The Age of Miracles (16 page)

Teddy laid
The Big Green Book
down on his lap and reached over and patted his mother's shoulder. “You'll be okay,” he said out loud. “Maybe you're just hung over.”

Eric came in and sat beside him on the waterbed. “The doctor's coming. He'll see about her. You know, Doctor Paine, who comes to dinner. She'll be all right. She just fell down.”

“Maybe she's hung over.” Teddy leaned over his mother and touched her face. She moaned. “See, she isn't dead.”

“Teddy, maybe you better go up to your room and play until the doctor leaves. Geneva will be here in a minute. Get her to make you some pancakes or something.”

“Then what will we do?”

“Like what?”

“I mean all day. You want to go to the lake or something?”

“I don't know, Ted. We'll have to wait and see.” Eric took his mother's hand and held it. He looked so worried. He looked terrible. She was always driving him crazy, but he never got mad at her. He just thought up some more things to do.

“I'll go see if Geneva's here. Can I have a Coke?”

“May I have a Coke.” Eric smiled and reached over and patted his arm. “Say it.”

“May I have a Coke, please?”

“Yes, you may.” They smiled. Teddy got up and left the room.

The worst thing of all happened the next day. Eric decided to send him across the lake for a few days. To his grandmother and grandfather's house. “They boss me around all the time,” Teddy said. “I won't be in the way. I'll be good. All I'm going to do is stay here and read books and work on my stamp collection.” He looked pleadingly up at his stepfather. Usually reading a book could get him anything he wanted with Eric, but today it wasn't working.

“We have to keep your mother quiet. She'll worry about you if you're here. It won't be for long. Just a day or so. Until Monday. I'll come get you Monday afternoon.”

“How will I get over there?”

“I'll get Big George to take you.” Big George was the gardener. He had a blue pickup truck. Teddy had ridden with him before. Getting to go with Big George was a plus, even if his grandfather might hit him with a belt if he didn't make his bed.

“Can I see Momma now?”

“May.”

“May I see Momma now?”

“Yeah. Go on in, but she's pretty dopey. They gave her some pills.”

His mother was in her own bed now, lying flat down without any pillows. She was barely awake. “Teddy,” she said. “Oh, baby, oh, my precious baby. Eric tried to kill me. He pushed me down the stairs.”

“No, he didn't.” Teddy withdrew from her side. She was going to start acting crazy. He didn't put up with that. “He didn't do anything to you. I went with him. Why didn't you have any clothes on?”

“Because I was asleep when he came and made me leave. He pushed me and I fell down the stairs.”

“You probably had a hangover. I'm going to Mandeville. Well, I'll see you later.” He started backing away from the bed. Backing toward the door. He was good at backing. Sometimes he backed home from school as soon as he was out of sight of the other kids.

“Teddy, come here to me. You have to do something for me. Tell Granddaddy and Uncle Ingersol that Eric is trying to kill me. Tell them, will you, my darling? Tell them for me.” She was getting sleepy again. Her voice was sounding funny. She reached out a hand to him and he went back to the bed and held out his arm and she stroked it. “Be sure and tell them. Tell them to call the president.” She stopped touching him. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth fell open. She still looked pretty. Even when she was drunk, she looked really pretty. Now that she was asleep, he moved nearer and looked at her. She looked okay. She sure wasn't bleeding. She had a cover on the bed that was decorated all over with little Austrian flowers. They were sewn on like little real flowers. You could hardly tell they were made of thread. He looked at one for a minute. Then he picked up her purse and took a twenty-dollar bill out of her billfold and put it in his pocket. He needed to buy some film. She didn't care. She gave him anything he asked for.

“What are you doing?” It was Eric at the door. “You better be getting ready, Teddy. Big George will be here in a minute.”

“I got some money out of her purse. I need to get some film to take with me.”

“What camera are you going to take? I've got some film for the Olympus in the darkroom. You want a roll of black-and-white? Go get the camera and I'll fill it for you.”

“She said you tried to kill her.” Teddy took Eric's hand and they started down the hall to the darkroom. “Why does she say stuff like that, Eric? I wish she wouldn't say stuff like that when she gets mad.”

