He blinked, stunned, while behind him Rose stood up from the beanbag chair in which she'd been sitting, watching television. The two kids had been playing on the floor, the little girl with her Barbie and the boy with his GoBots; they stopped, too, and stared up at the visitor with wide eyes.
'Aren't you going to invite me in?' Laura asked, her breath smelling of sweet red wine.
'No. Please go away.' He started to push the door shut.
Laura put her hand against it. 'I don't know anybody here. It's a bitch drinking alone. Don't be rude, okay?'
'I don't have anything else to tell you.'
'I know. I just want to be with somebody. Is that so bad?'
He looked at his wristwatch; Mickey Mouse was on the dial. 'It's almost nine o'clock.'
'Right. Time to do some serious drinking.'
'If you don't leave,' Treggs said, 'I'm going to have to call the police.'
'Would you really?' she asked him. A silence stretched, and Laura saw that he would not.
'Oh, let her in, Mark!' Rose stood behind him. 'What's it going to hurt?'
'I think she's drunk.'
'No, not yet.' Laura smiled thinly. 'I'm working on it. Come on, I won't stay long. I just need to talk to somebody, all right?'
Rose Treggs pushed her husband aside and opened the door to admit her. 'We never closed our door in anybody's face, and we won't start now. Come on in, Laura.'
Laura crossed the threshold with her bottle of wine. 'Hi,' she said to the kids, and the little boy said, 'Hi' but the little girl just stared at her. 'Close the door, Mark, you're letting the cold in!' Rose told him, and he muttered something deep in his beard and shut the door against the night.
'We figured you'd gone back to Atlanta,' Rose said.
Laura eased down onto the sofa. Springs jabbed her butt. 'Not much to go back to.' She uncapped the sangria and drank from the bottle. The last time she'd drunk anything straight from a bottle, it was half-price beer back at the University of Georgia. 'I thought I wanted to be alone. I guess I was wrong.'
'Isn't anybody going to worry about you?'
'I left a message for my husband. He's o-u-t. Out.' Laura took another swig. 'Called Carol and told her where I was. Carol's my friend. Thank God for friends, huh?'
'Okay, rug rats,' Treggs said to the children. 'Time for bed.' They instantly began to caterwaul a protest, but Treggs got them up and moving.
'Are you the lady whose baby got taken?' the little boy asked her.
'Yes, I am.'
'Mark Junior!' the elder Mark said. 'Come on, bedtime!'
'My dad thinks you're wearing a wire,' the boy told her. 'See my GoBot?' He held it up for her inspection, but his father grasped his arm and pulled him toward the hallway. 'Nighty-night!' Mark Junior had time to say. A door slammed, rather hard.
'Bright child,' Laura said to Rose. 'I'm not, though. Wearing a wire, I mean. Why would I be?'
'Mark's a little suspicious of people. Goes back to his Berkeley days, I guess. You know, the pigs were putting wire mikes on kids posing as radicals and taping everything that was said at SDS meetings. The FBI got a lot of files on people that way.' She shrugged. 'I wasn't into politics that much. I mostly just, like, hung out and did macrame.'
'I was into politics.' Another sip of the red wine. Her tongue felt furry. 'I thought we could change the world with flowers and candles. With love.' She said it as if uncertain what it meant anymore. 'That was pretty damned stupid, wasn't it?'
'It was where we were and what we were about,' Rose said. 'It was a good fight.'
'We lost,' Laura answered. 'Read any newspaper, and you can see we lost. Damn… if all that energy couldn't change the world, nothing can.'
'Right on, sad to say.' Rose grasped the bottle of sangria, and Laura let her have it. 'Ancient history doesn't go well with red wine. I'll make you some tea. Okay?'
'Yeah. Okay.' Laura nodded, light-headed, and Rose walked into the kitchen.
After a while Mark Treggs came back into the front room. Laura was watching a movie on TV: Barefoot in the Park, with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, pre-Hanoi. Treggs settled himself into a chair opposite her and crossed his long, gangly legs. 'You ought to go home,' he told her. 'There's no point in your hanging around Chattanooga.'
'I'll go in the morning. Soon as I get some rest.' Which was going to be next to impossible, she knew. Every time she closed her eyes she thought she heard a baby crying and the wail of sirens.
'I can't help you. I wish I could, but I can't.'
'I know. You've already told me that.'
'I'm telling you again.' He steepled his thin fingers together, and watched her with his owlish eyes. 'If there was anything I could do for you, I would.'
'Right.'
'I mean it I don't like not being able to help you. But look… all I am is a custodian who writes counterculture books that maybe a thousand people have read.' Treggs kept his gaze on her face. 'A wind-pisser, that's what I am.'
'A what?'
'My father always said I was going to grow up to be a wind-pisser. Somebody who pisses into the wind. That's what I am, like it or not.' His shoulders shrugged. 'Maybe I've been pissing in the wind so long I like the way it feels. What I'm trying to say is that I've got a good little life – both of us do. We don't need much, and we don't want much. Just the freedom to speak and write, and up at Rock City I play my pennywhistle and meditate. Life is very good. You know why it's so good?' He waited for her to shake her head. 'Because I have no expectations,' he said. 'My philosophy is: let it be. I bend with the breeze, but I do not break.'
'Zen,' Laura said.
'Yes. If you try to resist the breeze, you get a broken back. So I sit in the sun and play my music, and I write a few books on subjects that hardly anybody cares about anymore, and I watch my kids growing and I have peace.'
'I wish to God I did,' Laura said.
Rose came in from the kitchen. She offered Laura the clay mug with the image of her husband's face molded into it. 'Red Zinger again,' Rose said. 'I hope that's o -'
'Not that mug!' Mark Treggs was on his feet as Laura's fingers closed around the handle. 'Jesus, no!'
Laura blinked up at him as he reached out to take it away from her. Rose stepped back, out of her way. 'It's got a crack in it, I mean!' Treggs said; a goofy smile slid across his mouth. 'The bottom's leaking!'
Laura held on to it. 'It was okay this afternoon.'
His smile twitched. His eyes darted to Rose and then back to Laura again. 'Can I have that mug, please?' he said. 'I'll get you another one.'
Laura looked at Treggs's face on the mug. It was wearing the same goofy smile. A hand-crafted mug, she thought. Made by someone who was an artist. She lifted the mug up, being careful not to spill any of the tea, and as she looked at the bottom for any trace of leakage she heard Treggs say in a tense voice, 'Give it to me.'
There was no crack on the bottom. The artist had signed it, though. There were two initials and a date: DD, '85.
DD. Didi?
As in Bedelia?
Didi made things, Treggs had said. She was a potter, and she sold stuff in town.
Laura felt her heart stutter. She avoided Treggs's stare, and she took a sip of the Red Zinger. Rose was standing a few feet from her husband, her expression saying she knew she'd screwed up. The moment hung as Redford and Fonda prattled on the TV and the chimes clinked outside. Laura drew a long breath. 'Where is she?' she asked.
'I'd like you to leave now,' Treggs said.
'Bedelia Morse. Didi. She made this mug, didn't she? In 1985? Where is she?' Her face felt hot, and her eyes
