Every Last Cuckoo (26 page)

“What I
see,
” Charlotte burst out, “what I
saw,
was that you were sitting out here with nothing on.”

“Nothing on top,” Sarah corrected her. She softened toward Charlotte, then, and pitied her bewilderment. Remembering her vow to herself, that she would change toward her daughter, she said gently, “I once startled Mordechai while he was meditating nude. Totally nude. I was embarrassed, too.” She turned to him. “May I tell Charlotte what you told me then?” she asked.

He nodded. “I'll get the tea. Perhaps Charlotte will change her mind.”

So Sarah told her about Mordechai's lifelong faithfulness to Rachel. Charlotte had known about the death of his wife and baby since the night Jonathan and Tess had challenged his pacifism, but she had not known the rest of it. Sarah also described her morning and evening meditations and their benefits. “I've found endurance I never thought I had,” she said. “I'm not nearly as afraid of dying as I used to be. And it doesn't torture me to keep loving your father, not anymore.”

Charlotte stared mutely at Sarah and nodded slowly. Tentatively, she touched Sarah's shoulder, probably appeased more by Mordechai's celibacy than by Sarah's own account of herself. Still, her indignation was gone.

“What did you want, Charlotte?”

“Oh.” Charlotte seemed to give herself a quick mental shake. “I forgot. I . . . I was looking for Lottie. We were supposed to go to Burlington . . . to shop for shoes, and Tom's birthday present. She forgot, I guess. Jordan said she might be down here.”

“No, she's hiking with Tony.” Sarah studied her daughter. “You must feel so angry when she does that kind of thing.”

But Charlotte didn't look angry; she looked sorrowful. “I guess,” she said. “But I'm so used to it, I barely notice. She wants nothing to do with me.” She slumped down onto a bench inside the deck railing and sighed. “I just hope she'll come back.”

Sarah started to say that Lottie would be back in a couple of hours, but of course Charlotte meant something more than that; she was hoping she had not lost Lottie for good. Sarah saw in Charlotte's eyes exactly what she had finally seen in Charles's, that day in the woods when he had let himself mourn the lost time with David. She remembered her own sadness over this daughter who sat before her. But Sarah was sad no more, not just now. She leaned over to Charlotte and brushed the hair back from her eyes. Then she chanted softly, “Leave her alone, and she'll come home, wagging her tail behind her.”

The two of them walked back to the house together after iced tea with Mordecai. Charlotte remained subdued, and Sarah saw that it was probably harder for her to have Lottie out of her house than in it. From Charlotte's perspective, Lottie had simply and totally defected—to Sarah, to her friends and
Tony, even to Sandy and Tyler. Lottie loved them all without reservation.

Charlotte said, “Mom, really, how can I just let Lottie go and do exactly as she pleases? Are you saying she doesn't need parents anymore? She should just make all her own choices at sixteen, including sex and drinking and drugs and . . . just everything?”

“I'm saying she'll do that in any case. And she'll make mistakes. But Charlotte, you and Tom have already said everything you have to say to her. You've set good examples. You've loved her, you will always love her, and she knows that.” She paused. This was more than they'd said to each other, about anything real, for a long time. Sarah didn't want to jeopardize their small progress, but she added, “Lottie has already let go. The best way to invite her back is to let go yourself. You already began that process when you agreed she could stay with me. It takes time. But Lottie's a good person, and you've had a lot to do with that.”

Throughout the summer, Sarah had sometimes wondered whether her relationship with Charlotte might have been different if Charlotte had spent a couple of her adolescent years away from home. It was easy for Sarah to have three teenagers living with her, now that she wasn't mother to any of them. They were on their best behavior, as children often are in other people's homes. Angelo had lost nearly all his prickliness, and Lottie loved being at Sarah's amid friends. Only Jordan wasn't entirely at home. She was too diffident, as compliant as a windup doll. But she'd have time to settle in. She and the others would stay on with Sarah for the next year, until graduation. This summer they had given her more than she'd given in return.

