Leave Well Enough Alone (7 page)

“It’s freezing,” said Lisa.

Dorothy tried to sound cheerful. She tried to look as if she and Lisa were in on a joke. “Oh, it is
not
!” she said with a laugh. “If I do my double flip again will you just get your feet wet?”

Jenny shrugged. “Maybe,” she answered, still chewing her towel.

“Make it a cannonball dive and splash Matthew!” Lisa instructed. Matthew, the gardener, knelt only a few feet from the pool, weeding among the phlox and marigolds. Matthew was deaf and dumb. Over the previous two weeks Lisa had devised several tests to see if he really was unable to hear or speak. Matthew did not flinch at this latest test. Dorothy sprung off the diving board in the best back flip she could manage.

As her head passed cleanly into the water, she smiled, for she had not splashed him in the least. At the moment, she almost envied the old man. How nice it would be not to have to listen to Jenny and Lisa for a while. Dorothy bobbed up in the middle of the pool just in time to see Lisa jump into the deep end of the pool. Her cannon-ball was not sufficient to get Matthew. Without turning to watch her, he had disappeared just a second earlier around the back of the arch.

“Damn!” said Lisa.

“Okay,” Dorothy said when Lisa had dog-paddled to the edge of the pool. “I’ve had enough. You do not go into the deep end until you learn to swim better. Your mother doesn’t want you to dive. You try not to splash people and you don’t swear. All right, Lisa?”

“Get out of my life!” Lisa spluttered.

“If you do anything like that again, especially being unkind to a poor deaf man, I’m going to spank you.”

“You
can’t
spank me. Mom
says
you can’t.”

“I’m warning you that I will.”

“I dare you!” sang Lisa, beginning to dance on the rim of the pool.

Dorothy sat down in the nearest chaise longue. Keep your temper, she told herself. Remember she’s only nine. Remember your mother’s last letter. “Be patient and firm. Give them love and discipline and it will work out, I’m sure, dear. They will blossom before your eyes,” said the gentle, clear handwriting, in the letter Dorothy used as a bookmark for
David Copperfield.
Her mother, of course, was three thousand miles away. And she’s never seen kids like these, Dorothy thought to herself. She picked up her book and ran her hand over the blue airmail paper, as if to derive some strength from it. She watched Lisa flick tiny drops of water on her sister’s shoulders. Jenny sat in a disconsolate lump, her feet dangling into the pool.

“Stop it. Cut it out,” Jenny cried.

“Cut what out?”

“Cut out splashing me.”

“Lisa, get the ball and we’ll play some more volleyball in the pool,” said Dorothy wearily. It was better to distract than punish, her mother’s letter had advised.

“Scaredy-cat won’t go in,” Lisa whispered loudly.

“Lisa, just shut up,” said Dorothy.

“You’re not allowed to say that. I’m telling Mom!”

“Yes,” Jenny agreed, “just shut your mouth, Miss Wet-Bed!”

Lisa shoved her sister right into the pool. Luckily Jenny had not been sitting too near the shallow end. She did not crack her head on the tiles. She only screamed and swallowed a great deal of water. By the time Dorothy had fished her out of the pool, dried her off, and calmed her wailing, Lisa had disappeared into the pool house.

“If you don’t come out of there this instant,” said Dorothy, blinking into the cavernous darkness of the pool house, “I’m coming in after you.” No answer. Dorothy flicked the light switch. It did not work.

“It doesn’t work,” sobbed Jenny.

The pool house was filled with old gardening equipment, parts of the torn-down greenhouse, parts of a croquet set, a badminton set, and various other games that Dorothy could just make out, leaning against the walls, strewn over lawn mowers and piles of flower pots.

“The longer you stay, Lisa, the worse you’re going to get it,” said Dorothy.

“She won’t come out,” Jenny said. “Let’s play Monopoly.”

I hope she stays there for hours, Dorothy grumbled under her breath. Jenny, after all, wasn’t so bad. She was a curious, quiet little girl, given at times to sitting in her “cave,” a spacious, wicker-fronted closet in her parents’ bathroom. There she kept her books and counted the money in her piggy bank almost every day. Dorothy had promised not to tell Lisa about the cave or the piggy bank.

