Whatever Lola Wants (27 page)

“Okay. You tell me.”

“Two things. She's older, we all are. Still wears her hair long. Like you liked it.”

“Like she liked it, mainly.”

“And her health's not good. Rheumatoid arthritis. Lots of it. All over.”

“Oh god, poor Julie. What's her phone number? Her address—”

Charlie's head was shaking. “She doesn't want to see you. The only way she'd see me was if I promised not to tell you how to reach her.”

“Okay, keep your promise. If she's in Manchester I can find her.”

“Maybe you can. My guy did. It wasn't easy. But Carney? Don't try.”

“But I want to talk to her.”

“You'll have to find her yourself.”

“Goddammit, Charlie! I was the one who got you to find her. For me!”

“And I made a promise to her. No phone. No address.”

Carney downed the last of his watery Scotch. He got up, poured a large one, no water, swallowed half of it. He sat and glared at Charlie. “Where's your sense of loyalty?”

“All over the place, as you can see. You going to offer me more Scotch?”

“Get it yourself.”

Charlie did.

Carney leaned toward the fire, staring into the flames. “Okay, keep your promises. You have her address, right?”

“Yep.”

“Did you promise you wouldn't write her?”

“No. But why would I write her?”

“Not you, stupid. Me. I write her, I give you the letter, you mail it for me. No broken promises. You tell her the truth, that I don't know her address.”

Charlie shrugged. “I can do that.”

From eight till eleven Carney wrote Julie, numerous versions.

Dear Julie, I want to see you again, talk to you. I've thought about you so often since we were together so many years ago, and I—

Wrong. Why would she care? More Scotch.

Dear Julie, I've done a lot of foolish things in my life but the stupidest ever was lying to you about—

He'd told her that decades ago. More Scotch.

Dear Julie, I loved you once, you know. And maybe I still do. I've been with three major women in my life, a few others too, and each seemed right for a while, and—

He pulled himself away from the computer, sat on his bed, lay down and fell asleep. In the late morning he wrote:

Dear Julie, I would like to see you again. I know you told Charlie you didn't want to see me, but in all fairness you are not the only one who has to make that decision. Please, Julie. Just one meeting. C.C.

He drove to Charlie's and gave him the letter. “Special Delivery, okay?” He waited a couple of days, four days. On the fifth day a letter to Charlie: No, Charlie. Tell him to stop.

Okay, she wouldn't see him. Damn her. He didn't need to see her either.

PROTECTIVE COLORATION

Movement. Silence.

Taste shape size.

a.)

Wings orange-brown, cross-hatched in black.

Look! It's golden as it flies

to milkweed by the bank.

A monarch. She drops her eggs.

The eggs mature, hatch—

Watch. A thousand rubber legs.

Caterpillars glide across

the milkweed's latex blood.

They drink it in: digitalis.

Poison for the human heart, a flood

of death. Not for the caterpillars.

Each weaves itself to pupa-size,

a chrysalis. Wait. Soon again, a monarch.

For finches, swallows, jays,

it's fine to feast on butterflies.

But not the monarch, right? Monarchs

bring on spasm, retching, cramps.

b.)

The viceroy's wings are orange, black and gold.

Its caterpillar never samples milkweed.

Oh wonderful disguise unbeaten:

the viceroy flits away uneaten.

RF (February 6/03)

5.

At five-fifteen Deirdre Cochan in
her jeans and three-bears T-shirt arrived at Intraterra North. She ran along the central passage to her father's office at the end and burst through his door. “Time to come home, Daddy!”

He looked at her, abstracted. Was it that warm out, she didn't need a jacket? She had Benjie's nose. But not his hair, she had her mother's hair, that flaming red. Her chin wasn't Benjie's either, his had been broad, hers rounded away. “Just a few minutes, Dee.”

“Can I use Steed's computer?”

“You know how to turn it on?”

She glanced at her father as if he didn't understand anything at all. “Sure.” Steed himself had shown her. She strode into Steed's office, the twin of Johnnie's on the other side of the chancel, Deirdre proprietorial here as if the office were her own.

He packed two files into his case. His fingers felt puffy. She'd want to take his hand when they walked home. He joined her at Steed's computer.

