Carter Clay (25 page)

While Katherine babbles away with Mr. Clay, Jersey, bored, plucks at the sedge that rims the water hazard.
Sedges have wedges.
She remembers only that much of the ditty, and nothing of the nature guide who delivered it, but she can evoke the spot in the Everglades where she stood as the guide spoke: the dock from
which, moments later, Jersey would see a log resolve into an alligator. After
that
event—in commemoration—she drew a three-panel cartoon in her journal.

In the first panel, something—dark, scaled, mostly submerged in a lagoon—lies close by a group of feeding flamingos. In the second, the flamingos fly off, several looking back, wide-eyed, at the signs of agitation that now mar the water around the apparently emerging “something.” In the third and last panel, the “something” is revealed to be a suitcase on a conveyer belt, with several other suitcases following it up and out of the lagoon to the line of commuters who have gathered on the opposite shore.

Jersey liked the way she transformed the
experience
of “log turning into alligator” into a depiction of a faulty
expectation
of “log turning into alligator.” The harmless turns out to be the dangerous; the dangerous turns out to be the harmless. The drawing was not so great, but the flamingos were very expressive. Today, however—even after her experience of the Everglades and the drawing of the cartoon—she stares directly at an alligator of the same type and size as the one she saw a year before, and she mistakes it for a concentration of old leaves and twigs at the bottom of the water hazard.

“Lis-en,” Katherine says, clearly addressing herself to Mr. Clay, and not to Jersey. He holds up his hands, okay. Katherine smiles her damaged smile—higher on one side than the other—then makes what Jersey recognizes as a common refrain in the call of a mockingbird.

In response to Katherine's call, a mockingbird flies out from one of the golf course's dinky trees, and it lands—with the breed's characteristic balance-seeking wobble—on a post a way down the fence.

“Hey!” Mr. Clay laughs. “That was good!” He smiles at Katherine, then at Jersey, who feels taken aback, once more, by his interest in her mother and herself.

“Do you know any more calls, Katherine?” Mr. Clay asks.

“Actually”—Jersey tilts her head in the direction of the condominiums—“we have to go inside now. For lunch, Mom?”

“Jers, Car-er wans to
talk
!”

With her hands on her hips, Katherine appears an adult imitating a child who hopes to sound like an adult. The effect unsettles Jersey, but she says, as firmly as possible—hoping to sound adult herself—“You'll see Mr. Clay at Fair Oaks on Monday.”

He grins. “I hope I'll see you at church tomorrow.”

This does not satisfy Katherine, however, who complains so loudly all the way back to #335 that M.B. asks, the moment they come in the door, “What's going on?”

Katherine plunks herself down on the couch. Begins to wreak havoc on the wool of one of M.B.'s needlepoint pillows. “Car-er came and Jers
ma-de
me lea'!”

“Carter?” M.B. comes out from the kitchen. “Here, here, give me that!” She removes the pillow from her daughter's reach, and opens the coffee table drawer where, just for this purpose, she keeps a skein of mohair yarn and a pair of scissors. “Here.” M.B. snips a length of the multicolored yarn into Katherine's lap. “Now.” She takes a breath. Looks at Jersey. “Carter Clay came to see your mom?”

“He saw us feeding the ducks and stopped to say hi, M.B.”

Katherine shakes her head. “He my
hoyfrien
',” she says in a superior, correcting tone that makes M.B. and Jersey exchange a startled glance. “I see him ‘morrow at chu'ch.”

M.B. starts to roll her eyes for Jersey's benefit, then stops herself. “Let's just say he's your friend, kid,” M.B. says. “Now how about Jersey reading you a Bible story while I finish making lunch?”

Katherine picks up the Bible that sits on the coffee table and holds it out to Jersey. “Pas-or Bi-ner says Go-d's go-t plans for me. He says the aski-
den
's par' the plan.”

Jersey takes the Bible without argument, but who would be surprised to find that the passage she chooses to read aloud is one she finds not only beautiful, but to her purpose (the Letter of James)? And that she raises her voice so that her grandmother is sure to hear?

“Isn't that nice?” M.B. says, as she looks out at the pair from the pass-through; and when the telephone rings, she tells Jersey, “You keep on, hon, I'll get it.”

For a moment, because of the silence on the line, M.B. thinks,
the Breather
, but then the caller gives his name: “Carter Clay.” He hesitates, then adds, “From church? And Fair Oaks?”

“Of course!” M.B. feels a growing lightness in her chest, a sense that something crushing has just been removed from there, and she calls, “Kitty, Carter Clay wants to talk to you!”

