Every Last Cuckoo (21 page)

“Oh, great,” Charlotte muttered. “Then Luke and I will never be able to set foot in here.”

“Of course you will,” Sarah said calmly. “I hear there are pills you can take now, in advance of being exposed to things that trigger allergies.”

Sighing, Charlotte said, “Where's Lottie? She didn't come over at all last week. I thought we had an agreement.”

“Lottie's out. I'll have her call you when she gets back.”

“Well, would you just tell her we're expecting her tomorrow night? For dinner and the night?”

“No, dear. That's between you and Lottie. But I'll have her call.”

Charlotte rose. “All right, then. I brought some groceries, a few extra things I picked up at the store. Those teenagers must be eating like termites.”

“Thanks,” said Sarah. “I'll put them away in a bit.” She got up and walked Charlotte through the mudroom and barn. It had started raining heavily, and Charlotte had parked outside. “Need an umbrella?”

“No. I'll just run for it.” She dashed out, ducking and waving.

Sarah went back into the kitchen but then moved out onto the big porch, where she sat in a wicker chair and watched the rain and the mist in the distance. The gap between two ridges to the southeast was a bowl full of fog. Vapor rose like steam from soup. The rain softly blurred the distant hills, and everywhere the moisture brought out the scent of wet bark, grass, earth, and leaves. Sarah loved the silence outside and the rarer silence in the house. Everybody gone. Charles's sudden death had gouged out the center of her life, and now the emptiness was filling up in the strangest ways, with people and pursuits she never would have welcomed before.

Perhaps this was why, as she thought about Charlotte—her air of disapproval, their inability ever to speak a fresh word to each other—she simply quit worrying. She made a pact with herself—no more of this. Then she headed back into the house and reached the kitchen just as Sandy and Tyler came in through the mudroom.

Tyler headed for the hall bathroom, and Sarah asked, “How's Bob doing today?”

“Oh, God, Sarah, I wish I knew.” Anxiety made Sandy altogether less shy and polite than she'd been during the blackout last January. “It's been almost a month and he's still not out of the woods.”

They heard the toilet flush, and Tyler came down the hall, wiping his hands on the front of his jersey. “Where's Angelo?”

“He's at work, honey,” Sarah told him. “He works on Wednesdays, but he should be back pretty soon.”

Sarah was glad the teenagers had jobs. Their schedules were impossible to track, but rarely were all three at home simultaneously, and that kept the noise level tolerable. At their expense, Sarah had had a new phone line put in for their computers. They didn't need it for calls because Angelo and Jordan both had cell phones, and Lottie used Sarah's house line.

It was a mystery to Sarah why Tyler was so enchanted with Angelo, whom he followed like a hungry puppy. Angelo was friendly with Lottie and Jordan in a sardonic and slightly superior way, but he barely acknowledged Sarah or talked with Sandy. Sarah witnessed few of his interactions with Tyler, so it was hard for her to imagine him as anything but abrupt.

Sandy said Angelo made up stories, which Tyler tried to repeat for her in Angelo's wry narrative style. It was clear from his efforts that Angelo laced his tales with bathroom humor, dead-pan silliness, and a swear-to-God earnestness about impossible things. Angelo apparently didn't talk down to Tyler or dismiss his worries about Bob. He simply distracted the boy instead of offering false assurances.

Sarah had no reason to doubt Sandy's reports, but she also couldn't see that Angelo was really interested in a sad, pesky five-year-old. She mistrusted his aloofness. It was too hard to tell what went on with him.

Now Sarah watched as Sandy and Tyler climbed the stairs together at the end of the hall. Tyler held Sandy's hand, just as David had once held hers.

She wished David would call with the news of Tess's pregnancy. She must be well past the first trimester by now—unless
she had miscarried. Or aborted. Perhaps she didn't want another child. There was nothing like an unplanned pregnancy, if it was one, to test a new love.

A
DAY OR TWO
later Sarah grabbed the Nikon and hiked into the woods with the dogs. This time she took a walking stick and slathered herself with DEET, having decided she'd rather risk that than the bugs. She was still haunted by thoughts of cougars, knowing no stick could help her if she encountered one but feeling safer for having it nonetheless. Halfway along her usual trail she spotted a young beech whose roots grew around a rock outcropping, gripping it like a gnarled hand. Looking closer, she saw that the hand held something else besides rock—it was a length of bone, pale and petrified against the bark and stone. How on earth? It looked like the thigh of a deer or young moose. Sarah couldn't fathom how it had lodged on top of the rock or why it hadn't been knocked from that spot by the grasping young roots of the tree.

