This Body (29 page)

“Well, of course, people think that True has a weird name. Do you know who Denton True Young was?”

Emily swept him back with her hands. “Henry, go get the rest of the groceries. You can tell Thisby all about Cyclone Young
later. I'm sure she's just dying to hear it.” She rolled her eyes at Katharine, who laughed even though she had seen this
scene played out many times before.

“I know I'm in big trouble when she calls me Henry.” He called to Katharine as Emily pushed him into the family room, “I let
her boss me round, cuz she's so cute. But as soon as she loses her looks …” He made a slicing motion against his neck.

Emily chuckled as she emptied the contents of the bags. Katharine always admired husbands and wives like Hank and Emily. They
really seemed to like each other.

She felt like a wrangler trying to maneuver about stubborn livestock all afternoon. She wasn't very successful at it. Katharine
would almost have Marion cornered when she would suddenly slip out of range.

Hank was better at wrangling than she was and nabbed Katharine to tell her the story of True's name with great relish. He
flirted with her a bit, and she flirted back. It meant nothing — she knew it — but it was fun. It was a game they had played
as Hank and Katharine, and it made her feel as if she were still participating in her old life.

While they talked, Katharine kept an eye on Marion, and half a brain on the conversation.
Did she always part her hair on that side? Look how she rocks back and forth from one foot to the other. Philip did that for
hours, holding her when she was a baby and wouldn't sleep. She's charming the pants off that guy
.

By seven o'clock most of the guests had gone home, leaving the Dentons; True's girlfriend, Holly; her roommate, Tiffany; Puck;
Marion; and herself. They were all outside, some dangling their feet in the Jacuzzi, the others sitting around the picnic
table. The sky was softening overhead, the sun having dropped below the line of the eaves.

“I'm hungry,” Marion said to the assembled.

“Me too,” Katharine agreed; she had been too keyed up all afternoon to eat. There was a hollowness inside her stomach that
she knew she couldn't fill, but she knew what Marion would say next.

“Pizza,” they said simultaneously, and then laughed.

“What kind do you like?” Marion asked her.

“Canadian bacon, not ham, and pineapple. The big chunks, not those little canned pieces, and a few bell peppers, but not too
many.”

Marion's eyes got big and sparkly. “That's my favorite too.”

“Well, why don't we go down to Mystic's on Second Street and order one. We'll order something else for the others. Not everyone
has such refined taste in pizza. Goodfellow — RB — will let us use his car. You'll love it.”

Katharine hated Canadian-bacon-and-pineapple pizza, but tonight maybe it would taste like ambrosia.

“So, do you get down to LA a lot?” Katharine asked as they got into Goodfellow's car. She knew Marion would have liked the
top down, but it was hard to talk in a convertible.

“Lately, yeah.”

Already shuffling her off, are we
?

“Are your parents divorced?” She couldn't believe how casual she sounded.

“No, my mom died a year ago.”

“Oh, I'm sorry. I bet that was pretty hard.”

Marion shrugged and said nothing.

Well, what did you expect
?

“You get along with your stepmom okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“How about your brother?”

“Oh, he likes her. He gets along better with her than he did with my mom.”

Bam! straight through the heart. Well, you asked for it
.

“But he was being a butthead when my mom died. Even he'll admit that.” Marion rubbed her knee. “They flirt a lot.”

“Excuse me?”

“My brother and stepmom. They flirt. Like they pretend to be mad at each other and all, and he says she isn't his mom and
he'll get a tattoo on his butt if he wants to, and she says she wouldn't want to be his mom but she'll paddle his behind,
tattoo or no tattoo. It's all pretend, though. She doesn't act like a mom with him, and she can't decide with me.”

“What do you mean?”

“She can't decide whether she wants to be my friend or my mother.”

“What do you want her to be?”

“A dog.” Marion said it so softly that Katharine wasn't sure she'd heard correctly. “No, really.” Marion grinned. “She doesn't
like dogs. She's scared of them. You know.” She demonstrated, wrapping her arms around her head like an octopus and squashing
herself against the car door. “That kind of thing. Got bit as a kid, I guess.” She readjusted herself in the seat, arranging
one arm in her lap, the other resting atop the door. “My mother loved dogs. Our dog died two months after she did.”

Rathbone? He died?
Katharine felt the prickle of tears. How she loved that dog. Philip used to tease her that she loved that dog more than she
loved him. In a way it was true. She desperately needed Rathbone's unconditional affection, the kind she had gotten from her
kids when they were little but she lost as they grew older—
and wiser
.

“I thought he'd pine away because it was my mom who took care of him, but I think he died just because he was old.” Marion
plucked at her collar. “I wanted another dog. A puppy. My mom and me both wanted our next dog to be a German shepherd. His
name was going to be Atwill, after this guy who played Dr. Moriarty in the old Sherlock Holmes movies. My mom and dad had
a dog before I was born named Nigel. He played Dr. Watson. Rathbone was the guy who was Sherlock Holmes.”

She remembers that?

“Dad wouldn't let me, though. Get a dog, I mean. And then he started seeing Diana, and I think he knew pretty soon that he
was going to marry her, and she couldn't stand a dog.”

“Not even a puppy?”

“No, can you believe that?” Marion shook her head. “So sometimes I'd like to turn her into a dog.”

“What kind of dog? A rodent?” It was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

Marion stared at her. “My mom used to call little dogs ‘rodents’ too.”

Katharine felt sweat build up just under the layers of her skin, but Marion continued. “No … She isn't that bad. She can be
okay. She lets me borrow her clothes. I don't want to hurt her. I miss a dog, though. My mom hated small dogs, you know. It
got so we all thought we hated small dogs too. Dad included. But I wouldn't mind a small dog. Maybe Diana wouldn't mind a
small dog either. It wouldn't have to be big.”

