An Ornithologist's Guide to Life (21 page)

“That boy,” she says. “I don't like him.”

One of the reasons she has kept the light out here off is so Gary won't sit and read the newspaper while they eat.

“Which boy?” Gary says. His white golf shirt seems to glow in the candlelight.

“Jason, Justin, whoever he is,” Marjorie says, knowing it's Justin but wanting to demean him, even here with Gary. “He gives me the creeps.”

“He's only charging five dollars an hour,” Gary says.

“I liked Phong,” Marjorie says. She is pouting a little; all that wine.

“Phong has some awful cancer,” Gary says. “Bone cancer, I think. He certainly can't come and cut our grass with something like that.”

She knows why they've lost Phong. She sent a fruit basket to his house.

From the yard next door, those children scream and play.

“Don't they ever go to bed?” Gary says, his voice hushed. “They're so . . .” He struggles for the word. “Untended,” he says finally.

Gary's hair is silver, cut short. He is tall and lean, like he always has been, and he plays tennis and golf. Five years ago he quit smoking. He is aging well, Marjorie thinks, pleased.

It's just for the summer,” Gary is saying.

“He's the sort of boy who will break into the house and kill us while we sleep,” Marjorie says. She doesn't really believe this. But how can she tell Gary her real problem with the boy? “Like those Menendez brothers,” she adds.

Gary laughs at her, affectionately. Even though she went to Wellesley and got a degree in English, he has always seen her as a scatterbrain. It charms him, this image of her.

“They killed their own parents,” he says, reaching across all the food for her hand. “Not someone else's.”

He follows her hand like it's a lifeline out of deep water, follows it around the table, holding on tight, until he is at her side. Then he lets go, and moves his hands onto her shoulders
so that he can turn her toward him, then moves them inside her button down shirt and inside her bra until he finds each nipple. He is kissing her too, urging her off her chair down onto the stone patio.

“There are berries,” Marjorie says. “For dessert.”

Gary laughs. He is tugging on the zipper of his shorts.

“Here?” Marjorie whispers. “Not here.” But she is taking off her own shirt and shorts and underwear.

From next door, a woman's voice, high, too shrill: “
Jessica! Jessica!
”

Gary has found his way inside her. Marjorie sees his tanned back, his white buttocks, clear in the candlelight.

“
Jessica!
”

The stone patio is hard and cold on Marjorie's back. Above her the stars seem to drip from the sky, toward her. She hears herself sigh. She closes her eyes. The silly tufts of gray hair that have sprouted on his shoulders and back in his middle age tickle her hands when she moves them there.

“Oooh,” Gary whispers into her ear, his breath sharp with red onion. “I'm glad the little girls are having fun too.”

Of course they aren't; one of them seems to be lost. But Marjorie doesn't care. She lifts her hips up to meet her husband.

O
N
W
EDNESDAY MORNING
Bonnie stops in for coffee. Like her mother, Bonnie is small boned, wiry. Her hair is the same dark blond Marjorie's once was; now Marjorie gets hers frosted so that it is more of a silvery blond. They both wear it in a blunt cut, collarbone length, with headbands or
pulled back in ponytails, which is what they both have today. People used to think they were sisters.

Bonnie is a lawyer and lives on the East Side in Providence, in a condo in what used to be a church. She and her husband—a lawyer too—sank all their money into a beach house, where they disappear every weekend. All of these things make Marjorie proud of her daughter.

This morning Bonnie has brought Portuguese sweet rolls to have with their coffee.

“Daddy and I are just having salads for dinner these days,” Marjorie tells her daughter. “This way I don't need to turn on anything—oven, stove, nothing. It's really made life simpler.”

Bonnie smiles in a way that makes Marjorie think she has a secret.

“What?” Marjorie says. “I know you've got something up your sleeve.”

Bonnie grabs both of her mother's hands. “I told Ted I'd wait because he thinks it's bad luck to tell too soon. But I can't keep it from you.”

Marjorie gets a sick feeling in her bones. She knows, of course, what Bonnie is about to tell her and she knows it should make her delighted—
a grandchild!
—but she feels awful, like Bonnie is about to tell her
bad
news.

