Women and Other Animals Part 6

"Come in, Renegade," he said, stepping aside, but the dog didn't move. Michael looked into Gwen's face. "Did somebody do something to you? That guy with the speedboat?"

Gwen stopped her s.h.i.+vers by hunching her shoulders. Inside were coffee and b.u.t.ter and clean sheets. Food and hot water awaited, but she now wished she'd brought Michael something. She should have stopped at the cottage and gotten those three beers she'd taken from Dan. Or sardines. She was finally hungry enough to eat canned sardines. "That big island upstream," she said. "It's called Willow Island. I'll take you there if you want."

Michael leaned against the doorway. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, smiled, and said nothing.

Gwen felt drunk but blinked her eyes open. "What's your favorite bird?" she asked.

"My favorite bird? Let's see. How about the great blue heron?"

"There's herons on Willow Island." Gwen was dizzy from standing. "A campment of herons, living way up in the trees." She put one hand against the doorframe to steady herself. ''Hundreds of them. One came so close it brushed me with a wing."

"I don't suppose you know the story about Leda and the swan?"

Gwen wondered if she'd get used to Michael.

"Your fingers are pure white." He took her free hand and held it up in the kitchen light. "They're so cold. And you've got blisters broken open. We should clean your hands with peroxide and bandage them." He tugged at her wrist but stopped when she resisted. "I forgot. You want to stand right here in the doorway. Well, I bought you a can of gas. Matches are right here on the stove. I'll hand you everything so you don't even have to come in."

"What if your boat doesn't fit through the doorway?" Gwen's teeth clacked together, breaking up her speech.

Page 85 "Then I'll cut out the doorway with a Sawzall." Michael pulled her other hand off the doorframe and held both of them. In Gwen's blurred vision, it seemed that Michael's arms were fusing endtoend with her gooseb.u.mped and bruised arms, stretching into an impossible length of skin. "Come in, Gwen. Renegade's going to get cold out there waiting for you. I'll make you an omelet. This time I've got tomatoes."

Before she stepped through the doorway, Gwen looked behind her, across the river, toward the dark little house. She would row across tomorrow when her hands stopped hurting and close it against the racc.o.o.ns. Beyond that, she didn't know yet what she'd do. King followed her inside.

Page 86 The Perfect Lawn From his hiding place in the backyard, Kevin could see into Madeline's bedroom window and into a bas.e.m.e.nt living room with sliding gla.s.s doors. On the other side of her ruffled curtains, the beautiful Madeline lay with a science textbook propped on her knees. As usual, Mrs. Martin spent the evening on the couch with a paperback close to her face and the television glowing. She smoked nonstop, pressing a cigarette to her mouth and pulling it away as regular as a heartbeat. Several times this school year, Kevin had seen Madeline storm into the living room and stand before her mother, hands on hips, as if demanding an explanation or dis.h.i.+ng out discipline, as though Madeline was the mother and Mrs. Martin was the daughter.

Madeline stood and pulled off her Red Devils sweats.h.i.+rt to reveal a thick white bra. Kevin inhaled and held his breath, but Madeline undressed no further. She stepped into the hall and the bathroom light came on through the frosted gla.s.s he could distinguish no shapes. He let out his breath, moved up the lawn closer to the house, near the burn barrel, and lay on his belly in the dry leaves.

The Martins' backyard was not just neglected-it was a travesty. Under the newly fallen leaves there were growths of moss, bare patches, and last year's decaying leaves and sticks. Kevin worked Page 87 with his dad in the lawn care service when he wasn't in school, and he knew that with regular care this yard could be as nice as any in the towns.h.i.+p. The property ab.u.t.ted the neighbor's woods all the way down to the river, which afforded many landscaping options for this scraggly border in which he took cover. Kevin would suggest right off yanking these p.r.i.c.ker bushes and planting some mediumsized shrubs, something that would flower in the spring-forsythia, maybe-and a couple of burning bushes for fall color. The other cheerleaders lived near the school in whitecolumned houses with manicured flower beds, or in the halfbricked ranchstyle homes on Tiger Lake whose yards sloped toward little boathouses and docks. Though Madeline had every right to live on Tiger Lake and to have the best possible lawn, she and her mom lived instead in this small asbestoss.h.i.+ngled house on the river, not far from Kevin.

The night was unseasonably warm for November, so when Mrs. Martin got up from the couch and stepped outside with a grocery bag of trash, she didn't bother closing the sliding door behind her. She floated across the lawn, squinting against the smoke from the cigarette in her mouth, ashes and bits of paper falling away from her. Kevin flattened his body against the ground and cursed himself for choosing the new hiding spot. Mrs. Martin emptied the papers into the burn barrel and then held her disposable lighter inside until something ignited. The fire gradually lighted her face, neck, and chest. Her robe was fastened loosely, and Kevin wondered if it might slip open. Smoke spilled from her nose and mouth.

