Circle of Three (14 page)

The answering machine in the bedroom blinked a message. The tape took forever to rewind—that meant it was Mama. I lay down on the bed to listen.

“Hi, it’s me,” came her bossy, confident voice, booming over the silence. “I thought you’d be home by now. Give me a call when it suits. I’ve got an idea—I’ll tell you about it when we speak.” But no, she couldn’t wait. “What do you think about a little getaway? Just the three of us, for a weekend someplace interesting.”
The three of us
? Me, Mama, and Pop? How bizarre. “I think it would do us all good, I really do. End of the month, maybe, when it’s a little warmer. We could go to Richmond, we could go to Washington, Baltimore, wherever we want. I know Ruth works on Saturdays, but surely she could take the day off one time.”

Oh,
those
three. An all-girl getaway. Much less bizarre.

“’Course, the sale of colonic cleaning agents may fall through the floor, but homeopathy as we know it will survive.” She chortled merrily. “Carrie, erase this tape immediately, hear me? All right, call me when you get in if it’s not too late. Oh—Ruth called, by the way. A mix-up tonight, signals crossed. We missed her, but we understood. She is the sweetest child, I could just eat her alive. Let’s go to Washington, don’t you think she’d have more fun there? Okay, call me. Love you. ’Bye.”

I pulled the blanket up over my legs and crossed my hands over my chest. An out-of-town weekend with Ruth and my mother—what a nice idea. Theoretically. Three generations of Danziger women, all at difficult ages and stages, on the loose in the nation’s capital. It could be fun. It could be disastrous. It was one of those ideas that were so compelling and irrefutable
in the abstract
, as soon as you thought of them they were virtually inevitable. Destined. If only because all the arguments against them sounded neurotic.

I caught myself dozing.
Get up, get undressed
. I would. In one minute.

I was in the backseat of the family car, the blue Ford we had when I was in junior high. At first I thought Mama was driving, but now I could see it was Ruth. Trees and sky streamed past the open windows, vivid watercolor streaks, blue-green-blue-green-blue-green, and the pine wind blew in my face. “Don’t go so fast,” I warned, but Ruth paid no attention, didn’t even turn her head. Then Stephen was beside me on the seat, his thigh grazing mine. I wanted Ruth to look around and see us, see that we were together. I called to her, but she had her headphones on, keeping time to some cool, silent beat, swaying her shoulders. I couldn’t see Stephen’s face or his upper body, just the leg of his old green corduroy trousers. I moved my hand on his thigh, studying the contour of my fingers, light on dark, and then it was Jess’s leg.

He put his chin on my shoulder—my bare shoulder; all of a sudden I was naked—and kissed me under my chin. “Wait, now,” I whispered. Even though my eyes were closed tight, I could see the dazzle of blue-green-blue-green flood past faster, faster. Ruth was driving too fast, something horrible was going to happen. Jess had me pressed down against the seat and our legs were tangled up, his covered with tickly blond hairs, I wanted to stroke along his thigh and ruffle the fine hair, just graze it with my palm. I opened my mouth to tell Ruth to slow down, and Jess slipped his tongue inside, and we made love until the wail of a siren turned my hot blood into icy slush.

Ruth was still speeding, but in slow motion. Jess didn’t get it, he wouldn’t cover up, wouldn’t stop touching me, and I couldn’t scream at him because Ruth would hear. Even though the car was still moving, Officer Sherman poked his head in the driver’s window and handed Ruth a ticket.
Don’t turn around
, I begged,
Oh, don’t see us
, frantic, shoving at Jess’s slick shoulders. Officer Sherman dissolved, changed into Mr. Tambor. “It’s your fault,” he said mournfully, wagging his finger in my face. “She is failing all her subjects. You have only yourself to blame.”

“Mom?”

“Hey.” I struggled up on my elbows, cleared my throat. “You’re home. What time is it?” I put on a good-natured smile, in case any of the dream still showed.

“Ten-ish.” She waved her hand vaguely. She had an ostentatious stack of books clutched to her chest. I patted the bed and she dropped down beside me, scattering books on the blanket. “Were you asleep? In your
clothes
?”

“No, no. Just thinking with my eyes closed.” A joke of Stephen’s. We smiled wanly. “Did you have fun at Becky’s?”