She was playing with a program that made colored patterns. “Daddy! Watch this.” The supermouse sent blues, greens, blacks, reds slashing into each other, a chaos of design

“Very nice, Dee.” But—not wonderful. Not like Benjie's sketches.

They walked in the cool air the three blocks home, not holding hands.

In the living room Priscilla poured him a martini. He sipped. “Good.”

“Daddy, we bought marbles today. Swirlies. Want to see 'em?” Deirdre pulled his elbow.

“Careful, my drink.” He stroked her hair with his free hand.

“Deirdre sorted them out.” Priscilla smiled at her. “Into bags.”

“All by myself. Even while Mummy was away.”

“By yourself? Wasn't Diana here?”

“Yes, Mr. Cochan, I—”

“I mean with Diana, Daddy. Diana's always here.”

“Good. Good.” He glanced at Priscilla, and looked away.

“Come on, let's have supper.” Priscilla took his hand and Deirdre's, and led them to the dining room. Diana followed, fussing with Melissa, who was a year or two off from staying the course of a meal. Still the table was set, linen and silver, for five.

Diana put Melissa to bed before dessert, Deirdre after.

Deirdre, after her
bath, after being read to, after the goodnight kisses, lay awake for a long time. It didn't feel good here. Her chest of drawers was in the wrong place. Her doll house wasn't in her bedroom but in the playroom two doors down the hall. She'd not had a playroom at the farmhouse, she and Benjie played in her room, or his. Benjie's new room here was between hers and the playroom. Mummy said not to go in Benjie's room. Just his things were in it. Mummy said Benjie had gone away, they had to forget Benjie. Benjie hadn't gone away. She knew where Benjie had gone. If Benjie had gone away he might come back. But Benjie wouldn't ever come back. Except, sometimes, when she was asleep. Tonight she would not go to sleep.

She drifted, drifted. She groaned and turned over.

Diana in the room across the hall pulled her curtains tight against the clear starry sky. Melissa's wheezy snoring sifted through a thin door to the connecting nursery. So tiny, such loud snoring. Diana rarely heard Deirdre groan. Sometimes Deirdre whimpered in her sleep. Diana didn't hear this either. She had preferred the farmhouse. This new place was too big.

After dinner, willing
the minutes to pass till he could go back to Terramac, Johnnie had sat with Priscilla on the couch. He told Priscilla the Luciflex report was in, and good. Usually she enjoyed these details. Today she seemed distant. He supposed he might be seen that way too, by her. They sat silent for a while.

She lay her head against his arm. “I have some news too.”

“Hmmm?”

“We're having a baby again.”

For a long time he said nothing. Then he turned, and kissed her temple. “Good.” He raised his arm, put it across her shoulder. He stared at the dead fireplace. “When's it due?”

“Early January.” She drew into his side and touched her stomach. “This afternoon, for a second or two, I think I felt him.”

“It's still too early.” He spoke to the room, into shadows. “It's too small.”

“The place where he is.” She took his hand. “Want to feel it?”

“What?”

“The space.” She took his hand, guided it to her lap.

He let it lie there. It angered him, yes, anger, this baroque calm she released. It spun a web of silver cool about her, a flimsy mood. Was she like this inside herself? What kind of fetus would grow in the space she provided?

This new reticence of Johnnie's. Long ago when his hand lay on her skin she felt her heart spin wildly, precarious on its axis. But since he'd started building Terramac again, it was his unreachable balance that crept into her flesh. Long ago she'd learned to locate the quiet sites within her. But these days the little withdrawals from him were a relief. Why ease closer when nearness brought so little contact?

After they'd found Ben and brought him to the funeral home there'd been arguments, even then: what kind of coffin, what part of the cemetery. Or maybe cremation, she couldn't bear the thought of Benjie's skin and little nose and ears and mouth in the ground, the ground squeezing into him. And Johnnie's days of anguish, his drinking. The bottomless nightmares. She held hers in, listened to his dreadful black howls and the sobbing, tried to comfort. Enough. A time gone by. She'd done all she could. For Johnnie and for Benjie too. Now inside her the new one floated, grew, multiplied its cells; under layers of flesh and womb.

