A Lady Under Siege

21

In her upstairs studio Meghan arranged a scattering of new drawings, all of them variations on the same image: a woman in black lingerie pumps gas into a Mercedes, while her lover sits watching her from the driver’s seat, one black glove visible on the steering wheel. It was a scene straight out of the book, which she had forced herself to read, but had ended up skimming, mostly. Young urban women taking risks with strangers, that was pretty much the theme of it, and this scene, Meghan felt, captured both ends of the spectrum of possibilities—a girl could make herself vulnerable like that and be incredibly turned on, or just as easily the anticipated erotic jolt could fizzle into self-consciousness and public humiliation. Meghan looked at her sketch and knew she would need to fix it—the model would have to be leggier, more gamine-like, to bring out the vulnerability. She knew Debra would be expecting a minimum of three ideas, and this was only the first, but instead of setting herself to the task, she put the sketches aside, sat down at the computer, and Googled medieval medicine. While she scrolled down the choices, Betsy stuck her head in the door and said, “Are you finished?”

Meghan shook her head. “Uh-uh.”

“Then why are you on the computer?”

“I need to check something.”

“When can I use it?”

“When I’m finished.”

“Can I come in now?”

“Not yet.”

Meghan had banned Betsy from the studio for the afternoon—she didn’t think it appropriate for a ten-year-old to watch her sketch images of kinky women in erotically-charged situations. “I’m just taking a break for a minute, and then I’ll be back to work.”

“Why’s that woman putting gas in her car in her underwear?”

“This is exactly why I don’t want you in here—too much explaining.” Meghan got up to shut the door.

“What am I supposed to do?” Betsy whined.

“Watch TV. Read a book. Draw something.”

“I need my own computer.”

“I gave you an iPad , you lost it, remember?”

“I didn’t lose it, it was stolen.”

“You took it to school, you came home without it, that is all I know.”

“I left it in the cafeteria for like, not even five minutes.”

“Betsy. I’m closing this door.”

“I need another one. I’ll help pay for it, out of my allowance.”

Meghan shut the door.

BETSY WANDERED DOWNSTAIRS TO the kitchen, swung open the fridge door, and randomly scanned its contents, in hopes of finding something good, like chocolate pudding or cake. But there was nothing like that. In fact it scared her a little how empty the fridge was, another sign that her mother was losing it. From next door she heard a sound that she guessed must be Derek whacking a golf ball again, and went out to investigate.

The elaborate frame of plumbing pipes and netting he had so recently constructed was gone. From the deck she could see that he’d come up with a simpler strategy: his ball was now tethered to a six-foot-long elastic band attached to a spike in the ground. He set the ball between his feet and reared back for a swing, when Betsy called out in a singsong voice, “I can see yooouuu…”

The disruption made him carve a huge divot out of his scraggly lawn. He spotted Betsy on the deck and said, “There you are. How’s the finger coming along?”

“Better. Is that a real ball?”

“No, it’s hollow, and plastic. But for some reason, even though I’ve set it up so it can’t hit me, and I know it won’t hurt even if it does hit me, my body doesn’t believe my mind—every frigging time it comes flying back at me, I bail. It’s turning my smooth swing all spastic. What happened to your trampoline?”

“My mom locked it in the shed. It’s part of my punishment for the broken window. Plus she said it’s too dangerous.”

“Ridiculous,” Derek spat. “You’re overprotected. You’ll never learn to deal with dangerous things unless you’re given dangerous things to deal with.”

“What happened to your netting?” she asked.

“I took it down. When I wasn’t using it, it loomed too high above me, like a prison fence. Gave me the creeps, especially at night. This is better. Simpler is usually better.”

“What other games do you have?” Betsy asked.

“None. Golf is infuriating enough.”

“I have badminton, do you like it?”

