Tigers in Red Weather (18 page)

Mrs. Coolridge caught the quarter in her palm, and slapped it on the back of her hand. “Heads.”

Daisy thought she could hear her mother say something, but she wasn’t sure.

“Daisy?” Mrs. Coolridge eyed her impassively.

“I’ll take first serve.”

“Peaches?”

Peaches jerked her head toward the far side of the court and Daisy watched as she made her way around the post. Daisy picked up two tennis balls and stuck one in her pocket before walking across the clay to the center mark.

Standing at the baseline, she watched Peaches spread her feet wide and drop her body low, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. It was as if the whole world had gone quiet, except for crickets rubbing their wings together in the heat. She stared at Peaches’s feet and the angle of her right hip, which was jutting a little toward the alley.

Daisy tossed high and dropped her racquet behind her right shoulder. She could see the ball was straight, even though it hurt her eyes to look up at the sun. Bringing her racquet up, she hit a can opener, slicing into Peaches’s body on her backhand side, feeling her right foot come down with a hard thud as her weight moved forward.

Peaches was late stretching for the backhand, and the ball didn’t make it back over the net.

Someone clapped from the porch.

Daisy moved to serve to the ad court.

“Fifteen-love.” Her voice sounded small in the open space.

On the second point, she hit her serve slightly wide and the spin on the ball brought it straight into Peaches’s body. She squinted to make sure Peaches had missed it before turning her back on her opponent and repositioning herself.

“Thirty-love.”

She sliced her serve again, but this time Peaches was ready for her, hitting a low ball that forced her to the net. Daisy slid up and tried to volley into no-man’s-land, but Peaches was already there. She
returned with a slightly weak forehand, and Daisy skittered backwards, her racquet already dropped low at her left thigh. She hit a backhand straight down Peaches’s alley. Her heart pounded as she watched Peaches stretch for the ball. Stretch and miss.

Daisy knew the game was hers, she could taste it now, feel it vibrating in her muscles like the thrumming in the brush behind her. She pulled out the collar of her dress and blew down it, feeling the sweat running down her stomach cool under her breath.

Peaches positioned herself close to the alley, already protecting her backhand. It was a mistake and Daisy knew it.

Always punish a weakness
.

Daisy felt her feet move instinctively toward the center, the ball go up, the racquet drop back, arc and then slam a cannonball, flat and hard, down the
T
. It was in. Too late, Peaches shifted her weight, reaching for the forehand. Her wrist turned slightly as she made contact with the ball. It caught the top of the net and dropped back into her own service box.

Daisy’s fingers reached for the arrowhead in her pocket. She looked up at the porch and saw Ed, a small smile curling his lips. Her mother was gripping his arm tightly, even though the game was over. Daisy passed her hand over her face, which was feverish and smooth to the touch, the sweat so thin it slid right off.

They switched sides. Peaches gave almost as good as she had gotten, winning the game, although Daisy managed a couple of points. They continued like that, back and forth, tit for tat, each winning on her own serve. At times Daisy felt like they were dancing together, tight and uncomfortable, like when she danced with the boys from the Park School at Mrs. Brown’s class, their faces in frozen concentration as they tried not to step on her toes. The soles of her feet ached when she stopped running, but as she slid and skimmed across the court, her arm muscles straining to give power to her shot, her thighs extending, she felt no pain.

She watched Peaches move, watched the ball move, but her mind had almost disengaged. Images of the dead girl, of Peaches and Tyler under the Japanese lantern and of Ed’s white knuckles as they listened at the dining room door, spooled through her head. And Daisy played to make them disappear. If she hit harder, reached farther, moved quicker, they would fall like ducks in a row.

So she hit harder and moved faster, hit and ran and hit and ran, until she broke Peaches’s serve. She took the set. Then she took her next game, and the next and the next after that, until there was only one last game for her to win. And she
was
going to win, and once she did, she would never be hurt again; she would be armored for life.

At 30-40, Daisy watched Peaches getting ready to serve. As she made contact, the ball looked sluggish, and Daisy was already on the move. She chipped the return to Peaches’s backhand, moving quickly through the shot to set up for a volley. Peaches’s expression changed as she saw Daisy charging the net. As the return came back, Daisy delivered the final blow—a hot, sharp volley to Peaches’s forehand. It might as well have been Timbuktu. It was over.