“You've guessed, haven't you?” Bonnie says, slightly deflated. “It's just six weeks. Hardly pregnant at all.”

“There's no such thing as hardly pregnant,” Marjorie says. “At any rate, Ted is right. Things can go wrong early on.”

Bonnie looks horrified.

Marjorie pats her daughter's hand. “I'm sure you'll be fine,” she tells her. Then takes their coffee cups to the sink. She
wants Bonnie to leave. She says, “Rhoda Harris and I are going to play tennis today. Then have lunch.” It's all a lie. She has no plans today. Rhoda Harris is in England with her husband.

Bonnie has come up behind her. “If I didn't know better,” she says, “I'd think you weren't happy about my news.”

“Don't be silly,” Marjorie says, letting the water run too hot and plunging her hands under it. “It's just that if we get all excited and something goes wrong, we'll feel just terrible.” Saying this, Marjorie realizes it is exactly what she wants, for something to go wrong, for there to be no baby. “It's wonderful news,” she says, forcing herself to turn around and hug Bonnie. “Imagine! A new little person running around.”

Happy now, Bonnie says, “I guess I should get to the office. I wish I'd get some morning sickness or something. I mean, I feel really wonderful.”

Marjorie has always heard that's a bad sign, to have no symptoms. “You're sure?” she says.

Bonnie nods. “Positive.”

Marjorie turns back to the dishes in the sink.

“Mother,” Bonnie says, standing on tiptoe and peering over Marjorie's shoulder to see out the window. “Who is that young man?”

Marjorie glances up. “That is your father's idea of a gardener.”

“What's happened to Phong?” Bonnie asks.

“He went and got sick and this is who Daddy replaces him with.”

They both watch Justin push the lawn mower. He has on cutoff jeans and nothing else.

“He's like a Greek god,” Bonnie says.

Marjorie laughs. “Hardly. He's practically illiterate and he has these terrible tattoos everywhere.”

“I think he's very handsome,” Bonnie says. “Maybe he can come and cut
our
grass at the beach.”

“You would be very disappointed,” Marjorie tells her.

Still, long after Bonnie leaves, she stands at the sink looking out, watching the way his muscles push against his skin. He hesitates at the white fence that separates their yard from the O'Haras'. Marjorie cranes her neck to see what it is he's doing there. For a moment she thinks he's pissing—his hands seem to flutter somewhere in front of him, his back arches oddly. There is a flower bed there, but he isn't stooping. The boy is pissing on her flowers, on the neat rows of anemones and petunias that she herself planted and that Phong tended for several summers. Marjorie isn't certain what she should do. But then the boy, with an elaborate shudder, moves away, lugging a large garbage bag. Still, Marjorie stands there until the doorbell rings, and leaves to answer it, disappointed.

Marjorie doesn't recognize the woman standing on her doorstep. But she recognizes the little girl clinging to her leg. These are the people next door, from the O'Haras' yard. The woman is pregnant—God! Marjorie thinks. Is everyone pregnant these days?—all white doughy flesh and bumpy cellulite thighs. She shouldn't be wearing shorts. Her toenails are bright pink. And the little girl has that same tangled hair, screaming for a good brushing. She's the one with the
IOI
Dalmations
bathing suit.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” the woman is saying. “But I can't find my little girl. Jessica. The older one?”

Marjorie waits. The woman's hair is the color blond you get when you do it yourself.

“I was on the phone and she wandered off.”

“Again!” this little girl blurts. “Mommy says stay in the yard or in the pool and Jessica just doesn't listen.”

“Ashley does,” the woman says, touching the top of her daughter's head. “But Jessica has a mind of her own.”

“Then she lies and says she was right upstairs in her room or something,” the little girl adds.

The woman shrugs, a “what are you going to do?” motion that irritates Marjorie. What you're going to do, Marjorie thinks, is watch your children, comb their hair, and stay off the telephone.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “I haven't seen her.”

“If you do,” the woman says, “can you give us a holler?”

