Patricia Gaffney (23 page)
Authors: Mad Dash
He saw her at the end of the neat, fenced backyard, sitting on one of the low seats of a rusted swing set with her back to him, staring down at the grassless patch of ground at her feet as she swung herself listlessly back and forth, back and forth. The skirt of her white sundress billowed over her knees with each forward pass. She was barefooted. Both hands gripped the swing’s chains, and her head was bent at a sad, sideways angle. She looked forlorn. Impossibly lovely. He tried to hang on to his outrage, at least his bafflement, but they disappeared together the moment she turned around and saw him.
Because who could resist the rising light in her face or her slow, radiant smile, the pure joy in her eyes followed so quickly by a flood of helpless tears? Who could resist her flying white skirt and flashing legs, the reckless collision of her body against his when she threw herself into his arms and kissed him all over his face? She kissed the sparse hair in front of his ears—formerly sideburns—with extra fervor, and she rubbed her nose against the prickly side of his neck and murmured through her tears, “I’m sorry, oh, darling, I’m so sorry, I love you, you don’t look anything like him, I love you, let’s get married right away.” She cried so many tears, soon his face was as wet as hers.
“Like who?”
“Your father. Why do we have to wait? Let’s get married today, do you want to? I’m dying to.”
So they did. Not that day but the next, with a minister Arlene knew from sewing altar cloths for the Baptist church around the corner. Andrew’s father, a lifelong Episcopalian, had little enough use for Dash already and he balked at that, wouldn’t come down with Tommie for the ceremony. A week later Dash and Andrew threw a big party for themselves at the Thai-Vietnamese restaurant, and a week after that Andrew’s hair had grown out enough so that the whole issue drifted away, seemed almost dreamlike to him in time. He forgot about it.
Until, two months pregnant with Chloe, Dash took the car—they only had one in those days—and escaped to Arlene’s again. That time he didn’t go get her.
He thought of calling her now. Not of going to get her, just calling her. To tell her about Hobbes.
She’d probably be on her way to the cabin from work, though, and he didn’t like to talk to her while she was driving. Then, too, she’d try to cheer him up, and the things she would say—Hobbes was old, he’d had a good life, better to lose him now than when he was in pain and incontinent—Andrew didn’t feel like hearing those things now. Even from her.
He should go in and get warm. He’d catch his death out here. Or he could just stay where he was and feel sorry for himself. Remembering his wedding had put him in a strange mood, hopeful and sad at the same time. Bittersweet. Like recalling the warm, inspiring parts of a friend’s funeral.
He put his coat over his head and hugged his knees to his chest. He’d stay out here with Hobbes a little longer.
dash
fifteen
“
T
hank God for children.” Greta stabs a forkful of Cobb salad and shakes her head. She’s done her hair in braids today, four thick ones swinging around like orange tails, and one more curled up in a circle on her forehead like a hat ornament. “If I had to deal with nothing but mothers, I’d go nuts. I don’t see how you do it.”
“Well, you said it—the kids. But you have to admit, not all mothers are like that one.”
We’re decompressing, over a takeout lunch in the office, from a shoot this morning at the home of Mrs. Valerie Weiss-Slater and her new baby, the adorable Sophie. It was Greta’s first location shoot, plus she’d never worked with a child as young as Sophie—ten weeks.
“But God, wasn’t that lady a piece of
work
? Could you believe she wanted to
pretend
to breast-feed?”
“Oh, I’ve done mothers like that before,” I say over a mouthful of pickle. “They want the full Madonna portrait, but none of that messy stuff that goes with it.”
Beads clack in Greta’s hair when she shakes her head some more. It’s so much fun to teach her. I have to look at everything through her eyes, which makes it all new. “Valerie should’ve gotten the Academy Award,” she grumbles.
There was a lovely soft-gray light coming through Valerie’s gauzy bedroom curtain while we were setting up this morning, and she looked wonderfully maternal in a diaphanous white negligee, doing the sleepily ecstatic look with half-closed eyes and beatific smile—she must’ve been practicing in the mirror—when all at once she pulled a breast out of her nightgown and shoved it in Sophie’s startled mouth. “Hurry,” she snapped when Sophie, quite naturally, began to suck.
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Greta declares. “
“You wouldn’t have done the shot?”
“No. It’s bogus.”
She’s so cute. “Well, what’s dressing up a little girl in a Victorian gown and a big floppy hat and sticking her in a pony cart? Portrait photography’s a lot about pretend.”
“It’s not the same.”
“No, probably not. You’re right. And I do draw the line sometimes—like when the mother wants total nudity, and it feels more like porn than maternity. But, honey, if Valerie wants to pretend she nursed her baby, what do we care?”
“She’s a phony. What if she tells the kid she nursed her? And Sophie grows up believing it?”
