C
am finished with the net, and he put it away in a shed outside the pool’s enclosure. They got back in the car. The road into the old neighborhood was a sun-baked straightaway that ran a mile alongside the B & O railroad and parallel to the old Willie Du Pont estate. At the end of the straightaway the road plunged down a steep hill into the woods. Her stepmother, Elizabeth, had always played a game when driving along this stretch. She put the car in neutral, turned the motor off, and let it coast.
Everything was quiet but for a slight tearing noise of tires over the asphalt. They coasted down the steep hill, their bodies hunched to increase forward propulsion. The little car bolted, sank, reeled around the curve at its greatest velocity. Then, almost immediately, as if at the sight of home, it slowed, dropped out of the race, died. They were left there, thirty feet from the driveway. They had to start the ignition. It was cruel that Elizabeth always put them through this test. Then Margaret saw that Elizabeth, too, was agitated; she had been exercising faith, and it never met the standard.
Cam drove her down that same stretch, past the old estate. Something was different. There was a tangle of yellow construction vehicles moving back and forth, backhoes and other earth-moving equipment. Cam told her, “They’re putting an industrial park here.”
“An industrial park? You’re kidding.”
“Why are you taking it so personally? You said you never want to live here again, anyway.”
She shrugged. The neighborhood still looked good, the trees heavier, the lawns obscured by large blankets of ivy and low juniper. The landscaping had matured, reaching full cycle; some homes showed replanting. They turned into the driveway; the old yucca at the entrance was giant, like a colossal sea urchin, an explosion of sharp tongues. “That’s my favorite,” she told Cam.
“That figures,” he said.
They pulled in behind Elizabeth’s car. Margaret saw the bumper stickers, which always annoyed her. She went into the house first, ahead of Cam, to find Elizabeth.
“I’m here,” she called out as she went through the sun porch; its cork floor gleamed with little blue streaks flickering from the full-length windows. In the dining room she stopped to look at a bowl of fresh flowers, newly arranged at the center of the table.
Elizabeth liked to cut the stems and float the flowers in ice water, letting each rootless bloom drift on the surface of its immediate perfection. The flowers’ colors were enhanced by the shock of decapitation. The effect was thrilling, although the flowers might not last as long this way. Margaret called through the house for her stepmother; then she saw a strange sight. A clipping was clothespinned to the chandelier over the dining table—a glossy photograph from a magazine. It was a familiar image and caption:
BABY
JOE
OR
BABY
DOE
? The photograph showed a twelve-week embryo, eyes hooded and bulging, little hands, its fingers webbed and stiff like rooster combs.
“Jesus Christ,” she said.
Cam came in. “Oh. She’s back on her campaign.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“She’s always raging about this, since Jane’s abortion,” Cam said.
“It’s not Jane, someone must have told her about
me
.” She didn’t look at Cam.
“God, is this something to do with you? I think it’s just Jane. It’s Jane she’s always talking about.”
“Look, Jane must have told her about me,” Margaret said.
“You didn’t say anything about this.”
“Why should I? I don’t even want to think about it.
It was March. I don’t have to tell everyone—” Margaret said.
“You told Jane?”
Margaret didn’t say anything.
Cam said, “This happened last spring? With Tracy?”
“Of course it was Tracy, what do you think? I can’t believe this shit. On the fucking chandelier—”
“Okay, just be calm. You don’t have to put up with this. Don’t give her a reaction.”
Don’t have a reaction? Margaret remembered Newton’s Third Law in Physics: “For every action there’s an equal reaction.” A stationary object is struck and incorporates the offensive motion, even if it results in its own destruction. “The Conservation of Momentum.” In its neutrality, its passivity, it shatters, thus it
moves
. Sometimes, under a barrage of gunfire, a person is lifted off the ground, suspended, flung.
“I was sort of looking forward to seeing Elizabeth, really.” Margaret cleared her throat. She worried she was becoming tearful.
“Come on, it’s okay,” Cam told her. “It’s just the same horseshit. She gets the bumper stickers at the church bazaar.”
“What’s that smell? God, she’s making ratatouille. She knows I love it.” The air was rich with the fragrance of olive oil and eggplant. And rising through that heavy scent, Margaret could detect a familiar breath of Estée Lauder. “She’s making that dish for me,” she told Cam. “Christ. These mixed messages.”
