There was a big beautiful apple tree in George’s backyard he planted years ago when he moved into his house. He was enormously proud of it. All year he sprayed, watered, and cared for it. A tree surgeon was called at the slightest sign of anything suspect. Although he never ate any, George spent hours in the fall carefully picking and placing the fruit in large wicker baskets he bought specifically for that purpose. He donated all of it to our town hospital. I had eaten apples from the tree and they were horrible, but don’t tell him that.
Sitting under that tree, he watched as I flung dirt out of the hole. Although he had offered to help, I insisted on doing the job myself. If Old Vertue had come for me, I assumed it was my duty to dig for him.
“How old are you, Frannie?”
“Forty-seven.”
“Have you noticed how the meanings of words change the older we get? When I was young I used to think old meant fifty. Now I’m almost fifty and old is eighty. When I was twenty, I thought the word love meant a sexy woman and a good marriage. Now the only love I feel is for my work, Chuck, and this tree. Yet that’s sufficient.”
I shoved the spade into the ground and heaved. “Aren’t you just saying things are relative?”
“No, something completely different. Over a lifetime our definitions of things change radically, but because it’s so gradual we’re blind to them. As the years pass, our names for things no longer fit but we still keep using them.”
“Because it’s convenient and we’re lazy.” Up with another shovelful.
“Did you know the Farsi language has over fifty different terms for the word love?”
“Why are we having this conversation, George? Uh-oh! Here we go again.”
“What?”
“There’s something in here. In this hole too. Just like last time with the bone.”
“What is it?”
I bent over and picked up the brightly colored object the shovel had just uncovered. “Oh my God!”
“What Frannie? What?”
“It’s—it’s—”
“What?” George was frantic.
“It’s Mickey Mouse!” I tossed up the rubber figure I’d dug up. “It must have been in the ground ten thousand years.”
Even he laughed while he jiggled the child’s squeeze toy in his hand. “At least. Twenty years ago some kid was heartbroken a whole afternoon after losing this thing.”
When I finished digging and hadn’t unearthed any other archaeological treasures, I laid Old Vertue in his new berth and shoveled dirt over him. Chuck christened the new grave by pissing on it as soon as I was done, which was only appropriate. Ashes to ashes, dog to dog. George and I stood there a few moments looking at the spot.
“What do I do now?”
“Nothing. Wait.”
“Maybe he’s already in the trunk of my car.”
“I doubt it, Frannie.”
“But you do think he’ll be back? That it wasn’t just some lunkhead’s prank?”
“Nope. And I think it’s exciting.”
“I knew this guy whose wife got pregnant when they were in their forties. I asked how he felt about it and he said, ‘It’s okay, but to tell you the truth, I’m too old for Little League.’ It’s sort of the same thing for me here—I think I’m too old for wonder.”
“Pauline got tattooed.” Magda’s voice hit like a flamethrower the minute I walked in the door that evening. But her news was sensational. The thought of Fade making such a confident and uncharacteristic gesture made me want to clap. But if I let her mother know that she’d hit me.
I tried to sound... thoughtful. “Well, it is her body—”
She glared at me. “It is not her body when she does something as stupid as this. What’ll it be next—piercing? I hear branding is very in these days. She’s a teenager who suddenly wants to be trendy. I’ll be your cliché tonight. Don’t you dare take her side in this, Frannie, or I’ll tattoo your head.”
“Is it big or small?”
“Is what?”
“The tattoo.”
“I don’t know. She won’t show me! She just announced she’d done it and left me standing there with my jaw on top of my foot. My daughter has a tattoo. I’m so ashamed.”
“I thought you two were together today.”
“We were! We went to the Amerling mall. After lunch we split up for a couple of hours. When we met up later, she told me what she’d done. She’s such a quiet kid, Frannie. Why on earth would she do something so loony?”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be quiet anymore.”
Magda crossed her arms and tapped her foot. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“I think we have to see what it is first, honey. If it’s a little thing like a bug or something—”
“A bug? Who gets bugs tattooed on their body?”
“You’d be surprised. Down at the county jailhouse you’ll see tattoos—”
“Don’t change the subject. You’re her stepfather and a policeman—”
“Should I arrest her?”
She stepped up close and surprisingly wrapped her thin arms around me. With her mouth an inch from my ear she growled in her deadliest voice, “I want you to talk to her.”
Dinner that night was no fun occasion. Luckily it was my turn to cook so I didn’t have to endure the lunar silence emanating from the living room. Usually dinnertime was nice in our house. The three of us gathered in the kitchen and talked about our day. The radio was always on to an oldies station and when a great one played, we’d stop what we were doing and dance to the Dixie Cups or Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders.
That night, for some ominous reason, both women sat in the living room five feet across from each other, pretending to read. I think Magda was there to make believe her daughter’s tattoo didn’t bother her a bit. Life as usual. The only problem was you could see her mouth moving as she thought up one good zinger after another to say to her errant child. I think Pauline was there because she was either testing the waters or silently proclaiming she’d do whatever she pleased now and we’d just have to accept it.
So long as it wasn’t something dumb or obscene, I had no gripe with a tattoo. I was only curious to see what this strange young woman would want permanently engraved on some as yet unknown location on her body. While stirring the mulligatawny soup, I wondered out loud, “A dragon? Nah. A heart?” Et cetera. But if I didn’t placate Magda on this matter I knew I’d be in soup deeper than the spicy one bubbling on the stove.
I had an idea. Divide and conquer. I opened the kitchen door and asked Pauline to come in a minute. She shot a quick glance at her mother to see if this move had already been worked out between us, but Magda didn’t even look.
No one gave up less when it was necessary. The queen of the Cold Shoulder, the Zipped Lip, Mum’s the Word, Pauline’s mum could shut you out quicker than a slammed door.
Tossing her head, Pauline marched across the room and into the kitchen. “What?” she demanded in an imperious voice completely not her own.
I smiled at her.
“What?”
“Your ma’s going to glue us both to her shitlist if you don’t at least tell me where and what it is.”
She crossed her arms and tightened her lips exactly like Magda. “It’s my body. I’ll do what I want with it.”
“I agree. But we’ve got to come up with a way to resolve this thing without her going nuclear. Being stubborn is not how to do it.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Where is it?”
She sized me up, stuck out her bottom lip. “I’m not going to tell you. You’re trying to manipulate me. I hate that.”
“Then what is it? At least you can tell me that. Give us a bone, Pauline; give me something I can offer Magda that’ll calm her down. Be an individual, but remember you’re also a daughter. Your mother worries about you. Don’t be unreasonable. We’re on your side.”