More Than Allies (7 page)

“I can't believe he hasn't told her,” Gretchen said, as if Maggie hadn't spoken at all. “They go ahead as if everything is the same as it ever was. Is that possible? Have I been dreaming? He's put a birdfeeder on the deck. Their furniture arrives from L.A. tomorrow. The house has this thirty-dollar-a-yard carpet they'll have to pay someone to vacuum every other day.” Inevitably, she started to cry.

Maggie whispered, in return. “Polly's new baby is a girl. She heard this morning. They're bringing her Wednesday. A baby with special needs. What can that mean? All babies have special needs. Sometimes they don't go away. What about Jay? I can't believe the way he looks at me. What about Stevie? Does Polly hope we'll disappear? Is all this so I'll have to go to Texas?”

Gretchen sighed noisily. “He tells me, ‘you knew it all along.' I hate him when he says that. We've been lovers for three months. Okay I knew, like I know about the ozone layer. Like I know about taxes. It threatens, but it's abstract. I saw her in
Retribution
. It wasn't great, but she's a movie star. What does she want with Blake? Why does she want a house in Lupine?”

Maggie said, “I didn't really think he'd go without me. Why does he want to live so far away from home? Doesn't he understand that kids need family? They talk funny in Texas. A letter's not enough, not when he's not even sorry about leaving. What does he think marriage is?”

“If anyone said to me the whole thing is just sex, I'd bust them in their loud mouth. Bust
her
, I guess.”

“It's a lot more than sex. It's everything.” Finally, they were talking about the same thing.

“Mo thought you'd go, you know. Right up to the last minute. So did I. It was double-dare. You should go, what's here?”

Maggie switched off the light. Stars twinkled on the ceiling. She and Gretchen had put them there their senior year in high school, using a paper stencil. She could make out Cassiopeia.

Maybe they would talk tomorrow. She moved close to Gretchen. “Blake has a weak chin,” she said.

Gretchen snickered. “He's pathetic. I'm pathetic.”

“Join the club,” Maggie said.

Gretchen moaned and tossed so, Maggie moved out to her own bed in the cottage sometime in the night. Mo woke her at seven.

“I worried about Stevie all night,” he said.

“She's fine.” Maggie was still sleepy, and glad the call wasn't one of the schools. “We're all still in bed,” she said, though she didn't know whether her children were awake or not.

“Sorry.”

“It's okay.”

“I get an early start, while it's cool. The mornings are pretty.”

“I'm keeping Jay home today. We'll do something. He seems so moody, I thought maybe he'd talk to me.”

“I feel torn in half, Maggie. I want to come home, it's crazy being away from you. But the job is great. Austin's great.”

“I don't want to do this now. I'm not all the way awake.”

“Yeah. Well.” Both of them sour again. But Mo said, “I'm going to come up sometime in the summer. If you don't come here, I mean.”

“Jay misses you a lot.”

“And we'll figure it out then.”

“If it can be figured out.” Her same old stubbornness was stiffening her neck. “This is home, Mo. This is where we live.” Why couldn't he understand?

“I'm not going to argue on the phone.”

“What's to argue about?”

“Only our lives. All four of us.”

“I'm going back to sleep.”

“Maggie. Don't hang up mad.”

“What's the use, Mo?”

“The
use
is only everything. The
use
is we have two kids and
I love you
.”

Maggie gulped. “I love you too,” she said, but very quietly. She hung up before he could make too much of it.

Jay stumbled out to eat cereal about nine, then went back to bed. Maggie looked to Polly for a hint of what to do with him, but Polly was writing out bills. Maggie had already had breakfast with her, and fed Stevie, and was finding it difficult to keep from brooding about Mo's phone call. She was relieved when Polly said she had to dig some things out of the garage to get ready for the new baby.

Polly brought in an old crib, and Maggie scrubbed it while Polly went off for a tin of paint. They moved it out onto the patio and painted it white with a turquoise trim. In a burst of creativity, Maggie drew tiny flowers on the headboard. She could feel Polly's pleasure and excitement building. Babies.

“What do you know about the baby?” she asked her.

