The Blue Girl (6 page)

He lays a hand on his thigh and looks over at me in a way he hasn't looked in a long time.

He says,
Now you sound like Greg
.

It will pass
, I say, and then I almost say,
The swearing doesn't really worry me. It's what he does that keeps me up at night
.

I tell him to check to make sure they've done their homework, especially biology, which he's failing again, and to please compliment Caroline on her hair.
She's very sensitive these days. We don't want her thickening any more than she already has
.

He leans into me close and says,
What happened to that wild girl who shook out her hair in the water? Who would have ever guessed you'd become such a fine, domesticated woman?

My mother
, I think,
that's who
.

People change
, I say, as I look around the room at my needlepoint, the ceramic mugs the kids made in grammar school, the pictures of our wedding when we looked so young and stupid—and he says,
I guess they do
.

He asks me if I've left any of the pies for the kids in case they want a snack, and I tell him I've made them something different, something special, that I would never deprive my children. What kind of mother does he take me for?

Irene is waiting for me in her station wagon, the same car she's had for ten years. The doors are starting to rust. Everyone knows her husband is crazy, Colin, who never speaks, who throws a ball in the house like a child. I can count on one hand the number of things Colin has said to me over the years. He's not right in the head, that's true, but still, he could buy her a new car. There is family money, we've heard, though we do not ask. Now that he's crazy, he could part with some of that money for a car. At least that's what Libby and I say, but we don't ever tell Irene those things—we don't want to hurt her. Besides, if we talk about Colin, then we have to talk about Ethan, and none
of us wants to do that, not even Libby, who keeps him in the house all the time except when he goes to school. It's no way to raise a boy, even one with such problems, but who am I to say? Talking about Colin makes Irene nervous, and she's nervous enough as it is.

I get out of the van and wave. She must not have seen me in the dark, because she doesn't even turn her head. I knock on the window, and her head snaps around so fast I can feel the burn up her neck from a crick like that.
She should slow down
, I think, as she opens the lock and lets me in.

She says,
The children are beginning to talk
.

I light the cigarette that I save for our nights that we go to the blue girl and crack my window. When I offer the pack to Irene, she takes one. Her hands are shaking.

I say,
It's just talk, Irene, it's just talk
.

Irene puffs on the cigarette, leans forward, and squints at the road ahead that leads to the house.

Buck dreams about her
, she says. The smoke curls around her fingers.
He dreams about her every night
.

I blow smoke out the window. Mama loved to smoke when she was young. I imagine her sitting beside me, sucking on her unfiltered cigarette and laughing, saying,
Afraid of her own husband and children, this woman, such a shame
, and then clucking her tongue.

Irene
, I say,
children talk. They dream. They do all sorts of things
.

She nods and stares at her cigarette.

Look at my boy, Greg, grabbing at Rebecca
, I say.
They grow up, and they become strange
.

We don't say anything about Ethan, who is, of course, strangest of all, because such talk would be too sad, and there is too much sadness already. We sit and watch the road for Libby's car, always ten minutes late at least. Libby, with the beautiful daughter and the broken son. At night when I think of the blue girl, as I do every night, I think we all need these trips to see her, Libby most of all. But when I look at Irene with her shaking hands, I think I might be wrong.

She says,
Audrey doesn't sleep
, and I say,
I know. Caroline tells me. She has circles under her eyes, we've all seen them
.

And then I say,
Caroline asked about the girl at school, Irene. Asked the teacher. Maybe it's time you talked to Audrey. Maybe it's time we all talked
.

She glares at me, flinches as if I've poked her with a lit match, and says,
This is our secret. Ours. I thought we agreed
.

As the headlights of Libby's car beam straight at us, I cover my eyes with the back of my hand and touch Irene on the arm.

Then maybe you can talk about other things
, I say.

She doesn't answer. The time for talking has passed. Libby walks over to us with her sweater draped over her
shoulders, very stylish, wearing white slip-on shoes with her hair tied back. We kiss each other's cheeks and wait until Libby says the obvious.

What are we waiting for?

We laugh. Every time we visit the girl, we laugh. It's a laugh that almost hurts, not like the laughs we have when we talk about sex, like the time Irene told us that once, years ago, long before the television and the crazy basketball games, Colin fell off the bed in the middle of it, and she landed on top of him. Or when I told the story of David falling asleep while I went down on him with ice cubes in my mouth after too many shots of rum, although I'm kind of sorry I told that story, even though these are my friends, and who else can I tell? We laugh even though these stories aren't really funny—they make us look bad, they embarrass us, they show how unattractive we've become, even to our own husbands. Still, we have to tell each other more than just stories about the kids or cooking or summer gossip. We have to tell something about ourselves.

I'm the first to go in, always, but since the last time when the blue girl choked, I've been wanting to go last. But we have a routine, that's one thing we've always agreed on. It's a ritual, and we have to abide by it. I hear Mama whispering approval, Mama, who was so fond of order. The girl seemed peaceful in her bed that first time we
visited, with her fingers interlocked and white blankets draped over her. Her breath came slow and deep and didn't whistle. She opened her mouth as soon as I unwrapped the moon pie. After she swallowed a bite, she smiled at me with rapture.

You like that?
I asked. And when she nodded, I broke off a piece and gave her another. Each bite made me feel lighter. I felt bubbles in my head like after too much champagne.

