“For
“What in the name of hell does he know about legal… the legal realm?”
“There’s no reason to be upset. He might know someone I could talk to. He knows amazing people. Did you read the sort of joke guidebook for returning to the States he sent me? I was going to show it to you. It turned out to be useful, really. He seems to know people in high places, gay people. The number of people you would never think of being gay that he can identify is pretty staggering. He reminds me of that diabetic woman at the embassy who named all the secret diabetics she knew about in Washington. Your brother can be very helpful.”
“Call him, then.”
“I did, once. But not to talk about this. Just to say hello.”
“How is he?”
“I think he’s all right. I couldn’t tell. He’s so funny. He has a new motto for the CIA. Do you want to know what it is?”
He was silent. If he kept silent long enough it might remind her that there was a rule. He hadn’t been able to tell her about Dictionary Echelon but he thought he impressed a general rule of caution about certain references.
She sighed. “I know what I did, Ray. I’m sorry. But don’t you want to know?”
“Okay, what is it?”
“Peek and ye shall find.”
“Very amusing.”
“Anyway these names she likes are, this is a guess, from movies we haven’t seen, with cheap women as heroines. Arva is another one she likes, and Thelma. My sister is excitable right now. I think it’s stress and postpartum and I think she’ll be better. My mother can’t come. She’s in a wheelchair with gout. Also she’s so out of it. She’s not leaving Michigan. Since she heard there’s no father on the scene or even in the wings, she really has nothing to say to Ellen. I am overwhelmed here. It would be heaven if you could be with us, but you can’t, I know that. If I didn’t give you the tourist reentry thing your brother wrote, go and look on the second shelf of my nightstand. It’s brilliant…
“Ray, I want to talk to you forever. Can we?”
“You know we can.”
“But you didn’t ask for this expense with Ellen.”
“It’s all right.” He was attracting her, which wasn’t the right word, still. He was getting something going…
“Ray, how are you, are you eating decently?”
He said, “I don’t have much appetite,” to his surprise, because it wasn’t true.
“No appetite?” she said. “Why is that? Then go eat out…”
He had committed a mistake. She felt criticized.
“You don’t want Dimakatso to cook, so okay. She is perfectly adequate. I don’t want this on me. I don’t want to hear about how only one person can feed and nurture you the right way. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you what to do if you have no appetite. Don’t eat. Don’t eat for
It was his fault. He had been tempted to go for sympathy by the stupid Ringnes. That was enough Ringnes. The pleasant feeling of having a little extra space in the top of the skull was declaring itself nicely. It was excellent beer, Norwegian. He liked Norwegians. Swedes he could take or leave.
“Please forgive me,” she said.
“Come on. Nothing to forgive.”
“I have so much to tell you, Ray.”
“Tell, then.”
“I think it’s good my sister had this baby. I know it’s a mess with the father, but still. They love Ellen at the Montessori Institute. The job part of her life looks solid. She likes doing publicity. They pay pretty munificently. They think she’s brilliant.
“She needed this child. She was volunteering to baby-sit for all her married friends and she was falling in love with their children. They could do no wrong. She would baby-sit for a twenty-one-month-old holy terror who would go through the apartment dismantling it. But after each depredation, like tearing the knobs off the stereo, he would toddle over to her holding out the thing he had torn off as a gift, giving this darling smile. Or he would go into the bathroom and grab a container of shampoo and come out and give it to you as another gift but leaving a trail of spilled shampoo all through your living room. Of course Ellen doesn’t keep the caps screwed on. But anyway the child would be picked up and she would slowly discern her apartment was in ruins. She had been in a dream. I met one of the children who pushed her over the edge, a darling little girl, just a toddler. When she came over to be baby-sat she brought along a whole menagerie of stuffed animals. Going to sleep meant collecting them into a heap and lying down on top of them. She had fantastic names for them. When I asked her about her animals she said, ‘I use them as friends.’ Ellen wrote the names down so she could refer to them correctly on the phone. They had a phone relationship. Look at this. I’m at her desk now and here’s a card with the names of the animals. Here they are… Snartz, Gwinty, Pobeel, Woot, Fard and Dardena. Don’t you love Dardena? How is St. James College?”
He knew what he wanted from this conversation. He wanted to attract her and he wanted some evidence that he was succeeding. He wanted to hear that she was keeping her personal footing in all the upheaval around having a baby, particularly as the proposition might apply to her. He wanted her to miss Botswana, if that was possible. He wanted to hear what it felt like to be back in the States, if she liked it there. It was probably fortuitous that she had gone to Florida, which, if he was any judge, she was going to find boring and extreme, culturally. That was what he hoped. He had to say something about school. There was nothing attractive going on. The pigs were dead.
“School is fine. No big changes.”
“I think she’ll be a good mother. My fingers are crossed. Do you know what cradle cap is?”
“Some type of bonnet for a child? No idea.”
“No it’s a scalp condition. It’s like a crust. It’s unattractive. Newborns get it. You’re supposed to leave it alone, not be scrubbing it or oiling it every minute. Ellen can’t leave it alone.
“She just has to calm down about this baby. I think she will. Her breasts are immense. She was never large-busted, Ray. She was like me…”
So far, her attitude to the new baby wasn’t alarming. It was unromantic.
“What is going to happen to this child? I suppose it’s a good thing it’s a girl. They say they’re easier. This child is not a good sleeper.”
There was one other item he needed from this conversation. He needed to know if there was any chance that she had been in contact with Morel, any sign suggesting it.
“Well, anyway. America. I have to say Davis was right about one thing, unless it’s just this particular neck of the woods. I think it’s all over. He was right about credulism reigning and spreading. That means religiosity…”
“I figured,” Ray said.
“Credulism,” she said. She seemed to love the word. “The country is in a religious frenzy of some kind. Everybody has Jesus bumperstickers saying one thing or another. Anybody who thinks religion is going the way of the goatee is in for a shock. I don’t know how happy Ellen is going to be, living around here. The local people have a feeling against single mothers, I gather, that she’s run into, because the day she put a sticker on her bumper saying God Is a Single Parent someone twisted her windshield wipers so that they had to be replaced. She sees a connection, but who knows. Also the kind of religion that’s around is kind of gruesome. One sticker has the image of a hand with a nail through it and the text says His Pain Your Gain. On Monday if you go someplace for fast food the cashier just automatically reaches out for your church bulletin so they can give you your ten percent off. Is anything happening at the embassy?”
“Not a thing.”
“Have they found Dwight Wemberg?”
“No.” That was a true statement.
“I think about him. I wish you could find him.”