“Well—then Sophie will always think it’s sweet and precious that she and her mother had that bond, and one day she’ll nurse her own child.”
Greta rolls her eyes in a way that reminds me of Mo. They think I’m Pollyanna.
“We got some great shots, though, didn’t we? Especially the baby by herself.” We propped Sophie up with the arm of the sofa under her chest in Valerie’s immaculate white living room, and the first thing she did was yawn. I’m fast—I got the pug nose, the puffy eyes squeezed tight shut, and oh, the big, toothless, wide-open mouth. Of course Valerie had to put a fuzzy pink blankie under her—no drool allowed on the furniture—but that turned out to be even better, because then I got the unbelievably delicate pastel of Sophie’s beautiful skin. I think if you get that right, a baby’s skin, the rest almost doesn’t matter.
The phone rings. It’s still a luxury to have somebody else answer it. “Bateman Photography, this is Greta, how can I help you?” She’s so efficient. She jots down notes while she listens. “Oh, I’m sorry, we’re going to be closed all next week. But after the eleventh you’re welcome to come in. What about Tuesday?”
Whenever we speak, I make a point to tell Andrew how well she’s working out. Because it’s true, not just because I want to rub his nose in the brilliance of my choice. The new website Greta designed gets more hits in a day than the old one did in two weeks. She never misses a meter reading, she’s good on the phone, she’s great with kids. Studio work is still a challenge—we haven’t yet repeated the Greta-in-charge experiment (which went pretty well, no major catastrophes)—but I think that’s to be expected when you’re just starting out. The main thing is, she’s flashy. People come in and it’s not just boring old me anymore; there’s this extremely odd-looking young woman, edgy, arty, still a bit unpolished, head in the clouds sometimes. Somebody interesting.
She hangs up the phone. “A lady and her four-year-old. She doesn’t have any idea what she wants.”
“Is she coming in for a consult?”
“Yeah, end of April. Spring’s really filling up,” she notes, entering the appointment on the computer.
“I know, but I still need my week. God, one whole, uninterrupted week in Virginia.” I thrill at the prospect.
“You look different. You look good, but different.” Greta sits back down at the other side of my desk. “I mean, from when I first met you.”
“I do? Well, my hair.” I got about six inches cut off last week, a complete surprise to my hairdresser, not to mention me. “I’m old, Harold, cut it all off,” I told him. “Old people don’t get to have long hair.” He didn’t want to; he threatened to give me a perm and dye it blue. I was scared to death, but I kept insisting, and now—I like it! It’s easy, I don’t have to do anything, and it makes me look—the magic Y word—younger.
“Yeah, but no, it’s not just the hair.” Greta squinches her pale-lashed eyes into slits, studying me.
“I’ve lost some weight,” I say helpfully.
“No…”
“Just from walking. Sock and I take these long walks in the woods—”
“No, that’s not it. Oh, well.” She gives up, starts throwing lunch stuff in the trash.
I wish she could, but I’m not surprised she can’t nail it down, the precise change she sees in me. I certainly can’t. As soon as I think,
This is how I feel
, I don’t feel that way anymore, I’ve gone off in a different direction. Greta must see a pinwheel when she looks at me, multicolored vanes constantly spinning, spinning—or one of those trick card decks you thumb through fast and see some jokey scene played out in cartoons. Except my deck’s not in order, so there’s no coherent scene, just jerky, unconnected postures.
It’s not all bad, though. It’s as if I’m standing on tiptoes all the time. From excitement, from anxiety, both—doesn’t matter; either way, I’m not sleepwalking. Boy, am I wide awake.
“You know what, Greta, you can probably take off right now. Nothing here for you to do, and I have to start sorting through proofs if I’m going to get them online for Valerie by tomorrow. Because come hell or high water, I am
out
of here Friday night.”
Greta sort of dithers in the doorway.
“I mean, is that okay? You get your bonus today, of course, for helping on the shoot. And full pay next week even though I won’t be in the—”
“I know.” She’s got one arm in the sleeve of her gnarled green sweater, which she always wears with a long fuchsia muffler. “Um,” she says.
“What’s up?” She can’t have a raise yet. Can she? Maybe she can. She deserves it. Yes! She can. I’m excited, anticipating the good news.
“Um.” She falls back in the chair, unwinding her muffler. She’s a lipstick freak, always choosing the reddest, the brightest, her round mouth like a tropical flower in her milk-pale face. She takes a deep breath. “Joel asked me to marry him. I said yes.”
I don’t say, “Oh, wow,” soon enough. I’m too shocked. “Oh,
wow.
I’m so
surprised.
How about that.” I should get up and hug her. “You and Joel. That’s amazing.”
“It just happened. I haven’t told my parents yet, even. We’re thinking June.”
“
June
.”