Katherine looks up from frizzling her bit of yarn. “I don' wanna talk now.” She waves a hand in the direction of Jersey. “You be quiet, too,” she tells the girl. “I wan pie now.”

M.B. covers the receiver. “Don't be ridiculous! Come to the phone!”

Katherine folds her arms across her chest and does not budge.

“What do I tell him?” M.B. hisses to Jersey, who cuts her eyes at M.B. and hisses back, “What're you doing, M.B.? Tell him she doesn't want to talk right now.”

M.B. glares at the girl—even while she manages a merry laugh for the benefit of Carter Clay. “I guess she can't come to the phone just now, Carter, but we'll all be here tonight, if you feel like dropping by!”

If Carter had a button—say, in the palm of his hand—that he could push and,
boom
, his head would explode, he might have pushed that button after M.B. Milhause answered the telephone.

Before he even placed the call, he must have picked up the receiver twenty times, then returned it to the cradle.

It was not that he lacked nerve, but, rather, that he felt a terrible, sodden hopelessness. Seeing the pair on the golf course: Katherine, who would have been lost without Jersey; Jersey in her
wheelchair—and there was no getting around the fact that it was he and nobody else who had brought things to this pass. He was responsible.

Dear God
, he prays,
help me be willing to help them.

And dear God
, he adds,
let them let me help.

“I can't believe you did that,” Jersey says.

“I was just being polite,” says M.B. Which is not entirely true. M.B. does hope that Carter Clay will come by the condo—
could
he possibly be interested in Kitty?—and so she experiences only a minor twinge of guilt alongside a good deal of satisfaction when the doorbell rings that evening.

The scene: Katherine on the couch, making dangerously defective pot holders; M.B. in the recliner, playing solitaire; Jersey parked in front of the VCR, watching a videocassette.

“Oof-uh!” To conceal her anticipation, M.B. makes an assortment of dramatic noises as she works her way out of her recliner and onto her feet to answer the doorbell. “My poor bunions!”

Jersey does not turn from the videocassette to show her grandmother the skeptical look on her face, but it is there, it is there.
“One hundred trillion neural connections,”
says the scientist of Jersey's video. Hemmed in by tremendous models of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, the host makes his way down a grand corpus callosum.

Carter Clay seems nice, M.B. thinks. Someone you could talk to.
And
a Christian. And nice to look at. Beneath M.B.'s yellow buglight, with his shaved head, Carter Clay is pure gold; he could be a figure on one of Lorne's trophies.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jersey watches to see if either her videotape or the arrival of Carter Clay makes any impression upon Katherine. Apparently not. Katherine appears engrossed in her pot holder, breathing hard.

In the hallway, M.B. yelps, “Don't be silly! The girl's watching something, but me and Kitty are relaxing.”

There follows the sound of the man's polite scraping of his cowboy boots on the doormat (as if, Jersey notes sardonically, he comes in from a dusty trail ride, and Old Paint's tethered to the front porch).

“It's Carter Clay, Kitty!” M.B. calls.

Though her mother does not look up at this announcement, Jersey notices that the corners of her mouth do rise as she works a loop of red over a loop of blue, under a loop of green, over, under.

There are presents. For M.B. and Katherine: scarves. “Isn't that nice, Kitty?” M.B. asks. “What do you say?”

Katherine bobs her head. “Thank you, Car-ter.”

And “Thank you,” says Jersey as she examines her own gift—a new journal, in which Carter Clay has written on the first page:

“Hey, Katherine, let me show you something,” Carter Clay says, and holds out the brown paper bag in which he brought his gifts. Obediently, Katherine puts down her loom and takes the bag. “See how it says
Fort Powden
, there?” Carter Clay asks. “That's my hometown. Most paper bags you get in the stores, they come from Fort Powden. My dad worked at the pulp, there, till he had too many back problems and all.”

When Katherine only gives a nod, M.B. supplies a friendly “
Hm!
” then starts to the kitchen to fetch Carter Clay a cup of coffee.

“M.B.”—Jersey wheels after her grandmother, and in the kitchen whispers—“why's he coming here?”

Though M.B. is pleased by the appearance of Carter Clay, it is not easy for her to sound entirely convincing when she whispers back, “Guess he's sweet on your mom!”

Really, the idea makes Jersey woozy. Mr. Clay is not worthy of her mother, of course not. Still, the idea that he would be romantically interested in this version of Katherine—Jersey senses that it is absurd, and somehow creepy, too, and she whispers a pleading, “I can't believe that, M.B., and he's—not
smart
.”

