Precious (23 page)

Except Eva. Over the week she seems more and more sullen. Natalia can’t discern what’s wrong, and when she asks, Eva refuses to answer or pretends not to hear. When Eva doesn’t go to work, when she isn’t out with Greg, she takes to her room, the harsh rock music pouring outside the open window, pulsing like a violent heartbeat that sends shock waves through Natalia’s body. If Natalia asks Sissy, Sissy only shrugs or becomes quiet and suddenly dumb, or she awkwardly defends her sister. Eva’s entire attitude assaults Natalia, leaves her at first worried but then more persistently angered. She believes that Eva’s moodiness is retaliation, an irascible reaction to Natalia herself, that Eva is only trying to intentionally disrupt whatever fragile order has been accomplished.

On Wednesday, Natalia wakes thinking of this all. At six she hears Frank rustling around before letting the back door slam shut, and she knows that he’s taken to his car again. In the kitchen she finds he’s left enough coffee for the two of them, and, though the gesture is a small one, she feels a childish longing come over her. She decides to dye her hair the same color it was when she was young. After she rinses and showers, she plucks her eyebrows, surprised by how much she and Eva look alike— the same arched curves, the same darkly concerned eyes. Only the lines of age separate them, the faint ring around Natalia’s neck that she covers today as she did when she was younger, draping a silk scarf around it, knotting it loosely. She puts on a dress—a flowered voile, knee-length, trimmed with black ribbon and set off the shoulder—and inspects herself again in the mirror: thin, with a curved stomach, her arms
a bit more stretched by extra flesh and gravity, but otherwise trim. She isn’t so old, she thinks, that she can’t wear a dress like this—one that her daughter might wear. She pins her hair back with bobby pins and applies a coat of lipstick.

The pool water glistens at this hour, just catching lazy morning light. At seven, the girls are still upstairs, sleeping. She raps on the car door and stands over Frank’s legs, straddling them between her ankles. He pulls himself out from under the vehicle slightly, squints, and wipes an oily wrench with a rag.

“What’s wrong?” If he notices the dress, he doesn’t let it register beyond a quick glance.

“I’ve been thinking,” Natalia says, her voice crisp. “I’ve been thinking for days, actually, that we should go for a ride in this Chevy, and I’m already promising I won’t drive and get in an accident. I know that all you do is take this blasted piece of metal apart and put it back together again so that you don’t have to talk to anybody. I’ve watched you. I figured it out years ago.”

He squints again and pushes himself back under the car. She hears metal hitting metal. “Maybe that’s true,” he says finally, “and maybe it isn’t.”

“Do you like the dress?”

“You look like a kid.”

“Let’s drive,” she tells him, nudging his leg. “I’ll make some sandwiches.”

Under the car, his voice remains muffled. “What about the girls?” he asks. “They’re asleep.”

“Eva’s off today, which means all she’ll do is mope and I’m tired of that. We won’t be long. You can put up with me, can’t you? With my being next to you in this dress?” She flounces, even though he doesn’t see.

Frank says nothing. She hears a bolt drop to the ground and roll slightly before settling. “Maybe,” he says after a few moments pass. “We’ll see.”

Natalia waits in the house, uncertain and slightly dejected. She pours a glass of iced tea and stands at the back door, watching him tinker. What’s a few hours to claim? There are days and days of work, of tending to the house and children. To her surprise, he eventually pulls himself out from under the car, collects his tools, and places them back in the shed before heading inside. As he walks by her, he strips off his work shirt so that she can see the dark hairs on his back. “Okay,” he says, going into the bathroom. “Make some sandwiches, then.”

In the car, a little later, Frank doesn’t buckle up; he never does. Once he told Natalia that in the case of extreme accidents it wouldn’t matter and that in the case of a fender bender, it wouldn’t make a difference. The statement itself was designed to make her laugh, and it worked. Now he stops to get gas before turning onto the highway, the same highway he sometimes used to race on with his buddies from high school, late at night, before the road became more traveled, before malls and neighborhoods sprung up out of nowhere along with strings of car dealerships. Natalia keeps the windows open, the air rustling her dress. In her mirror she catches the long strip of asphalt behind them, the blurry sun, the expanse of sky and clouds blossoming like white roses. Frank turns on the radio and fiddles until he finds a good station, but Natalia turns it off, hoping to talk. She reminds herself that he dressed up for her, too—clean shirt, plaid shorts. The thought pleases her, emboldens her. “So,” she begins, “what should we talk about on our ride?”

