Precious (30 page)

“Can you imagine the guilt?” Ellie asks Natalia. “We need to tell her it wasn’t her fault. It could have happened to anyone.”

“She’s probably shy about coming,” Milly says, checking her watch again. “I had to march over there and practically crawl through the window to get her to let me in. She promised. She gave her word. I told her, ‘When things get bad, you need other people, whether you like to admit it or not.’ ”

“I can’t help but wonder what’s worse, knowing or not knowing?” Edna Stone says. She tidies the containers, her wrinkled hands diligently working the Tupperware.

“Not knowing,” Natalia says. “It’s always the worst.” From where she sits, she can see Frank flip burgers and make small talk with Jim and Edward. At this distance, she can’t help but feel her love for him again.

“Things better?” Ellie asks, noticing Natalia’s stare. Ellie pushes her big sunglasses up into her hair. Her eyes, Natalia notices, are a brilliant shade of brown.

“Of course,” Natalia says, nodding.

Milly leans in, her sides spilling off the bench. “You know, Natalia, I left my first husband once—the one before my Edward. This was back in the forties, during the war. Markus had flat feet, you know, and couldn’t join the military. He was a miserable man because of it. I swear he spent his entire life wanting to kill someone.”

“I’m glad I’m single,” Laura Landing says, sipping a gin and tonic.

“My advice,” Milly says, pointing a fork, “is always find a man who wears polyester. It’s a fabric that you can trust on a man.” She tells everyone a story, then, about how Edward refused to wear blue jeans because when he was a boy his mother forbade him to wear them. “She told him when jeans became popular, the country went downhill. How’s that for love and premonition?”

The women, including Natalia, chuckle. She listens as the women lapse into stories about their husbands and first loves, their years of marriage, their gloomy days and happier ones. She thinks of Frank again, remembers him as a boy who lived in trees, who picked fruit with an easy heart and courageous howl. She closes her eyes and sees him in moonlight, arms reaching out across the branches, full of intention.

“When we were young, Frank was so sweet he used to pick apples for me,” she says quietly. She’s surprised when the women stop and look at her for a moment. She smiles.

“Frank?” Milly asks, not unkindly. An amused look crosses her face.

Natalia is surprised to find her eyes well with tears. “Yes,” she nods, her hand to her heart. “My
kedvesem.
My loved. My Frank.”

“It’s a giggle show,” Mr. Nealy says, licking his lips. He grabs a beer and sits down. Mr. Nealy is always one of the last to arrive to any neighborhood function; it takes him a good hour to put on his best shirt and slacks and tie. He presses each beforehand, letting his hand guide the iron to create perfect pleats. He points now. “The women over there, they’re plotting.”

Wearing his plaid shorts and new loafers, Frank shifts and mumbles an agreement he does not necessarily feel today. A quoit loops around the metal stake and spins, and he calls out to the men: “A ringer around a tomato is worth double the points.”

“Good Lord,” Edward says, pushing his hand through his gray hair. He acknowledges defeat and plops down in a chair, panting. “Don’t let the missus hear you say that.”

“Too late,” Milly yells from the table. She points her fork accusingly. “You ring my plants, and I’ll ring your neck.”

Frank grins. “How’s work?” he asks Edward.

“I own a toy shop,” Edward says, shrugging. “How hard could it be?”

“Hard.”

“Business could always be better,” Edward says. “Things go in waves. This weekend has been good, hope it gets even better. Long hours, though. The missus made me take off for the picnic. Got some kid manning the store today.” He pauses. “I heard about the layoff, read it in the paper.”

Mr. Nealy turns and adjusts his hearing aid. “Plant’s been there ages,” he says. “No worries.”

“That’s what they tell me,” Frank says.

“Things good otherwise?” Edward wipes sweat from his brow. He sips his beer.

“Burgers are good,” Frank says.

“Not that,” Edward says, laughing. “Home, Natalia, the kids.”

Frank surveys the yard, the fence and hedges, the children running about.

“I’d be mad as a hornet,” Mr. Nealy says.

Frank says, “I am. Not much going to change that, for a while at least.”

“Sticking to it?” Edward asks.

