Authors: Drusilla Campbell
Wildwood (17 page)
In the kitchen Hannah hung up the phone next to the refrigerator and said, “That was Betts. She needs someone to run Angel over to the clinic. She’s got a fever of one hundred and one.”
Dan said, “That’s nothing for a baby.”
“For her it is.”
“Babies run high temps all the time. You know that.” Dan poured a cup of coffee.
“Can you pick Eddie up after practice and get him some new shoes and a haircut?”
Dan added sugar to his cup and sat at the counter opposite Hannah.
“Please, Dan?” She dug in the junk drawer for an elastic to hold back her thick curly hair. “Dan?”
“What happened to Betts’s car?”
“The battery’s dead. Someone left the lights on last night.”
He shook his head.
“Betts needs help and she called me. I’m honored that she feels comfortable doing that.” Dan stirred his coffee. “Just tell me, will you help out with Eddie? There are Nikes on sale at Big Five.”
“Are you the only person Betts knows with a car?”
She threw down the dishrag. “Why are you doing this? Why can’t you just say—”
“I’m serious, Hannah. Can’t she call another volunteer?”
“It’s Angel. You know how I feel about Angel. What if something happened to her?”
“Your time is already committed. Or do you have more hours in your day than the rest of us? Why couldn’t you tell Betts you can’t help out because your son is counting on you to pick him up after football? And you’ve got a houseguest and you’re giving a dinner party tonight? Why couldn’t you say that?”
“The party’ll take care of itself. I’ve already made the curry.”
“That’s not the point.”
“The point is you don’t want me to help Betts. For some reason, you resent the time I spend with Angel—”
“Resent?” Dan laughed and tossed the spoon across the kitchen, clanging into the sink. “If I were to really let go and tell you how I feel, resentment wouldn’t begin to cover it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Take it any way you like, Hannah. Just call that woman back and tell her you are otherwise occupied today.”
“I don’t see why you can’t take care of Eddie.” Anger thinned and hoarsened her voice; the sound diminished her confidence. “What’s the big deal, Dan. He’s your son.”
“He’s yours too, but not so anyone’d notice. Especially not him. You act like he’s got rabies. Apart from mealtimes, you haven’t had a conversation with him in months. It’s like you’re afraid to get near him. He tries to tell you something and you ignore him.”
“That’s not true.”
“He loves you and you practically cringe when he’s within a foot of you. Don’t deny it. I’ve seen with my own eyes. What the hell’s going on?” Dan reached across the counter for her hand. “This is more than menopause, Hannah. There’s something the matter and I want you to tell me.”
“Don’t goddamn doctor me.”
Ingrid stood in the doorway. “I could hear you guys clear upstairs.” She walked to the sink and rinsed Liz’s coffee mug. “Can’t you at least wait until Aunt Liz is gone?”
“This is none of your business, Ingrid,” Hannah said. “Unless you want to pick your brother up after practice and take him for shoes and a haircut.”
“Dammit, Hannah.”
Ingrid gawked at her. “You’re kidding, right? That was like some kinda macabre middle-aged joke. Right?”
Hannah saw Dan tug on his earlobe and knew how angry he was. She hated it when Dan was angry with her; the tension clamped her chest like a vise. If she opened her mouth, her voice would sound like terminal laryngitis. But it wasn’t too late. She could stop it right now. It didn’t have to go further. Dan’s temper flared hot and then when it was over, it was over and he never held a grudge. A call to Betts was all it would take to have him smiling again. He was right that someone else could get Angel to the clinic. But Angel didn’t need just anyone or someone.
She spoke to Ingrid. “I’m going to San Jose in a few minutes. Angel’s running a fever. I told Betts I’d take her to the clinic.”
Ingrid stared at her.
“Eddie can wear his old shoes another couple of days. Give him some money and he can get a haircut on his own.” Hannah concentrated on tidying the kitchen. The automatic movements—she could load the dishwasher with her eyes closed—soothed her and she didn’t have to look at the faces of her husband and daughter. “Ingrid, what are your plans today?” She spoke as if there had been no argument.
“Paco’s coming over in a little while. We’re going to study at his house.”
“I thought his parents were on a trip somewhere. Japan?”
“Korea.”
“And they’re back now?”
“I s’pose.” Hannah didn’t have to see the face to know the expression that went with the tone of voice. Pouted lips, sullen brows. “I dunno.”
