Wilde Lake(21)

And he tried so hard, starting with this very house. If Lu says nothing as the bills come in—Italian tiles, bathtubs that cost as much as small cars, custom rugs, top-of-the-line appliances for the kitchen where Teensy continues to make most of their meals—it’s because she realizes her father is trying to make good on a forty-five-year-old promise. He lured his young wife to Columbia, saying he would do anything to make her happy here. He failed. With Lu and the twins, he has a second chance to make someone happy in this house.

But is he happy? Was he ever happy? she wonders. Then she feels guilty, as grown children often do, for how seldom they have bothered to consider a parent’s happiness.





THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT


My January second birthdate seemed tragic when I was young, the cornerstone of all my social failures. If my birthday fell on a school day, it was always the first day back from the holiday, the least happy day of the year. And if it were a Saturday or Sunday, it was still an awkward time. People have no energy for celebrations after January first. Besides, my father didn’t know how to throw a party for a girl. With AJ, who had an April birthday, he told him to invite all the boys in his class, and that was that. They played in the yard for three hours, Teensy served a cake, then threw everyone out.

When my father told me I should invite all the girls in my class over for an indoor party for my seventh birthday, I saw the pitfalls. There would be no theme, no organization. If there were games, they would be too babyish. The favors would be found wanting. No, there were just too many ways to fail.

“I don’t like all the girls,” I said. “Some of them are mean to me.” That wasn’t exactly true. All the girls were mean to me. And most of the boys.

“The Brants don’t believe in leaving people out. All or nothing.”

“You’re leaving the boys out,” I said.

“There are twenty-six children in your class,” he said. “That is simply too much. But if you don’t want to include all the girls, you can have a celebration with AJ and me. You’ll have your favorite cake. You can choose an activity. Movie, bowling, ice-skating. And then you can invite your best friend. But if you want to have a party, you must include everyone.”

I wondered if my father had noticed that I was seldom invited to parties, that other parents did not observe the Brant standard. He certainly should have been aware that I had no best friend, but then—he did not arrive home until suppertime and I was too proud to speak of my troubles to Teensy or AJ. It made me feel better in a way that my father had no inkling I was friendless. I told him I could not choose just one friend—true enough—and selected ice-skating as my activity. There was a rink on the east side of Columbia and I was good at ice-skating, thanks to AJ’s tutelage, and I had my own skates, which provided a tiny bit of cachet. And at a rink, if one moved quickly enough, it was possible to disguise the fact that one was going around and around in circles all alone.

Better still, my father accompanied us and even laced himself into a pair of rental skates, the best gift he could have given me. Our father was not one for playing with us unless it was something brainy. He did not throw a football with AJ or swim with us at the community pool. Other fathers were rare there, too, but when they showed up, they picked up their children and launched them through the air, happy squealing rockets. We sometimes wondered if our father avoided activities because he was klutzy or inept. But when he did do something, he did it well. Still, I doubt he would have put on rented ice skates if it were not for the influence of our new neighbor, Miss Maude.



We had thought she was old when she moved into the house closest to ours, just a few weeks before Halloween. Really old, older-than-our-father old. She had silver hair, a lot of it, amplified by a wild curly perm. She never seemed to smile. But she wasn’t quite thirty and she came by her sad expression honestly. She was a widow. Her husband had been in Vietnam. “That’s probably why her hair turned white,” Noel said to AJ. “A bad shock really can do that.”

“Oh, that’s just nonsense,” AJ said.

They were in AJ’s room, watching Miss Maude through one of the little dormer windows that ringed the top floor, two to a side. I was in the adjoining room, the one that Teensy used when she slept over, eavesdropping. Two sets of spies. I didn’t understand the attraction of watching Maude Lennox preparing her yard and garden for the coming winter. The day was Indian summer hot, but a freeze was forecast for the next week. I glanced out the dormer window in Teensy’s room—from the outside, these windows looked like two eyebrows, arched in surprise. Miss Maude was crouching over a rosebush. She wore cherry-red shorts and a gingham halter, her snaky silver hair tamed by a triangle of red bandanna.

Music floated in the air, from AJ’s record player. It was a song he liked a lot, something about two people sitting on a hill. The girl apparently had moonlight in her eyes, which sounded interesting to me, like maybe she had moonbeams that shot out like lasers. Everything was ours, everything was ours. I imagined a king and a queen, surveying their kingdom, subduing miscreants with lasers.

“I can see her bending over a hot stove,” Noel said. “Trouble is, I can’t see the stove. Groucho Marx, Duck Soup.”

“Shut up,” AJ hissed.

“She can’t hear us, not with the music blasting. And from this angle, she can’t see us. Although it’s not her angles that interest you, I guess.”