Women and Other Animals Part 9

But now that the celery was growing here again, folks didn't have to leave this neighborhood the way she and her mother had. People could plant and tend huge gardens that watered themselves from below, and if they canned and froze, the vegetables could feed them half the winter. People's houses could be cleaned and painted, and windows could be thrown open to let in the sweet peppery smell. Plaster and drywall could be patched so that spiders were relegated to attics, and people's lives could be made lush the way they once were, as fertile as when her granny worked the celery.

Georgina adjusted the rearview mirror and in it saw Andy walking toward her from the road. Andy had grown up far from the river, in the neighborhood Georgina and her mother moved to when Georgina was fifteen, a neighborhood like the one she lived in now, where the ranch houses had decorative shutters, aluminum or vinyl siding, and attached garages. Georgina first had made out with Andy in his father's car, and then they'd had furious s.e.x at every opportunity in his parents' paneled bas.e.m.e.nt. Once he had torn her s.h.i.+rt in his hurry to undress her. She'd told herself he was pa.s.sionate, but she knew now that he was devouring her the way she used to eat those cheap pastries she bought with her nightcrawler money, without even tasting them.

She turned to watch Andy lumber toward her, his boots sinking with each step. Georgina's white tennis shoes were still clean as they stretched for the pedals. She hadn't bogged down as she walked, Page 133 partly because she was lighter than Andy, but also because she knew how to place her feet on this kind of mud. Andy saw nothing in this neighborhood but wood to steal and, in November, deer to shoot at. Outside Georgina's bedroom window, the deer used to travel through the morning fog like the starved ghosts of ponies, alone or in families, on their way to drink at the river. The deer were the food of last resort. In or out of season, a person shot one if he needed the meat and dressed it out on his own kitchen table. For Andy's ignorant selfishness, the mud would swallow him.

The truck windows were rolled up, and Georgina locked the doors with the automatic b.u.t.ton as Andy reached her. He pulled on the door handle, but Georgina looked away and fiddled with the radio, turning channels until she found a female voice wailing on a country station. Georgina turned up the volume loud enough that she couldn't hear Andy, and she put her finger on top of the door lock b.u.t.ton each time he inserted his key and tried to turn it. Georgina watched the mouth she had not been able to stop kissing in that bas.e.m.e.nt rec room and on a honeymoon hotel bed in Mexico. The mouth shouted, barely audible above the radio, "Let me in the G.o.dd.a.m.n truck. You're gonna get it stuck worse."

At their wedding reception, she and Andy had fed each other mouthfuls of a threetiered wedding cake that Georgina had chosen from among a hundred nearly identical designs. Then they'd returned to their table, each with a single tower of pure white cake. Georgina ate her own piece, sc.r.a.ped the plate and licked the fork, while Andy ate about half of his and ignored the rest. When he later clunked the plate with a beer gla.s.s, his remaining cake toppled and lay collapsed.

Georgina looked straight ahead toward the river as she s.h.i.+fted into first, what Andy called "crawl," what the men from this neighborhood called "swamp gear." The wheels all began to spin beneath her.

Andy's face grew red outside the window. Georgina jammed the big k.n.o.b into second gear. The wheels spun faster, and Georgina felt the truck sink. As she s.h.i.+fted into third, Andy began pounding on the gla.s.s with both fists. In his crybaby desperation he looked like an even bigger man than he was. Just over a year ago, in his Page 134 rented tuxedo, he had picked up Georgina in her dolly lace and, to the cheers of his brother and friends, carried her squealing out to the parking lot, slung over his shoulder like something he'd shot up north. Now mud from the front tires flew all over him, up his big left arm, onto his cheek, like cake raining on him, a crazy chocolate cake tossed handful after handful by some dirty, bada.s.s bride.

