Three Musketeers
While Sophie is talking to her parents, we stay in the living room discussing the surprise visit of yet another out-of-town relative. Are we becoming some sort of mecca for the salad days set?
“I can make space in the hobby room,” Valerie says. “I don’t need to use it for a while.”
“Oh Valerie, you just moved your desk in there.”
“Well, I was planning to move it out any way. My writing is not a hobby. I need some serious, dedicated space. I was planning to ask the architect to design a small writing studio out in back.”
This house isn’t big enough for you? I guess not, since Roger and I have filled it up with his son, my nephew and now my cousin. Oh dear.
“You wouldn’t mind? My collage studio is really too small to be a bedroom.”
“That will be five adults using one bathroom,” Roger is quick to point out.
“You’d think the plans for a four-bedroom house would have called for at least three bathrooms.”
“I don’t think the architect figured he was building a house for seven adults.” Andy speaks up in defense of his wife, who approved the design.
We all troop down the hall after Roger, who pokes his head into Valerie’s hobby room and studies the small space as if he is planning a quick remodel project.
“Maybe we can rent one of those portable johns for the boys,” Andy says. “We can throw it out on the front lawn.”
We all laugh, except for David.
“I don’t think your neighbors would like that very much.” David never seems to know when Andy is kidding.
“We’ll make it work,” Roger says. David looks alarmed. “I mean we’ll make room for one more person. It won’t be for very long. We’ll set up a schedule.”
“Some things can’t be scheduled.” I snicker, but that is so typical of Roger. He thinks a plan and a schedule fixes everything.
Sophie comes back looking shaken, but I can tell she is firmly resolved to stay. Her eyes are dry.
“I told my parents I will let them know what I plan to do.” She chooses an empty chair next to David to sit in.
I can’t gauge what David thinks of this sophisticated, gamine creature. Is her chattiness nerves or an open valve that will be hard to turn off? Whatever he thinks, he doesn’t draw away from her.
“What do you plan to do?” Valerie is so forthright. Well, some of the time.
Sophie folds her hands in her lap and sits up straight. She reminds me of me at a job interview. If she thinks our questions are intrusive, she makes no indication. Then she surprises us with complete candor.
“I was in the New York City Ballet School until this season. I did well in my auditions for the company. I thought I’d be picked up, at least for the tour company, but I’ve been nursing a chronic condition. I have a patella subluxation.”
Sophie pauses to let that sink in. Her hand moves gently back and forth across her left knee. “That’s the medical term for an unstable kneecap. My knee has never been dislocated, but as I got older, the sequence of steps I was expected to perform got more challenging. My condition showed up on a medical exam I had to take to join the company, and that ended my ballet career.”
She holds up her hand against any sympathy we might be preparing to offer. “It’s okay. It wasn’t really a surprise, but it was a tremendous disappointment to my parents. They invested a lot of money in my dance, and they were so proud of me.”
Sophie leans back in her chair and sweeps back the long curls that have fallen over her shoulders. “Ballet has been my life, but now I have to find something else.” She looks at me. “Even though I never knew your mother, she was an inspiration to me.”
I open my mouth to protest that shocking statement, but Sophie continues to talk. “No, really. I know my family. They are big and noisy, and they run right over people. They think they know what everyone should do. It took a lot of courage for Great Aunt Leora to get on a bus and go follow her dreams.”
I cannot believe what I’m hearing. My taciturn mother is this young lady’s heroine? The thought that Sophie might end up angry and bitter like my mother is outrageous.
Sophie sees that I am struggling with what she is saying. “My dad told me she had a cool career, and that she traveled and hung around with lawyers and judges and knew famous people.”
Did he also tell you that she abandoned my father and twin sister, and that she had no time for me or Valerie until she retired and needed a place to live?
Valerie responds to Sophie’s eagerness with a bright smile. “My Abuelita, I used to call her. She’s the reason I got my PhD in Spanish literature. She was the inspiration for my first novel.”
This opens a wound. In her last years, Leora and Valerie were close in a way I never was with my mother. But this is an old story. I’ve come to terms with it.
“Well, you can stay here while you figure out your next move. We’re going to move you into my hobby room. I won’t need it for a while. You can help me get it cleared out. I plan to redecorate it soon anyway.”
That’s news to me.
R
Now we are seven. This has not escaped Carlo’s notice. He leers at Sophie through his peephole in the hedge when she suns herself on the patio. I hear him rant at Gunther and Kay about the damn beatnik commune we are running over here.
