Darling? Read online

  And suddenly Cyrilla was screaming. Daisy went in to find her sitting up, still asleep, speaking in frantic gibberish as if she were arguing with a border guard in hell. “Wake up, Cyllie,” she said, but as she tried to embrace her, the child flailed as if Daisy herself were the monster. She started to sing “Lavender’s Blue,” hearing a strength, a sustaining note, in her voice, where once had been all grief and yearning. Cyrilla woke and pitched into her arms, and Daisy laid her back on the pillow, brushed the damp curls from her face, kissed her as if kisses would keep her safe from harm. “Mama, you’re better than a star,” Cyrilla said.

  “Nearer, anyway,” said Hugh, who’d come to stand behind her. Had she dreamed she could abandon him? She was a wife, a mother, her bones ached with the past, but she was here.

  * * *

  How she loved that ache! She could trust it, could return to it over and over, a million times a day. She would always be longing; Karp would always be there. As he opened the door the next week she felt a wave of relief sweep all her suspicions away. He had not followed her parents into the void, he was here in the doorway, he smiled, coughed a little, weakly, from the damp. She blushed with happiness, looked down at her feet, and admitted she’d written the review—worked on his behalf in spite of everything.

  “Laurel?” he inquired.

  “It’s a complex flower, nothing like a Daisy. It thrives in the cold.” She snapped out her answers, though something troubled her—yes, the bushes along his walk—they were mountain laurel.

  “And Tyringham?”

  “Oh, I just pulled it out of a hat, I’ve only been there once—with a man I was dating years ago; it’s not much of a town, a few houses, an old cemetery.”

  “It’s a place where you once walked in a graveyard—”

  “—with a man I loved,” she said sharply, proudly. Let no one suggest that Daisy Kempton would abandon a passion simply because it was unrequited and absurd.

  “Yes.” Their eyes met, maybe for the first time, and she looked away, feeling (could it be?) shy. It was a forlorn happiness, to be here together, two peculiar souls warming themselves at the same metaphor.

  “Jung said a man has to live out his complexes,” she told him, lest he think they were striking a truce. She would not give up—she’d pursue him into his next life, and if she came back as a duck and he a june bug … well, the gods have their ways.

  “Unlike Jung, I don’t sleep with my patients,” said the upstanding Karp.

  “Freud couldn’t be bothered to sleep with his own wife.”

  His sigh was very nearly a laugh.

  “I’ve developed a—a certain tenderness—toward the UPS man,” she said, feeling, of all things, guilty, though surely he’d be relieved. “I had—you know—a dream.…” It was a pleasure just to recall it, to feel the familiar longing begin to shape itself around the next hope. “He brought me a package, and…”

  But the lines in Karp’s forehead went so deep suddenly she thought of writing music on them: “So, you attempt to dilute your feelings toward me, and the efficacy of the therapy as well.”

  A reprimand—could it be? How they irritated each other! Yes, they were growing old together, Karp and she.

  A Girl Like You

  “I’m here to pick up the prescription for Elspeth Forrest?”

  Lane sounded adult and offhand—as if she were fully qualified for life, not at all furtive or peculiar. The pharmacist was young, his face and neck were all pocked, his Adam’s apple jumped ridiculously—who would be intimidated by such a person? She turned a mild gaze toward the cosmetics as if she were thinking of trying a new shade of nail polish if he’d just hand over the insulin and let her get on with her day. He tapped the name into his computer, running his finger along the screen to stall a minute, finally saying: “And you are—?”

  “Lane Dancie, her daughter.” Worthy of a business card.

  “Oh, okay,” he said, sounding relieved, turning to the refrigerator to take out the bag, double-checking the label. “Yup, Elspeth Forrest,” he said. “Insulin in suspension, one hundred units per … sterile hypodermic needles…” And finally, reluctantly, “How old are you?”