Georgina looked over her shoulder and saw a policeman at the edge of the road, slimhipped with his arms crossed over his chest, probably the guy who'd called her "ma'am." Andy's little brother appeared beside the cop, his mouth hanging open as usual, his monkey arms dangling. No doubt Andy's brother intended to pull this truck out with his own truck. They'd had it all figured out, except they hadn't counted on Georgina showing up. She s.h.i.+fted into fourth at four thousand revolutions per minute. She thought of the apple cake her granny used to make every fall, "plain apple cake" she used to call it, and Georgina's salivary glands shot spit through her mouth.

Andy fell away from the side of the truck and leaned against a tree, an immense swamp oak thrusting upward like the world's biggest celery stalk, a tree that had somehow defeated the chain saws of a thousand men like Andy who couldn't grow anything but gra.s.s. On the other side of the truck, the smallheaded man watched patiently with no expression, as if he saw this sort of thing all the time, as if just yesterday he'd seen the farmer march down from the hill and shoot his daughter's pony, as if Georgina, the cop, Andy, and his brother were just another collection of fools. Georgina closed her eyes and floored the accelerator pedal. As the wheels beneath her tore at the ground, she felt herself easing that pony free. She saw herself smas.h.i.+ng layer after layer of her wedding cake with both fists. With the big wheels of the truck, she imagined she was cultivating, at last, the heavy black river earth that a generation had neglected.

Page 135 Running The path behind my house joins a dirt road leading to Turtle Lake, and on that road my nextdoor neighbor's fifteenyearold daughter, Amber, is parked with a guy in a Camaro. The nine hundred acres including Turtle Lake was willed to the Audubon Society by a detergent king who had no descendants, and it is now preserved as a bird sanctuary and wetland. Most evenings I jog the path around the lake, about three miles. Days I work as a biologist in the company founded by the detergent king, now a pharmaceuticals research firm, and I live in a house that the company located for my husband and me in order to lure us to Michigan. My husband is a chemist, and my own current research involves the animaltesting phase of a drug which shows promise in preventing breast cancer.

When I cross the dirt road, I pa.s.s within ten feet of the Camaro, but neither Amber nor the boy notices me. Teenagers ignore married women in their thirties who are not their teachers or their mothers or their friends' mothers. Teenagers make out in cars here all the time and sometimes brave the muck to swim, but with the exception of Amber, the birds interest me far more. Amber has long, straight, lemoncolored hair, a vibrant hue she conjured up recently, perhaps to distress her mother. Presently, the back of her head is pressed against the pa.s.sengerside window and her face Page 136 and fingers are obscured by the boy whose back and hair she is grasping. Just last night I saw her stubbed fingernails with their dark, chipped polish, and I've listened to her mother Jackie repeatedly on the subject of nailbiting. Amber's mother has offered her thirty dollars if she'll stop chewing her nails for a month.

For the last few weeks, male redwinged blackbirds have been staking out territories as they're doing now, perching on sumacs and last year's cattails, scrawking at one another across the marsh, exposing their red epaulettes and rippling their shoulders to make the marks throb. Brownstreaked females peck seeds nearby. They seem disinterested, but soon they'll perk up and choose mates. The females build their nests close to the ground.

My husband and I are not inclined toward having children, though lately I haven't felt entirely settled in this decision. When my husband takes a position, he tends to embrace it wholeheartedly. (''Think of all that college tuition we're going to save!" he told his sister on the phone recently, giving a cheerful response to one of her critical comments. "Be happy. This way we can leave our fortune to your kids.") But I worry that if I express my doubts, he might suddenly change his mind and want children as much as he doesn't want them now.

Amber's mom Jackie has one child and no husband. I've only gotten to know Jackie because she is bursting to talk about Amber the minute the girl goes off to school, and in all but the worst weather I'm sitting outside drinking coffee at that time, watching the feeders from a bench my husband built for me. This morning, from opposite sides of the splitrail fence, Jackie and I watched Amber get on the bus.

"Two weeks until school's out," said Jackie. "One more absence and she fails the semester."

Jackie was wearing her terrycloth robe, and I noticed the rectangle of her crushproof cigarette pack in the pocket. After Amber leaves for school, Jackie usually goes back to bed.