Kevin's dad smoked too, but he burned cigarettes right down to their b.u.t.ts, then smashed them out in big gla.s.s ashtrays, bending and twisting the filters. He exhaled smoke in long straight streams, while Mrs. Martin just let the smoke drift out of her. Up close, Kevin could see that Mrs. Martin looked sort of like Madeline, or at least she had the same long, reddish hair. Perhaps after Kevin and Madeline had gone together awhile, her mom and his dad would start dating. It gave Kevin a moment of relief to imagine the four playing cards or eating a Thanksgiving turkey, but Mrs. Martin was staring into the barrel as though conjuring a vision or reading a message from the dark side in the flames. Through the eyesized air holes punched in the drum, Kevin watched the fire gaining fury.

Page 88 She obviously wasn't wearing anything under that thin robe, not even abra. She was standing too close over the fire, and he worried that her collar or the hair hanging in her face would ignite. He could almost see individual strands singe and shrivel toward her face.

Mrs. Martin took a step back and crossed her arms, holding her cigarette right in front of her face so she could drag on it without effort. Kevin could not see what was burning, but from the smells he imagined inserts from newspapers, a cereal box with a waxedpaper liner, a box of macaroni sh.e.l.ls with a plastic window. Kevin didn't know what Madeline ate besides the pizza slices she carried away from the lunch line. Perhaps it was the thought of Madeline eating with her hands, or maybe he had been absentmindedly pus.h.i.+ng himself into the ground. Whatever the reason, Kevin felt himself erect against the gra.s.s and leaves. He looked toward Madeline's window, but Mrs. Martin was blocking his view.

He contemplated scurrying away or else reaching under his body to adjust his personal part, despite the risk that Mrs. Martin might notice him. He could bring himself to do neither, and his whole body stiffened with indecision. Then with a tiny crackle, a piece of flaming something popped out of the barrel through one of the air holes and landed two feet away. Within minutes, Kevin smelled leaves smoldering. Mrs. Martin continued to gaze into the barrel, not noticing the new fire. Her nipple pushed against the fabric of her robe.

More leaves and some of the damp sticks began to smoke. Mrs. Martin's orangelit face grew demonic in the rippling light. Her pale eyes shone wet, and the long shadows of her eyelashes reflected upward onto her forehead. She was some sort of thoughtless witch, unconcerned with what spells she was casting. Her snakelike fingers wrapped around each other and around her cigarette like an unholy tangling of limbs. He tried to remember Madeline's fingers. Certainly they were more respectable than this. The smoldering circle grew to the size of a fried egg.

He knew the longer he delayed, the worse it would be to reveal himself in all his tompeepery. The smoldering orangeedged patch Page 89 grew to the size of a small hubcap, but he would burn to death in silence rather than have Mrs. Martin tell his father that she'd found him skulking in her shrub bed. He pressed his groin into the lawn, rhythmically.

When Mrs. Martin finished her cigarette, she lit another from it and dropped the stub into the flames. She turned and headed toward the house, dragging her robe across overgrown gra.s.s, catching a stick and a couple of leaves in her hem. As soon as she slid the door shut behind her, Kevin stood and stomped out the smoking debris, breaking up the pile to make sure nothing was still burning. Then he collapsed on the ground, telling himself that if this fire had been let go, the woods next door could have caught. If Kevin had not been here watching, that big tree by the house eventually might have fallen in flames through Madeline's roof, pinning her in her bed. Kevin imagined the beautiful Madeline curled safely in the dark under blankets, wearing red cheerleader underpants and her bra.

One January afternoon, Madeline approached Kevin at school and stood with her arms crossed over those lush b.r.e.a.s.t.s, big and smooth like a couple of knolls built up for decorative annual plantings. Because there was a game tonight, she wore her cheerleader uniform.

"I'm sick of you following me," she said.

"Huh?" She was so close that Kevin smelled her powdery perfume.

"I purposely went out to the parking lot, then back to the gym so I could see for sure, and you definitely followed me." Madeline turned her face up and shook her hair against the creamcolored backdrop of the painted cinderblock hallway. She pushed her hand through her hair, front to back, pulling strands away from her face, giving the impression that possessing such a mane was a n.o.ble burden. Kevin never tired of this performance, and he couldn't help it that hair as thick and long as Madeline's gave a guy the idea that he'd like to have her head in his lap. Kevin's surveillance of Madeline Martin, however, had nothing to do with thoughts of initiating her into personal acts he might have seen in magazines his dad subscribed to. The burnbarrel fire had made Kevin aware that Page 90 danger was always present and that he must continue to protect Madeline. He meant to come clean with her now, but he didn't know where to start. Instead he stared at her chest.

