Mendocino and Other Stories (23 page)

RIGHT AWAY LUCY
sees Jeremy and Stuart and Jade, sitting with their feet in the pool. She fills a plastic cup at the keg, and then, saying hi to people, hello, nice to see you, she weaves through the crowd and joins them.

“It's the hipsters,” she says, kicking each of her cousins in the small of the back. “How's the hippest place on earth?”

“Hip,” Stuart says.

“The hippest,” Jeremy says.

“Hi, Jane,” Lucy says. “We met at Pansy's birthday, in April.”

“Yes,” Jade says. “I remember.”

It shouldn't be legal, Lucy thinks, to look like that—at least not when Lucy's around! “Nice to see you again,” she says. “Nice of you to put up with this character here.” She means Jeremy: her
cousing
, she thinks affectionately, remembering the long-ago term.

“It's Jade,” Jade says.

Lucy looks at Stuart—he's rolling his eyes, meaning what? “Forgive me,” she says. “I was sure it was Jane.”

“It was in April,” Jeremy says. “Now it's Jade.”

Lucy kicks off her shoes and sits next to him. She puts her feet
in the water, but she's no longer thinking about any of them, cousings or their silly girlfriends. Here come Ellen and Matt.

WHAT MATT SEES
is kids, everywhere: and he tightens his hold on Ellen's arm. He doesn't remember there being nearly so many kids last year, and in trying to recall last year in any kind of detail he comes smack up against It: last year Ellen was pregnant, just—the news was maybe a week old and they were giddy with it.

He glances at her: she's pale and thin, so thin. She was worried about not being able to lose weight after the baby was born, but it's been just four months and she's slender and tense as a stick.

“There's Don in his apron,” Matt says, for something to say.

“Stop!” She shakes his hand off her arm.

“What?”

“I don't—want to be seen. I'm cutting through the trees, you can—I don't care what you do.”

She leaves the driveway and begins to walk in an arc that will take her around the nearby two-acre plot of pear trees—the home trees, Papa Louie calls them—to the back of the house. Everyone, Matt knows, has seen them.

He follows her. “Wait,” he says. “Ellen, wait, I'm right behind you.”

LOUISA KNOCKS AT
her father's study door. “Papa Louie?” she says. “It's me, Louisa.”

The door opens and there he is, like her sisters said: in boxers and his old seersucker robe. “Hi, Louie,” he says.

“Hi, Louie.” She goes in and kisses him. “Happy birthday—you're not getting older, you're getting worse.”

“I've got a question for you, Louie,” he says. “Come into my
office.” He walks her over to the bed—slowly, slowly—and they sit down on it, side by side.

“So?” she says. “Don't keep me waiting.”

“I want you to tell me how I got here.”

She picks up his hand and pats it, then laces her fingers through his. “It's like this,” she says. “You and Mom were driving from Sacramento to South Lake Tahoe—you were going gambling. And you hit Placerville and she needed to pee, so you got off the road and you drove until you found her a good place to pee, and this was it, so you bought it and built a house here.”

He nods. “And your mother?”

“She's dead, Louie. She died a while ago.”

“That's right,” he says. “That's right—I knew that.”

She kisses his cheek. “There's some people out there who want to say hello,” she says. “What about putting on some pants and we'll go out and try one of Don's burgers?”

“I don't like pants.”

Louisa turns away from him; she doesn't want him to see her tears.

“I'll wear shorts,” he says. “And my baseball cap.”

PANSY AND MIRIAM
sit on the back steps, their four feet lined up like soldiers. Pansy thinks of their mother: it wasn't ladylike to refer to your
feet
—you could say “My foot hurts,” or, better, “I have a sore toe,” but never “My feet hurt.” Pansy's feet are still ladylike—71½ AAA she wears, at sixty!—but Miriam's seem to be spreading; or maybe it's just the spindly little sandals she has on.

“There's Ellen,” Miriam says. “In the orchard, coming this way. Don't say anything about the baby.”

“I won't,” Pansy says. How could Miriam even
think
she would?

They're both thinking: Poor Ellen. What they really mean is: Poor Louisa. Louisa
suffers
over things.

“I don't see why she doesn't just go ahead and try again,” Miriam says. “Remember how she'd bring her dolls up and set them in the dining room chairs? And Mom would make real tea for them? She should have six babies.”

