Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights (10 page)

He scanned the small gathering. He took a beat longer on my mom, and then sought out my face with an amused smile. Rex came back and flipped my hand with his nose for a rub.

The funeral director ushered out a guy pushing a chrome gurney. Stroud went around to the back of the truck and opened the big door with Eric and me in curious pursuit. Arthur put his arm around Mom and led her back to the stone table.

Grandma was wrapped securely in quilted blankets and sandwiched between cartons of IV tubing and nitrile gloves. There were flower sprays and small arrangements tucked in here and there. They moved boxes and slid her around until they’d maneuvered her onto the gurney, which they wheeled quickly in the side door.

“I appreciate you doing this,” said Eric.

“No problem,” said Stroud. “I was coming this way.”

I gave him a hug, the blue shirt made his eyes even richer. I’m think my nipples reached out and stroked his chest. “Thanks. It’s nice to see you.”

He glanced down at my breasts and the corners of his mouth turned up, then he met my eyes, ”You too.”

The funeral director was back and they discussed escape routes.

“You’re leaving?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”

He whistled for Rex. They climbed in the cab, did some impressive maneuvering, and drove away.

“He seems nice,” said Eric. “Do you realize your cheeks look like red apples?”

“That obvious? He taught biology.”

“College?” he asked.

“High school,” I said.

“Huh. Well next thing will be sprayed on jeans with pumps,” he said.

“You noticed her get up?”

“I’d have to be blind. Let’s get this over with. Where’s Binky?”

Binky wasn’t back yet. Eric punched in Ted’s number while I got Emily out of the car and wandered back to the table. We could hear Binky’s voice before she was out of the car. Her walk looked a little drifty.

Eric went into the office to marshal the troops. The funeral director solemnly led us to the family plot. I hadn’t been there in years. Grandma would be buried with familiar names.

I don’t know when they’d done it, but Grandma was waiting for us. Her casket, adorned with a large floral spray, sat on a low platform with what looked like a poufy bed skirt. There were no chairs set up. We hadn’t planned on a crowd, which is where we hit snag number two. In all the hubbub about the guest list and who’s an alcoholic, no one had planned an actual service. Binky’s current Catholicism notwithstanding, we’re not a religious family. No one knew any good prayers off the top of their head. I had Emily, but it seemed like someone needed to kick things off. Enter Arthur.

“I didn’t know Minerva,” he began. “But in the little time I’ve known her daughter, I know she must have been a strong and loving person. I’m happy you included me today.”

Well done, Arthur. I glanced at Mother to see if she’d missed the Ella. I figured she’d feel touchy about him getting her mother’s name wrong, even if they had only known each other for a few days. I was. Ella is my middle name. I liked it, even though I thought it sounded odd with Hannah; it made a clip clop sound. No one had asked me. Mom was starting to cry; probably because her heels had sunk in and taken root in the grass. She was firmly planted, with a slight backward tilt. Her hand gripped Arthur’s arm like a claw. Nice manicure, Mom. He undoubtedly thought she was feeling loving and just trying to be strong.

I looked at Eric and raised my eyebrows. He shot the funeral director his this–is-what-you’re-paid-for look. The funeral director caught it.

“Why don’t we say the Lord’s Prayer,” he said.

We bowed our heads and he began, “Our father who art in heaven….”

Oh boy. It’s the prayer they say at the end of every Alanon and AA meeting; too preachy for my tastes. Arthur was delivering in a sonorous voice while the rest of us mumbled along. I looked at Mom and Binky when it got to the trespasses part, but neither was listening. Both had their heads down, Mom so she could sneak peeks at her sunken heels, and Binky so she could flick bugs off her suit. Ted had his arm around Binky’s shoulders, probably to keep her upright. Eric and Anna had their heads bowed and were holding hands.

“Would anyone like to say a few words about Minerva?” asked the director.

Now he was calling her Minerva. I wondered what the headstone said.

“I’d like to read one of Ella Minerva’s favorite poems.” I read “Wild Nights.”

“That was lovely, Hannah,” said Mom through her sniffles.

