Susan Smith - The Timer Game

‘You did make her do her homework, right?’ Grace pressed a finger against her temple. A vein throbbed.

Lottie pulled on her lip.

‘The one thing I asked you to do.’

Lottie shot her a wounded look and fiddled with her hair. Her bracelet clanked. It was fake turquoise that looked like gobs of used chewing gum. ‘We were getting around to it.’ She opened her mouth, threw back her head and sneezed. ‘That dog. I mean it.’

‘When, Lottie? It is now after eight on a school night and all you’ve done so far is pump up my child on caffeinated soda and yellow grease.’

‘Grace, you’re just not fun anymore. You need to work on your people skills.’

‘I want you to sit, Katie.’ Grace’s voice was icy calm. ‘I want you to sit at this desk and not move until you finish your homework. Is that clear?’

Katie stomped to the desk.

Grace yanked open a drawer and got out Katie’s stationery. It was pink and orange and had psychedelic ponies gamboling. She positioned a purple crayon in her daughter’s limp hand.

‘This is fun,’ Grace said. ‘We’re having fun learning about the mail. You send this to somebody, you get something back. You’re going to like it.’ It sounded like a threat.

Katie started to whimper. ‘You can’t make me.’

‘Oh, for Pete’s sake,’ Lottie protested.

‘I don’t have anybody to write to!’ Katie burst into tears and put her head down, dampening the stationery.

‘Write to Clint, honey,’ Lottie said, ‘he’d be happy to have you –’

‘She is not writing to Clint,’ Grace said, and Katie wiped her eyes and raised her head, interested at this turn of events.

‘Who’s Clint?’

‘She’s not writing to some hick singer who shellacs his hair until it’s the size of a turkey rump.’

Grace couldn’t believe she was having this conversation after the day she’d had, except that it was with Lottie, so it made sense. In the kitchen, the phone rang.

‘Hick!’ Lottie said in a hushed, stricken voice. Her unnaturally violet eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I want you to know Clint’s hosted the first hour of the Grand Ole Opry seventeen times, and I mean the first hour that’s broadcast, too, not the one that warms everybody up. Not even George has done that.’

‘She’s not doing it,’ Grace said.

‘How do you spell Clint?’ Katie asked.

‘Katie, enough. And Lottie, would you please get that phone?’

Grace waited while Lottie stalked out of the room, muttering about personal maid service.

‘Remember that girl Mommy told you was her friend when she was in high school?’

Katie shook her head.

Grace reached around Katie to rifle through the desk.

‘We haven’t gotten a pumpkin and you promised. We never do anything.’

Novels made it look easy. Heroines, they had a kid, they had problems, the kid got farmed out for long stretches, just dropped conveniently out of the story, while the heroine – always taller and skinnier than in real life, too, it wasn’t right – got herself out of trouble in some plucky way and came back to the kid and the kid was relaxed and happy and clueless about how close her mom had come to being turned into roadkill.

‘Nothing fun. I’m just a little kid. I’m supposed to have fun.’

‘You’re having a party Saturday.’

From the kitchen, Lottie sneezed and trilled into the phone, ‘Hello? Helllooo?’

‘And no goodie bags ready yet either. None. Not one.’

‘Oh, good, here.’ Grace pulled out her address book and started thumbing through it. It was slow going. Somehow, she’d mixed up the R ’s with the S ’s. ‘Well, Mommy had a friend named Annie and she grew up and got married, and they had a kid and he lives on a farm in Iowa and that’s who you can send your drawing to. And you can tell me what to say, if you want, and I’ll write it down.’

‘And a costume. You said you’d make one this year. You promised.’

Grace had. Months ago it sounded like a fine idea, she just couldn’t remember why. In the kitchen, Lottie banged down the phone, cursing.

‘You promised and you forgot. Just like you forgot to take me to see the panda baby at the zoo.’

‘The panda baby was sleeping, Katie.’

‘You promised and we didn’t.’

Katie had the instincts of a pit bull. She just lunged and clamped hold, dragging Grace back over every thing she’d promised and failed to deliver. Grace would be on her deathbed and Katie would kneel and clasp her wizened hand and stroke the purply veins, lean in close and murmur, ‘You promised popcorn and we were out.’ Then Katie would pull out a list of wrongs, and it would be on one of those long computer paper rolls, and she’d settle in for a nice, long chat.

Death would be a relief. Grace kept looking through her address book, ignoring the expletives coming from the kitchen. ‘He’s nine. A Cub Scout, I think.’

Her finger stopped. ‘There. Here it is. His name is Dusty Rhodes. He’ll enjoy getting a lovely drawing from you.’

‘No, he won’t. He’s a boy.’

Nobody ever told her it would be this hard. This constant and this hard. ‘They have animals and he has a paper route and he’s nine,’ she repeated. ‘Or ten. Anyway. That’s who you can send your letter to.’ She block-printed out the address onto the envelope.

‘I could write to Daddy.’ It hung there. Grace looked at her. Katie stared at her hands. Katie tried lots of things to get out of what she didn’t want to do, but never the trump card, her dad.

Grace had created this longing in this small, beautiful girl, this empty space that nothing filled. She’d promised herself she’d be better than Lottie, and she’d turned around and created the same ache in Katie that she’d had, growing up.

‘We’ve been through this, honey,’ Grace said gently. ‘Remember? Daddy died before you were born. It has to be a real letter. Not one to heaven.’

‘Tell me again.’ Katie stood up and Grace settled into the chair and pulled her onto her lap.

Katie’s eyes were a rich brown, a Portuguese color that spoke of sailing ships and rough seas and High Mass said in lonely places.

‘We loved each other very much.’

‘Uh-huh. Jack. You met him at a Padres game. They were playing New York.’

‘Right. We got pregnant and were going to get married, which is not the right order to do things in, and I don’t want you doing it that way either, but I’ll still love you no matter what.’

‘Only there was a car crash. That’s what happened.’

‘That’s what happened. And he would have loved you, honey.’

‘A lot.’

‘Over the moon. That’s what he would have been, having you as his daughter.’

Lottie appeared in the archway. ‘Wrong number. He hung up.’

‘You’re sure it was a he?’

‘I could tell just the way he breathed it was a he. I know how men breathe, Grace.’

‘So this Dusty kid,’ Katie said. ‘That’s a silly dilly stupid name.’

Grace glanced uneasily toward the phone, her thoughts elsewhere. ‘What? Try and leave that part out, Katie.’

An hour later, Lottie mercifully gone, Grace finished the carton of yogurt she was eating standing up. She bent down and kissed her daughter on the forehead.

Katie’s hair was a curly cloud on the pillow. Her favorite doll nestled in her arms, a Katie doll built to look like her, an extravagant birthday present Grace had given her for her fourth birthday. It had a recorder inside, so that Katie’s voice came out in short staccato sentences that Katie periodically changed. The voice was so lifelike that Grace sometimes thought it was Katie herself and dropped whatever she was doing to answer, much to Katie’s great amusement, which made Grace want to permanently injure the Katie doll’s vocal cords in any one of a number of unfortunate accidents.