“It was okay. I heard you saw her mom at school.”

“Yes, we had a nice visit. What did she give you for dinner?”

“Some casserole. Then we had cake left over from Becky’s little sister’s birthday. She’s twelve. It was pretty good.”

Her arms were bare under her dun-colored short-sleeved sweater. Long, pale, child’s arms, the curve of the wrist so tender and defenseless. “Aren’t you cold?” I said, pinching the fold of skin at the back of her elbow.

“Yeah, it’s freezing in here. So…did you just get home?” Casual yawn; bored examination of the line where the wall met the ceiling. My heart squeezed. Helpless love flooded me.
Don’t change, don’t do anything, don’t get older
.

“I had talks with all your teachers except Mrs. Fitzgerald.”

“Oh, shoot, Mom. She’s the best one.”

Shoot
. How sweet we could be to each other. I’d been cleaning up my language for Ruth’s sake for years, and now she was cleaning hers up for me. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I said, “it’s too late tonight. You look tired, I want you in bed. But I’ll just tell you—nobody told me anything tonight I didn’t already know.”

She bowed her head, relieved.

“We will, however, be making some changes soon. In the studying department.”

“Right, okay.”

“Right, okay. I’m not kidding.”

“I
know
.”

I thought about what Mr. Tambor had said, that she probably wouldn’t study math in college because Stephen was gone. She didn’t have to try to please him anymore. I was different—I’d given up on my father when I was even younger than Ruth, about thirteen. (I could be fairly precise on the date; I uncovered it with the help of a very careful therapist in Chicago nine years ago.) I hadn’t stopped loving him, but I gave up expecting fatherliness from him. But Ruth hadn’t given up on Stephen yet. I had watched with a sick heart while she persisted, virtually up to the night of his death, in trying to get his attention and his love. That’s what scared me the most about her, her puppy like constancy, her hopefulness. At fifteen, a wafer-thin coating of skepticism flavored her language these days, her rotten-teenager attitude, but underneath was a big, sweet smiley face. I counted the days before somebody’s thoughtless, random cruelty—please God, don’t let it be mine—erased it, killing her innocence.

“Go to bed, sweetie,” I said. “Kiss me good night first.” The red light on the answering machine reminded me. “Oh, Gram called. She wants us to go away for a weekend sometime. Just the three of us, to Richmond or D.C., someplace like that.”

“God. I mean, too weird. So do we have to?”

“Don’t you want to? I was thinking it would be fun.” She made a face of incredulous revulsion. Did they practice in
the mirror? Was there a course they took, “Contemptuous Expressions Sure to Hurt Your Mother’s Feelings”? “Well,” I said stiffly, “we’ll talk about that later, too. Get ready for bed now, you look exhausted.”

“I am, I’m really wiped. Can I stay home tomorrow?”

“No, you stayed home today.”

“Yeah, but it was a holiday. I am really, really wrecked.”

“Then you should’ve rested today.”

“I wasn’t tired today, I’m tired
now
.”

“Go to bed, then.”

“I could have mono for all you know. I could have chronic fatigue. I probably do have a liver dysfunction right now.”

“Good night, Ruth.”

“
Jeez.
” She snatched her books up, stormy-faced, and flounced out. In the hall she threw back, “Becky gets to stay home tomorrow.”

“Oh, really? Now I’m beginning—”

She didn’t hear. “Mrs. Driver has a lot more compassion than you,” she finished cuttingly, before closing her bedroom door with just enough force to register anger and resentment but not enough to justify the punishment for slamming. She’d perfected the distinction. She had it down to an art.

I slumped against the pillow. Bonnie Driver had a lot more of a lot of things I didn’t have. A nice bout of self-pity would’ve been very comforting right now. With Stephen gone, I ought to have felt
less
under appreciated than I used to. Nothing like a teenage daughter to keep you whittled down to size. No sustained highs allowed. I couldn’t remember being hateful to my mother in any long-term, persistent way when I was a girl, although I probably had been. The difference was that Mama was tough and strong and thicker skinned, and when you hurt her, she didn’t sulk or get depressed, she got mad.

An out-of-town weekend with Mama and Ruth. Well, maybe so. Maybe it was just what Ruth needed. She might learn important life lessons from her grandmother. Lessons her mother couldn’t teach her in a million years.

