“Mom didn’t play much either. Mom was just sick.” The way Gemma-Kate said the word sounded resentful.
“That wasn’t her fault. Sick or well, you couldn’t have had better.”
It was dark, but I knew Gemma-Kate turned her head toward me because the light on her forehead flashed in my face. The flash of light hid her eyes. She said, “My dog is pooping. Do I have to pick it up?”
“No. Let me.” I took out another bag, drew it over my hand, and picked up the poop.
When I had stood up again and knotted the plastic bag, Gemma-Kate said, gesturing with the handle of the leash in her hand, “Look at that one. Is that a tarantula?”
I saw what she was pointing at, a whole round clump of sparkles about as big as a quarter moving slowly across the fine gravel a little ahead of us.
“No, I’ve seen that kind before. It’s a wolf spider. It carries its babies on its back.”
“I thought spiders laid eggs.”
“Not this one. Or maybe it does, but when they hatch they climb on the mother. What you’re seeing is all the eyes of the babies.”
“Why does it carry them?”
“Instinct, I guess, continuation of the species, something.” Now, I had become accustomed to seeing the sparkles of spiders at night, and kind of liked the warning they sent out even if I hated spiders. But when Gemma-Kate handed me her Pug’s leash, bent down, and let the spider crawl onto her hand, my stomach cinched up. She examined it under the light from her head lamp, let it crawl from hand to hand, the mother lumbering under the weight of dozens of perfectly formed babies. I watched Gemma-Kate’s face as she did this, her focused stillness broken only by the throb of a rapid pulse under her jaw, and I thought she liked that I was watching her. Here is Gemma-Kate doing something that fascinates and perhaps even appalls tough Aunt Brigid.
Then Gemma-Kate set the spider down.
I thought about Marylin again and, as happens with someone who has seen too much dying, something bloomed inside me that wanted that grotesque spider mom to live. Gemma-Kate and I both watched the spider some more. Then she lifted her foot. Did she lift her foot or am I not remembering well, after all that happened? Did she pause, and glance in my direction to see me watching her, and only then put her foot down again, well away from the spider? Did she wonder what it would look like if all those sparkles burst over the sidewalk like tiny fireworks?
No. I was the one thinking that.
Someone has said that we don’t remember events; rather, our memory creates them. Sometimes you don’t know whether you’re remembering a truth or a lie.
The next night, Mallory dropped Gemma-Kate off at the church and brought her home as promised, pulling out of the driveway with a wave. I asked Gemma-Kate how she had enjoyed it.
“It was a church group, and there were only five of us,” she said, while fixing a cup of tea in the microwave. “We played Ping-Pong because it was too cloudy for telescopes. I thought I might die.” But then she admitted with a trace of reluctance, “There was one kid there who was my age. It was pretty cool because his dad is a cop, too.”
“What’s his name?”
“Peter something. Do you know him?”
“I don’t know a lot of people at the church.”
“We might hang out.”
“Is that anything like hooking up? I get confused by the lingo.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Yeah, I’m kidding.”
Sure enough, a couple evenings after that, the doorbell rang about six. When I opened it I saw a boy standing on the other side of the screen door. He scratched his side without speaking, and I prepared to hear how he was selling candles for the sake of a teenage group home. I glanced down to make sure the screen door was locked.
“May I help you?” I said.
Gemma-Kate came up behind me. “Do I need a flashlight?” she asked.
“I’ve got two,” he said.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Brigid. This is Peter.”
“Hey,” said Peter, lifting two fingers but not his eyes from where they were fixed somewhere around my right shoulder. He was one of those people I think of as a Neither. That is to say, neither tall nor short, neither light nor dark. Neither smiling nor scowling. I imagined if I spoke to him I’d find him neither sociable nor un. Totally unnoticeable until the moment you see his mug shot. No, now I’m being cynical.
“Peter. From church?” I asked with exaggerated ignorance.
With Peter left standing on the other side of the door, Gemma-Kate said, “I should have said something. I’m sorry, Aunt Brigid, I got so used to being independent at home I didn’t think to tell you in advance.”
