I had just about decided life didn’t get any better than an afternoon with James-Lawson and Bethany. Fresh–squeezed lemonade, James-Lawson’s small feet hanging off the dock next to mine, Bethany’s tucked up under her like a shy kitten’s—and a concerto of squeals and giggles as they watched a line of turtles sun themselves on a log and take turns sliding in and out of the water. I was as close to happy as I’d been in forever.
Until a nondescript sedan pulled into the driveway, and a squarish woman emerged from the driver’s seat, in a turquoise pantsuit this time.
Bethany pointed as Special Agent Deidre Schmacker opened the car’s back door and reached in.
“Is that a stranger?” she said.
Well, she’s strange, I wanted to say. But I shook my head. “No, I know her. We can talk to her.”
As if I had a choice. But I did have a choice for Bethany.
“You two can play in the gazebo while I talk to her,” I said. “It’s going to be boring.”
“Oh.” James-Lawson nodded sagely. “Big people stuff.”
“Definitely,” I said.
I put out both hands for them each to take one and started for the gazebo. Agent Schmacker came toward us, carrying something in her arms. Something that moved.
“Hey, Miss Lucia,” James-Lawson said. “She gots a dog.”
She did indeed. A pug, to be exact, who I could hear sniffing and snorting from its almost nonexistent nose even from yards away. Just when I’d been sure she couldn’t have been any less like any FBI agent I’d ever met.
Dropping the kids off at the gazebo wasn’t an option at that point. Bethany matched the irrepressible James-Lawson on the enthusiasm scale.
“I see that you’re being well taken care of, Mrs. Coffey,” Agent Schmacker said when she reached us, a squirming canine in her arms.
James-Lawson took his eyes off the dog long enough to inform her that I was taking care of them.
“Sonia is in physical therapy right now,” I said.
“That’s all right. I actually came to talk to you, and perhaps Bethany.”
I could feel my eyes going cold.
She leaned over. “Do you like dogs, Bethany?”
Bethany bobbed her head.
James-Lawson stuck out his hand. “I do, too, and my name is James-Lawson and it’s nice to meet you.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too, both of you. This is J. Edgar.”
In spite of my rising annoyance, I had to choke back a laugh.
“Would you like to pet him?” she said.
James-Lawson pulled back his hand. “Does he bite?”
“Oh no. And he loves kids. He’s just waiting for you to say something to him.”
Bethany put her hands on her chubby knees. “Hi, doggy,” she said.
The pug leapt out of his “mother’s” arms and into Bethany’s. He licked and snorted until I thought she’d giggle herself to death. I felt a smile sneak across my face.
Agent Schmacker clasped her hands behind her and looked on as if she were Bethany’s grandmother, there to enjoy the moment.
“Can I hold him next?” James-Lawson said.
Bethany handed J. Edgar right over and dug into her pocket, producing half a Pop-Tart. When had she stowed that?
“May I give him some of this?” she said.
Schmacker shook her head. “I don’t give J. Edgar refined sugar. It would decay his teeth and make his bones weak, and I love him too much to let that happen.”
“Oh,” Bethany said.
The agent’s voice was kid-kind, I had to admit, but Bethany wilted as if she’d just been scolded.
“Here.” Schmacker reached into her own pocket and pulled out a bone-shaped something. “You can give him this. It has all kinds of nutrients in it. Make him sit, though.”
James-Lawson set the dog on the ground, and the delight returned to Bethany’s face as she chirped for J. Edgar to sit and deposited the bone into his grinning mouth. He took off across the lawn and looked back over one of his too-big shoulders at her.
“May I go out there with him?” Bethany said to me.
“Me too?” James-Lawson said.
“Absolutely.”
They bounded off, squealing anew and calling “Doggy! J. Edgar!”
I put my hand to my throat to force down a lump. Deidre Schmacker, too, watched appreciatively before she pulled a piece of paper from her other pocket.
