Stop That Girl (18 page)

So yesterday Paul descended from Virginia’s house in his full leg cast. I leaped from my car and offered to help him in. “I’ve got it, Ann,” he said. “Thanks.” Like an excellent chauffeur I opened the passenger door for him. “So, thanks for hopping to on such short notice,” he said. “You’re a trouper. Besides, I know you didn’t have anything else to do today.”

Of course, he really said something else, but I knew what he was thinking. Paul and Virginia specialized in promotions. After we moved into their house and they found out that I had done some editorial work in the past, they offered me jobs from time to time. I never asked for them and often wondered how they knew I would say yes. I guess because I lived in Virginia’s rental I imagined they could see me rattling around inside it. So I spent a few days coming up with names for a new organic shampoo that would be sold pyramid style, by couples working their own neighborhoods like hungry coyotes. Then, a couple months ago, Paul and Virginia wangled the brocco-rabi account, a fairly sizable one, I gathered, and I started taking on assignments regularly. There were press releases and so forth. And then this grand opening for Chucky came up. I’d been on the phone to all kinds of official people in Stockton for the past month. The actual event was now only a few weeks away. And yet even though I’d tagged along with Paul and Virginia on meetings with N & B, and attended all the planning for the commercial that would be made during the event with the video people, I couldn’t help worrying that this might not be the best way to market brocco-rabi. Get the kids excited by brocco-rabi and they’ll bug their mothers into buying it; that was the cornerstone of their strategy. They had created 3-D cartoon activity books all about Chucky and planned to bring Chucky into the schools. But I already knew there was nothing lovable about Chucky Brocco-rabi. He had no personality. He couldn’t even talk, that was the bottom line. A costume designer was preparing a dozen of the mute green getups at this very moment. Paul and Virginia were spending a lot of other people’s money on this. They had their own business, but they didn’t have any kids. How could they know?

Paul and I drove the two-lane highway to Stockton. The hills were golden and so was the sky, filled as it was with crop dustings and smog and embers from a fire put out near Paso Robles only the day before. The wind had whipped that fire, then moved up here. It was whipping my car. “I hope Virginia doesn’t wimp out on me,” Paul said. “I mean, she’s the most intelligent woman I know, and yet she’s utterly insecure. I need to help her get over it. Same problem destroyed my first marriage. I was off overseas all the time on high-security missions, and so finally to make her feel competent I bought my wife a store.”

“A store?” I said. “That was nice of you.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t work. After a while she didn’t think she could handle it.”

“What kind of store was it?”

“Needlecraft, stuff like that. She was an expert at needlecraft.”

“Just because she was a needlecraft expert doesn’t mean she could run a needlecraft store,” I offered.

“She lost her confidence. Tried to kill herself with knitting needles.”

“Is that a joke?” I asked.

“If you think that’s a joke you’ve got a strange sense of humor,” Paul said.

There was something about Paul that bothered me, I decided.

“It’s a tragedy when someone underestimates their talents. By the way, are you aware of how smart your son is?”

“Of course I am,” I said. Will was smart, no doubt about it. He started reading when he was four, almost like spontaneous combustion. Not only that, he could identify all the states by shape when he was only two. He had memorized them all on his own.

“I just hope you realize how smart he is. It would be terrible if you didn’t.” This irritated me for some reason, so I didn’t reply. I didn’t need to. After all, I was driving and had to be vigilant because cars were speeding and passing. Paul kept blabbing about the uncertain future of Will’s intellect while I guarded our lives.

The supermarket we had chosen for this event was on the outskirts of town, in a new suburban area full of cul-desacs and shopping centers that had only been in existence for a year or two. The suburb still touched on original almond orchards, full of flowers in the springtime, gray as ghosts by Thanksgiving.

We entered the store and inspected the produce department to make sure it was suitable as a backdrop for both the commercial and the event itself. And it was. It was actually an especially good produce section. Vegetables of every color and shape, fresh and waxy, filled enormous rough-hewn bins that were spotlighted from above. Automatic sprayers jetted over never-dehydrating greens in tiers along the mirrored walls. Paul and I nodded at each other with approval. A quick talk with the produce manager assured us of his cooperation on the day of the event. “He’s going to be a phenomenon,” Paul bragged to the produce manager, showing him a blueprint of Chucky. “As big as the California Raisins, as big as Joe Camel. We’ve got a serious budget to play with here. So if you display our product prominently, we can do all kinds of great things for you.”

I started to feel sucked in. Paul’s droning voice began to compel me to think I was on an important mission. I could tell I was beaming as the produce manager listened and was impressed. At last, completely satisfied, we took off for destination two, the suburban junior high.

“Good work,” Paul said.

“Thanks. You too,” I added.

At the junior high we met with the leader of the drill team. Two hundred girls were quickly promised to be at our disposal for the event. We would have them do a few routines, substituting Chucky’s name for the name of their junior high. This drill team was the top-placing team in the state. We would make a generous contribution to their travel budget. Paul and the drill team leader fawned over each other as they closed the mutually beneficial deal. Then, as the drill team leader went on a little too long about the special routines her special core squad could do, and the baton twirling that would add to Chucky’s luster, I could see the gulf of Paul’s insincerity widening. I could tell he didn’t like her.

We finished off in Stockton by visiting the chamber of commerce. There we picked up more endorsements for Chucky and the event. Promises of publicity and even the possibility of a cameo by the mayor. Too much. The truth is, I seem to love being included on other people’s missions. This trip was lightening my spirits. As we walked out to my car we gave each other a high five. Paul was bubbling.

“I’ll actually spend a few dollars on you to thank you,” Paul nearly said. “Let’s go over to the restaurant at that big hotel downtown. Okay?”