Binky rolled her eyes. We stood reverentially, waiting for someone to break from the pack. Mom’s back must have been feeling the awkward angle. While Arthur steadied her, she stepped out of her shoes revealing a bright red pedicure, then weeded her shoes out of the lawn, tiptoed to the walkway, swiped grass off her feet and put them back on. The rest of us wandered slowly, heads bowed slightly, resisting the urge to run. Ted and Binky made a quick escape. Mom and Arthur were waiting to say good-bye.

“Thank Stroud again,” said Eric.

“You guys did a great job,” I said. “I’m going to Hawaii with Steve for the holidays so won’t see you. He’s going to call you in New York, take you to dinner if it works out.”

I was about to get in my car when Mom came over to me. “You know what they say, Hannah.”

“Who they?”

“They they. They say a man has an affair for variety, but a woman has an affair to make up her mind.”

“I’m not having an affair.”

“Well.” She smiled gently, gave me a hug and went back to Arthur.

That was a new one. I’d put it in my life’s lessons book under
‘A’ for affair
, right next to
A smart woman can control any man
. I was building quite a playbook from those sisters. To her credit, Mom had never trotted out the controlling men rule. I kept waiting for the day when she started combining. She could tell me what
they cats
had to say about my life choices, such as they were.

Unfortunately I’d spent enough time in the self-help section to understand that I needed to
own
my choices, which can really be a bummer when you have such a great mother to blame.

The scenic artist on our show had some woo-woo thing going. She swore we pick our mothers and fathers at some pre-womb point in time and space. I had started giving that a little thought but hadn’t gotten very far with it. I wasn’t quite ready for the edge of that wedge. Every time I tried to think about it
I felt a cleaving in my mind
, as Emily would say. It might be empowering to think we have that much control; on the other hand, it’s a heavy load. I was trying to stop controlling everything, not rope in what my previous self and my parents were doing before his little tadpole crashed Mom’s party. And just when she thought she was free, free at last with her two kids squirreled away in school all day.

And what did the scenic artist know? She was paid a paltry sum to produce paintings for a pretending artist who was really a rather vacuous actor, who sold them, off-camera, to people who found meaning in them, despite the fact that her character ranted around in a nihilist haze about how nothing means nothing. And the paintings were damn good. The scenic artist should have picked parents who sent her to the Rhode Island School of Design instead of some two-year trade school out in the valley. La dee dah. Mom always made me feel so good about things, even though I knew she couldn’t
make me feel
anything.

I called Stroud.

“Hey,” he said. “I just got here, nice place. Rex thinks the pool is his water bowl.”

“That should be safe. Light a fire if the house is cold, it gets chilly. There’s wine there.”

The road was wide open and it was only 4:30 p.m. Things had worked out great thanks to Stroud. I thought about him in my house, wandering around with Rex. I pulled up to the grape stake fence in forty minutes flat.

I opened the gate and looked down on the scene below. It was almost dark. He’d figured out how to turn on the pool lights, steam was smoking off the surface of the water. He had his shoes off and was reading in the chair by the fire.

“Hi,” I said. “You look so comfortable.”

“Good spot. I took Rex for a walk. The coyotes were out for dinner.”

“They’ll be howling like banshees in a few minutes. Lots of people find just their cat’s collar in the morning.”

“A lot of pressure on their environment,” he said. “So how’d it go?”

“It was fine. I read her poem.”

I went into the closet and changed. I took off my pearls and grabbed my all-purpose jacket.

“Well. You saw my mother.”

“Sure did. She didn’t look like your average hooker.”

“You should have seen her pedicure. And those shoes will have her on ice tonight. What’s an average hooker look like?”

“Not like your mother. If the tall tan guy is her new man, I doubt she’ll be on ice.”

My phone. Steve. I let it go to voicemail. I glanced at the screen; he’d left a message.

I offered to make breakfast for dinner unless Stroud really wanted to go back out. I scrambled eggs and made toast while I confessed about how awful I’d been to Arthur. We sat down by the fire to eat.

“Your father was a pilot?”

“Yeah. He learned as a young man. We had great times.”

“Did your mother fly with him?”

“Sure. Her name is Jackie. We all did.”

“And he slammed into a mountain?”

