Precious (21 page)

“I’m not in the mood to fight,” she says, though it’s clear to him she is.

Peter grows silent. He slams the drawer shut and opens another, which causes Sophie to cry more.

“Don’t be bitter,” she says.

But he is suddenly very bitter. He finds his keys tucked in the bread drawer, behind the Stroehmann’s. Under them, there’s a scrap of paper, the handwriting recognizable and thickly looped, but still not matching the name or number. He picks it up, thinking of what to say to recuse himself. He crumples the paper before tossing it into the trash.

“Why do that?” Amy asks. “What’s so upsetting?”

“It’s junk,” he says. “Nothing is upsetting.”

“No,” she says. “That’s not junk, that’s the name of a girl who stopped by the other week. She asked for you, by the way.”

“Did she?” he asks too casually. “And what did she want?”

“She
said
she wanted a job babysitting. But I’m just not sure. I don’t know how we could trust a young girl with our baby, with our house. Just exactly how well do you know her?”

What is he to say? The plain truth and absolute lies are both bad in equal measure, his reasons for lying in the first place mercurial at best. He studies Amy, her thin lips, her questioning expression. “She’s a girl from class,” he says finally.

“That makes sense.”

“It’s not like that,” he tells her. “Look, she’s got a crush. Frankly, she’s got a lot of problems.”

“What kind of problems?” Amy waits.

“I don’t know—domestic things, the usual stuff. She’s looking for someone—for something—to cling to. It’s nothing at all, nothing I’ve done.”

“You blame a girl?”

“I don’t blame anyone,” he says, gripping his keys tighter. “You asked. I’m just saying.”

There is silence, then, between them, too long, too pronounced.

Amy gets up and takes her paintbrush in hand. “Go,” she says finally waving her hand. She smacks the brush against the wall. “I need to think about things. I need to be alone. You can take Sophie with you. You’re not the only one who needs a break.”

Expectant, hopeful, Eva waits in the lot next to an elder-care facility that is situated away from the main roads and nestled behind a pond that geese frequent in the summer months. In the distance she sees a figure in white—a hospital attendant—shoo the honking geese from the road. She watches as the geese flap their wings violently and move into water littered with down and feathers. She plays with the fan vents on her driver’s panel. She unsticks and sticks the masking tape that holds the radio knob in place. When she tires of that, she goes through the junk on the floor—a few fashion magazines, a receipt from the grocery store, a bag of half-eaten potato chips. She wonders if she misheard Peter when he told her the time to meet. She looks at her watch again, realizing it is an awful activity to engage in, the mea suring of time—and only a minute has passed since she last looked, anyway.

If she could convince herself that it didn’t matter, that Peter was just like so many boys she’s known, she might turn the key again and leave him to find an empty lot and no one waiting for him at all. She might go and find Greg instead, whom she was to meet today before the phone sounded and her plans immediately changed. She might, if she didn’t care, leave Peter to his regret, to the knowledge that, by making her wait all the time, he risks losing her.

Within the hour, a few drops of rain spot the macadam, and then a crack of thunder sounds. She tilts her head, taking in the line of trees. The breezes whirl and lift the leaves, whipping them into ner vous motion. Eva cracks the window, grateful for the thunder, surprised by how much she missed its occasional forcefulness and grumble, its seeming accusations. Drops of rain slide down her window in erratic patterns;
she listens to the thudding sound on the hood. There is a sudden damp chill, the smell of earth made moist again, mud and grass.

How she desires Peter now, wants him to be near. How she wishes to slide into his van, gather him in her arms and feel his tongue in her mouth, his hands on her skin. How she wishes to shut everything out but him and the rain. To her growing relief, Peter has not mentioned her visit to his house that day. It is just as well, Eva decides. She herself began to regret the action almost immediately, the possibility of Peter finding out about her ill-planned, impulsive scheme. She cannot even inhabit the memory of that day without wincing at her own actions and behavior. The first time she and Peter were together, after that day he chastised her for calling and they spent considerable time arguing before he told her that if she ever did that again—if she ever called— everything between them would be over. But he said nothing of her visit, nothing at all, and so she assumed Peter’s wife must have discarded the scrap of paper, or perhaps lost it amid the activity of the day.