She was taking the lens cap from the Nikon when something large moved with a lot of rough noise behind her. Sylvie and Ruckus set up a ferocious, warning challenge, and Sarah spun around, raising both camera and walking stick. She shrieked to find herself almost face-to-face with the creature she later figured must be Stallone, the bull moose Charles used to track. The animal stood barely ten feet from her, its big rounded muzzle higher than her head, its rack of velvety antlers nearly as wide as the moose was tall. The only parts that moved were its wild eyes and the fleshy, swaying bell at its throat. The moose reeked of piss and animal sweat and seemed no less a threat than the
cougar she'd thought it was. Whuffing and snorting, it appeared every bit as surprised as Sarah.

The dogs moved between Sarah and the moose, charging and retreating, making a racket all the while. When the moose didn't respond, they stopped and stood their ground with their ears skinned back and their hackles up, growling low in their throats. They were gathering themselves to attack, and Sarah panicked to think what the moose would do to them. She froze for an instant; so did the dogs, and so did the moose. She could not hear a sound in the woods. Then—thank God!—the huge animal bolted, crashing across the trail, breaking branches with its rack, and nearly tangling its ungainly legs. Within seconds, it had vanished, and soon after even the noise of its leaving had ceased.

Sarah leaned heavily on her stick, breathing hard and staring into the woods where the moose had fled. When she was steady, she stooped to fondle the dogs and praise their courage. She started for home at a fast walk but soon broke into a run, giddy with relief that the moose had not charged her and trampled her. Sylvie and Ruckus cavorted like puppies, catching her excitement. She was sorry she hadn't photographed Stallone.

T
YLER STOOD ON THE DECK
outside the kitchen door and hollered. “Lotteeee! My hands are
full
! I got
sooo
much stuff!”

Lottie, who was scrubbing pans that the dishwasher would not accommodate, dried her hands on her jeans and went to let him in. “What'd you find, kiddo?”

His T-shirt was stretched to its limit over the day's harvest. He struggled to hold the bottom edge tightly over its lumpy contents and in the process exposed his small belly, which pooched out as he arched his back to counterbalance his load. Edging past Lottie, he released his bundle onto the table. A colorful plenty tumbled out—peas, lettuce, beans, young carrots, radishes, and leeks.

“Wow!” Lottie cried. “Great! That'll do us for at least a couple of days.” She ruffled Tyler's hair. “Thanks, boysie.”

The boarders had taken over the vegetable garden. Sandy had volunteered almost the minute she moved in, now more than a
month ago. It had been too late to grow anything from seed, so she and Sarah had bought starts for an assortment of vegetables as broad and exotic as Charles had ever planted. Sandy had mapped where everything would go, and Lottie had helped with the planting. Now, in the third week of July, new crops were ripening all the time. Lottie and Sandy did most of the watering and weeding, but they dragged Jordan and Angelo into the enterprise whenever possible. Even Tyler helped, picking the vegetables for dinner every night—now that there
was
dinner every night.

The chaos indoors had calmed after the first few weeks, and the boarders now kept a certain order and a variable routine. Sarah had almost nothing to do with any of it. She thought Charlotte must have threatened Lottie—keep the place clean, help your grandmother, or move back home. She knew Charlotte had complained to David and Stephie, because, of course, David and Stephie had said so. Sarah had been peevish with all of them. She liked the way she was living, especially now that the household ran more smoothly, on steam from others. On her own, she might have remained in permanent disorder after her lifetime of neatness and routine. Instead her house was cared for, and so was she. Some days she felt like a queen.

Angelo had withheld the royal treatment for several weeks, but gradually even he had begun to soften. A month ago Sarah had asked him a question about his job at a music store in town. She further asked what kinds of music he liked and whether he played any instruments. She was making conversation, trying to put them both at ease. In return he gave her monosyllables.
What business is it of yours,
he might as well have said.