"And stop staring at my t.i.ts," said Madeline. "That is so rude."

"Sorry." His eyes traveled down to her pleated skirt, red and yellow, barely long enough. She would reveal the underpants during athletic maneuvers at tonight's game.

Many of his male cla.s.smates seemed to prefer the pet.i.te figure of Breanna Harding, head cheerleader and homecoming queen, but Kevin had studied them side by side, and Breanna's overmade face and blond hair looked as dull as a plastic mannequin's next to Madeline's natural glow. Little Breanna might posture on top of the pyramid with ease, but only because, at the bottom and center of the pile, with feet secure on the asphalt track or gymnasium floor, there was someone as solid as Madeline.

"If I catch you following me again, I'll tell the viceprinc.i.p.al." Her hands were propped on her hips and she looked him square in the face. Madeline was a forthright girl, no doubt about it, but her eyes were as cool green as the perfect lawn.

"I won't follow you anymore," Kevin mumbled, letting his vision fall farther toward her muscular legs and shapely feet.

"Good." She pivoted and walked away, her calf muscles clenching with each step, her thighs rubbing against one another, her hips swaying side to side, s.h.i.+fting her pleats so they flashed redyellowredyellow like one of those plastic outdoor pinwheels.

Kevin was a man of his word, and not following her would probably be for the best, since he could stop being late to his cla.s.ses. He might even graduate on time in May if he kept handing in his partially completed homework and didn't acc.u.mulate any more tardies. Attendance, rather than achievement, had always been his strong suit.

He hadn't made any promises about watching Madeline's house, of course, and to protect himself from the elements on cold winter evenings when his dad was at the Pub or sleeping, Kevin wore his dad's Carhartt coveralls with the snapon hood. A piece of landscaping plastic kept him dry. Once he stuck one of his dad's business cards in their front door, but Mrs. Martin never called. By follow Page 91 ing her in his dad's truck one morning, Kevin discovered that she worked at the plasticmolding factory, which meant she probably couldn't afford a lawn service. The next time the snow melted, Kevin lugged a fiftypound bag of lime through the woods, and by the light of a dull halfmoon, he spread the grit over their halffrozen lawn. Lime dissolved slowly and would help bring the acidity in line by midsummer.

The second fire started in the living room. Despite the cold, Kevin had fallen asleep near the p.r.i.c.ker bushes, and when he awoke both bedroom lights were off and the downstairs was only dimly lit by the clock on the television. Something seemed odd inside, flickering and dimming. He walked to the sliding gla.s.s door, through which he saw thin streams of smoke. One tongue of flame rose from the couch, then disappeared. Another jabbed upward from the other side of the same cus.h.i.+on.

Kevin yanked open the gla.s.s door and took the carpeted stairs two at a time, then entered the first bedroom, which he knew to be Madeline's. He ran to her bed, pushed his arms under her, intending to scoop her up and carry her to safety. It had never occurred to Kevin that the beautiful Madeline would be heavy, heavier than him, and that she would scream and slap and punch him.

"Hey! Stop it! You! Stop it!" She continued to hit Kevin as he tried to work his arms out from underneath her. When he yanked himself free, Madeline toppled to the floor beside him. She grabbed her alarm clock and struck him in the head, momentarily stunning him.

Kevin held up his hands to protect himself from a second blow. "There's a fire, Madeline. I thought you had smoke absorption." Kevin had to admit, though, there was only a hint of smoke in the air.

"Who is that?" demanded Madeline. "I know that voice." She fumbled and switched on her ruffleshaded bedside lamp. "Oh my G.o.d, it's you, Kevin, you gross thing.

Get out! Get out of my bedroom now!" She stood and brushed off her Ts.h.i.+rt and pinkandwhite boxer shorts as Kevin backed toward the hall, his eyes shocked by the light. Kevin would never see boxer shorts in the same way again.

"But there's a fire," he said from the doorway.

Page 92 He had her attention.

"Downstairs," he said. He pushed his Carhartt hood off his head. "I think your couch is on fire."

She sniffed. "Oh s.h.i.+t! d.a.m.n you, Mom!" she shouted toward the wall.