  “Thirteen,” she said, defiant—she was almost eleven, but people often guessed older. Her face was wary and shrewd, her voice heavy with authority—she did not seem like a little girl. At school she let everyone cheat from her papers—she had all the right answers—but it won her no friends. That morning, the last day of school, Sylvie and Arlita had let her jump rope with them. She’d been so preoccupied with thinking how she’d say casually to Mama, “When I was skipping rope with my friends this morning…” (as if such happened every day) that she’d been clumsier even than usual and fallen, scraping knees and elbows, and Arlita had glared at Sylvie, who had invited her in, and Sylvie knelt beside her and examining her arm asked suddenly, “Is this a tan, or is it dirt?” then dropped the arm as if it was all pointless, there was no use being nice to Lane Dancie no matter how sorry you felt for her—she was a lost cause.

  Of course it was dirt—a mottled stain along her arms, up her neck—why hadn’t she seen it? She licked her thumb and rubbed at her wrist until a patch came up, then crossed her arms tight over each other—if the pharmacist found her out, he would give up on her, too.

  “I can’t give you these,” he said, but it wasn’t the automatic refusal she’d expected—he seemed hurt that she’d taken him for an easy mark. “Even if they were for you you’d have to have an adult.”

  “She’s my mother,” she said, rolling her eyes. “What do you think, I want it to get high?”

  “This much insulin could kill a person your size!”

  “Doug lets me,” she said. He had, once, after Mama called and begged him—she hated the insulin, hated leaving their apartment, even using the telephone. She quavered, she didn’t have strength for these things—Lanie was the strong one. So Doug the regular pharmacist had let her carry the insulin back, just the one time, he was very clear. And handsome, and confident—hearing his name the boy drew back. Lanie had life on her side for once; it would be easier for him to believe her, give in to her, than ferret out the lie.

  “No,” he said, suddenly, with an effort. “No.”

  Tears sprang up as if he’d slapped her. She was late already, and to be late without the insulin … Mama would be furious, she’d cry that she had no one to count on, she was alone in all the world, she asked only one little thing of Lanie and even that much Lanie couldn’t do. Then she’d get dressed in one of the suits she bought when she was job hunting and sweep down St. George Street looking so commanding people would step out of her way, pick up the prescription, and collapse in angry sobs at home. Or worse, she’d refuse to go and slip into sugar lethargy so Lane had to call the ambulance again.

  “Doug lets me,” she repeated angrily. She felt like a lost child among the high bright aisles. She wouldn’t cry though, in front of him or anyone—a pharmacist, was anything duller? She mastered herself with an iron effort, drawing herself up to dismiss him before he dismissed her, when he gave in just as surprisingly as he had balked a second before.

  “Okay,” he said, sullen. Silence had accomplished this—she of all people should have known that into a silence all fears are drawn. He looked left and right, but there was only an old woman combing the shelves for some ancient powder or liniment. “Okay, this one time.”

  She laid the bills on the counter—was he impressed she should carry so much?—thanked him stiffly, and left with the drug, the precious ingredient that must be added to Mama to keep her safe and calm. She had pulled it off, she was Lanie the magnificent, and all the way up Highland Avenue she imagined herself in the eye of a camera, starring in one happy scene after another: Lanie’s report is returned with an A; Lanie skips rope with her friends; Lanie breezes home clutching her books to her heart, stopping in the pharmacy, crossing at the light, waving to the bus driver who smiles paternally down over her … These were
scenes her mother could live on, and she could invent them endlessly, it was like having a magical power.

  The arms remained crossed, to keep the bad thoughts—of Sylvie and Arlita, and clumsiness, and dirtiness, from wrecking the picture. Seeing Mr. Lathrop in the courtyard, Lanie decided to go around through the alley: he had smiled at her once, in the elevator, where most people gazed over her head as if they were blind to everything beneath their chins. She’d been bringing Casper down for his walk, and he’d said, “I used to have an English setter. They’re a nice breed—eager, affectionate—just right for a girl like you.” A girl like you? How would he know what she was like, when she herself couldn’t say? But she’d felt something glowing inside her, something that said: Look, look at me. “A … fifth grader? Unless I miss my guess … and I’ll say a good student, too, quiet, but independent, loves her doggie there” (she realized she had been stroking Casper’s head as these words fell, like blessings, on hers) “and … the Spice Girls, and … chocolate chip cookies?” Here they reached the lobby, but as he turned for the laundry room, he said, “And, she blushes!” as if this were the proof of her perfection. Since then she had, of course, avoided him; she lived on this memory, and if she discovered he’d forgotten her, she might not be able to bear it.

