A Lady Under Siege

12

Betsy kissed her mother goodbye and locked the door behind her, then headed up to the computer. She had only two friends she was allowed to chat with, Sam and Brittany, and neither of them was online. Saturday afternoon. Brittany might have gone out of town for the weekend, and Sam was probably at ballet. Now what? She was instantly bored. This was the second time she’d been truly alone in her life, the second time in less than a week. The first time she’d felt only excitement, this time she felt abandoned. She wandered back downstairs and turned the television to a music channel her mother didn’t like her watching. The video showed a singer who looked to be about fifty under his pancake makeup and there were devils in it with blood coming out of their mouths. She watched until it ended and then turned it off. Now what? What she really wanted to do was go outside and jump on the trampoline, but her mother had laid down the law: no jumping without a grown-up watching you. What about Derek, she had asked. Her mother had made a pained face and said, Derek is on the wrong side of the fence, and Derek is to stay there. No jumping on the trampoline until I get home.

So. No jumping, but she hadn’t said anything about just lying on the trampoline.

The taut black surface of it was hot from the afternoon sun. She lay on her back watching the sky, then played with the orange sunlight through her eyelids, making it lighter and darker by scrunching her eyes shut. Presently she heard sounds from the back yard next door. Derek was working on something again. She heard knocks and clatterings and opened her eyes to see a fifteen foot square of mesh netting, framed on thin pipes, being leaned up against their shared fence. The pipes were junky, salvaged plumbing pipes, and the mesh looked tattered in places, but several layers thick.

A minute later there was a whipping sound, a sharp whap, and a golf ball flew into the net, where it was snared like a bird on the wing. The force of it stretched the netting, and the ball slid down to become entrapped in a little bulge of netting that hung over the fence onto Betsy’s side. Whoosh, whap. Another ball flew into the net, fell and joined the first, resting like eggs in a farm wife’s apron.

“What are you doing?” Betsy called out. She stood up on the trampoline to see over top of the fence, and bounced a bit to get a better look.

“Ah. Good morning, didn’t know you were there,” Derek greeted her. He’d dragged his picnic table to the back of the yard to make some space for himself. At the top of her bouncing arc she could see a half dozen golf balls at his feet. Betsy watched him tap one away from the others, and take his place over it. “Pay attention,” he said. “You’re about to witness impeccable form.” He took several practice swings and finally addressed the ball, staring at it for what to Betsy seemed an agonizingly long time. Then he swung. Whoosh, whap—whap!” The ball struck the fence below the netting and ricocheted back at him like a bullet. He tried to twist his head out of the way but it smacked him on the skull just behind his ear.

“Jesus F*cking Christ!” he shouted. Betsy stopped bouncing and stared at him. She covered her mouth to hide her grin. “Don’t you f*cking laugh!” he shouted at her. But then he smiled himself.

“Do you want your balls back?” she asked, hopping down from the trampoline and going to the fence.

“Of course I want my balls back, what do you think?”

“You should ask nicely,” she scolded him.

“Screw you to that. Not everyone is as polite and civil as you, little girl.”

“I’m not, really. What’s to keep me from keeping these?”

“I’ll come over there and wring your scrawny little neck, that’s what.”

“No you wouldn’t.”

“Don’t try me.”

Betsy went to the knothole in the fence. On tiptoes she could see him through it. “I can watch you practice golf from here,” she said.

“No you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll show you.” He picked a ball from the ground, came over and stuck it through the hole. “A well-struck shot would knock your eyeball out the back of your skull,” he said. Betsy stepped back and watched as the ball fell though the hole and landed at her feet. She scooped it up and rubbed her fingers over the funny dimpled surface.

“Now I have three,” she said.

“Where’s your mother?” he asked.

“She’s inside,” she lied. “How come you like golf?”

“Well it’s like this, my dear. As Willie Nelson said to Bob Dylan, once you start playing golf, you can’t hardly think about nothing else. Direct quote.”

“Who’re they?”

“Old geezers. Nobody important. Would you like to try?”