Sophie was here barely two days before Kay was over with another plate of cookies. This time, she didn’t stay long. Apparently she’d been instructed not to accept any offers of refreshment. No liquid or spiritual encouragement. She was in the house just long enough to encounter Sophie. Her only comment was, “My goodness, the skirts on you young girls are getting short these days.”
The Dolds are having a problem with Lukas. Kay doesn’t share this information, but I can see that he is in the painful grip of early adolescence. Rather than toss the evening paper onto the driveway like he used to do, he rides his bicycle down and places the paper on our doorstep. Then he turns his bike around and sticks his head in the garage to see if Sophie is hanging around with the boys. If she is, the neighbors on his route who expect their delivery after ours get their papers late, and Kay gets phone calls.
Danny is as taken with his cousin as David seems to be. I made a point to introduce Sophie to Danny as his cousin the night of her arrival. Danny has an eye for pretty girls. If the family tie isn’t enough to put him off, I’m hoping he will have the good sense to realize that their seven year age difference makes a close relationship inappropriate. If I see anything untoward, I won’t hesitate to speak to him directly.
David I’m not so worried about. Although they are matched in age, David is a reticent young man. Roger cautions that still waters run deep, but I trust my instincts on this one.
Valerie has taken Sophie over to the college to see if she can interest her in getting an education. Foothill is starting a dance program, but Sophie has already been where these students probably want to go. She has danced on the stages of New York. I think a junior college dance class would be a huge step backward for her. Valerie thinks Sophie should look into getting a teaching degree. Andy says we should all back off and let her breathe instead of trying to plan her life for her. And Roger starts spending more time out in the garage, keeping an eye on things.
Scott is hanging around a lot too. This afternoon, Roger has gone for a run. I decide to work in the flowerbed near the garage, dividing bearded iris. I watch Scott hang all over Sophie, see him try to pull her attention away from the project that holds David and Danny in thrall.
David has completed a design for a device that can modify sound in a solid-state guitar or bass amplifier. Sophie examines the drawings while David gives her a tutorial in acoustics.
“This device can enhance the level and quality of sound by minimizing distortion and boosting the sound levels at both ends of the sound spectrum. It can analyze the acoustics of whatever space a musician is playing in, and automatically adjust the sound levels and reverb.”
Sophie stretches her shoulders and looks into David’s eyes. Those horn-rimmed glasses intensify the mystery of this young man and add weight to his words, not that a discussion of sound spectrum needs any more weight.
Danny takes over. “Think about it, cuz. The musician can get a clear sense of what their music sounds like to an audience without having to step away from their instrument.”
“Can’t they just listen to each other, like musicians do in an orchestra?”
“Different problem,” Danny tells her and a discussion ensues, but Scott isn’t listening. He stands close behind Sophie, playing with her hair. I guess dancers are at such ease with the press of bodies in a small rehearsal space, she doesn’t notice. In any case, she doesn’t react.
David listens intently as Danny translates his technical explanations into plain language even I can understand. At the same time, David frowns a warning at Scott that clearly says, back off, buddy. From where I am kneeling in the iris bed alongside the driveway, I see Scott narrow his cold eyes at David. Like a cougar marking prey, he starts to weave Sophie’s hair into a single braid down her back.
Sophie has had enough. She reaches behind her to grab her hair out of his hands. “Stop it, Scott. I don’t like that.”
Scott gives the half-braided hair a hard tug, opens his fist, and lets her hair drop.
“Ouch!”
“Hey!” Danny moves Sophie aside with one hand and gives Scott’s shoulder a rough push with the other.
I rise from where I’ve been watching this drama unfold. With a sharp-edged trowel in my hand, I start toward the garage. I’m seething at Scott’s rough treatment of my niece, but Sophie shakes her hair out and laughs.
“Boys, boys...” Scott steps back and Danny lets his fist relax. Sophie turns her attention to David. “So if Danny is the marketing director for this enterprise, what job do you have in mind for me?”
Thank you, Jesus. I relax my grip on the trowel and pivot back to the pile of rhizomes I’ve collected for transplanting. Obviously my little tribe of transplants in the garage are managing just fine without my interference. I suppose any girl who has grown up in a ballet studio must know how to deal with overblown egos and petty jealousies.
David snaps his finger. “I’ve got it. We’ll teach you how to play the guitar. You can demo our product at trade shows.”
Danny picks up this idea and runs with it. “You’ll be our poster girl. You’ll be in all our ads, drawing attention to our product.”
