Hot Springs Page 11

  “Tell her what you like.” He hung up the phone. “Damn,” he said. He said it again and kicked at a rock on the ground, sending it skittering into a parking meter. Then he went to check the oil level in the truck.

  NINE

  “See that?” Bernice said to Emily, pointing up, as they walked from the illegal spot where she’d left the car. Baltimore’s Washington Monument stood fifty yards away, its base like an emperor’s tomb, the high column sticking up into the soupy evening, George himself atop it dressed in a toga and holding what appeared to be a lightning rod. “That’s the father of our country. He never told a lie, and he had wooden teeth.”

  “If I had wooden teeth, I wouldn’t have to brush them,” said Emily.

  “That’s right. You just slap on another coat of paint. It’s very convenient.”

  “Or buy more at the store.”

  “Exactly.”

  She found his new place easily enough, although she was surprised to see it had a steep set of marble steps, since the whole point of his moving out two years ago and taking this apartment had been to get away from steps. He’d written her a letter at the time, and she remembered how formal it was—no questions about her, only the single statement, “I hope you are well.” Just news of the move and his knees. She’d been living in a musty apartment on the corner of West and Ninth in Miami Beach, a concrete box on the eighth floor of a building called the Sun Palace. The letter had made her cry. She hadn’t wanted him to move.

  Calling these things houses was ridiculous—they were mansions. People wouldn’t have lived in them without a full staff, and all of them would originally have had their own coach houses. Her father’s had a Greek revival front complete with massive Ionic columns. Looking up the front steps, through the glass of the front door with its elaborate wrought-iron decoration and heavy security bars, Bernice could see into the entrance hall, where a newel-post nymph held aloft a lit torch, an imposing staircase rising above and behind her.

  She climbed the steps and pored over the brass mailboxes. Beneath the bottommost one, a piece of paper taped to the metal read, “Click—Terr. Rownaside.” She stared at this for a while, wondering whether it was in some way about killing. Insecticide, parricide, homicide. Then she pronounced it in her head. Around the side. Humor.

  She was fried. Her legs felt like noodles, and her entire body was buzzing. Her eyes were so sore and dry from staring out at the highway that she thought she might have done permanent damage to her brain and would for the rest of her life see everything with superimposed little white lines running toward her. They’d stayed in Amarillo at a Motel 6, then gotten up early and driven all day and well into the night, until they reached Nashville (another Motel 6); today had been more of the same. Only when they’d hit the mountains of Virginia and started seeing signs for Baltimore had it become real to her that she’d done this, that there would be an end to the traveling. The last challenge had been swinging around Washington, and the beltway traffic had nearly made her scream. But she hadn’t. She hadn’t. Instead she’d tried to keep up a stream of happy chatter for Emily, telling her about Dulles Airport and the National Gallery and the Mormon temple, the spire-topped towers of which rose up windowless and white like something from a science-fiction novel.

  She walked with Emily around the side and downhill, past two sets of low, barred windows, to what she guessed was the side entrance of the house, a simple white wooden door in a brick wall with an unmarked buzzer. A few feet away at the curb there was a cast-iron post in the shape of a horse’s head for travelers to tie up to and an oval lozenge of white marble for their descent. Across the street on the stoop of a crumbling brownstone, a fat man with a long beard sat watching her, drinking soda from a liter bottle. She ignored him and pressed firmly on the bell. There was no sound, so she pressed again.

  Eventually she heard noises. There was a peephole, and she figured he was behind it, checking them out. He opened the door.

  “You made good time,” he said. He wore jeans and a white oxford shirt, flip-flops. His white hair rode his head like a wave. He looked down at Emily with surprise. “Well,” he said, and opened the door wider. “What do you know?” He stuck out his hand toward Emily. “Don Click,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “Pearl,” she said.

  He gestured toward Bernice. “You go with her, do you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Pearl, do you like buttermilk?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to find out. Come in.”

  On the other side of the wall there was a small courtyard accommodating a fire escape, two concrete planters with flowers in them, a couple of pieces of plastic lawn furniture, and a yellow Weber grill with a picture of Homer Simpson on it. They passed these things and entered the back of the house through another door that led them into a dim hallway.

  “Kitchen’s that way,” he said, gesturing. “Rest of the place is over here.”

  “The Simpsons?” she said.

  “You don’t like The Simpsons?”

  The next room was enormous—perhaps thirty feet across and at least twenty wide. The floors were polished hardwood, and the inner wall was brick painted white. The street-side wall bulged outward where the windows were. Peering out through the dusty blinds, Bernice could see the sidewalk, which was more or less at eye level.

  “Welcome to the Bunker,” he said.

  “Great place.” Bernice looked around. One end of the room had been arranged as a living area, with chairs and a sofa and a television set, all of which she recognized from the old house. There was a massive fireplace in the south wall, complete with fake logs and a set of fire tools. The other end of the room had been fitted out as a work space, with his easel and a desk with a computer.

