Every Last Cuckoo (11 page)

That done, Sarah calmed herself. Charles had gone to the village for lemons with which to sauce the gingerbread. Sarah's other contribution to the evening's potluck was an Italian pie made with layers of polenta, cheese, and roasted vegetables. Sarah had no idea what the others would bring or whether the
flavors would blend or clash. She didn't care. She had grown up with potluck.

At seven on the dot, as Sarah sat in the great room with a glass of wine, she heard Leila holler, “Sadie! Where are you?” Smiling, Sarah pushed herself up from her chair. No one else would dare call her Sadie. She got to the door in time to see Leila stomping snow off her boots and waiting for Addie, who was bumping the car door closed with her hip. Addie bore a casserole like a chalice, holding it out from her stocky, bosomy body in both hands. A strong gust whipped her straight, gun gray hair and the tails of her coat. It sprang up from nowhere, unwrapped her muffler, and escorted her roughly inside.

Charles came downstairs, smelling of soap, just as Leila was putting her boots on the rubber mat in the foyer and rooting in a tote bag for some fuzzy slippers. Addie handed him the casserole and said, “This should go into the oven to reheat.” Charles brought his sneakered heels together and bowed, lifting the foil that covered the contents. “Curry,” he said, inhaling the spices. “Smells good.” He took the dish into the kitchen and set it on the stove. “Drinks?” he asked over his shoulder as they followed him.

Addie handed him a jar of chutney she'd taken from her coat pocket and said, “Scotch, rocks.” Leila seconded the order. But Charles already knew what they wanted and reached for the bottle kept just for them.

Sarah had left her glass of wine in the great room. She headed back that way, ushering Adelaide and Leila before her and leaving Charles to greet the Markses, who were just pulling in. Molly would be late, as always, but she would bring something fragrant with the herbs she grew year-round in her greenhouse.

When Peter and Vivi came in with Charles, they brought guacamole and corn chips. “I meant to make something more exotic,” Vivi said, hugging Adelaide and Leila, “but Jonathan called from Siberia and we talked too long.” Her angled face was lit with fond joy. Her only child, born when she was forty, was half a world away, and she worried about him, though she would deny it. At twenty-six Jonathan was levelheaded and focused.

“What's new with him?” Addie asked. She had her own soft spot for the boy who used to play his guitar with Addie on piano and Leila on flute. He would make them laugh until they hurt, introducing sly jazz riffs and musical jokes into their classical repertoire, straight-faced and innocent.

“He's a hero!” Peter declared, nodding to Vivi to tell the story, which she did with glee, acting out the drama between tree-trunk Jonathan and a scrawny fellow postdoc who went outdoors one night, fell down drunk, and could not, or would not, get up. Jonathan, working late, found him snoring when he went out to let the subzero night dissolve his sleepy stupor. The sodden drunk fought his rescuer, threw up into the snow, and went back to sleep. Jonathan shouldered him like a sack of sticks, lugged him home, and flung him snoring onto his bed. The next morning his friend, a slightly older man from Virginia, looked at Jonathan red-eyed and resentful and said in his soft Tidewater accent, “I would rather be dead than live through this hangover. If you saved me, as I believe you did, I do not thank you.”

“Then you can go shit in your hat,” replied Molly, appearing without a knock or a noise and striking a theatrical pose. She had a drink in her hand and a long paisley shawl over her shoulders. She didn't smile, but her old eyes glittered.

Sarah hooted and embraced the old woman—
really
old
woman, older even than Charles. She giggled as she tried to find the bony body hidden in the depths of the shawl, which tangled them both and splashed Molly's drink. Scotch. Not her usual, but it had been sitting out on the counter.

Over the dinner of Italian pie, Greek salad, West Indian curry, and French bread with rosemary and garlic—following, of course, the Mexican appetizer—they drank an Israeli wine and reminisced about Jonathan and his young years. He had been a funny, easy kid all his life, blessed with native optimism and an intelligent sweetness that likewise blessed his parents.

“You were so incredibly lucky,” Sarah told Vivi for at least the hundredth time. “Stephie was our only easy teenager.”

“But at least you don't have kids today,” said Molly. “Thank God for that. It gets worse all the time, what with drugs and sex and AIDS and . . .”

