Into Thin Air (41 page)

She flinched. “Are you going to let me see her?”

“I don't want you around my family,” he said.

Lee pulled out a piece of paper and a stub of pencil and with a tremble of fingers scribbled her hotel number. She fit it into Jim's pocket. “You can find me here,” she said. “Please. I'm not going to be around your wife, I just want to be around my daughter. I have a right to see her.”

“You have no right. You gave her up the moment she was born.”

“She's my daughter,” Lee said.

“Really?” Jim said. “How do you figure that?” He turned from her to push back into the pharmacy, where it was familiar, where he had some control. “According to the law, you don't even exist,” he said. Just before the door swung shut again, he realized he still really didn't know why she had left. He didn't know whether she intended to do anything more with Joanna than see her. He turned back to Lee, his head reeling, but although he looked and looked, she was nowhere to be seen.

He left work shortly after that, and the whole drive home he was rigid with rage and longing and fear. He drove the way he had when he was seventeen, wild with need, his heart smashing against his ribs, his breath ragged. He kept waiting for an accident to happen. He kept angling the car toward every slick and dangerous weave of the road. He kept his body braced against the sticky leather seat, arms stretched, legs so starchy they made his whole body ache. He banged the horn at a car that took a millisecond too long to make a right turn. He beeped so many times at a woman crossing the street that she began deliberately to take her time, stopping to delicately scratch her ankle, all the while giving him a smug, sly grin.

It seemed imperative to get back to Lila fast. He had to keep slamming Lee out of his mind with chips of memories about his wife, image fragments of Lila so vivid they didn't leave room for anything else. He remembered how as simple a gesture as her hand placed on the small of his back could stir him, how every time he saw a poster advertising Bermuda he was caught in a tangle of fear, relief, and absolute gratitude. He had no doubt that she had saved him.

He parked sloppily outside the house. He wasn't halfway to the walk and he could hear their new dog barking. He stepped through the door. The house was an assault. Lila was racing toward him, in a stained white T-shirt and frayed too big jeans, her hair shored back with a child's cheap red plastic headband. She stuffed the shirt into her jeans and flashed him a grin. “I got home late,” she said. “I'm sorry. Maureen took Joanna to see a movie. I thought you and me could have a real grown-up romantic dinner out, but I need half an hour.”

“Joanna's gone?”

“Just to the movies, I told you.” Flustered, she tugged the band from her hair, scrutinizing the plastic teeth. She began to bite at a thumbnail.

“Stop that,” he said. “It's disgusting.”

Surprised, she put her hand down. “You all right?” she said.

“I'm hungry.”

“I just need half an hour.”

“Fine, so I'll just walk the dog.”

“He was just out,” Lila said. “And it's hot.”

“Dogs don't know time from shit,” Jim said, and clapped his hands for the dog.

She planted her hands on her hips and scowled at him. “What's wrong with you?” she said. “Why are you sniping at me like that? Do you want to hit the dog while you're at it?”

“Nothing's wrong,” he snapped. “And I'm not sniping.”

“Fine, you're not sniping,” she said. “I'm going to shower.”

It
was
hot outside. He had to walk ahead of the dog and pull him. The dog's name was Fisher, a wheaten terrier they had just bought for Joanna's birthday because her year had been so rough. Jim was practically racing, trying to wear down his anger, and Fisher's doggy ramblings annoyed him. The dog snuffled in some hedges, and he yanked at the leash. The dog glared at him accusingly, took three lazy paces, and began snuffling again. Jim yanked him forward, almost dragging him across the ground. He gave one final tug and the dog suddenly pitched forward, vomiting on someone's petunias.

They ate dinner at a small Italian restaurant they both liked. Lila was in a new red silk dress and silver earrings, and every time she leaned forward he caught a drift of roses. He hated himself. He loved Lila. She had spent enough time worrying over Lee; she didn't need to anymore. He could handle whatever had to be handled. He stroked her hand on the tablecloth. “Gee, you look pretty,” he told her, but, helpless, he thought suddenly of Lee, her blond river of hair he could no longer touch.

Lila picked at her lamb, “It's funny, that woman coming by. Andrea,” she said. “I told her you were at work.”

Jim pronged a string bean and studied it.

“Did she find you?”

“No, I don't think so,” Jim said.

