Family Night (21 page)

At five o’clock, the parents came for the campers. Tru and Clear came into the house, stopping to clean their boots on a teak crossweave. Margaret plucked apart some lettuce heads while Tina arranged a fish on a broiler pan. Tina dribbled sesame oil over the fish, counting out the drips, telling Margaret these drips cost a pretty penny. Margaret said, “Why don’t you use something cheap? There’s Mazola.” When the fish was ready, they sat at the oval table where the cheese had earlier reigned. Margaret saw the cheese was moved to the sideboard and draped with a dish towel.

“Where’s Cam?” Tina said.

Tracy looked at Margaret. “I saw him over at the Duster. I’ll go see.”

Tina served the fish, small flaky slices layered over brown rice. Margaret could have eaten the whole fish. The past two days had made her greedy for simple comforts—food, baths, sleep. It made her think of beasts that gorge themselves because they can smell
drought
, which then means
famine
.

“The car’s gone.” Tracy came back to the table and sat down.

Tina cleared her throat. She knew something and
had waited for center stage to say so. “Cam went to get Laurence!” she said.

“He did what?” Margaret said.

“He went to pick up Laurence,” Tina said and she looked around the table.

“He went back to Wilmington? He left us here?” Margaret said.

Tina said, “Cam went to get his kid, Margaret. You know—”

“Why?” Margaret said.

“Life is not a riddle to be solved, it’s a mystery to be lived,” Tracy said.

Margaret looked at Tracy. “He can’t be driving back and forth like this, he’ll have a wreck. He’ll fall asleep at the wheel.”

Margaret avoided looking at the faces of Tru and Clear. They seemed intrigued by the turn of events—more fish for them, or perhaps they liked to watch a scene from real life unfolding in that kitchen where the flies circled over the blistered linoleum. Margaret stirred the brown rice; the food made her recoil.

“I don’t know why he wants to find our father. He’s a creep,” Tina said. “I met him in ’64. You know what he said all the time, his favorite word?”

“What was that?” Tracy said.

“He used an awful word as a superlative. Instead of saying ‘swell,’ or ‘great’, or ‘splendid,’ he said
brutal
. I was wearing turquoise jewelry and he said, ‘I love your bracelet.
Brutal
stones,
brutal
sky-blue.’ He said it about everything.”

“Brutal? That’s a terrific detail,” Tracy said. “You
have an eye, Tina, an eye for the essence of something.”

Margaret looked at Tracy. What the hell was he talking about? She wondered what might have happened between Tracy and her sister when they were supposed to be planting Fraser firs. Her sister was beaming at Tracy. Margaret said, “You mean she has an
ear
. An ear for what someone says.”

“Thanks,” Tina said. “I can’t understand what the fuss is about. Cam should leave that guy alone, he’s not worth the trouble.”

“Cam’s just trying to figure something out. Now he’s driving to get Laurence? Darcy’s not going to go for this.”

Clear said, “He can’t bring a kidnapped child into the camp, that could cause trouble.”

“It’s his own son,” Tina said.

“You can’t kidnap your own kid,” Margaret said.

“That depends on someone’s point of view. He can’t stay here. When he gets back, he has to leave. This is our third year, we’re gaining respectability, something like this could derail everything.” Clear stared at Tina until she blinked back at him. She wasn’t giving into him, but she couldn’t keep her gaze steady.

“Don’t worry,” Tracy said, “we’ll be on our way.”

A car pulled into the driveway. Margaret went to the window to see if Cam had changed his mind. She pulled the curtain back, collecting the thin muslin in one hand, and she saw it was a police cruiser.

“It’s the police,” she said.

Tina said, “Oh, that’s nothing. They come around every night. They think they might smell some marijuana
or something. They’re suspicious of us. They think we’re growing it—”

“Getting the kids to do some cheap farm labor? Plowing the poppies? Weeding the weed?” Tracy said.

“The town’s crazy. It’s the Ohio jitters, it’s never been the same since Kent State.”

“Kent State? That was years ago,” Margaret said.

“The scars are deep,” Clear said.

The cruiser turned around in the driveway, stirring up a cloud of dirt, then rolled away. Margaret sat down and touched the fish with the tines of her fork, separating the flesh, but she didn’t want it.

