Clock Dance Page 21

  Until now she hadn’t stopped to consider Erland’s lonely position in life. No parents, no blood relatives…

  She thought of a time right after Sean was born when she had become obsessed with her own mortality. For a short while Sean had had something the pediatrician called a milk rash—tiny red pimples on one cheek where he’d lain against a damp blanket. It had turned him homely and pitiable, and it had made her love him even more than when he had been perfect. Who else but a mother would feel that way? she had wondered. No one. Not even his father. And she had been terrified by the thought of how easily she could die and leave him unprotected.

  Not only did the aliens in Space Junk fail to notice differences in skin color, age, and class; they also appeared oblivious to the fact that their captives spoke different languages. Spanish, English, Mandarin, whatever: the aliens would reply in kind, without visible effort. There weren’t even any subtitles; the producers just seemed to assume that the viewers would understand too. Willa enjoyed this. She asked the others, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this were the way the real world worked?”

  “Huh?” Cheryl said.

  “If everyone could understand all those different languages?”

  “Well, you understood what Jose just said to the spaceship captain.”

  “That was only Spanish, though,” Willa said.

  As if neither of them had spoken, Hal leaned toward Denise again and said, “Maybe you and me could go to a movie sometime, do you think? To make Sean and Elissa jealous.”

  Without taking her eyes from the screen, Denise said, “Sean and Elissa could care less if we went to a movie.”

  Couldn’t care less, Peter would have corrected her.

  The doorbell rang, and since the inner door was open Denise just called, “Who is it?”

  “Me,” Ben Gold said, and he let himself in and came to stand in the living-room archway. “Oh, good, Space Junk.”

  “Hi, Ben,” Denise said. “Have a seat.”

  “I’m looking for Robert,” he told her, but he headed for the armchair anyway. “Maybe just for a minute or two,” he said as he sat down.

  “Who’s Robert?” Willa asked him.

  “My cat.”

  “I didn’t know you had a cat! Is that the gray tabby I see out on the street sometimes?”

  “Afraid so,” Ben said. “He’s supposed to stay indoors, but you’d never guess it. Which episode are we watching?”

  “The one where Li Tang tries to escape,” Cheryl said.

  “Ah, one of my favorites.”

  “I was just telling Denise that me and her should go to a movie,” Hal said to Ben. “Good for what ails her, right, Doc?”

  “Hmm? Sure,” Ben said, but he didn’t seem to be listening. “You know, the guy playing Li Tang is actually a famous actor from Hong Kong. It was quite a coup when he signed on for Space Junk. And he was the one who approached them; it wasn’t their idea.”

  “What else has he been in?” Willa asked.

  “If you hadn’t asked, I would remember,” he said reproachfully.

  She laughed and said, “Sorry.”

  Cheryl said, “I bet you understand Chinese, Willa, don’t you?”

  “Oh, lord, no!”

  “Willa speaks about ninety-eight languages,” Cheryl told Ben.

  “Is that a fact,” Ben said.

  “Or five, to be precise,” Willa said.

  Ben peered at her over the top of his glasses. “Which ones?” he asked her.

  “Spanish, Italian…I was planning to be a linguist, once upon a time, but I ended up in ESL.”

  Cheryl said, “What’s ESL?”

  “English as a second language. Teaching English to foreigners,” Willa said.

  Cheryl’s attention returned to Li Tang, who was fumbling now with the latch on the spacecraft door, but Ben said, “You know how to teach English to foreigners?”

  “That’s what I was trained in.”

  “You should come with me sometime to the Blessed Book Church,” he told her. “We’ve got all these immigrants there who can’t communicate with us.”

  “You belong to a church?” Willa asked

  She hadn’t meant to sound so surprised. Ben chuckled and said, “Well, if I did, it would be a synagogue; but no, I just volunteer there. Blessed Book runs this clinic; you wouldn’t believe all the different languages.”

  “I bet Willa speaks every one of them,” Cheryl told him.

  “Not quite,” Willa said drily.

  There was a tap on the screen door, and then Callie’s loud, flat voice: “Denise? Is Ben in there?”

  “I’m here,” he called.

  “You still looking for Robert? Because he’s out by Sir Joe’s truck.”

  “Thanks,” Ben said, and he heaved himself to his feet and shambled toward the foyer. A moment later they heard him out front, calling, “Robert? Robert! Come here, you rascal.”

  “If you don’t like movies,” Hal told Denise, “we could try that new fried-chicken place up on Ballycroft.”

  “Fried chicken gives me the gas,” Denise said.

  Li Tang burst out of the spacecraft door and floated off into the ether.

  10

  Willa had expected she would have to nag Erland repeatedly before he agreed to tell Sir Joe about the gun. But no: bright and early Thursday morning, as she was waiting on the back stoop in her kimono while Airplane took his first pee of the day, Erland popped out on his own stoop, wide awake and fully dressed. First he yawned aloud and stretched, gazing at the sky. Then he turned toward her and gave a theatrical start and called, “Oh! Hey there!”