  “It used to be the kitchen for the whole house. I know the owner. Taught one of his sons, years ago. His brother lived down here, after he had a hip replacement. They made it nice, installed grab bars in the bathroom, rehabbed all the fixtures. But the brother got worse. Now he’s at a nursing home, and I get his apartment. I call it the Bunker, but sometimes I think of it more as the Waiting Room. You know, like Florida is God’s waiting room? Anyway, I get a very good deal.” He looked down at Emily. “Buttermilk, right? I’ll get you a glass.”

  “But I don’t want it.”

  “Never know if you don’t try.”

  “I’d take a beer,” Bernice called out.

  “I’ll get you one,” he said.

  She pointed at the sofa, its weathered brown leather so familiar to her. It had been on the second floor, in front of the television. “Why don’t you sit down?” she said. Emily made a face at her, raising her eyebrows dramatically.

  “Where’s your bathroom?” she called out, as she started opening doors. “Never mind.”

  Emily went first, with Bernice standing outside waiting for her, as she had done at every rest stop for the past three days. She didn’t like to let her out of her sight—there were too many crazy people out there who wanted to kidnap little girls.

  When she was done, they took seats in the living room area. Emily wore blue shorts and a flower-print top that had ketchup and grease stains plainly visible on it. Bernice needed to do laundry soon, maybe take her shopping. The child had a smudge of something on her cheek that looked like chocolate, and Bernice licked her thumb and rubbed at it to get it off.

  Her father joined them and handed out the drinks, and they sat facing each other. She sipped her beer, which was so cold it hurt her teeth. “Any shows coming up?” she asked cheerfully.

  “Nope.”

  “New work?”

  “Some. I was at the studio today.” He held up his hands, which had dried paint on them.

  There was a long silence, and she felt a combination of embarrassment and impatience. Even his eyes, which flickered behind the lenses of his rimless glasses, seemed to lack any real interest.

  �
��We saw a fire,” offered Emily, pushing her untouched drink away from her on the coffee table.

  “Really,” he said. “Where was that?”

  “On the side of the road.”

  “In Oklahoma,” said Bernice. “This truck was just burning up. Black smoke everywhere, cops.” She remembered how the scene had taken so long to unfold in that flat, lifeless landscape: first the distant smudge against the sky, the way it grew as they approached, finally the small line of traffic that proceeded past the truck itself at a respectful twenty miles per hour, waved on by a highway patrolman in a storm-trooper uniform. It had remained in the rearview mirror for miles. “She won’t shut up about it. Have you thought over the house question a little more?”

  He took a drink of his buttermilk, then put the glass down. “I didn’t think there was anything to think about.”

  “So you’re saying no?”

  “No, I didn’t think about it, or no to the question?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what I think. I was asking you.”

  “No to the question.”

  “Ah.” He leaned back and pressed his hands together. “Pearl,” he said. “It is a pretty name. You are, what, about five?”

  She nodded.

  “I envy you. Five is such a good age. What kind of an artist do you plan to be? Painter? Sculptor? Performance?”

  “Come on, Dad. You think she has any idea what she wants to do when she grows up?”

  His eyes widened in mock surprise and he sat up straighter on the sofa. “I did.”

  “Well, you’re different. She doesn’t know, and she shouldn’t know. She’s a freaking kid.”

  “I’m going to be a missionary,” said Emily.

  Bernice looked at her. “Not anytime soon, I hope.”

  Don Click smiled. His teeth were the yellow ivory color of aged piano keys, or Bakelite radios, and Bernice was surprised to sense in him some relationship to death, not necessarily his own imminent death—in fact, he seemed quite healthy and vigorous, as he had all his life—but death as a subject of study, like the Italian he’d taken up years ago, when she used to hear him sometimes in his office repeating the phrases spoken by the recorded voices on the tapes: Buongiorno. Come stai? Bene, grazie. He got up and went into the kitchen, leaving them alone again.

  Bernice picked up Emily’s buttermilk and gave it a sniff. “Don’t drink this—it’s gross.”

  He returned with a box in his hand. “Tastykake, anyone?” he asked.

  Bernice shook her head. Emily accepted the chocolate cupcake with such obvious enthusiasm she wanted to give her a poke. Don’t trust him, she wished she could say. Don’t. Don’t.

  “They’re my vice,” he said. “And for some reason, they always seem to be on sale.” He smiled again, a bit of cake stuck in the corner of his mouth.

  “It won’t be for long, Dad,” she said. “I promise.”

  He tossed a key onto the coffee table. “When I told you no, I didn’t realize your situation. Obviously, this is different. There’s no furniture in the master bedroom, so you’ll both have to stay in your old room. Those beds are still there. Nothing to eat, either, and the whole place could probably stand a good cleaning. You’ll find plenty of supplies in the basement.”

  She stared at the key. “You’re sure?” she asked. “We could just do the sofa thing.”

  “Oh, no. You go on.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “Don’t make me sorry. Don’t make this go wrong some way.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And no smoking there, all right?” he said, catching sight of the pack in her purse. “You really ought not to, particularly now. What do you think, Pearl? What do you think of your mother’s smoking?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She’d finished her cupcake and her eyes were half closed.