"They've got a strict policy at that school," said Jackie. "Ten absences, you flunk."

"That is strict," I said. I approve of strict policies.

"I found cigarettes in her backpack last night."

Page 137 I could have told Jackie that children of parents who smoke tend to smoke. I could have told her that rifling through her daughter's belongings will destroy whatever trust they have between them. As a nonparent, however, I nodded and sipped coffee.

"She told me they were her friend's cigarettes, that she was carrying them for a friend."

Before I quit smoking, the best cigarette of the day was always the first one, the one I used to have at this time with my coffee, after my lungs had cleaned themselves during sleep.

"She expects me to believe that," said Jackie. "Does she think I'm stupid?"

I shook my head in sympathy. Parenting and growing up both seem like overwhelming prospects, far more difficult than quitting smoking and maintaining a program of exercise.

At the stream which feeds Turtle Lake, I clatter over a wood and metal bridge. Before it empties, the stream meanders over a marsh, where I sometimes see great blue herons and, on a good day, less common species such as green herons and loons. During the spring migration birdcount, my husband and I sighted a wood duck perched on a dead branch above the water. His harlequin pattern of green, blue, burgundy, and white looked like a map of the world. And why shouldn't the world be drawn on a duck? And why not on a duck that was hunted nearly to extinction at the turn of the century, probably by the very people who admired it most, the people who should have been taking care of the population. If a particular female of this species builds a safelooking nest twelve feet above the ground in a good tree, other females will drop by and lay their eggs in it, which is why one female may be seen herding as many as forty tiny, fluffy ducklings toward the water. With so many predators about, however, many of them don't survive the trip.

When I am as far from my house and Amber's boyfriend's car as this path takes me, I spy a male and female mallard in the gra.s.s. The female shakes her tail feathers.

The male nudges closer, not quite touching her. As I pa.s.s, the ducks s.h.i.+ft nervously and pause in their ritual. A few days ago, in this same spot, two male mallards were jumping on a female, almost crus.h.i.+ng her. The female kept Page 138 slipping out from under and waddling forward, but before she could get the momentum to take flight, one or the other would jump on her again.

My neighbor Jackie's face always looks tired, but she has beautiful dark eyes and straight teeth, very white against her bronzed skin. Perhaps she doesn't know that the artificial light in tanning salons can do nearly as much damage as sunlight. She has the slimhipped figure that until recently I thought exercise might give me. Earlier this week I asked her, "How do you stay in shape?" Jackie's nails are longish and always red mine are clipped short and unpolished.

"I'm a waitress, remember. I run my a.s.s off eight hours a s.h.i.+ft." She crushed out a cigarette on the top fencerail and snapped the b.u.t.t into her own gra.s.s. "Pretty birds, those yellow ones." She motioned with a nod. I have read that when food is hard to find, some overstressed parent birds feed their screaming young bits of plastic and cigarette b.u.t.ts.

A halfdozen male goldfinches have appeared on and around the thistle feeder this week, their winter graygreen exchanged for brilliant yellow. Goldfinches breed late into the season, either raising several broods a year or waiting until August or even September to make a nest. Last year we had a surprise ice storm in October that killed a particularly late batch of goldfinch chicks in our side yard. Because the leaves had not yet fallen, the weight from the ice bent trees and bushes to the ground, and from the woods behind our house we heard the gunshots of breaking limbs. My husband and I shoveled through the slush the next morning and buried the chicks, nest and all. For a week I didn't walk in the woods for fear of what other dead birds and animals I might find.

Jackie has given Amber a nine o'clock curfew on school nights, but because of her work hours she is often not there to enforce it. When I first met Jackie, I figured she was older than me, but she is only thirtytwo, which means she had Amber when she was seventeen. Premature wrinkling is another good reason not to smoke.