How polite she was. I unlocked the screen door and opened it, and said with what I hoped was a tone of mild curiosity, “Where you guys going?”
Peter finally spoke, more courteous and articulate than my first impression of him had allowed. “There’s an evening hike in Sabino Canyon to see the night-blooming cactus and the wildlife. A park guide goes along. I told Gemma-Kate it’s a good way to get to know the area. With the drive over and back we should be gone just a few hours. We’ll stop at Eegee’s for sandwiches.”
“Sounds like fun. Can I see your license?”
Gemma-Kate squirmed, but Peter took it in stride, pulling a crummy wallet out of his back pocket, opening it, and showing me his card. That’s how I could tell he really was a cop’s son.
While I glanced to see he was who he said he was and his license was up to date, Carlo came up and slipped Gemma-Kate a twenty. For my part, caught by surprise, and never having had the experience of dealing with a teenager before, let alone playing something that resembled the role of a mother, I let them go, only thinking to call Mallory immediately once the door was shut.
“Gemma-Kate works fast,” Mallory said.
“The kid’s name is Peter. He looks like a punk, but he talks nice.”
“Peter Salazar. Don’t worry,” she said. “I don’t know much about him other than he slinks about like boys his age. But he comes from a very strict family. His father is in law enforcement.”
“I know. What’s this about a night hike in Sabino Canyon? I hope it’s not like submarine races.”
“It’s legitimate. Don’t hover, Brigid. They’re nearly old enough for college, and you’re sounding like a helicopter mom.”
I hung up, somewhat reassured but still wondering if I should have been doing more. Carlo, having been celibate during his child-rearing years, was nonplussed as well.
“Do you think you should have talked to the boy?” I asked.
“I don’t know what I’d say.”
It occurred to me I hadn’t heard Carlo use that phrase much. “Am I supposed to have the safe-sex talk with her?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said again. “She seems old enough that someone would have done that already.”
While we waited up just like parents, I did a quick background check. Peter Salazar didn’t have a record yet.
Gemma-Kate came home by ten. Communication about the evening was limited to the relief she felt talking not only to someone under twenty, but someone who shared the fascinating and ugly life of law enforcement offspring. The life that was spent inexplicably scared of your own father for the power he exuded, yet worried daily that he wouldn’t come home. While she didn’t say it quite this way, I knew it for myself. Actually, she looked as if the exercise, night air, and companionship of someone her own age had done her good.
The least Marylin could have done was provide a manual with her daughter.
I nearly forgot to explain the cooking. The best thing, the most unexpected benefit of having Gemma-Kate visit, was that she knew how to cook and enjoyed it. I mean, really cook and really enjoy it. For the first couple of days she suffered in silence my Shake ’n Bake pork chops and microwaved frozen green beans. Then one day, shortly before the night hike, I woke up, put on my warm robe without resenting having to cover up because the morning temperatures were still in the low forties, and padded into the kitchen in my cheetah print slippers to find that the coffee was made.
Gemma-Kate was sitting in my recliner, reading a Southwestern cookbook I had bought and intended to use one day once I learned how to pronounce “quinoa” right without feeling affected.
“What’s that smell?” I asked of an aroma that had overpowered the coffee.
“Scones,” she said, with more caution than enthusiasm. “Is that okay? You didn’t have any Devonshire cream to go with them, but there’s something called prickly pear jelly in the refrigerator. That seems to work.”
I turned my attention to a baking sheet next to the stove on which a half-dozen triangles of heaven rested. I nibbled one. It didn’t need jelly. “Where did you learn this?”
“Mom started to teach me. When she got really sick, if I wanted to eat I had to cook it myself. I found out I was good at it.”
I asked her what else she could cook. She was two steps ahead of me. Privately she had already gone through my kitchen and handed me a list of things to get at the grocery store the next time I went shopping.
“What’s fish sauce?” I asked, scanning the list.
“It’s near the soy sauce in Whole Foods. Do you have those here?”
“I’ve never been inside one. How about if I give you my car keys and credit card instead?”
An almost smile formed at the corners of her lips. “If you do the cooking I’ll do the cleanup,” I added. Then, not wanting her to feel like Cinderella, I added, “Just dinner, I mean. And maybe I can help and learn something.”
