Florida(24)

A minute later she strode off the bed and went to the window and, leaning for the curtains on each side, pressed her chest against the glass, to tease. The man on the tractor wasn’t a man but a young boy. He was laughing.

In the curtained dark again, they heard the tractor moving off, then the flurries of roosters down in the village.

Nice surprise, Grant said, sliding his hand down her thigh. Hope we didn’t wake them up. He stretched, lazy. Amanda imagined their hosts in the room below: Manfred staring blankly at the wall. Drooling. Genevieve with her passive-aggressive buzzing beneath the duvet.

Who cares, Amanda said.

Well, Grant said. There’s Leo, too.

I forgot, she said.

Poor kid, Grant said. Everyone always forgets about Leo.



* * *



—

Amanda went down the stairs in her running clothes. She passed Leo’s room, then doubled back.

Leo stood on the high window ledge, his wisp of a body pressed against the glass. Here, the frames rattled if you breathed on them wrong. There was rot in the wood older than Amanda herself. Leo was such an intense child, and so purposeful, that she watched him until she remembered hearing once that glass was just a very slow liquid. Then she ran.

He was so light for four years old. He turned in her arms and squeezed her neck furiously and whispered, It’s you.

Leo, she said. That is so dangerous. You could have died.

I was looking at the bird, he said. He pressed a finger to the glass, and she saw, down on the white rocks, some sort of raptor with a short beak. Huge and dangerous even dead.

It fell out of the sky, he said. I was watching the black go blue. And the bird fell. I saw it. Boom. The bad thing, I thought, but actually it’s just a bird.

The bad thing? she said, but Leo didn’t answer. She said, Leo, you are one eerie mammer jammer.

My mom says that, he said. She says I give her the wet willies. But I need my breakfast now, he said, and wiped his nose on the strap of her sports bra.



* * *



—

Leo bit carefully into his toast and Nutella, watching Amanda. She’d never met a child with beady eyes before. Beadiness arrives after long slow ekes of disappointment, usually in middle age. She had to turn away from him and saw the light spread into the pool and set it aglow.

Are you a kid or a mom? Leo said.

Jesus, Leo, she said. Neither. Yet.

Why not? he said.

She didn’t believe in lying to children. This she might reconsider if she had one. Grant and I’ve been too poor, she said.

Why? he said.

She shrugged. Student loans. I work with homeless people. His company is getting off the ground. The usual. But we’re trying. I may be someone’s mom soon. Maybe next year.

So you’re not poor anymore? he said.

You practice radical bluntness, I see, she said. We are, yes. But I can’t wait forever.

Leo looked at the giraffe tattoo that ran up from her elbow to nibble on her ear. It made him vaguely excited. He looked at the goosebumps between her sports bra and running shorts. My mom says only Americans jog. She says they have no sense of dignity.

Ha! Amanda said. I know your mom from back when her name was Jennifer. She’s as American as they come.

As they come? As who comes? Genevieve said from the doorway. So much coming this morning! she said, showing her large white teeth.

Sorry about that, Amanda said, but she didn’t mean it.

Genevieve walked lightly across the flagstone floor and kissed her son on his pale cowlick. Her tunic was see-through silk, the bikini beneath black. She wore sunglasses inside.

Hi, Jennifer, Leo said slyly.

Too much wine last night? Amanda said. Was the restaurant worth all of its stars?

But Genevieve was looking at her son. Did you just call me Jennifer? she said.

Aunt Manda told me, he said. And someone is coming today. The girl. The one that’s taking care of me until we can go home.

Genevieve propped her sunglasses on her crown and made a face. Amanda closed her eyes and said, Jesus, Genevieve. Mina’s coming. My niece.

Oh my God, Genevieve said. Oh, that’s right. What time’s her flight? Three. She did some calculations and groaned and said, Whole day shot to hell.

Because you had some extremely important business, Amanda said. Pilates. Flower arranging. Yet another trip to yet another cave to taste yet another champagne. Such a sacrifice to take a few hours to pick up Mina, who’s basically my sister, the person who will be watching your child for the rest of the summer for the price of a plane ticket—

I get it, Genevieve said.

—a ticket, Amanda was saying, that Grant and I bought so that we could go out to dinner at least once on our only vacation in four years, instead of babysitting for Leo for a week while you go out.

The women both looked at Leo, flinching.

Whom I love very much, Amanda said. But still.

Do you feel better? Genevieve said. Some people just don’t mellow with age, she said to her son.

Leo slid off his stool and went out the veranda doors, down the long slope toward the pool.

If I didn’t love you like a sister, I’d throttle the shit out of you, Amanda said.

Her boy gone, Genevieve’s smile was, too. The skin of her face was silk that had been clenched in a hand. I guess you have the right to be upset, she said. I’ve been using you. But you know that food’s the only thing that wakes Manfred up and Leo can’t go to those restaurants.