Running is something, like smoking, that I've left and come back to dozens of times, but I haven't smoked since we moved into this house, and I've been a more dedicated runner as well. In high Page 139 school, I belonged to the debate club and the science club, but I should have joined the crosscountry team, because it took me a decade to learn what the coach and gym teacher would have taught me in a season about running and my body. When I was Amber's age, I was not pretty, and my real concern was getting a scholars.h.i.+p at a good college, so maybe it's not surprising that I didn't have any boyfriends.

Excepting the occasional detention, Amber evidently doesn't partic.i.p.ate in any sanctioned afterschool activities.

"Amber isn't in anything?" I asked, surprised.

Her mother gave me a puzzled look and exhaled smoke. "What would she be in?"

I shrugged and watched the cigarette travel to the fence. Smoking was the only bad habit I'd ever had, and I just couldn't stop missing it. "A sports team?" I suggested.

"Debate? Drama?" Even as I spoke, I knew how stupid I sounded to Jackie. Though smart enough to achieve, Jackie had no doubt been bored with high school and saw no reason to pretend otherwise. She probably had older boyfriends, and had s.e.x, and smoked pot. Had I known her then, I would have felt both superior to her and jealous of her, which is more or less how I feel now.

Where the path nears the water again, I see another mallard pair floating. The difference between the s.e.xes in some birds is stunning. Compare the iridescentgreen head of this male with the female's plain browns. The male needs that coloring for females to notice him, and the female relies on her camouflage-she'll pull out her own feathers to line her nest, which she will then be unable to protect from racc.o.o.ns, crows, and snakes. Above and to the east, a turkey vulture circles vulture numbers are increasing in Michigan, in part because they eat roadkill, which at this time of year they partially digest and throw up for their young. The s.e.xes look alike.

Ornithologists say that vulture nests are hot and smelly.

A filmy white grocery bag lies half drowned at the lake's edge, probably blown here by the wind. Back there, near the wood and metal bridge, I saw the stiff plastic from a cheese and crackers lunch package, the kind that consumer groups recently determined did not have the nutrition a kid needs from a meal. When I have time on Page 140 the weekends, I come out here and pick up the fastfood wrappers and drink cups and occasionally, used condoms. A small effort on my part keeps the place fairly clean, which may well be preventing more people from leaving trash. Coming around the final stretch, I see Amber get out of the car and run up the path that leads to our houses. The sun is setting, so it must be almost nine o'clock. Jackie will either be home or she'll call home from the bar to check on Amber. Last night Jackie called my house.

"I'm sorry for bothering you," she said. Behind her surprisingly clear voice was music, shouting, and the clanking of gla.s.ses and pool b.a.l.l.s.

"It's no bother. What can I do for you?" My husband had fallen asleep on the couch with the new issue of Science over his face.

"I know it's late, but could you go over to my house and look in on Amber?" When she paused to draw on her cigarette, I could almost taste the smoke. "The phone has been busy for forty minutes, and I'm wondering if she took it off the hook."

"I'll go check. Call me back in ten minutes."

The living room next door was dimly lit, and the curtains were closed. As I knocked at the front, I would almost swear I heard the back door open and close, and someone might have been running behind the house, toward the dirt path.

"Mom's at work," said Amber. It had taken her more than a minute to answer the door.

"I know. She called and asked me to check on you. Your phone's been busy."

"Mom doesn't trust me." Amber spoke matteroffactly. Her black fingernail polish was chewed most of the way off her short, ragged nails. Her cuticles were ripped, and on some fingers that cuticle skin was red and slightly swollen as though infected. Weren't there ointments a person applied that tasted like grapefruit rind? Wasn't there a school psychologist she could see? Was there an amount of money that would induce her to stop mauling herself? Somebody had to do something! I wanted to shake her shoulders and scream into her face, "Stop it, you stupid girl, or you're going to end up pregnant!"

Instead I said, "Your more was worried."