“Well, not slammed, I said that for dramatic effect.” I told him the story.

“Sorry.”

“We should go swimming and look at the stars,” I said.

“You can see stars here?”

“Uh huh. Three, sometimes even four, manage to pierce the ambient light when there’s no moon like tonight.”

“Out in the flat desert it’s like being under a huge bowl of stars. They arc from horizon to horizon,” he said.

“Hmm, I’d like to see a bowl of stars. Let’s swim, then I’ll fix some tea.”

We turned off all but a few lights. I opened the damper and added some wood to the fire.

“I don’t have trunks,” he said.

“You don’t need trunks, nobody can see us. There are towels in the bathroom cupboard.”

He went in to undress while I stripped down in the closet. I wrapped in a towel and grabbed the bottle of wine and glasses.

I don’t care how warm it is; those first few feet getting in the water are a doozy. The air was colder than the water so it felt wonderful to hold a beat too long in the cold air, and then slip into the water. The water felt like warm skin sliding up my legs and torso. I rolled over and slowly breaststroked down to the other end of the pool. It was darker at that end and my eyes began to adjust to the night sky. Stroud dropped his towel and stepped into the pool, taking his time with the first few steps; then dove in with a small splash. He swam half the length of the pool underwater then surfaced.

“Hey,” he said in a low voice.

“Hey. Nice, huh?”

“Yeah.” He glided my direction and turned his back to the wall so we were both looking up at the sky. Our legs brushed against each other as they gently held us in place below the surface. I put my hands over my shoulders and held onto the edge of the pool to keep from slipping under. I had to arch my back to keep from floating to the surface.

He looked over at me, then came closer and faced me, with his hands on the edge of the pool next to mine.

“Nice,” his face was just a few inches from mine.

We kissed. His warm tongue made a slow exploratory circle around the smooth skin just inside my lips, then brushed my tongue. Electricity raced down my core and arched my back; I floated up to meet him. The water pressed me up against his body and legs so that he was lying on top of me, suspended in the warm water. Our cells seemed to be buzzing some language back and forth through his soft but purposeful tongue, through his strength, the hair on his legs, the breath from his nose on my lip. My nipples brushed against his chest in rhythm with the gentle tidal wave our body motion created.

I was completely lost, so when my fingers slid off the edge of the pool and I slipped under water, my mouth was still open. I felt his arm wrap around my waist and fish me out, back almost to where I had started. Our legs were in a state of confusion now that our delicate equilibrium had been lost. He managed to hold me and hold the edge of the pool. I coughed.

“Are you alright?” He looked very amused.

“I think so.”

It was at that moment that his steely grip on the pool gave way and we both went under with him on top, of course.

We pushed away from each other in a mad play for survival and surfaced a few feet apart. We looked at each other and laughed; then we just looked at each other. Despite the floundering finale, we both sensed the wild animal on the loose.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” I asked. “I brought the bottle out.”

“Sure. Do you swim laps in here?”

“Yes.”

“Naked?”

“At night, yes. Why?”

“I just wanted the picture for the future.”

“We also play a lot of Marco Polo. We call it Roger Wilco.”

I took off swimming and made it to the wine in a matter of seconds. Stroud swam right behind; he’s a good swimmer.

“Nice ass.”

“Thanks,” I said. We sat on the bottom step with the warm water up to our shoulders, sipped wine and gazed at the starless sky.

“I’m getting cold,” I said. “You ready to get out?”

“Yeah.”

I rose from the water as nymph-like as possible, then jumped in the shower to heat up fast. I hung up a guest robe for Stroud. He was standing by the fire wrapped in a towel, looking thoughtful.

“I left you a robe if you want to rinse off. I’m going to start some hot water.”

He came up behind me in the kitchen and pressed into my back and kissed the side of my neck. He slid his hand inside the fold of my robe, took the weight of my breast in his hand and brushed the nipple like he was gently stroking a cat’s ear. I turned around to face him.

“Can you stay?” I asked.

“Unless you’ve changed your mind again.”

“I haven’t.”

He took a shower while I fixed tea and added a log to the fire. I curled my bare feet under me as I sat in a chair close to the fire.