“Thank goodness they’re not strict Macros or we wouldn’t have the cheese. We’d starve,” Tracy told Margaret as he walked her outside and down the long lines of waist-high evergreens. In the field, it was completely dark without any houses or streetlights. Where was the moon, the stars?

Margaret felt dizzy; she recognized a slow whirl of panic increasing. “I don’t want to stay here in this place. It’s awful, like a German fairy tale. That house, it’s sort of spooky, and these lines of fir trees—”

“It’s all right. It’s like an HO Railroad landscape. Don’t worry, baby.” He put his arms around her. “You’re having an anxiety attack.”

They walked down the rows of trees.

“These trees will be decorated with lights, each one will have its crooked star. They’ll dry out in somebody’s living room. Maybe they get a loop of peace cranes to
go with it, you know, instead of a string of popcorn,” Tracy said.

“Those peace cranes give me the creeps,” she said.

“It’s harmless, like making pot holders.”

She looked one way, and when she turned back, Tracy had ducked behind a thick row. “Tracy, don’t hide!” she was screaming.

He came right back holding a rabbit’s head by the ears. It was a fresh-killed rabbit, its neck chewed. “An owl had it,” Tracy said. “It took off, didn’t you see it?”

“Drop that head. Will you drop that fucking head right now!” she told him. Tracy pitched the rabbit’s head high into the air.

There was a small clearing in the middle of the field where they found lawn chairs and a round table that held a beach umbrella. The campers had picnics there; Margaret saw the plastic forks lost in the grass. Tracy picked her up and pressed her down on the redwood table, knocking the wind from her voice when she tried to refuse. He found the small belt on her skirt and tugged it loose.

“Don’t rip it!” she said.

He stood at the table’s edge and pulled her closer. She held on to the aluminum pole as he tugged her. When he had her hips, he found the triangle of nylon and rolled it down from her. She was quiet, waiting to see what direction he was taking. He shoved his jeans away and took another hold on her. The umbrella was shaking as he rocked her, the spokes started collapsing and the canvas sank over them, but it didn’t interfere.

“What’s that?” she said. “I hear a baby crying.”

“Nothing,” he told her, “be quiet.”

“I hear it.”

“That owl, maybe a fox. Please,” he said, and he looked up at the night as he fucked her, let his head fall back on his neck, shut his eyes against the inadequate dark. He told her she was thinking too much, she was thinking out loud.

“I really thought I heard something,” she told Tracy when he was finished. He still rested against her, she could feel his heart beating. Then it slowed, receded behind a ledge of muscle. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I just thought it was a baby.”

“There’s no babies out here. This is the middle of nowhere. We’re in the plains. Plainsville.”

She really thought she had heard a baby. Sometimes it was alley cats yowling, that strange wail like a human infant. For months, she had been having fantasies about finding an abandoned baby. It was in all the newspapers. Babies were lost and found in trash bins, supermarket carts, library stacks. She read a story about a jogger who found a baby. The baby’s mother had noticed the jogger’s predictable routine, running around a lake each morning, rain or shine. She left the infant especially for the athlete, believing exercise was a virtuous trait, when it might have been mere narcissism. A man loping for miles beside his own reflection. What kind of parent would he be?

A pedestrian was walking down the street. The pedestrian was standing on the curb at the exact moment of a head-on collision. An infant was hurled through the open window of one vehicle and landed safely in
his indifferent grasp. The parents of the infant were killed in the accident. The child welfare officials were impressed by the rescue, which was merely a reflex, and they asked the pedestrian if he wished to undergo the interviews and complete the proper applications in order to adopt the baby. He told the authorities he would have to think it over. He was refusing to accept the truth. Certainly, that baby was his mysterious fate, why wouldn’t he accept it? Margaret dreamed babies were hurtling willy-nilly through the congested traffic. Why wasn’t she at the right place at the right time?

Margaret took Tracy’s wrist, so he would face her. “We’re stranded. Did you ever think of that? I have to pick up Celeste on Sunday.”

“Your brother is a stupid fuck. I didn’t want to say so in front of those hippies, but he’s not a hundred percent,” Tracy said.

“Why don’t you just say it. He isn’t playing with a full deck.”

“He’s playing. He plays solitaire.”

Margaret said, “Is he coming back?”

“If he’s serious about Lewis. If he needs to find that missing link.”

