The Train of Small Mercies (13 page)

“Jesus, I wasn't ready for that,” she said.

“I'm sorry, babe,” he said. “I thought you liked that.”

“I don't,” she said. “Just let me get my own smoke.” She coughed again, a deep, ragged screech, and when she swung her head away she saw the Pyle twins next door watching her through the fence. They had Barbie dolls in their hands, a yellow plastic bucket filled with water at their feet. The Barbies were trying out their new pool. The coughing had alarmed the girls, but they didn't look away once Georgia caught sight of them.

“The chlorine smell is kind of strong,” Ted told Edwin. “Are you sure you don't have too much chlorine in there?”

Edwin was picking up the chicken pieces with tongs and placing them onto the grill. “I'm sure,” he said.

“I thought it was kind of strong, too,” Lolly called. “You checked it?”

“Of course,” Edwin said. “And the pH level, and the alkalinity. I checked it all.”

“I don't know. It sure is strong,” Ted said.

“You're already stoned,” Edwin suggested.

“Maybe,” Ted said. He ran a hand across his chest, running a finger through the ringlets of chest hair. “Maybe.” He sat down in one of the patio chairs and went back to his joint.

“I'll bring out the rest of the food,” Lolly said in the voice she reserved to show her annoyance—low and from her gut. Edwin nodded, and when the screen door closed behind her, he discreetly turned the grill so that he didn't have to crane his neck to watch the swimming pool. Georgia had her arms stretched along the rim, her head thrust back and her eyes closed against the sun.

“So you and Georgia are getting pretty serious,” Edwin said softly.

“I guess. It's cool, though. No pressures, nothing too heavy. And she's young, you know.”

“She's a free spirit,” Edwin said. “I like that about her. She's a cool chick.”

Ted released the joint from his lips and turned toward the pool. “Hey, baby, Edwin says you're a cool chick,” he called out.

Georgia opened her eyes and shielded them from the sun. “What'd you say?”

“Shut up,” Edwin told him. “God, be cool, man.”

“What?” Georgia shouted once more.

Ted was laughing. “Nothing.”

Edwin closed the grill and glared at Ted. What was so special about Ted that he could get a girl like Georgia? he wondered. Ted sold stereos for a living and had no particular hobbies, other than listening to music and getting stoned. Edwin thought about how sad Ted had been that first year after Mai took their daughter back to China. After an ordeal like that, Edwin considered, maybe it was only fair that he ended up with a girl as stunning as Georgia. Still, it was hard for Edwin not to resent Ted, or to despise him, even, when he was in the happy couple's presence.

Lolly backed carefully into the screen door, then spun around, her hands full of plates. “I agree with Ted that the chlorine feels too strong,” she said. “It's overpowering.” She was still using her annoyed voice.

“You're just not used to it,” Edwin said as he lifted the grill cover and flipped over the chicken.

Ted stood up and handed the joint over to Edwin. It had shrunk so that Edwin could barely pinch it between his fingers. A month or more had passed since Edwin had smoked, and as he inhaled he could feel Lolly watching him as she spread out the plates. They used to get high regularly. Now she was content to drink wine, but Edwin never developed a taste for wine. He missed the days when he could roll marijuana joints on the kitchen table, when Lolly might sit in his lap and he would reach his hands up the back of her shirt and fiddle with her bra strap until she had to undo it for him. Making love with Lolly on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, both of them stoned, the sunlight pushing through the blinds of their bedroom windows—these were some of the happiest memories Edwin had, and lately he had been thinking about those first two or three years of marriage with increasing frequency. There wasn't any real worry over Lolly not yet being pregnant back then, and there were no other tensions between them. Go to a folk club, maybe drive to an art gallery in Wilmington, get together with friends. Now nothing felt the same. How, Edwin wondered, had their relationship become such a struggle?

But at least he had the pool. And maybe Ted and Georgia would come over like this all summer long. He didn't want to be jealous of his friend, but even so, if Ted and Georgia hung out here on weekends, with Georgia in her remarkable bikini, didn't that already have the makings of a good summer? At least better than the last few?