Frank catches a glimpse of Sissy, a flash of silver. She’s hiding next to the shed, bent down. Her head pops out, along with the top half of her body, before disappearing again. The children scream, too happy
and excited to bother to eat. He looks for Eva and catches sight of Natalia instead, sitting at the table, talking to the women. She sends up a small wave, a questioning look. “Better together,” he says, “than apart. Better for the kids. Better for me, too.”

“True,” Edward says. “Best call, I guess.”

After she eats, Natalia finds Eva sitting out on the front step, sneaking a cigarette, her legs stretched out before her, an oversize T-shirt hanging well below her cutoff shorts. Eva squints into the day, out to the empty street, and seems to regard nothing in particular—the wilting hedges, the fire hydrant, the dribble of water snaking down its base. Natalia waits, debating what to say, but Eva ignores her and her offering of a plate of food.

“A dirty habit,” Natalia says of the cigarette. She thinks of sitting down, but remains standing instead.

“Dad smokes,” Eva tells her, without looking up. “You don’t get on him for it.”

“It’s his house, and he can do what he likes. It isn’t your house, so there are rules. You embarrassed your father the other night, in front of his friends from work.”

“Did I?” Eva inhales and blows a line of smoke, casually in the other direction. She extinguishes her cigarette. In the sun, her head throws off streaks of chestnut and gold. She threads her fingers through her thick hair, pulling out a few loose strands.

“You don’t have a right to make him feel that way, not after everything he does for us all. You can’t just bring shame to our family.”

“Shame,” Eva says, without looking up. “That’s all we have.”

Her tone exacerbates Natalia. There is too much Natalia wants to say—her discovery in Eva’s room, her knowledge that Eva goes out to get high, her displeasure with how Eva influences Sissy. She wants to tell Eva that every once in a while she might think to cover her knees or chest when she goes out to meet her friends. She wants to say Frank is
right—it’s Eva’s problem. That Eva acts like a
szuka,
a dog. She wants to say all of this, and more. “Look at me,” she says, waiting. “Why are you so angry with me, with your father?” In the backyard, children shriek with laughter.
It is a pleasant enough day,
Natalia tells herself.
Everything is taken care of. There are no small catastrophes. Everyone is doing the best they can.
Eva, she realizes, sees none of this. “Ungrateful,” she says finally “You’re ungrateful for all that people do for you.”

“Me?” Eva glares at her then.

It is this type of willfulness and defiance that only infuriates Natalia more. She opens her arms a bit, to let the incoming breeze cool her. “I heard from Milly I know that Sissy was alone, that you just left her.” Natalia pauses, letting this thought in, too—all the things that might have happened with a girl entirely alone in a house: grease fires and broken bones, slips in the tub, a head cracked on the porcelain. “You talk about me, and look at yourself. Look at your attitude, your lies.”

Eva shifts uncomfortably, and Natalia feels a flash of victory. To her mind, Eva has asked for this—with her sullen demeanor over the past weeks, her cruel words. She doesn’t know what else to say, though it seems impossible to her that a mother does not know what to say to her own daughter. If Eva were a young girl again, this argument might turn into a conversation, might end with Eva throwing her arms around Natalia in apology. Natalia stands, wishing that her daughter would apologize, but of course Eva does not. She will not apologize for anything. “Lies are bad habits.”

“If that’s the case,” Eva tells her, “then everyone except for Sissy is screwed.”

There seems to be more to say, more to ask and uncover, but Natalia hears a voice and turns to see Milly and Jenny come around to the front yard.

“There you are,” Milly says. Worry shadows her face. “I tried to call Ginny Her phone is off the hook.”

Natalia eases her posture and pretends that no argument has happened at all. “Maybe she changed her mind?”

“We’re going over to see,” Jenny says. “You’ll come, won’t you? Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

“In a minute,” Natalia says. “Yes.”

The women walk away then, launching into immediate discussion on how best to handle what Milly has already deemed a delicate situation. “We’ll wait for you outside the house,” Milly calls, turning briefly.

Eva is still glaring. She pulls her legs up more and lights another cigarette. “Glad you’ll go and help them,” she says, her words measured.

