The bartender raised his eyebrows and slid a coaster her way.
“I’m just—” She glanced up at the TV in the corner. A bearded, blindfolded hostage was speaking into an old-fashioned microphone. It was Day 43. “I’m just looking for the bathroom.”
“Right through there.”
It was a dark little hallway. She looked back at the glasses pyramided on the bar, then rushed to the door with the W and bolted it shut behind her.
The soup came up yellow and bitter. She spat it into the sink and wiped her face slowly in the mirror. She didn’t know how to fight for him. She’d never fought for anything in her life.
On the way back Gena and Peter veered into a store. Vida stayed outside, looking at the books in the window. There were a few classics in paperback. Daniel Deronda, which she’d never read. But she wasn’t tempted. Gena and Peter came out with Parcheesi. They opened it as soon as they got home, hunkering down on the floor on their stomachs like little kids. The phone rang when they were into their second game. Gena went into the kitchen to get it. She spoke in a low murmur, her back to them. Peter was left alone on the floor, Vida on the brown chair. It was the first time they’d been alone since the car. He was sitting up now, sideways along the board, one knee bent, one arm straight as a pole to the ground. With the other arm he rolled the dice over and over, unsatisfied with the numbers. His sprawled body seemed enormous, the dice and the board tiny beside him. He was done with her. Every thud of the dice told her that.
Gena held out the receiver. “It’s for you.”
Vida shook her head but Gena shook her head right back at her. “I can’t put him off any longer, Vida.” She wouldn’t back down. Vida could see that in her face.
Maybe it was Brick, she told the blood rising to her face. It was just before five back there. He’d have come home, made himself a cocktail, put himself in the mood to deal with teacher truancy.
But it wasn’t Brick. “Are you really all right?”
She remembered the sound of his voice from their first phone calls. Her heart would be slamming just like this and she’d wrap the ringlets of cord around her finger and half of her would wish he’d cancel the date they were making and the other half wanted to talk to him all night long. His voice was deep and always a little hoarse, like an old reed instrument hitting the low notes. “I think I’m okay.”
“Vida, I—”
“I imagine you’ve spoken to Brick.”
“I told him you’d call when you were ready.”
It felt like a rug burn, the tight heat in her chest. A calendar hung by the phone and Gena had made a diagonal line through all the days that had passed, just as their mother used to do. It had always depressed her, that habit, as if each day were a task to be crossed off a long list.
“I want you to do exactly what you need to,” Tom was saying, and she thought of that night in June when, after having dinner with the family of Tom’s goddaughter, they’d split off from the rest, taken a walk to the Norsett town landing, then back to Tom’s car. Nothing had happened between them on that walk; she couldn’t remember what they’d spoken of, and Vida had decided that if he asked her out again she’d say no. But on the way home, for no good reason, her whole body began to shake. It was a warm night in June but she was shaking and couldn’t stop. He didn’t ask why. He just turned the heat on for her. When she didn’t stop trembling, he turned it up higher, even though he’d begun to sweat in his suit and tie.
“I’m here,” he was saying. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll come to you and Peter the minute you say the word.”
She thanked him and then, unable to form more words, hung up.
“How did that go?” Gena asked from the doorway.
She pushed down all that was rising and found her usual flatness. “About as well as one might expect.”
A guinea pig scuttled out from beneath a chair, paused, and kept on toward Gena, who scooped it up and cooed into its ear.
“Aren’t they supposed to live in cages?” Vida said.
“Oh no. They grow much bigger and stronger if they’re given room to roam.”
“But they’re not house-trained.” She pointed to the small yellow puddle it had left behind.
“No more than a squirt of liquid here, a pellet or two there.” Tucking the creature under her armpit, Gena folded a paper towel into a square and pressed it with two fingers into the urine. The whole thing saturated quickly. She tossed it into the trash and returned to her game with Peter.
She’d always believed Gena was the stronger of the two of them, the sister who was meant to flourish and thrive.
Vida went back to her room. She drew more palm trees. At night she slept. She awoke early, well before dawn. December 17. The date had been traveling through her dreams. It was a familiar date, a date printed somewhere. On flyers. At school. She had it now. The spring musical tryouts. Helen.
She picked up the pad and charcoal pencil by her bed. It didn’t take her long to remember which of Jerry’s girls corresponded to which year, as if her mind had been keeping a careful inventory without her knowing it.
1973 Janet Blake
1974 Audrey Beale
1975 Beth Zaccardi
1976 Nancy Goff
1977 Amelia Crane
1978 Bonnie Steadman
It felt good to match the names with dates, as if she were tidying up a small part of her brain. She wrote the letter out three times, one for Brick, one for Lydia Rezo, one for the board of trustees.
On her way out, she passed Peter sleeping on a narrow mattress in the living room. He’d kicked off his blankets and curled one leg up to his chest while the other stretched out straight behind him, as if he were taking a great leap into the sky. He’d slept in this position all his life.
She found envelopes and stamps in a drawer in the kitchen. Then she put on Gena’s canvas shoes and left to find a mailbox.
THIRTEEN
HE AWOKE TO THE SOUND OF THE TRUNK OF THE DODGE SLAMMING SHUT. Was she leaving? He waited for another sound. Nothing.
When his mother finally left, he’d move into her room, to the double bed. He’d never slept in a double bed. And palm trees out the window. He wanted to see the beach again today. Gena wanted to take him over to the school. The idea of a new school was only good in theory. Look how badly he’d fared with kids he’d known all his life. What would happen when he was a complete unknown from the opposite end of the country?
He fell back asleep.
“Peter.” It was his mother, whispering. “Are you awake?”
“Kind of,” he said.
“Shhh.”
“What’s going on?” He wasn’t going back, if that’s what she wanted.
“Let’s go on a picnic.”
“A picnic? What time is it?”
“A breakfast picnic.”
He pushed himself up to sitting, his head still thick with dreams. Beside him sat a wicker basket with a wooden lid. The stalk of a banana kept it from closing all the way. Beside that squatted his mother. She’d combed her hair and put on a dress.
“Come with me,” she said.
The dress was yellow with short sleeves and a full skirt that lay in folds on the floor. His mother, even in the summer, didn’t wear tiny sleeves like that. She didn’t wear yellow, ever. The whole thing — the dress, the basket, the secrecy, even the word “picnic”—was far stranger than any dream.
“Okay,” he said, too curious to feel like there was a choice.
She waited for him out by the car.