Never look a gift horse in the mouth, Mom used to say.
Carlo and I were always on the go, me working private investigation cases I found interesting, him with his own passions du jour, like building an observatory so he could more easily use the eleven-inch telescope I bought him last Christmas. But Gemma-Kate kicked us up a notch with her youth and excitement about her new surroundings, coupled with anticipation of starting at the university and moving into a dormitory in the fall.
On the plane ride back from Florida before she got sick, Gemma-Kate and Carlo had made a list of all the things she needed to explore. Sedona. Mount Lemmon. Tombstone. The Grand Canyon! They talked about some places I hadn’t even seen yet.
That day I was coming out of my office after reporting to a client that the woman she had seen in her husband’s car was a silicone sex doll. That actually wasn’t as bizarre as finding out he had had it designed to look like his wife. I couldn’t advise her whether she should divorce him for infidelity with herself. It wasn’t my job.
Carlo was sitting at his desk in the swivel chair facing Gemma-Kate where she sat at the end of the couch, her arms resting on a cushion. When she turned her head to say good-bye she looked like an old painting, that pose of serenity. They were going over to the Desert Museum to learn about Arizona flora and fauna while I went shopping.
Mallory was the one who preferred shopping, while I preferred hiking. But I had discovered from being married to Carlo that sometimes the most friendly things happen when you compromise. It turned out shopping was a great way to talk without the pressure of being eye to eye, something that always made me think of having to convince someone I wasn’t lying. Plus I discovered that shopping and drinking often went together, especially when the item you were looking for was a bathing suit.
We met at La Encantada, a split-level upscale plaza with Coldwater Creek on the bottom but St. John’s and a Tiffany’s on the top. After a couple of glasses of Chardonnay at North restaurant, Mallory was prepared to enter a small boutique called Everything But Water. We both faced the racks against the wall of the shop, pushing the suits back and forth, back and forth, talking. It was this motion that I found most therapeutic, with or without the wine.
I had also found that women are fond of talking about two things: their children and their own hideous defects. Because neither Mallory nor I had had children, and were in agreement that we couldn’t see the use of them, the bathing suits made us default to our bodies.
She said, “I look at these things and keep hearing a little voice in my brain saying, ‘You have no waist.’ You don’t have that problem. You’ve got no belly fat at all.”
While gone are the days of pert thighs and rock-hard breasts, I have to admit I’m still pretty trim. But wanting to show solidarity, I said, “I have monkey-face knees.”
Mallory snarfed as if I was bringing a knife to a gunfight. She took a black one-piece with a peplum off the rack and held it up. I shook my head. “Get one with the legs cut out more.”
“Are you still sure you want to go to that fund-raiser?” Mallory asked, jumping to an entirely different topic, knowing I’d keep up with the mental mountain-goating that friends do.
“Sure, why not?”
“I’m not sure it will be fun. One of the couples I invited, their son drowned just before I met you.”
I held up two fingers. This was the gentle sign that we were repeating ourselves.
Mallory said, “Did I tell you it’s kind of self-serving, my inviting them, that the father is Owen’s doctor?”
“Yes, you did. I don’t care. I’ve been working really hard on the aunt thing and could use a night off.”
“How did the date go?”
“Okay, I guess. She seems to like Peter, but she doesn’t talk a lot. When she does talk it’s like she’s considered every word before speaking it. She’s quiet. Really polite but quiet. And then I’m really polite back. It gets to me a little.”
“She’s probably just trying to be what she thinks you expect.” Mallory threw the suit back on the rack with ill-hidden disgust. “I should have had more wine.”
“You’re only going to wear it in your own pool. What do you even need a suit for?”
“Don’t be gross, darling.” She looked at me appraisingly.
“Well, it’s not like I parade around flaunting it,” I said, thinking of the time I was undercover as a stripper, flaunting it very nicely, thank you. It’s hard to not grow comfortable with your own skin once you’ve pole-danced in public. That Mafia hit man never dreamed a Fed could writhe that way. “I’m just saying if I come out of the shower and I want something from the kitchen I don’t put a robe on to go get it. Does anyone?”