A big Dracula laugh.
Mwahh-haaa-haaa-haaaaaaa.
“Papa!” she screamed. He came staggering into the basement. His glasses glowed dimly. He held his arms up in the air, as if about to descend on them with a billowing black cape. But he was wearing a tie and sports coat instead. A dank hiccup escaped from the dehumidifier.
Her friends collapsed on each other, shrieking. She let out her breath and folded her arms around him.
“Are your eyes closed?” Maggie asked. “Are you relaxed?”
“Yes,” Beatrice said. She felt everything inside her slowly coming loose.
Her hands joined her sister’s on the contraption. The candle was making the whole room smell like cake. How good it felt to rest her eyes, to rest her fingers on the plastic, to let the unseen forces take over for a little while. She tried to conjure up a picture of the universe and saw styrofoam balls of varying sizes gently bobbing in the breeze. No. That was the solar system, abandoned weeks ago in her homeroom after the science fair. The universe was bigger, much bigger. She would have to try harder.
“I’m asking my question now,” Maggie whispered.
“Go for it.”
“I’m asking it silently, actually. I’m asking it in my head.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Beatrice opened her eyes a crack. “The whole point is to be collaborative.”
Maggie sighed, her eyes still closed. “Well. Just think of Mama. Think of Mama and me on a beach in the Caribbean.”
“Doing tai chi?”
“Okay. If you want.” She paused. “Think Aruba.”
That was easy. She could handle Aruba. White sand. Turquoise water. A scattering of cabanas. Beatrice squeezed her eyes shut and drifted over the island. She saw two little figures standing in the surf. Above her the black wind of the galaxies swept by. A passing comet showered her in sparkles. To her surprise, she was turning. And somewhere far away, her hands began to move. She tumbled through the ether like a satellite, keeping one eye fixed on the island below. White sand. Blue-green water. Her hands slid away from her. Which way was Yes? Which way was No? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember if the board was upside-down or not. All she could do was watch the two people circling in slow motion at the edge of the sea. What was it that her sister wanted? An offshore bank account. A Princess cruise. Waves crashed, moons pulled, planets spun. Black holes swallowed everything in sight. The beautiful universe went on and on. I don’t care what she wants, Beatrice thought as her hands traveled below her and she, slowly tumbling, beamed her message into space:
Marilyn?
Papa?
Say yes.
Bump
MANY YEARS LATER, SHE WAS on her way to see some trees. A magnificent London plane tree, more than sixty-three inches in diameter, and an allée of horse chestnuts, somewhat sickly and tattered but still of interest. Of interest to her, who now spent her days thinking about such things. Gradation, drainage, compacted soil. Canopy coverage. The secret lives of city trees. They grew shadily at the perimeters of her imagination, and along the blocks she now walked to the park entrance from the station. Beautiful and various and unavoidable, trees: and yet working in the urban forest she still found great wide-open spaces in her mind where no trees grew at all. On this day, for instance, as she walked from the station to the park in a neighborhood she had no reason to visit, except for the horse chestnuts, she was thinking about something else entirely.
A girl with a wonderful butt was walking a few feet ahead of her. She didn’t even know how to assemble the phrase in her head—ass? bottom? There was no comfortable way of describing it. But seeing the girl from behind made her happy. She had first noticed her climbing the stairs from the station—her white flip-flops looking improbably clean against the grimy, gummed-up steps. Neat little ankles, lean calves. A cheap silky skirt—also white, with orange swirls—that ended just at the back of her knee. All of this moving crisply up the dirty stairs, as deliciously as a new pair of scissors biting into a sheet of paper. At the top the girl turned left and crossed over to the bright side of the street. In a stroke of fortune, she was headed toward the park. There were four whole blocks in which to wonder at her high, brisk bottom and the charming way it undulated beneath the thin material of her skirt.
Undulate? Oh help us. The word was practically dripping with oily intent. It really was impossible to walk behind a girl with a pretty butt—in objective appreciation—and not sound hopelessly slimy, even to oneself.
But a pregnant woman couldn’t be slimy. She might be constipated or gassy or luminous, but not slimy. And in her case, she was pregnant, objectively pregnant. If she found herself studying girls on
