Olive, Again: A Novel (29 page)

“Listen, you guys,” Lisa said. She had kissed her father, who had stood up to greet her and who was now sitting back down in his lounge chair, and Lisa sat down in a chair across from her mother, next to her mother’s television, but then she got up and moved the chair so that it was directly on the strip of yellow duct tape; she looked back and forth between her parents. She touched the long bangs that fell onto her face, moving them slightly aside. “I stopped and saw Laurie on the way up—”

Fergus said, “We know, Lisa. That was good of you.”

Lisa glanced at him and said, “And I told her something, and she said I had to tell you guys, that if I didn’t she would—so I have to tell you.” The dog sat at Lisa’s feet, and he suddenly whined and wagged his tail, poking at Lisa’s jeaned legs with his nose.

“So tell us,” said Ethel. Ethel took a glimpse at her husband; he was looking at Lisa impassively.

Lisa smoothed her long brown ponytail over her shoulder, and her eyes were very bright. “There’s a documentary that’s been made.” She said this and raised her eyebrows. “And it stars me.” Then she turned to the dog, patting him, and making kissing sounds toward him.

Fergus said, “What do you mean, a documentary?”

“What I said,” Lisa answered.

Fergus sat up straight in his chair. “Now, hold on,” he said. “You’re starring in a documentary? I didn’t know documentaries had stars.”

“Tell your father to hush up,” Ethel said. “And then tell me about this documentary. What do you mean, you’re starring in it? Honey, this is so exciting.”

Lisa nodded. “Well, it is, frankly. Very exciting.”

A few times during the summer months, after the Highland Games in June, Fergus would put on his kilt—not the one with the MacPherson plaid, but a different one of plain color; he had gained weight and bought the last one at a store for only twenty-one dollars and ninety-nine cents, the price had pleased him—and he walked the streets of Crosby. He enjoyed this; people were pleasant, and he liked the feel of the kilt; he wore it with a gray T-shirt that matched his gray beard, and he wore his brown walking shoes with it as well. People, often summer people, would stop and talk to him, and they spoke of their own Scottish pasts, if they had one, and he was always surprised—and pleased—at how many people were proud of their ancestry this way. Years earlier there had been a pack of boys up near High Street that would call out, “What does a Scottish man wear under his kilt? A wang, a wang,” and they would convulse with laughter. He had felt like throwing stones at them, but of course he did not, and he noticed as the years went by that this sort of thing happened much less frequently and so he had his own private theory that people were becoming more tolerant—about a man wearing a kilt, anyway, if not more tolerant about the mess in the country—and this pleased him.

“About your work?” Ethel was asking Lisa. “Or is this a documentary about someone who comes from a small town and lives in New York City?”

Lisa closed her eyes, and opened them. “About my work,” she said. She stood up. “Oh, you guys, we’ll talk about this later. Let me get unpacked.”

Fergus said, “No, tell us now, Lisa. Spit it out, kid. Not everyone stars in a documentary.”

Lisa looked at him. “Well. Okay. Now, listen, you guys. I’m a dominatrix,” she said.

Fergus couldn’t sleep. He stared at the dark above his head. Then he closed his eyes and immediately felt afraid and so he kept his eyes open, but he couldn’t sleep that way. After almost two hours he got out of bed and went down the hall and listened, and he heard Lisa moving about her room, so he knocked lightly on the door.

“Dad?” She stepped back and let him in. She was dressed in her pajamas; they were pink silky-looking things, the bottoms long.

“You know, Lisa,” he said. He put his hand to the back of his head. “You know, if it’s money you need, honest to God, just say the word. I never should have assumed you could have made it on your own down there—”

“Dad, it’s not the money. Well, it kind of is, I guess, but that’s not the point.” Lisa put her hand to her hair, which was out of its ponytail now, and she smoothed it over her shoulder; it looked glossy to Fergus, like a television ad.

He sat down on her bed; his legs felt weak. “What is the point?” he said.

“Oh, Dad.” She looked at him with such great sadness on her face that he had to look away.

Earlier—that afternoon, after a great deal of confusion, especially from Ethel, who did not understand what a dominatrix was and who kept saying, “I just don’t understand what you mean, Lisa”—Lisa, after explaining to her mother what she did as a dominatrix, that she dressed up and had men play out their sexual fantasies, had said to her parents, “People need to be educated.”

“Why?” Ethel and Fergus had said this at the same time.

“So
they
can
understand,
” Lisa said. “Just like how Mom doesn’t even know what we do.”

Fergus had unwittingly walked across the tape to his wife’s side of the living room. “People don’t need to understand that kind of behavior. Good God, Lisa.” He tugged on his beard, walking about. Then he said, “You’re only excited because some damn person, some goddamn nimrod, decided to make a movie about this.”

“A documentary,” Lisa said. She said, almost with exasperation, “It isn’t about sex, Dad. I’m not a
prostitute,
Dad.” She added, looking up at him, “I don’t have sex with any of these men, you know.”