“Spit it out,” Natalia demands. “Whatever you have to tell me, spit it out.”

Eva hesitates. She stares off across the street, to nothing in particular. “You didn’t care what happened,” she says finally. “After you left. You didn’t care that Dad went out one night, that he got drunk, that he came home late. And what did he do? Call me by
your
name? Come up to me? Put a hand on me?” Eva inhales and waits. Then she flicks her cigarette and sends sparks flying to the ground. She pulls her legs closer and wraps her arms around them.

Her words feel like a smack, quick, across the face. Natalia stands, shaking her head. “All you do is lie,” she concludes, pushing Eva’s words from her mind. “All you do is make up stories.”

Upset, barely able to register Eva’s words, Natalia walks to Ginny’s house and finds Milly and Jenny still standing together like an envoy calling out, unleashing a relentless succession of knocks on the front door. The afternoon light pushes down through the trees and between the row of houses. Somewhere beyond the house, a dog barks.

“We’ve been at this for five minutes,” Milly says in an exhausted way. She checks her watch, possibly worrying at this point about the dwindling food and ice at the picnic, the necessity of putting items away. She peers into the window and raps on the glass, her knuckles white from effort. “Ginny” she calls, trying to peer in. “You’re missing the picnic.”

Natalia goes to the door and feels it give without hesitation. She lets it drift open, intending to only call into the house, intending to remain a bystander, but it is the smell of burning food that hits her hard and the slight gray smoke that grows diffuse in the living room. Her feet react before her brain. All the thoughts she had of Eva on the walk over disappear in that moment and are lost to the day. Instinctively, she runs. Milly and Jenny follow close behind. In the kitchen, they find Ginny on the floor, slumped over, the phone cradled in her lap. There is a vacancy in her expression that startles Natalia, but she permits herself only a moment to let this register before she flicks off the oven and grabs a towel. She opens the door and bats away smoke and pulls out the cake, blackened, smoldering.

“They called,” Ginny says, just audibly, nodding but not seeing any of them.

Natalia places the cake in the sink. She comes over and tries to help Ginny up, but her body is like a lead weight that won’t budge. Natalia rests on her knees, feels the cool linoleum through her summer pants. “Who called, Ginny?” she asks. She looks over to Milly and Jenny.

“They found something, but I don’t think— By the creek. They don’t think it’s her. They said they aren’t sure.”

“My God,” Milly says.

Ginny nods. Her face is pale. Natalia senses that she is falling, that every word they say is tumbling in after her, into an abyss. She knows this look. She saw it in so many broken faces when they became ghosts, floating, finally lost to the world.

“Ginny,” Natalia says.

“They said—” Ginny tells them, choking up on the words, “—they said the girl was raped.”

Natalia picks up the phone from the floor, replaces it on its receiver. She feels numb, lost in things. She thinks of Eva, she thinks of Sissy. A shiver travels through her, even on this mild day. She is aware of the cuckoo clock above the sink, how it ticks and ticks away the hours, and she remembers that a cuckoo is a bird of bad luck, each call it makes
sounding out the years the listener has to live. A heaviness hangs on her and she forces herself to breathe. “We’ll go together, Ginny,” she says, leaning forward to help her up. “We’ll go with you to see.” She places her arm under Ginny’s. The women help. Together, they manage to right Ginny, just as Natalia sometimes saw men do—men holding each other up even though it was futile, really, a last defiance against death, a last affirmation of something defiantly, wholly humane.

Ginny trembles, her body tilting sideways. “I can’t. I don’t want to know.”

“You have to,” Natalia says, steadying her. “We’ll do it together.”

“They aren’t sure.”

“You’ll be sure then.”

“I should go back to the picnic,” Jenny says, shaking her head. She wipes back tears with her knuckle. “To let everyone know.”

“Frank,” Natalia tells her. “Tell him I don’t want Sissy to hear. Tell him to take the girls out. I don’t want them home when I get back, particularly if … ” She feels Ginny get weaker and pulls her up. She whispers into Ginny’s ear. “We’ll go with you. Milly and I are going to go with you, but you have to walk yourself. Ginny, you have to walk.”