Page 141 Amber shrugged and bit once at a hangnail on her middle finger, then stopped herself. As the clenched hand fell to her side, she stiffened and stood waiting for me to leave. She was as tall as I am, but she looked muscular and fertile, and, despite her mutilated fingertips, confident. She reminded me of girls from high school sports teams, girls with springy footsteps who walked right down the middle of hallways, girls who, even at fifteen and sixteen, thought they had mastery over their bodies.

"I must have knocked the phone off the hook," she said.

"Your mother said you were having trouble with math," I said. My heart beat as though I were presenting findings to my superiors, results which called into question my own earlier research. "I can help you with math. Or any other schoolwork. I'd be glad to help. Really, Amber."

"Thanks. I'll let you know." She sounded both condescending and suspicious of me, and on the way home, I told myself I was glad she didn't want help, because tutoring would cut into what little time I had in the evenings with my husband. We don't go out to movies or plays nearly as often as we'd like. Amber doesn't know I'm behind her now as she runs.

The Camaro boyfriend backs out of his parking place-too quickly, I think. If he loved Amber, he would sit for a minute and watch her figure disappear down the woods path. Instead, he screeches toward the asphalt, spitting up gravel without looking back to see either me or Amber, whose bright hair rises and falls, whose arms flail. Her leather sandals are heavy and loose-I wore similar sandais at one time, made from actual tire treads. Today I wear the best technical running shoes I've ever owned, with an adjustment for p.r.o.nation.

Amber wears hiphugger bellbottoms which she hikes up as she runs, and this, along with the clunky sandals, slows her. The clumsiness of youth surprises me, for certainly Amber is stronger than me. Though her running is loosejointed and effortless, she has no idea how to run.

I could show her how to breathe and stride, how to hold her arms so as not to waste energy, how to dress to move easily. If she wanted to join the debate club, I could help her construct solid arguments Page 142 and do the necessary research. At this moment, I want to share with the girl everything I've learned-about men, about algebra, about breast cancer-but she is not interested, and in any case she would break my heart with her crazy hair and chewedup nails, and with the way she goes with boys who don't appreciate her. I speed up slightly to narrow the distance between us, though not enough to catch up with her. She doesn't hear me behind her as together we travel the path that leads to our separate houses.

Page 143 Taking Care of the O'Learys The twostory monstrosity rose in the distance before them, its roof a bright and humiliating blue-Barb had sewn together four overlapping vinyl tarps to keep the weather out of their rooms until she and Martin could buy the materials to finish s.h.i.+ngling. The house disappeared behind trees as they neared the driveway. Couldn't they just keep going, Barb wondered, drive right past that G.o.dforsaken ruin? Steer the pickup into a field? As the sky darkened, she'd strip and lie naked on the cool metal truck bed and pull Martin down onto her. What if she threw herself across the truck seat right now and pressed Martin against the driver's side door? The steering wheel would whip around, and the truck would swerve into the trees or crash through a wall into somebody's living room.

But the G.o.dforsaken ruin to which they were returning was their home, and thirteenyearold Rebecca was waiting for them. Gravel flew up as they turned into the quartermile dirt driveway. Barb thought of the creatures-opossums, squirrels, cats, and dogs-that might dash beneath their wheels. As he maneuvered through potholes, Martin wrapped his hand around Barb's leg and squeezed. Though a moment ago Barb had wanted to mash her body into his, she now stiffened against his hand.

"What's the matter, Barbie?"

Page 144 "Aren't you going a little fast?"

"Do you want to drive?" he asked, taking his hands off the wheel.

"Just be careful." She hated the way she sounded, but she wished he'd slow down and watch what was in front of him.

"You worry too much." He slowed slightly. "Hey, you haven't seen any bats around here, have you?"