“I don’t want you spending the day over there alone.” Hannah ran the water hard and scrubbed ferociously at the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.
“Let her go, Hannah.”
“If they want to study, they can do it here. In the dining room.”
“And I say, she can go.” Dan spoke each word precisely. “You go too. Do what you must. I’ll take care of things here. Eddie’ll get his shoes. And his haircut.”
Hannah stood like a stone, clutching the blue dishcloth so tightly it dripped onto the floor.
“But, Ingrid and Paco—”
He grabbed her shoulders, his face white with anger. “Look, you want to go off and do your thing with Angel and Betts and whoever the hell lives at that place? Okay, you do it. Meantime, I’m in charge around here, and if I say Ingrid can go to Paco’s, then she can go. The less time you spend with this family, the less you’ve got to say about how things get run. Is that clear?”
Hannah’s heart contracted. In a fraction of a second, she knew it might be possible to make Dan so mad his anger would flare and not die down again. He could be pushed too far. She wanted to undo the last fifteen minutes, to hold Dan and hug Ingrid until she squealed. She had a quick, urgent longing for Eddie—And then his image repelled her. She didn’t want to hold Eddie. She didn’t even want to pick him up after football practice and buy him shoes. The thought of his hair, thick and oily and long at the neck, disgusted her.
“Do as you please,” she said and tossed the dishcloth into the sink. “I have to go.”
Liz settled in the overstuffed wicker chair and put her feet up on the matching hassock. In the sulky light of outdoor flares the party of eight old friends gathered on the patio overlooking the pool and paddock. The sounds of jazz piano came from the CD player in the kitchen. From where Liz sat she saw the silhouette of the wildwood, a black paper cutout against a night sky reddened by the reflection of lights from the busy valley and San Jose. She breathed deep and smelled the creek and wood, the distinctive tang of bay and gum and damp and shadows she knew so well that even in Belize, in her kitchen in the middle of the night, she could summon it. How could Hannah not think of what happened at Bluegang when reminders were all around her?
Liz sensed trouble between Dan and Hannah; but if it bothered Hannah, she hid it well. In a long black skirt, gored and graceful on her slender body, she sat at ease among her friends, her hair curly and wild, barely controlled by silver combs, wilder than any of their mothers would have approved. So feminine, Liz thought. A pretty mouth and wide eyes, and that hair, that wonderful hair, that silver blonde hair. Liz closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of her friends’ voices, their laughter and banter. It crossed her mind that she had no business coming back to Rinconada loaded down with skeletons, dumping her bag of old bones at Hannah’s feet and expecting her to sort it out. I must be crazy, Liz thought.
At best, unkind.
Hannah—Jeanne too, for that matter—led more or less contented, settled lives. They were not the lives Liz had ever wanted for herself, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate them. Bluegang had receded in her friends’ minds, and apparently bore no more relevance to this day and place than did the death of Jeanne’s brother and her parents’ alcoholism, or Hannah’s maddeningly mild father and judgmental mother. It was only Liz who could not let the bones rest.
Misery loves company.
Was that the real motivation behind this trip home? Before tonight she would have insisted it was not but now she wondered if she was deluding herself. Maybe Jeanne was right and Liz was just plain selfish and too imaginative. In the middle of the night in Belize she never would have thought this possible; but in this circle of old friends, it seemed if not
absolutely
true, at least
possibly
so. This, she saw at once, was why she didn’t like to come back. In Rinconada it took an effort to hold on to who she was now; it was easy to slip backwards and become again that deferential and neglected child, the accident who had disrupted her parents’ ordered and scholarly lives.
At best, unkind.
Hannah—Jeanne too, for that matter—led more or less contented, settled lives. They were not the lives Liz had ever wanted for herself, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate them. Bluegang had receded in her friends’ minds, and apparently bore no more relevance to this day and place than did the death of Jeanne’s brother and her parents’ alcoholism, or Hannah’s maddeningly mild father and judgmental mother. It was only Liz who could not let the bones rest.
Misery loves company.
