The Grief of Others (30 page)

Ricky stands at the place where the path meets the beach, as yet unnoticed by her children and Jess, savoring the luxury of giving her attention without its being demanded. Jess and Paul crouch in the shallows, remarking on the school of minnows weaving among their ankles. Biscuit, wearing only a diaper, is eating sand, licking it from her palm the way another child might lick batter from a beater. Paul, holding the hems of his red trunks, dainty as a Victorian girl holding the edge of her bathing costume, peers past his knees into the water. A laugh bubbles from his throat—“One
tickled
me!”—and Jess smiles at him in such a way as to raise in Ricky’s chest something swift, like a sob. It is the realization that of all the innumerable sweetnesses the world will offer her children, the vast majority will go unwitnessed by her.

“Hey! Mommy!” Paul, noticing her, jumps and scatters the fishes.

Biscuit gives a sandy grin over her shoulder and pops her pacifier back in her mouth.

They all sit together awhile, digging and mounding sand with an assortment of plastic bowls, scoops, and sieves, until Ricky says she feels like going for a swim, and asks Jess if she minds being alone with the kids again. Jess does not, and Ricky wades in up to her waist and then dives.

 

 

WHILE JESS AND her brother build up the walls of their castle, Biscuit works on her own project. She has discovered that it is fun to peel at the sticky tape at her hips. She peels one, then the other. When both little flaps of tape are sticking out, like open doors, she stands up. Her diaper does not come with her. “Hey.” She speaks around her pacifier. “’ook.” This is a good trick. No one reacts. She looks up. Her mother has disappeared into the lake, her father has disappeared into the world, and the other two have disappeared into their castle. She sees them, but they don’t see her. Maybe it is she who’s disappeared. She looks back down. No, there is her round tummy, there is the dimple of her crotch, there are her feet with their little piggies sticking up pink through the sand. Everyone is missing the diaper trick. “’ook,” she says again. “’ook!” And they do. Paul’s eyes widen and already she can see him preparing his mouth to speak, to scold. Jess laughs. And here goes Biscuit shrieking with delight, tearing across the sand as they come chasing her. She is tackled and they all tumble down and sand gets everywhere; everyone is laughing now, even Paul. When they get up Biscuit remains where she is: upside down, the crown of her head pressing into the sand so that the sky has become the floor, the lake the ceiling. This is the other world she goes to sometimes. But where are the others? Not in it. They have moved away, outside the frame of what she can see. Now there is another shriek, not Biscuit’s, not anyone’s, but the ongoing shriek of a siren, the siren that echoes every day across the lake when they are eating lunch, but it’s the wrong time, she knows that because she’s already woken from her nap, and Paul and Jess have moved away toward the edge of the lake, leaving Biscuit on her own in the upsidedown world.

 

 

“WE THOUGHT IT was you,” Jess says later that evening, when the whole family is gathered around the outdoor fireplace. Ricky and Paul are in the hammock; John and Jess sit on the folding chairs in front of the fire, feeding it handfuls of peanut shells every few minutes. Biscuit is walking in circles around the woodpile with
Scuffy the Tugboat,
which she “reads” out loud to an invisible, rapt audience. Besides the colander full of peanuts they keep passing around, there are plastic cups of wine for John and Ricky, and of cranberry juice for Paul and Biscuit and Jess. A plate of raw chicken parts, slathered in homemade lemonmustard sauce, sits on a flat rock beside the fire.

“We really thought it was you,” repeats Jess, and she has said this already, earlier in the afternoon. They have all been telling and retelling the story, so that by now even John, who was in town getting groceries, feels as intimately acquainted with the way it unfolded as if he’d been present.

First there’d been the siren sound of the noon whistle, echoing oddly in mid-afternoon, and sounding over and over instead of one long blast.Then Jess and Paul had made out small figures clustering at the edge of the public marina partway around the lake; there had been something about the way they clustered that differentiated them from people gathering for sport or play. And then several of the small craft scattered about the lake were switching course, homing in together on one spot, not terribly far from the Ryries’ beach, a hundred yards, maybe two. It was the party boat, with its jolly striped awning, that arrived first at the place where all the other boats were converging, so that it initially looked as though everyone were gathering for some kind of prearranged mid-lake merrymaking. But Jess did not think that was it.

