Wide Blue Yonder (5 page)

“How’s the water?”

“What?”

“Nothing. Your uncle Harvey’s scaring people again.”

Swallowing sounds as Frank hoisted his drink. “What did he do, a rain dance in the park?”

“No, he’s just being himself.” She related Ed’s account.

“Ed should maybe keep his nose on his own face.”

“Yes, but I don’t want people to think we weren’t watching out for Harvey.” It sounded rather bald, put that way, as if they cared only for public opinion.

“Huh.” Frank mulling the data. His mind was like one of those games where you put a marble in the top and it threaded its way through a maze and popped out the hole in the bottom. You could follow the process all the way through from beginning to end. “Does he belong back in a home or something?”

“I don’t think so. Not yet.” She hated talking about it so glibly. Institutional life for Harvey would mean the dementia ward and the kind of pills that made you fall asleep in a chair. “Somebody should go check up on him,” she said, and waited.

“Check up. Like, go talk to him and see if he knows what day of the week it is? Don’t they have somebody from the county who does that?”

Elaine kept silent. Part of the marble-in-the-maze routine was Frank’s compulsion to say something cheap like that. In the background there was the sound of a television commercial played at top volume for the space of a remote’s click. The receiver was muffled again. When Frank came back he had the edge of his private conversation, a leftover laugh, in his voice. Probably Teeny had taken off her swimsuit top. “Maybe you could run over there next week. You’re closer.”

“Sure. You’re welcome.”

“Just don’t get him all worked up so he starts expecting things.” Meaning money, she supposed. Snake. “You know, Frank, I don’t think of Harvey as crazy. More like he’s on this different plane where there aren’t any good or bad people, just good or bad weather.”

Frank considered this for a moment, then surprised her by asking about Josie. “She’s fine. At least, she’s healthy enough. Good vital signs. Of course, she glowers and slouches around the house and acts like she loathes every minute of existence.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s a teenager.” Elaine regretted it the instant she said it. A stupid remark she didn’t even mean. If Josie had heard it,
she’d take it as one more piece of evidence that would weigh against Elaine on the unforgiving scale of her daughter’s heart. She amended herself. “She’s just very private. Very closemouthed. I figure it’s the boyfriend.”

“She has a boyfriend now?”

“Hello, Frank. She’s had the same boyfriend for more than a year. Jeff, the Hormone King.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? What are the two of them up to?” Sloshing sounds. Frank agitated, perhaps even capsizing. “Don’t you keep track of them, for God’s sake?”

“Frank, relax. Joke.” Smart mouth, stupid brain. Why could she never resist her own cleverness? “I’m sure they aren’t doing anything. Besides, I think they broke up.” In fact, she was sure they were doing everything. Nothing evidentary, like condom wrappers or suspect bedsheets. On those occasions when she had come home late from work, she’d found them sitting blankly in front of the downstairs TV in poses of lustless disinterest. But she
knew
. “I’ll go see Harvey and call you back if anything needs to be done, OK?”

When she hung up the phone she let her breath out, looked around for someone to complain to, and as usual found no one. Perhaps she should get a dog, or a lover. Josie was at work. She’d started a new job hostessing at night in a franchise steak house. While it was a step up from fast food, it meant she kept later hours and left the house looking alarmingly dressed-up and older, in an unwholesome sort of way. There were dangling earrings now, and a lot of smudgy eye makeup, and clothes that approached some borderline of too short or shiny or tight or sheer. Elaine was tempted to speak with her about the Business Wardrobe. Which would no doubt go over just as well as the famous Sexual Responsibility and Contraception talk.

She tried to remember that time when everything between
them had been simple, or at least straightforward. She had to go back a long way. Josie had been a sweet baby, an exceptionally golden, beatific child. All right, so she was her only child, and it wasn’t as if she could make impartial comparisons. But there were the pictures, the videos, the memories. She and Frank had never been anything other than an awkward mismatch, even back when they were too young and hopeful to realize it. Yet somehow they had come together to form this perfectly symmetrical and prepossessing creature. They’d even been happy, from time to time. You couldn’t take a picture of that. It didn’t hold still long enough.

