Women & Other Animals (21 page)

I shrugged and watched the cigarette travel to the fence. Smoking was the only bad habit I'd ever had, and I just couldn't stop missing it. "A sports team?" I suggested.

"Debate? Drama?" Even as I spoke, I knew how stupid I sounded to Jackie. Though smart enough to achieve, Jackie had no doubt been bored with high school and saw no reason to pretend otherwise. She probably had older boyfriends, and had sex, and smoked pot. Had I known her then, I would have felt both superior to her and jealous of her, which is more or less how I feel now.

Where the path nears the water again, I see another mallard pair floating. The difference between the sexes in some birds is stunning. Compare the iridescentgreen head of this male with the female's plain browns. The male needs that coloring for females to notice him, and the female relies on her camouflage—she'll pull out her own feathers to line her nest, which she will then be unable to protect from raccoons, crows, and snakes. Above and to the east, a turkey vulture circles; vulture numbers are increasing in Michigan, in part because they eat roadkill, which at this time of year they partially digest and throw up for their young. The sexes look alike.

Ornithologists say that vulture nests are hot and smelly.

A filmy white grocery bag lies half drowned at the lake's edge, probably blown here by the wind. Back there, near the wood and metal bridge, I saw the stiff plastic from a cheese and crackers lunch package, the kind that consumer groups recently determined did not have the nutrition a kid needs from a meal. When I have time on

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the weekends, I come out here and pick up the fastfood wrappers and drink cups and occasionally, used condoms. A small effort on my part keeps the place fairly clean, which may well be preventing more people from leaving trash. Coming around the final stretch, I see Amber get out of the car and run up the path that leads to our houses. The sun is setting, so it must be almost nine o'clock. Jackie will either be home or she'll call home from the bar to check on Amber. Last night Jackie called my house.

"I'm sorry for bothering you," she said. Behind her surprisingly clear voice was music, shouting, and the clanking of glasses and pool balls.

"It's no bother. What can I do for you?" My husband had fallen asleep on the couch with the new issue of
Science
over his face.

"I know it's late, but could you go over to my house and look in on Amber?" When she paused to draw on her cigarette, I could almost taste the smoke. "The phone has been busy for forty minutes, and I'm wondering if she took it off the hook."

"I'll go check. Call me back in ten minutes."

The living room next door was dimly lit, and the curtains were closed. As I knocked at the front, I would almost swear I heard the back door open and close, and someone might have been running behind the house, toward the dirt path.

"Mom's at work," said Amber. It had taken her more than a minute to answer the door.

"I know. She called and asked me to check on you. Your phone's been busy."

"Mom doesn't trust me." Amber spoke matteroffactly. Her black fingernail polish was chewed most of the way off her short, ragged nails. Her cuticles were ripped, and on some fingers that cuticle skin was red and slightly swollen as though infected. Weren't there ointments a person applied that tasted like grapefruit rind? Wasn't there a school psychologist she could see? Was there an amount of money that would induce her to stop mauling herself? Somebody had to do something! I wanted to shake her shoulders and scream into her face, "Stop it, you stupid girl, or you're going to end up pregnant!"

Instead I said, "Your more was worried."

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Amber shrugged and bit once at a hangnail on her middle finger, then stopped herself. As the clenched hand fell to her side, she stiffened and stood waiting for me to leave. She was as tall as I am, but she looked muscular and fertile, and, despite her mutilated fingertips, confident. She reminded me of girls from high school sports teams, girls with springy footsteps who walked right down the middle of hallways, girls who, even at fifteen and sixteen, thought they had mastery over their bodies.

"I must have knocked the phone off the hook," she said.

"Your mother said you were having trouble with math," I said. My heart beat as though I were presenting findings to my superiors, results which called into question my own earlier research. "I can help you with math. Or any other schoolwork. I'd be glad to help. Really, Amber."

"Thanks. I'll let you know." She sounded both condescending and suspicious of me, and on the way home, I told myself I was glad she didn't want help, because tutoring would cut into what little time I had in the evenings with my husband. We don't go out to movies or plays nearly as often as we'd like. Amber doesn't know I'm behind her now as she runs.

