruth? No, she left.”

“She left?” I went closer to the stifling heat. “When?”

“Oh…” She peered at the fire through the glass door, as if a clock might be in there. “An hour ago? Well, at six, when we close. What time is it?”

“But she was supposed to wait for me. She left at six?”

“Yeah. Bummer. I guess she forgot.” She smiled consolingly. She had dry, curly, reddish hair, flat around the front under a leather headband today, bushy and wild in back, an electrified halo.

“Do you know where she went? Did she go home?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t say, she just left, same as always.” She picked up the white cat on her lap, gently set it on the floor, and stood up. “Problem?”

“Can I use your phone?”

“Sure.”

Ruth wasn’t at home. I got the machine and thought of leaving a sarcastic message, but Krystal was listening; it might embarrass Ruth. I called my mother.

“Hi, Mama. Ruth isn’t there, is she?” She could’ve gotten mixed up, had one of her friends drive her over there.

“Ruth? No. Should she be? I thought you were bringing her. Is she driving? But she can’t yet, she doesn’t—”

“Long story—we’ve missed each other. I’ll call you back, okay? As soon as I find out where she is.”

“Do you think something’s happened?”

“No, no, it’s just a mix-up. I’ll call you back. Don’t worry.”

Damn.

“Have you got a phone book?” I asked, and Krystal rummaged around and found one under a small counter covered with jars of Aloe-Dent, Astragalus, and Vitamol. What was Caitlin’s last name? It was on the tip of my tongue. All Ruth’s friends were on speed dial at home; I had no idea what their numbers were. Caitlin, Caitlin…I couldn’t remember. Jamie, then; Jamie Markus.

She wasn’t there. Mrs. Markus thought she might be over at Caitlin’s, and gave me the number. Caitlin McReynolds.

Mrs. McReynolds said Caitlin was over at Becky Driver’s. Jamie, too, but she wasn’t sure about Ruth. I called the Drivers.

“Oh, hi, Mom.”

“Why are you not here?”

“Where’s here?”

My intense relief at finding her alive and unmolested evaporated very quickly. Underneath lay nothing but irritation. “I’m at Krystal’s,” I said through my teeth. “Where are you?”

“Oh, wow, I forgot. I’m supposed to go to Gram’s, right?”

“Correct.”

“Well, I forgot.”

“Did you forget to come home, too?”

“No, because I knew you were going out.”

“If you knew I was going out, how could you forget you were supposed to go to your grandmother’s?”

“I don’t know, I just
did
.”

I pinched a white trail up and down the bridge of my nose. “I don’t have time to pick you up now.”

“That’s okay, we were just about to eat anyway.”

“I don’t have time to call your grandmother and apologize, either. You’ll have to do that.”

“Oh,
man
.”

“Ruth? I mean it.”

“Okay, okay.”

“As soon as we hang up. Now, how were you planning to get home?”

“Jamie’ll drive me.”

Jamie was sixteen, had been for about a month and a half. “No,” I said, “I’ll pick you up on my way home. About eight-thirty.”

“No, Mom, come
on
. She can drive me, and anyway, eight-
thirty
? We won’t even have our homework done by then.”

“Oh, you went over to Becky’s to do homework.”

“Yes. I did! Partly. I
did
.”

I was too tired to keep arguing. Stephen always said I gave in too easily, I was too lenient, I had no backbone. All true. I was probably ruining our daughter. The reason I was going to parent-teacher conference day in the first place was because Ruth’s grades were sliding, and that was undoubtedly my fault, too. I felt like an invalid, an amputee, I had no control anymore, it was all slipping away.

“Make sure Jamie drives carefully, and I want you home by nine-thirty.”

“Nine-thirty?
God
, Mom. Ten, come
on
. Jamie doesn’t even have to be home till eleven.”

“I very much doubt that.”

“Ten, Mom.”

“Nine-forty-five, and not a minute later. Hear me?”

“O
kay
.”

“What are you going to do when we hang up?”

“Eat dinner?”

“Ruth—”

“Kidding, Mom, it’s a joke. Remember jokes? Ha ha?”

“I’ll see you at nine-forty-five. I imagine we’ll have a lot to talk about.”

That sobered her up. She said good-bye without making any more jokes.

“Do you take flaxseed?”

“What?”

“Flaxseed oil,” Krystal said, shelving the phone book, “is very good for maintaining a healthy blood pressure. Comes in capsules. You want to take it with sage tea, a nerve tonic.”

“Yes, that’s—I’m sure that’s a good idea. Would you happen to have any aspirin?”

She laughed gently. “No. Headache?”

“It’s just starting. Tylenol?”

“Ah, Carrie. Belladonna, gelsemium, feverfew, winter-green, willow bark, meadowsweet.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Autogenics, acupressure, aromatherapy, massage, juice therapy. These I can offer you.”

“Ha-ha. But no Tylenol?”

“Are you familiar with Ayuveda? You could try a plain warm-water enema if you have a
vata
headache. Or rubbing the scalp and the soles of the feet with sesame oil, followed by a hot shower.”

“Oh, thanks. I’ll—”

“If it’s a shooting, burning
pitta
headache, a sandalwood paste to the forehead and temples works wonders. For a
kapha
headache—does it feel worse when you bend over?—salt water in the nostrils is good.”

“That’s interesting. I’ll certainly remember that. But now I’m so late, and I’m double-parked, I’d better run.”

“Well, I wouldn’t advise running. What you want to do right now, before it gets a foothold, is to imagine your headache is something else, say a leprechaun. Strike up a conversation with it. Make friends. Try a trade-off—you promise to eat better and get more sleep, your leprechaun promises to back off this time.”