“Yes,” Marjorie says. “Of course.” And they live close enough that a holler would do it too. Disgusted, she closes the door.

T
HAT NIGHT, THEY
still haven't found the little girl. While Marjorie and Gary eat their salads on the patio, they can hear the mother give an anguished description and details to the police, whose car sits in the middle of the street sending a blue light across Marjorie's yard.

“The woman can't keep track of those children,” Marjorie tells Gary. “It's no surprise that one has gotten herself lost.”

“They're like little ragamuffins,” Gary says. He has turned the patio light on himself tonight, and the paper is spread around him like a fairy tale princess's hair. “Little sweet girls,” he adds, distracted, turning a page.

Gary is a messy newspaper reader; he turns it all inside
out, pulls the guts of one part away from where it belongs, and leaves the whole thing in disarray. If Marjorie doesn't read it first, she can't piece it back together into a shape that makes sense. She has not read today's yet, and watching Gary tear it apart she knows she won't get a chance now.

Bonnie's news grabs hold of Marjorie. She isn't supposed to tell Gary; Bonnie and Ted want to break the news themselves, in some elaborate manner, at the appropriate time. Bonnie has asked her mother to act surprised when they do. Still, she wants to see Gary's private reaction herself. All day the word
grandmother
has scraped away at Marjorie's insides, eroding pieces of her.

“Gary,” she says, her voice low enough to hold a secret.

From behind them, cutting through the kitchen, comes a man's voice.

“Excuse me?” it calls. “Mrs. Macomber?”

Marjorie jumps to her feet, banging her thighs on the sharp metal table. Gary looks at her.

“Probably the police,” he says, calmly. “Canvassing the neighborhood.”

Marjorie remembers how the garden boy, Justin, stood so long by the fence that morning.

Gary has stood too, to answer the door. But Marjorie grabs him by the arm, hard.

“That boy you hired,” she hisses. “Justin. He was up to something over by their yard.” She indicates with a tilt of her head so there's no confusing what yard she means.

“By the flower bed, you mean?” Gary says.

“No,” she whispers.

The policemen are knocking, banging the M shaped knocker against the door with an urgent desperation.

“I think he was masturbating,” she tells Gary. Is that what she had thought? she wonders.

Gary laughs. “Marjorie,” he says, in that same affectionate way that seems, now, condescending.

Marjorie remembers how long he stood there, his arms jerking about. She remembers the way he shuddered before he moved on.

“I'm telling you,” she says.

But Gary is shaking his head, laughing to himself, heading toward the door.

By the time she joins him, he has already assured the policeman they have not seen the little girl. He is shaking the policeman's hand.

Another policeman comes heavily up the front walk.

“Joe,” he says, “we got her. She's been in the garage all day. Hiding.”

“Jesus,” the first one says. He looks at Gary. “Sorry to bother you.”

“They don't watch that child,” Marjorie blurts.

She is, oddly, relieved that the little girl has been found. Maybe Justin was just weeding over there. Her own imagination seems enormous, out of control.

“She says she was scared to come out,” the second policeman says. “Won't say what she's scared of. Just that she's scared.”

“They probably watch horribly scary things,” Marjorie tells them, even though no one seems to be paying her any attention. “
Jurassic Park
and things of that nature. She's just a little girl.”

“Yes, ma'am,” they both say, as if it's something they learn in the police academy.

Gary and Marjorie stand on the front steps and watch them get back in their police car, its blue light spinning silently.

“Remember that sweet little doll Bonnie had?” Gary says. “It wore a ragged sort of dress made of burlap? And it had a big tear stuck to its cheek?”

“Little Miss No Name,” Marjorie says.

She can't imagine why Gary would remember that doll of Bonnie's, or any doll, for that matter. He hardly seemed to notice Bonnie when she was a little girl. He was too busy then, trying to earn money, to make a name for himself at the insurance company where he now holds the largest office, the corner one with its own cubicle for a secretary, its wide view of things below.

“Yes,” Gary says, closing the door. “Those little girls remind me of that doll. Unkempt but lovable.”