Frank takes a swig of soda, rests it between his legs. “You only said you wanted to drive, so I’m driving. There’s nothing worse than talking in a car going fifty-five miles an hour. If the talk isn’t good, your only option is to jump out the window. It gets messy.”

“I see,” she says. She turns the radio on again, leans back, and looks out at the newly constructed houses that whiz by. Things have changed, in some ways, a fact that leaves her slightly disoriented today, though in other ways they remain unchanged by time, too, and she chooses to focus on these things instead: the ice-cream parlor they pass, one that
opened when they first married, the row of shops that still advertised the same attractive discounts, year after year. “Do you remember what it’s like?”

“What?” he says.

“To feel peaceful? Or to have a peaceful conversation?”

“Is this a conversation?”

“Maybe,” Natalia says, adjusting her scarf. “Maybe it’s the start of one.”

Frank ducks his head a little, peering out to the landscape and the road. He adjusts the mirror. “It’s a good day for a ride.”

They fall into another silence, not so strained, not so painful. She waits, trying to think of how to bring him to the place where they might remember, where they might connect again. How long it seems since they first met, the night now clouded in nostalgia. Where would she and Frank even be without her high school friend Frannie, the heavyset girl with a leg stiffened from polio, Natalia’s lab partner? When Natalia turned gray-faced during dissections, it was Frannie whose steady hand made the intricate cuts in frogs and pigs. She cut away the rubbery skin, peeling it back to reveal the intricate organs: the hearts, the lungs, the livers, the reproductive parts and stringy intestines. It was because of Frannie that Natalia met Frank. The girl, she supposed, had as few friends as Natalia did back then, and halfway through the year she invited Natalia over for dinner. It was a spring evening, and because Natalia didn’t drive, because even in her junior year Clara said a car was an unnecessary luxury, Natalia walked the ten blocks to Frannie’s house. She wore a full skirt, a conservative blouse that buttoned to her neck and had a lace collar, one Clara insisted upon and that Natalia herself hated. She had already opened one button by the time she found Frannie sitting on the porch swing. Frannie’s brother, Benjamin, a broad-faced, thick-bodied boy, leaned against the railing, and Frank, next to him, turned his head when Natalia sent up a hello. Seeing her, he grinned like a Cheshire cat, but he turned quickly and went back to his
good-natured ribbing of Frannie, who blushed shamelessly and sat with her leg uncomfortably jutting in the opposite direction from which her body leaned.

“You could sure cause some damage with that leg on a football field,” Frank said. “Yow.”

They continued joking until they were called inside. After a long dinner during which Frannie’s father mused about politics and music, the four of them discussed school in the backyard. Benjamin and Frank passed a football between them, while Frannie and Natalia sat on the steps, watching them. Benjamin planned on obtaining a scholarship and had plans to go into the major leagues, while Frannie longed to become a vet, even though her mother was pushing for her to work at her father’s law firm, where she had it on good authority that several young men were recently hired as junior lawyers. “She thinks I need someone to take care of me,” Frannie said, fiddling with her brace. “She told me that a girl like me should be thinking of marriage.” When it came around to Natalia and what she wanted, Natalia drew a complete blank. She played with the hem of her skirt. She thought, in a silly way, that what she most wanted was the moment itself, and that this very moment she wanted to dance. The air felt good on her skin. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just want to feel free.”

The boys erupted in laughter, and Natalia laughed, too, realizing she sounded foolish. Frank threw the football back to Benjamin and looked over to her. “How about Hollywood? How about fly me to the moon?”

Natalia shook her head. “I guess after school I’ll get a job doing something.”

“Not dissecting frogs, I hope.” Frannie got up, limped over to the boys. “Throw it to me.”

“A movie star,” Frank said, looking up.

“Please,” Frannie said. She fumbled with the ball but caught it and happily lobbed it back, spinning it in the air like an acorn. “She doesn’t want to be a movie star.”

“Your plans?” Natalia asked Frank, blushing, changing the subject.

He grinned. “Everything. The moon and stars and whatever is between them.”

