Family Night (20 page)

Cam started the engine and they drove away from the Tire Center. He followed the rules of the road, he didn’t make a production out of it. Then they were back on the highway.

“Did you have to steal the tires? Stupid shit,” Margaret said.

“Maybe I’ll send them a check later.”

“You’ll be writing your checks from the nick,” Margaret said.

Tracy said, “It’s Darcy. Darcy made him do it. She says he’s a thief, he’ll rise to the occasion. He’ll become a thief.”

“Look,” Cam said. He stopped mid-sentence and pinched his fingers high on the bridge of his nose, pressed the heel of his hand against his left eye, then his right; he finished by rubbing his temple with his fingertips. Margaret thought he must be starting a terrible headache. He wasn’t thinking of her or of Tracy. He wasn’t with them, he must be thinking of the Arrow Collar as he studied the road that was bringing him closer. Sometimes his shoulders suffered minor cringes. It was as if he saw something, apparitions. Margaret searched the highway; the heat waves wobbled, then
subsided, wobbled again. They passed a dead dog on the shoulder; the wind from the opposite traffic was lifting the plume of its tail. It reminded Margaret of those half-alive segments, dismembered insects, their notched legs beating with only a chemical memory of life. One tiny, exhausted nerve still pulses, unaware of the fate of its whole. Margaret looked at Cam’s face. When his discomfort didn’t flare, it retreated into the remote ganglia. Either it’s pain at rest, or pain at work. It was never an absence of pain.

Cam was pleased with the tires. He braked. He let go of the wheel to see if the Duster pulled to the left or to the right. The tires were riding smooth. Perhaps he was just stalling again, but he asked Margaret if she really wanted to visit Tina at the commune. “What’s it called?” he asked her.

“Sun and Moon, I think.” She kept her voice flat. “Sun and Moon Farm.”

“Jesus,” Cam said.

“Wait, that’s perfect,” Tracy said. “It says everything. Your basic celestial dichotomy. Two opposing worlds that create continuity and balance on Earth—sun and moon.”

“Piss and shit,” Cam said.

A big, six-foot flag was nailed between two trees at the entrance of the commune. They stopped the car and looked at the place. Margaret wondered if maybe they should just roll away before they were seen. These organic gardens and whole-grain bakeries were always
tainted by an inner conflict: capitalism, or socialism, which would it be? Her sister’s commune would probably be the same—flower children searching for an angle.

“That’s an Italian flag,” Cam said.

“No,” Tracy said, “it’s supposed to mean ecology, see? It says it right there on the green stripe.” Tracy was right, there was something written on the flag. The words said,
Love Your Mother
.

“Nice,” Cam said.

“I’ve heard that before,” Margaret said.

“Still looks Italian. Makes me think of a pizzeria,” Cam said.

They drove up the dirt road toward an old farmhouse and outbuildings. The place looked run-down, like an abandoned farm you can buy from the government for one dollar and a letter of intent. In a field near the buildings, a parachute billowed up and down, several children tugging its hem. The children ran in and out of the circle, making the silk lift, puff up, then deflate. It was supervised play of some kind, like Ring Around the Rosie using army surplus materials. “That chute’s from Nam,” Cam said.

“The parachute?” Margaret asked.

“Yeah, I can tell.”

“But you weren’t over there—in Vietnam, I mean.”

“It’s a Nam chute, I’m telling you.”

Tracy said, “I think that’s a Du Pont fiber. I’m sure it is.”

Tina was bronzed. Her teeth looked white as peppermint Beechies. “I’m always out in the sun,” she told them. She’d been planting trees. During the summer
months, the commune was a children’s ecology camp, but it was a year-round Christmas tree farm. Tina said that they had just put in two new acres of Fraser fir seedlings. It was hard work, the pine needles were sharp, stabbing, and the gluey pine tar darkened her fingers like tobacco juice. Margaret saw that Tina’s hands were sore-looking.

Margaret kissed her sister and something rustled against her breast. “What’s that you’re wearing around your neck? Looks like some kind of origami?”

“Peace cranes,” Tina said. “That’s my forte. I teach peace cranes to the campers. That’s my expertise, my specialty.”

“Peace cranes?” Margaret asked. She looked at Tina’s heavy necklace, paper origami cranes in a matted half-circle.

“There’s a thousand on this necklace,” Tina said, “it’s my first thousand. Don’t you know the story?”

Tracy said, “Yes, I know that one. About the little girl after Hiroshima, right?”

