Lacy Eye (24 page)

“What do you mean? Because I like it.”

He shook his head. “No, you don't. You think you should, but you don't. It isn't you. Glitter? I don't think so.” From someone else, the words would have come across as smug or arrogant. But I could tell that this man was neither of those things.

“You're right,” I told him, and the relief I felt in admitting this to him astonished and energized me. I felt the surge of pleasure that comes from being recognized in return, when you are not expecting it.

Around us at the pool, people were jostling one another, throwing Frisbees, reaching into coolers for cans. Somebody had set up a boom box in front of the campus center, amplifying the sounds of The Who and Journey and Queen. “Are you available?” he asked, and I said, “What?” in order to figure out what he really wanted to know. I decided he must be inquiring whether I was seeing anybody, and since I wasn't, I told him, “I guess so.”

“Want to go grab some coffee, then?” I liked this, too—that he suggested coffee instead of a beer at the Rat, which was where (despite the fact that it was only lunchtime) most of our classmates seemed to be headed, now that the show was over.

“I can't. I have Logic in ten minutes.”

“But you just said you were available.”

“Oh. I thought—sorry. Anyway, no. I have class.” I could feel my face flushing.

“Well, what's after Logic?”

“Reason,” I said, without knowing I was going to. My spontaneous answer surprised and delighted me, as it obviously did him.

“I'll be back here at four o'clock, right in this spot,” he told me. “We can find a table somewhere and come up with some conclusions.” It took me a moment to realize that he was following the thread of my joke, but when I got it, I smiled back at him and agreed.

I only half-expected him to be there when I showed up again after my class, and when I didn't see him at first, I was surprised by the plunge of disappointment I felt, as well as angry that I'd let myself become so hopeful. But then there he was, walking out of the student center, and although I wanted to chide myself for allowing the thrill I felt at the sight of him, I couldn't manage it.

“You don't know how completely unlike me it is to ask out someone I don't even know,” he told me.

“And you don't know how completely unlike me it is to accept.” I wasn't even sure this was true, because I hadn't dated very much up to that point, but it felt like the right thing to say.

He had in mind the Daily Grind, across the street, but he understood when I hesitated because I spent four afternoons a week there bussing tables. I lowered my eyes when I said it, feeling embarrassed, but when I raised them again, it seemed that he looked at me with even more respect than I had seen in his eyes before. “A working girl,” he said, making it sound like something a person should aspire to. Then he added, “A girl after my own heart,” and I felt blood rise to my face again.

Instead, we walked five blocks to the newer, fancier coffeehouse I had never been to. Seated across from him, I felt both excited and anxious, not sure how I should act. I knew that people always advised, “Be yourself,” but I wasn't at all sure of what
myself
actually was.

Because of this, it was much easier to ask Joe questions than to answer any. I learned that he was in the university's graduate accounting program, and worked twenty-five hours a week keeping the books for a local car dealership (“So, a working boy,” I said, feeding his own line back to him but stopping short of adding that he was a man after my own heart); that he liked things in his life—from the balance sheets on his desk to the cabinets in his kitchen to the tools in his garage—to be in order, with everything in its place; and that eventually he wanted to become something called a certified fraud examiner.

Then, though I didn't ask, he told me about his family. How his father had been fired from the steel company, when Joe was in junior high, for showing up drunk for his shift one too many times. How his mother tried to support the family by working as a home health aide, but was forced to apply for government assistance because her salary wasn't enough. How his father had always made fun of Joe for being “more serious than a heart attack,” even now, as he accepted the checks Joe sent home and spent them on cases of Genny Cream.

I appreciated his confiding in me. It should have made it easy for me to reciprocate and talk about the things that made me sad, the things I was ashamed of. Yet I held back because that's what we did in my family; it was the Swedish way.

