White Oleander - Janet Fitch [110]
“I know it hasn’t been easy for you.” He put his hand on my shoulder. Smooth. There was heat in his hand, it warmed my whole shoulder. For a moment I wondered what it would feel like to make love to Ron. His bare chest so close I could stroke it, the gray hairs, the quarter-sized nipples. He smelled good, Monsieur Givenchy. His voice, not too deep, sandy and calming. But then I remembered, this was the man who was causing all the problems, who didn’t know how to love Claire. He was cheating on her, I could feel it in his body. He had the world, all Claire had was him. But I couldn’t help liking his hand on my shoulder, the look in his eyes. Trying not to react to his masculine presence, solidity in his blue pajama bottoms. She’s a young woman, he told Claire. It was just part of his act, the appreciation thing. I bet he did it with all the lonely spoonbenders. I stepped away, so his arm dropped. “You better come through,” I told him.
20
IN JUNE, true to his promise, Ron rented a cabin in Oregon. No phone, no electricity, he even left his computer at home. In the forests of the Cascades, we fished in high green rubber boots to our waists. He showed me the fly reel, how to cast like a delicate spell, the glistening steelhead trout like secrets you could pluck from the water. Claire pored over bird books, wildflower guides, intent on naming, as if the names gave life to the forms. When she identified one, she was as proud as if she herself created the meadowlark, the maidenhair fern. Or we’d sit in the big meadow, propped up each by our own tree, and Ron played cowboy songs on his harmonica, “Red River Valley” and “Yellow Rose of Texas.”
I thought of my mother in Amsterdam, singing Whoopee ti yi yo, git along little dogies. Explaining to me that a dogie was a calf that had lost its mother. It’s your misfortune and none of my own. Ron was from New York, I wondered where he learned songs like that. TV probably. I saw how he looked at me when I sketched by the riverbank, but did nothing to encourage it. I could live without Ron, but not without Claire.
When it rained, he and Claire walked together down the trails cushioned in pine needles, the ferns smelling like licorice. At night we played Monopoly and Scrabble, three-handed blackjack, charades. Claire and Ron did routines from Streetcar Named Desire, Picnic. I could see what it was like when they were first together. His admiration for her. That’s what she needed to remember, how he was the one who wanted her.
I’d never spent so much time with Ron before. It started to irritate me, how he was always the one running the show. When he got up, he woke me and Claire up. But when we got up first, we crept around, because Ron was still sleeping. A man’s world. It bothered me, the way it was Ron who decided the day’s activity, whether it was a good day for fishing or hiking or a trip out to the coast. Ron who said when we needed to go to the store and when we could get by another day, whether we took slickers or sweaters or bought firewood. I’d never had a father and now I didn’t want one.
But Claire looked healthy again. She didn’t throw up anymore. Her coloring grew vivid. She made gallons of soup in a big cast-iron pot, while Ron grilled fish over the open fire. We had pancakes in the morning, or eggs and bacon. Ron smiled, crunching bacon strips. “Poison, poison. And such small portions” — the punch line of a joke they had. Thick sandwiches in our backpacks for lunch, ham and salami, whole tomatoes, smoky cheese.
Claire complained that she couldn’t fit into her jeans anymore, but Ron hugged her around the thighs and tried to bite them. “I like you fat. Enormous. Rubenesque.”
“Liar.” She laughed, swatting at him.
I dangled