“Mrs. Coffey,” she said, “this is a list of everyone who has worked for Sonia. I’ll be going over it with your sister at some point, but I also thought—” She gazed across the yard where J. Edgar and the children were cavorting like Shakespearean nymphs. “I’m wondering if Bethany might be able to tell us anything.”
“No,” I said.
“Mrs. Coffey, I’m not going to interrogate her.”
“No, you’re not. So far Bethany has not been told that her mother’s plane crash wasn’t an accident, and I want to keep it that way.”
“You’re her legal guardian, then, now that her mother is incapacitated?”
I struggled to swallow. This was why I despised these people so much, no matter how warm and fuzzy this one tried to be.
“No, I’m not,” I said. “But as her aunt, I am not—”
Schmacker put her hand up. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to try to usurp your authority. How about a compromise?”
How about no?
But I said, “What would that be?”
She held up the paper. “I will leave this list with you, and sometime, when you and Bethany are just chatting, you might ask her about some of the people on it. Who was nice, who wasn’t. Who liked Mommy, who didn’t. Make it a game.”
I shook my head. “I can already tell you that Bethany will be no help whatsoever. They sheltered her from everything that went on.”
Agent Schmacker gave me a long look before, still holding the paper, she put her fingers in the corners of her mouth and produced a high-pitched whistle. J. Edgar twisted in midair and made a beeline for her, with Bethany and James-Lawson behind him.
“Children are aware of a lot more than we think,” she said to me. “I’d appreciate anything you can find out.”
Which would be nada.
J. Edgar jumped into her arms and snuffled at her face.
“Does he have to go now?” Bethany said.
“He does. We have work to do.”
“Oh.” Bethany twisted the bottom of her shirt in her fingers. “Will you ever bring him back?”
“Would you like for me to bring him back?”
She nodded hungrily. James-Lawson chimed in with his “Me too.”
I glared at Schmacker. Oh, I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little dog too.
“Then he’ll be back to visit,” she said.
She touched Bethany and James-Lawson each lightly on the head, pressed the list into my hand, and went toward her car with the panting J. Edgar pug.
Bethany ran to the driveway and waved until they were out of sight, and it shook me to the core of all the stuff I had crammed inside myself.
She truly was afraid to take a step without asking somebody’s permission. She was defeated by the slightest hint that she’d said something wrong. It took small beings like a four-year-old boy and a homely animal to make her at ease enough to smile, beings who wouldn’t tell her to go away, be quiet, eat a cookie and be happy with that. J. Edgar and James-Lawson had achieved what no one else in her little life had: they had made her believe that there wasn’t always someone else more important than she was.
When Agent Schmaker’s car disappeared around the corner, Bethany trudged back to James-Lawson and me. The glow left her face, and I couldn’t let it go.
“You know,” I said, “we have other animal friends right here.”
James-Lawson took a survey of the lawn. “Where?”
“Right there,” I said.
I pointed to a blue heron that stood skinny-knee deep near the bank. I had actually taken an immediate dislike to the bird the first time I saw him, since he was thin and graceful, but he might serve me well at the moment. If he did, I would thank him later.
“What’s his name?” James-Lawson said.
“He hasn’t told me,” I said. “We’ve only just met. Why don’t you two give him one?”
“We can do that?” Bethany said.
“Of course.”
“May we name him J. Edgar?”
I hated to squelch this burst of creativity, but I wanted to keep Agent Schmacker off her radar.
“Do you think J. Edgar would want to share his name?” I said. Bethany shook her head and looked faintly frustrated.
“Okay,” I said. “What about Harry? Harry the Heron?”
It wasn’t terribly inspired, but the dimples returned, and James-Lawson ran toward the river, hand already outstretched. I could have predicted that he’d say, “Nice to meet you, Harry the Heron,” which he did.
Harry beat his wings against the air and lifted himself easily out of reach of the small boy who would have shaken his claw if he’d allowed it.
“Hey, Mama—that’s Harry the Heron.”
I turned to see James-Lawson jumping into Wesley’s arms. Bethany looked on as if she were watching a display she’d never been privy to before. I wanted to hold her, but so far I’d felt the invisible shield that said, I don’t want anybody touching me. It hurts when they let go.
