A Theory of Relativity by Jacquelyn Mitchard
This was the pattern revealed. The missing piece placed. The torturous bridge that connected this house with that cemetery was complete. The piece was Keefer, the daughter of their daughter, who hummed when she walked and slammed the ground, hard, with her heels, because she liked the rhythm of the vibration, who did not drink her water ba-ba, but slept with it under her neck like an orthopedic roll. Keefer, the word that spelled Georgia down and Gordon across, the answer to the question that had been God’s. A grave and enormous question—are you up to this?—had been presented to her to swallow in unbearable portions. Scalded, stung, kicked, awakened when she would have preferred to lie numb, dragged to this place, Lorraine’s feet touched down on the other side of the understanding with a quickening of her legs, an agility suitable to God’s tested message carrier. She raised her gown high over her thighs, so that she could be more like a leaf offering no resistance to the wind and the moving darkness of grace. She would see it all through. She would see all of it and ask only for the strength to understand it. She felt the phantom touch of Georgia’s baby foot, the toes wiggling and seeking in the hair on the crown of her mother’s head. Lorraine nearly spoke.
It was nearly dawn when she awakened Gordon, who had fallen onto their living room couch, and told him, “You have to buy a house.”
“Now?” Gordon asked. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t have a real bedroom for Keefer. She’s two. She can’t go on sleeping in the closet.”
“Mom, what am I going to use for money for a house? And anyhow, what does it matter where she sleeps?”
“The Cadys have a whole . . . fairyland for her, Gordie,” Lorraine continued, sweeping her hair back ruthlessly, snapping off ends that had become entangled in her reading glasses. “I’ve been reading the classifieds. I circled some things for you to look at.”
“Now?” Gordon asked. “Mom, I’m dying here. I didn’t mean that. I mean, the last time I drank so much beer as last night, I was in college. Why didn’t somebody stop me? Tim was like the beer pusher. It feels like a truck ran over my head. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. . . . do you have an aspirin, Mom?”
Lorraine flew from the living room and bounded up the stairs, rummaging for the one, last, ancient pill bottle. The light in the bedroom was too dim for reading small print, even with her spectacles. Was this Demerol? Dilaudid? Gordon was healthy. It wouldn’t kill him. Keefer and Mark were snoring in unison. Good. Lorraine had never felt more wide awake. She plopped the single pill into Gordon’s palm.
“Juice,” he muttered. “If I drink water, I’ll puke. I mean it. Where’s Lindsay?”
“She went home hours ago.”
“How did I get on the couch?”
“I guess you walked.”
“Let me sit up,” Gordon muttered, and Lorraine gave him her hand, her hand of amazing, soaring power. “Okay. Here. I’m drinking this juice. This is a big aspirin . . .”
“It’s extra strength.”
“Okay. Mom, it’s not hardly even light out. What are you going on about?”
“It’s that you need to buy a house. Or at least, we need to look at houses. There was this little farmette I read about, right here, now it’s on Hat Lake—”
“I can’t live on Hat Lake. Emily Sayward lives there.”
“It’s a big lake, Gordon.”
“I can’t afford a lake house—”
“It’s like, fifty or sixty thousand—”
“Then it has to be a hellhole.”
“Well, okay. There’s a bungalow, it’s brick, on Mission Street. That’s right behind the middle school, Gordie. Keefer could walk to school.”
“She can’t even talk yet, Mom.”
“Well, she could walk someday. You have to be planful, Gordie, honey.”
“I know. I am very planful.”
“Brick is nice. Warm in winter. Cool in summer. It says . . . may I turn the light on, honey? It says, wooded lot. And three bedrooms. Tile floors.”
“Mom, if they’re reduced to mentioning the floor, it’s got to be in crummy shape . . . and what does it cost?”
“Eighty thousand.”
“It might as well be eighty million.”
“We can figure something out, Gordie.” Lorraine tapped her teeth with the earpiece of her reading glasses. “You can get an FHA loan. Dad and I got an FHA loan. You can only get them for the first house you buy. You get a great interest rate, and you only have to put down like a thousand bucks.”