I thought of every lie I'd ever told, and though there were too many to count, I felt hopeful. That first night, feeling as if I'd fed the blue girl all my lies, I swam nude in the lake before I went home. Although the ripples washed over me, I couldn't see them breaking in the darkness, I couldn't tell where the ripples ended and I began. It made me cry, swimming that way. I thought about David as the lanky boy I met that summer, the way we made love in the lake, the way I leaned my head against him as he sucked on my breast, the way he tugged at it with his teeth like he wanted to swallow me whole, and I wanted him to. I pressed my chest forward to give him more of me, but there was never enough to give.

During the last few visits, the girl looked restless. She sat up in bed and stared, not lying back like she used to, not opening her mouth until the moon pie was almost at her lips. At the last visit she choked, and I began to cry. I
hadn't cried for so long that it hurt to stop. She swallowed one of the pies whole and opened her mouth to show me she couldn't breathe. When she tried to grab for my hand, I ran out to the room where the old woman waits and then out to my car, crying all the way.

If we can just hold on, it will be all right once it's over, Magda
, Irene said when she joined me, and I said,
I know, but sometimes it's just so hard
.

Tonight the old woman is waiting by the door. She's small and hunched and keeps her hands hidden in her pockets. As her hands move inside the pockets, I imagine they're filled with nuts.
When we're gone
, I think,
she'll crack the nuts open with her teeth
. She motions to us, but it's so dark I can only make out the outline of her hand—I can't see what she's hiding. I think that if Mama were here, she could talk to the old woman—not in English, not in Russian—in some strange, unknown language, and she could get her to open her hands. But I don't have Mama's gifts.

The old woman says,
She is very hungry
, and gives me a look of such meanness, I almost crush the moon pies before I remember they're in my hands. She says,
You took so long to come, the girl is starving. The girl needs to be fed
.

Irene says she's sorry, but we have children who need us, things to attend to, we don't mean to be forgetful. The
old woman doesn't answer. She pokes at my moon pie with her finger.

Go
, she says, and I hurry through the small room with no chairs, almost tripping as I head down the hallway to her door. I think of knocking, but she's always in bed, this girl, so I turn the knob and go inside.

She looks bluer than before, but how this is possible, I don't know. How she became blue in the first place is a mystery to us all, how she breathes, where she came from, what she wants. What we want from her.

Standing here feels so much like a dream that I'm sure I'll wake up in a minute and find Mama shaking me in my bed, telling me it's time to go swimming in the lake, time to get some sun on my face. I think I'll wake up and there will be no husband who ignores me, no limp-haired daughter, no boy who worries me with his swearing. It will just be me and Mama and Papa playing durak. I'll be one of the summer people again. My brothers will throw rocks in the lake, and I'll dance in the ripples.

She's sitting up in the bed looking less serene than usual. There's no peace in her face, her brows knit together, her crazy hair juts out worse than Caroline's. I think of offering to comb her hair. I think the girl would like that, would like a mother's touch, except that I'm no good with hair.

I say,
I brought you pies, your favorite
. And when she smiles. I say,
I hear you're very hungry
.

It's the first time I've seen her nod. Her head moves slowly, up and down, up and down again, like a baby when you first teach it to say yes or no, even though no is always the favorite.

I ask if she'd like one of my pies, and she nods again, up and down, her whole neck bending then coming slowly up. It looks like a great effort, this nodding, but she smiles when she does it, so I think it must not really hurt. Her blue lips part as I hold out a piece for her. She closes her eyes, smiling while she chews, and I think of Mama saying,
This girl, so easy to please. You were that way once
.

When she finishes three pies in just a few big bites, I watch for signs of choking, but they seem to go down smoothly, no gasps. When she swallows the last bite I hear the song in my head, loud at first,
tiny bubbles
, then a soft
tiny bubbles . . .
I wish the girl knew the words.

I'm about to get up when she lets out a grunt, a low noise in her throat, so low it stops me, and I fall back in the chair.

I unfold the empty napkin as if to say,
That's it, no more
, but she shakes her head back and forth, childlike. She holds out her hand to mine. I don't take the hand. I just look at it. Even the fingernails are blue.

I say,
No more, that's all I have
. She shakes her head at me again. I get up from the chair and move toward the door. Libby's next, I think, and she can't wait with Ethan home, so there's no time for lingering.

When I'm halfway to the front door, the old woman says,
There is always more, so much more. You have no idea how much more
.

I don't look back. I move out the door as fast as I can. I don't even wait for Irene or Libby the way I'm supposed to. All I can think is that I have to get home before something happens, although I have no idea what that something might be.

I drive fast with my foot hard on the accelerator and my hands tight at the wheel. Mama sits in the passenger seat next to me, holding cards in her hands. She says,
So much pain that girl has. Why don't you take away the pain?

I blink, and Mama's gone. In my head I tell her,
I'll make more moon pies, Mama, I promise I will
. But I am no good with promises, and she knows that.

Greg the Boy is up when I get home. For a minute I want to take him in my arms the way I did when he was small and his freckles were still cute. We used to play connect the dots on his arm. Now we'd need to draw a highway map.

He says,
Ma, where are all the fucking pies?

I stand there looking at this boy, this son of mine, who pulls at his groin and fails biology. I think someday
when I'm gone he'll imagine me in his car with him, and he'll think about the smell of my pies. I wonder if that's all he'll remember, his mother who made moon pies. That can't be all. There must be more.

He rattles around in the refrigerator. It's late, and I'm so tired.

Again he says,
Who took all the fucking pies?