Moonbird Boy (11 page)

By six-thirty on Saturday morning Bo had already been to an all-night supermarket and bought groceries. Free-range eggs, a tub of medium-hot salsa, freshly ground coffee in three flavors, and a pack of cigarettes. After breakfast and two cups of hazelnut-mocha she phoned Eva Broussard.

"I'm starving, I bought a pack of cigarettes, and I've realized I need new towels," she announced without preamble. "I've cleaned out my linen closet and bagged the towels so I can take them to a women's shelter someplace. When the stores open I'm going to shop for new ones, thinner ones that don't take an hour in the dryer. I didn't sleep much last night, kept thinking of ways to conserve energy. If everyone used thinner towels like they do in Europe—"

"Bo." Eva Broussard's voice was deep with concern. "Don't take any more of the antidepressants. Throw the ones you have left into the toilet and plan a quiet schedule for the rest of the weekend. You know what's happening."

"Yeah, you said it might," Bo agreed. "You said the antidepressant might alter my normal cycle and throw me into a manic episode. But I'm not really manic, and besides, it feels good after an entire month of wanting to dig a hole, get in it, and die, and hating myself for not having enough energy to pick up a shovel. This is better. I'm okay."

"It may not stay better, and you wouldn't have called me at this hour if you were okay. Keep taking the mood-stabilizing medication; with luck it will even you out in a couple of days. In the meantime, exercise, keep the sun out of your eyes, and avoid stimulants."

Bo eyed the pack of cigarettes lying on the Formica counter between her tiny kitchen and the dining area of her beach apartment. A familiar comfort. "Does that include nicotine?" she asked.

"Yes," her psychiatrist laughed, "and as usual, I refuse to discuss smoking with patients whose vision and hearing are not so impaired as to preclude access to books, magazines, television, and billboards. I'm a little worried about you, Bo. Will you call me this evening to check in?"

"Sure," Bo answered. "And thanks, Eva. You're my lifeline."

After hanging up, Bo went out onto the redwood deck over the beach and lit a cigarette. It tasted rubbery and made her dizzy, but the physical movements, the arc of her arm and the tipping of her head back to exhale, were calming, pleasant. Beneath the light haze over the ocean a string of pelicans soared with ragged grace. When one plunged into the blue-green swells she held her breath until it emerged clasping a small fish in its beak. The day was clean and breezy with possibility, she thought. A good day to be alive.

After dressing conservatively in khakis and a clean white polo shirt, she tied a blue cotton crewneck sweater over her shoulders and added tiny lapis earrings for the necessary touch of class. The outfit would do for lunch somewhere on Cape Cod, she thought. It would also intimidate the parents of Lindsey Sandifer.

The little girl was waiting, again wearing her blue-checked dress, when Bo arrived at the motel. Gretel, recognizing Bo from the night before, scampered across several crushed beer cans littering the floor and then stopped to place a warm paw on Bo's instep as she sniffed her leather sandals appraisingly.

"Don't even think of it!" Bo told the puppy as she handed her CPS identification card to Lindsey's mother. "Just hang on and we'll get you something even better to teethe on."

To the woman she said politely, "With your permission I'd like to take Lindsey and Gretel to a dogwash about three blocks from here. The owners have a lovely boutique and will be delighted to talk with Lindsey about how to care for her puppy. Then we'll probably have an ice cream before returning. We shouldn't be gone longer than two hours. I've put the phone number of the dogwash on one of my business cards for you, and the address as well in case you'd care to join us later." The tone was the one Bo's violinist mother had used when dealing with salesmen and representatives of ladies clubs who expected her to provide free "musical interludes" for creamed-chicken fashion lunches.

"Sure." The child's mother nodded, glancing at the closed bathroom door from behind which a shower could be heard. "Go ahead."

"My stepfather says you're fustered," Lindsey mentioned when they reached the sidewalk, a worried frown narrowing her large eyes.

Bo pondered the term, momentarily taken aback. "Ah, I think he meant 'frustrated,'” she said when she'd deciphered the second-grade version. "That's just a word some men use when women aren't afraid of them. It doesn't really mean anything."

"My mom's afraid of him. She's afraid he won't stay with us," the girl went on. "I can tell. It's because of me, because I'm not his kid and he has to pay for me." The child's blond head was hunched over the puppy in her arms.