Maybe they should have been guided by that fitful happiness, tried harder later when the marriage took its sour turn. Would it have been better if she and Frank had toughed it out, made the usual compromises, resigned themselves to a life of low-grade hostility and disappointment? Elaine had asked herself this many times, and the answer always came back the same. No, for her. Frank, who knew? Yes, for Josie. Even a remote and clueless father on the premises seemed better than the wound inflicted by his absence. In spite of all the paperback books and counselors that told you how to help your child articulate, process, manage, and come to triumphant terms with the family crisis, nothing went according to the script. Instead, a blank and resentful screen had descended on her daughter’s face at age twelve.

At this same time Elaine had taken the first of many deep breaths and struck out on her own. Nothing had come easily, but she could look back now and give herself credit for whatever success she’d pried out of life. She’d had her share. No complaints.

And yet. And yet. Something kept nagging at her in the same way the dashboard light did. Off and on. Undiagnosable. A twitch or an itch that said something was out of balance, overlooked. Something she had done or left undone. An anxious edge
to even the best of times. She was forty-five. The wilting prime of life. She had friends who had taken up the serious practice of yoga, or started on antidepressants, or embarked on the sort of wilderness expeditions that required you to collect dew on plastic sheets for your drinking water. All of them trying to commune, or connect, or revitalize. She understood their not-enoughness. The fear that they were not happy enough, or valued enough, or beautiful (still beautiful!) enough, or fill-in-the-blank enough. The modern disease. Life as ten thousand screaming television channels projected on an empty screen.

She was startled to hear the garage door opening. Eight-thirty. Josie home unexpectedly early from work. Elaine, who was sitting vacantly at the kitchen table, composed her face to look interested and welcoming. “Hi honey.” A neutral, cheery, daughter-greeting tone designed to deflect antagonism.

“Hi.” Josie swept past her to the refrigerator. One syllable for three. What would happen if she didn’t say anything? Would Josie speak, or would they circle each other in silence like fish in an aquarium?

“You’re off early.”

“Yeah, it was slow, they told a bunch of us to go home.” She emerged from behind the refrigerator door with a bottle of iced tea, which she opened and drank half of, then returned to the shelf. “This one’s mine, OK?”

“Would you like some dinner?”

“No, I’m going out again.”

“Oh. Who with?”

“Jenn and Tammy. Tammy’s folks just got a new pool table.”

Her eyelids fluttered. Elaine took this to indicate that the evening’s plans had nothing to do with pool, and possibly nothing to do with Jenn or Tammy. Was it good or bad that the girl at least bothered to lie? Was there any way you could ask your child
to at least please keep herself alive? Tonight she was wearing a black knit dress with a white stripe around the edges of the neck and straps. Her thin arms were bare and suntanned. Her legs were propped up on high heels that made her mince a little, and her dark blond hair was pulled off her neck so that there was one long line of her from head to toe. Elaine could have started in on the makeup, but decided not to. It wouldn’t be long before the girl wouldn’t have to pretend at being an adult.

Josie noticed her staring. “What?”

“I was just thinking how nice you look tonight.”

“Oh.”

There was How was work, and Drive carefully, and Make sure you’re home by midnight. Instead Elaine said, “I’m going to go see your uncle Harvey tomorrow. Would you like to come?”

“Did Dad put you up to it?”

“No, I put myself up to it.” Josie raised her eyebrows but didn’t ask. “I thought I’d stop at the deli and get some sandwiches. Make a picnic out of it. I know he’d enjoy seeing you.”

“Do you think so, Mom? I mean, does he really pay attention to anything but the stupid Weather Channel?”

“Of course he does.” More certain than she felt. “Anyway, the important thing is that somebody has to take care of people who don’t have anybody else.”

Josie’s face lit with a sudden delighted grin. “You mean like I’m gonna have to take care of you someday, huh?” She wiggled her fingers in a cheery wave as she headed upstairs. “I’ll go if I’m up, OK?”