Daisy let her racquet drop to the clay, with a soft thud. She stood on the hot court looking at Peaches. Her ponytail was in disarray and her round face was bright pink, as if she had been slapped. For a moment, Daisy felt sorry for her, and somehow sorry for herself, too. But then her mother was there, taking Daisy into her embrace, and she was panting into her mother’s cotton blouse. She felt Ed standing close by.

She knew she had to go shake Peaches’s hand. But she just wanted to enjoy the cool shade of her mother’s body and the blankness in her mind.

The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine
.

HELENA

1967: AUGUST
I

H
elena padded over to the mirror and looked at her reflection in the early morning sun. Her blond hair stood up in a ball of graying frizz, like a hideous crown. She was reminded of a line in one of Nick’s poetry books. Somebody’s something had been “exquisite and excessive.” Excessive indeed. A whole box of Nick’s books had been accidentally shipped to Los Angeles when they had left Elm Street after the war. She had meant to send it directly on to St. Augustine, but when she never quite made it to the post office the first week, or the second, she began to rummage through the volumes.

She looked in the mirror again, pushing her heavy breasts up with both hands, then turning to view them in profile. She let them drop. She looked at her cheeks, once apples, now just plain old round. Delicate frown lines snaked across her forehead, papery in the brisk light.

The room she had woken up in was nothing if not bright and cheerful, with its airy proportions and starched, glad colors. Yet, somehow, it depressed her. It felt accusatory. She had grown up in
this kind of shimmery, reproachful eastern light, but she did not feel bright and cheerful.

Helena sighed. It was never any good, all this thinking about things. Too much thinking and then too much not thinking had started most of the trouble, anyway. It was why she had woken up in this room with the bluebirds on the wall in someone else’s house.

She sat down at the dressing table. Her eyes trailed across the smudged glass surface, resting on a photograph of herself standing between Hughes and Nick. Nick had put the picture there. They were facing into the sun and her own eyes were partially hidden in the shadow of her brow line. Nick was looking off to the side, as if something there had caught her attention, putting her features into starker relief.

Helena nudged the frame a little, and then a little more until it clattered to the floor. When she bent to pick it up, she saw the glass was broken. She pulled the photo out and straightened up. She looked at the picture awhile longer before taking up the small sewing scissors on the top of the vanity and, ever so slightly, trimming an edge of Nick’s face from the photograph. She held it out and inspected it. Then she cut away another sliver, erasing her lips and the tip of her nose. But it still didn’t look quite right, so she just went ahead and cut Nick’s face out entirely. Satisfied, she put the picture back in the frame and brushed the broken glass into the wastepaper basket.

It was only then that she remembered: It was her birthday. She was forty-four.

“Aunt Helena.” Daisy came rushing out of the kitchen as Helena approached the door. “Oh no. We were going to bring you breakfast in bed. We’re too slow, Mummy,” Daisy called over her shoulder.

“Tell your aunt she’s not to come into the kitchen.” Nick’s voice had a mock seriousness to it that made Helena cringe.

Daisy turned back to her aunt, smiling. “Well, you heard the general.
Stay there and I’ll get your tray and keep you company on the porch.” She kissed Helena on the cheek. “I almost forgot to say it. Happy, happy birthday.”

Daisy was wearing a pair of minute shorts, and a T-shirt. Helena could see the outline of her niece’s nipples through the fabric. Daisy’s breasts were small and pointy, and Helena thought of her own, heavy in her hands only minutes before. The girl was tiny, so light and blond, like her father. Helena was reminded of something Nick had said once about living in the house of the good and the golden. She understood what her cousin had meant. It was unnerving.

Daisy set the tray down on the rickety white table on the front porch. Eggs Benedict. Toast. One slice of cantaloupe, with a wedge of lime. Orange juice.

“Ta-dah,” she said, spreading her hands over the tray. “Mummy’s making you your birthday surprise.”

