After supper, Kit sat at the desk on the insulated office porch, practicing her cursive penmanship on a ruled worksheet. The porch was an add-on to the original house, so she could see into the kitchen through two windows set in the wall. Mom and Dad were doing the dishes, bumping into each other, slow like, way more than usual. In fact they were laughing.
Since she and Dad had come home from school and seen Mom running on the road, a different mood had been building between her parents. Kit got the part of about being happy that Mom was getting more like her old self, but there were parts to it she couldn’t figure out; like whatever they were seeing when they looked at each other was invisible to her, a grown-up mystery.
She did have a basic idea about the difference between good things and bad things, and she decided that, whatever it was, it was a good thing. She turned back to the worksheet and drew a loopy G.
As Broker and Nina removed the dishes from the washer and stacked them in the cupboard, they played billiard with their eyes; soft cushion rail shots, indirect. Not an urge, not yet a desire, more like a discreet question that hovered over them. Physical contact? Whattaya think?
Broker thinking, Probably be the time to fill her in on the local soap opera that had been percolating offstage. He made a start.
“You know, when Kit had that fight at school?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, the kid’s dad got a little aggressive in front of the school and, ah, I kinda dropped him,” Broker said.
Nina grimaced with mock severity, “What? You hit him?”
“No, no,” Broker was quick to add, making frantic erasing motions with his hands. “I just sort of threw a choke hold on him.”
“Uh-huh. Just a choke hold. And Kit? She knew about this?”
Broker folded his arms tightly across his chest, and as he talked, his right hand jerked out and back, punctuating his explanation. “We thought it best not to bother you with it. And, well, he came back at me. The tire on the truck? That was probably him. And Kit’s bunny was probably in the truck because it wound up planted on a ski pole”-he pointed his jerking hand out toward the woods-“out by the ski trail. Griffin took it home the last night, stitched it up.” He took a breath, exhaled. “Had Ditech’s collar buckled around the neck. So he probably got the cat too.”
“Jesus, Broker. He came on the property?”
“It’s cool. When Griffin came over, he brought the sheriff-”
“The sheriff, what the-”
“Ah, oh yeah, I left something out. The kid’s dad is the garbageman; he was driving the truck yesterday morning, and he flung our garbage in the ditch while I was watching. So I collected it, took it to his garage, and dumped it in front of his office. Ah, that’s why the sheriff came out.”
Nina grinned. “Christ, Broker; we came up here to keep a low profile. And you started a war?” She shook her head.
“Me? He started it, asshole came at me-”
“Well, I guess this explains you being more snaky than usual.”
Broker unfolded his arms and went back to making the brisk scrubbing motion with his hands. “No sweat. It’s all taken care of. The sheriff is affecting a rapprochement. I’ll meet him halfway, maybe replace the kid’s shirt that got bloody, like that. Griffin went and talked to the guy…”
Nina actually laughed, and it was good to see her bubble with spontaneous humor. “Harry? Oh, great, and he’s so good at quiet diplomacy. He’ll just cut the guy’s throat, along with his wife and kid, kill the pets, burn the house, and spray the land with dioxin so nothing ever grows there again.”
They were both laughing now. Infectious giggles. Months of pressure surfacing and popping like cold bubbles.
Kit wrenched open the porch door, deep glower creases in her brow. Clearly, she felt left out. “Keep it down, you guys,” she announced. “I’m trying to study.”
“She right,” Nina said. “Get a hold of yourself.” She rinsed a dish in the sink and handed it to Broker, who obediently put it in the washer.
Despite her show of annoyance, Kit went fast into sleep, tucked in happy with her risen bunny. Broker and Nina stepped carefully down the stairs. As they walked into the kitchen, their eyes met once, then glanced away. It was mutual.
The laughing jag at the sink had exhausted the requirement to talk. And the loud drifting silence dwarfed mere language. Broker thinking how the vectors of their lives had flashed in tangents, fiercely independent; now they had been united during this crisis. The big dangling question: Now what?
The wrong word might betray a lurch of hope or fear, precipitate an avalanche. Tip her back into the darkness.
For months they’d moved in a clumsy deliberate weighted dance around each other, two deep-sea divers in old hard suits. They’d bump surfaces, but their skin remained remote, not really touching, covered by layers of protection. Air hoses trailing, getting tangled.
And that was also in the signal of their eyes. Careful now, kicking off the deep-sea weights. Could be danger in ascending too fast.
So they treaded forward, side by side, through the tactile silence. They were coming up from a great depth. Still braced for the riptides, undertows, and threats…
…that had coiled and thrashed in the close shadow of madness.
Griffin had built a plywood platform in one corner of the office off the kitchen that supported a queen-size futon. The bed was covered with a lush green-and-orange quilt of vaguely Polynesian design. Bolsters and pillows to match. The colors were an exception to the stern North Vietnamese blacks, browns, and grays that Griffin favored. A souvenir perhaps, left behind from some forgotten amorous interlude. The bed beckoned now, a shallow protected place. They rambled there.
Still no words.
Nothing needy or hungry. Slow moves with no wasted motion. Nina striped off her clothes efficiently-the precocious birthday girl unwrapping a present. Chaste almost, until you saw the grinning skull-and-crossbones tattoo on her right shoulder. And the scars.
Two pairs of jeans mingled on the floor, socks, underwear; his shirt, her blouse. Chilly on the porch. Goose bumps. An almost adolescent scramble to get under the sheets and quilt.
Christ. How long? More than a year.
Since he’d strayed with Jolene Sommer.
Their first kiss was tentative, gentle. Cautiously, they found each other with a slow innate mastery of all things physical. They did it almost weightless, hummingbirds guarded on a bed of eggshells. She was especially wary, having lost control and not sure she had regained it.
Broker was making love with a woman who matched him scar for scar. His fingertips grazed the slick braille on her hips, her butt, her shoulder, her legs. And the one he couldn’t claim; the cesarean below her navel. Her birth canal had been scarred by fragments of the Kalashnikov round that had clipped her hip. After Kit’s difficult birth, the doctor told them they would be taking chances having another child.
Still no words. A final perfect fit of hope and fear. They took courage for granted, were less honest about being stubborn.
What was she thinking behind her green eyes? Probably what he was thinking: What happens now that we’re getting through this crisis?
Will we go back to who we were before?
Will we be changed?
Slowly she fingered the pack of cigarettes and lighter from her jeans, put one in her mouth, and lit it. Then she held it to his lips. He puffed but did not inhale, watched the smoke curl up to the tongue-and-groove ceiling. He remembered the Vietnamese connection. ARVN soldiers jotting on slips of paper, then burning them in the predawn. An airstrip at Phu Bai, Broker watching, waiting for the helicopters that would take them in. Smoke was the prayer language of the dead.
No words.