Mattie? Still there?’
‘He’s dragged you into it, hasn’t he? That awful old man.’ Now her voice sounded not nervous but somehow dead.
‘Well, yes and no. You could argue that fate dragged me into it, or coincidence, or God. I wasn’t there that morning because of Max Devore; I was chasing the elusive Villageburger.’
She didn’t laugh, but her voice brightened a little, and I was glad. People who talk in that dead, affectless way are, by and large, frightened people. Sometimes people who have been outright terrorized. ‘I’m still sorry for dragging you into my trouble.’ I had an idea she might start to wonder who was dragging whom after I pitched her on John Storrow, and was glad it was a discussion I wouldn’t have to have with her on the phone.
‘In any case, I’d love to come to dinner. When?’
‘Would this evening be too soon?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘That’s wonderful. We have to eat early, though, so my little guy doesn’t fall asleep in her dessert.
Is six okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ki will be excited. We don’t have much company.’
‘She hasn’t been wandering again, has she?’
I thought she might be offended. Instead, this time she did laugh. ‘God, no. All the fuss on Saturday scared her. Now she comes in to tell me if she’s switching from the swing in the side yard to the sandbox in back. She’s talked about you a lot, though. She calls you ‘that tall guy who carrot me.’ I think she’s worried you might be mad at her.’
‘Tell her I’m not,’ I said. ‘No, check that. I’ll tell her myself. Can I bring anything?’
‘Bottle of wine?’ she asked, a little doubtfully. ‘Or maybe that’s pretentious — I was only going to cook hamburgers on the grill and make potato salad.’
‘I’ll bring an unpretentious bottle.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘This is sort of exciting. We never have company.’
I was horrified to find myself on the verge of saying that I thought it was sort of exciting, too, my first date in four years and all. ‘Thanks so much for thinking of me.’
As I hung up I remembered John Storrow advising me to try and stay visible with her, not to hand over any extra grist for the town gossip mill. If she was barbecuing, we’d probably be out where people could see we had our clothes on . . . for most of the evening, anyway. She-would, however, likely do the polite thing at some point and invite me inside. I would then do the polite thing and go. Admire her velvet Elvis painting on the wall, or her commemorative plates from the Franklin Mint, or whatever she had going in the way of trailer decoration; I’d let Kyra show me her bedroom and exclaim with wonder over her excellent assortment of stuffed animals and her favorite dolly, if that was required. There are all sorts of priorities in life. Some your lawyer can understand, but I suspect there are quite a few he can’t.
‘Am I handling this right, Bunter?’ I asked the stuffed moose. ‘Bellow once for yes, twice for no.’
I was halfway down the hall leading to the north wing, thinking of nothing but a cool shower, when from behind me, very soft, came a brief ring of the bell around Bunter’s neck. I stopped, head cocked, my shirt held in one hand, waiting for the bell to ring again. It didn’t. After a minute, I went the rest of the way to the bathroom and flipped on the shower.
The Lakeview General had a pretty good selection of wines tucked away in one corner — not much local demand for it, maybe, but the tourists probably bought a fair quantity — and I selected a bottle of Mondavi red. It was probably a bit more expensive than Mattie had had in mind, but I could peel the price-sticker off and hope she wouldn’t know the difference. There was a line at the checkout, mostly folks with damp tee-shirts pulled on over their bathing suits and sand from the public beach sticking to their legs. While I was waiting my turn, my eye happened on the impulse items which are always stocked near the counter. Among them were several plastic bags labeled MAGNABET, each bag showing a cartoon refrigerator with the message BACK SOON stuck to it.
According to the written info, there were two sets of consonants in each Magnabet, PLUS EXTRA VOWELS. I grabbed two sets . . . then added a third, thinking that Mattie Devore’s kid was probably just the right age for such an item.