Madeline pushed past Kevin, and he followed her down the stairs and into the living room. Flames shot up intermittently from the cus.h.i.+ons and the air stank of burning foam rubber. "We've got to drag it outside," she said. She lifted one end of the couch apparently without effort Kevin lifted the other end and pretended that he too found it effortless. Cigarette burns crusted the couch arm. Kevin's eyes watered from the smoke which had started to pour out of the cus.h.i.+ons.

Once outside, Madeline pitched the cus.h.i.+ons into the snow. Kevin could see through the clear patches of ice that crabgra.s.s grew around the cracks in the cement.

"Shouldn't we put water on it?" He felt odd about leaving the couch to smolder in the darkness, but he followed Madeline back inside. Kevin was warm in the coverall, which was a little too big around the middle and short in the legs, but Madeline's arms were covered with b.u.mps, and the hair on them stood straight out. He willed himself not to look at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"It won't do any good to pour water on it," said Madeline. "That padding burns for days. Nothing you can do. Believe me, I know." Then she threw back her head, shook her hair, and yelled up the stairs, "d.a.m.n you, Mom!"

Kevin considered sharing his secret about the burnbarrel fire, but it would mean letting on about watching her house. He looked up to see the smoke pooling at the ceiling.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here, anyway?" she asked.

"I . . . just happened to be pa.s.sing by." Kevin choked out a cough he'd been holding in.

"Through my backyard? You know I don't want you following me."

"I live farther down the river. This is a short cut."

"Well you shouldn't be shortcutting through people's yards." She Page 93 ran a hand through her smokepermeated hair. "I think you should leave now."

Just then, Mrs. Martin drifted into the stairway and turned to face Kevin with only one eye open. Her bathrobe hung so that her left breast was half visible. Kevin was struck by its softness, as compared with the firmness of Madeline's b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"What is it, Madeline?" she asked sweetly, oblivious to the smoke.

"You just about burned the place down again, Mom. That's all."

"Where's our couch?" Mrs. Martin reached into her lefthand pocket and pulled a cigarette gently out of a pack.

"Mom, you aren't listening. The couch was on fire, from one of your stupid cigarettes."

Mrs. Martin's other eye finally opened, bloodshot. Her hair lay flat on one side of her head. She supported herself by the stairway railing.

"How much did you drink tonight, anyway, Mom?"

"Is this one of your boyfriends, dear?"

"Oh, G.o.d." Madeline rolled her eyes. "Look at him, Mom. He is not one of my boyfriends. This is r.e.t.a.r.doKevin."

"What's that name?" Mrs. Martin's eye threatened to close again.

"Just Kevin, ma'am," he said.

"Oh, h.e.l.lo, Kevin."

"Nice to meet you, ma'am." Kevin stuck out his hand and shook hers, the way his father would shake a client's hand. She momentarily let go of the railing, but then took it up again.

"Did you two go out tonight?"

"Mom, get it through your head. I do not go out with Kevin." Madeline crossed her arms and looked up at the ceiling, which made an attractive gesture, Kevin thought, like certain flowers turning to face the sun.

Mrs. Martin lit her cigarette and let the match fall to the carpet.

"See, Mom, you're doing it again!" Madeline stomped as though she might lose her temper. "What did you just do with that match?"

"Don't worry, honey. I'll vacuum tomorrow." Then to Kevin, in slurred speech: "She's embarra.s.sed for you to see the house when it's such a mess.

Page 94 ''No, Mom. I am not embarra.s.sed for KevintheFreak to see our messy house. I just want you not to burn it down. That's all."

"Did you want a beer, Kevin?" asked Mrs. Martin. Kevin wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly.

"He's not old enough to drink. He's in high school, Mom."

"You kids are so conservative these days." She laughed, lighter than air. Kevin couldn't imagine why he'd thought she was an evil witch out by the burn barrel. As Madeline and her mom bickered, Kevin watched the ash on the woman's cigarette grow long and yet defy gravity. Mrs. Martin seemed so light that if she let go of the bannister again, she might just float up. He felt an overwhelming desire to take care of Mrs. Martin, to get ashtrays for her, to check every hour whether or not her couch was on fire. He stared into Mrs. Martin's freckled chest.

"Mom, do yourself up," said Madeline tiredly. "Kevin, stop looking at her chest." Madeline adjusted the front of her mother's robe and cinched it tightly across her stomach, causing Mrs. Martin to lose her balance momentarily. Kevin felt a terrific pity for the woman it must be difficult, he thought, to have a daughter as awesome as Madeline.

