Women & Other Animals (14 page)

"Good." She pivoted and walked away, her calf muscles clenching with each step, her thighs rubbing against one another, her hips swaying side to side, shifting her pleats so they flashed redyellowredyellow like one of those plastic outdoor pinwheels.

Kevin was a man of his word, and not following her would probably be for the best, since he could stop being late to his classes. He might even graduate on time in May if he kept handing in his partially completed homework and didn't accumulate any more tardies. Attendance, rather than achievement, had always been his strong suit.

He hadn't made any promises about watching Madeline's house, of course, and to protect himself from the elements on cold winter evenings when his dad was at the Pub or sleeping, Kevin wore his dad's Carhartt coveralls with the snapon hood. A piece of landscaping plastic kept him dry. Once he stuck one of his dad's business cards in their front door, but Mrs. Martin never called. By follow

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ing her in his dad's truck one morning, Kevin discovered that she worked at the plasticmolding factory, which meant she probably couldn't afford a lawn service. The next time the snow melted, Kevin lugged a fiftypound bag of lime through the woods, and by the light of a dull halfmoon, he spread the grit over their halffrozen lawn. Lime dissolved slowly and would help bring the acidity in line by midsummer.

The second fire started in the living room. Despite the cold, Kevin had fallen asleep near the pricker bushes, and when he awoke both bedroom lights were off and the downstairs was only dimly lit by the clock on the television. Something seemed odd inside, flickering and dimming. He walked to the sliding glass door, through which he saw thin streams of smoke. One tongue of flame rose from the couch, then disappeared. Another jabbed upward from the other side of the same cushion.

Kevin yanked open the glass door and took the carpeted stairs two at a time, then entered the first bedroom, which he knew to be Madeline's. He ran to her bed, pushed his arms under her, intending to scoop her up and carry her to safety. It had never occurred to Kevin that the beautiful Madeline would be heavy, heavier than him, and that she would scream and slap and punch him.

"Hey! Stop it! You! Stop it!" She continued to hit Kevin as he tried to work his arms out from underneath her. When he yanked himself free, Madeline toppled to the floor beside him. She grabbed her alarm clock and struck him in the head, momentarily stunning him.

Kevin held up his hands to protect himself from a second blow. "There's a fire, Madeline. I thought you had smoke absorption." Kevin had to admit, though, there was only a hint of smoke in the air.

"Who is that?" demanded Madeline. "I know that voice." She fumbled and switched on her ruffleshaded bedside lamp. "Oh my God, it's you, Kevin, you gross thing.

Get out! Get out of my bedroom now!" She stood and brushed off her Tshirt and pinkandwhite boxer shorts as Kevin backed toward the hall, his eyes shocked by the light. Kevin would never see boxer shorts in the same way again.

"But there's a fire," he said from the doorway.

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He had her attention.

"Downstairs," he said. He pushed his Carhartt hood off his head. "I think your couch is on fire."

She sniffed. "Oh shit! Damn you, Mom!" she shouted toward the wall.

Madeline pushed past Kevin, and he followed her down the stairs and into the living room. Flames shot up intermittently from the cushions and the air stank of burning foam rubber. "We've got to drag it outside," she said. She lifted one end of the couch apparently without effort; Kevin lifted the other end and pretended that he too found it effortless. Cigarette burns crusted the couch arm. Kevin's eyes watered from the smoke which had started to pour out of the cushions.

Once outside, Madeline pitched the cushions into the snow. Kevin could see through the clear patches of ice that crabgrass grew around the cracks in the cement.

"Shouldn't we put water on it?" He felt odd about leaving the couch to smolder in the darkness, but he followed Madeline back inside. Kevin was warm in the coverall, which was a little too big around the middle and short in the legs, but Madeline's arms were covered with bumps, and the hair on them stood straight out. He willed himself not to look at her breasts.

"It won't do any good to pour water on it," said Madeline. "That padding burns for days. Nothing you can do. Believe me, I know." Then she threw back her head, shook her hair, and yelled up the stairs, "Damn you, Mom!"

Kevin considered sharing his secret about the burnbarrel fire, but it would mean letting on about watching her house. He looked up to see the smoke pooling at the ceiling.

"What the hell are you doing here, anyway?" she asked.

