Long Division Page 20

  In the late afternoon, the park gets swallowed in shadows. If you try not to think about all the sex offenders who pick up victims there and about the rumored two-headed fish that circle the brown lake, then the dusky hours can have a fairly magical feel. Surrounded by massive evergreens (sometimes up to the shore, with roots draping into the water), everything at Spanaway Lake feels soft and covered. As I was reaching down to inspect what was either an agate or a worn chunk of a brown beer bottle, I spotted a mother duck and her brood of ducklings dipping into the water. There were eight of them. I know this because I followed them stealthily along the little path that borders the lake’s edge as they careened in and out of nooks of cattails and skunkweed. There was one duckling that kept lollygagging behind and two little ass kissers that were determined to follow their mother right flush behind her waving webbed feet. They were faster than I expected. I was walking at a fair clip to keep up with them, and at moments when I thought I’d lost them, my heart would sink. I’d say something like No no, baby ducky family. Wait for Annie.

  And I don’t need George W. Bush to lay down the cash for a therapist just so she can tell me this: You have issues being alone. I’d been with David nearly 24/7 since our senior year of college. When he wasn’t around, my students were. In the summers there were more students. Friends. And when he takes off, what do I do? I acquire an unconventional pet, foster a friendship with a ninety-three-year-old woman who is basically a captive audience, and go klutzily stumbling into love with my best friend, who just happens to be around all the time.125 I was my relationship before half of it left for a far-off desert. And now Alden’s dead, things with David are going stale, and I’m chasing ducklings around dirty lakes, enthralled by their darling togetherness. I realized this as I galloped up a little hill to hopefully meet the ducks on the other side. And then I stopped. I saw them. The mother had turned squarely, pointing her butt feathers (and then eight tiny sets of butt feathers) directly, perhaps purposefully, at me. They swam to the middle of the lake. I returned to my car and ate a few more cookies. Drove home.

  It was nearly dark, and my arms were loaded with a few groceries and my stuff from the park. I entered the house through the front door. Dropped my purse on the sofa and stumbled into the kitchen. I unloaded the box of cereal and two cans of SpaghettiOs into the pantry. I took a zucchini squash from the fridge and began to slice it with this knife my mother bought me for my birthday last year. I love slicing with this knife. It makes beautiful whisking noises as it slides through the gnarliest potatoes and carrots as if they were mere room-temp sticks of butter. After tough days at school, I’d come home and cut and slice and dice the stress away. (There are many bags of chopped onions in my freezer.) After I finished cutting the zucchini, I remembered Helen. I wonder what Helen’s up to, I mused, reaching for the switch to ignite the patio light.

  And then I saw the feathers. White and speckled about the lawn like someone had dropped a box of packing peanuts and left its contents to spread in the wind. Helen, I thought, why are you molting so! This is just the sort of thing Edward Harrington warned me about. But then as my eyes roved to the further corners of the yard, the potted plants on the little cement patio, the patch of dirt before the entrance to Helen’s sunroom, I realized that the feathers—the soft, shiny plumes and quills and bits of down—were everywhere. And in quantities that could only mean two things:1. Someone had filmed a pillow fight scene for a teen movie in my backyard.Or

  2. Helen was completely naked.

  I busted through the back door and onto the patio, breathing heavy, the chopping knife gripped firmly in my hand. “Helen,” I shouted. “Helen! Come out!”

  Silence. Silence. Silence.

  My eyes adjusted to the glare of the porch light and started to pan across the fence line. It’s not a nice fence. If you were imagining a clean, white wooden fence up until now, I’m sorry I must shatter that pleasant image. My yard—like many a South Tacoma yard—has a waist-high, chain-link fence. The poles that punctuate the grid every few meters are shiny and capped by those little round dome things that make them look somehow safer and less industrial. In the far left corner of the yard, I spotted a darkness where there didn’t used to be one. The corner was just past the reach of the porch light, and as I walked out to it, feathers sticking to the heels of my flip-flops, my insides darkened too. With anxiety. With sadness. With dread.