In May, Kevin and Madeline graduated together, but the beautiful Madeline walked with a football player while Kevin walked with his cousin Crystal, who sniffed from allergies through the whole ceremony. After that, at least one afternoon a week, Kevin drove his father's mower along the shoulder of the road to the Martin house. He fertilized the lawn, spent hours dethatching and reseeding, and then he mowed it in straight lines. Having the river right there and the big trees at the side kept the gra.s.s lush without any watering. Mrs. Martin tried to pay him, but he would accept only supper and a beer. Kevin didn't like beer, but he figured he'd try to get used to it.

"Hi, weirdo," Madeline would say without even looking at him, and then she'd shake back her hair. "I'm not hungry for dinner today, Mom."

Mrs. Martin always asked Kevin what he wanted for dinner, and he'd say that, oh, anything would be fine. She'd make herself and him a grilled cheese sandwich, a burger, or macaroni and cheese Page 95 from a package. She'd sit across the table from him as though she were his mom. He wished she'd offer him milk, but she never did. She read books even while she ate, read more than anyone he knew. His dad only read newspapers and the backs of fertilizer packages to see how much water to add.

"You should meet my dad," said Kevin one day, after the last bite of a cheese sandwich.

"Is he a nice person like you?"

"Oh, he's really nice. He has his own business, you know, and he's not married."

Mrs. Martin looked up from her book, kept looking at Kevin while she tugged a cigarette from her pack and lit it. The inside of her mouth looked dark compared to her cigarette and her teeth. Her skin looked pale, too, in the kitchen light. Kevin blushed, though he didn't know why. He tried to make conversation. "Do you like working at that plastics factory?"

Smoke poured out of her nose as she spoke. "It's kind of like dying and going to h.e.l.l five days a week."

Beer went up into Kevin's nose, and he coughed until his throat cleared. Mrs. Martin went back to reading and Kevin looked out the kitchen window to where Madeline was finis.h.i.+ng an entire bag of potato chips and sunning herself next to the driveway. She wore reflector gla.s.ses and a bikini cut so small and high over her hips that a person driving by could see almost every detail of her most personal body parts. Kevin excused himself and stepped out into the front yard.

"Why don't you lay in the backyard, by the river?" he asked.

"The river stinks. I don't go down there."

She was right the river did stink, but you got used to it. "My dad and I used to fish on the river." Kevin put his hands in his pockets. "Before he started his own lawn business."

"My dad's an architect at a firm," said Madeline. Kevin couldn't see her eyes behind the gla.s.ses. "He's designing a shopping mall in Grand Rapids right now." The way she said it made Grand Rapids sound truly grand. "He lives outside Detroit with his wife."

"Do you like the way the lawn looks now?" asked Kevin.

"I'm leaving, so I don't care. I'm getting out of this h.e.l.lhole and Page 96 going to college in Ann Arbor. My dad is going to pay for what's left after my scholars.h.i.+p."

The revelation struck Kevin like an alarm clock to the head. Of course she would go to college, and of course she had too many talents to go to the community college like other kids.

"You won't know anybody there," said Kevin.

"That's right. And n.o.body will know I come from this place."

Mrs. Martin invited Kevin to Madeline's small goingaway party in the third week of August. Madeline was a vision of loveliness in a redandwhitecheckered miniskirt and matching halter top. Kevin hadn't thought an architect would look much different from a landscaper, but Mr. Martin turned out to be a tall, darkhaired, cleanshaven man with a distinct hairline-he looked to be of a different species altogether from Kevin's father. Kevin couldn't imagine Mr. Martin ever having been married to Mrs. Martin. Even now, Mr. Martin kept straightening his napkin and looking at Mrs. Martin as though she were overgrown limbs that someone needed to lop off and toss on the compost pile. Mrs. Martin had started out sober, but, upon the arrival of Mr. Martin, went into the kitchen and poured herself a half vodka, half orange juice in a tall gla.s.s. She grew unsteady and her mouth froze in a loopy smile, as though it was made out of playdough and stuck there on her face. Madeline didn't treat her mother with her usual impatience today Madeline ignored her entirely and hung at her father's side.

Mrs. Martin was going to be so alone without Madeline that Kevin felt like crying for her. He had to arrange a meeting soon between Mrs. Martin and his father.

Perhaps they could speed up the dating process and get married right away. Madeline might take years to come around to Kevin, but Mrs. Martin seemed genuinely openminded.

After everyone waved goodbye to Madeline and Mr. Martin, who was driving her to Ann Arbor, Kevin ran home to find his father-through the woods, through three other backyards, away from a German Shepherd that chased him, barking, to the end of a twentyfoot chain. When he got there, the truck was gone, so Kevin Page 97 sprinted a halfmile to the Pub, where he found his dad at a table with Officer Harding and a guy in a postal uniform.