Barb hadn't. They bounced over the gravel to the house that used to belong to Martin's parents, and to Martin's father's parents before that. Barb hoped that Rebecca hadn't let m.u.f.fin outside-it was a miracle Martin hadn't yet run over their dog. At their old house, the dog had stayed inside a fenced backyard. Barb had liked their small brick house next to the post office, within walking distance of the dentist's office where she worked nine to three. Rebecca had a halfdozen friends within a few blocks, and Martin had walked to the library after dinner most evenings. Living across from the mortuary had made Barb uneasy at first, but Peas Brothers turned out to be nice, quiet neighbors. Then Martin's poor crazy mother had died, and Martin's father offered them the big family house, along with its ridiculous tax delinquency-ridiculous because Mr. O'Leary could have paid the taxes for the last four years but hadn't bothered. Martin had refused to let the dilapidated place go, so the only choice had been to lose the house in town with the window boxes and walltowall carpeting. Barb wondered every day if she'd given in too easily.

Their headlights lit a pair of red metallic eyes beside the driveway. Too close to the ground to be m.u.f.fin, it was probably a rabbit, as likely to dart in front of the car as not. When they had some extra money and time, Barb would figure out how to run some kind of barrier, chicken wire maybe, along the driveway-after they finished s.h.i.+ngling the roof and about ten other projects, that is. Martin searched the trees as he flew down the driveway, watching for bats. He'd build bat boxes, he said. The nature center would give him a pamphlet showing him how.

A car was parked in Martin's spot, and though Barb said, "Somebody's here," Martin only pulled his attention from the trees and swerved to avoid it at the last second. It was an old Toyota with California plates and a smashed rear b.u.mper.

Page 145 "Who the heck's that?" He screeched to a stop.

Barb got out and rolled her shoulders. "Maybe it's a friend of Becky's," she said, not that she'd like the idea of Rebecca having friends whose cars were registered two thousand miles away. She and Martin walked along the stone path leading up to the house. Martin had hardly changed since they'd made out in the back of his first pickup. He worked at the same smallengine sales and repair shop halfway between here and town, though now he was the manager. "Bat boxes," Martin said again, taking Barb's hand and swinging it. Barb was continually surprised at his competence each time they took on a new house project, but getting him to finish the old job before starting a new one could be a problem.

They entered the kitchen to see two girls with chairs pulled up to the kitchen counter. When the girls simultaneously turned their round faces toward her, Barb felt the ground give way. Two pretty noses, two heads of blonde hair cut blunt at the earlobes. Two Rebeccas? Martin burst past Barb and held out his arms.

"MarthaMarmalade! Where'd you come from?"

"Los Angeles," Martha squeaked as Martin squeezed the breath from her.

"Why didn't you call?" Martin let loose, then bearhugged his little sister again.

Martha grinned at Barb over Martin's shoulder and waved. Barb's surprise turned to shame at having a guest see her kitchen, even if it was only her sisterinlaw. Not that Barb had stained the floor tile or neglected to paint the window frames for fifty years, nor had she worn the porcelain of the sink through to the cast iron. Barb would never have let a grease fire burn long enough to inflict those marks on the ceiling.

Barb thought for a moment that her daughter was holding a cigarette between two fingers with chipped red nail polish, but she traced the hand to Martha. The smoke fretted toward the twelvefoot ceilings to hang like cobwebs. Martha had not even come back for her mother's funeral-no one had been able to contact her. At close range, Martha's age showed in the lines around her eyes. Rebecca's complexion was perfect and clear.

"Did the two of you get something to eat?" Barb asked.

Page 146 ''We're fine, Mom."

Martin clasped his sister a third time. "How long are you here?" he asked.

"I'm not sure." Martha looked at Barb.

"Well, stay as long as you like," said Martin. "We've got plenty of room, all right. Don't we, Barbie?" He spread out his arms as if to fill in some of the s.p.a.ce. "Hey, let's have a nightcap."

"I can't believe you guys are living here," said Martha.

"Mom can't either," said Rebecca.

