Part 8 (1/2)
Still, after finis.h.i.+ng her hair, she slid open the jewelry drawer and looked at the tray of velvet cups, Charlotte lurking nearby while she checked her favorites: the Elsa Peretti bracelet, the jade lozenge Harris had brought from Singapore, the tiny yellow diamond cuffs. The amethyst pin, a gift from Moose years ago. She wore it for luck when Ricky was tested each month. ”The important stuff is all there,” she said. ”Why?”
Charlotte gave a disinterested shrug and left the room, as if Ellen were the one dwelling on the topic.
Harris stood at his dresser, a.s.sembling the oblong gold studs and cufflinks engraved with his initials that he wore to dressy events. Charlotte watched his meticulous toilette from her parents' bed, thrilling at each gust of irritation her father provoked in her. His s.h.i.+rt was flawlessly pressed, sections of fine, translucent netting in the arms. Had he ever worn a soft flannel s.h.i.+rt, even once? Did he even eat banana bread?
”No plans!” Harris exclaimed, as if this were out of the ordinary. ”No friends coming over, nothing?”
”I have plans with Ricky. When he's done skateboarding.”
Her father looked disappointed, as if this were a feeble excuse for nothing.
”Plus I've got tons of reading for Uncle Moose,” Charlotte threw in, purely to annoy him.
Her father frowned, and installed his cufflinks in silence.
Driving to the club through the azure dusk, Harris thought of his daughter alone before the TV set and felt a twist of anxiety. ”She doesn't seem to be making many friends at East,” he said.
”No,” Ellen said. ”She doesn't.”
”I worry she's gotten lost in the shuffle,” he said, turning to his wife. ”This whole Ricky saga.”
Ellen sighed. ”I can only worry about one kid at a time.”
”How was today?”
”Fine,” she said. ”Afterwards he ran out the door with that skateboard.”
Harris whistled. ”Busy life.”
Since the beginning of school, Ricky had a.s.sumed a new ident.i.ty as a skateboarder, an ident.i.ty whose component parts were baggy pants worn so low that Harris expected to see his son's bare a.s.s any minute, and a partially shaved head, a thin sheet of hair dangling over baldness. ”Kid's hair finally grows back,” he said, ”and he shaves it.”
Ellen shook her head. She hated the hospital; even now the smell of illness, of hospital food, made her almost gag. From the moment she and Ricky walked through those gla.s.s doors, her brain objected to every sight they pa.s.sed: The veal-complexioned people in their paper outfits-no. People crumpled in wheelchairs or walking feebly, dragging IVs alongside them on wheels. No! No! They stared at Ricky ravenously, these failing creatures, as if he were a gatekeeper jingling the keys to their release. Ellen's son had never looked more beautiful than shuffling beside her over the hospital linoleum; she imagined these sad, broken figures grasping for his narrow eyes and lingering summer tan- ”Let go, Mom!” Ricky barked, shaking free of her grasp and pounding ahead down the hall in his oversized skateboarding shoes. Ellen understood, from her sessions with Dr. Alwyn, that her feelings about the hospital were freighted with memories of her mother, who had taken to bed for whole years, swaddled in her mysterious illness, ringing a little bell-deceptively tiny, for it had made a sound like breaking gla.s.s that filled the house-asking for cranberry juice. And Ellen would bring it, climbing the stairs with the small silver tray to her mother's room, which was always dark. No matter how bright or pretty a day might be-soccer games, damp summer gra.s.s, diving lessons at the country club-Ellen always felt inside her the weight of that dark room; only Moose had the power to dispel it. Yet she couldn't bring herself to sell the house! Now, with Dr. Alwyn's help, she had come to see that her reluctance was not so very strange-that the urge to return to the scene of unhappiness with the hope of undoing it was natural, if not necessarily good. ”Bigger windows!” she'd exhorted the architect. But your furniture will fade. Screw the furniture, Ellen had parried, taking a certain delight in shocking the man. She wanted light, light. Fresh air to wash away the smell of her mother's illness-her mother, now hale and robust at seventy-two, living in Palm Beach with a Cuban immigration lawyer. Who took lessons in the tango, the mambo, the hustle, and had wallpapered a bathroom by herself. Who, it now appeared, had never really been ill in the first place.
”Penny for your thoughts,” Harris said. He'd been hoping she would ask about his golf-he'd played under par and won a client, Matthew Krane, a consultant to the Radisson Hotel chain. But nowadays she rarely asked.
”I hope Ricky comes home on time,” Ellen said. ”So Charlotte doesn't worry.”
”Charlotte never worries,” Harris said.
Gra.s.sOkay, the land. Well, it was totally different from now. (First of all, where IS the land now?) It was mostly prairie, and prairie in those days did not mean dried-out gra.s.s up to your knees with some flowers mixed in. Prairie meant a mixture of many gra.s.ses-Indian Gra.s.s, bluestem, side oats grama-that were extremely tall, taller than a person's head! With long tangled roots that reached way down deep into the earth. Prairie soil was incredibly rich and good for planting, but all the gra.s.s and roots were very hard to break through and turn over, which you had to do before you could plant anything. It could take a whole year to make prairie ready for farming. ”Breaking the prairie” was the name for that process, and there were professional Prairie Breakers who were experts at it. But eventually the whole prairie got broken up and planted into crops, and the real original prairie hasn't been around for many, many generations. What we call ”prairie” now is just gra.s.s.