“Maybe thirty years ago, Mom. You can’t put down a thousand bucks on an Airstream now.”
“I think you can. I think you can get this . . . homestead thing or something. I’m going to make some appointments, to just look—”
“Don’t you think that would be . . . tempting the gods, Mom? You know, putting all your chickens in the same basket?”
“You know we’re going to win now.”
“I don’t know anything. Except I think I have to lie down. My head is going around like the mechanical bull ride . . .”
“That’s just the meds.”
“Mom, I’ve had aspirin before. I think I have a fever or something.”
“Gordie, you have to pay attention here. That woman, that Faye, the psychiatrist. . . . she’s going to evaluate us all over again . . .”
“Faith.”
“Fay, Faith, Fate, whatever . . .”
“She’s a psychologist.”
“Gordie!” Lorraine surprised even herself by grabbing his ear. “Listen to me. You have to show how confident you are that Keefer will remain with you. That’s what the Cadys did. They just went ahead. Enrolled her in Sunday school. Put up wallpaper. That was how they edged us out.”
“Well, okay. I hear you,” Gordon sighed. “You can make an appointment to look at the mission—”
“The house on Mission. It’s a good street name, isn’t it? Not like Bluebird Hill Parkway or something? The address is Eleven Eleven. Those are good numbers, Gordie. That’s the make-a-wish number, remember?”
“On the clock,” he nodded, fumbling for a pillow, burrowing his face in its fullness.
“Because she’s going to be making an appointment with us, probably any day now. That’s what Greg Katt said.”
“Okay, Mom,” Gordon agreed, “houses. Houses and wallpaper.”
In fact, however, Faith Bogert decided to hold off even on approaching the McKennas until after a good, long visit with Delia and Craig in Madison. To make sure she was at her best, she drove down the night before, staying at a massive old bed-and-breakfast inn just above the university boathouse on Lake Mendota. Before dinner, Faith took a pep walk, following the instructions of the nutritionist she’d visited two weeks and four pounds earlier: Jog for two houses, walk for two houses. Intervals burned fat more efficiently, the counselor had told her, and though Faith was almost sure that a guts-out run would burn fat faster than anything, she had pretended to go along with the woman’s certainty. She did not yet have the capacity to run a full block anyhow, having spent far too many summer days curled up with a book instead of clenched on her living room floor, doing sit-ups on the AbMaster she’d madly purchased one late night from the Shopping Channel.
Delia’s appearance, when she opened the door, shocked Faith Bogert more than she could effectively conceal. Delia had applied makeup carefully and more skillfully than Faith would ever have been able to do herself—the blending of blush was Faith’s Waterloo. A cheesy pallor put lie to Delia’s wide, welcoming smile, her brisk offer of iced tea, her proud display of Keefer, decked out in a white tea-length dress with pink covered buttons, each button in the shape of a rosebud. The same blossoms decorated a bow that caught up a strand of Keefer’s cottony auburn baby’s hair.
“How do you ever manage to keep that on?” Faith asked, extracting her clipboard from her tote bag. “I never met a toddler who’d put up with it.”
“Well,” Delia said, “well, first, we dress her up for church every Sunday
“What?” Faith asked, more to conceal her scrutiny of Delia’s bloated face than from any real curiosity. What was the matter with Delia? She’d always been a large woman, but large in the sense of robust, never—despite the MS she suspected she had (though she’d told Faith it had never been confirmed)—with the look upon her of any sort of ill health. Now she was massive. Was Delia pregnant? Faith, under the pretext of examining Keefer’s hairband more carefully, leaned in closer, getting up to seat herself on the ottoman near the sofa where Delia half-reclined, her legs, sculpted red shells of toes crammed into white sandals, splayed as if to hold her erect. “What’s the big secret?”
“I glue it on,” Delia giggled.
“You glue it on.”
“I glue it to just the tiniest little piece of her hair. I use nail adhesive.”
“Doesn’t she try to pull it out?”
“Not more than once!” Delia said, with a gleam of triumph. “It didn’t really hurt her. Of course it didn’t, right, Keefer Kathryn? Just tugged enough on her little noggin that she learned to leave it alone.”