“Does this thing have a name?” Scott is trying to worm his way back into the trio’s good graces.
“Not yet,” they say in unison.
R
Mike shows up early this evening for his session with the boys. I want to talk to him, but the house is getting so crowded it’s hard to find a private corner. The young people are in the kitchen cooking dinner. Well, Sophie is cooking and the boys are watching, jumping up to fetch things when she barks orders. Scott has invited himself to the party.
I pour two glasses of iced tea, hand one to Mike and we walk out on the patio and across the lawn. The new deck is finished. We sit under the bay laurel on redwood chairs. In addition to chairs she has placed where we can relax and watch the creek, Valerie has furnished the expansive deck with tables and benches. At the end of the semester, she’s planning a luncheon for her top-performing students, the ones she wants to encourage to continue their language studies. Valerie never does anything halfway. Despite her intention to cut back on her hours, she is being considered for head of the Foreign Languages Department.
My muscles are sore from squatting in the flowerbed this afternoon, sawing apart the thick, tuberous iris roots. I sip my tea and try to form my thoughts into a question.
“You are worried about Scott hanging around so much, aren’t you.”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“That kid worries me, too. There is something that’s just not right about him.”
“It can’t be easy for him having a father like Walter.”
“Walter’s a tough nut, that’s for sure, but I think it’s more than that.”
“I think he’s using drugs, Mike.”
“Oh, I know he is.”
“I don’t want him around the kids, especially Sophie.”
“Your kids have pretty good instincts, Dee.”
“You don’t think he’s dangerous?”
“I didn’t say that. I meant I don’t think your kids are likely to buy drugs from him. They’re too smart to do that. They have too much going for them.”
“Scott’s a drug dealer?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Well we can’t have him around here, then. What do we do?”
“I’ve been thinking maybe I need to find somewhere else to meet with the boys. I thought that meeting in a neighborhood would have a stabilizing influence, but I don’t want to expose your family to something unpleasant. I was hoping that Scott would benefit from the group, but I’m afraid he’s just using us as a cover. I can’t let that continue.”
The patio door opens and Mike’s boys begin to trickle out. Goldie comes galloping behind them; she jumps joyously at a Frisbee flying through the air, back and forth over her head. Laura must be in the kitchen fixing snacks.
“Don’t worry Dee, we’ll figure something out.”
The T-Group session starts and I’m settling down at the kitchen table to catch up with Laura when the phone rings. It’s Walter, requesting a meeting with us. His tone is cool and officious.
“What’s this about, Walter?”
“Mrs. Russell, the level of complaints I receive about the activities at the Glass House has risen sharply in the past month. I want to sit down with you people and see what we can do before someone loses their head and tosses a match into a puddle of gasoline.”
I feel my body stiffen. The image of my mother’s house burning in the night sky sears my eyes. I can hardly keep hold of the telephone receiver for the weakness that travels down my arms, causing my hands to tremble.
By all reports, the fire was caused by bad wiring, a well-known problem with the little craftsman bungalows that had been hastily built. There was no animosity in the neighborhood then. But there had been a moment when arson was considered, and I will never forget how sick I felt. That’s how I’m feeling now, but I won’t let Walter know that.
“Don’t you think that’s a rather poor choice of words, Walter?”
“Of course. You’re right. That’s not at all what I meant.”
I let silence hang in the air. Then Walter takes a different approach. “Dee, just to let you know, Carlo and Gunther wanted to be at this meeting, but I said no. I know they are a bad combination. Gunther is pompous and Carlo is childish. They feed each other, like Laurel and Hardy.”
Only not as funny.
“We are in total agreement about that, Walter.”
“Instead, I’ve invited Kay and the Jacksons to join us and represent your neighbors. I find Kay to be fair-minded and Ivy and Jerry have been in the neighborhood for a long time. They get along with everyone.”
No wonder Walter keeps getting re-elected. He really knows how to play both sides of the fence. I should just let this lie, but it’s too tempting. “How about we include Detective Ramos? He knows the neighborhood very well also.”
Walter goes silent. I wonder if we’ve lost our connection. Then he comes back with what he intends to be his last word. “There’s no need to bring the police in on this. It’s just a friendly discussion.”
It didn’t sound so friendly at the beginning, but I let it go now. He and his posse will be by tomorrow before dinner. That’s not fair. Although I trust the Jacksons to be neutral and Kay not to dominate the conversation, I determine that whether Walter likes it or not, at least Father Mike will be part of this discussion.