“Like it? I love it,” he exclaimed. “In my day I was fourteen-and-under regional champion, or I would have been if I’d bothered to enter. Wicked drop shot, I had. But that was mostly indoors, and I love it even more outdoors—it’s the only game besides golf where you really have to watch what the wind is up to—a capricious little gust can ruin what you expected was a perfectly placed shot.”

“Shall we play?” Betsy asked excitedly.

“Oh let’s,” he answered, gently mocking her. “But we’ll have to play blind badminton.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ll make the fence the net, which means you can’t see the birdie until it comes fluttering back at you.”

“Brilliant!” Betsy cried. She was thrilled. She ran inside to retrieve her racquets and shuttlecock, and before long a spirited game of blind badminton was underway.

UP IN HER STUDIO Meghan was lost in the world of medieval medicine, educating herself as to the properties of the four humours. The familiar musical peals of Betsy’s distinctive laugh reached her faintly from the back yard. She got up and went to the back bedroom window to have a look. Below her Derek and Betsy, in high spirits, were whacking the birdie back and forth over the fence.

“You know if you win, you get to declare yourself blind badminton champion of the universe, because we’re the only two players known to exist,” Derek was shouting, his voice ragged from exertion.

“Even if I lose, I’ll still be second in the universe,” Betsy yelled back. “I’ll get the silver medal!”

“No, you’ll be the worst, worst in the world. Shit!” His return shot hit the fence and fell back in his yard. “Pardon my French. Okay. I’m serving. Ready?”

“It’s ten eight,” Betsy called out.

“For me,” said Derek.

“No, for me!”

“It was nine eight for me.”

“No it wasn’t!”

“Don’t mess with me, girl,” Derek scolded.

“You’re the one messing.”

“Whatever. Finish this game, then I need a cigarette.”

“But ten eight for me, right?”

“Fine. Still plenty of time to whip your ass. I mean butt.”

“Ass is a donkey,” Betsy laughed.

“True. And people do whip donkeys, right on their ass.”

“Asses have asses!” Betsy giggled. “Damn it!” She muffed a shot. “Ten nine.”

“Watch your language,” Derek teased her.

“Which one, asses or damn it?”

“Both.”

“You say them all the time!”

“I’m allowed. When you stop living with your mother, you’re allowed.”

“She didn’t hear me.”

“I think she did. Check the window.”

Betsy looked up to see Meghan looking down at them.

“Mom! Come out and play.”

She shook her head.

“Come and play! It’s called blind badminton, because of the fence!”

Meghan opened the window wide enough to speak through. “Sorry honey, I’ve got so much work to do.”

“You always say that.”

“I’ll be down in a bit.”

“Your bits take hours.”

“Smoke break,” Derek announced.

“It won’t be hours,” Meghan said.

“Come now or forget it,” Betsy warned her.

“I’m closing the window,” Meghan answered. She did, and disappeared inside.

Derek sat on top of his picnic table and lit a cigarette. On her side of the fence Betsy entertained herself by batting the birdie straight up into the air, again and again, counting each successful swat out loud, to see how long she could keep it aloft. At eleven she stopped—“I think a bat flew by!” she shrieked excitedly.

“Too early for that,” Derek said. “Unless he’s messed up. How’s your mother doing, by the way?”

“She’s getting better, I’d say.”

“I don’t know about that,” Derek replied. “Had quite a lot to say to me at seven thirty this morning, and none of it made the slightest bit of sense. Which is fine, I suppose.” He sang a few lines from a pop song: “Wish I knew what she was thinking, Wish I knew if she was sane, Wish I knew if it was only a game. Do you know it?”

“Never heard of it,” Betsy said.

“What do they teach you kids in school? Are the seminal bands of the 1980s so easily forgotten? The Jones of Ark?” He sang another tune: “A human being, is only really being, when he is being, loved.”

“But why does everyone need to be loved?” Betsy asked. “It’s very unfair if it’s not their fault no one loves them. Why do the people in songs always go all crazy when they can’t have love?”