  “Morning,” Willa said. She’d never seen him at this hour before.

  “So,” he said. “By the way! I’ve been thinking. I think maybe I should talk to Sir Joe.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “Because he’d probably see my side of it, right?”

  “I’m just about sure he will,” Willa said. “And you’ll feel better afterward, I guarantee.”

  “Yeah. Okay. So…I’m wondering, were you serious when you said you could be there too?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, then,” he said. He heaved a loud sigh.

  “Shall I come over after breakfast?” she asked him.

  “Breakfast! You mean, like, today?”

  “Sooner is better than later.”

  “Yeah, but today is Thursday,” Erland said.

  She waited.

  “He’s always real busy on Thursday,” Erland said.

  “How about Friday, then?”

  “Friday. Well. You know what? Let’s just wait till the weekend.”

  “The longer you put it off, the likelier he’ll find out on his own,” Willa said. “And that wouldn’t be good.”

  “Look, at least I’m doing it, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, strategically retreating. “You’re the boss.”

  “Maybe Saturday?”

  “Saturday’s fine with me.”

  “Say ten o’clock Saturday morning,” he said. “I’ll come over and get you.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

  “Because if you showed up on your own, it might look like telling him was your idea,” he said. Clearly he had been giving this some thought.

  Willa said, “Oh. Okay.”

  Actually it was her idea, but she saw his point.

  Erland gave a sharp nod, looking uncharacteristically decisive, and turned and went back into his house.

  * * *

  —

  On Saturday morning precisely at ten, somewhat to Willa’s surprise, he knocked on the front door. You could tell he was under some stress. His face was white and stiff, and when Willa said “Good morning,” he said a frozen “Mor
ning” without returning her smile

  She nudged Airplane aside with her foot—he seemed to be imagining that he’d been invited too—and stepped out onto the porch and followed Erland across the yard to Sir Joe’s yard. Erland was walking in that spiky, teenage-boy way with his hands jammed in his rear pockets and his elbows jutting out. Willa had to take a couple of extra skips to keep up with him.

  She was feeling almost as nervous as if it were she who was about to confess.

  They climbed the steps to Sir Joe’s porch. Erland pulled the screen door open and walked in first (nothing chivalrous about Erland), and she followed. “Yo,” he called out. “Look who I found!”

  Sir Joe’s house smelled like bacon and coffee. The foyer was empty except for a wooden bench bearing a motorcycle helmet, and the living room was painfully neat. It held just a giant flat-screen TV and a couch and a coffee table. No rugs, no lamps, no knickknacks, no pictures on the walls. No Sir Joe, either, but just then he walked in from the dining room, wearing his weekend outfit of black leather pants and white T-shirt and carrying a mug. He stopped short when he saw Willa and said, “Well, hey there, pretty lady.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  “What brings you here?”

  “Oh…”

  She looked at Erland. He was jittering on the balls of his feet, hands still in his rear pockets. He caught her look and visibly swallowed. Then he turned to Sir Joe. “I was just telling her I had, like, something to talk to you about,” he said, “and she said she might like to be in on it.”

  Sir Joe cocked an eyebrow at Erland and waited.

  “It’s about, you know, that gun of yours,” Erland said.

  Sir Joe glanced swiftly at Willa, no doubt because he didn’t want her knowing the gun existed. Willa stayed impassive.

  “See, the other day it, like, accidentally went off,” Erland said.

  “What!” Sir Joe said with a start. “Went off? Went off where?”

  “Um…”

  “Where was this?”

  “Well…on the porch?”

  Sir Joe drew back a bit and blinked.

  “I was just, like, showing it to this guy I know? From school? And he took it out onto the porch. I didn’t let him take it; he just did, and I tried to get it back from him and by accident it, um…”

  Sir Joe said, “Goddammit to hell, Erland. You could have shot someone!”

  Both Erland and Willa held their breath.

  “Oh,” Sir Joe said. “You did shoot someone. You’re the one who shot Denise.”

  “It was an accident! I swear it was. I was only, like, trying to stop this guy from waving it around.”

  Sir Joe said, “You brought a friend here when I wasn’t home. Flat-out going against the rules.”

  “I was just—”

  “You went into my mukluks.”

  Willa felt an absurd urge to giggle.

  “And you,” he said, wheeling on her. “What’s your interest in this?”

  “I came because I know Erland is really, really sorry,” she told him. “I just wanted to make sure you realized that.”

  “And now I guess you-all are going to sue or something.”

  “Sue?” she asked. It was so unexpected that for a moment she thought he was referring to a person named Sue.

  “That’s what folks like you do, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What, then?” he said. “What is it you want?”

  “I already told you: I want to make sure you understand that Erland is sorry.” She paused. Then she added, “And he’s worried you’ll tell the police.”

  “Police,” Sir Joe said. “Oh. Well.”

  There was a silence.

  “I’m not real sure about the police,” he said finally.

  More silence.

  “I mean, as I recall, I got that gun some time ago. In maybe not the most licensed way.”