She'd rolled her eyes. “Angelo, for heaven's sake. I'm not your mother, I'm not your enemy. You just happen to live in my house. Relax a little, I won't tell.”

“Sorry,” he said sullenly. Then he permitted himself a slow smile. “Force of habit.”

L
OTTIE SORTED THROUGH
Tyler's garden haul, stowing some of it and washing the rest. She fixed dinner for the household—leeks, carrots, and peas from the garden, braised in broth and wine, with grilled chicken and biscuits. Sandy had taught her some culinary techniques, which she was proudly mastering.

Usually those who were home ate the evening meal together at the kitchen table. Whoever felt like cooking did so, often two or three at once. Even Mordechai joined them a few nights a week. He would bring wine or cider, bread or cheese, sometimes a plate of stuffed grape leaves or a cold soup. He would show up, unannounced but not unexpected, after the sounds of kitchen activity had drifted down to the cabin from the open doors and windows of the house.

One Sunday, Sarah went looking for Mordechai to extend a formal dinner invitation, before the day got away from her and she forgot. Vivi and Peter were coming over a few nights later, bringing Jonathan, who was back from Siberia. Jonathan was to be a surprise for Mordechai, so Sarah needed to make sure he would be available.

On the way to the cabin she stepped into the vegetable garden through the hurricane fence that kept out the ever-hungry deer. She walked down a neat pathway between mounds of prolific bean and squash plants to the far end of the large plot, where
she picked three early tomatoes. She had to tug them from their moist hairy vines. They were medium size, warm from the sun, and heavily fragrant. It was a good growing year.

Holding the tomatoes in her cupped hands, smelling summer in their taut skins, Sarah rounded the cabin to the steps that led up to the deck. She liked skirting the pond and saying hello to Charles. It wasn't until she reached the top step, calling out Mordechai's name, that she saw him on the deck through the surrounding screen, sitting straight up and cross-legged on his wide, low stool. It was another second or two before she realized he was naked.

The sun angled through the screen just right, spotlighting him. Calmly he reached for a short robe. “Good morning, Sarah,” he said, as if he routinely greeted company in the nude. “You wanted something?”

Sarah stepped through the doorway and held the tomatoes mutely before her.

Mordechai took them and inhaled their scent as Sarah had done. “Mmm,” he sighed. “Thank you. I will have one with lunch today.”

She blurted, “Mordechai, I'm sorry, I should never have come down unannounced.”

His bushy eyebrows went up, and he smiled. “Don't apologize, Sarah. Goodness,” he said, looking down at himself in his light, striped robe, “this is just a beat-up old package. Nothing much.”

Sarah sat. Mordechai gently touched her shoulder. “People are so funny about bodies, don't you think?”

“Yes, I suppose. But what were you . . .?”

“I was meditating. As I do every morning. Always in the nude,
because it is conducive. Always outside—or as close to outside as the bugs will let me go. I should have warned you that if you came down in the early morning you would find a naked man with stick legs and a fat belly exhibiting himself.” He laughed again.

Sarah asked, “Is meditation a Jewish practice? I know so little, I'm sorry.”

“It's just part of my practice.” He shrugged. “Maybe I am a Zen Jew. I look for the place inside me where there is no noise, only light and peace.”

“Do you find such a place?” Sarah asked, interested. “I could use a map.”

“Yes, I find it. Not every time, but often. Anyone can.”

“When did you start?”

“A few years after my wife died giving birth to our son. Baruch. He died, too.”

Sarah remembered then. “Vivi told me you had lost your wife and child, but she didn't say when. Or how. It must have been terrible.”

Mordechai shut his eyes briefly, then went on. “I entered the IDF—excuse me, the army, the Israeli Defense Forces—soon after. I served three years, as everyone does. Rachel and I would both have served sooner, but she was pregnant, and I was recovering from a motorcycle accident, many broken bones.” His gaze went distant. “Later, after the army, I went to teach at the University of Tel Aviv. I tried going out with a few women. Smart, lovely, strong. I liked them very much, but soon I knew I would never love anyone but Rachel.” He focused on Sarah's face again, pulling himself back to the present. “It seems I married for life, for both our lives. I'm still married, still faithful to
my wife after thirty years. Which is why bodies are just bodies to me. Nothing more.”