  Bernice picked up the key and stood. “We’re both pretty pooped, so maybe we should get moving. You don’t have anything to worry about, I promise. And I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “It’s unnecessary. I like to know where you are, but I don’t need to hear from you. I assume you’re capable of taking care of yourself.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. You’ll find the phone still works, but there’s no long-distance service. I had it turned off. You might want to look into that.”

  She felt as if the air were draining from the room. She wanted something from him, some acknowledgment—she was here, after all. She’d come all this way, piloting a tin can of a car with his own grand-daughter in it. They hadn’t died; they hadn’t even had a flat tire.

  “Question,” he said. It was something he used to say to her, not only to find out about her life, to which she had decided to deny him admission, but also to spot-check her on things he was sure she wouldn’t know. Question: Are those clothes what everyone is wearing at your school, or just you? Question: What are the Antipodes?

  “All right.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “Working on?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You should always be working on something.”

  “I’m just hoping for a shower, Dad.”

  “What about a mural? You should consider a mural.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll consider one.”

  “People want murals. I never did one myself, but I think maybe that was a mistake. There’s money in murals.” Don Click saw them out as far as the courtyard. “It was a pleasure,” he said, stooping to shake Emily’s hand. “I see great things in your future.”

  The neighbors were having a noisy barbecue in front of their stoop, and the smell of grilling hot dogs hung in the thick evening. They were a black family she’d never seen before, and they seemed to have at least ten kids, all different ages, some chasing each other around the sidewalk, others sitting on the steps. The green van in front of their house was adorned with American flag stickers on every available surface.

  Rather than go in the front, Bernice led Emily along the breezeway, to the back alley. A tall, bony-looking man with an oversized head was checking the doors of the car parked in the space behind the neighboring house. She didn’t think he was a thief—she didn’t know what he was.

  “Hello,” he said, eyeing them suspiciously.

  “Hello,” said Bernice.

  “It’s not supposed to be here,” he said.

  “Is that your parking place?”

  “No. But it doesn’t matter. This car doesn’t belong here.”

  “Well, what do you care then?”

  He gave her a peculiar look, his head tilted to one side. “I care because I live here. Serve this guy right if something happened to his car, you know what I mean? Parking where he’s not supposed to.”

  She didn’t remember this person, either. He seemed like a nut. She’d only really paid attention to the kids: perpetually snot-nosed Ginny Lester up the block, two years younger, or Stefan Kurkowski, who’d shown her his penis one day in the crawl space underneath his parents’ rotting back porch; for the most part, the other residents of the surrounding houses had remained anonymous, adult, and mysterious.

  “You thinking of buying?” the man asked.

  “I live here,” she said.

  He stared at her hard, then suddenly smiled in a fake way. “My mistake!” he said. “I know the old guy moved out. I keep thinking there’ll be a For Sale sign one of these days. Probably worth a few bucks, this house. Well, none of my business, right? You have a good one!” He made a little gun out of his thumb and forefinger and pointed it at Emily. “Pow,” he said.

  “Pow,” she said back.

  They climbed the back steps that led to the kitchen door. Bernice had forgotten what Baltimore was like in summer, so airless and humid. There would be another two weeks of this to get through, at least.

  The air inside the house smelled stale and mousy. Three phon
e books lay stacked on the radiator just inside the door. She locked the door behind them, stood for a moment taking in the strange feeling of being here again. The refrigerator was off, and she opened its door; it contained only a small, ancient box of baking soda. She found the switch and brought the appliance shuddering to life.

  “We need to go shopping,” Emily observed.

  “Tomorrow. You ready to brush and go to bed?”

  Emily nodded and yawned.

  “Come on, then. It’s up a bunch of steps.”

  She moved through the dining room to the center of the house, where the front stairs rose three stories, a small glass skylight overhead at the top. Emily looked practically drugged, so Bernice lifted her and carried her up to the first landing, then put her down.

  “Whose house is this?” asked Emily.

  “Yours,” said Bernice. “For a while, anyway. One more flight. You hike this one, OK? I’m tired, too.”

  Her old bedroom was more or less as she’d last seen it, which at first she found surprising, but when she thought it through, she decided that this was not sentimentality on her father’s part but the opposite—he’d simply been too lazy to change anything. And so there were the children’s books she’d read, lined up on the shelves he’d built for her and painted himself. There were her stuffed animals, Ucello the horse and Bobo the dog. A clear plastic drop cloth had been thrown over the twin beds, which were made up and ready to be slept in. It was a good thing, too, because, everything in the house was coated with about a quarter inch of dust.

  “Here it is,” she said. “Our own private suite. Bathroom just outside the door. Nice view of the neighbors’ back porches.”

  Emily took a step and tripped over an untied shoelace, going down on one knee.

  “Ouch,” said Bernice, helping her up. “You OK?”

  The child nodded. She looked so tired. Bernice wondered how long she’d gone without noticing the shoelaces. There were so many things to worry about. What else was she overlooking? She opened the windows and turned on the ceiling fan, which helped a bit, but it was still pretty awful. The air outside felt as stale as the air inside.