Maud's House (10 page)

Freda crushed the cigarette tip in the ashtray and lit another. The smell of burning sulfur wafted across the table. “So,” she said. “Tell me about the kid.”

I thought about Thomas, waiting at home, probably reading one of his astronomy books. He refused to go to sleep until I came in. Some nights, when my feet were heavy from walking the meals marathon at the Round Corners Restaurant, Thomas massaged them. His fingers are gentle like starlight. They are unerring in their hunt for aching joints and muscles, relentless in their pursuit of the fallen arch. They perform with certainty, like a comet on a predestined course, and I’ve begun to look forward to the night when the stars come out and Thomas’s fingers wait for me.

“He’s cute,” Freda said.

“He’s nineteen,” I said.

“Lewis Lee is a year younger than me. Most people don’t know that. Younger men make a woman feel frisky. You should try it.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand him. He’s got everything: money, looks, I think he’s probably a genius. And he just drops out of school so he can loaf. I told him he was screwing up his entire timetable. He’ll have a hell of a time making his first million by the age of thirty at this rate. But he just laughs at me.”

“So he’s a smart kid.”

“He’s a smart ass.” I ran my hand through my hair, dislodging it from the braid. “I thought everybody wanted to go to college these days, to learn to make money.”

“You said he has money.”

“His parents do.”

“Same thing.”

“You know, his parents don’t even have indoor plumbing.” Thomas told me half the week his mother and father lived simple lives without electric can openers, microwave ovens, and take-out pizza. The other half they worked with, talked with, played with some of the most sophisticated computer hardware in the country. They were high technologists. They ran computers that ran corporations.

“They like working with high technology but hating living with it,” I explained to Freda. “Ten other families live on a piece of land with them. They’re all friends from their hippie days.”

Freda perked up. “Like a commune?”

I shrugged. “Apparently, they went to college together and were in the peace movement together. His mother grows all her own food, organic, you know, no fertilizers, and his father chops wood to keep the house warm. The house isn’t much bigger than a trailer. When they plug all the computers in, they blow a fuse.”

“A commune, as in free love, free sex?”

“Will you forget about Lewis Lee for one minute? Three times a week Thomas’s parents throw on their corporate duds and drive into Silicon Valley to work. They’re very good at their jobs. You can’t get away with living the way they do if you’re not. The company psychologist says they’re going back to the earth, seeking to renew their relationship with nature, because high technology has made them feel alienated and isolated. Thomas’s mother says she just likes fresh vegetables.” Freda and I exchanged glances. “No plumbing,” I said.

“And a house full of computers,” Freda said, shaking her head. “Well, I think you ought to consider the situation. You could use some romance in your life, some free love, some nostrings sex. You’ve been irritable lately.”

“It’s that damn painting everyone keeps talking about.”

“Men are wonderful inventions.”

“Haven’t you heard? Women don’t need men to be complete.”

“Who says you have to need them? Just enjoy them. I’m not saying it would be the great love affair of all time; Lewis Lee and I have that distinction. But it would improve your disposition.”

“I’m not irritable.”

“You’re horny.”

“He’s a child! He writes home every week. He has a portable computer in the van that he hooks up to my phone and sends letters to his parents. He calls it electronic mail.”

Freda nodded toward the post office down the street. “For gawdsakes, don’t tell Ella about that.”

The next week Odie made three visits to my house nagging me about the painting.

“No,” I said. “You can throw me in jail, feed me bread and water, make me watch old videos of World Series games. But I’m still not doing the painting.” Odie mumbled something about using blackmail when he had the chance.

Odie was getting nowhere in the investigation of the missing knitting needles.

On Friday Wynn spiked Mrs. Weaver the librarian’s blue hair. Mrs. Weaver screamed when she looked in the mirror. Wynn tried to calm her: “The punk look is très chic right now, Mrs. Weaver.”

“But I look like the bride of Frankenstein.”

“Not many women can carry that look. You’ve got the bone structure to handle it. And it couldn’t be more timely with Halloween around the corner.”

Mrs. Weaver began to cry. She was somewhat pacified, however, when Wynn announced that the cut was free. Of course, it was a mistake like George’s underwear and the blue sheets. But it tore Wynn apart. Professional pride, she said. She hadn’t done something that bonehead since beauty school. And besides, she said, she couldn’t afford to keep giving her work away.

