Imperfect Birds (32 page)

A
t bedtime, she set a trap for Rosie. “Sweetheart,” she asked, undercover again, this time as a masseuse, “how was the meeting?”

“We didn’t go. We went last night, but tonight we changed our minds at the last minute, made a fire at Fenn’s and read—I read a book of his while he paid bills. Berryman’s
Dream Songs
—he had it, can you believe it? James has the same book in his study.” She held up a tattered copy as proof. Elizabeth had loved those poems so much. She and Andrew had read them out loud to each other in bed exactly one lifetime ago. He would have adored this daughter of theirs.

The next morning Rosie was so churlish at breakfast that Elizabeth wanted to scream.

“I can’t believe you think it’s okay to eat like that,” Rosie said to James, sneering, as she walked past the table where he sat wolfing down his cereal.

“I always eat this way, Rosie. Way too fast, like a rat, okay?”

“It makes me sick,” she replied, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Elizabeth had wrapped an English muffin with peanut butter and jam in a paper towel for Rosie to eat on the way to school, and she stuffed this into her jacket pocket. “My mother hates it, too,” she sniped at James from the door, as if suddenly possessed. “It reminds her of her mother, eating bacon. She told me that once, when you first started going out.”

“Jesus, Rosie,” said Elizabeth, looking contritely at James. It was true, it used to drive her crazy, and still could, but he waved it away.

“That’s amazing you remember that from ten years ago, missy, since you can’t seem to remember to flush various products out of sight.”

“That’s disgusting, James.”

“It’s true. You’re almost eighteen and you didn’t flush last night.”

“How do you know it wasn’t Mom?”

“Because Mom flushes,” he replied. “Everything that has ever been inside her, except pee.”

“You’re a pig, James.” She turned in fury to the counter, picked up a vegetarian sausage Elizabeth had made for breakfast, and flung it at James. “You hate life.”

In a split second, James, with an oily bullet hole on his T-shirt, leapt up and grabbed her by the wrists, but she was bigger than he was, and just as strong, and she twisted away.

“Eat your animal flesh, James. Go ahead. You’re like the trappers in San Francisco Bay, who picked off all the otters last century.”

“I didn’t kill any otters,” Elizabeth offered weakly.

“Yes you did, darling, remember?” James said. “That one time. Remember?”

“Don’t mock me!” Rosie thundered. “Your whole selfish generation has helped kill off this planet!” She stormed out the door.

“Come home after school, you’re grounded,” James shouted, but the door had already slammed. It was doubtful she’d heard. Then the door opened again, and she shouted, “It was easy to kill otters, because they trusted humans! How does that make you feel?” Then the door slammed again.

He came to sit beside his wife at the table. “God almighty, Bertha,” he said.

“Jesus. She’s gone nuts again. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

“We need help,” he said.

She sat with her chin on her chest, eyes closed. James sighed, shook his head, and lifted her chin with one finger. “It’s good that we’re getting the otter thing out in the open, baby. If you don’t get it out, you can’t let it go.”

They sat holding hands at the table. Rascal came in, yowling for food. James got up to feed him. “Look at poor innocent me,” he told the cat. “I was eating muesli!”

S
everal days later, Elizabeth and Lank drove out to the lagoon. They sat on the bank where she and James had hiked a week before, not far from Lank’s favorite barbecued-oyster joint. James was going to meet them here and treat them to lunch, in exchange for letting him steal their observations. Lank and Rae were on a new diet, mostly seafood, vegetables, and fruit. His face, shaded by a Giants cap, was wider than when she’d last seen him, fat, fair, and open as the man in the moon’s.

“Lank?” Elizabeth said. “Do you believe in evil?”

The tide was high today. A thousand birds flew overhead squalling, gulls and terns tracing the shape of the sky, the dome, the globe, swooping for food, frogs and crustaceans and worms.

“You mean outside of our addictions, puritan guilt, projections, domination, and generally despicable behavior? You mean like a force? The Big Bad? You mean like Henry Kissinger?”

“Yeah. Like a grim force loose in the world.”

Lank thought this over. “You mean besides the depravity of human will?” Elizabeth nodded. “Some sort of dark intelligence that’s pitted against God, and goodness?” She nodded again. Lank handed her the binoculars. “You mean like—” Elizabeth laughed and jabbed him with an elbow. “Nah. Not really. If I say Rae does, will you think she’s a wing-nut, like Oral Roberts, and get a new best friend?” Elizabeth nodded.

“I know she thinks the drug trade is evil,” he said. “But we haven’t lost her entirely. She’s not about sulfur and rats, or Al Pacino as Satan. Yet.”

“But you don’t believe.”

“No. I believe in extremely sick people. I believe in extreme childhood abuse that leads to sociopathic adults. I believe in loose screws.”

“I feel that dark forces are around the kids now, in this town and in their minds, and in the world. Lank, did you know Rosie smokes?”

“God, I hope you haven’t said anything to her about it,” Lank said.

“Why?”

“Look, I’m a high school teacher. And rule one is, Any idea which comes from the parents must be resisted.”