Joe didn't press me. When we'd each drunk two cups of coffee and it was time for dinner, he suggested we walk even farther up the street, to Neillio's, so he could treat me to their veal parm. Though I warned myself against it, I knew I was falling for him.

“Enough about me,” he said when we'd been seated in a cozy corner booth I assumed he'd requested in the murmur he exchanged with the hostess after she greeted us. I knew from TV that some men slip bills into the hands of hosts and hostesses and maître d's, as a way of getting what they want, so the fact that Joe accomplished the same thing with just his manner, his smile, and his words, attracted me to him all the more. “Tell me the Hanna Elkind Story.”

He sat back in the booth and made a beckoning motion with both hands. I loved the sound of my name in his voice, and it seemed he could tell this. It made me unreasonably happy to see he was an ice chewer, like me.

I started to speak and immediately stumbled, realizing I didn't know where to begin. The waiter interrupted to ask if we wanted drinks, and I looked at Joe for his answer, somehow already knowing, because of what he'd told me about his father, that he wouldn't order something for himself. Part of me was tempted to order a glass of wine, but a bigger part knew it would be a mistake. I wanted my head to stay clear, this night. I knew I'd want to remember.

When our iced teas came, I managed to tell him the only things that seemed important: that my mother had died before she could have the garden she'd always dreamed of, and that I wanted to be a nurse.

“Is your father still living?” Joe asked after a moment, but the swift rise of warmth to my skin must have caused him to add, almost immediately, “Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude.”

“It's not rude. I just don't talk about him much.”

“You don't have to talk about him now.”

“But I
want
to.” And I did; suddenly, though I never would have expected it, I found myself eager to tell this man, whom I'd known only a few hours, everything that had happened to my family since that knock at our door on that stormy night. I began with telling him the name of the prison my father had died in a few months earlier, then my memories about the arrest itself. “It's still hard for me to accept that my father was a…” I hesitated over the next word.

“Criminal?” Joe said it calmly, and after a moment I nodded, then took my own sip of iced tea and crunched down on a cube.

“I guess there's no way around it,” I said. “That's what he was. Even though he didn't exactly go around breaking people's legs.” This was something I had always told myself as a way to feel better when I thought of what my father had done.

“What he did was worse than breaking legs, don't you think?” Though his message was blunt, Joe kept his voice gentle. “Or at least as bad. Taking advantage of people who trusted him.”

“I guess.” I coughed a little, nervous because I knew what I wanted to say next but wasn't sure I should. “I think I'm afraid of what that might make you think about me.”

“It doesn't make me think anything.” He shrugged. “Nothing your father did reflects on you.”

“It doesn't?”

“Why should it? It wasn't
you
who stole your friends' money, was it?”

“No.” That didn't seem strong enough, so I added, “I wouldn't do that.”

“Well, then. When
you
start stealing people's money, ask me again.” He held my gaze steady as he reached for the check, and I was the first to look away. On the way out of the restaurant, he said, “It seems we have a lot in common, Hanna Elkind.”

“How do you figure?”

“Weak fathers. Meek mothers.” He seemed to startle himself with the poetry of it, which made us both smile.

“Lethal combo,” I agreed. I said it in a joking tone, but in fact I meant what I said; I believed that my mother's illness and her death had been sped up, if not caused by, the stress of my father's trial.

When we walked out into the warm evening, Joe took my arm. By the time he kissed me at my car an hour or so later, I knew what it felt like to be on that precipice—the one jutting out over love.

Because I was ashamed of it, I'd never told either of my girls the story of Kip Gunther, and how indirectly it had led to my meeting their father. Now I considered mentioning it to Dawn, as a way of starting a discussion about work and where she might look for a job. But something stopped me. Sitting across from her at the kitchen table as I'd done so many nights before, I felt suddenly vulnerable, wanting to protect myself. I'd often felt that way with Iris when she was younger, because I sensed that she and her friends mocked their parents behind their backs, but I'd never experienced the same sensation with Dawn. I tried to set it aside, but it wouldn't let me.