After the argument Peter was slow to rouse and Eva found she had to coax him, gently, as she might a boy, weaning him from his anger until he relented, towering over her, his legs pressing hers then pushing them apart, all while his teeth pulled at her skin. When sex was over, they lay quietly, the rug scratchy under Eva’s bare back, Peter’s pale arms around her, her hip touching his. She rested her chin on his chest and went on about her mother’s return and he listened, stroking her hair as she recounted everything about that day, up to the point where she left to find him.

“Have you forgiven her?” he asked, his own anger by that point entirely exhausted. He ran his hand down her neck, then along the line of her bare shoulder and breast.

“Not yet,” Eva whispered. Eva moved from him then and concentrated on the worn books Peter didn’t bother to return to the library. She sat up, naked, Indian-style, the smell of them mingling between her legs. She picked up a book and paged through it absently.

“Hey,” Peter said to her. “Come back here.”

“Will you be there when I need you to be?”

He looked up toward the ceiling and waited. “When I can,” he said, finally, but it sounded to Eva like an untruth, and for as much as she didn’t wish to hear hesitation, it seemed to lie under his words.

“Thanks a lot,” she said.

“We’re not married.”

“Well, obviously.” Eva rolled her eyes.

“Come here,” he said again.

She looked at him—naked, his lean legs and stomach, his limp penis curled against thick hair. She would take any moment she could get, she decided. She convinced herself that whatever they had—however fleeting each encounter—she would cherish. And she did come back to Peter then. He touched her forehead, pressing it lightly with his thumb, and she settled down against him again. She closed her eyes.

The attendant is gone. The geese, too, have vanished in the now almost blinding downpour. The cool air teases her skin. Perhaps it is the weather that’s kept him, the fog-ridden windows, the surely congested roads. She will never know about Peter’s day, how he dreaded facing Amy again, how, once in his van, Sophie pitched a tantrum, how her screams reverberated in Peter’s brain. She will never know how, at the SPCA in New Jersey, he described his cat to the attendant. She will never know that as he passed the cages, Sophie writhed and struggled and Peter blamed Eva for everything. She will never know any of this.

Instead, Eva plans what she will say, already coming up with the friendly complaints she will level—the amount of time wasted, her curls that have tightened and frizzed after she spent so much time primping. She’ll tease him, telling him that he only thinks of her as a diversion—a bit of fun—then she’ll wait for him to reassure her that it isn’t like that, that she’s got it all wrong and she knows it. She sits idly for another hour, until the rain turns into a faint drizzle and the last remaining drops of rain slide slowly down her window in drippy waves. She breathes and waits just one more moment—one moment longer, and then a few more—before turning the key and heading back home.

The summer continues unpredictably into mid-August, bleeding out moments. A forgetfulness sets in. The neighborhood meetings gradually diminish; searches at the park lessen, then cease. The police presence once felt dwindles as the officers’ attentions turn toward drug problems on the south side of town: a planned raid, a chase through the city. There is, as is the case of those closest to an incident, the lingering effect of absence, and there is talk now not of the girl who went missing, but of how to best help the girl’s mother. Ginny Anderson is seen out less, once—as reported by Milly Morris—wandering aimlessly down the street at night dressed in a housecoat and sneakers, and once—as reported by Edna Stone, who told a group of women at her card club—down at the park, sitting on a bench, staring out into the woods. The rumors amplify with each retelling, so that soon most people believe Ginny to be a woman made mad by waiting and doubt. The
women in the neighborhood whisper at the mailboxes that something clearly needs to be done.