Katharine felt an idea take shape in her head. “How long are you going to be down here?”

“I don't know. A week. Maybe more. Depends on how busy my aunt is.”

“My little sister — she's your age — works at a veterinary clinic near where I live. She comes and stays with me at night
and goes to work during the day. She works a lot with the dogs. Perhaps you could go with her one day, spend the night at
my place, and then I'd bring you back to your aunt's.”

“I don't know,” Marion said slowly, but there was a spark of interest in her voice.

“Well, think about it. I'll talk to your aunt. She seems like a nice person. You seem to be real close to her.”

“Yeah, she's cool. She never had a daughter, but she knows what I'm going through.”

“And, of course, without your mom to talk to —”

“Oh, I always talked to my aunt, even when my mom was alive. My mom … she didn't grow up like me. She never worried like I
do. She always knew what to do. She was always so sure of herself. She never messed up as a kid.” Marion shifted a bit in
her seat. “She wouldn't have understood. I tried to be like her, but I couldn't. I can't. I didn't want to let her down, so
I didn't tell her a lot about the things that bothered me. So I talked to my aunt.”

Ah, truth. It is a thief of hearts
.

“So you and your brother getting along okay?” Katharine asked when they got back into the car with their order. She felt like
a cassette tapehead — pressed on
RECORD
only, letting the words flow over the magnetic strip unheeded. Later, much later, she would play it back, and then, maybe,
she would let herself feel.

“Me and Obi? Okay.”

“OB?”

“Yeah, Obi. For Obi-Wan Kenobi. After my mom died, we were talking about how much she liked the movies, and how she named
everything after movie characters.”

Not everything
.

“Like the dogs and other things. She called her car the Predator, after that Schwarzenegger movie.”

That was just a joke
.

“We even had rats named Bert and Ernie.”

All right already
!

“Did you know that Bert and Ernie — you know, the
Sesame Street
puppets — were named after two characters in that movie
It's a Wonderful Life
?” Marion's voice dropped down a notch. “We'd always watch it at Christmas. Diana hadn't even seen it before. I think she
got confused. Well, anyway” — her voice rose again — “we figured we were named after somebody too. We tried to think of movies
around the time we were born. We figured Ben was named after Ben Kenobi — Obi-Wan Kenobi — from
Star Wars
.”

Katharine watched her out of the corner of her eye. “And you?”

“I'm harder. I mean, we blew off Maid Marian right away. It just didn't seem right. Then we were watching
Raiders of the Lost Ark
again, and the girl in that is named Marion. She spells her name with an
O
, and she'd be someone my mom would like me to be. Taking care of myself and all. And my mom had this thing for Harrison Ford.
He was, like, one of her heros.”

He is not
.

“He was in both movies, you know.”

“I know,” Katharine said with something like resignation in her voice. It was all beginning to feel like too much, this dichotomy
of her existence.

They drove up to the Denton house, and Katharine had to fight the urge to push Marion out on the parking strip and keep driving.
Dump the kid and drive straight as piss up to Frisco and beyond. And farther beyond that. Then beyond that
.

But she got out of the car and ate the pizza that tasted like cardboard. She watched her daughter laugh and make jokes with
her aunt and uncle, punch her cousin repeatedly in the upper arm for teasing her, and quickly develop a crush on Goodfellow,
who looked so handsome in his khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled up, following him with her eyes, asking him questions about
his job at the studio in such a way that was endearing and irritating at the same time.

Katharine felt like the Monster in
Frankenstein
, who is taught to speak —
and his only profit on it is, he knows how to curse
.

Act 4, Scene 2

Youth! Stay close to the young and a little rubs off.

— M
AURICE
C
HEVALIER
,
Gigi
(1958)

Katharine bumped the waiting tape cassette into the car stereo. There was some static and then Mr. Mulwray's voice poured
into the car. “Taking care of business, Miss Bennet. I'm not sure whether I told you that sometimes I'll be sending taped
reports. When I'm on the road, like now.” Sounds of fast-moving vehicles periodically threatened to overpower his voice, and
there was a loud backfire like a gunshot. “I've found the only way my reports get done is to tape them. Kelly will be sending
you a transcribed copy in a few days.”

The tape had arrived in the mail that morning, and although Katharine could have listened to it in the apartment, she waited
until she would be driving; it would be easier to listen to the tape when her arms, legs, and subconscious were engaged elsewhere.

“I don't have a tremendous amount of new information for you. The girl — what's her name?” There was the sound of pages being
shuffled. An irate horn from a nearby car burst on the tape. “Yeah, yeah,” yelled Mr. Mulwray away from the microphone. “Freeway
maniac,” he murmured. “Where was I? Oh, right, the girl — Marion — is down in Long Beach, visiting her father's sister and
husband. I'll be sending out one of my operatives to watch her for a few days. There'll be an additional charge for that,
but it won't be too bad. Don't worry. Let's see. The girl continues to play a great deal of tennis. She was in a tournament
two weeks ago and won a couple of rounds.”

A little late, Mulwray.

“Mr. and Mrs. Ashley are vacationing in San Diego for a couple of days. I won't be assigning anyone to follow them. You said
the children were your primary concern. I understand the boy has been hired as a housesitter for a neighbor while they're
all gone. And there appears to be a young lady in his life. Her name is Allie Fox.”

Katharine didn't know anyone by that name, anyone who went to Ben's school. She felt something like jealousy flare up and
smolder.

“She works at the bank as well. She's an older woman. Nineteen. They went to that new Harrison Ford film on their first date.
She drove. After the show they went back to his house and talked for quite a while in the car. 'Round midnight, he kissed
her and got out of the car. From the sidewalk he waved and called to her to drive defensively. I'll keep you informed as things
progress. Mulwray out.”