Though it went against my instincts and against what Joe believed about raising self-sufficient children, I thought about how I might help Dawn find something to do. Trying to shut Joe's voice out of my head, I decided to ask Francine if she thought Bob Toussaint would go for the idea of hiring Dawn as a delivery person for our in-home meal service. We'd been down an employee since the end of summer, when one of the college kids who'd been working for us went back to school, and as much as I knew Joe would have hated for me to use an “in” to get one of our kids a job, I thought it might be a good match: the job didn't require a college degree, only a clean driving record and a car.

I made a point of getting to the office early, when Francine usually had the place to herself. When I asked what she thought about the idea of Dawn coming to work for us, I could see that the question startled her. Then I remembered I hadn't mentioned to her yet that Dawn was returning home. I tried not to notice that her enthusiasm, like everyone else's, was tepid at best. Cautiously, she said she didn't see why we couldn't hire Dawn, “as long as you can vouch for her.” She tried to say this in a jokey way, and ostensibly she was only asking me to guarantee that Dawn would be reliable in the job.

But I knew that what she really wanted me to do was assure her that Dawn had had nothing to do with trying to kill me. Of course I couldn't do this, since Francine hadn't actually voiced the question. She said she'd speak to Bob about the possibility of hiring Dawn. Later in the day, I could see her trying to muster some happiness for my sake when she told me that Bob had approved it, and that I should let Dawn know she was hired.

Dawn showed little reaction when I got home and told her she could begin training the next day and delivering meals to our clients the day after that. “I thought you'd be happy about it,” I said. “With your maxed-out credit cards and all.” I didn't mention the money she'd borrowed from me the night we went to Pepito's.

She shrugged. “I guess.” She was focusing on a rerun of
Three's Company
, and had made no effort that I could see to start any kind of dinner. “It's just that it's not very exciting,” she added, following me into the kitchen where I began rummaging in the cupboards. The TV show had just ended. “Delivering food to old poor people. You know?”

I bit my lip, knowing how Joe would have responded:
You're a college dropout. You're lucky to get any job. Your mother and I didn't start out with jobs we liked, either.
Instead I said, “They're not ‘old poor people.' Some of them are old, but some are laid up on crutches or just too busy to shop. And none of them are poor—they all live in Everton, for God's sake. And it's not charity; they pay for this service.”

“Oh.” She seemed to brighten at this information, then thanked me and told me she appreciated my help.

She began delivering meals to a reduced roster of six clients; once she proved she could handle that, Francine would increase it to ten. When I got home after work on her first day, Dawn was like a different person—energetic and cheerful, bustling around the kitchen preparing a meatloaf that ended up not tasting as good as it looked, but I was glad she'd tried.

“I love this job, Mommy,” she said, setting the table. “Everybody's so nice, and one lady even tipped me. Mrs. Wing. Do you know her?”

I did, of course; Dottie Wing had been on my own delivery rounds list from the day we started the service. Since Francine had suggested I compile Dawn's route myself, Dottie was the first person I put on it, because she was friendly without demanding an undue amount of time, as some of the clients (lonely, shut in) did. I'd called her personally, to let her know my daughter was taking over, but that I'd stop in now and then to say hello.

I should have anticipated that she would offer Dawn a tip. And I should have warned Dawn that accepting tips wasn't allowed, but I'd forgotten. I told her she'd have to give it back, and though she balked at first, I convinced her she had to if she wanted to keep the job.

On her third day, I got home early because our last two patients had canceled. I knew Dawn was home because the Corvette was in the driveway. But although the TV was on as usual, she wasn't in the family room. Following Abby, who seemed to want to lead me to another part of the house, I found Dawn in Joe's office, digging through his desk drawer. She was so intent that she didn't hear me approach, and when I said, “What are you doing?” from the doorway, she jumped, a sheaf of papers falling onto the desk.