A Lady Under Siege(14)

“Keep ’em closed!”

“They’re closed, they’re closed!”

“Okay, open ’em!”

She saw the fence, and in midair above it, Derek suspended as if weightless for an instant. Then he fell to earth, or at least fell out of sight behind the fence, and the unseen springs shrieked again, and he shot back skyward to new heights, then fell again, and rose, fell, rose, and fell, again and again. For good measure with each rebound he attempted some kind of goofy pose—hands on hips, or thumbs in ears, or biceps curled like a body-builder. The whole thing was so unexpected that Betsy, entranced, giggled delightedly. Then suddenly he flew dangerously off kilter and sideways skyward, a panicked grimace on his face. “Oh shit,” he muttered, and plummeted down out of sight. She heard a soft thud as he hit the earth.

Betsy rushed to the fence and tried to peek through the cracks. A knothole gave the best view—she saw a weathered trampoline, its skin stretched tight by equally aged springs, hooked to a base that might once have been painted blue.

“You like it?” Derek asked. He was back on his feet, dusting himself off, looking a bit woozy.

“I love it,” she squealed. “Where did you get it?”

“It’s amazing what people throw out in the trash,” he replied. “It’s perfectly good, except where it’s broken. Not broken. Bent a little, I should say. Would you like to try?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“My mom would freak and have a heart attack and die.”

“From a little old trampoline?”

“No, from me going to your yard.”

“No no, don’t worry about that, my dear. The toy is for you—I brought it home specifically with you in mind, because I’ve seen you wandering aimlessly around your patch of perfect lawn over there. You’re like some poor little waif in a children’s book praying for an imaginary friend to come along. Here’s my advice—keep hopping on this little number and chanting I think I can I think I can, next thing you know, you’ll be in orbit with the space shuttle. Or at least you’ll get some exercise, get the kind of colour in your cheeks all boys and girls your age and ethnicity should have. A girl like you should be ruddy-cheeked and ready to ride a balloon to the moon, right?”

“I guess so,” she said. She wasn’t sure what he had in mind.

“Stand back,” he said. “Way, way back. In fact, go up on the deck.”

She did as told, and from there she could see him work. “See these planks?” he asked. “They’re two by tens, twenty-four feet long. Almost impossible to find such a thing anymore. People say my back yard is just junk, well I say look again.” He took the two planks and leaned them against the fence on a sloping angle, so that their midpoint was on top of the fence, like the midpoint of a teeter-totter. Grunting and cursing from brute effort, he slid the base of the trampoline onto the planks, then up the planks— with more grunting—until the whole thing teetered atop the fence. Then with a last Herculean push the planks tottered over, and the trampoline lumbered down them onto Betsy’s side, crash-landing in a flowerbed of yellow Lion’s Bane and purple Foxglove.

“Don’t wreck the flowers!” Betsy screamed.

“Too late for that,” he muttered. He climbed the stepladder against the fence and looked over to examine the damage. “It’s barely touched them,” he said proudly. “No harm, no foul—and more importantly, the brilliant part is, the thing looks absolutely level, perfectly placed for you to test it out. Climb aboard!”





9





Having banished Betsy to the deck, Seth and Meghan moved to the living room for their talk. “I hate having to raise my voice to her like that,” he said as he settled onto the couch. “But it’s the only thing that gets her attention. I’ve been very sharp with her at our place. The house, I mean. Used to be our place. I still call it that.”

Meghan sat in a chair across from him. “She doesn’t like being there, she’s made that clear. It makes her feel creepy to be there and I’m not,” she said. “Her biggest complaint is when she tries to go to sleep at night she has to listen to you and your girlfriend in bed in the next room, giggling and God knows what else. Couldn’t you at least make sure she’s fallen asleep before you go at it?”

“Yes, well, it’s a bit of a moot point, really,” said Seth. “Soon enough there’ll be plenty more night-time noises to disrupt her, because what I came by to tell you, in person, is, Irena is pregnant.”