On Saturday, Natalia steps outside. The breeze blows gently causing the branches outside Sissy’s window to dance. Natalia blinks hard in the morning light, still smelling the lemony wash on her hands and arms, the soapy blend from her morning shower. She collects a copious amount of junk mail from their mailbox. Across the street, Ellie Green and Jenny Schultz sit out on Jenny’s porch, and before Natalia can avert her gaze, Ellie, a small woman with dark short hair and olive skin, sends up a wave, beckoning her. She’s been neighbors with these women for years. She’s sat with them and exchanged pleasantries at those occasional summer picnics. She’s passed them watermelon on a plate and done so with a smile, but she has never really entered into the cliques, never divulged too much of herself for fear of recrimination. Rather, she has kept a courteous distance that she considers necessary, with neighbors especially. She has never talked about anything of importance, nor has she since she’s been home—Frank and the children, her struggle to find a place within the house again. Since she’s been back, she’s avoided most people, managing to slip indoors when she sees someone out, retreating until people have passed by on the sidewalk. She has even of late avoided Ginny—how ashamed of herself Natalia was after the last visit, the things she said about Ginny’s child, the quiet accusations leveled. Still, she felt that same pinched hardness and jealousy return in her stomach when Frank called Ginny last night. Without saying a word to Natalia, he walked over to Ginny’s house and came home an hour later, sullen and quiet.

“Is she okay?” Natalia asked, feeling something raw in her throat.

“She’s what you’d expect.”

“Any news?”

Frank shook his head.

“Are you and Ginny—”

“What?” Frank said, his tone genuinely surprised. He stood waiting.

“Nothing,” Natalia told him. She went into the bedroom alone. “Never mind.”

She didn’t know what the neighbors thought, about her, about Frank or Ginny. She didn’t want to know the gossip.

“Natalia!” Jenny calls.

Natalia sends a reluctant wave back and walks over, slowly, knowing it is impossible to pretend she doesn’t hear or see.

“Glad you’re out,” Jenny says, leaning forward in her lawn chair. As she does, her pearl earrings dangle like small white moons. She smooths her hands against her tanned knees. Natalia thinks how attractive a woman Jenny is, always poised. “We wanted to talk to you.”

Simple enough, and yet Natalia hesitates. Awkwardly, she shuffles through her mail. “Junk,” she says. She’s aware her hair is still wet and, with her free hand, she touches it absentmindedly feeling the cool thickness of it against her neck. “It’s always junk, isn’t it?”

“Oh, I know,” Jenny says. “Catalogs and credit card offers, right? It’s the same over here. We were just talking about mail, actually. Sit. The dog’s inside. I remember you don’t like dogs—that husky loose at the park last year made you scream.”

Natalia stands on the first step, leaning against the railing. “Dogs can be aggressive.” She nods back to the house, trying to think of an acceptable lie. “I have to make breakfast, for Frank, for the girls. My hair, too, has to be dried.”

“Of course,” Ellie says. “Hungry mouths, always. We won’t keep you. We were just saying that the postman stopped me the other day and asked about Ginny. He’s tried her door several times, but she doesn’t answer. When it rained a few nights ago, all the mail in her box got wet. Quite a mess, apparently. You’re friends with her, aren’t you?”

“We’re neighbors,” Natalia begins. She hesitates. “Yes, friends, I suppose.”

“Have you talked to her at all?” Jenny asks.

“I’ve been a bit busy at the house.”

“Of course. You don’t have to explain. We’ve been hoping to see you
out. We’ve been wanting to know if you need anything, if you need someone to talk to—”

Jenny’s voice sounds sincere, but Natalia always has trouble gauging the depth of sincerity in others, particularly when they urge disclosure. These women might be like thieves after she leaves them, leveling assaults at her. She looks blindly down the street. “I mean, I haven’t seen Ginny” She would like to say she’s made a firm resolution to take care of her own house before others’. Each house, she would like to say, has its own problems and its own grief to manage. Ginny’s house isn’t her house. To claim that would be presumptuous, even foolish.