Universal Harvester(14)

“That’s terrible,” Sarah Jane almost said, but she stopped herself, because she wasn’t sure it was what she meant. Maybe it’s terrible, the dead bird inside the gourd, the gourd full of wasps hanging from the rail on the porch, the wet spot spreading on the bottom of the gourd. But maybe there was a better explanation for the spot, something about dewpoints and organic matter and the lifespan of an empty gourd. Nothing was really certain. She reached into her purse.

“I brought two. I didn’t want to answer a bunch of questions,” she said instead, handing Lisa the tapes, their bulky cases dully reflecting a little sun. She heard the hum inside the gourd grow a little louder and dutifully took a step back.

“They will swarm,” said Lisa, turning discreetly, tapes in hand. Sarah Jane followed her inside; they stood behind the screen door, watching as a few wasps ventured out to see if the shadows they’d felt required a response. “I’ve had to run inside real quick a couple of times.”

“Couldn’t you call Orkin and just get rid of them?” asked Sarah Jane.

But Lisa had a dreamy look on her face; the sentry wasps were tracing patterns in the sunlight. “I guess,” she said quietly, still under the spell of the lazy figure eights the wasps followed in the air. “But it seems kind of mean. It’s their home now, you know?”

She closed the door and turned, heading for the cellar steps. “It’s just nature,” she said conclusively, but also, as it seemed to Sarah Jane, sadly, as if somewhere in the question of the birds and the wasps there was something to be regretted, but nowhere that any reasonable person might fix the blame.





9

“Hello?”

“Big man? It’s Dad.”

“Hi.”

“Hi. I just thought I’d call and see if—hey, listen. I was thinking about getting dinner in Des Moines.” A beat. “There’s a friend from work, we thought we might get dinner together.”

Steve listened to the short silence after he’d said it; it was a rift in something. Jeremy felt it too. They almost always had dinner together. It gave shape to their days.

“Oh, OK,” said Jeremy.

“If you’d rather I—” Steve looked at the wall of his office; he was calling from work. Next to an old family portrait on the wall above the desk, there was a printout of a Love is … cartoon. Love is … the greatest feeling you can feel! It had been there for years; it came from another time.

“No, it’s no problem, Dad. I’ll fix myself something. See you later?”

“I won’t be late,” said Steve. “See you later, then.”

“Sure,” said Jeremy. It was true. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“If you’re up later, let’s visit a little,” his father said finally, trying to hide the effort it took to say it under the easy burble he used when talking to clients.

“All right,” said Jeremy.

*

He was at the Spaghetti Works in Des Moines. Sitting across the table from him, eating a piece of garlic bread, was Shauna Kinzer; she was an office manager at a lumberyard. He’d been nodding casual hellos to her for several years; a couple of times they’d had lunch, nothing fancy, just an Applebee’s out near a site they were both involved with. In the middle of fine-tuning the details on a big job, he’d asked if she’d like to get dinner, and she’d given him an easy, natural yes that filled him with a quiet warmth. He’d been nervous, worried that she could see it. It had been a long time. She’d ordered the pepperoni chicken.

“Chicken all right?” he said.

“It’s great,” she said, smiling at him. “I always try to order something I wouldn’t make for myself at home.”

Steve twirled his spaghetti against a spoon and gave a small laugh. “My house has two grown men in it,” he said. “We eat a lot of spaghetti.”

“Are you the cook?”

“We take turns,” he said. “If you brown your own beef you can make a pretty nice sauce. We get kind of competitive.”

It seemed early, but she saw an opening, and she liked him. “How long have you two—” Not quite. “When was—”

“Winter of ninety-four.” He stabbed and twirled. There was a small beat; kitchen sounds, other tables talking, laughing at something. “Christmastime.”

“I can’t imagine.”

Steve chewed his food for a minute, and swallowed, giving the moment the time it needed. “It’s all right now. Thanks, though. Honestly,” he said, and he meant it. From early on he’d had to hear lots of people tell him how Linda was in a better place now. Right out of the gate: She’s in a better place now. Why did they say that?

“How old—”

“Jeremy,” he said. “Sixteen. That’s really the hardest part, you know. You don’t know what to say. To him. To anybody, I guess, but … it was hard.”

“I am so sorry, Steve.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “We miss her, you know. But we know she’d want us to be strong, that’s what she would have wanted. I wish she could see our boy, you know. He—he’s a good boy,” he said, his voice breaking a little, because he hardly ever talked about it; he was surprised to find himself feeling so open.