Eight o'clock, no Ricky. Charlotte went to the window and looked at the sky, but it offered her nothing tonight: a starless darkness. In the kitchen, she slipped a mini pizza into the microwave. She went online to see if any of her three best friends were logged on, but they weren't-out somewhere, probably together, these girls she had known since third grade, sharing sprees of candlemaking, ant farms, weaving, papier-mache; Halloween costumes in which each was a different colored M&M. The summer after freshman year, the other three had gotten boyfriends, and a gap had fallen open between them and Charlotte. Even as her friends schemed on her behalf, begging to know which boys she desired and promising, through espionage and subterfuge, through brainwas.h.i.+ng, hypnosis and possibly witchcraft, to make at least one reciprocate; even as they urged makeup upon her, a padded bra with the future option of implants, colored contact lenses (violet being their top choice), an alternative haircut and some more intriguing mode of dress-The thing is, Chari, you aren't really making an effort-even as a machine of rehabilitation churned around Charlotte, she'd been seized by a deep new resistance in herself, an aloofness from her friends' earnest confabs on her behalf. It was true, she wasn't making an effort. It seemed phony-dangerous, too, as if she might lose something in the process. A last hope.
She sent an e-mail to all three: ”What's up? Hey, I miss u guys :-)”
At eight-forty-five she started watching Murder on the Nile Murder on the Nile-part of an ongoing project she and Ricky had undertaken to watch every Agatha Christie movie ever made. It was half over by the time she heard her brother downstairs and paused the tape. He gasped when she walked in the kitchen. ”You're stoned,” she said, looking at his boggled eyes.
He didn't answer. He was prying open a box of Pop-Tarts.
”It's nine-forty,” she said.
”Ding ding ding.”
”Where were you?”
”Skating. I nailed a dire trick.” He dropped a Pop-Tart into the toaster. ”A Switchdance one-eighty.”
Charlotte had no idea what this meant. ”Who with?”
”Seniors.” He could not suppress a grin.
”You're kidding. From Baxter?”
”No. From Saturn.”
The Pop-Tart jumped, and Ricky caught it between two fingers, blew on it a while and took a bite. The flavor shot through his head, a crazy infusion of berries. Charlotte just stood there. At the Pit, where he'd been skating, he'd heard someone say his sister's name but thought at first he'd imagined it; he was stoned, which made everything loop around and curlicue until he was skating through time-kings, knights on horseback waving lances, then ollying back around to the steps, where he heard it again-”Charlotte Hauser”-and was so startled he lost his balance and the board blurted away. He listened. Two seniors. It seemed to Ricky they were using Charlotte's name as kind of a threat, like, If you f.u.c.k with me-Charlotte Hauser. Hearing his sister spoken of in this way so appalled him that he forgot it instantly, let it drop into the night and disappear. Paul Lofgren, a senior, had decided this year that he and Ricky were bros, a mysterious grace that had befallen him for reasons Ricky didn't a.n.a.lyze. And so he hung with these older kids now, Smas.h.i.+ng Pumpkins on the boom box, the very air sweet and rare. Charlotte was folded into the night. When he nailed the Switchdance 180, everyone clapped.
”Who's the kid?” Someone to Paul Lofgren. And Paul, laughing: ”Girl bait,” which occasioned a bigger laugh (everyone laughed when Paul laughed), and although Ricky wasn't clear on how he could be girl bait when he hardly knew any girls, he liked it immeasurably better than being the kid who was sick.
Nibbling his Pop-Tart under Charlotte's solemn gaze, he felt a jerk of impatience. She was weak, a joke-his sister-without even knowing it! Why don't you do something? Why don't you do something? he wanted to shout, then wondered why he hadn't done something himself-or said something. Said anything. Opened his f.u.c.king mouth even once. He believed Charlotte had the power to determine the outcome of certain things. Did she sense his treachery (she could read his mind, he was sure), or was she sad for some other reason? he wanted to shout, then wondered why he hadn't done something himself-or said something. Said anything. Opened his f.u.c.king mouth even once. He believed Charlotte had the power to determine the outcome of certain things. Did she sense his treachery (she could read his mind, he was sure), or was she sad for some other reason?
”I rented Murder on the Nile,” Murder on the Nile,” she said. she said.
”Subtle,” he said. ”Let's.”
”Here, I'll make your pizza.” She'd saved half her own to eat with him. Her thin brown hair fell around her face as she took a pizza from the freezer and carried it to the microwave. And in that moment, Ricky, like the pizza, seemed to travel some distance in his sister's hands, to arrive fully and decisively home, in this kitchen.
”I smoked pot,” he said.
He spoke with a mix of conspiracy and challenge, longing for Charlotte's approval yet daring her to withhold it. She rarely did; Charlotte liked being Ricky's confessor, privy to all his evil deeds.
”Ding ding,” she said.
She carried his pizza upstairs, trying to master the anxiety it gave her to picture her brother consorting with boys who despised her. It seemed possible they might turn Ricky against her, and this conjured an isolation more brutal than any Charlotte had imagined.
”I watched a little, but we can start over,” she said as they collapsed onto the couch in the TV room.
”That's okay,” Ricky said, penitent. He relied on his sister to be cheerful; her somberness tonight unnerved him. ”I can watch tomorrow.”
But Charlotte rewound the tape, as he'd known she would. They flopped together, chewing pizza, and as the movie began, Ricky felt comfort fold itself around him like a pair of wings. The skating, Paul Lofgren, it all just blew away. It was maybe even good, he considered, that the other kids didn't like Charlotte-it meant that whenever he came home, she was likely to be here.
[image]
”You're waiting for something to happen?” Moose asked. ”Is that what you said?”
”Does it sound weird?”
He smiled. ”There are those who would tell you I'm not the best judge of that.”
Charlotte laughed. The air was full of leaves. Ten fat jack-o'-lantern bags squatted on the bright lawn around Versailles. ”Do you think something will happen?” she asked, hesitant.