“Generally speaking, if pop songs are to be believed, love and the lack of it are the primary cause of madness, suicide, and crying all night,” Derek replied.

“Someone’s at your door,” Betsy said.

“What?”

“Your doorbell rang. The front one.”

“You heard it from here? I’m getting old.” Derek got up and headed inside through his open back door. “Should have kept my head out of the speakers at those long-ago rock shows.”

“Shouldn’t smoke,” Betsy yelled after him.

“I don’t smoke with my ears.”

A FEW MINUTES LATER Betsy was playing with a stray golf ball she’d found, rolling it around on her badminton racquet, when Derek reappeared with a friend in tow, exclaiming, “Come meet my new friend Betsy! You’ll like her, she’s ten.”

Betsy climbed up to her deck to get a look at them. Derek spotted her there. “Betsy, look who’s here. A sight for sore taste buds, my old buddy Ken.” Ken nodded to her. He had his long hair tied back in a ponytail, wore a black tee shirt that said Stay Heavy, and was doing arm curls like a weight lifter with a twelve-pack of beer in each hand. “Gimme one of those, I’ll lighten the load,” Derek demanded. “Two dozen beers here—if I’m quick enough, I’ll get eighteen to your six.”

“I have no interest in alcoholic beverages,” Betsy said haughtily. “To me they taste awful.”

“Youth is wasted on the young, so the old get wasted,” Derek said.

“Why do you like it?” Betsy asked.

“You’re too young to understand, unless that homeroom teacher of yours is a drunkard too.”

“No, only a bisexual. But he told us once he had a love-hate relationship with cocaine.”

“Me too, still do,” said Ken. “Love it when I have it, hate it when I run out.”

“You do know too much,” Derek said to Betsy. “Don’t be in a hurry to put away childish things.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Stick to lollipops and dollies as long as you can.”

“I’m already past those things,” she said curtly. “I like online chat.”

“Give her a beer, then,” Ken said, ripping open the flimsy cardboard case and handing Derek a cold can.

Derek’s eyebrows lifted mischievously above a rogue’s grin. He held the can out toward Betsy. “Would you like one?”

Just at that moment Meghan came out onto the deck. “She most certainly would not,” she said sharply.

“We’re just joking around,” Derek smiled. In a teasing voice he added, “The young lady has already informed us she has no interest in alcoholic beverages.”

“Hilarious,” Meghan scoffed. “Betsy, time for dinner.”

IT WAS A WARM summer evening. As she ate her meal in the kitchen, Betsy strained her ears to eavesdrop through the open door on the conversation of the men outside, catching only fragments of phrases from the increasingly drunken rhythms of their speech. She ate quickly and got up to head back out, but Meghan stopped her. “I don’t want you going out there.”

“But you always tell me I need more fresh air.”

“It’s not so fresh. They’re smoking like chimneys, the two of them.”

“Outside smoking doesn’t count.”

“You can go use the computer if you want. Chat with your friends for a while, then it’s bath time, then bed.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I need to talk to Derek for a minute.” She felt a need to talk to Thomas, to tell him of Sylvanne’s plot to get a kitchen knife, and reinforce her insistence that Daphne’s bloodletting stop. She’d been researching the antiseptic and antibiotic uses of medieval herbs, and wanted to tell him to apply vinegar and lavender oil to the wound on her arm, and add garlic and onion to the vegetable soups prepared for her. She also wanted to raise the possibility of tuberculosis as the cause of Daphne’s sickly cough.

Betsy trundled upstairs to the studio, and Meghan cleaned up the dishes. Occasionally she heard laughter from the men, and a loudly hooted expletive here and there. Better get out there before they’re incoherent, she thought. She wiped the counters and dried her hands, then went out the back door. There was only Ken in the back lawn, lazily swinging a golf club. He lifted his head and saw her, and stared at her quite brazenly, her long legs in particular, making her wish she was wearing something more concealing than short shorts and a tank top.

“Where’s Derek?” she asked.