Bo entertained a private fantasy of murder, but said, "He's young and doesn't know how to be a daddy, since he wasn't there when you were a baby and didn't get to learn. He's still just like a teenager, you know? But he might shape up after he learns how to be important to you and your mom." Always disgusting to toe the conciliatory social worker line, but there was no point in doing anything else.

"Oh," Lindsey said thoughtfully. "Teenagers act dumb."

"But then sometimes they grow up, right?"

"I guess. Can Gretel have ice cream, too?"

The limits of seven-year-old insight had been reached. "No, but she can have dog candy. That's what she'd like."

The dogwash was busy as Bo steered Lindsey past several raised bathtubs in which large dogs were being lathered and scrubbed. Gretel, now riding on Bo's left shoulder, registered her alarm at these activities by sinking her tiny, sharp claws into Bo's neck and diving into her collar.

"I don't think she wants a bath," Lindsey giggled.

"Aagghh!" Bo yelped. "Mindy, Jane, get out here and sell us a harness and leash so I can get this beast out of my blouse!"

One of the shop's owners, Jane Jenkins, appeared from an office in the back. "I thought your beast was still in Germany." She grinned beneath short, wavy hair so red it made Bo's seem dull by comparison. "Oh, you mean this little scamp. And you," she addressed Lindsey, "must be the proud owner. Let's go over here and pick out something really smashing for your dachsie."

"It's 'dachshund,' " Lindsey replied regally. "But at least you didn't call her 'weenie' or something. Don't you think it's dumb when people call dachshunds 'weenie dogs'?"

"I do," Jane agreed.

Bo watched as they sorted through an array of small harnesses made of nylon webbing, holding each one next to the puppy's coat.

"Red clashes with her fur," Jane noted.

"And pink does, too," Lindsey said.

It was serious business. Finally they selected a deep yellow harness with matching leash, and Jane spent twenty minutes introducing Gretel to her new wardrobe. In her harness the little dog looked like a bright autumn leaf, Bo thought approvingly. And Lindsey was ecstatic.

After additional purchases of rawhide chewsticks, a squeaking rubber porcupine in Day-Glo orange, and a box of canine cookies, Bo and Lindsey sauntered back up the beachfront walk to an ice cream bistro and made their selections.

"We're going home tomorrow," Lindsey said without enthusiasm as they sat on the seawall licking their cones. "To El Paso. I guess Danny's gonna quit being in the navy and come live with us. He says my mom has to get a different job to make more money. She's a waitress now. He says she has to pay him back for all the money he spent when I had my tonsils out in the navy's hospital."

Bo saw an amoebic black dot with purple edges swimming in her field of vision. Anger, again. "Danny has made a mistake," she said through a fake smile. "He must have forgotten that his military insurance paid for everything the navy didn't cover. I'm sure he'll remember that when he thinks about it."

"My mom's real name is Emily," the child said softly. "I think it's like a pioneer mom's name. She reads me Laura Ingalls Wilder books. They're about this little girl on the prairie, y'know?"

Bo nodded. "Little House on the Prairie was my favorite. Is that one your favorite, too?"

The child scowled into the horizon, ignoring Bo's question. "He just calls her M. Sometimes he calls her B.M. You know what that means? It's bad. Sometimes I just wish he'd die."

Bradley, you're meddling in the life of a kid that's not even on your caseload while neglecting the kid that is. You've opened a can of worms here. Now handle it!

"It's really good that you let your angry feelings out," Bo said conversationally to the top of Lindsey's head. "It's okay to feel angry sometimes and it's super-okay to say those angry feelings out loud when you're with a grown-up who understands that kids don't really mean—"

"I do really mean it," Lindsey said. "I wish his dumb boat would just sink and he'd be a skeleton at the bottom of the ocean with the pirates."

"Pirates?"

"Yeah, like at Disneyland. Pirates of the Caribbean, y'know? They've got trunks full of gold and diamonds, and they sing."

"You're right. I forgot about that."

And so much for the textbook social worker crap.

When Bo returned Lindsey and Gretel to the pink motel, the adults were sitting on the balcony in silence.

"Be sure to read Laura Ingalls Wilder books to Gretel as soon as you're old enough." Bo smiled at the little girl, and then said good-bye.