As Freda says, “There is nothing sadder than a beautician run amok.” I remembered all the times Wynn had looked after me: how she kept me from looking like a scarecrow in the school pictures (Wynn was always ready with brush and hair spray in the girls’ bathroom.) and how she talked me out of the black leather wedding dress. Throughout my life, Wynn had always understood how hard it was for me to function in a world not of my making, in a world without my house and paints. Wynn understood that some things—such as how to dress and act at a prom—never entered my mind. While other girls thought in terms of Friday night dates and new pink ski pants and teen magazines, I was immersed in Matisse and mauve paint and the way you can draw a guitar with a few strokes of the brush. I knew nothing about girl things, and Wynn knew everything. As Papa used to say when faced with one of those embarrassing adolescent girl questions, “Thank God for Wynn.”

I thought of all the times Wynn had saved me (even when rescuing wasn’t all that important to me) and asked Wynn if she would do me a small favor: pose for a few sketches. “Sketches,” I told her sternly, “this has nothing to do with the Round Corners painting so don’t get up your hopes.”

“Oh, yes, please Maud,” Wynn gushed, drying her tears on the hem of her maternity smock.

I patted her arm and sighed. I never could stand to see Wynn depressed. So I’m painting again.

I don’t have any intention of doing the Round Corners mural, George; it’s just a painting. It could be any old painting. It doesn’t have to be of Round Corners.

I don’t know what it’s going to be, but whatever it is, it’s four months pregnant.

E
very morning Thomas drives into Round Corners and buys The
New York Times
at Snowden’s Store. He reads the newspaper to me, his leg dangling over the back of the sofa in the studio. Current events are a compulsion with him. It probably has something to do with being raised by “ists”: activists, pacifists, environmentalists, humanists, high technologists. Apparently, his parents served politics at breakfast with the wheat germ, fiber, and nuts. Harvey Winchester says all the baby books encourage talking to children from the moment their blurry eyes blink upon this world. In fact, it’s almost negligent not to yak at them in their carseats, at the dinner table, during diaper changes. I’m sure Thomas’s parents read the same book, but I bet they didn’t discuss the color of a maple leaf or a cat’s soft fur. “My parents care so deeply about so much, Maud,” Thomas said. “Sometimes they make me feel as if I don’t believe in anything at all.” Forget the cat; Thomas cut his teeth on conservation, women’s rights, environmentalism.

As Thomas read aloud, his voice alternated between good humor and outrage. Unlike T-Bone, who read the newspaper anesthetized by a tap-dancing high, Thomas had no protection from anger induced by corruption, horror generated by injustice, pain produced by stories of South African children maimed by rubber bullets. Thomas is the type to hear the children’s screams a globe away. He has that kind of sensitivity, so strong it’s almost touchable, so appealing it almost overwhelms a woman. The sun poured in the window in the roof, splashing over Thomas, turning his yellow hair golden. I thought he doesn’t fit in this studio with the uncaring white walls.

I laid down my pencil with a trembling hand and got a beer.

“You shouldn’t drink beer this early in the morning, Maud,” lectured Wynn Winchester, nestled in a rocker brought up from the living room. According to Wynn, this was the universal pose of mothers-to-be—swaying in rockers, patting their stomachs. The Madonna with Bloated Belly look.

I placed the beer can on the table with restraint.

Wynn chattered, “I’ve given up all alcoholic beverages, drugs, and cigarettes.”

“You never smoked cigarettes,” I said.

“Not after that time in the cemetery. Jesus, I thought I was going to die. Remember we stole a pack of Marlboros from Daddy’s dresser and sneaked out to the graveyard. We scrunched behind the headstones and puffed until we were sick.”

“How old were you?” Thomas asked, lowering the newspaper.

“Children. Just kids. Twelve, I think.”

“Tell me some more. I want to know everything about Maud. Was she cute as a kid?”

“Not as cute as me,” Wynn said. “I always had to style her hair. She never even combed it for school pictures. She couldn’t be bothered. All she thought about was her art.”

“Sit still, Wynn,” I said.

“I am sitting still.”

“Your lips are moving. Thomas, read us another story.”