“I keep forgetting that.”

“Oh, sure. My parents used to send me helpful things from
Reader’s Digest
like ‘I Am Joe’s Lung.’ That alone added seven years to my smoking.”

The lagoon smelled so much sweeter at high tide, less gucky and fecund, less like frogs. It smelled of fresh nutrients, a salad bar for crustaceans.

Later James scribbled down everything they said on his paper placemat at the Oyster Corral. Lank said, “The fish travel in clumps, the birds fly overhead in clumps—as above, so below.” Elizabeth gazed at Lank’s peaceful face as James scrawled away. Lank had taken off his cap, and the sun poured through the window above the beach directly onto his head. His thin red hair caught the light, like saffron threads in glass, just as it must have when he was a baby.

They had all been heavy smokers once, and all considered quitting to be the hardest thing they’d ever done. James and Lank agreed that the more parents tried to get their kids to quit, the longer the kids would smoke. Elizabeth thought about all the ways she could try to persuade Rosie to quit, and started to offer her ideas, but James interrupted. “No, darling, Lank is around teenagers all the time. Listen to what he says.”

“I think I’m right about this, Elizabeth. Helpful parents get in the way almost all the time, even when they’re right—especially when they are right.”

“I wonder what Rae would say.” Elizabeth sounded mournful.

“I already know the answer,” Lank said. “I actually asked her once what Jesus would do about my students who smoke, because at one of the reunions at my school, there was a woman who had early-stage emphysema. Rae said he would have held his tongue. That Mary had one very stressful encounter with him when he was an adolescent. It’s when he gets lost one day, for a long time, and she and Joseph finally find him in the temple. They do not beat him senseless. Mary just gives him the stink-eye, and asks, quietly, ‘What the
fuck
?’ ”

“Rae didn’t say that!”

“She did!” Lank replied. “Then Mary gets him back home asap.” James wrote this on his placemat. “Seriously. She doesn’t order him to never return to the temple, or he would have snuck back the first chance he got.”

“Let’s enforce the drug laws at our house, Elizabeth. And release her to her own higher power when it comes to smoking, grades, and so on.”

“But if someone had stopped that high school girl from smoking, she wouldn’t have emphysema now.” Still, she wondered whether the men were right.

Lunch was lovely—calm, fun, delicious, the best she had felt in a while. But half an hour after she got home, she left a message for Robert Tobias on his answering machine.

H
e called back after dinner, and Elizabeth heard Rosie pick up the extension. “Rosie, hang up,” Elizabeth told her. “Hi, Robert.” She heard a click, and then silence. “Thanks for returning my call.” And then Rosie burst in on the phone.

“My mother called
you
?” she shouted. “You traitor, Mom. Mata Hari.”

“Hang up, God damn it.” Rosie hung up loudly. Elizabeth shook her head: he must think they were crazy. “Sorry, Robert.”

“That’s okay,” he said, but he sounded skeptical, as if expecting gunfire to ring out.

“I called because I’m a bit worried about Rosie, and wanted to make sure she’s doing okay in chemistry.”

“To tell you the truth, she isn’t the pistol she was last semester. Her work is definitely off. How much detail do you want? She does fine with the warm-up problems most days, but doesn’t join in the review of the content we’ve been studying in the textbook, or the current event in science we’re discussing. Her lab partner is carrying more than his share of the work. She seems distracted, and vaguely annoyed.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“She’s a brilliant girl, but she’s been late a few times with her homework.”

Elizabeth hesitated before asking, “Can she still get an A, though?”

“She can get a B-plus for the quarter if and only if she aces the big test next week.”

“God. What a difference a summer makes.”

“It’s probably senioritis. Tell her to get her butt in gear. A B-plus shouldn’t hurt her on her college apps.”

“Okay.”

“Is there anything else?”

She
almost
told him about Rosie’s crush, but she had already done enough damage. Rosie would be livid. “No,” Elizabeth said. “That’s all.” After she hung up, she knocked on her own forehead. Then she went down the hall and knocked on Rosie’s door. Silence. Then a long-drawn-out “God,” followed by a sharp “What?” Elizabeth gingerly let herself in.

“Darling, I’m sorry I did that behind your back. I was worried. I’m your mom and I’m paid to be anxious. I was afraid you weren’t even getting an A-minus or B-plus, but he said you will if you do well on next week’s test.”

“I already knew that, Mommy, and it’s humiliating that you called.” Rosie stared at her from bed. “I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I’m doing fine in school. I gave you a clean urine test. I’m going to meetings with Fenn. Will you please be a little happy for me?” Elizabeth picked at her cuticles and nodded. “I’m a good kid, Mom.” Elizabeth so wanted to believe her. Rosie was her outside heart.

Elizabeth followed them to a meeting again two days later, and after they went inside, she raised her fist in victory. But the next afternoon, when she picked up Rosie for a dentist’s appointment, she swore she could smell a hint of marijuana when Rosie slid inside the car. And Rosie went nuts when she mentioned it: “Sniffer dog! Let’s go straight home so you can test me.”