"I . . . just happened to be passing by." Kevin choked out a cough he'd been holding in.

"Through my backyard? You know I don't want you following me."

"I live farther down the river. This is a short cut."

"Well you shouldn't be shortcutting through people's yards." She

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ran a hand through her smokepermeated hair. "I think you should leave now."

Just then, Mrs. Martin drifted into the stairway and turned to face Kevin with only one eye open. Her bathrobe hung so that her left breast was half visible. Kevin was struck by its softness, as compared with the firmness of Madeline's breasts.

"What is it, Madeline?" she asked sweetly, oblivious to the smoke.

"You just about burned the place down again, Mom. That's all."

"Where's our couch?" Mrs. Martin reached into her lefthand pocket and pulled a cigarette gently out of a pack.

"Mom, you aren't listening. The couch was on fire, from one of your stupid cigarettes."

Mrs. Martin's other eye finally opened, bloodshot. Her hair lay flat on one side of her head. She supported herself by the stairway railing.

"How much did you drink tonight, anyway, Mom?"

"Is this one of your boyfriends, dear?"

"Oh, God." Madeline rolled her eyes. "Look at him, Mom. He is not one of my boyfriends. This is RetardoKevin."

"What's that name?" Mrs. Martin's eye threatened to close again.

"Just Kevin, ma'am," he said.

"Oh, hello, Kevin."

"Nice to meet you, ma'am." Kevin stuck out his hand and shook hers, the way his father would shake a client's hand. She momentarily let go of the railing, but then took it up again.

"Did you two go out tonight?"

"Mom, get it through your head. I do not go out with Kevin." Madeline crossed her arms and looked up at the ceiling, which made an attractive gesture, Kevin thought, like certain flowers turning to face the sun.

Mrs. Martin lit her cigarette and let the match fall to the carpet.

"See, Mom, you're doing it again!" Madeline stomped as though she might lose her temper. "What did you just do with that match?"

"Don't worry, honey. I'll vacuum tomorrow." Then to Kevin, in slurred speech: "She's embarrassed for you to see the house when it's such a mess.

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''No, Mom. I am not embarrassed for KevintheFreak to see our messy house. I just want you not to burn it down. That's all."

"Did you want a beer, Kevin?" asked Mrs. Martin. Kevin wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly.

"He's not old enough to drink. He's in high school, Mom."

"You kids are so conservative these days." She laughed, lighter than air. Kevin couldn't imagine why he'd thought she was an evil witch out by the burn barrel. As Madeline and her mom bickered, Kevin watched the ash on the woman's cigarette grow long and yet defy gravity. Mrs. Martin seemed so light that if she let go of the bannister again, she might just float up. He felt an overwhelming desire to take care of Mrs. Martin, to get ashtrays for her, to check every hour whether or not her couch was on fire. He stared into Mrs. Martin's freckled chest.

"Mom, do yourself up," said Madeline tiredly. "Kevin, stop looking at her chest." Madeline adjusted the front of her mother's robe and cinched it tightly across her stomach, causing Mrs. Martin to lose her balance momentarily. Kevin felt a terrific pity for the woman; it must be difficult, he thought, to have a daughter as awesome as Madeline.

In May, Kevin and Madeline graduated together, but the beautiful Madeline walked with a football player while Kevin walked with his cousin Crystal, who sniffed from allergies through the whole ceremony. After that, at least one afternoon a week, Kevin drove his father's mower along the shoulder of the road to the Martin house. He fertilized the lawn, spent hours dethatching and reseeding, and then he mowed it in straight lines. Having the river right there and the big trees at the side kept the grass lush without any watering. Mrs. Martin tried to pay him, but he would accept only supper and a beer. Kevin didn't like beer, but he figured he'd try to get used to it.

"Hi, weirdo," Madeline would say without even looking at him, and then she'd shake back her hair. "I'm not hungry for dinner today, Mom."

Mrs. Martin always asked Kevin what he wanted for dinner, and he'd say that, oh, anything would be fine. She'd make herself and him a grilled cheese sandwich, a burger, or macaroni and cheese

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from a package. She'd sit across the table from him as though she were his mom. He wished she'd offer him milk, but she never did. She read books even while she ate, read more than anyone he knew. His dad only read newspapers and the backs of fertilizer packages to see how much water to add.