All this was said with a straight face and complete confidence. I searched for a twitch of the lip, a self-conscious twinkle in the eye, but in vain. Krystal Bukowski was the real deal.

“I’ll do that. I’ll try it in the car,” I promised, and escaped.

What I tried in the car was speeding. On Cemetery Road, along the half-mile limbo section between residential and
rural, where the houses ran out but the cornfields hadn’t quite begun—suddenly a blue light flashed in the rearview mirror. Cop.

I slowed but didn’t pull over—maybe it would pass, maybe it was after a criminal. I jolted in panic when the siren burst,
Wheep! Wheep!
No, it was me. It wanted
me
. My foot started to shake on the brake pedal and my hands turned clammy on the steering wheel.
Calm down
. I’d been speeding, not robbing a bank. But I was scared, and under the fear was fury, and over everything lay intense, skin-prickling frustration.

“Hello, Officer.” I tried a bright, flirty voice. “Is there a problem?”

“Evening, ma’am. In a hurry tonight?” He wouldn’t stand next to me, wouldn’t come farther than my shoulder, I had to twist my neck to see him. A good tactic; it must deter the armed and hotheaded from shooting him in the face. “See your driver’s license and registration, please.” I fumbled them out of the glove compartment and handed them over. “Where you headed tonight, ma’am?”

“The high school. It’s parent-teacher day.” See? How wholesome and innocent?

“Uh-huh. Any reason you were going fifty-three in the thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone?”

I blanked. Should I tell the truth and say I was late? Deny everything? “Fifty-three?” I said wonderingly. “Are you sure?” I still couldn’t see his face, but his voice sounded young and unsympathetic. “I never speed, honestly. It was an accident. I’m teaching my daughter to drive, I go
under
the limit usually.”

“Ma’am, would you turn on your emergency blinkers, please?” I did, and he sauntered back to his patrol car and got in. I could hear him talking on his radio. I burst into tears.

What in the world was wrong with me? I wanted to sob and sob, not stop for days. It was crazy, I couldn’t account
for it. I barely had myself pulled together when he came back and handed me a pink ticket through the window.

“I’m going to give you a warning this time, Mrs. Van Allen.”

“Oh, thank—” Mortifying tears flooded my face. “Sorry.” I found a tissue and blotted my eyes. “Thank you. I’m—I’ll—I won’t do it again.”

He finally leaned in the window, a little late now, but probably to see if I’d been drinking. I saw his face by the dashboard light. Young, yes; he was only a boy. “Better not, because next time, if it’s me, I won’t be so lenient.”

“No, I know. I won’t, don’t worry.”

“You don’t want to mess up your good driving record.”

“No.”

“You want to set a good example for your daughter.”

“I know. Yes.”

“Okay, ma’am. You take it easy now.”

“I will. Thank you, Officer”—I squinted at the badge on his chest—“Sherman.”

He followed me all the way to the high school. I drove with exaggerated caution, five or six miles below the limit, careful to stay in the exact center of my lane. I didn’t cry again, but I was still on some tricky kind of an edge. What a strange overreaction. Why such childish humiliation and rage? I couldn’t remember feeling like this before, not over something so trivial. I looked normal, I wore pantsuits and worked at a computer, I could go for days at a time without crying. “Carrie’s finally coming around,” my mother was starting to tell her friends, and even Ruth didn’t worry about me quite as much. But see how little it took to level me. Officer Sherman hadn’t even given me a ticket!

My old school got a face-lift in about 1990, tinted windows and a new pink brick facade, even a tastefully harmonious addition. Now it looked about half its real age—thirty-five. But most of the interior changes were only cosmetic, and
when I turned up for open house or one of Ruth’s glee club concerts or science fairs, it was very much like stepping back in time. Because of the smell, always the same, always a humid, sweetish mix of chalk dust, mildew, wet wool, and sweat. As soon as I inhaled it, I was seventeen again, and a thousand ripe memories bombarded me. Like fruit falling out of a tree on my head.

No memories tonight, please. I wasn’t myself; my poor head ached already, I was so tired, all I wanted to do was go home and pull up the covers. Besides, I was weak and vulnerable, and memories of high school always meant memories of Jess. I needed to focus on who I was, not who I used to be; I was an aging widow, here for her troubled teenage daughter.
Think of Ruth and getting home,
I advised myself,
Ruth and getting home
. That ought to squelch nostalgia.

There were long lines outside the classrooms of the teachers who taught Ruth’s new worst subjects—biology, history, and amazingly, math. But that was some consolation, wasn’t it, the fact that she wasn’t alone? Maybe these teachers were incompetent, maybe lots of kids’ grades were slipping.

But, no. Ms. Reedy, the biology teacher, and Mr. Von Bretzel, the history teacher, unfortunately struck me, in ten-minute interviews with each, as entirely capable; they were also sympathetic and understanding, and brought up the subject of Stephen’s death even before I could. No scapegoating there. I’d been hoping—I realized it when I saw it wasn’t going to work—to put all the blame for Ruth’s troubles on the callousness and insensitivity of her teachers.

This must be what it’s like waiting for the priest at confession, I thought, queued behind two other mothers outside Mr. Tambor’s room. Did my companions feel as guilty as I did, as personally responsible for their children’s academic shortcomings? But how could Ruth be failing algebra? There must be a mistake; math had always been her best subject. Now it was English, which made no sense at all. No, this had to be a mistake.