  He saw her, though, before she could get away. “There she is and just when I need her,” he said. “What do you think?” He held out two packs of seedlings. “Should I put them all together higgledy-piggledy like this?”

  He was planting flowers in the forlorn square of grass in front of the building—the courtyard, the super called it, the building being named Hampton Court, which had provoked gales of laughter from Mama when they first moved in. Why not the Landfill Arms? she’d asked, and when she took Lanie to school the first time she spoke the words Hampton Court with a hint of careless snobbery, the way you might say The Dakota, and flashed Lanie a secret smile. She was going to finish up her degree, find a job, and then who knew? Uncle Buddy was going to help her, and he knew people, the kind who can speak a word in your favor and change your whole life. Lanie would see: in a few months their Hampton Court period would be over and the day they shook her father off would count as the happiest day of their lives.

  And she’d bustled around making the apartment pretty. Her husband was gone and with him all her troubles, and everything must be fresh and bright for the new life. The diabetes that had seemed a crippling burden shrank to a minor annoyance and she swiped the needle into her thigh each morning with a giddy machismo. “God never gives anyone more than he can bear,” she said. She had started going to church again—she believed in everything; her husband had carried all the world’s ills away with him. One evening she’d danced the Charleston to the ticker-tape maracas on Wall Street Week. “The sky’s the limit, my blossom!” she said, and to Lanie’s amazement she—who had sworn she would never, ever marry again, never have to do with a man—began planning a wedding for Lanie, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with tall white candles and bridesmaids in red velvet and a wreath of roses on her head.

  That image, of all of them, remained, though it was three years now since they moved to Hampton Court, and any idea of a job had long since been abandoned—to lose the Medicaid without a really good salary and insurance—it wasn’t worth it. No, she would never let her daughter become one of those creatures who wore her latchkey around her neck; she intended to be there for Lanie. And there she was waiting, at three o’clock—she was avid, greedy to hear every minute of Lanie’s day.

  Late as she was, though, Lanie stopped to look into the flowers—they floated over their stems with a crazy brilliance, rose pink, butter yellow, tangerine. Poor Mr. Lathrop—planting a garden in this parched spot was the kind of thing he’d do, cheerful but doomed. He was gaunt and gray-cheeked, with an expression of morose intensity, his eyes popping out slightly as if no matter where he looked he was always staring at the same sad thing, and he seemed to be always alone, but his walk was quick and fluid and somehow hopeful; whenever Lanie saw him she imagined he was on his way to someplace exciting. Once he had gotten into the elevator carrying a Chinese dinner in one hand and a bunch of red tulips in the other, but it wasn’t for guests, he said—he just liked to do everything right once in a while.

  “Ummm,” she said, drawing it out, relishing the attention. “I like them all together.”

  “Higgledy-piggledy it is then,” he said, and she laughed, because she could see he hoped she would, and he started singing and dancing a high silly step, throwing his arms and legs out so wildly she felt embarrassed for him.

  “Oh, the higgledy-piggledies give her the giggledies,” he sang. “When the higgledy-piggledies give her the giggledies, I do the jiggledy, piggledy ho!”

  It was something you might do for a three-year-old, but he was trying to please her, so she kept laughing.

  “Will they grow?” she couldn’t help but ask.

  “Some flowers do better in poor soil,” he told her. “Portulacas, nasturtiums … the less they have, the more they bloom. You can eat the nasturtiums, they’re peppery—want to try one?”

  This seemed like taking candy from a stranger, and she shook her head but could hardly croak out the no—wouldn’t it be madness when someone was kind to you, to turn him away? He folded the flower and pushed it into her half-open mouth with a finger. It felt like velvet and tasted like perfume, but she chewed and swallowed it and smiled at him, thinking she might absorb something of him this way.

  “Here,” he said, picking three more—“Take some home. They’re good in a salad, too.”