“Well, how do you get it out?”
“Just snip it off. It’s just the teeniest itty bit of hair.”
“Aren’t you afraid you’ll make her bald?” Faith heard the nervous octave in her voice and deliberately breathed in slowly, lowering her tone. She could not make out whether Delia was pregnant or simply . . . huge. The woman had gained thirty pounds easily. She must weigh well over two hundred. For one nasty and repented instant, Faith felt for the newly emerged contour of her own rib cage.
“We don’t dress her up so often it would make any difference,” Delia assured Faith, leaning back, straining to pull Keefer up onto her lap. There. Faith scrutinized the motion. She was pregnant. No. Delia was packed with new flesh all over, not only through the abdomen. “Their hair grows so fast. And they don’t ever dress her up. I’m working out monkeys from her hair for days after she gets back from up north. I don’t think Gordon ever puts a brush to it.”
“I know he does,” Faith said mildly. “I’ve seen her little comb and brush set at his place.”
“Anyhow, he’s a man. Right?” Delia loosed Keefer, who began fiddling with the roseate buttons. “Sugar, you leave those buttons alone now. You heard me. Alexis! Will you please bring me her board puzzles? The big ones?”
The teenager, taller by inches, appealingly sloppy in jean shorts and a bathing suit top, banged in from the deck where she appeared to have been sunning. A burn that already looked wrathfully swollen shared space on her narrow shoulders with a bright white pair of strap marks. “Ouch,” Faith said warningly, “looks like you need some sunblock.”
“I don’t even feel it,” Alex told her amiably. “I just move from the back to the front with the sun every day. It goes away. I get tan. My dad’s part Indian.”
Delia snorted. “I don’t know what part you mean,” she said sourly.
“He is, Mom. You know he is.”
“I take it you don’t mean Craig,” Faith said. “He looks pure Irish.”
“Her dad in North Carolina, she means. Jack Tyson.”
“Are you planning to go see your father this summer, Alexis?”
“Alex,” said the girl, carefully removing two puzzles from a stack on a low shelf. “Come on, Keefer-Weefer-Poo. Let’s get these trucks all back in their houses. Yeah, my dad says we’re going to the races in Daytona.” Another snort from Delia. Alexis took note of it, then seemed to ball it up and sail it out of her consciousness. Good for her. Delia apparently had no idea of the rage that putting down a child’s absent parent could engender. Well, few people did.
Faith smiled. The girl’s manner with the baby was balm on the chafed memory of the dozens of angry runaways, sullen shoplifters, habitual ungovernables who’d left a sad trail through her files, rich truants who blamed everything on their parents, poor truants whose parents blamed everything on their children. This girl was good medicine for this baby. Faith took up her pen. “So what is it we’re calling this young lady with the roses on her dress these days?”
“Craig’s mother made it. She’s coming to visit for a couple of weeks real soon.”
“And Craig?”
“He couldn’t be here. We’re both sorry. Meetings. You know, he’s had to miss so much work. But they’re really behind him. They keep telling him, you just work on keeping that baby—”
“Well,” Faith said, circling back, “so I noticed. You use both her names.”
“We’re slowly, slowly trying to work our way around to calling her Kathryn,” Delia said. Faith noticed the drizzle of sweat on her lip. “She’s named after my granny Kathryn, you knew that. My grandma and Ray’s.”
“And after, well, the name Georgia chose for her.”
“It just doesn’t sound right on a girl. The two, together, that’s all right. At home, we use two names a lot. You know, like Billy Bob? But Keefer?”
“I like it,” Alexis chimed in, not inappropriately. “I like girl names that sound like boy names. They’re cool. I’m having my name legally changed to Alex.”
“That’s for you to decide when you’re older,” Delia said. Faith was struck again by her patience. “I’ll hope you don’t change it, but it’s going to be up to you. And names are like houses. You can move, and then move again.”
Faith nibbled at the proffered banana bread.
“How are all of you doing this hot summer?”
