Lydia Millet - Magnificence

“So what did you do?” asked Susan.

“We helped get some of them back in the water. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Answer: I sat on my crippled ass behind a folding table and handed out bottled water to the volunteers. Tame shit like that.”

“But it’s good,” said Susan softly. “I’m glad you did.”

“T.’s idea, he got on some kind of emergency phone tree for marine mammal rescue. He’s on a bunch of lists now. Your basic Good Samaritan shit. Some of it’s just giving out money. Like with the foundation. He just paid a bunch of poachers in Africa to stop shooting rhinos. They sell the horns to make into, like, fake Chinese aphrodisiacs. Now they’re getting a salary for guarding the rhinos instead of killing them. Who knew?”

“That sounds like a great idea,” said Susan drily.

“But with the whales I kinda got into it,” said Casey. “It was a life-or-death thing. It had — I don’t know. It wasn’t nothing.”

“You take the wine, OK? I’ll take the glasses,” said Susan, and handed down the bottle. She put five goblets on a tray and they started out of the kitchen, toward the patio. “So where did, you know, the getting-married part come in?”

“Spur-of-the-moment,” said Casey behind her. “That was his idea too.”

“You going to have a reception? At least a big party?”

“Fuck if I know,” said Casey happily. “Haven’t thought about it. He’s moving in, though. He likes my place better than his.”

“I like it better too.”

“He does things,” said Casey. “You know. I miss how walking on sand used to feel. I was telling him that, after the whale thing was over. We were on our way out of town, we’d driven down to the shore to look at it one more time. So he picked me up and carried me down to the waterline and put me down and he got down there with me. And then we kind of crab-walked. We walked on our elbows. There were waves, you know, and I can’t go fast on my elbows, I’m not built in the shoulders like Sal or someone. Anyway, I’m not going to say it was some romantic shit, because actually it ended up sucking. I mean after three minutes I was soaking and shivering, I had these scratches on my knees from dragging them, because there were pebbles in the sand too, shit, there were probably syringes, what the hell would I know. And then the finer sand, for like days after that, was killing me. It got way down in my goddamn ears and I couldn’t get it out of there. I was afraid it would do some damage, if you want to know the truth. To the ear drums or whatever. Then I’d be crippled and deaf. So finally I had to go to a Mexican doctor, on our way back up here, in some shitty border town crossing into Arizona where the doctors make most of their salaries selling Ritalin prescriptions to American turistas . For snorting, not for the hyperactive kids. I had to go to one of those guys and get my ear canals irrigated. It was actually disgusting.”

They passed through the French doors, saw the other three talking and laughing at the poolside table.

“The guy tried to sell me a scrip for Ritalin just as an extra bonus. After he squirted six gallons of warm water into my ears.”

“Sounds like T. showed you a really good time,” said Susan.

“His heart was in the right place, though,” said Casey.

As they drew near the table Jim glanced up, smiling. T. was smoothing a lock of his mother’s hair behind her ear.

Family, thought Susan. She was surprised.

“Don’t look now,” said Jim, a couple of days later. They were on the tennis court, whose clay surface was far too cracked for serious players. Luckily they were not serious. They had two old wooden racquets from a closet in the rec room and a bag of dull gray balls with hardly any bounce.

“Don’t look where now,” said Susan, walking up to the net.

“Outside the gate there’s a guy with a camera, taking snapshots of us,” said Jim, and bent down to pocket a ball.

She turned to look.

“Well shit. What did I just say,” said Jim, shaking his head. But he didn’t seem upset.

“Who is it? The cousins?”

Jim shook his head. “Doubt it. They have no incentive to document us.”

“But then — who would?”

“I think maybe my wife,” said Jim. “Apologies.”

Susan had been reaching down for her water bottle, at the end of the net, but stopped and glanced up.

“Your wife?”

“Someone who’s working for her, anyway. They’re gathering ammunition.”

“Ammunition?”

“For the divorce.”

She lifted the bottle to her lips and gazed at him steadily as she drank.

“I had no idea,” she said, after she wiped drops off her lips.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“Can’t she — you mean for alimony, or something?”

“Ha. No. There was a prenup. She’s wealthy, her family made me sign it. Evidence of infidelity means I won’t get anything.”

“Oh,” said Susan. They stood opposite each other, wooden racquets in hand, with only the net between them. The top of the net was cracked, like the court, its white hem barely holding together across the top of the sagging green mesh.

“Sorry for the invasion of privacy,” he said, and gazed down at his shoes. They were Converse; Hal had owned a pair.

“I don’t care,” she said. “But are you — I mean we could call the cops or something, couldn’t we? That’s actually my property there, where he’s standing. I think he might be trespassing.”

Jim shook his head and shrugged. “I always knew it would happen. She’s been waiting me out. Waiting for me to do this. For years. So now she’s free to get rid of me. Even before, any settlement would have been minuscule. Fine with me. But she likes to win completely. She didn’t want me to see a penny.”

“So why did you — I mean, why did you stay? If you weren’t in it for the money. .”

“Why do you think,” said Jim. “Let’s hit the ball, OK?”

He backed up.

“You love her,” said Susan, nearly under her breath. “You love her even though she doesn’t love you.”

He stood and tossed a ball, waiting for her to move into position.

“I can’t help it,” he said finally, as she walked to the service line.

The ball came early, while she was still turning toward him to receive. It bounced and hit the fence.

Vera was not coming back; a sick relative needed her in New Jersey. Angela was upset by the news and sequestered herself in her bedroom.

“She won’t eat anything but candy,” reported Casey over the telephone. “She refuses to have anyone else come and stay. Except for T. or me, but we can’t go there every night. She drinks water from her bathroom tap, out of the toothbrush cup. She eats these little bags of red licorice. She had them left over from giving out to the kids at Halloween and she took them in there with her and now she won’t eat anything else. If you try to give her real food she lets it sit there and rot.”

“Maybe,” ventured Susan, “maybe it’s time to consider—?”

“Not happening. We’re not putting her in an institution. First of all, she would hate it. And T. doesn’t like the idea much either.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” said Susan. “Taking care of her is kind of a full-time occupation.”

She was looking out the window at the backyard, where the guys who serviced the koi ponds were dipping tubes into the water to test it.