“To water plants.”
“Where are the plants?”
“Not far from here.”
“Where’s Mommy?”
“Getting her hair cut. She told you that.”
“Why does she want her hair cut?”
“I can’t figure her out. I don’t understand your mother.”
Elsa has gone with a friend to get her hair done. Michael has the car. He is tired of being cooped up watching daytime television with Mary Anne, so he’s going to Prudence and Richard’s even though he just watered the plants yesterday. Silas is with them, in the back seat. Michael looks at him lovingly in the rearview mirror.
“Where are we going?”
“We just started the ride. Try to enjoy it.”
Mary Anne must have heard Elsa tell him not to take the car; she doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself.
“What time is it?” Mary Anne asks.
“Three o’clock.”
“That’s what time school lets out.”
“What about it?” Michael asks.
He shouldn’t have snapped at her. She was just talking to talk. Since all talk is just a lot of garbage anyway, he shouldn’t have discouraged her. He reaches over and pats her knee. She doesn’t smile, as he hoped she would. She is sort of like her mother.
“Are you going to get a haircut, too?” she asks.
“Daddy doesn’t have to get a haircut, because he isn’t trying to get a job.”
Mary Anne looks out the window.
“Your great-grandma sends Daddy enough money for him to stay alive. Daddy doesn’t want to work.”
“Mommy has a job,” Mary Anne says. His wife is an apprentice bookbinder.
“And you don’t have to get your hair cut, either,” he says.
“I want it cut.”
He reaches over to pat her knee again. “Don’t you want long hair, like Daddy?”
“Yes,” she says.
“You just said you wanted it cut.”
Mary Anne looks out the window.
“Can you see all the plants through that window?” Michael says, pulling up in front of the house.
He is surprised when he opens the door to see Richard there.
“Richard! What are you doing here?”
“I’m so sick from the plane that I can’t talk, man. Sit down. Who’s this?”
“Did you and Prudence have a good time?”
“Prudence is still in Manila. She wouldn’t come back. I just had enough of Manila, you know? But I don’t know if the flight back was worth it. The flight back was really awful. Who’s this?”
“This is my daughter, Mary Anne. I’m back with my wife now. I’ve been coming to water the plants.”
“Jesus, am I sick,” Richard says. “Do you know why I’d feel sick after I’ve been off the plane for half a day?”
“I want to water the plants,” Mary Anne says.
“Go ahead, sweetheart,” Richard says. “Jesus—all those damn plants. Manila is a jungle, did you know that? That’s what she wants. She wants to be in the jungle. I don’t know. I’m too sick to think.”
“What can I do for you?”
“Is there any coffee?”
“I drank it all. I drank all your liquor, too.”
“That’s all right,” Richard says. “Prudence thought you’d do worse than that. She thought you’d sell the furniture or burn the place down. She’s crazy, over there in that rain jungle.”
“His girlfriend is in Manila,” Michael says to his daughter. “That’s far away.”
Mary Anne walks off to sniff a philodendron leaf.
Michael is watching a soap opera. A woman is weeping to another woman that when her gallbladder was taken out Tom was her doctor, and the nurse, who loved Tom, spread
Mary Anne and a friend are pouring water out of a teapot into little plastic cups. They sip delicately.