M.B. makes a face. “As if being smart ever did your mom a lick of good!”

Jersey stares up at her grandmother—now briskly opening and closing cupboard doors. “Well,” she says, finally, “that was mean.”

“Oh,
mean
! You just come out and behave yourself!”

The information contained in a simple virus would fill a book of one hundred pages, exclaims the video host, but M.B. crosses in front of the set and places Carter Clay's cup of coffee on the dinette, and does not give the host a glance.

“I been thinking, Carter,” M.B. says, “maybe we could hire you to give us some help around here sometimes. Now that Kitty's coming home, weekends?”

Carter has just been noticing how nice M.B.'s apartment is—like a model room in a department store: pretty sofa and chairs, matching tables with matching lamps—and, instantly, he looks up in distress and repentance. “Oh, I couldn't take money! But I hope you ask me to help. Any time. Really.”

“Well, fine!” says M.B. “So! What do you think about this Holy Land tour Pastor Bitner's planning?”

Carter is still unused to conversations relating to church life, and he feels especially shy in front of the faithless Jersey; but he studies his big hands and ventures to say, “I guess they'll see Mount Quarantanin. Pastor Bitner says that's supposed to be the site of the Temptation. That'd be something, wouldn't it? Though, according to Lloyd—you know old Lloyd from church, right?—Lloyd believes you only have to travel to Missouri to be where they had the Garden of Eden. I can't remember the name of the town, but Lloyd says it's in Missouri.”

“Branson?” M.B. says. “No, that's the entertainment place, isn't it? Bobby Vinton—‘Roses Are Red'?—he's got a place there. A bunch of big stars do.”

Carter flushes at this swerve in the conversation, then gazes at Jersey's video as if he is suddenly vitally interested in what the host has to say. Once upon a time, Carter loved the songs of Bobby Vinton—“Blue Velvet,” sure—but should he know of a place called Branson? Sometimes, at church or at work, when people mention this and that as if they are
givens
, he feels a gap as plain as the one left behind by a lost tooth.

And hey: does Jersey
really
understand this video?

In pure agitation, Carter rises from the dinette with his cup of coffee and—careful not to block the girl's view—crosses the room to inspect the lone photograph on top of the entertainment center.

Woman, man, girl. Immediately, Carter realizes it is a family photo of Jersey, Joe, and Katherine, and he turns away with a guilty start that M.B. registers—and is only too happy to mistake for a sweetheart's unhappiness at seeing his girl with another guy.

“Oh!” she says with a little laugh. “That's—a bad picture! I don't know why we even have it out!” She rushes across the room and sets the thing face down on the entertainment center. “Anyways, have you ever been to Missouri, Carter? You ask me, it can't hold a candle to Florida. Did anyone ever grow an orange in Missouri? Give me a break!”

“M.B.,” Jersey says, “you make a better door than a window.”

“So turn the darned thing off! We got a guest, for crying out loud!”

“No,” Jersey pleads, “please?”

M.B. looks to Carter for sympathy. “The part of science that's to do with electric lights and telephones and all, that I don't mind, but
this
”—M.B. waves a dismissing hand at Jersey's videotape—“this isn't anything anybody needs to know.”

Carter nods. “Sometimes I wonder if we're even supposed to know all the things we know today.”

“Right.” M.B. sighs. Really, what she would really like is to return to her game of cards, and in order to resist the urge, she
stays away from her recliner, takes a seat at the dinette. “But try to tell Jersey that!”

Jersey turns away from the show. “You rang?”

M.B. nods. Lights a cigarette. Hopes Carter Clay does not object to cigarettes. Good grief. Should she put it out? To deflect attention from herself, she continues, “I just wish you could hear all Pastor Bitner knows about science, Jersey—how fossils are a trick from the devil and all.”

The girl bugs her eyes. “A trick from the
devil
?”

“That's right.” M.B. lifts her chin to give strength to her position. “The devil tries to make people—like your scientists”—she glances at Katherine, still absorbed by her pot holder—“he wanted them all to believe the wrong dope, so he made fossils, see? So's some people would get tricked into believing there wasn't the Creation. They'd think it happened real
slow
, over millions of years and all, instead of the seven days”—she claps her fingertips to her mouth—“
six
, I mean!”

Jersey turns her chair in the direction of her grandmother. “So that's what you think my mom was doing? The devil's work?”

“Now, I didn't say that, Jersey.”

“Of course, you did!”