“Love and discipline” indeed, Dorothy thought as she sorted the money and the property cards. “Patient and firm” indeed. Dorothy glanced over at the pool house. In there was someone who was never going to change, at least not because of anything she, Dorothy, did or didn’t do. Dorothy longed for some company other than the girls and Mrs. Hoade. Matthew might have been someone to talk to, if he could hear, which, of course, he couldn’t. Dorothy liked the old man’s rugged features and quiet ways. Given a beard he would have been a dead ringer for Abraham Lincoln, he was so tall and wraithlike. He looked wise, too. Someone to sit and listen to some sense from. But of course that wasn’t possible. Miss Borg might have some good advice on the subject of children—after all, she was a baby nurse—but Miss Borg spoke no English and understood none. Nice Miss Borg. Sweet Miss Borg with the clear gray eyes and scrubbed pink cheeks. Dorothy and Miss Borg had become acquainted, after a fashion.

Several times, when Mrs. Hoade went to “check on the little one,” as she put it, or on weekends when Mr. Hoade went down there, Dorothy had seen Miss Borg emerge from the cottage down the way and walk into a neighboring field to pick wild flowers. Dorothy had parked the girls in front of the television, from which they never moved in the evenings, and had followed the floating white uniform out into the meadow full of sweet peas and cornflowers and black-eyed Susans. These few minutes on occasional evenings had been pleasant, and although she could only smile and help Miss Borg carry her flowers, she felt for the short time that a headache had stopped awhile, that a noise had ceased. “Whatever language the woman speaks, Dorothy,” Sister Elizabeth goaded in Dorothy’s mind, “learn it! Learn it and give her your own God-given English in return.” Dorothy had learned to say “
Guten Abend
” and with the help of Miss Borg’s small German dictionary had tackled the names of a few flowers and weeds, which she promptly forgot. However,
Guten Abend
, good evening, was an improvement upon
Achtung
!, the only word of German she’d known before. Dorothy hoped that her company gave Miss Borg some satisfaction, but she couldn’t read into the sad gray eyes, and the smile lines around the old woman’s mouth seemed to belong to a once-happier person.

“Lisa, come out of there. Now!” Dorothy shouted.

“She won’t,” said Jenny. “Your turn.”

“I better get her.”

“Oh, leave her alone and let her cool off. It serves her right.”

Dorothy sighed. “Never let the girls out of your sight.” Those were Mrs. Hoade’s instructions. “The place is full of rusty nails, old foundations, and other things I don’t want them to get into, particularly Lisa, since she is allergic to tetanus shots and very impressionable. There are snakes down by the pond, rotting timbers near the baby’s cottage. I want them in sight at all times.”

“I promised your mother to keep you in sight all the time,” Dorothy said.

“Well, she can’t go far in that place. Let her stew. Do you want to buy Virginia Avenue?”

Jenny held her money fanned out like a bridge hand rather than in denominatory piles, as everyone else who played Monopoly always did. She also had extraordinary luck, and after making several advantageous deals with Dorothy managed to accumulate most of the important properties on the board. “What was Mom so happy about at lunch that she brought out wine?” Jenny asked.

“Oh, her book, I guess. It’s going well. I guess it’s fun doing all that cooking.”

“With Dinna to clean up,” said Jenny.

Dorothy laughed. Jenny was a perceptive one. “I think it’s exciting. She’s asked me to help her with her index cards at night. Community Chest. You inherit a hundred dollars.”

“You like that?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Ecch,” said Jenny. “I bet you’re thinking your name will
go
on the book somewhere.”

“I wasn’t thinking that at all,” said Dorothy. Jenny was too smart for her own good. Dorothy had hoped secretly not only that her name would be at least acknowledged in print, but that she might get to visit a television studio if Mrs. Hoade were to be on television once the book was published. From there Dorothy had hardly dared think, except... “I enjoy helping your mother. I’m good in English and we have to know how to organize notes for school and everything, so it’s not hard,” she said. “The other thing your mother was happy about was something to do with your father. Some new thing that might happen? Your turn.”

“N?”

“That was it. What does N stand for?”

“That’s a campaign of some kind. Move your piece back three spaces.”

“Is your father in politics? There was a senator here last Friday night at the party but I...

“Shake dice and pay owner four times the amount shown. No, he works for a drug company. At least he did. Now he does something called public relations. They’ve been talking about this for weeks. N probably stands for No-Drip or New Armpit. But it could be anything. Forty-four dollars, please. Thank you. You know what Dad did all that time in South America?”

