He says, “Be a while yet. I like to cook them slow.”
“Everything’s so neat and tidy.”
“Cleaning lady was here yesterday,” he says. “I should’ve moved into a smaller place when Mike went away. Probably could get a fair penny for this dump. But I can’t be bothered. Eight percent mortgage and I couldn’t find any place cheaper to live and at least the kid’s got a place to stay if he feels like coming home to see the old man between semesters.”
“Does Mike fly?”
“Some. He got his license two years ago. It’s not a passion with him. He’ll be a Sunday flier.”
“Do you mind?”
“I don’t make the mistake of thinking of him as an extension of myself. He’s got his own life.”
He’s flipping the steaks over. There’s a lot of sizzling. She can smell hickory smoke from the chips he’s sprinkled on the coals.
“What happened to his mother?”
“She was someplace up in Oregon last I heard. Waitressing in a lobster place.” His shrewd glance flashes toward her. “I guess you want to know why I got custody of Mike. She’s a drunk. Happens to a lot of Air Force wives.”
You don’t have to tell me about that, she thinks. My mother and my sisters were just about the only sober women in the—
Stop it. You haven’t got any sisters. Your mother was a housewife and your father was a plumber and you grew up in Phoenix and Chicago, and they died twelve years ago in a four-car pileup. You have no family. For Ellen’s sake—remember that.
“Does Mike ever see his mother?”
“He tried to. For a while. I never put restrictions on it. But it got so he couldn’t stand seeing her boozed up. He writes to her now and then. In a letter you can pretend nothing’s wrong.”
She takes his empty glass inside and mixes him another bourbon and water.
On the kitchen wall hangs a ristra of red tongue-searing chili peppers. There aren’t any curtains. It is unabashedly a man’s kitchen.
She’s still unnerved from this afternoon—the reporter’s wallow in mob-style murder. She feels jumpy. Things keep blundering around inside her, hitting taut cords.
Through the kitchen window she watches him step back from the barbecue and clench his eyes against the smoke.
It’s silly to be coy with him. What’s the sense in delaying any longer? He’s not going to be a pushover for soft lights and bedtime games. Whatever his answer would be then, it’ll be the same now. Get it over with.
She’s rehearsed it long enough: the story in detail. It’s part truth, part fabrication. There ought not to be any questions that can take her by surprise. There’s no excuse for procrastination except fear; and she’s got to set fear aside out of concern for Ellen and the deadline, less than a month now, that hangs over her like a boulder perched on the lip of a cliff.
At the edge of the flagstones there’s a patch of mint. She breaks off a sprig; rinses it with the garden hose and pokes it down amid the ice cubes in his drink.
He tastes it and shows his approval.
She moves to one side to get out of the smoke; the wind keeps pushing it around. She senses he is aware of the sexual tension. She reclaims her own glass from the redwood table and thinks about another drink.
But that would just postpone it. And let’s not forget the rules of the new game: never drink enough to make the head fuzzy or the tongue loose.
Come on. It’s Ellen’s future you’re farting around with. Blurt it out.
She says: “I had a motivation for learning to fly. It wasn’t just for fun.”
“No?”
“There’s something I need to do and it requires an airplane.”
Her abrupt determination seems to amuse him. “Smuggling wheelbarrows?”
“What?”
“Sorry. Old joke. Go ahead.”
She takes a breath. “I’ve got a daughter—fourteen months old. I’m having a custody fight with her father.”
“Must be painful.” An upward glance: the concern is genuine. “Sorry to hear it.”
She tries to decide how to phrase it. Prompting her, he says, “Your little girl got something to do with learning to fly a plane?”
“I wanted to be my own air rescue service. My daughter’s.”
“You’re serious now.”
“The son of a bitch has got my kid, Charlie. I want to get her back.”
28 The steaks are seared; she watches Charlie crank the grill higher so they will cook more slowly. She can’t decipher his expression. All he says is, “Go on.”
“Last year we separated and I moved out here. I thought I’d get settled and then go back and collect Wendy. As soon as I’d established California residency I filed for divorce here. But then I found out he’d filed at the same time—back in New York.”
“And?”
Now more lies: “There’ve been custody hearings in both states. California says I get the child. New York says he gets custody.”
“He’s got possession of the kid?”
“For the moment.”
He pokes the steaks with a long fork. Fat dripping on the coals has started a fire and he sprays it with water from a hand-pump bottle that used to contain window cleanser. Out here he’s startlingly different from what’s he like at the airport or in the plane. His domesticity seems wildly out of place.
She says, “It’s not altogether selfishness on my part. He’s not a fit father. She can’t stay with him. She just can’t.”
“Well—you’re talking about kidnapping now.”
“She’s my own daughter. My child!”
“Love, I’m talking about the law.”
“It’s kidnapping in New York—it’s honoring a court order in California. Depends where you’re standing.”
“Forget the legalities. The baby’s in New York with her old man? Then—possession being nine points of the law and all—you’re talking about kidnapping. You get caught, that’s what they’ll arrest you for.”
“I know that.”
“I think you belong on a funny farm.” But he says it with gentle humor. “What kind of guy is the father?”
“You won’t get an objective opinion from me.”
“Granted. Tell me about him.” He’s taking the steaks off the fire.
“On the surface very charming.”
“He’d have to be, to get you to marry him.”
He’s not looking at her just then and she wonders how he means the remark to be taken. Is it the casual flattery of a man on the make or a compliment meant sincerely?
“He’s dangerous.” Then abruptly she stops, feeling awkward. She didn’t mean to put it that way. It seems to reveal too much. She doesn’t want to scare him off.
She continues quickly: “He can be unpleasant.”
“Yeah, well we all can be unpleasant.” He’s plucking potatoes and corn on the cob out of the coals, using the long barbecue fork to peel the foil off them.
“What’s his name?”
“Bert. Albert. Some of his friends call him Al.”
“Albert what? Hartman?”
“Of course,” she lies.
Is it her imagination or did he notice her instant’s hesitation?
His face gives nothing away. His eyes are squinted against the smoke. “We’re about ready here.” With deliberate care he breaks the leaves off the corncobs and removes the silk. He slides the potatoes deftly off the fork onto the plates and when she carries them inside there’s a corner of her troubled mind that appreciates the precision with which he effects all these little accomplishments: he only looks disorderly.
He shakes up a decanter. “Salad dressing. My recipe. English mustard in it—hope you don’t mind.”