One morning Cara came to the office to talk about arranging the company picnic at my house. From my cubicle’s window I saw her park her car—it’s one of those new Mustangs that Ford revived from the original. It looks just like the white Mustang convertible she got for her sixteenth birthday.
Billy also got a Mustang then, red. I heard their parents gave them a joint birthday party at the country club down in Sonneveld, and that’s where they got their convertibles. They used to park side-by-side in the high-school lot, the only students with cars.
Cara got out and leaned against the fender, staring at her feet, with her hands in her skirt’s pockets. She’s as trim as when she was a cheerleader, and her hair’s still long and blond. Her face is still tanned, too, from tennis, I guess. Only she looks worn now, just a little. Her eyes seem less blue.
"Kevin," she asked, when she came to my cubicle, "why is the picnic at your house this year?"
"Billy decided that," I said.
"Is that what you want?" she asked.
I shrugged.
"Yeah, right," she said, glancing across the corridor at Billy’s office.
It was only nine in the morning, so Billy had not come in yet. Just then the new woman walked by, carrying a pail. She stopped, light on her feet, and stared at us. That beautiful dark face had no expression. Then she walked on.
"That’s his newest cleaning woman?" Cara said.
I nodded.
She looked down at her feet. I heard her sigh.
We talked about getting the kegs delivered to my house, and renting picnic tables where people could sit, and a big tent for if it rained, or to get out of the sun, and so on. My cubicle is small, so we had to sit close together at my desk, making notes on pads. When we were finished, Cara put her elbows on the desk and rested her chin in her hands, looking at me.
"I’m sorry, Kevin," she said.
"Sorry?" I said.
"Oh, I don’t know," she said, frowning. She shook her head. "Billy, I guess….and school…was I polite then?"
"You were always nice," I said.
"Well…" she said.
She sat looking at me again, which made me feel funny.
"Thank you," she said.
"For what, Cara?" I said.
"Oh, I don’t know, just because…" she said. "For what you’ve done here, I guess, and Billy…."
She kept looking at me, with her chin in her hands. Then she stood and gathered up her pad with the notes, and her silver pen.
"He’s so…fragile, I guess," she said. "And lately…."
She shrugged and sort of half smiled.
"Kevin…." She said.
She shook her head, as if shaking away thoughts. Then she turned and left.
First of Two Events:
One evening after work, Herbert and I walked along the dirt road that runs through the woods past my house. Herbert froze, looking toward the woods. He whined.
Feather stood off the road, small and lean and sinewy, just where the trees started, staring at us.
Herbert whined again. He isn’t usually like that at all. But she made me feel weird, too, standing there in the woods, staring.
"Nice evening," I said.
It seemed right to say something.
She just stared, with those strange eyes.
"Picnic’s the day after tomorrow," I said.
She only stared. Herbert backed away, behind me.
She spoke, almost a whisper. But it still sounded like a scream.
"This animal," she said. "You love him, yes?"
No words came right away. But it didn’t matter. She turned and slipped away into the oaks. Just before the foliage hid her, I thought she sort of blurred.
Another crazy idea.
It left me feeling drawn in to some bad thing. Like when parents fight.
Would the word be "complicit?"
You should ignore ideas like that.
Second Event:
That evening, after Herbert and I got back to the house, the telephone rang. When I picked it up, there was just breathing at the other end, wheezy. So I knew who it was.
Finally he spoke.
"Are you right with Creation?" he said.
"I don’t know," I said.
I slumped onto the floor by the telephone stand. I leaned my back against the wall.
For a while he just wheezed. I imagined him, gray with cement dust. He would be sitting on the bed in his third-floor apartment, down by the river. His eyes would be wide, looking like cracked brown glass.
"Floating’s a sin, you floater," he said. "Creation needs swimmers."
"I try to swim," I said.
"Floaters, they’re the dead fish," he said. "Belly up."
I didn’t say anything about the dead fish.
"He needs us to swim," he said. "We stir Creation’s waters."
That was a new one.
"You still slaving for that woman?" he said.
"She’s got diabetes and a bad thyroid," I said. "She can’t do a lot of things, so she calls me up."
"She’s got Beelzebub’s rancid fat," he said. "She’s got Satan’s fangs, dripping malice, for lo, she worketh selfishness, and doth carp and criticize, and turneth a man’s life unto dust."
I didn’t say anything. I heard the same sort of thing from her, except without the Bible sound.
"When you were but a child, I came to your schoolyard, day after day I came, and for years," he said. "I preached Creation in that schoolyard, but, lo, you turned away, for she madeth you her creature and stopped your ears."
"She had custody," I said.
"Be a sharer, then," he said. "Because my Chevrolet’s engine is struck sick, by that woman’s curse, and needeth the healing touch."
"All right, Dad," I said. "Take it to the garage—tell them I’ll pay."
That’s why you need to push crazy ideas away. Or they take over your brain, like his.