“Just because she’s stewing some eggplant, don’t go soft on her.”
They heard Elizabeth coming down the hall; the light click of her pumps on the terrazzo tiles was unmistakable.
“Have you finally decided to arrive?” Elizabeth called. She appeared in the archway between the living room and the dining room. She stood there, centered, her hair gleaming in great cinnabar waves. “Margaret,” she said. “I was certain you stayed on the train and went to Florida.”
“I’m sorry, we’ve been playing hooky. Cam had to clean the pool at the apartments.”
“Did you see the industrial park?” Elizabeth asked her.
“It’s terrible,” Margaret said.
“I hear the bulldozers all day; they make a constant
beep, beep, beep
when they back up. It’s torture.”
“Those are warnings. Saves lives,” Cam said.
“Oh really? Well, it saves some lives and ruins others,” Elizabeth said.
“Is that ratatouille?” Margaret said.
“Fresh eggplants. You should see them, tiny as thumbs.”
“Thumbs struck by hammers,” Cam said.
Elizabeth said, “He’s in one of his moods.” Margaret nodded.
They stood around the big mahogany table. The magazine scrap twirled slowly in the air, its jellied skull, its rooster-comb hands extended in a frozen greeting.
Cam said he had to be back at the Bringhurst Apartments to show a two-bedroom at four o’clock. He would get Laurence from Darcy and come back for dinner. Margaret walked him to his car.
“Sorry about that embryo,” Cam said.
“I used to hang things from the ceiling for Celeste, rabbits and stars; the stars absorbed the daylight and glowed in the dark.”
“Sure, I know.”
“I took those things down when I read a baby was strangled in his own mobile.”
“How often can that happen?”
“It happens.”
Cam backed his car out of the driveway, and then he was gone behind the hemlocks.
Margaret went back into the house to get freshened up, and she saw that her old bedroom had been claimed by her father. His big desk looked wild; every drawer was fully extended until she believed the whole piece would topple if not for a heavy canister of pennies he kept on a top ledge. On the floor, his ledgers and tomes were stacked in waist-high, tilting towers. She lifted a tall spindle, leafy with receipts, and found an old storybook. Its spine was cracked and the book fell open in the middle. Once, she had tried to read a favorite passage to Cam, but he wasn’t impressed. He was pitching a sock into the air and catching it on his pointer
finger. He was trying to distract her when she was feeling bookish. Then, some hormonal message caused the capillaries in her nostril to rupture. A sudden, red spill forced Cam to look down at the page. He was mesmerized by the frothy circle. “Get me a Kleenex!” she yelled, and she slapped the book shut. When she turned back to that page, there it was, a winged blot.
Margaret went down the hall to find her stepmother. She asked about her father. “I thought he was supposed to be retired?”
“He’s down there straightening out something for the new owners. They have to learn the inventory.”
“That’s not easy, let me see—reversible ratchets, speeder handles, dock bumpers, augers, portable sandblasting kits, grease guns, exit signs.” Margaret enjoyed reciting that litany.
“You can remember all of that?” Elizabeth said.
“Of course I do. I helped with the spot inventories.”
Elizabeth set out the glasses and lifted the heavy double-sized bottle of scotch. Perhaps she found Margaret’s gift of memory intrusive. “What about Celeste?” Elizabeth said.
“Phil is bringing her here on Sunday, and we’ll take the train back.”
“Back to your friend Tracy?”
“Of course,” Margaret said.
“When will I see Celeste?” Elizabeth said.
“Don’t worry, you’ll see her,” Margaret said. “She’s taller. She’s grown since—”
“I’m certain she’s a perfect young lady now,” Elizabeth said.
“She’s just eight, you know, don’t expect miracles,”
Margaret said. “I see a change coming, but it hasn’t happened yet.”
Margaret helped Elizabeth unfold the big padded mats that protected the dining room table. Then she put the linen cloth down and tugged the hem at each end until it was even. Margaret avoided knocking into the glossy magazine scrap as she smoothed the cloth.
At five o’clock Margaret started watching the clock. The clock’s white face was rubbed silver from years of friction. The hands were bent and could never be corrected no matter how often they tried it. Margaret said it wasn’t the hands that were crooked, it was the
face
, the face of the clock was warped.