  It was a hole! Some monster had dug a hole under my fence, shimmied its way through, and, evidenced by the contrasting spray of bright feathers trailing through the tunnel, made away with my precious Helen!

  I returned to the house and placed the knife in the sink. I took the cutting board of zucchini coins and let them cascade gracefully into the trash can. I turned off the water I was boiling for pasta and opened the door of my refrigerator. I selected a bottle of Stella from another untouched six-pack left behind from the pre-David-in-Iraq days. I tore through the contents of three drawers before I found the bottle opener, ripped off the lid, and took a long, cold, tough-girl drink. And then I called Gus.

  By the time he arrived, I’d started my second beer. I offered him one and he took it.

  “So where do you think she is?” Gus asked after his first swig.

  “Bird Heaven,” I said dejectedly. “Where even penguins can fly.” I jumped up to sit on the kitchen table where I was tall enough to see out the window. By this point, the breeze had blown most of Helen’s feathers to the east side of the yard, and they clung to the links of the fence, dancing around like mini flags or ribbons. Part of me wanted to grab a ziplock bag from the cabinet and run outside. I could collect a small bundle and stuff my last bits of Helen along with sprigs of lavender into a little sachet bag to keep in my sock drawer. Or I could take the feathers and glue them to the rim of a hat. I could tie flies for fishing. I could stash the quills in that little box with my baby teeth.

  “There’s a chance she could still be alive.” Gus didn’t say this with enough confidence to make it annoying. It was just a token stab of hope. That line you say when there’s really no good line at all.

  “No, Gus. She’s dead. Someone’s dog heard her fussing about, smelled her juicy flesh, and then barged in and snatched her. I just hope I don’t find her mutilated corpse down by my mailbox.” And I should point out that I wasn’t crying. Yes, I did call him to come over. I needed someone, but I wasn’t hysterical. I wanted to tell Gus how foolish I felt for thinking I could keep a suburban chicken alive. I wanted to tell him that I felt inadequate and that it was my fault for not reinforcing the fence or for not making a coop door that was too small for the average prowling canine.

  “It’s warm in here,” Gus said. “Do you want to take the beers out back and sit? Maybe Helen will be lured home by the sweet sound of your voice?”

  “Very funny,” I said as I moved toward the door.

  Outside I unfolded the two vinyl lawn chairs and lit one of those citronella candles in the terracotta pots. My mother gave me a set of them when I first started renting this house last year. You’ll love having a patio, Annie. It’s what summer nights are for. Had my mother imagined I’d use the candle to light a vigil for my dead and gone pet chicken, perhaps she’d have purchased tea lights in foggy glass votives. I wished we had a tiki torch. Those were definitely more Helen’s style.

  “So what are you doing this weekend?” Gus asked once our chairs had stopped squeaking and our beverages were making frequent journeys to and from our lips.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been kind of lousy at making plans lately.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you doing? Do you have to work?”

  “No. I don’t know. I broke up with Gina.” Gus said this in a very dude way that’s atypical for him. Like he was trying to mix the perfect voice cocktail of testosterone and nonchalance.

  “I know,” I said. If I were a smoker, this would have been the moment where I took a long, slow drag.

  “What?”

 
; “Gina told me. We ran into each other at the farmers’ market.”

  “How’d she seem?” I know Gus must have liked Gina fairly well to have dated her for over six months, so his concern seemed authentic—more than just curiosity.

  “She’s sad. But not so heartbroken that she can’t enjoy beet greens. I think she’ll survive. Why’d you do it?” Annie Harper’s cocktail: two parts teasing, two parts no-bullshit, several twists of curiosity, just a splash of nonchalance.

  “I was tired of her. Isn’t that usually the reason? I mean, unless one person does something particularly evil to the other person, most relationships end at the pasty hands of boredom.”

  “Pasty hands of boredom?” I laughed.