For a while she had been unable to make out much. “What’s happening?” Paul asked at intervals, until she picked him up. “I can’t tell,” she said. “Maybe nothing.” But they watched as though neither of them believed it.

After a time, the siren stopped. They saw figures in dark clothes, uniforms, arrive at the public marina and move rapidly into a motorboat. It was difficult to see, with the sun spangling the water, but Jess thought she saw someone dive from the side of the party boat. Occasionally they could hear voices but no words. Then Jess saw another figure jump in, from the catamaran, and she knew they were diving for something.

“What are they looking for?” asked Paul, and she said nothing, and he didn’t ask again, and she marked this, and also the fact that neither child had asked for Ricky or wondered aloud how long she’d been swimming.

Jess wishes she hadn’t seen them hoisting the body from the water. Though she had never seen a dead body, it was obvious what it was, the sodden weight of it terrible and limp, like seaweed. She saw them lay the body on the party boat, whose flat base, almost level with the water, made it the best-suited for such a purpose. After this she sensed a deflation of energies, nothing like relief, but a kind of uncoiling, as one by one the boats dispersed from their knot, most of them following, at what seemed an unnaturally slow pace, the party boat as it headed for the public marina. She realized she had to set Paul down.

“What was it?” he asked, when he was standing.

“I don’t know,” she said, and realized he thought whatever it was had passed. Jess was thinking about how long it would take the police to identify the body, and then how long it would take them to make their way out to the cabin, and she hoped John would be home by then. Somehow, both grateful for and a little disturbed by her own ability to act normal, she started playing tic-tac-toe with Paul by drawing the lines in the wet sand. Biscuit came over and chanted, “Ta-ta-toe,” and tried to get in the game, mostly messing it up so that they could hardly tell which were the X’s and which the O’s.

Some ten minutes later Ricky emerged from the water, radiant and exhausted. Jess broke down at the sight of her. Ricky, bewildered, looked first to see that Biscuit and Paul were unharmed, then took Jess in her arms. “What is it?” she panted. “Did something happen?”

Jess sobbed into her neck. The front of her oxford turned dark blue. Drips from Ricky’s body ran down her own legs. She felt how strong were Ricky’s muscles, inhaled the lake smell that clung to her: silt and algae and deep, mineral coolness.The children’s hands were on her, little sandy butterflies lighting upon her calves and thighs, offering oblivious, heartfelt consolation.

It wasn’t until John came back from town with the groceries and a too-short haircut that they learned what had happened. A volunteer fireman had come into the barbershop while John was in the chair. In the manner of the local men, who habituated the barbershop more often to chew the fat than groom themselves, he’d related the facts succinctly: single mother, thirty-five, vacationing down from Elmira. Two kids. Here with the sister’s family, the grandparents, too, all of them staying in a rental cabin. No history of heart trouble, no history of substance abuse, according to the family. Autopsy would tell. Kids nine and eleven. Girls, both.

Now, sitting by the outdoor fire as daylight drains from the air, waiting for the coals to die down to the point where John can lay the grill over them and cook the chicken, Jess goes over it again in her head: the siren, the convergence of boats, the divers, the seaweedlike mass of the drowned body, the blue-and-white-striped awning that shaded it as it was brought to shore. She thinks of the way Ricky held her and of the way she held Ricky; of the dead mother and the dead mother’s children; of her parents back in Elsmere and of the word “orphan.” She thinks of little sandy hands patting the backs of her legs, of the chicken and corn John bought and is now cooking, of the solace of food and wood smoke and twilight. Of affection secured.

The shapes of bats flit above, black against violet sky.

 

 

JOHN IS BARRED from the cabin. It is switching over from afternoon to evening on their last day at Cabruda Lake. Within the hour they will all sit down to his birthday supper, but for now he is forbidden entry. Something about a surprise, says Paul, standing in the doorway with his arms spread. “You have to stay out, Daddy. You can’t see it yet.”

Ricky, Biscuit in her arms, appears behind him. She lays a hand on Paul’s head, but looks at John as she says, “Nice work, sentry.”

“He wanted to get in.”

