“Thank you for calling.”
“Hey.”
I turned to see Bernadette pull a velvet scrunchee out of her ponytail, fluff her long black hair dramatically so it fell around her shoulders like a full skirt, and whisk it right back up again. “You know, your kid does it.”
“Does what?”
“Hangs out in front of Mr. DePosta’s liquor store.” Bernadette sank into her chair as if it were a depressing place to be.
“How do you know?”
“His shaved head. Mr. DePosta complained about it.”
“His hairstyle isn’t illegal, and neither is his hanging out.” I swiveled away from her, my chair seat tilted, and I had to grab the desk to keep from falling over.
I picked up my stack of messages. I flicked the corners, making a little animated flip book, but the image kept repeating instead of progressing. Re: column, re: column, re: column. Except one.
“Hope your ankle’s better.” No name. I went downstairs.
“Who left this?” I slid the pink slip in front of Peg, who shifted her gaze from a crossword puzzle to my message. She chewed on her bottom lip and took a sip of Lipton’s before responding. “Don’t know.”
“Male or female?”
“Don’t remember.”
Jane frequently left messages on my home machine, without identifying herself, but she knew my ankle was healed. I heard footsteps on the stairs. Bernadette was coming down fast, tying her orange sweater around her shoulders.
“I love that color, Bernadette.”
“Feel it, it’s so soft.” She batted a sleeve in my direction. I caught it and raised it to my lips, felt an erogenous jolt, and immediately freaked. What in the world was I doing?
“I’m going home for lunch,” I said. It wasn’t yet noon. “I’m starved. I must be hypoglycemic or something.”
“Strange,” I heard Bernadette remark, and I didn’t know if she was referring to the fact that I had almost kissed her sweater sleeve or announced that my sugar levels had dropped. I didn’t look at either Bernadette or Peg, but climbed the narrow steps two at a time to get my purse, and then left the building by the back staircase
I DID GO home for lunch. I needed to be someplace private, because I felt exposed. That moment of eroticism overtaking me for no reason whatsoever. A Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing—the first time the doctor becomes Hyde unintentionally, uninduced, no potion swallowed, and yet the mouth grimaces, teeth protrude, beastlike hair sprouts wildly all over his face. It was a trifling episode—fondling that orange sleeve, raising the soft wool to my face, leaning forward to inhale and caress—but it was not willed.
My street appeared empty except for Mr. Woffert, securing Tyvek to his second story. “Uh-oh,” he said as I got out of my car. I assumed he had detected an unforeseen underlying problem like dry rot, and gave him a wave and an encouraging smile. In retrospect I believe he was commenting on my arrival. I entered the house and walked into the kitchen.
Deidre was sitting on the table, naked. Her long legs wrapped Sam’s waist and formed an interlocking S twist around his bare behind. Deidre, a few inches shorter than Sam when standing, topped him by a good six inches when sitting on the breakfast table having sex. Her eyes popped wide open, marbly blue martian eyes. Her legs and arms whipped apart and fluttered momentarily.
I backed out in a shot. “Sam, Deidre, get dressed,” I yelled from the hall, then retreated further into the living room. Almost immediately I wasn’t sure that I had seen what I thought I had seen. If Deidre and Sam had insisted that they had been fully clothed and simply hugging, they might have convinced me. “Get yourselves dressed and come in here,” I shouted, while I prayed that the vision be erased from my consciousness, that I be allowed the merciful flipside of trauma—memory loss—the way accident victims cannot recall the moment of impact.
Normal range? Not in the normal range? Who knew?
I heard their feet on the stairs, ascending in a measured way. They didn’t have the decency to sprint. They were neither embarrassed nor ashamed. I dug my fingers into my scalp and pulled my hair at the roots. The pain felt good.
A few minutes later, they clomped down and into the living room, flushed but dressed. I pointed to the couch and they sat. Deidre, her boots planted far apart, leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, a benched New York Knick waiting to resume play. Sam slumped, his body maintaining all the definition of a potato sack.
“We’re speaking English,” I said. “Why aren’t you in school?”
Before the question was out of my mouth, I knew the answer: Because they wanted to be here, having sex. I rephrased. “How often do you cut school?”
Sam began chewing his thumb. Deidre sent her missile gaze into my own. Two questions, no answer.
I tried to break the ice. “Who are Klingons?”
“They’re a weird race of warriors who like to kill people” Sam replied promptly.
“They like to kill people?” No direction was safe.
“They want to die.” Sam smirked then caught himself. Deidre emitted one of her motorized laughs.
“Which is it? They want to kill people or they want to die?”
“Both. They want to die gloriously so they can go to Stobcor.”
“Stob-o-cor,” corrected Deidre.
“Is that heaven?”
Sam nodded.
“Look, I am fed up with both of you. You are too young to be having sex, period.” I could hear the inanity of my own words, but I plowed on. “I may have to speak to Sam’s father about this.”
“Go ahead,” said Sam, daring me. He knew my telling Allan would establish my own incompetence.
“I’m taking you both back to school. Deidre, I don’t want to see you around here for a while. Sam, I’ll discuss your life later.”
“Petak,” said Deidre.
“What does that mean?”
Sam shrugged.
Deidre’s speaking Klingon was like my parents’ conversing in French when I was a child so I wouldn’t understand. Possibly, I hated her. “Come on, get your backpacks.”
Sam rose reluctantly, pulling dead weight into a standing position. Deidre batted at her pale, wilting bangs. It was the first vaguely female move I had seen her make, if I didn’t count having sex.
AS SOON AS I delivered Sam and Deidre back to school, I called Jane.
“Are you free?”
She heard my neediness over the phone. “Is dinner tonight soon enough?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, sweetie. Burgers and Such, seven-thirty.”
I arrived before her and parked myself in a booth along the wall so no one would overhear us. This upscale hamburger joint reminded me of my ex-husband, because of the spider plants hanging above the tables beside the front window. Allan had loved spider plants, perhaps he still did. Spider plants produced offshoots, baby clumps of thin green-and-white leaves that he snipped and planted in smaller pots. They never died, and they all reproduced boring replicas that prospered even in the arid atmosphere of our marriage.