“It's a fantasy, Teddy. She never had anyone do anything bad to her in her life, and when she wants some excitement, she just makes it up. It's okay. I'm sorry she fell down the stairs. I was trying to help her. You know that, don't you?”

“Yes. Listen, can I buy Big George some lunch before we cross the Causeway? I took twenty dollars. Will that be enough to get us lunch?”

“Sure. That would be great, Teddy. I bet he'd like that. He likes you so much. Everybody likes you. You're such a swell little boy. Come on, let's arm that camera. Where is it?”

Teddy ran back to his room and got the camera. He was a scrawny, towheaded little boy who would grow up to be a magnificent man. But for now he was seven and a half years old and liked to take photographs of people in the park and of dogs. He liked to read books and pretend he lived in Narnia. He liked to get down on his knees at the Episcopal church and ask God not to let his momma divorce Eric. If God didn't answer, then he would pretend he was his grandfather and threaten God. Okay, you son-of-a-bitch, he would say, his little head down on his chest, kneeling like a saint at the prayer rail. If she divorces Eric, I won't leave anyway. I'll stay here with him and we can be bachelors. She can just go anywhere she likes. I'm not leaving. I'm going right on living here by the park in my room. I'm not going back to Mandeville and ride those damned old horses.

Big George came in the front door and stood, filling up the hall. He was six feet five inches tall and wide and strong. His family had worked for Eric's family for fifty years. He had six sons and one daughter who was a singer. He liked Eric, and he liked the scrawny little kid that Eric's wife had brought along with the big mean other ones. “Hey, Teddy,” Big George said, “where's your bag?”

“You want to go to lunch?” Teddy said. “I got twenty dollars. We can stop at the Camellia Grill before we cross the bridge. You want to do that?”

“Sure thing. Twenty dollars. What you do to get twenty dollars, Teddy?”

“Nothing. I was going to buy some film, but Eric gave me some so I don't have to. Come on, let's go.” He hauled his small leather suitcase across the parquet floor and Big George leaned down and took it from him. Eric came into the hall and talked to Big George a minute, and they both looked real serious and Big George shook his head, and then Eric kissed Teddy on the cheek and Big George and Teddy went on out and got into the truck and drove off.

Eric stood watching them until the truck turned onto Saint Charles Avenue. Then he went back into the house and into his wife's workroom and looked around at the half-finished watercolors, which were her latest obsession, and the mess and the clothes on the floor and the unemptied wastebaskets, and he sat down at her desk and opened the daybook she left out for him, to see if there were any new men since the last time she made a scene.

June 29, Willis will be here from Colorado. Show him the new poems.
HERE IS WHAT WE MUST ADMIT
. Here is what we know. What happened then is what happens now. Over and over again. How to break the pattern. Perhaps all I can do is avoid or understand the pattern. The pattern holds for all we do. I discovered in a dream that I am not in love with R. Only with what he can do for my career. How sad that is. The importance of dreams is that they may contain feelings we are not aware of.
FEELINGS WE ARE NOT AWARE OF
. The idea of counterphobia fascinates me. That you could climb mountains because you are afraid of heights. Seek out dangers because the danger holds such fear for you. What if I seek out men because I want to fight with them. Hate and fear them and want to have a fight. To replay my life with my brothers. Love to fight. My masculine persona.

Well, I'll see Willis tonight and show him the watercolors too, maybe. I'll never be a painter. Who am I fooling? All I am is a mother and a wife. That's that. Two unruly teenagers and a little morbid kid who likes Eric better than he likes me. I think it's stunting his growth to stay in that darkroom all the time.

Eric sighed and closed the daybook. He picked up a watercolor of a spray of lilies. She was good. She was talented. He hadn't been wrong about that. He laid it carefully down on the portfolio and went into her bedroom and watched her sleep. He could think of nothing to do. He could not be either in or out; he could not make either good or bad decisions. He was locked into this terrible marriage and into its terrible rage and fear and sadness. No one was mean to me, he decided. Why am I here? Why am I living here? For Teddy, he decided, seeing the little boy's skinny arms splashing photographs in and out of trays, grooming the dogs, swimming in the river, paddling a canoe. I love that little boy, Eric decided. He's just like I was at that age. I have to keep the marriage together if I can. I can't stand for him to be taken from me.