  “What? You’ve never seen them?” Gus lifted his drink and paused for a moment. “It’s kind of like you’ve been watching television and you’re sleepy. The couch, it feels good, and the sounds of the TV are nice and soothing. You’re not particularly riveted by the program, and you let your consciousness fade in and out. You’re comfortable enough that you entertain the idea of riding out the whole night on the sofa. With the mutterings of infomercials and throw pillows with semiabrasive, stained upholstery. But you don’t mind it. You’re so tired, you keep not leaving. In the back of your head—where you’re still kind of awake and capable of reason—you know you should get up and go to the bedroom. But there’s something that’s keeping you there. It just seems good enough. You can’t fathom that the bed is really any more comfortable. But then somehow—amazingly—you do it. You stand up. You walk to the bed and it’s true. It’s unarguably better. Your legs stretch out all the way, and the pillow cases are smooth and cold and wonderful.”

  “And what does this have to do with you and Gina?” I crossed my ankles and turned my head away while I asked it.

  “Gina was a fine girlfriend. Thoughtful, kind, definitely smart, but at the end of the day, I never fully felt it. Felt rested. There was that crick in my neck. I was sleeping on the sofa. And now I’m free, sprawling out in my clean, quiet bed. I was so tired when I first got back from Dominica. Gina was the first couch I fell into. And she turned out to be kind of boring to me. Pleasant-boring, but still boring.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ya, mahn. I should have done it months ago. Before I saw that Juiceman juicer guy so many times.”

  “It does seem like a great appliance.”

  “Gina just wasn’t right for me.”

  It was the most words Gus had spoken to me about a relationship since the failed chewing-gum mosaic. And even that was kind of superficial. Whether he fell in love or got any good action down in Dominica is a mystery to me. And granted, we’d each had a few beers and were still all thrown off and flustered by Helen’s absence, but it felt nice for him to spill a few things to me—weird and metaphorical and absent of Annie-Love confessions as they were. We finished the six-pack and I cautiously told Gus that I sleep on my sofa at least two nights a week and that I kind of know what he means. I was really glad he was there. Just as I started thinking that I should probably do something—stroll around the neighborhood shouting Helen’s name, search her coop with a flashlight for evidence, call the police126—a couple appeared from around the side of the house. They were young and sweaty. The man was wearing a backwards baseball cap and the woman wore cutoff jeans. Both had hooded sweatshirts. They must have let themselves in through the side gate. I jumped a bit when I saw them. The man spoke first.

  “Hi. Sorry to interrupt. I’m Pete. This is Jenn. We just moved in down the street this morning.” We all traded hellos, names, and firm handshakes chilled by the night air. It was a very normal exchange. Like midnight neighbor gatherings were commonplace in these parts. Then there was an awkward silence where I stared at Pete and Jenn’s pockets bulging with random moving items. I could see an outline of packaging tape in the kangaroo pouch of Jenn’s hoodie. She had several rubber bands around her wrist. A little flashlight head peeked out of Pete’s pants.

  “Annie. We’re really sorry. Our dog, Roger, he escaped from our yard, and he came back a few hours ago with . . .” Jenn was twisting her fingers, the concern in her eyes leaping out and bouncing around the yard. It was like she didn’t care if the movers broke her wedding china or if their new house had no running water because she was obviously upset about something else.

  “. . . with what we think is your chicken.” She turned to Pete. He took over.

  “He’s never done anything like this before. We were so confused to see him with a chicken in this neighborhood. But then we asked the Madsens next door what they thought, and they told us about you and that it was probably your chicken and oh, we really feel so awful. I know this isn’t a great way to start things off in a new town, but . . .”

  “No.” I took a step toward them. I felt like they were two of my students who had just spilled dirty paint water all over the floor. Not an act of recklessness or a sign that they weren’t paying attention, but a pure, simple accident. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s not your fault. Dogs are dogs. He couldn’t help it.”

  “Your coop is really terrific.” Jenn sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve, which instantly made me like her. “I feel so bad. We feel so bad.”