“You never let me finish. What I was going to say—the scientists who claim fossils show there's no Creation,
they're
the ones I'm talking about! Your mom—she just got taken in by Joe and them when she was a girl. And, you know, toward the end there, I got a feeling she thought some of your dad's ideas were wrong. It's just a matter of time before somebody figures out she's wrong, too.” M.B. turns to Carter Clay to smile. “She wrote a book—about birds and dinosaurs?”

Carter Clay nods. “Jersey loaned me it.” He smiles in the direction of Katherine, but Katherine does not seem to notice. “It's a long one!”

Jersey gives a bitter laugh. “You don't understand, M.B. Scientists—they may change their ideas, but they always try to work from evidence.”

“Well!” M.B. brings her hands together in a merry clap. “Don't that tell you something? There's the devil's trick, right there! Evidence—but it keeps changing!”

Jersey points the remote control at the television screen to lower the volume of the videotape. “Anyway if you believe the devil can trick people, why wouldn't you think God could eliminate the trick?”

M.B. looks to Carter Clay, to see if he might tackle the question, but Carter is now busy fishing for something in his back pocket, and M.B. grows impatient and answers herself, “He could! But He wants us to have faith!”

“In
what?”

“Hold on,” Carter Clay says—now unfolding an index card he has taken from his wallet.

“Faith in Him, silly!” says M.B.

“That's right!” Carter Clay holds up the card, then reads from it: “‘By a man came death.' Corinthians 15:21. You know how there's all that talk about how fossils are real old, Jersey? Like, before there was even people?” Carter Clay smiles. “The thing is, you can't have fossils of dead creatures from
before
the Fall, because ‘By a man came death.' There wasn't death before the Fall.”

Carter Clay mistakes the girl's embarrassment for him as embarrassment for herself, and he feels a little sorry for her. Her eyes are such a bright-bright blue, he thinks she may begin to cry. Instead, she speaks: “We do have fossils before man, Mr. Clay.” She takes a little breath of air and looks away from him. “The Bible doesn't prove fossils are wrong. The fossils prove you can't use the Bible as a science book.”

Carter studies the writing on his index card, then moistens his lips before reading on, “The Bible is the word of God. Good men said so and good men don't lie.'”

To Jersey, the idea that this man quotes such trash-thinking is not just confounding but scary, too, and she offers in return, “Good people, like my mom and dad, they say the fossil record contradicts what's in the Bible.”

He gnaws on his lip. “But”—he speaks slowly—“then they ain't good people. I mean, unless they're just deceived. But if they're deceivers, then they ain't good.”

M.B. nods. “That's right.”

“No,” says Jersey. “Look at the moon and the sun. We'd think they were the same size if someone hadn't figured out ways to
measure them. Well, people have also figured out how to measure the age of really old things.”

Carter Clay takes a deep breath as he tucks his index card back into his wallet; then he asks, “Jersey, you don't want to be atheist, do you?”

In response, she rolls her eyes.

If Carter had rolled
his
eyes like that—hell, his father would have tossed him right into a wall.

“Anyways, Jersey”—M.B. tries to sound kindly, calm—“you'll never be saved if you're atheist, Jersey.”

“Well, boo hoo hoo!” Jersey cries, and, realizing that she sounds like her father when he was being silly—relishing that resemblance—she repeats, “Boo hoo hoo!”

Which makes Katherine laugh, and imitate Jersey—or possibly Joe: “Boo hoo hoo!”

“Kitty!” M.B. cries. “Shush!”

“
You
shush,” says Jersey; and then, cheeks flaming at such daring, she adds a mumbled, “She has a right to laugh.”

Really, the speed with which M.B. springs from the recliner startles even M.B.

“Hey,” Carter Clay says, “hey, now—” but M.B. has already got hold of one arm of the girl's chair and begun to shake it as she shouts, “If you weren't in that thing, Jersey Alitz, I'd slap your face! You ought to be ashamed!”

Jersey closes her eyes. Her voice is small when she says, “God's the one that ought to be ashamed. Any reasonable human being would have prevented what happened to my parents and me if he could have.
You
would have, M.B.! Think about that! If God exists, you're nicer than God!”

Though she has never in her life been slapped across the face, Jersey does not cry out at M.B.'s slap. Instead, quite evenly—despite the way her own mother now wails
no, no, no
—Jersey continues, “Don't you think that if your God wanted me to believe in him—that he could make me, M.B.?”

No one answers this question, perhaps because frightened Katherine now noisily works her way into the narrow space
between couch and wall. Ducked down, out of sight, Katherine calls a trembling, “I luh you, M.B.! I luh you!”