“Great,” I said. I looked at my watch. All that accomplished, and it was still only three o’clock.

“Virginia’s probably got Will by now,” Paul mused.

“True,” I said.

“That’s nice. For Virginia. She really wants kids.”

I parked in the garage under the hotel. I helped Paul get out of the car and he limped beside me into the lobby. The restaurant was closed between lunch and dinner, so we sat in the bar. Paul ordered an Irish coffee, which sounded exactly right to me, so I ordered one too.

“This is good,” I said when it came.

“Want anything off the bar menu?”

“Umm—well, I guess crab cakes.”

“Virginia will be incredibly psyched about this,” Paul said. “It’s all working out. Now all I need to do is contact that reporter from the
Bee
and then the radio station. You want to take care of that?”

“Sure,” I said.

And then I’ll show Virginia the results and she’ll think I did all the work, and she won’t resent having to support me, seemed to be what he was thinking. “Miss, can we have a kettle of clam chowder and an order of crab cakes?”

“You know,” I said, “I think this is going to be a lot of fun. I think a lot of people will come. That was a great idea you had, about raffling the Rollerblades.”

Paul nodded in complete agreement. “The main thing to remember, though, is that the commercial is the most important aspect of the event. So as long as the video people get all the shots they need, it doesn’t matter if things don’t go perfectly smooth. Doesn’t that take a load off your mind?”

“You mean, since I’m the coordinator?”

“Right. Can I ask you a question, Ann?”

“Okay.”

“Do you think Virginia is attractive?”

I had thought he was going to ask me if I was a happy, fulfilled person—something that would put me on the spot but make me feel like I had an interesting secret. “Sure,” I said sullenly.

“I mean, is she what another woman would call a beautiful woman?”

“Yes, I guess so,” I said. I pictured Virginia. She was tall and gangly and cut her red hair like a helmet. I suppose you can say anyone is beautiful, really.

“Do you mind if I tell her you said that?”

“But it’s not as if I said, ‘Virginia’s beautiful’ out of the blue.”

“But you think so.”

Who wanted to argue over something like that? “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

Paul smiled at me. It was the first time I could remember him attempting to look pleasant for my benefit. Foolishly, I had looked forward to some new company today in the form of Paul. But try as I might, I didn’t have a sense of us connecting.

The crab cakes came, and at least they were good. Paul dipped into his clam kettle. “Chow down,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Did you know Virginia wanted to write a postcard to Letterman about Will?” Paul slurped. “Get him on the show.”

“What?”

“That state thing. The way he bites Fig Newtons into the shapes of states? That’s incredible.”

I laughed. “He did that for you guys?”

“Virginia was in shock. I tell you, she’s a little bit in love with your son. Who wouldn’t be, he’s a great kid. But the truth is, we’ve actually talked about taking care of him if anything ever happened to you and your husband. I mean, we’d go the whole way. We’d adopt him.”

I looked at Paul quizzically. “You mean, if both of us died?”

“We’re not going to adopt him if you’re still alive, obviously.”

“You mean you imagined us being dead?”

“All I’m saying is that we would like to volunteer to be the ones who would take care of Will if anything ever happened. That’s all.”

I slumped in my seat. Never before had anyone discussed the possibility of my own death with me. It felt intimate and indifferent at the same time. As if someone had stripped me of my clothes but not stopped to look. A real insult.

“Let me get this right. You and Virginia were sitting around one day, maybe talking about how nice it would be to have children, and then one of you said something like, ‘That Will boy over at our rental is pretty nice,’ and the other one said, ‘Maybe our tenants will die suddenly and we can have him’?”

“Of course not,” Paul said. “Virginia and I put a lot of thought into this.”

“And anyway, even if we did die, what makes you think we’d want you two? I have a sister! I have friends!”

“Forget I said anything.”

“No, no, I’m glad you told me,” I said. “Because, you know, the idea makes my blood curdle.”

“Oh, come on,” Paul said. “You’re overreacting!”

“Yes. It makes me feel really sick, like the crab cakes are trying to crawl out of my stomach.”

“You’re funny,” Paul said, smiling the way he did at the drill team leader. “Virginia and I really appreciate that in your work.”

I excused myself. I was really bent out of shape. I needed to ask my husband to go pick up Will at Virginia’s house right away. But when I reached his office they told me he had already left. Then I called home. “What happened?” he shouted. “The school called me at work.
At
work!
No one ever came to pick up Will. One of the teachers had to sit there waiting with him until I got there.”

“Virginia didn’t get him? She forgot about him?”

“If I had been out of the office today, what would have happened? It took me an hour and a half to get there because of traffic, which I always avoid by leaving later.”

I said, “You know what? It’s just as well, because I’m not going to be working for Paul and Virginia anymore.”

“Why on earth would it be just as well?”

“I’m not going to be working for Paul and Virginia anymore,” I said again. “Don’t you want to hear why?”

“Someone better explain something,” he really said. “How would you like to be left at school? My mother never did that to me.”

On the long drive back to Aptos, the wind wrestled the car and the passers passed and the sun went down right before our narrowing eyes. Sometimes the road vanished into a dwarfed sunburst on the windshield, and Paul gasped and dug into the floor with his bad leg. I hoped his hair would turn white. I was having trouble dealing with certain people, it was clear. Take, for example, people who thought you could sell a stenchful vegetable by dressing it in a costume, and people who made love to their wives with their shoes on. Last night I crawled out of bed, stretched out flat on the living room floor, and closed my eyes. I imagined traveling to a place where I started over with nothing but my child. I don’t know why that scenario always appealed to me so much, but it was the only thing I could think of that carried me through the night.