H
OT AS IT WAS
, school had started two days earlier, on the thirtieth of August. Labor Day weekend had begun. Sarah was cutting back the perennials that were finished for the year, leaving sedums, monardas, asters, and a few others that still bloomed above their browning stalks and leaves. The air smelled different now, full of dust and pollen that hung suspended in the motionless heat. The vegetable garden would yield right up until the first killing frost, which could come any night now, or hold off until October. Sandy had been putting up the harvest at a faster pace, trying to keep up with the abundance. When frost threatened, she would finally pick all the tomatoes that were left on the vines. The household would feast a time or two on fried green tomatoes, and the rest of the late-season yield would ripen in brown paper bags for stews and sauces.

Already Sarah missed the random patterns of her boarders' comings and goings. The teenagers' new schedules were tighter and more synchronized. They would be gone from seven thirty until four or five or six, depending on their after-school jobs or activities. Tyler would enter morning kindergarten next week, a prospect he faced with mingled excitement and dread. Sandy would continue to spend her days at home or at the hospital.

Bob was dying. His doctors were still treating his burns, but they told Sandy he just wasn't fighting to survive. There was little hope. Sandy sat beside him every day in an effort to revive his will. “Sarah,” she would plead, “why isn't it enough that I love him, that Tyler needs him? Why doesn't he want to stay with us?”

Sarah thought it likely that Bob no longer recognized himself. He was helpless and disfigured; he was in perpetual pain; he was
exhausted. The Bob Hanks she had met for those few days last winter had been constantly in motion and always in control. He was passionate about hunting, fishing, driving his snowmobile in the woods and meadows. He took care of his family. He was proud of them and of himself. Now he was piling up bills, a mountain of debt that he could never conquer, especially impaired. If he recovered, it would be months before he could work again, if he ever could work at all. He was blind in one eye and three fingers on his right hand were webby stumps. He would need long, painful rehabilitation.

Vermont was full of people who lived on the edge, but Sarah had never been so aware of this, nor so close to it. Everyone in her own household lived near the edge of poverty, the edge of old age, or the edge of adulthood—dangerous in itself. More and more often, she recalled her childhood and that other household filled with people balanced precariously between survival and disaster, sanity and despair. This time around, things were less desperate. Sandy's need was greatest, and everyone supported her. If Bob died, as he seemed determined to do, his life insurance would leave Sandy and Tyler better off financially, but the price of this was high nonetheless.

Sarah straightened up from her garden work, soaked with sweat. She thought of the cold to come. So many kinds of cold, always lying just under the heat of sun or skin or human tenderness. She raked the last prunings onto a tarp, pulled its corners together, and laid her rake on top in case a breath of air should stir the pile.

Inside, she went upstairs, stripped off her sticky clothes and dropped them into a heap on the floor. She stepped into the
shower. It felt cool on her overheated scalp but ran warm down her back, carrying the heat away with it. She scrubbed soil from her nails and hands, her arms and legs. She had worked as unclothed as possible in the garden, just a tank top and shorts and sandals, so she was black and gritty in her many creases. Good dirt.

She was rinsing the last of the shampoo from her hair and soap from her body when Sandy knocked loudly. “Sarah! Can you take a phone call? It sounds important!”

“Damn!” Sarah muttered, shutting off the water. But she called out, “Yes! All right, I'm coming.”

She opened the door, wrapped in a towel, and took the cordless phone from Sandy, mouthing, “Thanks.”

It was Josie Koval's mother, Rose, breathless and upset. “Sarah? Oh, Sarah, I've got to ask you the most enormous favor, very fast. Right away. I really need your help.”

“Rose,” Sarah said calmly. “Slow down. I'll help if I can. What's wrong?”

Rose was calling from a hospital in the town of Berlin, closer than the one where Charles had died and where Bob was now. Sarah remembered Sandy's frantic call in June, and she braced herself. Indeed, this was another disaster, though not as bad as it could have been. Josie's partner, the father of the baby she had been carrying when she'd lost two toes to frostbite last January, had attacked her and threatened their child. Josie needed a place to stay where Roger would not think to look for her. It wouldn't be for long. He'd been arrested right after the incident, just an hour or two ago. He was in custody, and Josie was determined to press charges, but he still could get out soon if he was granted
bail. Rose was furious at the thought. “Goddamned idiots!” Sarah had known Rose casually for at least thirty years and had never before heard her swear.

