Girl in the Arena - Lise Haines [70]
Concerned that one of the photographers has climbed the fence, I throw the lights on outside.
Uber is walking across the lawn in a striped delivery shirt. He trips over a pile of tile samples out in the yard, a full half hour early. He’s clutching a paper bag. I’m reminded of that guy in The Invisible Man, his head wound in bandages. Only one eye is exposed so I give Uber credit when he avoids a landing in the rosebushes. He rights himself and follows the light toward the kitchen.
Looking down at his chest, he tries to pull the two halves of his tiny shirt together. On the pocket the name Dave is stitched in carmine thread.
—A friend of mine has a brother who works for a delivery service, Uber says. —I was kind of hoping we’d be able to slip in and out without notice.
He explains that Allison gave him the code to the gate. I see the CONSTANT BEAUTY FLOWERS truck, backed in and pulled as close to the house as possible, almost shearing off Allison’s border of small crescent-shaped bricks. I put on the shirt he hands me over my tank top. But the cap keeps catching on my bandages so I decide I’m healed enough and rip the bandages off and get the cap in place.
—You think I’ll pass? I ask.
—You look constantly beautiful to me, Uber says.
—Groan. We better hurry, I say.
I go over and give Thad a kiss on the cheek and grab my purse.
—Lyn’s going to figure everything out tonight, Thad says to Uber.
I don’t know why this makes me blush. I excuse myself and call up the stairs to let Allison know we’re leaving now. She wants us to wait so she can come down and say hello, but I shout that we’re late and kiss Thad again and hurry into the garden with Uber. Then I look back for a moment.
Thad appears to be a little lost, motionless, already waiting for my return. Allison has rushed downstairs and is waving to us now in one of her Chinese robes. She swoops an arm of billowing silk fabric around him with great affection, the way she always holds Thaddy. And suddenly I’m aware of how old my mother looks standing there. I don’t mean culturally old, throwaway old, liver spots and crow’s-feet old. I don’t mean that she should cut and shift her face around to be younger and therefore more likeable. She’s a beautiful woman and always will be. But what I mean is she looks worn thin.
If grief comes in waves, Allison is standing inside one of those waves, completely submerged as her eyes follow me out into the darkness. She’s learned to breathe water, to see through water. I think of telling Uber to wait, so I can run back inside to say something to her, to express anything, really, but I can’t find the thing to say. I know we better get out of here before the media catches on, so I remind myself to get Thad out tomorrow so she can have some time to go to the movies or get her hair done. We have always been good at repair.
Keeping our heads down, Uber opens the back doors to the van and I climb in and crouch near the crates of empty plastic vases, some with water at the bottom. The windows in the back are blackened. Uber hits his head when he pulls the driver’s-side door open to get in.
—Are you all right? I ask.
—I’m great. Great, he says.
He fires up the engine and gets the gate open. Despite his best efforts to fool them, the paparazzi swarm.
CHAPTER
25
Once we’re on the road, the water in the vases begins to crest and slop over the sides and I’m sitting in water and decide to take my chances in the passenger seat. Uber has his head cocked at an odd angle to see the road.
—Do you like bowling or pool? he asks.
—Sometimes, I say. —Maybe it would be a little tough with your eye tonight?
—It’s not too bad but it does kind of cut down on my peripheral vision.
He’s driving erratically, and I offer to take the