  “I see,” Willa said. She put on a nonjudgmental expression.

  “I don’t mean I stole it or anything.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But considering I don’t have a permit to show, I’m thinking I might just not bother them with it.”

  “That makes sense,” Willa said.

  She glanced at Erland. He was chewing his lower lip, keeping his eyes fixed on Sir Joe.

  “Then also,” Willa told Sir Joe, “he’s afraid that you won’t let him go on living here.”

  “Huh,” Sir Joe said. He seemed surprised. He took a sip from his mug. “Yeah, I’ll need to think about that,” he said. And then, after about fifteen seconds of ostentatious pondering, “Nah, what the hell.”

  Willa wasn’t sure of his meaning.

  “It kind of sucks, being fifteen,” he said finally.

  “Oh! Yes! It does!” Willa said enthusiastically.

  “Geez, the kid can’t even get a driver’s license yet.”

  Willa made a tsking sound.

  Erland said, “So I can stay?”

  Sir Joe shrugged. “I guess,” he said.

  Erland pulled his cap off—whole pinwheels of hair! Slinky toys of hair!—and said “Phew!”

  “But no telling Denise,” Sir Joe told him.

  “Oh, why not?” Willa asked, and Erland said, “I was thinking I could apologize.”

  “Nah,” Sir Joe said dismissively.

  “I been wanting to do that for ages.”

  Willa said, “And I bet she’d feel a whole lot better if she didn’t think someone had shot her on purpose.”

  “Why would she think that?” Sir Joe asked. “Face it,” he told Erland, “she is the one who’d likely go to the cops.”

  “You think? Gosh. Okay, Sir Joe,” Erland said in a meek voice.

  Willa wanted to argue with that, but she supposed they should just be grateful Sir Joe had taken the news as well as he had.

  * * *

  —

  On Tuesday afternoon, Willa and Cheryl drove Denise to her orthopedist’s office. Denise was hoping to exchange her plaster cast for a walking cast. When she announced this, Willa felt a twinge. Once Denise was in a walking cast she wouldn’t need Willa anymore. It seemed a little too sudden.

  Somehow, Willa’s stay in Baltimore had stretched on without her noticing. The guest room had acquired the settled, slightly shabby feeling of home; the people she met on her morning walk greeted her with a smile; the man who passed the house twice daily towed by his three Westies had started commenting on the weather; and the stuffed rabbit on the corner had been claimed at last, or else discreetly discarded. She and Denise were like longtime roommates: she knew not to expect Denise to act sociable before breakfast, and they both liked a glass of chardonnay in the evening, and Denise had begun counting on Willa to finish her sentences for her. “That other side of the street is so full of themselves,” she would say. “So conceited and stuck-up and over…over…” and Willa would say, “Overbearing? Overweening?” If she stayed around much longer, she thought, they’d start correcting each other’s anecdotes.

  “Is this just your sneaky way of leaving me?” Peter had demanded during a recent phone conversation. “Are we turning into one of those couples where the wife stays on permanently in the country house while the husband lives in the city?”

  “Goodness! Don’t exaggerate,” she’d told him. “You should be glad to have some time to yourself.”

  It was he who phoned her, most often. This was only reasonable, since she had no way of knowing when he’d be out playing golf or eating at the club or whatnot. But then when she answered he would be surly and laconic, as if the call were her idea, and so even though she was happy to see his name on the screen she found the conversation hard going. She pretended nothing was wrong, though; she made a point of soundi
ng breezy and animated. She brought him up-to-date on Cheryl’s baking projects, and she joked about how Airplane was desolate without him.

  She was less forthcoming about Denise. She still hadn’t told him that Denise had started going in to work now, and she had made no mention of the walking cast.

  When Denise came out of the examining room, she was wearing a chunky blue canvas boot that stopped halfway up her shin. A young girl in pink scrubs carried her purse and her crutches, but Denise was making her way unsupported. “Look at me!” she called to Willa and Cheryl, and when she was closer she said, “It fastens with Velcro; I can take it off for showers. I cannot wait to shave my legs.”

  “Here you go,” the girl said, handing Denise’s belongings to Willa. “You be careful now,” she told Denise. “Don’t overdo; remember what the doctor said.”

  “Yah, yah,” Denise said on an outward breath. She raised both fists above her head. “Free at last!” she crowed.

  Though she did need Willa’s arm as they left the building, and she leaned on her heavily when she settled into the car.

  * * *

  —

  “Denise is in a boot cast now,” Willa told Peter that evening.

  “So does this mean she can start driving?”

  “Not yet. But she’s managing without her crutches.”

  “Can she make it up the stairs?”

  “Well, just by sitting down and scooting up backward,” Willa said. “She’s too wobbly yet to risk walking up.”

  She failed to tell him that Denise had been sitting down and scooting up backward for some time now.

  There was no reason, though, to feel guilty about staying on a little longer, because it turned out that Denise was still not ready to drive. And simply getting around the house was such a laborious process that she continued to rely on Willa for any serious fetching and carrying.