Erie began to cry, deep within his heart at first, then right there in the sunlight, at twelve o'clock on a Saturday morning, into his own hands, his own deep, salty, endless, heartfelt tears.

Big George had stopped at the Camellia Grill, and he and Teddy were seated on stools at the counter eating sliced-turkey sandwiches and drinking chocolate freezes. “So, what's wrong with your momma?” Big George asked.

“She fell down some stairs. We had to go and get her and bring her home. She got drunk, I guess.”

“Don't worry about it. Grown folks do stuff like that. You got to overlook it.”

“I just don't want to go to Mandeville. Granddaddy will make me ride the damned old horses. I hate horses.”

“Horses are nice.”

“I hate them. I have better things to do. He thinks I want to show them, but I don't. Malcolm and Jimmy like to do it. I wish they were home from camp. Then he'd have them.”

“Don't worry about it. Eat your sandwich.” Big George bit into his. The boy imitated him, opened his mouth as wide as Big George's, heartily ate his food, smilingly let the world go by. It took an hour to get to Mandeville. He wasn't there yet. He looked up above the cash register to where the Camellia Grill sweatshirts were prominently displayed—white, with a huge pink camellia in the center. He might get one for Big George for a Christmas present or he might not wait that long. He had sixty-five dollars in the bank account Eric made for him. He could take some of it out and buy the sweatshirt now. “I like that sweatshirt,” he said out loud. “I think it looks real good, don't you?”

“Looks hot,” Big George said, “but I guess you'd like it in the winter.”

Teddy slept all the way across the Causeway, soothed by the motion of the truck and Big George beside him, driving and humming some song he was making up as he drove. Eric's a fool for that woman, George was thinking. Well, he's never had a woman before, just his momma and his sisters. Guess he's got to put up with it ‘cause he likes the little boy so much. He's the sweetest little kid I ever did see. I like him too. Paying for my lunch with a twenty-dollar bill. Did anybody ever see the like? He won't be scrawny long. Not with them big mean brothers he's got. The daddy was a big man too, I heard them say. No, he won't stay little. They never do, do they?

Teddy slept and snored. His allergies had started acting up, but he didn't pay any attention to them. If he was caught blowing his nose, he'd be taken to the doctor, so he only blew it when he was in the bathroom. The rest of the time he ignored it. Now he snored away on the seat beside Big George, and the big blue truck moved along at a steady sixty miles an hour, cruising along across the lake.

At his grandparents' house in Mandeville his grandmother and grandfather were getting ready for Teddy. His grandmother was making a caramel cake and pimento cheese and carrot sticks and Jell-O. His grandfather was in the barn dusting off the saddles and straightening the tackle. Maybe Teddy would want to ride down along the bayou with him. Maybe they'd just go fishing. Sweet little old boy. They had thought Rhoda was finished having children and then she gave them one last little boy. Well, he was a tender little chicken, but he'd toughen. He'd make a man. Couldn't help it. Had a man for a father even if he was a chickenshit. He'd turn into a man even if he did live in New Orleans and spend his life riding on the streetcar.

Teddy's grandfather finished up in the barn and walked back to the house to get a glass of tea and sit out on the porch and wait for the boy. “I might set him up an archery target in the pasture,” he told his wife. “Where'd you put the bows the big boys used to use?”

“They're in the storage bin. Don't go getting that stuff out, Dudley. He doesn't need to be out in the pasture in this heat.”

“You feed him. I'll find him things to do.”

“Leave him alone. You don't have to make them learn things every minute. It's summer. Let him be a child.”

“What's wrong with her? Why's she sick again?”

“She fell down. I don't want to talk about it. Get some tea and sit down and cool off, Dudley. Don't go getting out archery things until you ask him if he wants to. I mean that. You leave that child alone. You just plague him following him around. He doesn't even like to come over here anymore. You drive people crazy, Dudley. You really do.” She poured tea into a glass and handed it to him. They looked each other in the eye. They had been married thirty-eight years. Everything in the world had happened to them and kept on happening. They didn't care. They liked it that way.