I
COULD’VE CALLED
Landy and asked him about the article in the paper on Noah’s Ark. He was the logical one; the ark was his project, after all. But I called Jess. I wanted to hear firsthand about the city council vote, I told myself. Ignoring the obvious fact that, since Landy would undoubtedly have been at the meeting, his account would’ve been firsthand, too.

Jess was out, as usual. Farmers didn’t seem to spend much time in their houses. I left a message. He called back when I was on another line, trying to sign up an instructor in white-water rafting for the summer term. At about three in the afternoon, we finally connected.

“Hi—what’s this I hear about playground equipment?” I asked, all business. “Now Pletcher’s bribing the city council?”

“He thinks of it as an inducement. How are you, Carrie?”

“Do you think it’ll work?”

“Well, the treasurer did some figuring last night, and came up with a little under thirty-nine thousand to replace everything at the park.”

“Thirty-nine thousand
dollars
?”

“And that’s not even top-of-the-line equipment. There’s opposition to the ark on the council, no question, but I think,
for that much money, a lot of aesthetic sensibilities are going to roll over.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.” Wait until my mother hears about this. Launching a fully stocked ark on the Leap even sounded tacky to
me
.

“Meanwhile, Carrie, Landy’s animals are getting uglier every day.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“The
Morning Record
’s sending a reporter out next week to take pictures. For a feature.”

“Uh-oh.”

“It’s only a matter of time before Eldon and the Arkists all look ridiculous. Landy, too.”

“Sorry,” I said again. “Nothing I can do about it.”

“You could come out and help us.”

“Jess—how in the world did you get caught up in this?”

He sighed. “It started out so peacefully. Landy had a woodworking project—that’s what he called it—and asked if he could use my band-saw. The next thing I knew, I was cutting out rhinoceroses.”

“
You’re
doing animals now?”

“Yes, and I don’t have time, I’ve got an ark to build. The original was made out of gopher wood. Any idea where we could get some gopher wood?”

“Eighty-four Lumber?”

“Funny.”

“When do you milk your cows?”

“I knew there was something I forgot to do.”

I laughed. “This is all your own fault. You could’ve said no.”

“I could’ve. But I like it. I like the idea.”

“But it’s so
crazy
.”

“That’s what I like about it.”

I smiled to myself. That was the Jess I knew.

“And you need it, Carrie.”

“
I
need it? Oh, I assure you, I don’t need it.”

“Okay, then, I need you.” Quiet for a second. “Come over Saturday, will you? Bring Ruth.”

“No, no, I can’t. Anyway, Ruth has to work.”

“Come by yourself.”

“I can’t, Jess, really.”

“Think about it. Try to come.”

“Andy’s giving up violin,” Chris Fledergast announced, coming to stand in front of my desk while she pulled on her coat and wound a wool scarf around her neck. “Maybe piano, too, but we’re putting that decision off till summer.”

I turned off my computer. How could it be five o’clock already? “Andy’s giving up the violin? Why?”

“Because he hates it.”

“Well, sure, but…”

“I know. Believe me, if it was up to me, this would not be happening.” She jammed a maroon wool cap down so low on her head, it hid her eyebrows. So clumsy and gangly on the outside, so graceful inside, a genuinely gentle person. “It’s all Oz’s doing,” she said, folding the ends of her muffler across her chest and buttoning her quilted coat over them.

“Oz doesn’t want Andy to play the violin?”

“It’s not that.” She smiled at Brian when he came out of his office. “Telling Carrie—Andy’s quitting violin, and maybe piano, too.”

“How come?” Brian draped one muscular thigh over the corner of my desk and sat down.

“Oh, he hates to practice, he hates the recitals. He’s starting to say he hates music.”

“It’s just a phase,” Brian said. “What is he now, ten?”

“Nine. He says he wants to play baseball.”

“And Oz is all for that,” I guessed. I’d only seen Chris’s husband once, when he’d dropped her off at work and come in for a second to meet me. He was nice, I’d liked him, but big and tough, a pretty macho guy—I could imagine him not minding much if his kid gave up piano.

“No, it’s not that,” Chris said. “It’s not a guy thing, you know, not Oz wanting him to get tough or anything.”

“Oh.” So much for what I knew.