  * * *

  Mama was sitting on her bed, holding a finger-stick blood-sample kit and crying.

  “Where were you?” she asked. She had that awful, familiar expression; the smallest thing could send her spiraling down—she was frightened, heartbroken, suspicious, and she needed to account for these feelings, to find some way to explain them. When she was mad even Casper felt it—now he lay with his chin on the rug, looking balefully up at Lanie as if he blamed her, too.

  “At the pharmacy.”

  “For forty-five minutes?”

  “I stayed after school to jump rope with Arlita and Sylvie.… We lost track of the time. I’m sorry.”

  “No you’re not, you’re not sorry!” Mama said. “You don’t care—you’re having a good time with your friends and you don’t care, that’s all. And I’m here all alone, and I can’t, I can’t…” She held the lancet poised over her finger but couldn’t bring herself to stab it.

  “Here, let me,” Lanie said. “I’m good at this, Ma, remember?” She took the hand tight so Mama couldn’t squirm away, and pricked it, caught the welling drop, folded the poor finger gently back into the hand. Why it had to be, that someone who so feared the needle should have diabetes … The Greeks would have thought it a punishment, and Mama let out a wild sob as if Lanie were Nemesis herself.

  “It’s way up, Ma,” she said, going for the insulin.

  “I try so hard, Lanie,” Mama said. This was the cruellest thing—she seemed to think Lane had the power to cure her, that if only she was good enough Lanie would take the curse away. Thank God for the needle gun—they’d got it with the Medicaid. It went so fast, at first Mama said it was painless, though after a few months she’d seemed to feel the shots again even worse than before.

  “Arm or leg?” Lanie asked.

  “Leg,” her mother said, resigning herself. Lanie grabbed her thigh hard to squeeze out the feeling, pressed the gun to the skin, pulled the trigger. Nothing ever sounded so fast, so certain as that needle. She didn’t suppose she would mind it as Ma did—she was not going to mind things, she was going to live a bold life. When she went for a shot at school the nurses always said how brave she was. And when the others mocked her she turned her face away—they were young, that was all, they didn’t know who they were talking to. Let them laugh—Uncle Bud knew people at NBC, he was going to get her a screen test for the soaps. The image of hers
elf, dirty, her ear sticking out through her lank hair, pushed itself into her mind, but she slammed the door on it. They would soon be enlightened, her classmates, the people who should have been her friends—she would be leaving the likes of them behind.

  The ordeal over, Mama relaxed a little, though she was still wary. “I did go out,” she said, defending herself against the unspoken complaint. “I got you something … but now I suppose you had a snack on the way home.”

  There, set out on the table with a glass of milk, was a cupcake with an inch of sugar frosting piped out to look like pink and yellow roses. The note beside the plate read, “For the rose of my heart. Happy Summer Vacation.” Sweets. Mama wanted Lanie to have everything, and she knew the exact shape of everything—the outline of the void in her own life.

  “It’s beautiful,” Lanie said, with just the right feeling, she thought. The cake was no better than the nasturtium though; it was all sugar and no taste, and the thought of Mama going through all her careful rituals, showering, making up her face, checking the mirror a hundred times all for the sake of a trip across the street to buy a cupcake, and then waiting, waiting for Lane to come home and see … It stuck in her throat, but she ate every bite.

  “Beautiful like my beautiful girl,” her mother said, smoothing Lanie’s hair and kissing the top of her head before she sank woozily into the couch. “Would you bring me a little glass of wine, honey? I think it might help my head.”

  “Is it okay?” Lanie asked, because it wasn’t—wine was no better than cake—the sugar burned up her veins like acid, made her head ache so that light had to be filtered, noise muffled, all of life muted, recast in pastel. Lanie had the nasturtiums in her pocket; she wanted both to show them off and to keep them a secret—they were so bright she felt they might hurt Mama’s eyes.

  “Of course it’s okay,” Mama said, irritated again. Lanie was so officious, full of rules like a horrible little nurses’ aide, she knew. A little wine, what harm could it do? Lanie poured as little as she dared.