Back at her apartment there was a message from Andrew LaMarche saying he was counting the hours until he could see her again. Bo examined her reactions to this news and found pockets of interest heretofore lacking. The depression with its gloomy irritability and absence of romantic inclination was definitely waning. And there were, she calculated, about a hundred and seventeen hours left to count.

Next she phoned the receiving home, got the address and phone number of Bird's new foster care placement, and called.

"He seems to be doing fine," an easygoing male voice told Bo. "Got 'im up here on my ranch in Ramona, plenty a room to run around. Got 'im in knee and elbow guards, too. Worker tole me y'all suspect ADHD. Think you're prob'ly right."

The foster father, a retired oil rig mechanic from Texas named Dutch Stedman, had gone on fostering after his wife died "for the hell of it," he told Bo. And the wild kids, he went on fondly, the ones with problems, just seemed to mellow out with a little discipline and a lot of space. Bo made an appointment to visit Bird on Monday, and hung up. It sounded as if the boy were in good hands. So now what?

The painted rattlesnake clock in the kitchen said it was only ten o'clock. On a normal Saturday she'd just be finishing her second cup of coffee, Bo thought. But today she'd been up since six and still felt energetic enough to clean out the refrigerator, wash the car, and reorganize the federal government. It was going to be difficult to "plan a quiet schedule" as Dr. Broussard had ordered. Maybe a movie would be a good idea.

Phoning her psychiatric social worker friend, Rombo Perry, and his partner, Martin St. John, Bo heard an answering machine message accounting for the couple's absence. Their dog, Watson, was graduating from obedience school in a ceremony at ten-thirty that morning. Everyone was invited to a noontime picnic celebrating the occasion and directions to the picnic site were provided.

Bo sighed and replaced the phone in its cradle. From the easel in the dining alcove a half-finished portrait of a spirited old fox terrier seemed to cock its head expectantly.

"I couldn't stand to go to Watson's party without you, Mildred," Bo told the painting. "Everybody would be there with their dogs except me and it would just be too much."

Wandering onto the deck adjoining her living room and bedroom, Bo saw that the invisible window had closed again. The window through which the grieving observe a world whose ongoing activity seems inexplicable.

Bo had noticed the window first while sitting in a black limousine with her grandmother outside the Boston mortuary from which her younger sister, Laurie, was about to be buried. Already an adult, she'd nonetheless been surprised to see that traffic lights still changed color, that strangers drove by in cars, talking and laughing. The feeling had not abated as they drove toward the cemetery until an old man in a gray topcoat emerged from a barber shop and stopped on the sidewalk. Removing his hat, he crossed himself and then stood with bowed head for a moment as the hearse and somber black limousines passed before him. An old-fashioned Catholic, he'd known the ritual that broke the window, made a connection. Bo had never forgotten him.

"I feel like going out to the desert," she told an oblivious surfer riding the swells far out beyond the end of the Ocean Beach Pier. At that distance she couldn't discern any detail of the wetsuited body half submerged in opaque green water, but she imagined it was the old man from Boston. Imagined he would understand.

The phone rang as she locked the door of her apartment behind her, but she didn't go back in to answer it. Bounding down the steps toward the street, she could hear her own voice on the tape announcing the usual "I'm sorry we're unable to answer your call at the moment ..." message through the open kitchen window. And after that she was sure she heard the frantic barking of a small dog.

Alexander Morley lowered his eyelids and shook his head so imperceptibly that only the most acutely attentive waiter could discern his meaning. No more wine. He'd brought the entire MedNet board to Phoenix at extravagant expense for this celebratory lunch at his club, and Bob Thompson was embarrassing him by swilling eighty-dollar-a-bottle Monbazillac as if it were grape soda. The waiter nodded a sixteenth of an inch and beckoned the server to clear the wine glasses. The subtlety was not lost on Bob Thompson.

"I'm sorry," he beamed at the server, "but I'm not quite finished with my wine." A technicality, but within the boundaries of truth. There was a quarter-ounce of liquid left in his glass. Ignoring the old man, Thompson turned his animated gaze to Elliot Kines, the board member second to himself in seniority, and asked a rhetorical question regarding Kines's opinion of South Africa as a test market for health services. Everyone at the table was uncomfortably aware that Bob Thompson had just thrown down a very large, symbolic gauntlet.