But he is happy with the idea. She can tell by the way he pulls her back down to kiss her, fully, on her bruised lips.
BY THE TIME Marjorie appears next door, the girls have been found. They make themselves small, roll into tight balls, like a Persian cat Marjorie once had. She stands in the open garage door, where their mother kneels before them. Both girls are sucking their thumbs. The younger one has her eyes closed, and she rocks back and forth like she is trying to soothe herself, to go to sleep.
“I knew they were okay,” Marjorie announces. Her voice is bright; maybe tomorrow or the day after she will be gone.
The mother turns toward her. “But they say they’re not,” she tells Marjorie.
Marjorie is impatient with this woman, who clutters the neighborhood, the O’Haras’ yard, with Lion King swimming pools and lost children, who has babies she can’t take care of, and expects everyone to give her a hand.
“But here they are,” Marjorie says. “Fine.” Actually, they don’t look fine. They look frightened or even a little crazy.
The older one says, talking around her thumb, “The boogeyman got me again.”
The younger girl nods, eyes still closed, rocking back and forth.
Their mother gets to her feet with some difficulty. “That’s what I’ve been hearing all fucking summer.”
Her language, out here on a bright summer day, shocks Marjorie.
“The boogeyman, the boogeyman. They say he comes in here and gets them. First it was just Jessica. Now Ashley’s starting too.”
“He’s hairy! And he’s ugly!” Ashley blurts. “And he hurts us!” She runs past her mother and Marjorie, into the house.
The older girl says solemnly, “He has a big long thing, like a dragon has maybe, and he makes us touch it and today he put it in my mouth until fire came out.”
Of course it’s the girl’s imagination talking. Marjorie can’t believe it’s anything else.
“My God,” the mother says. “What is she telling me?” The woman looks to Marjorie and asks again. “What is she saying?”
WHEN GARY GETS home it is after two, and he has had too many martinis.
“I’m drunk,” he says happily. “God, it’s good to get drunk in the middle of the day.” He is red-faced and red-eyed.
Marjorie has put her robe back on and is sitting in the cool dark of the family room. She is almost happy for her husband’s drunkenness; she has not showered away all of the sex she had that morning, she has not made the bed. She has simply sat here, trying to piece together what is going on. Gnawing at her is that she was right all along; something is very wrong with Justin. He has done something to those little girls. But when? she keeps thinking. She watched him come up the street. And she reminds herself how the older girl is a liar; someone has said that.
Sloppily, Gary makes room for himself on the chair where she sits. He licks her neck. When she pulls away, he says, “I’m probably too damn drunk anyway.”
She doesn’t know why she brings it up, but she says, “There’s something going on next door. With those children.”
Gary buries his head in her chest and murmurs, “Why, you smell funny! All sweaty! Where’s your kiwi soap and your grapefruit bubblebath? You smell like you’ve been in the hot yard.”
Marjorie tries to pull away, but he holds on too tight. She says, “You don’t think Justin would do anything to those girls, do you?” She laughs when she says it out loud. “That’s ridiculous,” she says. “I know it is.” Somehow, she does know it. They have told themselves ghost stories, the way children do, and frightened each other. They need friends. They need to go to day camp somewhere and make bracelets out of gimp and eat s’mores.
“Oh,” Gary says, “those beautiful delicate little things. That one, that littlest one, has yellow in her eyes, like that old tabby we used to have. She is the prettier one, I think.” He climbs onto Marjorie’s lap, awkward and drunk, smelling of booze, and wraps his arms around her. “I wish I could,” he mutters, resting his head on her shoulders, “but I’m too drunk and tired and old. Probably in this condition, that gardener you like so little could still manage. But I’m a grandfather, after all.”
Marjorie cannot get her own arms around him, so they sit there, like that, for too long, in the cool, dim room.
IT IS LATER that night, as Marjorie stands over the hot stove frying bacon for a bacon and egg supper, that Gary, head aching, breath sour, says: “I’m so ashamed.”
The bacon hisses and splatters Marjorie’s arm, burning her.
“It’s just that I told them our news, about Bonnie and the baby coming, and they kept toasting me, buying more drinks.” Gary stares into his cup of black coffee. “It’s humiliating really.”