A link is a peculiar item, she was thinking. Her father sold all kinds of links: offset links, roller links, double cleavis, weldless carbon, different sizes, round, oblong, square. They were beautiful—Blu-krome, electroplated zinc finish, shot peened finish, brushed aluminum. There were so many different kinds of chain that might become damaged, might need a replacement link. If it was a conveyor or some kind of a winch, the work
stopped until Richard sent the part over. Margaret had always liked to churn her hands through the plastic drawers that held the links of chain, the silver hexagons, the bolts, the industrial diamond chips. She liked to finger these minute parts, stir and sift its heavy seed.

When they came into the house, Tina was brewing tea. The beverage smelled like wet hay as she swirled a wooden coil with honey in and out of their cups. Margaret asked her if there was a shower. Tina shook her head, no, but she looked gleeful. “It’s not a shower, it’s better than a shower,” Tina said. “I’ll show you.”

Margaret followed Tina outside. Tracy went ahead and walked with Tina, they bumped shoulders as they exchanged some words. They walked to the shed where the farm equipment was kept with the toys for the day camp, the parachute crunched down in a cardboard box. Margaret saw an old-fashioned pump in the center of a muddy circle.

“A pump?”

“We usually fill the wading pool in the morning so the water can warm up during the day, and then we have a nice wash after supper. Someone forgot today, so it’ll be cold. Really spicy.”

Tracy said, “It sounds delicious.”

Tina pumped a few gallons into a plastic bucket. “Here’s the sponge,” she told Margaret.

“Oh, one of these real underwater sponges. What about soap?”

“Here’s my bottle of Castile—it’s sandalwood, or no,
this is the peppermint. This mint soap will freeze-dry your nipples.”

Margaret smiled at Tina’s enthusiasm. She didn’t mind undressing before her sister. She wondered if Tracy would want to bathe. As soon as she was naked, Tina lifted a ladle of water and splashed it across her back. Margaret held her breath in the cold spray, but she turned in a circle as her sister dipped the ladle into the bucket and doused her with the icy water.

“You look beautiful,” Tracy told her. “Like someone from another time.”

“Like Venus,” Tina said as she tipped the utensil over Margaret’s shoulders.

“This must be how everyone bathed for centuries. These erotic water rituals,” Tracy went on. He was trying to get something going.

Margaret lathered with the Castile soap. It felt hot, the peppermint burned the corner of her eye, it stung her as it washed down her legs and swirled through the small arrow of hair. It seemed to numb her. She said so, and Tina told them that in ancient medicine, mint was an anesthetic.

“I should have had some mint when I had my appendix out,” Tracy said as he pulled his jeans off and moved behind Margaret.

“Oh God, he’s going to try something,” Margaret told Tina. She didn’t like her sister seeing this.

Tina said, “Some people just invite rape. It’s a
fait accompli
.”

Margaret looked at her. “You believe that? You’re crazy.”

Tina was working the pump handle until the bucket was refilled; then she went back to scooping the water and sifting it over them. “The Egyptians used mint in their embalming, mint and anise,” her sister said. “Comfrey, fennel, costmary, lavender, coriander—” Tina stopped naming herbs when Tracy took Margaret’s soapy wrist, pulling her hand to him.

“Shit, Tracy!” Margaret said.

“Give me a hippie hand-job,” he whispered.

“Out of the question,” she told him.

He was smiling. A smile in the dark looks strange, disembodied; you can’t be sure what it means because the eyes aren’t lighted. Tracy knelt down and scooped his hand over the bronze floor of mud then slapped the clay against her belly, smoothing it down. Margaret started to walk away, but he held on to her. She stood there. He pushed a handful of mud against her cunt, rubbing it into the slit. Margaret felt the velvety grains of earth, gritty but pleasing as he touched her, sculpting notches around her labia. The clay began to tighten over her belly and along the inside of her thighs. Tracy kept dabbing it on until she felt weighted, heavy with pulses. She dipped at the knees when it rocked over her and she saw her sister’s teeth, luminous flashes. Tracy patted the mud against Margaret’s thighs and over her buttocks, then he stood up. He fitted himself behind her, tugged her hand until she took him. His brief, omniscient shuddering was sudden and afterward he leaned into her. He rested his forehead against the shallow plane between her shoulder blades; she felt his eyelashes swipe her vertebrae.