Wynn said Thomas had a melodious voice, even when reading of mayhem. His tongue did not stumble over datelines such as Reykjavik. He read story after story, so poised, so witty, so grammatically correct. At last, he finished the paper, tossed it on the floor, and folded his arms across his chest. “We ought to be doing more about the homeless,” pronounced Thomas.

“I’m doing my bit,” I said. “I took you in.”

“I mean in a political sense. We could go sleep in boxes in front of the White House.” I ignored Thomas. “We could protest. I’ve never been in jail, but Mom and Dad have been arrested tons of times.” He studied the skeleton branches of the trees through the skylight. “Now, they express their political views with their bucks instead of their bodies. They unloaded all their stocks in South African companies long ago. They have a ‘socially responsible’ investment counselor. What did George think of socially responsible investing?”

George thought it was a crock. “Who knows who’s dumping what in the dead of night?” George used to say. That was one of the things I trusted about George: He didn’t trust anybody.

I concentrated on Wynn’s hair. She wanted to be a brunette in the painting.

Thomas the philosopher persisted. “It’s tough to know what to believe in, y’know. I mean nothing’s for sure. You think you’re doing one thing and end up doing something else. Like the soldiers in Somalia. They just went there to feed people—to keep kids from starving—and now the people they were trying to help want to kill them. It’s crazy.”

Wynn snorted. “Well, I tell you what I believe in: babies.” She patted her protruding abdomen.

I smiled. “I believe in washing my belly button once a week.”

Thomas laughed. “I believe in hamburgers with as much fat and grease as you can squeeze in them—real cholesterol monsters.”

Wynn made a face. You could turn her green with just the word “bacon.”

Thomas, who enjoyed exasperating and/or shocking Wynn, went on, “Of course, being a Californian, I also believe in real estate, which is not to be confused with the environment. Oh, and the big one, The Earthquake.”

Wynn shuddered. She was not a fan of geological disturbances. Wynn the mother-to-be liked to feel the earth firmly under her feet. When she walked, she slid her feet forward in a searching way and cradled her swelling stomach, ever on the lookout for a gopher hole or a tree root waiting to trip a pregnant woman.

Thomas and I exchanged grins. It was impossible not to like the kid. He had the ability to fit, like a puzzle piece, even in a town of strangers. In a few short weeks, Thomas had become a part of Round Corners. Everyone, but T-Bone, like him. T-Bone called Thomas Spaceman.

“I’m into exploring space,” Thomas once told T-Bone. “The one out there.” He motioned to the sky. “And the one in here.” He tapped his forehead.

Thomas liked to ponder those stupid meaning-of-life questions. What is happiness? Does it make sense of your life? Where do you find faith? On a mountain? At church? In a painting? What is art, and what is life?

“What else do you believe in, Maud?” Thomas asked.

I saluted them with my Rolling Rock. “I believe in country western music.”

Wynn left in a rush. “I’ve got women waiting for me at the shop, probably swinging from the hair dryers in anxiety. All the females in Round Corners want to look pretty for carving the bird.” Thanksgiving was a week away. “Thomas, are you going home for Thanksgiving?”

“My family doesn’t eat meat,” Thomas said.

“It figures,” Wynn muttered, grabbing her purse and hustling out the door.

“Watch out for the gopher holes on the stairs,” I called, giving the sketches one last glance before heading for the kitchen.

Fortified with another beer, I set out to prepare dinner. In less than an hour, the kitchen table and counters were covered with no fewer than twelve cookbooks, all opened flat and speckled with flour, gravy, and grease. All the cookbooks were borrowed from the library, a habit I got into living with George. I always checked out art books for me and cookbooks for George. If the blue-haired librarian could see her books now, her hair would probably turn back to its original white color.

In the past week, since Wynn had been modeling for me, I had renewed my resolution to learn to cook. I made chicken tetrazzini, leek soup, beef bourguignon, Szechwan duck, and cheeseburgers—none of which resembled the pictures in the books.

George often told me anyone could cook, if they wanted to. He had been doing it for most of his adult life and didn’t understand how I could find it so difficult. Cooking only required attention. Or so he said. “You must care for your cuisine as if it were a Cassatt,” he said. George was an impressionist chef.