Part 16 (1/2)

”You going for pizza? Burgers? What?” He glances across the street at a Mexican restaurant; his pupils are the dark bright of sungla.s.ses. ”I'll pa.s.s on the tacos. No burritos today, nope. Gracias.”

”Don't be actin', Bong!” Now it's Sophy who looks away.

Mum says something in Khmer from behind her seat belt. Her tone is mild, her manner is mild; she does not say more than ten words in all. Though her window's half up, she doesn't roll it down; neither does she turn her head. Still, Sarun heeds her in a way that he didn't his sister. Not answering, exactly-he doesn't answer. But he does straighten up, stretching. He looks off at the bus station. Then finally, hunched over, elbows on the car door, he thrusts his face in the half-open window and talks, looks off, talks some more, looks off. Riding a donkey, looking for a horse, Hattie's father would say, but if you saw him from a distance you might almost think him flirting.

Mum blinks, her handkerchief in her lap.

”All right,” he says. ”I hear you.”

And with that he climbs into the backseat of the car, next to Gift, asking would Hattie shut that noise. ”That Goya s.h.i.+t,” he calls it.

A kind of talk Hattie doesn't like, but all right. For today, a house special: no lecture, she just turns off the music. Gift, happily, doesn't seem to mind. Sarun's doing gymnastics with him-launching him from his knees to the ceiling, flying him around like an airplane. Gift squeals and squeals. It's the kind of overexcited vocalizing that used to end, with Josh, in a tantrum. But Gift doesn't go over the edge. It's Sarun who tuckers out-still playing, but more and more mechanically, until finally, when they stop for pizza, Sophy takes over. She touches Gift's nose, blows on his face, lets him play with her s.h.i.+rt strap. He climbs in under her s.h.i.+rt, making noises. Everyone else is silent, though the atmosphere once they're back in the car is growing lighter; maybe it's just that as Hattie drives faster, everyone's hair is whipping and blowing. In any case, something feels to be streaming away. Mum puts her hand up, keeping her hair from her face, and yet no one moves to close a window. Y xn y y, Hattie's father would have said-one heart, one will.

A moment of grace, Hattie's mother would have said.

Sophy brings a plateful of food over to Hattie the next day, to say thanks. Everyone, she reports, is fine. Her mother in particular is happy.

”Sarun knows her heart,” Sophy says. ”She doesn't have to say anything. He knows her heart.”

Then she nods to herself and smiles a private smile-her own gaze inward, as if on her own known heart.

Hattie hums and goes looking for her wetsuit. Time to see if the lake's warm enough for a swim.

No need to go looking for Everett; this problem male hulks at the corner like a trading-post bear. He's wearing an unfrayed sweats.h.i.+rt and a buoyant blue feed hat but his jeans are all grease and wrinkles, his bootlaces all knots and creativity; and there's something unsettled and unsettling in his normally mild glance.

”Mind if I walk, too,” he says.

To which the walking group replies, No, no, of course, though-a man in their midst! And a man who wants something. They maintain an unaccustomed silence as they head down the main road and over the culvert. They pa.s.s the big field. They pa.s.s the four corners. They pa.s.s the new speed-limit sign that had to be put up after the other one got run over. They wave hi to Judy Tell-All driving by in her exhaust-spewing pickup; and is that Jill Jenkins out in a car with Neddy Needham? Who's a lot less of a puffball since he started his crash fitness course; and what a nice sport wagon he drives, with a bike rack and a sunroof. And now look.

”Two-timing Carter?” asks Beth, quietly. ”Having a side dish?”

Hattie shrugs.

”Because isn't Carter seeing Jill? That's what I heard.”

Da gun-detachment. ”I'm trying not to know,” says Hattie.

”You're what?” says Beth.

Above them, the clouds darken, then lighten, then darken, then lighten. There's no one more bipolar than Mother Nature, Lee would say. But never mind-Everett is still keeping pace with them. Not hurrying them. Just kind of keeping them company, though their pace can't be his pace. There's a grace to the man, thinks Hattie. If only all men knew what he knows. Though maybe that's his trouble, or related to it-his obligingness. A willingness that can turn mulish. Hattie minds him less with every step, in any case, and can almost believe the group could walk the rest of the walk the way they're walking now, preoccupied.

But finally Greta asks, ”Is there something on your mind?”-tilting her head in her Greta-like way. Lee's first lines showed up around her mouth-all those faces she made. Greta's, in contrast, are forming zip across her forehead, and what surprise is that? When she spends every day lifting her eyebrows, as now, with interest.

Everett straightens his hat. ”Ginny kicked me out.”

”No kidding.” Beth slows up. ”Did she really?”

”I am so sorry to hear that,” says Hattie.

Greta throws her braid behind her back, a sign of concern. ”So where are you living now?”

”In a tent. Here I built that house with my own two hands, with my own two hands.” Everett holds them up. ”And what did it get me?” His normally shaven face is unshaven. ”A tent,” he says. ”I'm neighbors with a rosebush.”

Beth stops dead. ”A rosebus.h.!.+” she exclaims. ”We're going to have to do something about that!”

”A hydrangea'd be great,” Everett says drily.

”She means about the tent,” says Greta. ”Is there something we can do about the tent?”

”Nothing wrong with a tent,” he says.

They walk a bit more, their eight arms swinging. The mist s.h.i.+nes brilliant; the sky is like a light box. Then it blinks off.

”You're upset,” says Hattie, finally.

”She changed the locks on me, Hattie,” says Everett. ”She changed the locks.”

”That's outrageous!” says Beth. ”What gives her the right?”

”She says the house is hers. Says the money came from her farm so it's hers.”

”When you've been married for thirty-seven years?” says Hattie.

”You remembered.”

”That is not right,” says Greta.

” 'Course, she's said stuff like that before,” says Everett. ”It didn't just start. But the locks, now.” He shakes his head. ”The locks're a development, see. They're a development.”

”You're going to have to fight that,” says Greta, firmly.

”Am I,” he says. ”Take her to court, right?”

”Exactly.”

”Well, guess I'm going to need a phone line, then-what do you think? And maybe a lawyer. Think I'll need a lawyer?” He winks.

”You will,” says Greta.

”A lawyer need payment?” he says-his mock earnestness a little like Sarun's, thinks Hattie, only with a different laugh. ”We can help you with the fees,” says Greta. ”You can use my phone,” says Hattie.

But Everett gives a sideways jerk of his head, as if trying to get a fly off his neck. ”Guess what I'm going to do to thank her,” he goes on.

Hattie pictures his clothes hung up all over, like last time.

”Kill myself,” he says instead. Calmly-with an air of satisfaction, even. A kind of grin cuts across his face.

Still, Beth looks him in the eye. Long way up as it is, she telescopes herself skyward, like a mother talking to a grown son, and says, ”You are not.”

And Everett, sure enough, takes a more or less immediate interest in his shoelace knots. ”Might as well, now,” he says and starts walking on. ”Wouldn't you say? Might as well. I gave her my life. Gave her everything I had. Don't you think if she was going to dump me at the end she should've warned me?”