Polly said she was the child of an addicted mother, and wasn't going to be easy at first. Maggie chewed on her lip. She could see it now: Polly rocking and walking an infant, Gretchen pouting and playing poor-me recluse, Maggie and her kids suddenly odd ones out. Polly was humming to herself. The sunshine gleamed on her short black hair. “Kendra,” she said.

Jay wandered out, still in his pj's, rubbing his eyes. He went straight to Polly for a hug, glowering at his mother. Maggie felt a twinge of envy and hurt. “How about a real breakfast now?” she asked, trying to sound cheerful. She had read somewhere that if you refused to let your child cloud your spirits, he learned—what? She couldn't remember, and she couldn't imagine. She felt what he felt, not the other way around. He clung to Polly, who extricated herself and patted him on the back. “I've got a little more to do here, Jay-Jay, but you could fry some bacon if you like.” Jay looked at his mother, his chin up.

“I'll make some cinnamon toast,” Maggie said. “Stevie loves it.” Stevie, hearing her name, ran across the patio and flung herself at Maggie.

Sometimes children are like great huge sacks of flour to be lugged and handled and lifted and kept. Sometimes Maggie would like to close her eyes and think there was nobody out there who needed her.

“I like it too,” Jay said.

“Then why don't you help me make it?” Surely they could manage that. Making a mess was always therapeutic.

After breakfast they played a board game, Space Agents. It was the simplest of games—roll the dice and move—but he loved it. He thought being an astronaut was a real possibility. They played until Maggie's space ship got ahead of Jay's for the third time and he accused her of cheating.

“Cheating!” She couldn't believe the anger that flashed in his eyes. “I rolled the dice and counted the moves, you watched me all the time.” She didn't know why she was arguing with him. His anger had nothing to do with Space Agents. She felt a nauseating wave of helplessness. She didn't know what she was supposed to do to make him feel better. What was so terrible, anyway? She doubted half the kids in his school lived with both parents. It wasn't like his dad was dead.

They exchanged more words, silly words between a child and his mother, and then Jay stood up abruptly and tipped the board off the ottoman and sent the pieces flying onto the floor. When he saw what he had done, he squeezed his eyes into ugly slits. “I hate Space Agents!” he cried. “It's a boring baby game.”

Stevie was grabbing pieces in her little fists, and Maggie was trying to watch that she didn't eat them or toss them under furniture. She wasn't really looking at Jay.

Jay kicked at the board, and though his kick didn't hurt anything, it scared Stevie and made her howl, and shocked Maggie, who lunged for him and barely caught his sleeve, then lost it as he turned. He ran down the hall and slammed the bedroom door behind him.

Polly was standing in the kitchen doorway. Maggie began crying, which escalated Stevie's distress. Polly came over and sat down on the floor beside the baby. “There, there,” she said. Maggie glared at the both of them. What about me? she wanted to say. Gretchen appeared at the end of the hall and asked what the
hell
was going on, then turned and slammed
her
door.

Maggie threw herself on the couch and sobbed.

The day was beautiful. The sun shone. The temperature was in the mid-seventies. The lightest breeze blew. They couldn't stay unhappy.

“I have an idea,” Polly said a little before three. “Why don't you take Jay for an ice cream? Stevie and I will walk down to the park for a bit. How's that sound?”

Gretchen, glowering and speechless, had already dressed and made it out of the house. She hosted the members' lounge before the matinee. Wouldn't she be the gracious one today?

Jay seemed to perk up at the suggestion, and Maggie, her eyes stinging, agreed that ice cream sounded good. They headed off for the Dairy Queen.

“Tell you what,” she said when they were in the alcove to the store. “You get me a single cone, vanilla. And you can have whatever you want.” She handed him a five dollar bill.

He looked at it as if he didn't know what it was.

“I'll get a seat,” she said. She thought he looked pleased, once he figured out what he was doing. They went inside and he moved into line behind some other kids.

Only he backed away, one step, then another and another, until he had backed against the counter where the newspapers were spread out. Maggie hurried over to him. He looked ready to cry.

“What now!” she said. He pointed, the tiniest gesture.