He tossed his golf club over the fence, and it came down so close to her that she jumped aside in fright.

“Watch it! You almost hit me!”

“Just making sure you’re awake. It’s a six iron, perfect place to start.”

She dropped her golf ball and picked up the club, holding the grip experimentally, waving it like a baseball bat through the air. “Seems silly, trying to whack a ball with this,” she said.

On his side of the fence Derek retrieved another club from a bag lying on the ground. “You’re right, it is very silly,” he said. “Something for men of leisure to fill the empty days. That’s my excuse, anyway.”

She took a tentative swing at the ball in the grass at her feet and whiffed completely. She tried again, and missed again. On the third try she connected, and the ball popped up and tapped lightly against the fence.

“I hit it!” she exclaimed proudly.

“Good for you. Now you’re hooked. Are you holding the club properly?”

“Why is it called a club? It looks like a stick.”

“Just a minute.” From a tangle of junk in the back corner of his yard he extricated an old kitchen chair, the kind with a vinyl seat and chrome legs. He carried it to the fence and stood on it so he could look over the top and watch her. She had retrieved the ball and was preparing to whack it again, aiming at the fence, directly at him.

“Wait wait wait. I’m in the line of fire here,” he told her. “Turn so I can see you from the side. That’s the best way to advise you on your form. Aim toward your house.”

“I might hit a window.”

“Ha! I don’t think you have the biceps to do damage. Keep your hands close together. Choke up a little on the grip.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Never mind, just swing away.”

She gave it her best. Putting aside apprehension and doubt, and drawing on all the strength her girlish arms could muster, she spanked the little white sphere as hard as she could. To her surprise she connected cleanly, solidly—the ball rocketed out of the grass toward the house, and with a delicate crack it struck and splintered one of the dozen small panes of glass in the back door. Shards tinkled onto the deck floor.

“Holy shit! Lookit! I broke it,” she screamed. “Thanks to you I broke it!” She rushed up onto the deck to check the damage.

“Not thanks to me,” Derek said. “I didn’t break it, the ball broke it. Who knew you had such power? You’re a natural. Don’t worry about the glass. I’ll fix it, I promise. I’ll get right on it.”

Betsy looked anxiously at the jagged splinters that radiated from where the ball had struck the glass. One splinter hung like a loose tooth. She gingerly took hold and tugged on it. It came loose in her hand. She dropped it carefully to the floor.

“Don’t be messing around,” Derek warned. “You’ll slice your finger off—those things are razor sharp.”

“I’m being careful,” she replied. She pulled another shark’s tooth shard loose, then another, driven by an impulse to hide the damage from her mother by tidying up the mess. If all the splinters are removed then the broken pane won’t look broken, it’ll look clear, like all the others, she thought. She extracted two more splinters, then tugged on a smaller one that refused to budge. Her grip slipped and she felt a sharp pain. She held her hand up and saw blood dripping down into the V between her fingers. She turned to Derek and showed it to him, like a helpless, frightened toddler.

To Derek at the fence it looked like a bloody peace symbol, a crimson V for victory. A thin rivulet of blood trickled down to her elbow and dripped onto the deck. He muttered, “Jesus Christ,” then said firmly, “Go get your mother.”

“She’s not home.”

“You told me she was home.”

Betsy shook her head.

“Go run that thing under cold water in the kitchen sink. I’m coming over.”

She stood frozen by panic, too shocked by the sight of blood to move.

“Do it now!” he shouted. That reached her. He watched her disappear into the house, then placed his hands on the cross beam of the fence, and vaulted up to balance one foot atop it. He swung his other foot up and over, but miscalculated and felt the momentum of his body pitching him forward, then downward, head first. Like a rider thrown from a horse he felt the fence give out under him, an eight-foot panel of slats ripping from its poles and collapsing in a clatter of planks onto Betsy’s garden. He came down on top of it, and rolled onto the lawn, unhurt, picked himself up and headed toward the open back door. He found her at the kitchen sink, shaking. He called out, “Betsy! Do you have bandages?” and realized he was yelling.