“I don’t understand,” Ethel said, moving her hand through her hair; she stood up and looked around and then sat right back down. “I really don’t understand any of this.”

Fergus felt puzzled but—only slightly—relieved to hear that she didn’t have sex with anyone, but he said, “What do you mean it’s not about sex? Of course it’s about sex, Lisa. Come on.”

“It’s about playacting. Dressing up.” Lisa’s voice sounded like she was trying to be patient. “If you watched it, you might learn something. Laurie watched it.”

“You have it?” Fergus asked.

“Yeah, I have a DVD. I’m not suggesting you watch it, I’m just saying if you
did
—”

Now, late at night, Lisa only said, still with the sadness in her face, “Go to sleep, Dad. I never should have told you. It was a mistake. But you know, you might have found out, because it will go public, and I thought you should know.”

“You don’t have sex with these men?” Fergus asked.

“I don’t, Dad. No.”

Fergus backed out of the room. “Good night,” he said.

“Sweet dreams,” Lisa called to him.

And Fergus could not believe she said that.

In the morning, Fergus overslept—he had not fallen asleep for ages—and when he woke he could hear Lisa and her mother in the kitchen. He knelt and got out his Civil War uniform from the trunk beneath his bed; the hat seemed squashed, and he punched it a few times. The whole uniform looked wrinkled; he had not taken it to the cleaners to have it pressed as he had in the past. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he murmured to himself. He put it on, got out the small brush for his mustache, which he tried curling at the ends, then went into the bathroom and sprayed hairspray on it, which got into his eyes and stung like hell.

In the kitchen, while sunlight was streaming through the window, he said to Lisa, “Good morning,” and she smiled at him—“Hi, Dad”—and he poured himself a bowl of cereal and took it into the dining room, and then he did something he never did, which was to sit on Ethel’s side of the yellow duct tape, and he did that so he could hear better what they were saying. But they were talking about dish towels. Dish towels! Lisa was saying that she’d like to go to that store out by Cook’s Corner where they have nice dish towels, and Ethel was murmuring something that sounded like Okay, they could do that. Fergus finished his cereal and went back to the kitchen, rinsed the bowl, and told Lisa that he was going off and would see her tonight. “Have a good time,” Lisa said. And then his wife said, “Tell your father to enjoy his day,” which kind of surprised him, and he said to Lisa to tell her mother thank you.

But he did not have a good day. Taking it from the garage, he put his pup tent into the back of his truck, and when he got to the park everyone was already there; in fact, he heard the gunshots before he even pulled up. It seemed a motley crew this time, not as many men were there as usual, and he got out his tent and walked over to Bob Sturdges, who greeted him and said, “Over there,” pointing to a place near the pup tents that Fergus was to use for his own, and Fergus was already too hot in his uniform as he put the damned thing up. He could not stop thinking about Lisa. He thought of her as a young girl, home from school at the end of the day: She’d always been a cheerful sort, not like Laurie, who was prone to sulking.

One of the men nearby—Fergus could not remember his name—was cooking something on a tiny grill placed over a little fire, and Fergus took his coffee—he had cheated and ground the beans earlier—and his tin cup and went and sat with this man, who said, “Hello, Fergus!” And Fergus made his coffee, feeling like a fool, and sat and drank it with this man, whose name finally came to him, Mark Wilton. “Not so many folks today,” said Mark, and Fergus said no, there weren’t.

From above them the sun came down sharply; they were in a tiny spot of shade from an oak tree, but much of the park was in full sunlight. The oaks and maples caused a dappling of the brightness, and Fergus suddenly remembered the park when he had been a kid here; there were elms in those days, and their leaves were so full, so thick, that the park had felt like it was garlanded. The grass in his memory had been greener as well, and in fact these days there was a whole section of the park that was just dirt, caused by the farmers market that showed up twice a week, the carts ruining the grass below.

Turning, Fergus saw a woman walking toward them in a long dress, skirt puffed out, bright blue, and she was carrying a little blue parasol against the sun. He could see her face, and what struck him was the look of almost-smugness on it. But it wasn’t smugness, he realized, as much as a suppressed joy for being able to wear such a dress today. She was a big woman to begin with, and the dress made her appear even bigger. “Hello, Fergus,” she said as she got closer to him, and God Almighty if it wasn’t Charlene Bibber.

“Hello, Charlene, that’s quite a dress you’ve got on today.” Fergus gave her a nod.

“Yes, it is,” said Mark Wilton. “Look at you.”

“Well, thank you, boys. I made this dress myself by
hand
.” Charlene stood there, a few beads of sweat lining her upper lip. “I thought to myself, no sewing machines back in those days, so off we go, Charlene, you can do this, and so I did.”

Fergus stood up and said, If they would excuse him, he’d forgotten something back at his house.

“What’d you forget?” asked Charlene, and he just shook his head. As he got into his truck he saw that she was still watching him.