Florida(29)

Grant turned the car on and pushed up the hill, home.



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    The women gave out little yodels of surprise when they arrived to find the men in the kitchen in aprons, chopping vegetables. The men looked at Mina when she came out of the car, and Leo felt power turning and beginning to flow in her direction, like the stream at the bottom of the hillside when he shifted rocks in its bed. Outside smelled like rich earth, like cows. Manfred had poured them all champagne and brought the flutes out on a platter, and they drank it on the wet white gravel, looking at the way the vines sparked with late light, the green and purple tinge to the edge of sky. To Mina, they all said. Even Leo got an inch of champagne, which he had always loved like cola. He downed it. His mother was watching his father carefully over her drink, and it was true his father had a dangerous pink in his cheeks. Badness moved in Leo. He stole into the kitchen, now dim with dusk, and to the fireplace, the small ceramic box that had Allumettes written on it, or so Manda had said a few days earlier with her shy French. Leo had to wait for Grant to come in, bouncing Mina’s suitcases up the stairs. His mother and Mina followed behind, his mother explaining the wonky shower, Leo’s schedule, how Leo couldn’t swim yet so everyone had to be careful with the pool. Leo’s father gravely handed him a purple macaron and turned back to cook, and Leo put the sweet thing up the chimney for the pigeons to eat. He hated macarons. He came out on the grass, past the pool, down into the cool orchard with its sticky smell. It appeared that the falcon had grown while he’d gone. It was huge with the shadows that had fallen on it. He stood over the bird on its nest and said words in German, then English, then French. He made some magic words up and said them. In one of his father’s old books, back at home in the castle in the Alps, there had been a drawing of an old bird set aflame, and in the next illustration, it turned into a glorious new bird. Leo thought with longing of his own bed there, his own books and his own toys, and the mountain in his window when he awoke. He struck the match on a stone. The flame sizzled then took. The sticks were wet but not right under the bird, and those dry twigs caught just before the flame touched his hand. The bird’s feathers, burning, let off a reek that he hadn’t foreseen. He stepped back, crouching on his heels, to watch. Black roil of smoke. When he looked up again, it was much later; shadows around him deepened. The bird was a charred, ugly thing now, half feathered, half flesh. The fire had gone out entirely; there was no more red in the embers. Someone was calling for him, Leo, Leo! He stood and ran up the hill, feeling weariness in his legs and all along the back of his neck. It was Mina calling for him with the sunset bright in her hair, with another glass of champagne shining in her hand. Someone is burning something awful, she said, sniffing. An orange-faced boy rode by on a tractor that looked like a leggy animal; he stood up and shouted something gleeful that neither of them caught over the noise. Mina waved, smiled with her teeth. She looked at Leo’s dirty face, his dirty hands. She said, laughing, Wash yourself, eat your dinner fast, and I’ll give you a bath and put you to bed. His heart could hardly bear all that he was feeling. It was either expanding to the sky or contracting to a pin, hard to say. Leo, his mother called, come give me a kiss. Die, he thought, but kissed her anyway on her soft and powdery cheek. He kissed Manda up the giraffe’s neck on her neck, and she blushed and laughed. His father he would not. Let the boy be, his father murmured to his mother. The gleam on Mina’s legs up the stairs. He would eat her if he could. He let her wash him with warm water and she put him in clean pajamas and he petted her soft cheek and smelled her while she sang him to sleep.



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It was chilly outside on the veranda. Amanda wore a fleece, Genevieve wore a brocaded shawl. They waited for the food to cook and ate terrine on baguettes and drank champagne, listening on the monitor to Leo’s little piping voice and Mina’s gravelly one answering him. There was light coming from the kitchen and on the table one candle in a pewter candlestick that looked ancient. Manfred had put on Peter and the Wolf, which was Leo’s CD, but all of the other music in the house was his sister’s and all of it was 1990s grunge. There was some kind of newborn glitter in Manfred’s eyes that Amanda was having a difficult time looking at directly. Something had shifted between Grant and Manfred; there was a humming line between them there had never been before.

Yesterday, Manfred said suddenly, I poisoned the rats in the kitchen. I forgot to say. Do not eat the cheese you will find in the corners.

Poor little rats, said Genevieve. I wish you had told me. I would have found a humane trap somewhere. It’s an awful thing to die of thirst. She pulled the shawl tighter to her.

Oh! That explains the falcon, Amanda said. The others looked at her.

Leo saw a falcon fall dead out of the sky this morning, she said. It was huge. It was in the driveway. I don’t know how you all missed it. I bet it ate a poisoned rat and croaked in midair.

No, Genevieve said, too quickly.

It seems likely, doesn’t it, Manfred said. Oh, dear. It is terrible luck to kill a raptor. It signifies the end of days.

I mean, the thing probably just had a heart attack, Amanda said, but rested her head on her husband’s shoulder, and it took him a moment to slide his chair over and put his arm around her.

The wind restrained itself, the treetops shushed. The moon came from behind a cloud and looked at itself in the pool.