  “We’re sorry to come over so late, but we didn’t want you to be up all night worried.” Pete looked at Jenn, then at me again.

  “It’s okay. It’s really okay.”

  “Annie’s tough.” Gus stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “And Helen had a really great life here.”

  “Helen is such a nice name,” Jenn said and smiled a bit. I started hoping we would all become friends. I imagined backyard barbecues where Roger (amazingly, I didn’t hate him!) would pant at my feet and we’d all laugh about the strange circumstances of our first meeting. Gus and I would be holding hands and Jenn would be carrying a tray of handcrafted beef patties over to her aproned husband.

  Our conversation shifted to the normal pleasantries of new acquaintances. Pete and Jenn had moved from Olympia because of a new bank job Pete just landed at Wells Fargo. Jenn was five months pregnant.127 Before they left, Pete—much to Jenn’s embarrassment—handed me an envelope.

  “I know there’s nothing we can do to replace Helen, but someone gave us this as a wedding gift last year and we’ve never signed up. Jenn says regifting is tacky, but I wanted to do something.” I opened the envelope to find a gift certificate to the Chesalon Wine and Cheese of the Month Club. There was a number to call when you were ready to start receiving your first of six monthly pairings.

  “This is great,” I said. “You didn’t have to. But thanks. I’ll use it. I’ll enjoy it.”

  “I don’t care much for cheese, and Pete’s really more of a beer guy.” Jenn had relaxed now that the gift was well received. We all said good-byes, Jenn rambled off several more apologies, and Pete whispered something into Gus’s ear right before they turned and evaporated into the darkness of the side yard.

  Gus and I returned to our chairs, and I flipped the gift certificate around in my hands.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “No kidding,” Gus said.

  “What did Pete tell you when he left?”

  “He said that he’d taken Helen’s—um—remains and placed them in a cedar cigar box. And if you don’t want to bury it or anything, he said you can just throw it away.” I knew that this was the type of kindness that melted Gus’s heart then nearly bubbled it out of his chest. He was grinning so hard, but trying to fight it back like he was worried I’d find his smile inappropriate. I laughed.

  “That’s incredible,” I said, giving him the green light to let his cheeks flex freely. “I bet it’s the cigar box from his wedding night.” And then Gus jumped up from his chair.

  “Hold on a second,” he said and bolted toward Helen’s coop. He bent down to the handle that pulled the drawer-floor-egg-retriever out from the bottom of the house. He looked at me. “Annie, do you mind?” I shook my head. Gus pulled out the
drawer slowly. He placed his hands on his knees and leaned his face in close to the shavings—a dangerous proximity to an understandably rank blend of smells. And then I heard him sigh. Not a defeated sigh, but a quick, relieved, almost surprised sigh. He returned to the patio and squatted before me, his face serene, almost blank.

  “Miss Harper,” he said with his hands pressed together in a gentle bowl, cradling the smooth brightness of Helen’s final gift to me.

  “Her last egg,” I whispered, not taking my eyes off it. It was perfectly shaped and glowing. Like Helen had gathered all the sunlight of the day and condensed it into this ultimate creation. I looked up at Gus, who was smiling now: half sad, half happy for me. “How should I cook it?” I asked. We both crunched our faces up for a minute, silently going through egg preparation methods, analyzing them for levels of tastiness, beauty, and respect. I couldn’t decide.

  “Wait,” Gus said. “Don’t. Don’t cook it. Let me take it home, and I’ll bring it back for you tomorrow.”

  “Why?” I was too tired, too semidrunk, and too brain-dead to even wonder what Gus had in mind.

  “Just trust me, Annie.” And I did. I thanked Gus for coming over, and he thanked me for letting him help. We picked up the beer bottles and I noted how the clanking sound would normally cause Helen to skitter around in her coop. Before he left, Gus asked me if I’d read much of Annie Harper’s Journal yet. I told him that I had not, but I would do so soon. He seemed rather anxious about it. Then he went home.