“He says Andy should be allowed to decide for himself.” She scowled down, jabbing the side of one gloved hand into the spaces between the fingers of the other. “Oh, I don’t know. I just think, how is he supposed to know what’s good for him? He’s nine, how could he know?”

“Yeah,” Brian said, “but if he hates it.”

“I know. I don’t know. We argued and argued, Oz and me.”

“I had to take piano,” I said. “Took it for four years, and I can’t play a single song.” Not strictly true; I could play “Für Elise” and “Country Gardens.”

“I always wanted to take piano,” Brian said, “but my folks couldn’t afford it. I’d’ve been good, too. Too late now.”

“Andy’s very musical, his teacher says he’s got loads of talent. I say of
course
he wants to play baseball—he’d rather eat ice cream than spinach, too, but we don’t let him. But Oz says he’s old enough to make his own decisions, so.”

“Well, I guess if he’s supposed to play the violin—”

“He’ll come back to it—that’s what Oz says.” Chris shook her head, worried. “We’ll see.”

I tried to think what I’d do if Ruth wanted to give up something she was good at—reading, say. No, bad example, because of course I’d have to discourage that. But—say she wanted to give up both her team sports, soccer and volleyball, and spend her time…drawing pictures of fashion models in designer clothes. Just for example. Would I allow that, even though she has no talent for drawing or design but she’s excellent at soccer and volleyball?

I wasn’t sure. Probably.

I knew who would violently disapprove of that decision, though. Mama. If she thought she knew what was good for you, you didn’t have a prayer. She’d wear you down to a nub and you gave in.

“Chris,” Brian said, “did you get that payroll spreadsheet printed out before you shut down?”

“In your in box.”

“Great. You going home now?”

“Thought I would.” She grinned at me, holding out her arms.
What does he think I’m doing in my coat?
We laughed at Brian behind his back sometimes, but in a nice way, tolerant and affectionate, the way women laugh at men they like. Brian took advantage of Chris, though. She was so smart, but she didn’t push herself. She did whatever he told her, cleverly and efficiently, because loyalty and hard work were what she thought he’d hired her for. If he’d appreciated her, it would’ve been different, but he didn’t. He took her for granted.

He cracked his knuckles, one of his boyish habits, swinging his leg back and forth against the side of the desk. “I need somebody to brainstorm with,” he said, frowning. “You have to get right home?” he said to me.

“Um…”

“Because we could do it over dinner. An early one while we talk, if you’re free. I need to get back to Carmichael on this Remington thing, and I’m not sure what to tell him.”

Remington College recently made an interesting offer: in return for nothing except goodwill and community relations, the college would let Brian hold some Other School courses on campus, in free classrooms, mostly at night, and they’d even spring for on-campus ads to that effect, and include the school in the annual catalog under college-associated community services. I thought it sounded terrific, but Brian was being cautious.

“Well, I could,” I realized. “Ruth’s going over to a friend’s house after work and she won’t be home till late, so it’s a good night for me.”

“Great!” He bounded up from the desk, rattling my computer monitor. “I need ten minutes, then we can go. We’ll take my car.”

“Hey,” Chris said when he had disappeared into his office. “He never invites me to dinner. Guess you have to be good-looking and single.”

But she was kidding—I looked to make sure, and she was grinning.

“Too much air?” Brian touched a button discreetly hidden in the leather side panel of his Lincoln Continental, and the window went up without a sound. “I’m just saying it could muddy our image. Is it the Other School or is it Remington College? The distinction won’t stay clear in some people’s minds.”

“Brian, where are we going?” We’d been driving in the country for twenty minutes.

“Great place, you’ll see.” He threw his right hand across the back of my seat, leaning back to steer with his left. “You’re thinking what difference does it make if it’s clear in their minds or not. Just as long as it gets us more enrollment.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I can see your point, too. I’m probably being too proprietary.”

“No, I think it’s a legitimate concern. One of the school’s biggest assets is its independence. It’s the
Other
School. Most people have a sense that it’s alternative.”

“Right, it’s out there, it’s a little on the edge. You put it on the college campus, it’s just another post-secondary program. People think continuing education, adult education, associate degree, Other School. And that’s wrong, that’s not who we are at all.” He smacked his hand against the steering wheel for emphasis. The smell of his cologne was strong at the office; in a closed car it was overwhelming. And the Lincoln was huge, but Brian’s bulk made the front seat feel almost cozy.