The next morning Elaine made sure she was up, even though it meant Josie sulked against the car door, her hair unwashed and her opaque sunglasses flying like a black flag. What did you do last night? None of your fucking business. One more conversation not worth having. It was a perfectly beautiful summer day, a
sky full of whipped-cream clouds and clear light. They drove through downtown, past Trade Winds, its window elegantly turned out in blue chrysanthemum print bedding. She wished she was there, at her place behind the counter, where the only problems were those of money. Past City Hall and the big hotels and the Lincoln Home with its constant line of summertime tourists, descending block by socioeconomic block to Harvey’s neighborhood.

At the deli Elaine bought turkey sandwiches and soda and potato salad and chocolate chip cookies. “Here,” she said, handing the bags to Josie, who had remained in the car listening to obnoxious music. “Make yourself useful.”

“Give me a break.”

“No, you give me a break. Were you drinking last night? I want you to tell me the truth.”

Josie tilted her head to catch the stream from the air conditioner. “Why? You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

“Try me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I’m very glad to hear it.”

“Why are drinking and drugging the only things you worry about? That is such a joke.”

“Well, tell me what else I should worry about. Please.”

“Just … everything. Life.” Josie raised one hand to sketch out some vast and cloudy shape. By then they were turning into Harvey’s driveway, a gravel track with a stripe of weeds growing up the middle. Elaine shut off the engine and they sat for a moment, taking in the place. Josie asked, “Does he know we’re coming?”

“I called and told him.” In response, Harvey had recited the month’s rainfall totals. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea.

When she was a small child, Josie had called Harvey’s place the Crooked House. Its white clapboards shed a few more nails every
year. The porch sloped downhill. Moss was growing around the shingles and the little stovepipe chimney. Elaine promised herself that she would at least pry enough money out of Frank to fix the roof. There was an old-fashioned glider on the porch, the kind that moved with a rusty noise, and a plastic whirlygig in the shape of a duck with paddling wings. Sunflowers and hollyhocks grew in one corner of the yard. Lined up on the front edge of the porch, along the windowsills, and on the surface of a sawed-offtree stump were countless small clay flowerpots and plastic tubs. Each of them held some sprouting or leafing or blooming plant. There were marigolds and spider plants and something that might have been lettuce, fantastically gone to seed. A tough-looking nasturtium. A sweet potato set to root in a glass jar. A row of stubby carrot tops in cottage cheese cartons. Morning glories propped up on sticks and beginning to strangle the neighboring begonias. The house resembled a child’s zigzag drawing or something from a down-at-the-heels fairy tale. All the window shades were drawn down at lopsided angles. The Crooked Man and his Crooked House.

The front door was open and through the screen they heard the steady, uninflected voice of the lady weathercaster. “Harvey?”

Elaine couldn’t see him in the TV-lit dimness. Josie edged up behind her with the groceries. “Should we just go in?”

Elaine reached out and plucked the sunglasses from her daughter’s nose. “Just hold on a minute. Harvey? Yoo hoo.”

Josie muttered, “Yoo hoo. Incredible.”

“Hush.” Harvey’s dome-shaped forehead appeared around the corner of the kitchen doorway, then he ducked back out of sight. “Harvey, are you hungry? We brought you lunch.” Again the head-ducking, then the head was followed by the rest of his elongated timid self. “Oh look, Harvey, Storm Center’s on.”

He moved in front of the television to watch the weather map. Elaine opened the screen door and motioned for Josie to follow
her inside. She set the paper sacks on a table, then slipped into the kitchen to look for plates. The kitchen was enough to break your heart. She found three mismatched plastic plates in a cupboard, pink, green, and turquoise, fork-scarred and shiny. She decided against pressing her luck with glassware; they could drink from the cans.

When she went back in, Harvey had hunkered down on the floor in front of the television. Josie loitered by the door, still uncommitted to entering. Did she have to be beaten with a stick to get her to do anything? Elaine unwrapped the sandwiches and scooped out potato salad. Thank God for plastic forks and paper napkins. “Would you like Coke or Sprite, Harvey?”

She held the two cans up before him and his hand closed around the Coke. Elaine settled discreetly on the couch and offered him the green plate. He raised it to his nose, then his hand closed around the sandwich and he took a bite. Crumbs dribbled from his old soft lips. It required a little more effort to manage the potato salad, but soon he was working away at it. Behind them, Josie rummaged in the paper bag, making three times the necessary noise.