Was that the real motivation behind this trip home? Before tonight she would have insisted it was not but now she wondered if she was deluding herself. Maybe Jeanne was right and Liz was just plain selfish and too imaginative. In the middle of the night in Belize she never would have thought this possible; but in this circle of old friends, it seemed if not
absolutely
true, at least
possibly
so. This, she saw at once, was why she didn’t like to come back. In Rinconada it took an effort to hold on to who she was now; it was easy to slip backwards and become again that deferential and neglected child, the accident who had disrupted her parents’ ordered and scholarly lives.
Mindy Ryder sat beside Hannah on the cushioned bench wearing an ankle length skirt and peasant blouse, an elaborately embroidered shawl across her shoulders. With her long narrow eyes, moody and Slavic, exotic and unlikely above her upturned Irish nose and rosebud mouth, she looked like a gypsy, a description Liz knew would please her.
Teddy and Jeanne sat side by side on a pair of upholstered Brown Jordan chairs across from Mindy and Hannah. Teddy. Movie star handsome in a loose fitting lime green linen shirt and beige pleated trousers; Jeanne delicately patrician in soft slacks and a light sweater. She wore her hair pulled back and Liz wanted to tell her to let it go, stop looking like a Norman Rockwell schoolteacher. She was on her third drink.
Who am I? Her conscience?
So far that evening they had talked about a bestseller everyone was reading, about a Randy Newman concert and could they still get tickets, about trophy wives, and now the topic was rain. The lack of it.
“If it goes on much longer,” Gail Bacci said, “I won’t be able to give houses away around here.”
They laughed at that.
Gail’s homecoming cheerleader features had become marshmallowy with age; but her round blue eyes still sparkled with the energy that had always left Liz slightly breathless. She sat beside her husband, Mario, on the redwood planter seat encircling the trunk of the live oak around which the flagstone patio had been laid. In the half-light Liz could not see Mario’s eyes, but she remembered them. Dark brown with flecks of gold and green, dense lashes and half moon eyelids, bedroom eyes high school girls swooned for. Time wouldn’t have changed those—or the naughty boy behind them either.
Dan perched on the stone wall beside the steps leading down to the pool. Relaxed, apparently cheerful: like Hannah, he concealed the fact that there was trouble in the family. The years had favored Dan. He was no longer shy and gawky. Like Hannah he seemed perfectly at ease. The pair of them were the weave and fiber of this family and community—schizophrenic as silicon had made it. Liz watched them and listened and occasionally added something to the conversation, but not much and not often. Tonight it took too much energy to fight sliding back into the childhood role assigned to her: Liz the dreamer with nothing important to contribute, one step behind, a little tentative, slightly shabby. Not smart and confident and capable like Jeanne. Not pretty and lovable and well dressed like Hannah. Memory came as a physical sensation, tearing back tissue and making raw again what had never fully healed. She felt as she never did in Belize: a bolt of burlap in the land of silk.
She accepted another glass of wine. She was among friends and she looked good. Her clothes were right—floaty raw silk pants and shirt in a deep blue that flattered her; her haircut was chic. Why couldn’t she relax, play the role expected of her, and have a pleasant evening?
“How much rain do you get down in Belize, Lizzie?” Mario asked.
She never knew the answer to that kind of question.
“I’m surprised you can’t give us all the vital statistics,” Gail said, laughing. “You were such a bookworm.”
Despite her new haircut and pretty clothes and never mind that even pregnant she was at least forty pounds slimmer than Gail, Liz felt pissed on, put down, exactly as she had in high school.
Did anyone ever, really, grow up?
“I’m still a reader.”
So there.
“I’ve made the bookseller on our corner a wealthy man.”
So there.
“I’ve made the bookseller on our corner a wealthy man.”
“But, my God,” Teddy Tate bent toward her, “how do you keep from being bored to death?”
His smugness infuriated her and she tried to recall if she had ever liked Teddy. Maybe for a few hours or days when Jeanne was flush with love, and it had been important that they approve each other’s choices of husbands and lovers.
“I have friends. Gerard and I talk and cook together.”
And read and listen to music.
“We have satellite TV. We can pick up Miami if we want to. Which we mostly don’t.”
We go for walks and sail our little boat.
“The guest house takes a lot of work. I’m exhausted at bedtime but it’s a good life.”
And read and listen to music.
“We have satellite TV. We can pick up Miami if we want to. Which we mostly don’t.”
We go for walks and sail our little boat.
“The guest house takes a lot of work. I’m exhausted at bedtime but it’s a good life.”
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