“She loved her dolls,” Pansy says. She remembers one time—she was so embarrassed!—Stuart stole one of the dolls and ran down to the pond and threw it in. Ellen cried and cried; in a way, Pansy thinks, Ellen never did forgive him for that.

Now Ellen is before them, in shorts that
hang
off her. She looks terrible. Behind her is Matt—handsome Matt, that's how Pansy's always thought of him. He's tall and shy, and you can tell just by looking at him that he's miserable.

Miriam stands up. “Ellen, honey—how wonderful.” She puts her arms around her niece, who holds herself absolutely rigid, and Miriam feels just as awkward as she did when her sisters' children were small and submitted to her clumsy hugs.

“Is Mom inside?” Ellen says.

“She's in with Papa Louie, hon,” Pansy says, and Ellen slips between them and enters the house.

“I wish you wouldn't call him that,” Miriam says. Both her sisters do it, as if they were the kids. He's their
dad
.

But Pansy's watching Matt. Over by the path to the pond is an old swing set, and Elias has been standing near it for several minutes. Now Matt walks over there and says something to him. Pansy finds she's holding her breath waiting for Elias to get on the swing, for Matt to push him. But they just look at each other, and then Matt disappears around the side of the house.

IT'S TWO O'CLOCK
, and Don's ready to start cooking the burgers. No one seems interested, though—they're spread out around the pool, talking away, and a little while ago six or eight kids went racing down the path to the pond: he can hear them splashing. Pansy's Jeremy appears from the house, sniffling and looking around, something sneaky about him—but then he sees Don looking at him and he comes over and offers Don his hand.

“Going to cook some burgers, Uncle Don?” he says.

No, Don thinks, I'm just standing here because I like the heat. “That's the program,” he says. “Time for the big feed.” This strikes him as pretty damned funny, and he laughs.

“Want a hand?” Jeremy says. “I've flipped the odd burger in my time.”

“No,” Don says. “I don't begrudge it, not a bit. Your grandfather's been good to me.”

“See over there?” Jeremy says, pointing at a skinny girl by the pool.

“The lady there?”

“I'm going to marry her,” Jeremy says. “What do you think of that?”

Don laughs—what a mistake he's made! “Hell,” he says, “I've been talking to you all this time and I thought you were the other one, I thought you were Jeremy. Ha! Identical twins, you boys fool me most every time I see you.”

“I am Jeremy,” Jeremy says. “And we're not identical, we're fraternal.” He turns to leave, wondering why he was talking to Uncle Don in the first place: he and Lucy used to call him The Uncle Don Trap—they'd
hide
from him when they were little.

“But I thought you were already married,” Don says.

“Ever hear of divorce?” Jeremy says. “It runs in the family, you know. Mom and Dad, my wife and me—I've got a kid and I'm
doing everything I can to make sure he grows up and ruins some-one's life, too.” He stalks away.

Don turns back to the barbeque and begins slapping hamburger patties on it. They can eat 'em now, he thinks, or they can eat 'em cold.

MATT WANTS TO
find Lucy. He decides to check the pond, but on his way down the path he sees an unfamiliar woman sitting on a bench that rings a tall pine tree, and something about her makes him stop—maybe that she's incredibly dressed up,
over
dressed.

“Hi, there,” Matt says.

She looks up and squints at him. “Hello. Do you know what time it is?” She's about thirty-five, he thinks, but looks about forty-five.

He checks his watch. “Two-fifteen.”

“What do you think?” she says. “About two more hours?”

“I don't know,” Matt says. “Two or three.”

She opens her purse; it's small and white and—lizard? Ellen would know. She withdraws a pack of cigarettes and pulls one out. “Do you have a light?”

Matt pats his front pockets, although he knows he doesn't. “Sorry,” he says. “Would you like—would you like me to get you a drink?”

She laughs. “No,” she says. “I'm just fine.” She pulls a lighter from her purse and lights her own cigarette.

“Well, bye,” Matt says. “See you later.”

THE CHILDREN HAVE
divided into three groups. The largest contains most of the boys and two or three girls; they've taken the
opportunity to shed their parents and their clothes, and they're running in their swimsuits between the pond and the table up by the house, where the potato chips are. They send two emissaries at a time; as soon as one pair returns to the pond with a paper plate full of chips, the next sets off at a run, so they are almost never without provisions.