She speaks quickly. “Because we both want a small wedding, tiny, just family, and we’ll probably do it outside in a park or something. So no big, like, preparations or anything. And afterward I’m going to work at home. Designing commercial websites. Which I’ve been doing some of already in my spare time, you know—I told you. And I’d help Joel, too, because his goal is for us both to be independent, work for ourselves, not have bosses. He’s got plans already for his own consulting firm, he’s got great contacts in the industry and also in the government, which is where it’s all at in this town. There’s this woman at his work that he’d go in with, she’s Chinese, so they’d get minority set-asides.”
I stop listening to Joel’s consulting firm plans. I’m having an out-of-body experience. Greta has turned into a ventriloquist and her dummy is talking to me. “But, Greta,” I manage when she pauses. “What about your career? Your photography career,” I specify in case she’s forgotten. “What about photojournalism? Travel?” I stand up, have to dissipate some energy. “What about perfecting your art?”
She lowers her head, becoming absorbed in braiding three pieces of fringe on the muffler.
“You know I’m glad for you. If this is what you want. But honey, you’re so young—”
“Twenty-five?”
“That’s young. Do you have to
marry
him?” I try a laugh, to mask the exasperation. “Couldn’t you just live together?”
“He has a son, Dash.”
“Right, okay, but—is this what
you
want? Be sure, be absolutely sure. Joel, I can see—and I know he loves you, but isn’t it possible the, the
practicalities
might also be motivating him here?”
“Like what?”
“Like wanting some help with little—I’m sorry, I forget his name—”
“Justin.”
“—Justin, wanting a mother for him, needing help when it’s, when there’s—”
“Justin already has a mother.” She stands up, too. “I have to go.”
“Wait, wait. I am
really
not saying what I mean.” I follow her out through the studio. Something’s hounding me, I can’t let this go. I’m not angry, exactly; it’s more like desperation.
In the lounge, she whirls around to face me. “You know, Dash—” Her face is pink; she’s about to cry. Oh no! Then I will, too. “You’re not my mother.”
“Of course I’m not, of course not. But we’re friends, and I couldn’t stand it if you were making a mistake.”
“I’m not. Not for
me.
”
“I know you feel that way. I know exactly how you feel right n—”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do, believe me, I do, but in a few years, or a lot of years, in—say,
twenty
years, you’re going to feel differently. Or you
might
, you might feel—”
“I’m not you.”
Her back is to the door; she swings her fist down behind her and
thunks
the door with it hard. “I want to do this. I love Joel and he loves me. This is not me—
sacrificing
myself. I wish I could be like you. Or your friend Mo—no, not her—but you, I don’t know anybody I’d rather be like than you, but I’m not.” Her voice quivers. Tears squeeze out of her pale eyes and dribble down her cheeks. “I’m not you.”
“Oh, honey, don’t cry. Never mind about me. I understand what you’re saying, but you’re twenty-five—”
“Just because that’s how old
you
were—”
“No, listen. We don’t always take time to think things through. Forget age—anybody. And you have so much talent. You have a real eye, Greta, and that’s rare, you have no idea how rare it is.”
“I’m not, I’m not rare. I’m not creative!
You
are—I’m not!”
“Nonsense—you have your whole life, you can be anything. If you settle now because
he
wants you to—and because you’re in love and it feels good and you want to be with him—”
“What’s wrong with that? I don’t understand you! You have the best job in the world. You’re not stuck—I don’t get why you’re
warning
me.”
She jerks the door open, clatters down the stairs. Outside, it’s a shock to see blue sky, sunshine—this morning it was gray and misty. At the bottom of the outdoor steps, she whips around. “I’m not bolting on you, I’m not quitting
tomorrow.
”
“That’s completely beside the point.”
“I’ll work till the end of May, that’s what I was trying to tell you. But after that, I’m sorry it disappoints you so much”—more tears—“I’m marrying Joel.” She gives a jerky wave. “So I’ll come in for two days next week, like we said. That is, if you still care to employ me.”
I call after her. Pedestrians on the sidewalk gawk at me. Now, of course, I’m crying, too. This is crazy. Greta keeps going, moving as fast as she can in her wobbly strut, hampered by her ridiculous platform boots. I sink against the warm brick wall and watch her go.
If you’re going to laugh about something later, start now.
That’s a good saying, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t apply here. No, this is a bitter, bitter pill. I don’t even know why I’m taking Greta’s horrible decision so personally. I feel terrible about what just happened. I’ve been unkind, tactless, and a bully.
But I’m
right.
I see it so clearly. Why can’t she?
M
o calls. “I’m so disappointed in Eleanor Roosevelt,” she opens.
“Oh?”
“Guess what her one regret was. In her whole, amazing life, the one thing she wished at the end she could change.”
“I give up.”
“She wished she’d been prettier. Not world peace, ‘I wish I’d been prettier.’ Eleanor
Roosevelt.
”