The Camaro boyfriend backs out of his parking place—too quickly, I think. If he loved Amber, he would sit for a minute and watch her figure disappear down the woods path. Instead, he screeches toward the asphalt, spitting up gravel without looking back to see either me or Amber, whose bright hair rises and falls, whose arms flail. Her leather sandals are heavy and loose—I wore similar sandais at one time, made from actual tire treads. Today I wear the best technical running shoes I've ever owned, with an adjustment for pronation.

Amber wears hiphugger bellbottoms which she hikes up as she runs, and this, along with the clunky sandals, slows her. The clumsiness of youth surprises me, for certainly Amber is stronger than me. Though her running is loosejointed and effortless, she has no idea how to run.

I could show her how to breathe and stride, how to hold her arms so as not to waste energy, how to dress to move easily. If she wanted to join the debate club, I could help her construct solid arguments

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and do the necessary research. At this moment, I want to share with the girl everything I've learned—about men, about algebra, about breast cancer—but she is not interested, and in any case she would break my heart with her crazy hair and chewedup nails, and with the way she goes with boys who don't appreciate her. I speed up slightly to narrow the distance between us, though not enough to catch up with her. She doesn't hear me behind her as together we travel the path that leads to our separate houses.

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Taking Care of the O'Learys

The twostory monstrosity rose in the distance before them, its roof a bright and humiliating blue—Barb had sewn together four overlapping vinyl tarps to keep the weather out of their rooms until she and Martin could buy the materials to finish shingling. The house disappeared behind trees as they neared the driveway. Couldn't they just keep going, Barb wondered, drive right past that godforsaken ruin? Steer the pickup into a field? As the sky darkened, she'd strip and lie naked on the cool metal truck bed and pull Martin down onto her. What if she threw herself across the truck seat right now and pressed Martin against the driver's side door? The steering wheel would whip around, and the truck would swerve into the trees or crash through a wall into somebody's living room.

But the godforsaken ruin to which they were returning was their home, and thirteenyearold Rebecca was waiting for them. Gravel flew up as they turned into the quartermile dirt driveway. Barb thought of the creatures—opossums, squirrels, cats, and dogs—that might dash beneath their wheels. As he maneuvered through potholes, Martin wrapped his hand around Barb's leg and squeezed. Though a moment ago Barb had wanted to mash her body into his, she now stiffened against his hand.

"What's the matter, Barbie?"

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"Aren't you going a little fast?"

"Do you want to drive?" he asked, taking his hands off the wheel.

"Just be careful." She hated the way she sounded, but she wished he'd slow down and watch what was in front of him.

"You worry too much." He slowed slightly. "Hey, you haven't seen any bats around here, have you?"

Barb hadn't. They bounced over the gravel to the house that used to belong to Martin's parents, and to Martin's father's parents before that. Barb hoped that Rebecca hadn't let Muffin outside—it was a miracle Martin hadn't yet run over their dog. At their old house, the dog had stayed inside a fenced backyard. Barb had liked their small brick house next to the post office, within walking distance of the dentist's office where she worked nine to three. Rebecca had a halfdozen friends within a few blocks, and Martin had walked to the library after dinner most evenings. Living across from the mortuary had made Barb uneasy at first, but Peas Brothers turned out to be nice, quiet neighbors. Then Martin's poor crazy mother had died, and Martin's father offered them the big family house, along with its ridiculous tax delinquency—ridiculous because Mr. O'Leary could have paid the taxes for the last four years but hadn't bothered. Martin had refused to let the dilapidated place go, so the only choice had been to lose the house in town with the window boxes and walltowall carpeting. Barb wondered every day if she'd given in too easily.

Their headlights lit a pair of red metallic eyes beside the driveway. Too close to the ground to be Muffin, it was probably a rabbit, as likely to dart in front of the car as not. When they had some extra money and time, Barb would figure out how to run some kind of barrier, chicken wire maybe, along the driveway—after they finished shingling the roof and about ten other projects, that is. Martin searched the trees as he flew down the driveway, watching for bats. He'd build bat boxes, he said. The nature center would give him a pamphlet showing him how.