“I see. I’ll take over from here.”

Paul disappears into the interior, which is smelling like cake.

“We’re not quite ready,” says Ricky, leaning against the door frame in a leisurely manner.

“You look nice,” says John. He is standing on the door stone, flirting with his wife. “You’re a fine-looking woman.”

Ricky smiles, her mouth closed as if she is holding something wonderful, honey or pearls, on her tongue.

“You’re a country wife.”

She laughs.

“I don’t even know what that means,” he confesses.

“Here.” Ricky transfers their plump girl from her hip into John’s arms. “Why don’t you and Biscuit go look for a bear? Come back in twenty.”

The cabin door closes. John looks at Biscuit. “Want to walk?”

“Ride.”

He hoists her onto his shoulders. They stroll down the path, out toward the dirt road.The early evening is shot through with pale yellow, but this drains away as they walk, leaving the air a granular blue. John whistles. He forgets how good a whistler he is, and how nice a thing it is to do.

Biscuit winds his curls around her fingers. “Gentle,” he reminds her after a bit, and reaches up to pry her hand loose. She has tensed; one of her feet kicks out. “See! See!” she commands. A chipmunk, eating something. It sits silkily hunched and bright-eyed, darting glances at them as it chews. His daughter has grown very still on his shoulders, but John feels her avidness, her concentration. She is breathing through her mouth. He is holding her ankles and there is sparkling power in them. He imagines if he let go she would pitch herself forward and rush toward the nibbling, gold-backed creature.There will come a day when what John knows about Biscuit will amount to less than what he does not know about her. That stands to reason. But now a thought startles him: what if that day has already come?

Later, the ban lifted, Paul gives his father a tour of the decorations he has made. “All by my bigself,” as he says. They include a circle of pinkish pebbles arranged on the doorstep, a cupful of wildflowers and grass in the center of the table, and at each place setting, one baby pine cone nestled in the bowl of the spoon. They eat hamburgers and salad, and then cake, which Jess presents, carrying it, lit, with some pride to the table, and setting it carefully before him. It turns out she has made it. John is moved, hearing this. This whole time, the whole vacation, she has seemed to want little to do with him. John would be the first to say she owes him nothing, yet he’s been hurt by her apparent disregard, jealous of the affection she’s so freely showered on the others—even as he’s rejoiced in it, been thankful to see her take so warmly to Ricky and Paul and Biscuit, and they to her.

The cake is . . . interesting, as dense and rich as any John’s ever tasted, almost alarmingly so. With the first bite he has the sensation of juice running down his throat. “Wow,” he says, nodding, reaching for his napkin, aware she is watching him. “That’s some cake.”

Jess is pleased, when asked, to be able to rattle off the ingredients: flour, sugar, a can of 7Up, a pound of butter, five eggs.

“Really?” John says very politely. “A pound of butter?”

“Four sticks.” She turns to Ricky for confirmation. “Right?”

“Ah,” he says, with no particular emphasis, and catches Ricky’s eye. She keeps her smile expertly contained. Her earrings, little glass teardrops, dangle like beads of sap just below each lobe. John would like to bite them lightly.

Jess has noticed nothing of their silent, amused exchange; she is safe in her ignorance and pleased with her cookery, as innocent, as protected as Biscuit and Paul, both of whom are deeply, utterly invested in their rectangles of cake. It’s an art form, thinks John, sui generis: the act of youths eating cake. He feels himself and Ricky gazing together at all three children, all happy at this moment: the happiness of absolute intention.

Biscuit finishes first and asks Jess for seconds; Jess appeals to Ricky for permission. John perceives the shift in allegiance, or in intimacy. Now it is Jess and Ricky who share the knowing smile, who parse each other’s tiniest movements of eyebrow and shoulder. John reads in this the history of their afternoon together: their trip to town, their labors side by side in the cabin’s tiny kitchen. But it isn’t only this afternoon; he sees how in two weeks’ time they have made something of their own, Jess and Ricky, something that does not include him and is not about him. It has sprung from and resides in innumerable small intimacies: their playing the Or Game while they do dishes; Ricky teaching Jess how to light the gas lamps, Jess teaching Ricky how to play Liverpool.