“No, what?”

“He sold zillions of tubes of that stuff that sticks false teeth to the roof of your mouth to the South Americans. It was all rigged. Our government passed some kind of foreign-aid bill. When the South Americans got the money, one of the things they did was pass out thousands of sets of false teeth to all the beggars and peasants and things. Then Dad’s company got into the act and sold all the false-teeth owners Suradent. My Dad’s company wanted that foreign-aid bill badly. They even sent cases of Scotch to all the senators who voted for it. Saint Charles Place with two houses. A hundred and fifty, please.”

“Jenny, you’re making that up! Two hundred dollars for passing Go. You’re making that up!”

“I’m not,” said Jenny. “It’s perfectly true. I always find out the facts. Just like Sergeant Friday.”

“But that’s against the law. Look at that nice senator your parents had here last weekend. Don’t tell me he knows about that!”

“Him? You mean Rogers?”

“Yes.”

“He’s only in the state legislature. No, but you gotta believe me, Dorothy. You know one of my Dad’s best friends, his golfing partner or whatever they call them, down in Buenos Aires, he had the account for Coke. He and Dad used to laugh because the more Coke this guy’s company would sell, the more false teeth people would need and the more Suradent Dad would sell.”

“They laughed about that? Go to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect... They laughed about that?”

“Oh, yeah. Get Out of Jail Free card.”

“People never really say what they mean. Like for instance, Mother. She wants us to think that kid out there has a cold. I bet you anything it’s one of those what-do-you-call-its.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because she doesn’t want Lisa to see it. She’s afraid Lisa will have nightmares for a year. Why doesn’t she just tell us? We don’t want to see it anyway. Especially me. I hate all babies. Do you want to buy the Reading Railroad?”

Dorothy bit down on her lower lip. She thought how impressed she’d been to meet a person who actually was in the government. Jenny, who was only a kid, was not only unimpressed by a man who’d run for office, whose name had been in the paper, Jenny was positively blasé about a whole bunch of senators in Washington. “What’s the matter? You look sad,” Jenny asked.

“Nothing.”

“Is it really one of those, you know... Did Mom tell you?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Is it?”

“It’s called a mongoloid.”

“Do you want to buy that railroad? See?”

“See what?”

“See, I was right. I’m glad they keep it out there. I don’t want any stinky crying babies around the house.”

Dorothy laughed. She spent her last two hundred dollars on the Reading Railroad and promptly landed on Jenny’s Boardwalk hotel. “That’s the end of the game, Jenny. I can’t pay.” She began sorting the money out again. “I guess I don’t care for babies so much either. I guess that’s an awful thing to admit.”

“Do you have babies at your house?”

“No. My sister has one, though. A girl. I mean she’s a really cute baby. Everyone says so and my sister loves her and all, but I don’t see how anyone can stand going goo-goo, ga-ga all day without going out of their minds. Besides, most of the time babies smell awful, unless they’ve just been washed, and then before you know it they smell hideous again. I don’t know. I suppose it would be good for me to learn to like them since I’ll probably have to have them someday.”

“Not me,” said Jenny stretching out like a contented cat on the warm, sun-speckled tiles. “Not me, oh, boy.”

Dorothy had almost forgotten about Lisa. She lay back on the comfortable cushions of her deck lounge and played with a wild grape vine that hung from a trellis overhead. She thought of Maureen. Maureen wheeling the baby carriage with its crinoline fly netting and its tremendous springs that were better by far than the springs in Maureen’s and Arthur’s Chevy. She began to picture Maureen’s dumpy little house on Seale Street. Practically all the girls in Maureen’s class in high school who had not gone on to college or become nuns had babies now. There had been wedding showers and then weddings and then baby showers. The minute Terrance graduated from Holy Cross, he said, he was going to marry Angela, his steady. He and Angela would probably have a baby soon after, too. They would move into an apartment with ugly old furniture that never wore out, or ugly new furniture that fell apart in a year. Once, when Maureen had been down with the flu, Dorothy had wheeled Bridget’s carriage up the sleepy Wednesday-afternoon street. A street she knew to be inhabited at that hour only by housewives and children. She’d felt like an invalid herself. “This is the loveliest place in the world,” she found herself saying to Jenny.