“Really?” Lila stopped eating.

“Really,” Jim said, and put down his fork. “This place is famous for their desserts,” he informed her. “Let's eat ourselves sick.”

“I don't know if I'm hungry for dessert.”

“I'll get a menu,” said Jim, lifting his finger like a flag.

Lila knew Jim wasn't sleeping, She heard him wandering around. Or she'd wake and find him standing over her bed, his face so terrible it frightened her to see it.

“Bad dream,” he said. He was angry and edgy. He got into bed beside her.

“I'm right here,” she told him. He sat slowly on the bed beside her, pulling her up against him, rocking her. “Shh,” he said. “It's okay.”

He didn't eat the dinners she prepared for him. He studied her and he studied Joanna, and he watched the phone, and every time it rang he jumped up to grab it.

She was going to confront him. She planned to pick up Joanna from school and drop her with Maureen and then sit down with Jim, Wordsworth Elementary was only two blocks from the house, but she still got there a little late. She parked the car and started walking around the back, where the kids were streaming out. The crossing guards, little girls with white belts strapped across bright plaid and flowery dresses, were making a string of smaller children stop before a crosswalk on a perfectly empty street. They had those poor little kids marching just like little Nazis.

Joanna was always supposed to wait at the back. Even from here Lila could see her, in a red corduroy dress, rocking on her heels. Joanna used to have lots of friends. She had been inseparable from her friend Denny, but ever since she had been skipped ahead a grade, she was almost always alone. When Lila asked about Denny, Joanna just shrugged. “She's a baby,” she announced, but her face was miserable. The few times Joanna was with another child, it was always someone who was as ostracized as she now seemed to be. Just last week she had brought home a girl named Sandy who had waddled into the house in a fizz of crinolines, her hair artificially brightened into an icy gold. There was Merilyn, who was so overweight Lila could hear her gasp when she walked. Joanna didn't seem very happy with these girls. She played school or read aloud to them or played with her Barbie doll, and when one or the other of these girls left, summoned by the honking of her mother's car horn out front, Joanna didn't even look up to see them leave her.

Lila waved to Joanna. Maybe on the way home she'd stop at Hit-Or-Miss and let her pick out a new dress.

Joanna, leaning against the chain-link fence, saw Lila edging toward her. Resigned, she pulled herself from the fence. She had a note in her pocket from the teacher, but before she had even left the school she had gone into the girls' room and read it in the stall. Another conference.

Last year, when the teacher told her she was being skipped ahead into third grade, she had been so excited she could barely wait for summer to pass. She had insisted on getting to school her first day nearly half an hour before the janitor. For the first time in her life, she wasn't bored. She could open a math book and be wonderfully puzzled by formulas and equations. She could open up a science book and find pictures of stars and moons and planets. She loved school, but it didn't take her very long to see that there seemed to be something wrong with loving it. Denny began to avoid her. “You think you're so
big
.” Denny accused, and even though Joanna was baffled, Denny ended up being best friends with Trina O'Shea, who wasn't even in the first reading group, who still couldn't add without using her fingers like an abacus. The two girls linked arms. They whispered every time they saw Joanna. She tried to make friends in her new grade, but she was so much smaller than the other kids. The teacher put her right in the front row. Worse, when she announced to the class that Joanna had been skipped ahead, instead of admiration, the class groaned. Her excitement with learning only irritated the class. Every time she raised her hand, stretching it up, waggling it frantically into the air, Rosie Gordon who sat behind her would whistle loudly through her nose. When she went to the blackboard Billy Shearer would throw spitballs at her. She got good at hiding her report card from the other kids. She lied easily when Rosie asked her in a scornful voice if she got all A's again. “No,” she said, trying to be equally scornful. She didn't mention the A minus. Jo-A-na, they called her. They didn't choose her for a partner in gym even though Jim had shown her how to hit a baseball in the backyard, even though Maureen had taught her tennis. She didn't understand it. She was too ashamed to tell her parents, who treated her report card as if it were a trophy.

She kept trying to make new friends. She invited girls over, but they seldom came. Once Rosie approached her, and for a flash second Joanna actually had hope. “So what day is it?” Rosie asked. “Thursday,” said Joanna, and then Rosie had screamed, “Wrong!” and gripped the edge of Joanna's skirt and flung it up high to her waist. “It's Dress-up Day!” Rosie cawed. “Dress-up Day!” And all the other girls had giggled at the flash and ruffle of Joanna's white panties, at her burning face.