A car was parked in Martin's spot, and though Barb said, "Somebody's here," Martin only pulled his attention from the trees and swerved to avoid it at the last second. It was an old Toyota with California plates and a smashed rear bumper.

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"Who the heck's that?" He screeched to a stop.

Barb got out and rolled her shoulders. "Maybe it's a friend of Becky's," she said, not that she'd like the idea of Rebecca having friends whose cars were registered two thousand miles away. She and Martin walked along the stone path leading up to the house. Martin had hardly changed since they'd made out in the back of his first pickup. He worked at the same smallengine sales and repair shop halfway between here and town, though now he was the manager. "Bat boxes," Martin said again, taking Barb's hand and swinging it. Barb was continually surprised at his competence each time they took on a new house project, but getting him to finish the old job before starting a new one could be a problem.

They entered the kitchen to see two girls with chairs pulled up to the kitchen counter. When the girls simultaneously turned their round faces toward her, Barb felt the ground give way. Two pretty noses, two heads of blonde hair cut blunt at the earlobes. Two Rebeccas? Martin burst past Barb and held out his arms.

"MarthaMarmalade! Where'd you come from?"

"Los Angeles," Martha squeaked as Martin squeezed the breath from her.

"Why didn't you call?" Martin let loose, then bearhugged his little sister again.

Martha grinned at Barb over Martin's shoulder and waved. Barb's surprise turned to shame at having a guest see her kitchen, even if it was only her sisterinlaw. Not that Barb had stained the floor tile or neglected to paint the window frames for fifty years, nor had she worn the porcelain of the sink through to the cast iron. Barb would never have let a grease fire burn long enough to inflict those marks on the ceiling.

Barb thought for a moment that her daughter was holding a cigarette between two fingers with chipped red nail polish, but she traced the hand to Martha. The smoke fretted toward the twelvefoot ceilings to hang like cobwebs. Martha had not even come back for her mother's funeral—no one had been able to contact her. At close range, Martha's age showed in the lines around her eyes. Rebecca's complexion was perfect and clear.

"Did the two of you get something to eat?" Barb asked.

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''We're fine, Mom."

Martin clasped his sister a third time. "How long are you here?" he asked.

"I'm not sure." Martha looked at Barb.

"Well, stay as long as you like," said Martin. "We've got plenty of room, all right. Don't we, Barbie?" He spread out his arms as if to fill in some of the space. "Hey, let's have a nightcap."

"I can't believe you guys are living here," said Martha.

"Mom can't either," said Rebecca.

Four months ago, in January, when Barb, Martin, and Rebecca first moved into their cold, crumbling bedrooms, Martin kept pacing the hallway shouting "All this space!" and stretching out his arms. Rebecca had followed his lead, singing "Give me space!" and then the two had started dancing around, waving their arms, celebrating the surrounding decay like members of some demented tribe. Barb had liked the size of their old house; there, she knew at all times which rooms her daughter and husband occupied. Whenever they had visited Martin's parents in this house, she'd felt uneasy about the big rooms filled with cobwebs and the dirty walls, not to mention the way Mr. O'Leary flirted with her, as though she were not his daughterinlaw, but some bar waitress. After he buried his wife, Mr. O'Leary packed up what he wanted, left everything else, and moved to Florida, where, he said, he'd be chasing rich widows.

After they got Martha settled into the cleanest of the empty rooms, Barb lay in bed and stared at some moonlit lathe showing through the wall. If she were to push it with her hand, the piaster would crumble, and she would see right into the bathroom. On the other side she could break through above the stairway. She smelled mold—tomorrow she'd spray again with disinfectant. Martin rolled over in his sleep, cupped his body around hers, and placed an arm across her. She adjusted to be closer to him, then lay awake, feeling his body pressing all around her like a warm, small dwelling.

When she next awoke, Martin had turned away and spread himself across twothirds of the bed, snoring in a private bliss. Barb heard creaking throughout the house.

When they'd first moved in, there had been families of red squirrels living in the attic, but Barb Page 147