“A little girl?” Margaret asked, she didn’t want to hear another gruesome story.

“She’s dying from radiation poisoning, right?” Tracy said. “She makes a wish, she cuts a deal—if she folds a thousand origami cranes for world peace, maybe she’ll recover.”

“Is this a true story?” Cam said.

Tina said, “Absolutely.” The whites of her eyes were very white, like the tiny porcelain rim around sheeps’ eyes, or the overly alert ceramic eyes of dolls. Margaret studied her sister and figured it was probably the deep
walnut color of her skin that accentuated the whites of her eyes. She’d seen that same dogmatic look on church rectors and overenthused athletic coaches. A single-mindedness seems to bleach the eyes as the skin weathers.

“What happens to the girl, does she fold all those cranes on time? Does she get better?” Cam said.

“Nine hundred and something,” Tracy said, “then she buys it.”

“Oh Christ,” Cam said.

“How many of these cranes have you folded, Tina?” Margaret asked.

“Thousands and thousands. I fold hundreds a week, and I keep going.”

Margaret felt a little queasy. Tina could do this to her. Tina was in her forties, still driving her VW micro bus, rust spots patched with fiberglass, its original logo altered, soldered to form a peace sign. The vehicle was a relic, something for the Museum of Natural History; Margaret could research how Tina’s consciousness evolved by tracing the cellophane scabs from the decals and stickers. It all started with a single butterfly chair back in the late fifties. Margaret remembered her sister sitting cross-legged in her chair with those black canvas wings. Then she joined a group called the Peace Pilgrims. She started traveling, living out of her van. She kept several disposable toilets in neat stacks, some cottage cheese containers that she was meticulous about although she seemed to flaunt them. She sat Indian-style, no matter what the social function. Then she refused to wash her hair, she just inserted a piece of
cheesecloth over the bristles of her hairbrush. “Shampoo robs the essence from hair,” she said.

During a visit home, she hurt Elizabeth’s feelings when she refused to eat a piece of homemade blueberry pie. Elizabeth showed her the thick slice, the rich mirrory fruit, like mercury on the plate.

“You can’t eat the pie? This used to be your favorite,” Elizabeth said. Tina explained, she couldn’t eat anything “picked,” nothing could be harvested. Fruit had to fall on its own. Fallen fruit was all she would eat.

When Tina learned to make sandals she pestered Margaret or Cam, asking if she could trace someone’s foot on a piece of leather. Margaret finally agreed. She watched her sister ink a rough outline of her foot on a piece of cowhide. The pen tickled her instep as Tina drew the arch line, then she curved around her toes, leaving enough space for the thong.

Once, when Tina visited, Elizabeth washed Tina’s dashiki with the family laundry and the dye ran, erasing the ancient patterns from the African cloth. Everything else was stained.

Tina was showing Cam around the farmhouse. There was a big wheel of cheese left out on the kitchen table. “Cam, have a piece,” she said, shaving the cheese with a knife. “The great news is,” Tina was saying, “the cranes make me financially independent.”

“The cranes?”

Tina explained that she earned one-hundred-dollar stipends from the public schools. She brought her own colored paper, the glazed kind for folding origami; regular construction paper was too hairy and coarse.
Reporters wrote newspaper articles about Tina, calling her the “Origami Mommy.” She kept clippings about herself, her paper empire, in a manila folder. She made Xerox copies of these newspaper articles to promote herself.

“You get paid?” Margaret said.

Tina cut a curl of cheese and handed it to her sister. “I give peace instruction, it’s not just arts and crafts.”

Some others joined them as they stood around the cheese. Tina pulled Cam by his sleeve. “I’d like you to meet my friends Tru and Clear.”

“Excuse me?” Cam said.

“My friends,” Tina said, “Tru and Clear.”

Tru was in her fifties, nice-looking with strange violet eyes. They must be contact lenses, Margaret was thinking. Clear was the woman’s husband. He was balding and bearded. Clear’s body seemed oddly pitched, jutting forward like someone gliding off a ski jump. It was his sandals. His sandals sloped backward. “It’s better for the spine. The spine is the keyboard of health,” he was saying. Margaret looked down at her own shoes. Darcy’s shoes.

Clear was showing Cam the collection of plastic magnets on the refrigerator. Clear had a machine that made plastic buttons and magnets, any slogan or logo you might want. Cam leaned close to the icebox to read the political buttons; his mouth was even. Margaret knew he couldn’t smile without sneering. He was finding it hard to remain collected. Margaret didn’t care about the buttons. Perhaps a button was the
only
way to approach a resistant individual. Somebody has to devote his life to the issues.