“He’s smart enough,” Frannie said, announcing that Frank had skipped an entire year in high school. “He’s a whiz. A person like that could do
anything.
A person like that might even become president of the United States.” Frannie saluted him, stood up straight.

“It’s still not football,” Benjamin said.

Frank laughed. “Not much is.” He threw the ball to Natalia, who, surprised, caught it with both hands.

When it came time to go, Frank offered to give Natalia a ride. She glanced at Frannie and caught her shift uncomfortably.

“It’s not far,” Natalia said, getting ready to excuse herself. She straightened her skirt. Sometime during the night, she had unbuttoned her shirt again, and now she rebuttoned it. “I can walk.”

“It’s a beautiful evening for a walk,” Frannie agreed.

“Nice night for a drive, too,” Frank said, raising his eyebrows. That Cheshire grin. “There’s no reason to walk.”

God, how he adored that car—black, sleek-looking with leather interior and chrome wheels. Later, after they were dating, Frank would teach her to drive in that Chevy, and she, nervous to the point of shaking, would hit reverse instead of forward and slam into a tree. She’d shrieked, realizing that she’d caused considerable damage to the back end—the metal completely crushed from the impact, the fender leaning at a bizarre angle. But that night driving her home with the car still intact, Frank bragged and told her it was the first thing he’d saved for in his life, bought with money he’d made working at the country club after school and on weekends. “The pay at the club isn’t great,” Frank confessed. “But the tips, Christ. It’s a shame the old guys can’t find their own balls, but I’m not complaining. Got the car used, a good deal. Fixed it up myself in the old man’s shop.”

When Natalia inquired about Frank’s family, she was surprised that he told her so much about his father, about his father’s temper. She didn’t know why—perhaps the night itself, the sky deepening over
them, magically; or perhaps it was that he’d risked something with a stranger when he had no reason to—but she told him, too, about her life, about internment, about her German parents. She told him—the only person she ever told—about the camp, the wires, the burn around her neck. “I’m a Gyp,” she said, half ashamed, half ready for a rebuke.

“Must be why you have that look.”

“What look?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said, grinning. “That pretty look, I guess.”

“You won’t tell?” she asked, suddenly nervous and blushing.

“I won’t ever tell.”

“I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Then we won’t,” he assured her.

“Frannie thinks you could be president.”

“Frannie,” Frank said. “Frannie’s like a kid sister. I’ve known her forever. So where should we go? I’ll drive you anywhere you want, Natalia. Anywhere at all, even to the moon.”

Natalia glanced out the window and felt herself blush again. “I have to go home.”

“All the better reason not to. Want to go for a swim? There’s a pond out by a farm I know.”

She smoothed her skirt. “I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“Never stopped me.”

She hit his leg playfully and turned. “Forget it, Frank Kisch.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m a gentleman. I won’t even look.”

“You would, too!”

“I wouldn’t look,” he said solemnly. “Even a little.”

“I would be offended,” Natalia said coyly, “if you didn’t look a little.”

They laughed and headed out the highway. At an exit on the other side of town, he turned off and traveled out roads populated with farms and orchards. “I always like it here,” he said, pulling into a small grove with a pond, the wheels hitting gravel. “It would be nice to own a place like this.” He parked. Though she would normally have felt uncomfortable
in a strange place, she felt oddly protected with Frank that night, as if nothing in the world could harm them. She allowed him to put his arm around her.

They threaded through the orchard. In the distance there was an old house, the lights on the bottom floor illuminated like eyes. The crickets sang, and Natalia swung her hips as Frank talked. She unleashed a thread of stories on him, telling him, happily, that she once knew a boy who would turn into a wolf at night just to howl at the moon, for the pleasure of it. “Are you like that boy?” she asked. “Free like that?”

Frank howled then and climbed up a tree. He reached across a branch and picked her an apple. He inched down, presenting it to her, transformed again, not a boy but a gentleman.

Remembering this, she thinks to place her hand on his leg now. How much she loved that boy and that sweet promise of a man. She wants to say time doesn’t really change us, that she knows that boy is still inside him, waiting. “The thing about memories,” she says instead, looking over, “is that you can pick which ones to hold on to, and which ones to let go of. You can keep the good and leave the bad. Remember that time in the orchard, after Frannie’s house?”