•

I raised my head. Lola, watching me. A nod, that I should continue.

•

6.

Bobbie glanced across her desk
and down from her bedroom window. Carney's car had not appeared in her drive. She adored her nephew but this was inconsiderate of him. Since Ricardo's death she'd felt alone too much of the time. Her bones ached. Getting tired at five in the afternoon. Getting old. Go to bed early, read a little. Downstairs a door opened, and then slammed shut. Carney called her name. She pulled the shawl around her shoulders and headed to the stairs. “How'd you get here?” Then she saw the sneakers he was taking off.

He grinned up. “Jogged over.”

Nine miles. That boy had too much energy. Oughta have a woman. Needed to find one and stay with her. That Lynn, Bobbie had liked her a lot. Marcie too. Bobbie walked down the stairs, her right hip tight today. “What's your need? Coffee? A drink.”

He nodded. “I will have, like you, a whisky. Then I'm taking you to supper at The Bosworth Inn. You're driving.”

“What're we celebrating?”

He considered that. “The fact that lots of people are more screwed up than we are.”

“In that case I'm ordering a really good wine.” She felt a dozen years drop from her back.

They sat in her living room in front of the fire. The sun slid behind the black trees on the hill across the way, backlighting bare branches already tinged running-sap red. Sipping Bobbie's smoky Laphroig, Carney told her about going out to Terramac field headquarters, then reporting to Theresa Magnussen. “She's mighty disappointed in me. And ready to bring in the howitzers.”

“How bad is this Terramac?”

“For starters, it was covered in snow. On paper and under its white blanket, not godawful. As developments go. Cochan seems to know what he's doing and that's way up on most.”

“He the one built that Hudson Valley complex down south of Albany? That Terra-something group?”

“Intraterra. I think so, yeah.”

“And what's so special about this place?”

“Mostly that it's going to be all enclosed. I had a talk with a fellow named Boce, one of Cochan's vice-presidents. Cochan wasn't around. Terramac City is Intraterra in Merrimac County, right? And the place where people will live he calls Summerclime. That's because it's like summer year-round.”

“Here? Northern Vermont?”

“Yep. The whole thing'll be covered with clear connected domes, triple-glazed and polarized. Complete with micron-thin heating wire to melt snow, and troughs for water to run off into huge cisterns, with overflow into the stream.”

“What do you mean, domes?”

“Just that. From what I understood, some as big as a quarter mile in diameter, over public spaces like the golf course and the central square.”

“A covered golf course?”

“That's what he's planning. Covered houses and apartments. And domed public spaces where flowers and even palms can grow all year round. Domes over restaurants and walkways.”

“Why?”

Carney shrugged. “They've done their market research. Enough people with real money want to live there.”

Bobbie shook her head. “Imagine that. Little Johnnie Cochan.”

“What?”

“Your Cochan.” She sniffed a laugh. “I knew his mother.”

“Oh?” Carney wasn't surprised. She knew lots people. And for those she didn't know she knew someone who knew them. Even more people knew Bobbie. Over forty years her poetry hadn't made her much money but it won prizes and got her around. “When was that?”

“Back in college. Mount Holyoke. We were roommates for a year.”

“Friends?”

“The way one is. She was smart. I mean, really smart.” Bobbie shrugged. “Badly balanced. She died young. Booze, lots of booze.” A small shiver. “She had no real friends.”

“Well, she has herself one powerful son.”

Bobbie nodded. “She married his powerful father.”

“That helps.”

“She worked for the corporation his father owned, pharmaceuticals. Elizabeth Shapiro. A scientist when few women went into science, not into the kind of science where you make it big. Libby, she called herself.” Bobbie pictured the pretty face. “Then at Cochan's lab she changed it to Beth. The sort of woman who envies other women's successes. Libby Shapiro, Beth Cochan.”

“What was she, a chemist? Biologist?”

“Biochemist.” Bobbie sipped her whisky. Libby, a woman fully committed to her work. The work killed her. Does full commitment kill you? Hadn't killed Bobbie. Not yet. “Didn't see her for ten years, then we ran into each other again. In Montreal. She drove down to see me once. Her work then was early gene stuff, mutating life-forms.”