Georgia climbed slowly out of the pool, and as Lolly spread out the plates on the small patio table, Edwin watched Georgia dry off. Then, behind her, he saw the twins again. They had their faces against the chain-link fence, their Barbie dolls in little scarlet skirts, their Barbies' hair wet and combed back. Couldn't their parents come up with something for them to do besides spy on Edwin's first pool party? Edwin waved the tongs toward them in stiff recognition, his mouth set in a pouty sneer, and they removed themselves from the fence.

“Looks good,” Georgia called out. As she got closer, Edwin could see that the skin around her eyes and nose was bright red and flecked with tiny bumps. When she came closer for a peek at the chicken pieces, Edwin saw that the whites of her eyes were also inflamed.

“Go ahead and help yourselves,” Lolly said after laying out the cut vegetables. When she saw Georgia's face she put her hand to her mouth. “Honey, your face is breaking out! You're red all over.”

Georgia traced her fingers all around her eyes. “Oh my God! It does kind of itch,” she said. “It's really red?”

“Edwin, there's too much chlorine,” Lolly said. “Look at her—she's having some kind of reaction.” Edwin came over, and Georgia tilted her head back so that he could see for himself. Edwin could make out even more tiny bumps in the sunlight. Georgia kept her eyes closed as he listened to her nervous, shallow breathing.

“Oh, man. Maybe I have too little pH,” he muttered. “But I don't see how. Are you sure it's not sun poisoning?”

Lolly turned Georgia's chin gently so that she could look again. “That's not sun,” she said. “You've got to fix the water before anyone goes back in.”

A charred smell exuded from the grill. Edwin flung the cover open and was besieged by a dark mass of smoke, which he tried to fan away while flipping the burning pieces over. He let out a small moan and tried to think what he could do.

“This has never happened to me before,” Georgia said.

“Hang on, Georgia,” Edwin said. “We'll take care of you. I just want to get this chicken before—” He reached for a knife and began slicing off the blackened skins. Ted put his hands on Georgia's shoulders from behind and turned her around.

“Wow,” he said. “My baby is all blotchy.” Georgia made a pitiful face, which caused Ted to pull her close. “Oh, my sad little bunny. Come here.”

Edwin turned to watch Georgia press against Ted's hairy chest, and when he saw Lolly looking at him, he turned back to the chicken. “Okay, we're recovering over here. I'm just going to do a little artful surgery. Who needs the skin, anyway, right?”

He flipped the pieces over once and said to Ted, “Here, turn these over again in one minute. I'll take Georgia in and see what I can find for her face.”

“I'll do it,” Lolly said, which was what Edwin was afraid she would say.

“No, I'll handle it. My pool, my problem.” Edwin held the screen door for Georgia and led her to the bathroom, where he opened the medicine cabinet, though he had no idea if there would be anything there he could use. “Are you in any pain? I tried to be so careful with all the chemicals. I studied and studied the manual. I don't get it.”

Georgia reached for the cabinet mirror, putting her face an inch away from her reflection. “It mostly just itches, but I look so terrible.”

“It would take more than a little reaction to make you look terrible. That's for sure.”

“Poor me,” Georgia said.

“I mean it, though,” Edwin said, and picked up a tube of something he didn't recognize. He scanned the small print and put it back. “Ted is one lucky guy. I don't know if he knows how lucky.”

“You're sweet,” she said. The cabinet mirror was still between them, and it gave Edwin an ideal opportunity to stare at her cleavage. When he glanced back into the cabinet, he saw a tube of A+D ointment.

“ ‘For minor skin irritation,' ” he read. “Here, this should work.” He closed the cabinet and leaned into her. “Now close your eyes, and I'm going to rub this in. Then we wait for sweet relief.”

The smell of chlorine had even permeated the small bathroom, but Edwin could still breathe in the scent of Georgia's skin, which smelled faintly like peaches. He put a generous dab on the tip of his finger and rubbed it across her nose and under her eyes. She showed a little smile as he traced his finger.