“Who would
be
a teenager today?” sighed Leila. “How's Lottie handling it?”

“We only know what we see,” Charles answered her. “Which all seems okay. We do sometimes wonder what the whole story is.”

“Anything in particular?” Addie prompted.

“You name it,” said Sarah. “Lottie's friends are mostly fringe kids, arty, geeky. Bright but bored by school. There's a lot of rebellion and acting out. Lottie's like them but not like them.”

“Her grades are good, right? And I've never seen her surly.” That was Peter, whose thick brows drew down to the bridge of his nose.

“Ha!” Sarah answered. “Believe me, Lottie gets surly! And her grades are pure ego. She likes showing that she can rebel and still outshine the preppy kids.”

“What about drugs?” asked Molly, returning to her theme.
“And sex?” Sarah thought she caught a wistful note in Molly's voice. Had she been a wild child seventy years ago? A different world, the 1920s, but there was that
roarin'
part.

“Who knows?” Sarah moaned. “I'm her grandmother, for crying out loud. I do know that the school estimates a quarter of the kids are using marijuana, or alcohol, or harder drugs. And Lottie says it's more like
three
quarters.”

“So what's your guess?” Vivi asked.

Glancing a little uneasily at Charles, Sarah replied, “My guess is Lottie smokes marijuana. I'm pretty sure she doesn't drink, because she's allowed wine at family gatherings and always turns it down. But
God
you should see her friends! Pierced in the most painful places. Every color of hair, tons of makeup, leather and chains and studded
dog
collars of all things. Even some of the boys wear black nail polish.”

Charles leaned back. “Don't worry about Lottie,” he told Sarah, stretching his legs under the table. “Long as everything else is okay, it won't hurt her to smoke a little pot now and then. Assuming she doesn't get caught.”

Silence fell as surprised glances traveled around the table. Sarah was about to remind Charles of the very different tune he had sung about their own children when Addie cracked up. “Charles, I'm so glad to hear you say that! Leila and I couldn't
live
without pot. Can't
tell
you how it helps arthritis. And migraine. Not to mention flu and cabin fever and anxiety and acid reflux.” Leila nudged Addie conspiratorially, watching the reactions of the others.

Molly humphed. “Think you'd discovered the stuff. Bet I smoked it before the first beatnik did.” She reached into the pocket of her long skirt, searching. “Anybody want some?”

Charles grinned and said, “Why not?” and darted a look at Sarah.

Once again she was about to pounce on him, but suddenly the lights went out. In the darkness they could hear the wind rolling like a boulder over the roof and whistling in around the door.

“Well, when did that come up?” grunted Charles, pushing his chair back and feeling his way to the cupboard that housed the kerosene lanterns and matches. He came back ghostly, carrying a soft light in each hand. The glow threw his face into relief, blackening its furrows, bathing its surfaces. The shadows leapt upward, making him devilish. He mugged at his friends and Sarah as he set the lanterns down. “Okay, Molly old soul, light that thing.”

One by one, they inhaled the sweet herbal smoke, some tentatively, others with familiar ease. Sarah realized later that she and Vivi had been the only obvious novices. She couldn't imagine when Charles would have smoked marijuana before that night. She would never have guessed, after David's drug-laced adolescence, that he would try it himself or tolerate it in connection with Lottie. Watching him draw in the smoke and hold it, she saw him suddenly young and charged with energy. How adventuresome and funny he'd been; how mischievously he had known and teased her body. Maybe he was looking for that young self.

The seven old friends stayed at the table until very late, laughing and telling familiar stories, their faces softened and made young again by lantern light, memory, fondness, and intoxicating smoke. Sarah felt floaty, sentimentally aware that these friends had enriched her marriage to Charles in uncountable
ways. All those years of comfort, hilarity, listening, and escape. Friends gently and indispensably let off the pressure that could build inside the deepest intimacy, days and years in the same house with the same person.

Long after midnight, they all parted reluctantly.

Over breakfast the next morning, Sarah prodded Charles about his changed attitude toward marijuana. He shrugged. “I read the medical journals. Those health benefits Addie and Leila mentioned—they're real. Alcohol and tobacco are much more dangerous, and those poisons are legal.”