“Well, I haven’t been as well as I’d like,” Delia admitted ruefully. “I’m feeling this heat, I can tell you. And me a Southern girl.”
“How’s the baby?” Faith asked quickly. Now, the bait was on the water. She would rise to it or not.
“She’s doing fine. Nothing bothers her,” Delia said smoothly. So. Perhaps she really was just obese. “We try to keep things very quiet for her. No TV. And definitely,” she smiled ironically at Alexis, “no MTV.”
“My mom’s got a blocker.”
“Best twenty bucks I ever spent.”
“I have to get my fix of MTV at my friend Liesel’s house.”
“I can’t control what other parents let their kids watch,” Delia said. “And I like Liesel, she’s a nice girl. But I think those messages, all that. . . . sexual, you know, and not a healthy sexuality . . .”
“I have to say I agree,” Faith said, jotting briskly. “So what’s going to happen if the court on the retrial decides in Gordon’s favor?”
“Well, I pray that will not happen. But, we are prepared to face it, Doctor. My husband and I will do everything within our power to keep Keefer where we believe her parents wanted her to be. But we will go on either way. We’ll be able to accept it.”
“That’s good. That’s a good way to keep your hopes up,” Faith said. “So Craig is equally committed to the long haul?”
“We both believe we know what’s best for her. We know that the love of two good parents, even if they’re not the ones God gave you originally, can heal a lot of hurt.”
“And you’re open to helping her come to terms with . . . her questions?”
“If she has any, yes.”
“What fun things do you two do together?”
“We try to have a standing date every other Saturday night. I have to say, Alexis is a wonderful baby-sitter. And she doesn’t charge too much.”
“I meant you and Keefer.”
“Oh, we play all day. We play beauty parlor. We play house, though with all this weight I’m trucking around, I can’t get down with her like I should. We play Barbies. I’m teaching Alexis to sew. We’ve made her some really cute Barbie outfits.”
“And you’re still working?”
“God willing, yes. Doctor, raising children is expensive. Not to mention th
“So, things seem to be going well.” Faith tried again, “Except you mentioned not feeling well?”
“Just my headaches. My aches all over, nothing so special, nothing I won’t survive.” Delia was a wall.
Faith took her leave feeling as she did when a run opened down the back of her stocking—irritated and exposed in a way that made no sense. She had learned to trust these instincts, but there was nothing here to see. Delia was clearly not sick enough to skip work. She was managing both girls well. Her mood seemed generally good. Perhaps Delia was simply one of those women, like Faith’s own Aunt Mary, who ate their way through crises and fasted their way through good times. Not a particularly heart-healthy way to live, but crises would probably not be standard fare for the Cadys for too much longer.
A breeze had stiffened while she was inside, and as she stowed her tote bag in the backseat of her car, Faith noticed Alexis cheerfully hip-hopping her way out to the sunnier front porch, yellow earphones in place. Mad dogs and teenagers, Faith thought, as the wind snatched the loose pages of her notes and whipped them down and out through the gap of her open car door. She would be able to reconstruct, but wait . . . the pages had been trapped in a window well, blown flat against one wall of the concrete box. Faith sprinted and captured her pages and was turning to leave when she heard Keefer scream. It was a baby’s angry wail, Faith ascertained quickly, coming from the open window just over Faith’s head. She made a mental inventory of the house’s plan, trying to keep her cool, as Keefer sobbed, “No, no! No wetty!” A jet of water. Delia’s voice, low, not precisely threatening, but stern, very stern. “Mama said leave those buttons alone! And if you scream anymore, you’re going under the shower, Miss Priss. Do you hear me?” Okay. What Faith was hearing was not a forthright abuse. She was hearing a fairly strict, Bible-bound Southern woman, probably suffering from a pounding headache, administering the threat of some fairly inappropriate discipline for a two-year-old. On the other hand, it was only a threat; Keefer was quieting down, Delia was making crooning noises. The shower was shut off. Delia had not struck Keefer. Faith had herself been slapped, only once, in ninth grade, the time when Eve Bogert caught her smoking behind the pool building with Jennifer Adderly.