Cam arrived with Laurence. Cam’s eyes looked different, veiled. He must have had a scene with Darcy. Margaret watched to see if her nephew saw the picture on the chandelier, but he was waist-high and didn’t seem to notice. Laurence had his father’s looks, the chin’s deep shaded hollow. She pushed the palm of her hand over the top of his head, combing his hair through her fingers. The boy liked her attention and kept his fists in his pockets as she tugged his cowlick left and right, trying to get it flat. “It’s hopeless,” she told him.
“No, try it,” he said. “Please try more.”
Margaret curled her index finger and lifted his chin with her knuckle. “That’s it for now,” she told him.
She went over to the sink, and she made Laurence a grenadine and seltzer so he could be part of the group, but he didn’t like the flavor.
“Well, it’s
pretty
, isn’t it?” Elizabeth scolded the little boy.
When her father walked into the room, Margaret embraced him. She never knew what to say except to mention how green the place looked. She praised the shrubs, the ivy, the old Atlas cedar woven through the power lines. “Is that giant yucca still mine?” she asked him. He liked her teasing.
“It’s yours,” Richard told her.
They took their drinks out onto the flagstone terrace, and Margaret slipped out of her shoes to feel the warm, uneven slate. She lifted her glass and toasted Richard. “To your premature golden years.”
“That’s right. I’m through with industrial supply. The End. I would have stayed with U.S. Steel until they forced me out. You know, all the way—until I got rickety. That’s a different story. I used to
make
steel, not
sell
it.”
Richard missed the steel industry, which he had left, unwillingly, in order to move out of town to marry Elizabeth. He never wanted to go into selling. Throughout her childhood, Margaret listened to his complex step-by-step narrations about open-hearths melting practices. She was the only student in her grammar school who knew that steel wasn’t mined. It was man-made. She learned both the matter-of-fact and the gothic thrill of metallurgy. She understood semi-killed steel and dead-killed steel. Richard told her about slag viscosity, about ingot molds and the Theory of Solidification. He used to get her to see the difference between big-end-down versus inverted-hot-top molds. She knew
about the open-hearth furnace, its stacks, flues, and checkers.
“It was dangerous work,” Richard said, “I might not be here today—”
Elizabeth groaned. “Don’t start. Not the one about rescuing Mr. Trojanowski.”
“I like that story,” Margaret said.
“Trojanowski was snagged on a ladder just as a ladle was ready to pour,” Richard said. “Now, I have to figure—I can get to him by going up to the second tier and coming down the other side, but the shortest route to get to Trojanowski is to run beneath the ladle of molten steel. I can run right over there, but the nozzle is ready to tip. There’s Trojanowski. Twenty feet as the crow flies. What am I deciding? In a second it’s going to tip.” Richard was grinning at Margaret.
Margaret knew the story; she liked its drama.
Elizabeth said, “It’s stupid to run beneath molten steel.” Elizabeth fidgeted, scratched her elbows, touched her hair all over. Richard often ruined her cocktail hour in this manner. Cam didn’t like it either.
“So, you saved the Polish guy,” Cam said.
“For the time being,” Richard said. “He had a bad accident the next year.”
“See?” Elizabeth said. “It was pointless to go out of your way.”
“It’s a good story,” Margaret said. She didn’t want Elizabeth to shush him, and she said to her father, “So, tell me again—you can condition an ingot mold with an aluminum wash, or in a tar tank, then there’s graphite—”
“Graphite has a poor splash repulsion,” Richard said.
“Oh, I forgot. Well, there’s molasses, it covers well but you say that creates a lot of burnt carbon. Carbon causes scabs and blisters.”
“That’s correct. And you don’t want to use brine; brine makes fumes; the men can’t stand it and it damages the electric wiring on the cranes—”
Elizabeth said, “Will you both please stop it!”
Richard gave Margaret a much too technical explanation just so she would be inclined to keep asking. He would have gone on as long as she wanted.
Cam said he might go down to Ocean City to see a boat that was for sale. Maybe if Margaret came along they could take the ferry over to Cape May to see Jane.
“Do you really need a new boat, son?” Richard said.