She gave book reports on books no one else had ever heard of, let alone could read. A
High Wind in Jamaica. The Secret Garden
. The other kids were giving oral reports on books like
Lad
,
a Dog
, and they gave her fishy stares when she recited, their faces turned hard and angry.

Her only ally was the teacher, a young lanky woman named Miss Tibbs, who had long frizzy black hair and always wore short skirts. She kept clapping Joanna on the back. She gave her special books and special lessons, but when she mentioned that maybe Joanna could be skipped ahead again, Joanna began to get headaches so terrible she sometimes spent afternoons lying on a white table in the nurse's office with a cool cloth on her head.

She was lonely. She began purposefully to fail, to have more and more headaches. She began biting her nails with a vengeance. Miss Tibbs sent a note home saying Joanna was clearing her throat every five minutes.

She began to retreat more and more into what her father called “the zone.” She could mesmerize herself so that she didn't see the spitballs flying toward her. She didn't hear the other girls whispering about a pajama party she wasn't invited to, the other girls asking her if she ever combed her hair. And she didn't have to hear her parents' concern.

Lila honked the horn. She parked by the curb, idling the motor, and then, suddenly, she saw the same blond woman who had come to the house, crouched down by the fence, fingers hooked through the wire rungs, staring over at a corner. She was better groomed than the first time Lila had seen her. She was in a short red dress and black heels, her blond hair piled into a ponytail. Lila watched the blond woman unhinge her legs. She was focusing wildly, her gaze stuttering from small face to small face. “Mom!” cried Joanna. The woman looked toward Joanna, frowning, and then she spotted Lila, and abruptly she looked back at Joanna, her face flooding with color. “Hey!” Lila called, and began striding toward the woman. She bolted in the other direction. “Wait!” Lila called. She knew that face. She remembered the photo Jim had shown her. “Lee!” she suddenly called out, stunned by her own audacity. The woman looked at her for a moment, alarmed, and then kept walking.

“Who was that?” Joanna said.

Lila yanked open the car door. “No one,” she said firmly. “Just some crazy lady. If you see her again, you stay away from her.” She pulled the car into gear. “So,” she said, trying to be cheerful. “How was school?”

“Fine,” said Joanna, turning her face from the school.

Lila was furious with Jim. She waited until Joanna was in bed and then she strode into the living room. He was sitting in the rocker, leafing through the newspaper, and when he heard her he looked up. “When were you going to tell me?” she said quietly.

“Tell you what?” he said.

She felt her anger spreading through her body, rising like steam. “About Lee,” Lila said, a hollow wave of nausea washing through her. No, it's not Lee, he could say. Lee is dead. You must be imagining things. “She was on our front
lawn
. She was at the
school yard
.”

“Lila,” he said.

“I know it's Lee.”

He sat up straighter. “I didn't want you upset,” he said finally.

Her heart bumped. “Are you crazy?” she said. “What happened? What does she want?” Lila slumped onto the couch, pulling at the tufts of fabric the dog had chewed out.

She angled her body so he'd look at her, but instead, head lowered, he got up and moved to her, cupping her head in his hands.

“Why'd she come back?” Lila said.

He was silent for a moment. “I don't know exactly. She says she wants to see Joanna.”

“See her?” Lila stood up. “What else?”

Jim looked suddenly weary. He rocked Lila. “She's not seeing anyone,” he said.

Every time Jim thought of Lee, she suddenly appeared. He would be talking to a doctor on the phone in the pharmacy, and suddenly he'd think: Lee. And there she'd be, curled around a stool at the soda fountain, sipping something frosty and dark from a parfait glass. Or he'd be walking over to the school to fetch his daughter and he'd see some tiger lilies growing wild in the scrubby grass and he'd remember how Lee had loved them. When he got to the school there would be Lee, walking away from him, the bottom of her dress floating up in the wind, like a wave. Once, he saw her sitting on one of the child-size swings, staring up at the sky, barely moving in the empty school yard. She hadn't seen him, but he had stood there until she had gotten up and walked out of the yard.