Four months ago, in January, when Barb, Martin, and Rebecca first moved into their cold, crumbling bedrooms, Martin kept pacing the hallway shouting "All this s.p.a.ce!" and stretching out his arms. Rebecca had followed his lead, singing "Give me s.p.a.ce!" and then the two had started dancing around, waving their arms, celebrating the surrounding decay like members of some demented tribe. Barb had liked the size of their old house there, she knew at all times which rooms her daughter and husband occupied. Whenever they had visited Martin's parents in this house, she'd felt uneasy about the big rooms filled with cobwebs and the dirty walls, not to mention the way Mr. O'Leary flirted with her, as though she were not his daughterinlaw, but some bar waitress. After he buried his wife, Mr. O'Leary packed up what he wanted, left everything else, and moved to Florida, where, he said, he'd be chasing rich widows.

After they got Martha settled into the cleanest of the empty rooms, Barb lay in bed and stared at some moonlit lathe showing through the wall. If she were to push it with her hand, the piaster would crumble, and she would see right into the bathroom. On the other side she could break through above the stairway. She smelled mold-tomorrow she'd spray again with disinfectant. Martin rolled over in his sleep, cupped his body around hers, and placed an arm across her. She adjusted to be closer to him, then lay awake, feeling his body pressing all around her like a warm, small dwelling.

When she next awoke, Martin had turned away and spread himself across twothirds of the bed, snoring in a private bliss. Barb heard creaking throughout the house.

When they'd first moved in, there had been families of red squirrels living in the attic, but Barb Page 147 thought sleepily that these other noises were probably just the ghosts of O'Leary's, too loud to be contained in the nether world: drunken, backclapping, overemotional ghosts, howling at their own jokes the way Martin's father did, their skeletons' elbows clacking as they nudged each other.

Martin's mother, poor Mrs. O'Leary, had been drugged halfnumb as long as Barb had known her, wandering in and out of rooms like a thicklimbed, badlywired Stepford wife. Barb had once seen Mrs. O'Leary carry an ashtray into the kitchen and dump it into the pot of beef stew instead of the garbage pail beside the stove.

Barb fished the cigarette filters out of the pot and never said a word. And for years Mrs. O'Leary had saved potato water, first in quartjars, and then in fivegallon pails. It was full of vitamins, she explained to Barb through badlyapplied orangish lipstick that did not suit her complexion.

"Why don't you dump them out?" Barb asked her fatherinlaw before Mrs. O'Leary died. Marrying into this family might well have been Mrs. O'Leary's downfall.

Barb had seen the pictures of Mrs. O'Leary as a young woman, looking as normal as Barb herself.

"That's her thing," Martin's father had said. "Let her do her thing." As Barb had turned away from him, he reached out and pinched her bottom. "Heehee," he said, like some r.e.t.a.r.ded demon.

When Mrs. O'Leary died, there had been twentytwo buckets of potato water molding in the big kitchen. Barb had mopped every day since they moved in, trying to remove those sunken bucket rings from the kitchen's fakebrick white linoleum. Replacing the tile in the huge room was a job they couldn't yet afford when more pressing concerns, such as s.h.i.+ngling the roof, lay before them. Now Barb had to make sure that Martin didn't get distracted and start building bat boxes instead. She closed her eyes and listened to his sweet, easy breathing.

Barb was up by sixthirty, and she had French toast ready by the time Rebecca ambled to the table. That smooth skin, those nearlyred lips, that thin, elegant nose.

How had such an exquisite creature sprung from her? Rebecca was taller than her, as tall as Martha already, which made Barb feel vaguely guilty, as though she had allowed the girl to grow up too quickly.

Page 148 "Mom, stop staring at me. I'm trying to eat."

Barb thought she could still see Martha's smoke drifting around from last night. She stared up at the ceiling, willing the paint chips-almost certainly lead-not to fall.

"Where's Dad?" asked Rebecca.

"He's getting up."

Rebecca turned and screamed, "Daad, hurry up!"

"Don't yell," said Barb. She envisioned a stormcolored paint chip shaking loose at the vibration from Rebecca's voice, failing in slow motion toward a bite of French toast en route to the girl's mouth.

"Coming!" floated down the stairway.