She saw then that the boys in front of him were Hilario and Gus. Gus gave him a little wave, then said something in Spanish to Hilario, who snickered. They left.

“What?” Maggie asked Jay, exasperated.

Jay thrust the bill into her hand. “I don't want any.”

“What did they say? What did they do?”

“Nothing! They didn't say nothing to me.”

She followed him out to the car. She made herself sit in silence. She would outlast him. She would make him say what was wrong. In a moment he said, “I should have gone to school. I missed practice for Spanish night.”

“You're not in Spanish night, Jay. Jack said. You know he said. Because of the paint can.” God, she hated Jack!

He turned his head and hung his chin on the window. “I hate Jack,” he said quietly.

“Jay.” She touched his arm lightly, but he yanked it away.

“I talked to your dad this morning. He's going to come up.”

He swung around. “He's coming back?”

“He's coming to—to see you.”

When he didn't say anything to that, she started the car. She pulled out into the street in the direction away from home. Maybe if they drove around a bit they would both calm down.

She drove past the high school, a mistake, she soon saw, because buses were loading and students were crossing the street any place they liked. She slowed to a crawl.

“Let's go to Dad's place,” Jay said. He'd pulled himself up in the seat.

“What, honey?” She didn't know where he meant.

He pointed down the street. “You know, down by the freeway.”

“Oh, the Gabrelli property. Okay.” She was relieved to get past the high school throng. In a couple more blocks they had crossed the back artery street and hit a poorly kept road that would deadend along the bank of the freeway.

She parked on the shoulder of the road in front of the Gabrelli place. It didn't look like anyone was there. The Gabrellis were Californians, and didn't spend much of the year here. They had bought an old farm house to renovate, and Mo had worked for a month last summer clearing the property of brush and trash, checking and steadying the old shed they wanted to keep for its blue tin roof and look of groovy old times. He had taken Jay out with him most afternoons. There was an irrigation ditch along the back of the property, fruit trees, berry bushes, several abandoned cars. It was like country, so close in.

They walked up the gravel drive past the house. There wasn't any sign of life. “We're trespassing, you know,” Maggie said. Jay paid no attention. Who would care? Maybe the neighbors, but probably not. The property was three-and-a-half or four acres, the house shaded on both sides with large poplars. And they weren't hurting anything.

Behind the house the property inclined sharply, and then opened onto a rolling meadow. What was left of a shed or small barn lay low to the ground. Someone, at some time, had taken the roof right off the shed and set it on the ground, but because the roof was high-peaked, there was still room to walk beneath it. Jay headed straight there.

He knelt down by a broken concrete slab and poked at the ground. Maggie asked him what he was looking for.

“Chipmunks. Sometimes Dad and me would go to lunch and bring back french fries and they'd eat them, one at a time.” He stood up abruptly. “They're not there,” he said curtly, but as he walked away he looked around and his expression brightened.

Just before the opening to the shed there was a hillock of ferns. He said, “Watch, Mom!” then turned and flung himself backwards onto the mound. Spread-eagled, he lay nested in the soft foliage and smiled at her. “Come on,” he said. “It's soft as pillows.”

She thought about the green stains on his white T-shirt, and she thought about what might be crawling in the grass. She shook her head.

He sat up. “What'd we come for?” he said, but he headed into the ruins of the shed.

Maggie followed him under the roof, climbing over old beams and odd hunks of lumber. Near the middle of the length of it was an open place in the roof, and in the ground where the light hit, grass and a few sprigs of violets had sprung up. Someone had been here fairly recently—there were the sooty remains of a small fire, and an empty pork and beans can.

“Look, Mom!” Jay said, digging at the little mound of ashes with a stick.

“That's not very smart,” Maggie said. “Dry as it is around here.”

“Oh
Mom.
”

She sat on a beam. The sun shone on her face and felt fine. She closed her eyes and didn't pay any attention to her son as he poked around. When she looked up again, she didn't see him. For a moment she was alarmed, then saw through the other end of the shed that he had gone out on the grass. She followed. The sun was bright in her eyes. He darted towards her, holding a long skinny branch. “Halt and surrender!” he cried.