Sarah hooted at him. “Don't give me that, you old fraud. You
liked
that pot. And it wasn't the first time.”

Charles gave her a look of innocent surprise but said nothing.

Sarah popped him lightly on the arm and said, “You're up to something. Secret drug use, new lenience about Lottie.” Suddenly she knew exactly what Charles was up to. “It was David!”

Charles tried without success to keep a straight face.

“So that's what was going on! You three guys, in Peter's shop the day after Thanksgiving. No
wonder
you didn't invite Tom; he'd have reported you!” She burst out laughing, knowing at last why Charles's grumpy mood had dissolved like fog in a wind that day. “When else?”

“Stacking wood. David's offered before, you know. I just never accepted until this visit.”

“Uh-
huh
.” Sarah nodded, considering. “It took Hannah's accident, didn't it? Your son got you high, and now the two of you can finally talk. I saw you out there, by the woodpile.”

Charles gave her a wide smile. “I only wish it had happened years ago.”

T
HE WIND CAME UP
again the next week and took out power lines from Montpelier north and east through three towns. Crews worked around the clock, but no one could say how long the blackout would last. On Sunday the town clerk called Charles and Sarah. Could they house a young couple and small boy? Without electricity, their trailer had no heat. Charles and Sarah could. The clerk would call the Hanks family and let them know.

At three that afternoon, under a calm, overcast sky, Bob Hanks arrived with his wife, Sandy, and their four-year-old son, Tyler. The three of them followed Charles shyly into the great room. “Mr. Lucas, Mrs. Lucas,” said Bob, as Sarah rose from her chair by the woodstove, “it's nice of you to help us out. I hope we won't be a bother.”

“We're happy for the company,” Sarah assured him. He was a broad young man with a blond beard and acne scars showing above it. He smiled at Sarah and introduced his wife, a small woman with light brown hair, green eyes, a prominent slender
nose, and a round, compact young body. The little boy, Tyler, studied Sarah with the blank, frank gaze of the very young. He whispered “Hello” when prompted.

“Well,” said Charles, “let's have your coats. Hall closet's this way. I'll show you.”

Bob followed Charles, while Sandy looked uneasily around the room with her solemn son now riding on her hip.

“Sit, please,” urged Sarah, gesturing toward a soft armchair on rockers. “That little guy of yours looks heavy.”

Sandy smiled and murmured, “Thanks.” She kept Tyler on her lap and eased into rocking him. “I hope he doesn't get too rambunctious for you. It's hard to keep a four-year-old quiet.” Her eyes surveyed the room nervously, as if looking for breakables.

“If it makes you feel better, we'll put a few things up on shelves. But we've had two generations of kids in this house. Believe me, we don't keep priceless
vah-zes
on tabletops.” Sarah drew the word out with an affected drawl, making Sandy laugh a little. Tyler wriggled down from her lap but didn't venture away from his mother's knees.

“We have two dogs; I hope that's not a problem,” Sarah said. “They're very gentle.”

Sandy said, so low that Sarah could scarcely hear her, “Tyler will be fine. He hasn't been around dogs much, but I don't think he's afraid of them. Are you, honey?”

Tyler dutifully shook his head no. His eyes looked a little unsure.

Sarah made a few more stabs at light conversation, but Sandy spoke so softly it was a struggle to get anything going. She was relieved when the men came back in. Bob was not so reticent, apparently. He was saying to Charles as they entered, “Yeah, I
love the winter, 'specially ice fishing. Me and some buddies have a shanty on Lake Elmore, go up on weekends long as the ice is thick enough.”

“How do you know when the ice is thick enough?” Sarah asked, glad of Bob's blustery voice. “I seem to remember there's some kind of formula. I see pickup trucks out on the ice, even after a week of thaw. Scares me to death.”

Bob's smile lit up his face. He had good eyes, with fine crinkles at the corner. “All's I know is you drill a hole and measure. You need seven inches of black ice under the white stuff on top. That's strong enough for people and shanties. Don't know for sure about trucks and snowmobiles, but we just add a few inches for good measure. Never gone through yet.” He stood near Sandy and ruffled Tyler's hair. “Can't wait for my boy to get old enough to go with me. Huntin' too. Got a six-point buck this year. Sandy makes the best venison stew you ever tasted.”