It wasn’t really going to be much of a surprise, if Helena judged correctly. When they were younger, she had loved angel food cake. But she had lost her taste for it years ago, although no one had bothered to ask her. So she ate it every year, and every bite tasted of disapproval.

Helena dipped her fork into the hollandaise sauce and licked it. She had to admit, one thing you couldn’t reproach Nick for was her cooking, when she got around to it. The sauce was delicious and creamy, shot through with lemon.

“This is just too sweet of you, dearest,” she said. “Really, you shouldn’t spoil me so.”

“It’s your birthday. Everyone deserves some spoiling on their birthday.”

“Well.” Helena cut into the English muffin. “So, when did you get down last night?”

“I just made the last ferry. Ty couldn’t get away from work, but
he said there’s no way he’s going to miss your birthday celebration tonight.”

“Mmm. So, anything new on the wedding front?”

“I’m sure there is, although no one tells me,” Daisy said, laughing a little too gaily. “I’m so sick of this wedding, I could cry. I’d rather elope, but you know how it is. Mummy and Tyler won’t be stopped. They always have their heads together, conspiring over flowers or music, or some other detail. And if we’re not here, then the two of them are on the phone at all hours of the day and night, plotting.”

“Well, I suppose they just want it to be beautiful for you.” Helena took a bite of her poached egg. “Although”—she swallowed and shot Daisy a look out of the corner of her eye—“it is unusual for the groom to be so interested in all the trivial comings and goings.”

“Not very manly, I agree. I keep telling him so. But I suppose I should be flattered that he’s so excited. Anyway, the wedding’s boring. What are you going to do for your birthday?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought that much about it.”

“It’s too bad Ed can’t be here,” Daisy said, taking a sip of Helena’s juice.

The gesture shocked her. It was so like Nick, so cavalier, so entitled, and she found that she wanted to slap the glass out of Daisy’s hand. She willed her hands not to shake.

“Maybe we could go to the salon and have our hair done.”

“I’m not a doddering old woman, Daisy. I am still capable of making my own hair appointments.” She heard the acid in her own voice.

“That’s not what I meant,” Daisy said. “Of course you can. I just meant my treat. Just something fun to do.”

“I’m sorry, dearest. I didn’t sleep very well. Woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I suppose.” Helena sighed. It was very tiresome, all these little cover-ups, but she had to be careful. She had to be cheerful and, above all, well. She straightened her spine. “Perhaps you’re right. The salon might be just what I need.”

When Daisy went off to call Shelley’s in Vineyard Haven, the sole hairdresser on the Island, Helena turned to her cantaloupe. She knew she was supposed to have eaten it first, like everyone else did, like she had always done, but she decided that she didn’t care. It was her birthday, after all, and this small act of subversion gave her pleasure.

She pierced one of the squares of melon that Nick had no doubt cut with perfect precision, and bit into it. Its sweetness astonished her. She was reminded of the first time she had eaten melon in California, not long after she had moved there. Avery had taken her to the Cabana Club Café at the Beverly Hills Hotel for breakfast. It was 1945 and Helena had never eaten breakfast out; she didn’t even know people did that. And not by pools, anyway; maybe in some dark, dingy diner if you were a traveling salesman. They had brought her a slice of cantaloupe, or at least she thought it was. Maybe it was honeydew. Either way, when she bit into it, it sparkled—that was the only way she could describe it. She’d never tasted fruit like that, and after all the wartime rationing in the East, she thought she had died and gone to heaven. Or maybe some glamorous version of Mars.

That’s what Los Angeles had been like those first couple of months. Everything was new and startling and alien. Avery had written to her while she was still in Cambridge to tell her that he’d found a house, but when he picked her up at the train station, he informed her that they would be living in the guesthouse of a famous Hollywood producer. (The Producer. Even after she knew his name, Helena always thought of Bill Fox as the Producer, like a character in a script.)

Of course, the ceremony at city hall hadn’t been so great, but then again, she had told herself, Avery was very busy and weddings weren’t all they were cracked up to be. She’d worn a cream-colored hat that the shopgirl at Bullock’s had persuaded her to buy. She didn’t know where that hat was now.