The second group is four or five girls who have their swimsuits on under their clothes but don't want to swim in the pond, because it's murky, or in the pool, because all the grown-ups are sitting or standing near it. They sit at the one picnic table, which is shaded by an umbrella, and talk about the counselors they had at camp this summer.

The last group isn't really a group at all: a few toddlers playing in the sandbox Papa Louie built long ago for Lucy, his first grandchild; two serious little boys who found a checkers game in the house and are lying on the living room rug, talking about the best openings; and Elias.

Elias has finally gathered the courage to lean against the swing. He's not quite tall enough to climb on it, but he thinks that sooner or later his dad will come along and lift him up. A while ago a man asked him if he was having fun, and he said yes, but the man didn't seem to care one way or the other—he stood there for a while and then walked away. Elias knows he's supposed to have fun—his mother told him he would have a blast.

Just when he's thinking of her, up walks his uncle Stuart, whom Elias knows she doesn't like—she said once that Stuart was a little devil on his dad's shoulder. Stuart is just as tall as his dad, though: Elias checked.

“Elias, my man,” Stuart says. “Lunchtime! What do you say to a burger?”

“OK,” Elias says.

Stuart is wearing a shirt just like his dad's—just like Elias's,
too, only bigger. It's a special kind of shirt that has to be dry-cleaned. Once Elias saw Stuart sitting at his dad's desk and he thought Stuart
was
his dad. He stood in the doorway and said, “Hi, Dad,” and Stuart laughed—with him, his dad said later, not at him. Elias will never make that mistake again.

LOUISA FINDS ELLEN
upstairs, in the bunk room. She's got the shades drawn; she's lying on one of the little iron beds.

“Can I bring you anything?” Louisa says. “Iced tea? A pear?”

Ellen smiles wanly, but she doesn't make the family joke: Oh, are there pears? “No, thanks,” she says.

Louisa sits on the edge of the bed and pats her daughter's hip. “I was thinking about what you said on the phone last night, hon. About you and Matt maybe going away for six months or something? I think that's very smart, and Dad and I would be happy to help out. You could go somewhere exotic and wonderful.”

Ellen rolls over so she's facing the wall. “What would be the point?”

“Well,” Louisa says, “it might give you something else to think about.”

Now Ellen doesn't say anything.

“You know?” Louisa strokes Ellen's hair, her pretty dark hair.

“I'd kind of like to be alone, Mom,” Ellen says.

Louisa pulls her hand away and stands up. “OK,” she says. “I'll be outside if you want me.”

She closes the door behind her, but hesitates before starting down the narrow staircase. Last night Ellen was so open with her—Louisa felt that perhaps she had finally reached a turning point. Today it's as if they never even had that conversation. It's strange to Louisa—strange and sad—that the best talks she's ever had with either of her daughters have all been on the telephone.

LUCY'S OUT ON
the raft in the middle of the pond, motioning for Matt to join her. He didn't bring his swimming trunks, but he thinks, Oh, who cares?, and he takes off his shoes and shirt and dives in. The water is warm and green, mucky: he's never understood why everyone swims here when there's a perfectly good pool up by the house.

He pulls himself onto the raft, but suddenly he feels shy; since Ellen lost the baby he and Lucy have taken to doing this, going off and talking, and he feels at once protective of and a little guilty about this new standing with his sister-in-law.

“Hey,” Lucy says. “How are you?”

“Mezzo,” he says. “Mezzo-soprano.”

She smiles and scoots over so he can lie next to her. “Is it burger time yet up there?” she says. “I felt a hunger pang a while back.”

“Any minute now.”

“Ellen's inside?”

“Upstairs.”

They lie quietly. The sun feels nice on Matt's back; he even likes the thick green smell of the water drying on his skin.

“Hey, did you see Elias up there?” Lucy says. “In that little Hawaiian shirt?”

“I didn't know they made them that small.”

“They probably don't. Jeremy probably had it made—at considerable expense.” She lowers her voice, although of course no one can hear them. “I have this horrible feeling that someone made him get a perm. His hair wasn't that curly at Pansy's birthday party.”

“Really?” Matt says. “You're kidding.”

“I wish.”

“He doesn't really seem like the happiest kid in the world, does he?”

“No,” Lucy says, “and you know what? I'm not sure Jeremy's the happiest man in the world, either.”