“Gone out to get cigarettes and papers,” he replied.

“Papers?”

“Rolling papers. Come on over—I sold a bike today, one of my motorbikes. I got some serious cash for it, and now it’s like, Let’s Party!”

“I’ll pass,” Meghan said. “Got things to do.”

“Should I tell Derek you’re looking for him?”

“Sure. Tell him it can wait until tomorrow.”

“Will do.”

She went inside, irritated that she had something important to say to Thomas, but couldn’t. There was an hour to fill before Betsy’s bath and bedtime, and what she really wanted to do was get back online and continue her research into tuberculosis, autoimmune illnesses, and medieval medicine, but with Betsy at the computer she decided instead to pick up her galley copy of Enemies with Benefits again, hoping a scene she’d somehow missed in her cursory skim-through would now jump out at her and beg to be illustrated. She spread herself out on the living room couch, but after a few minutes she realised she was sweating. The room was stuffy in the heat. She decided the best place would be out on the deck, but that meant putting herself on display to the drunks next door. It would have to be the lawn—the fence would grant privacy.

There was no one in Derek’s back yard when she went out. She brought a picnic blanket to spread on the lawn, and flopped down on it with a couple of cushions from the patio chairs. In a few minutes she could hear, but not see, Derek and Ken emerge from the house and settle back into an evening of drinking beer around a picnic table ashtray. She perked up when she heard Ken say, “Your neighbour wanted to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Apparently she’s having dreams about me.” Derek said.

“Sounds promising.”

“Yeah. Some dude that looks just like me, some ancient prince in a castle.”

“Doesn’t matter. Nice ass trumps craziness any day,” Ken remarked.

“She truly believes there’s someone listening in my head, and she needs to talk to him. Thomas, his name is, and she’ll be like, ‘I’m talking to Thomas, not you.’ I’ve told her there’s no one else in there, it’s all private property, but she doesn’t care, says it doesn’t matter whether I’m aware or not, he’s there, all right. He’s in there.”

“Don’t let her see the real you,” Ken advised.

“Too late for that! Don’t you remember me yelling at her the other night? Up at her window right there? In spite of that I’ve landed in her good books. Christopher Hitchens to the contrary, there is a God. I’d do her in a minute. She’s gorgeous, don’t you think?”

“Like I said, nice ass trumps craziness.”

“Everything’s nice about her.”

Meghan, now fully focussed on her eavesdropping, waited for more, but instead there came a prolonged silence. She pictured the two of them lost in thought, hiding in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Then Ken said, “Someone like her might be good for you.”

“What do you mean?” she heard Derek say.

“Well. It’s just. Well you know. She’d have been about the same age, now.”

“Don’t even go there,” Derek said quietly. “Although I know you care. And I’m glad you care.” Then there was another prolonged silence. Then Derek broke the sombre mood with a sudden loud, elongated yowl—Meghan pictured him rising from the picnic table and stretching like a noisy cat. “You’re my best friend, old Ken,” he sighed affectionately. “It’s been a long strange journey and back through all of that, and here we are, still the best of buds.”

“Smoking the best of buds,” added Ken.

“Gimme a hug,” said Derek.

“F*ck that.”

“No, come on, do it. No one’s hugging me these days. Every human needs a hug.”

“All right then, for charity’s sake. Lonely old Derek.”

Meghan heard the beavertail claps of the manly backslaps that are inevitable when drunken men hug each other. She’d begun to worry about how she was going to sneak into her house without them realizing she’d been listening to them, and seized this moment to scurry up onto the deck unnoticed. She lingered by the door for a moment, taking in the sight of two middle-aged fools clenched together in that dishevelled yard.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Ken said.

“It feels great. A human being, is only really being, when he is being, looooved,” Derek brayed.

“That song sucked. You can let go now.”

“No f*cking way. I’m loving it.”

“Small doses, man. Everything in small doses.”

“But not love. Never say that about love.”