Tina was saying she didn’t like to eat anything packaged in plastic, hence the big wheel of cheddar with a black waxy rind. Cam was eating a thin slice of the yellow cheese. Tracy poured himself a glass of cider, but it was sharp. “Is this going hard?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tina said, and she tasted it. “You’re just not used to it.”

The man, Clear, was asking Cam if he and Tru could get a lift to Chicago. Cam wasn’t forthcoming. He repeated Clear’s question, “Can you get a lift to Chicago, is that what you’re saying? A lift to Chicago? A lift to Chicago—” He was waiting for Margaret to rescue him.

Margaret said, “Sorry we can’t take you with us.” She pulled Cam by his elbow into the next room. “You don’t have to be rude,” she told him.

They were in a bedroom. It had two iron beds with faded quilts on either side, a bed stand with a Blue Willow pitcher and bowl. It was just for decoration; the pitcher was dusty, no one had been using it to wash. Cam sat down on one of the beds and rubbed his face. He looked horrible.

Cam said, “We’re not staying here tonight. It gives me the creeps, these hippies. That cheese left out like a salt lick for cows.”

“Tina’s okay, she’s making a living.”

“Margaret, you’re always so optimistic.”

“I’m not. I’m not optimistic, are you kidding? But I don’t know. Those cranes are like a cottage industry or something.”

He looked half-dreaming, dead on his feet. He let himself down on the little bed and turned toward the
wall. “I’m going to shut my eyes for a while,” he said.

“Good,” she said.

“I hope they don’t mind—that guy with the sandals. This could be his bed. I don’t like to think. Just closing my eyes. Just for a minute—”

Margaret went back into the kitchen. Tracy was out in the fields with Tina, they were going to plant a few Fraser fir seedlings so Tracy could have the thrill of it. Margaret wondered if Tina was trying to flirt with him. Elizabeth and Tina were quite alike along these lines, always flirting with Margaret’s boyfriends. It was harmless, a test. They wanted to keep their feminine wiles greased and sleek, up to muster.

Margaret was alone in the kitchen; she watched a single fly circle the cheese. One fly was nothing. Its transparent wings, its tiny blue-green sheath looked pristine. She went back into the room where Cam was resting. He looked completely still. She felt a twinge in the small of her back as she stood over her brother. Her ribs, like the tines of a metal rake, felt sharp. It must be from driving in the Duster, sitting on that armrest; she rubbed her spine as she stood at the end of Cam’s bed. She untied her new skirt, unwrapped the filmy panel, then tucked it around herself again, tying the cord tight. She looked down at Cam.

“Get in,” he said.

“What?”

“Lie down, I’m so tired. Lie down here or over there, but do something. You’re bothering me.”

She didn’t think she could wake him by fixing her skirt. She crawled into the bed next to him, the mattress
sagged where her knees touched but it wasn’t too bad. He turned over on his back and she put her face against his breast. He put his arm around her. The weight of his arm against her hip was familiar. Her ear was against the hard pectoral shelf, the same side where his heart was beating. She listened. A heartbeat can be lulling. It’s an enslaved pulse, quite eunuched, without soul or gender. Then she heard Cam as he cleared his throat and shoved her over, turned to face her. He smoothed her throat with the palm of his hand, keeping her still. His lips touched the corner of her mouth, lifted, sank to her mouth again. She couldn’t tell if she wanted her freedom or if it was his decision, but they separated. He got up and left her.

She threw her legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. She let her tongue flutter over the corner of her mouth where Cam had kissed her; the taste was slightly tarry from his cigarettes. It wasn’t a true kiss, his lips had brushed past her.

I don’t find any problem with that, she told herself. Their blood didn’t mix, no coded, glossy substance was exchanged. A kiss was an airy, transient occurrence, like the northern lights or a shower of comets. Astronomical phenomena that occur in the blinding daylight can’t be seen or documented. Margaret reclined on the small bed, turned on her side, and pulled her knees up. She felt sleep coming, its fuzzy swarm over her lips, her eyes weighted by invisible thumbs. She was rotten to disturb Cam. He needed the sleep more than she did. She couldn’t help herself, she was drifting. There was a bird outside, a tiny note that faded in and out of hearing
until it became predictable and she stopped listening for it.