"You should meet my dad," said Kevin one day, after the last bite of a cheese sandwich.

"Is he a nice person like you?"

"Oh, he's really nice. He has his own business, you know, and he's not married."

Mrs. Martin looked up from her book, kept looking at Kevin while she tugged a cigarette from her pack and lit it. The inside of her mouth looked dark compared to her cigarette and her teeth. Her skin looked pale, too, in the kitchen light. Kevin blushed, though he didn't know why. He tried to make conversation. "Do you like working at that plastics factory?"

Smoke poured out of her nose as she spoke. "It's kind of like dying and going to hell five days a week."

Beer went up into Kevin's nose, and he coughed until his throat cleared. Mrs. Martin went back to reading and Kevin looked out the kitchen window to where Madeline was finishing an entire bag of potato chips and sunning herself next to the driveway. She wore reflector glasses and a bikini cut so small and high over her hips that a person driving by could see almost every detail of her most personal body parts. Kevin excused himself and stepped out into the front yard.

"Why don't you lay in the backyard, by the river?" he asked.

"The river stinks. I don't go down there."

She was right; the river did stink, but you got used to it. "My dad and I used to fish on the river." Kevin put his hands in his pockets. "Before he started his own lawn business."

"My dad's an architect at a firm," said Madeline. Kevin couldn't see her eyes behind the glasses. "He's designing a shopping mall in Grand Rapids right now." The way she said it made Grand Rapids sound truly grand. "He lives outside Detroit with his wife."

"Do you like the way the lawn looks now?" asked Kevin.

"I'm leaving, so I don't care. I'm getting out of this hellhole and

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going to college in Ann Arbor. My dad is going to pay for what's left after my scholarship."

The revelation struck Kevin like an alarm clock to the head. Of course she would go to college, and of course she had too many talents to go to the community college like other kids.

"You won't know anybody there," said Kevin.

"That's right. And nobody will know I come from this place."

Mrs. Martin invited Kevin to Madeline's small goingaway party in the third week of August. Madeline was a vision of loveliness in a redandwhitecheckered miniskirt and matching halter top. Kevin hadn't thought an architect would look much different from a landscaper, but Mr. Martin turned out to be a tall, darkhaired, cleanshaven man with a distinct hairline—he looked to be of a different species altogether from Kevin's father. Kevin couldn't imagine Mr. Martin ever having been married to Mrs. Martin. Even now, Mr. Martin kept straightening his napkin and looking at Mrs. Martin as though she were overgrown limbs that someone needed to lop off and toss on the compost pile. Mrs. Martin had started out sober, but, upon the arrival of Mr. Martin, went into the kitchen and poured herself a half vodka, half orange juice in a tall glass. She grew unsteady and her mouth froze in a loopy smile, as though it was made out of playdough and stuck there on her face. Madeline didn't treat her mother with her usual impatience; today Madeline ignored her entirely and hung at her father's side.

Mrs. Martin was going to be so alone without Madeline that Kevin felt like crying for her. He had to arrange a meeting soon between Mrs. Martin and his father.

Perhaps they could speed up the dating process and get married right away. Madeline might take years to come around to Kevin, but Mrs. Martin seemed genuinely openminded.

After everyone waved goodbye to Madeline and Mr. Martin, who was driving her to Ann Arbor, Kevin ran home to find his father—through the woods, through three other backyards, away from a German Shepherd that chased him, barking, to the end of a twentyfoot chain. When he got there, the truck was gone, so Kevin Page 97

sprinted a halfmile to the Pub, where he found his dad at a table with Officer Harding and a guy in a postal uniform.

"Hi, son," said his father.

Kevin was too winded to speak right away.

"This your kid, Sam?" asked the postal man.

"Yep, this is Kevin. He's working with me fulltime this summer." Kevin's dad clapped him on the back. After being outdoors in the sun, Kevin was blind in the dark bar, and he had to feel his way down into a captain's chair. The three men drank beer from draft glasses and expelled streams of smoke, tapping their cigarettes into a central glass ashtray. "Hey, Shirl, bring my boy a Coke."

"Diet or regular?" she shouted back, across the room.

"Hell, Shirl, do you think he's on a diet?"