Kyra saw me pulling into the weedy dooryard, jumped off the slumpy little swingset beside the trailer, bolted to her mother, and hid behind her. When I approached the hibachi which had been set up beside the cinderblock front steps, the child who’d spoken to me so fearlessly on Saturday was just a peeking blue eye and a chubby hand grasping a fold of her mother’s sundress below the hip.
Two hours brought considerable changes, however. As twilight deepened, Kyra sat on my lap in the trailer’s living room, listening carefully — if with growing wooziness — as I read her the ever-enthralling story of Cinderella. The couch we were on was a shade of brown which can by law only be sold in discount stores, and extremely lumpy into the bargain, but I still felt ashamed of my casual preconceptions about what I would find inside this trailer. On the wall above and behind us there was an Edward Hopper print — that one of a lonely lunch counter late at night — and across the room, over the small Formica-topped table in the kitchen nook, was one of Vincent van Gogh’s
‘Sunflowers’ . Even more than the Hopper, it looked at home in Mattie Devore’s doublewide. I have no idea why that should have been true, but it was.
‘Glass slipper will cut her footie,’ Ki said in a muzzy, considering way.
‘No way,’ I said. ‘Slipper-glass was specially made in the Kingdom of Grimoire. Smooth and unbreakable, as long as you didn’t sing high C while wearing them.’
‘I get a pair?’
‘Sorry, Ki,’ I said, ‘no one knows how to make slipper-glass anymore.
It’s a lost art, like Toledo steel.’ It was hot in the trailer and she was hot against my shirt, where her upper body lay, but I wouldn’t have changed it. Having a kid on my lap was pretty great.
Outside, her mother was singing and gathering up dishes from the card table we’d used for our picnic. Hearing her sing was also pretty great.
‘Go on, go on,’ Kyra said, pointing to the picture of Cinderella scrubbing the floor. The little girl peeking nervously around her mother’s leg was gone; the angry I’m-going-to-the-damn-beach girl of Saturday morning was gone; here was only a sleepy kid who was pretty and bright and trusting.
‘Before I can’t hold it anymore.’
‘Do you need to go pee-pee?’
‘No,’ she said, looking at me with some disdain. ‘Besides, that’s you-rinating. Peas are what you eat with meatloaf, that’s what Mattie says. And I already went. But if you don’t go fast on the story, I’ll fall to sleep.’
‘You can’t hurry stories with magic in them, Ki.’
‘Well go as fast as you can.’
‘Okay.’ I turned the page. Here was Cinderella, trying to be a good sport, waving goodbye to her asshole sisters as they went off to the ball dressed like starlets at a disco.’
‘No sooner had Cinderella said goodbye to Tammy Faye and Vanna — ”
‘Those are the sisters’ names?’
‘The ones I made up for them, yes. Is that okay?’
‘Sure.’ She settled more comfortably on my lap and dropped her head against my chest again.
”No sooner had Cinderella said goodbye to Tammy Faye and Vanna than a bright light suddenly appeared in the corner of the kitchen. Stepping out of it was a beautiful lady in a silver gown. The jewels in her hair glowed like stars.”
‘Fairy godmother,’ Kyra said matter-of-factly.
‘Yes.’ Mattie came in carrying the remaining half-bottle of Mondavi and the blackened barbecue implements. Her sundress was bright red. On her feet she wore low-topped sneakers so white that they seemed to flash in the gloom. Her hair was tied back and although she still wasn’t the gorgeous country-club babe I had briefly envisioned, she was very pretty. Now she looked at Kyra, looked at me, raised her eyebrows, made a lifting gesture with her arms. I shook my head, sending back a message that neither of us was ready quite yet.
I resumed reading while Mattie went to work scrubbing her few cooking tools. She was still humming. By the time she had finished with the spatula, Ki’s body had taken on an additional relaxation which I recognized at once — she’d conked out, and hard. I closed the Little Golden Treasury of Fairy Tales and put it on the coffee-table beside a couple of other stacked books —