“On the other hand,” I said, “you can’t ignore the benefits. The hassle factor—you’d never have to hustle for classroom space again—that’s just one thing. Enrollment. I have no idea how much it would go up—”

“Plenty. You got kids sweating through poli sci, trigonometry, the history of the rococo period in Belgium in 1840—and they see a notice that next week there’s this cheap night course on how to get laid on the first date and it’s
right across the hall
—you got a big jump in enrollment.”

“That’s a joke, right?” With Brian, you could never be sure.

“I’m talking on that order. We’d definitely gear a lot of courses to attract the students, though, much more than we have been. That’s common sense. You’d have to take advantage of what’s practically a captive audience.”

“But how to get laid on the first date, that’s—”

“An example! Of course we wouldn’t call it that.” He gave my shoulder a playful jab. “I’d count on you to think up something tasteful—‘Overcoming Shyness in Your Interpersonal Relationships,’ something like that. Huh?” He laughed hard—he always laughed hard at his own jokes. “‘Dispensing with Inappropriate Shame’—you like that? Ha ha ha ha!” He’d flicked on the turn signal. He was braking, pulling into the parking lot of a long, shingle-sided, neon-lit restaurant. “We’re here,” he announced, easing into a space between two shiny pickup trucks. “Ever been here before, Care?”

C
ACTUS
F
LATS
, read the blinking green-and-yellow sign. Cocktails, beer, steaks and chops. Live entertainment Fri., Sat., Sun. “No,” I said. “My first time.”

“You’ll love it. You like rib eye? Best in the Piedmont. It helps if you can stand country music.”

Cactus Flats was an old-fashioned roadhouse, low and dusty, reeking of beer, big enough to maintain separate sections for its three primary activities—drinking, eating, and dancing. Brian wanted to “brainstorm” here? No live music tonight, a Thursday, but the jukebox was as loud as a band, and it never took breaks. After a while the twangy George Jones and George Strait and Vince Gill tunes got into my head. It was true that the older I got the more I could tolerate country music, and it wasn’t to embarrass Ruth (as she
claimed). I could hear the words and sing the melodies—was that asking too much? Lowbrow, Stephen used to tease me; you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take Carrie out of Clayborne. He hadn’t said it in a very nice way.

We sat in a booth along a knotty pine wall adorned with saddles, spurs, Stetsons, and longhorns. I felt sorry for the waitresses, who all wore tight jeans tucked into high-heeled cowboy boots. “Do you come here a lot?” I asked Brian over a peppy Patty Loveless song, something about only going halfway down. I had to shout my question again, not so much to be heard over the music as to attract Brian’s attention. Because he was gone. As soon as he gave the waitress our drink order—a couple of Lone Stars, what else—he went into another world, appeared to get lost in the music and the…
ambience
wasn’t the right word for Cactus Flats. The experience. He even sang along—I could hear his pitch-perfect falsetto just under Patty’s. Sometimes I came upon Ruth in her Walkman headphones, wearing the same intense, absorbed, blissed-out expression and wailing along to the music of bands with names like Hole and Anthrax.

Brian grinned happily and either nodded to my question or continued to keep the beat with his head, I couldn’t tell. When the beer came, he clicked his icy stein to mine with so much gusto, I was afraid we’d chip our glasses. “Isn’t this great, Carrie? Isn’t this the perfect place to unwind?”

I nodded, smiled back. Well, it was. It really was. But I wished I’d had a little notice; I could’ve unwound more efficiently if I’d known I was supposed to. But how amazing to see this new side of Brian I’d never suspected. He’d taken off his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, loosened his tie. He looked younger, carefree, not nearly as intense as usual as he slouched against the wall, one foot drawn up on the seat, banging out the beat with his fist on the back of the wooden booth.

The music changed. All of a sudden he shouted, “Two-step!” grabbed my arm, and hauled me up and out of the
booth. I tried to resist, but it was ridiculous, Olive Oyl fighting off Bruno. “I can’t do this!” I yelled, trotting to keep up as he pulled me along, out onto a huge, nearly empty dance floor. “Brian, wait! I can’t do this!”