“Oh, Rose, dear, let me think.” Sarah said. “You know I have a house full of refugees?”

“Yes. Word travels. It's why I thought of you, that and the fact that Roger doesn't know you. But perhaps you just can't fit Josie in. I'll understand, though I don't know . . .”

“No, no, just
give
me a minute,” Sarah snapped. Instantly contrite, she said, “Rose, I didn't mean that the way it came out. I'm sorry. Let's see.” Mentally she ran through a half-dozen excuses. The last thing she wanted was another boarder. Then she heard herself saying, “Maybe I could put a couple of the kids out in Charles's office. Or Josie and the baby could squeeze into my office off the kitchen. Oh, I don't know—we'll work it out. Just send her over, Rose. Or bring her. When will they release her?”

Rose exhaled audibly, a gust of relief. “Sarah, thank you! They're just finishing the cast—Roger broke her arm, that son of a bitch. The baby's fine but screaming his head off. Oh, God, I shouldn't tell you that, you'll never let him in your house!” Her voice cracked on a hysterical giggle.

“Rose,” Sarah said sternly. “Calm down. I'll get a room ready for Josie. Just get her over here in one piece.”

Sarah hung up, and for a furious second or two she chastised herself for agreeing to one too many people in her house. One and a half too many. Then she addressed the problems at hand. She figured she and Sandy would have an hour to decide where to put Josie and start preparing the space.
Lord!
she thought.
A baby! Probably more noise than all three teenagers.
She hoped fervently that Roger Whatshisname would stay in jail long enough
for Josie to make other living arrangements. Then she realized that even with Josie and the baby she would have fewer people, under easier conditions, than her parents had had in the Depression. So be it.

“All right,” she told Sandy. “We'll put them in my office for now. The baby can sleep in a file drawer or a big box if need be, and the daybed will do for Josie. I'd really like to keep Charles's office free for David and Tess.”

Sandy shook her head. “I'll move down here with Tyler,” she offered. “We'll get a little cot or mattress for him.”

“Why on earth?”

“Nobody's after us. Josie will be safer on the second floor.”

Sarah kissed Sandy on the cheek. “You are a sweetheart. It won't be for long, I'm sure. You'll move back upstairs before you know it.”

R
OSE CAME AND WENT
in a flurry of anxious energy. “I don't want to leave my car outside your house for long,” she panted, struggling with a large duffel that she had hastily packed for Josie. “Who knows who might see us and then tell Roger?” She looked around apprehensively, but there wasn't a single other car within sight or earshot.

Josie carried her son and a shoulder bag full of his supplies. The baby was squalling and looked as if he'd been doing so for a long time and intended to keep on. Sarah stopped herself from sighing.

Then Rose was gone. The teenagers would soon be home from school. Tyler was at a friend's house for the afternoon and a sleepover—his first, and good timing, too. Mordechai was at work in the cabin. Surely he would hear the baby's crying.

Sandy sat Josie down at the kitchen table and poured her some iced tea while Sarah stood outside, saying good-bye to Rose and promising to call her. “Don't you call me,” she said, searching for a credible reason. “In case . . . well, you know,
in case Roger is released and somehow gets his hands on your phone records and tracks Josie here.” Rose was hysterical enough to swallow this. The truth was, Sarah didn't want Rose phoning every five minutes.

Back inside, Sarah found Sandy holding the baby and Josie looking darkly into space. She shifted her gaze to Sarah, but it did not lighten. “Thank you,” she said stiffly. “I'll try not to be any trouble.” Glancing at Sandy, who was doing the mother shuffle with Josie's howling son, she added, “I'm sorry about the baby. He's upset. He'll quiet down.”

Sarah sat down across from Josie. “Is your arm hurting a lot?”

The young woman shook her head. “Not now. Not until this big wallop of Vicodin wears off.”

“You can take that stuff and still nurse? If you're nursing, I mean?”