James-Lawson finished informing his mother of everything we had said, done, and eaten in her absence—punctuating himself with ‘You know whats?’ and then grabbing Bethany’s hand and pulling her to the stack of rocks they’d collected.
“You’re good with him,” Wesley said to me.
“He’s good with me,” I said. “He pretty much tells me what needs to happen, and I’m happy to oblige.”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” Her eyes were pouring their oil into mine. “Let’s sit for a minute.”
I followed her to the chairs Sullivan and I had left on the lawn. I didn’t hesitate to sit in one now that I knew I would fit into it without a shoehorn. Besides, once again I knew I couldn’t argue with this woman, even if she was about to call me on something. I could see it in her lips.
“I’m not letting James-Lawson do anything he shouldn’t,” I said.
“Oh, I know that. But you’re letting your sister get away with everything.”
“Excuse me?”
“This is probably going to make you mad, but it’s got to be said. You are at that woman’s beck and call. I’m talking about ‘Lucia, take care of me while I refuse to take care of myself.’ ” Her voice rose in pitch. “‘Lucia, take care of my baby, because I won’t do that either.’ ‘Oh, and Lucia, honey, could you do everything Marnie can’t do because I’m drivin’ her to drink?’ ”
To my own utter surprise I laughed out loud.
“I’m not trying to be funny.”
“No,” I said. “It’s just that I thought that same thing not a day ago. I feel like a waitress for Sonia’s life.”
“Girl, from what I can see, you are a waitress for everybody’s life.” She waved her hand. “But that is not my business. Sonia is my business, and if you keep doing everything for her, she is never going to recover.”
Lucia Marie—don’t you listen to this.
But I did, because Wesley Kane’s voice spoke with more power than my mother’s tape, and that was a first.
“I know you are crazy in love with that child.” Wesley nodded toward Bethany. “But you catering to Sonia’s every whim is not helping either one of them. Now I am not going to tell you how to run the rest of your life . . .”
Though she clearly would have been glad to, and I might have let her.
“. . . But I will tell you that you have to stop doing the hydrotherapy on Sonia’s face. She can do that herself now. The same goes for the medication, taking care of her mask, and her mouth prosthesis.”
“Which I can’t convince her she has to wear.”
Wesley pulled her chin in. “Do you hear yourself? You have to convince her to wear the thing that is going to keep her mouth from turning into this?”
She pulled her lips sideways and looked like the figure in the Scream painting. I wanted to laugh again. I also wanted to cry.
“I’ve left her a list of the things she has to do for her self-care,” she said, “and if you want to help your sister—and that precious baby girl—you won’t do any of the things that are on it.”
I could feel the slats of the chair pressing into my back. “I won’t know what to do with myself,” I said.
“If I were you, staying in this beautiful place”—Wesley pointed her chin toward the river the children were tossing their stones into—“I’d be in there swimming every day.”
“I love to swim, and I would if I owned a bathing suit—and there were no neighbors—and I didn’t have stick women all over the place.”
Had I actually just said that? Out loud?
Apparently so, because Wesley’s face contorted. “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, girl?”
The professional voice was gone. I got the feeling we were suddenly two sisters in the ’hood or something.
“I’m talking about this body,” I said.
“What about it?”
I just looked at her.
“It’s not like you have your own zip code,” she said. “You got some junk in the trunk, but—”
“Junk in the trunk?”
She leaned forward and patted her backside. “I have some too. That wouldn’t keep me out of that water. You white women kill me, all wanting to look like death on a cracker.”
I could only laugh until tears stung my eyes.
“That’s it,” she said. “Tomorrow I am bringing you a swimming suit.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she put her hand practically in it.
“I don’t want to hear about what size you wear and don’t wear or any of that. You just going to put it on and go in the water with those children and have a ball.”
“Only if you’ll bring one for yourself and get in with us,” I said.
I waited for the That would be unprofessional, but she smiled her magnificent smile.
“I thought you were never going to ask,” she said.