“Does that tickle?” he asked.

Georgia nodded.

“Yeah, tickling is a good thing.” He kept rubbing and reapplying, and finally Georgia opened her eyes.

“All done?” she asked.

“Well, that depends,” Edwin said in a new, childlike voice. “Do you
want
me to stop?” He surprised himself with that, though he had imagined himself saying some variation of that line almost as soon as they had met. He had generally conjured up rubbing suntan lotion into her shoulders, not rubbing ointment on her broken-out face, but he had seen his opportunity and taken it. Georgia took a step back, her wide eyes narrowing and her beatific smile crumpling into a face he hadn't thought possible.

“That should do it, I think,” she said.

Edwin's heart quickened immediately, and he was aware of a sound like the muted thud of boxing gloves against a punching bag. Could she hear it, too? He could feel the first beads of perspiration forming on his forehead. “I just meant, do you think I have it covered enough?” he said. “I just wanted to be thorough. Since I feel so bad that this happened.” He looked down at the tile floor, not wanting to swipe at his moist skin, but equally concerned that drops would start running down his face.

“Well,” Georgia said, “maybe the chicken is ready.”

“Right, I'll bet it is,” Edwin said, but he couldn't look at her again. Only when Georgia turned to walk back through the house could he look up, but this time he kept his eyes trained on the walls.

F
rom the kitchen window Ellie watched Jamie and Roy talk. Joe came up behind her and took a look for himself. They could hear Miriam's radio.

Roy was writing something in his notebook, his head bent down but nodding to show Jamie he was still listening. Jamie held one of the crutches out, the foam cushion tucked under his arm, his other hand fastened to the grip so that it felt like a machine gun.

“Did he say he wanted to talk to us, too?” Joe asked.

“I wonder what they're talking about. I hope Jamie's okay.”

“He's faced a lot worse than a reporter's questions. I think he can handle himself.”

“Well, it's different,” she said. She watched Joe tie his shoes, wondering if he was going somewhere. She decided then that she didn't want him to be interviewed.

“He went to school with Jamie,” she said. “We didn't really know him, though. He wasn't a friend of Jamie's. The Murphys. Do you know any Murphys?”

“Not that I can think of,” he said. “Irish. Sad day for the Irish. Kennedy. Murphy.”

“It's a sad day for everyone.”

“Well, not everyone wanted him to be president,” said Joe. “But he didn't have to die trying, that's for sure.”

Outside, Roy was switching the tape over. “Sutton is supposed to come over in a while,” Jamie said. “You remember Bill Sutton?”

“Sure, I remember Sutton,” Roy said. “What's he up to these days?”

“Not a lot,” Jamie said. “That knucklehead wishes he could go to'Nam. He and I are a hell of a pair now. Gimp and Limp. He even went over to the draft board and wanted to take the physical, show them what he could do. That was before I came back. When he saw my little souvenir, suddenly he piped down about that.”

“Well, let me ask you, if I can: You went and fought for your country in Vietnam, and there are a lot of people who say we have no business over there, that it's not our war. And don't think we should be there. Do the politics of this war enter into it for you at all? I guess what I'm trying to ask is, do you see your being over there in any different light than when you first got there?”

Jamie watched two squirrels chase each other across the trunk of a tree. “You a war protester, Murphy?”

“No,” Roy said, and it was the truth. Increasingly, the journalism majors were becoming some of the most vocal student leaders in protesting the war on campus, and their familiar, image-laden editorials and grotesque cartoons of Lyndon Johnson in the weekly student newspaper had become as ubiquitous as the ads for Coppertone or Planters peanuts. But Roy had mostly stuck to his beat: covering the latest announcements from the school's president and developments between faculty and the administration. He wrote a little-read regular column called “The Blackboard Report.”

Jamie stared at Roy, wondering whether he believed him. “To that question, I think I'm going to say—what do I say, no comment? Off the record?”

“Either. Off the record means you'll answer it, but I can't use it. It's up to you. Whatever you feel like.”