Alice Hoffman - Here On Earth

It’s Hollis who opens the door, and he stops short when he sees the Judge. “To what do we owe this pleasure?” His tone is reasonably agreeable, not that that’s the way he feels. “You’re not selling Girl Scout cookies, I’ll bet.”

“I thought I’d bring Gwen home,” the Judge says.

Gwen slips into the house, trying her best to be invisible. Hollis lets her by, but he doesn’t open the door to invite the Judge in. If it were anyone else but Bill Justice at the door, he’d probably just slam it shut. Because it is the Judge, Hollis smiles gamely.

“Teenagers,” Hollis says, assessing the Judge’s face to see if Gwen has told him about their run-in and coming up with very little. The Judge, after all, is a poker player, a good game to know for someone in his line of work.

“I thought I could say hello to March,” the Judge says.

“I think she’s asleep,” Hollis has the nerve to say, even though it’s not quite seven.

This lie might have passed had March not heard the red dogs barking, then looked out her window and caught sight of the Judge’s car. She’s pulled on a sweater and come downstairs in her bare feet.

“It’s so nice to have you stop by,” she says to the Judge when she gets to the door. They never have company out here, and although March tells herself she doesn’t miss a social life, she’s inordinately pleased to see the Judge. “I’ve been meaning to call Louise. I never did thank her for that wonderful dinner.”

March has her hair pulled back, and the Judge is surprised to see how white it has turned. She’s skinnier than he remembered as well; could it be she’s lost this much weight since Thanksgiving?

“I was just giving Gwen a ride home from town,” the Judge tells March.

“Was Gwen in town?” March asks Hollis. “I didn’t realize that.”

Now the Judge knows what’s wrong. March seems like a sleepwalker. Wake up , he wants to tell her. Open your eyes.

“Looks like it,” Hollis says.

“Well, come in.” March is still beautiful when she smiles. “Have some tea.”

When the door is opened wider, the Judge can see into the kitchen. It is dimly lit and bare, as if no one lived there.

“With a cook like Mrs. Justice for a wife, the Judge certainly doesn’t want our tea,” Hollis says. “Isn’t that a fact?”

Hollis and the Judge look at each other. Unless the Judge is mistaken, and he rarely is about such things, there is an attempt at intimidation beneath the surface. He’s seen it before, at hearings and trials, and he knows precisely what this sort of man is trying to tell him. Don’t fuck with me. Don’t even try.

“Louise would love for you to come to dinner,” the Judge tells March. “How about Friday?”

March looks at Hollis.

“That won’t work out,” Hollis says. “Friday isn’t good.”

March loops her arm around Hollis’s waist. “I guess we have plans. Please tell Louise thank you anyway for the invitation.”

“Well, we’ll be in touch.” The Judge nods. “We’ll figure something out.”

Hollis remains by the back door until the Judge has gotten into his car and pulled down the driveway. When the Saab turns onto Route 22, Hollis heads for the little blue bedroom where Gwen has been listening to every word through the thin plaster walls.

“What’s wrong?” March says, following Hollis, not that he’s listening to her. In his opinion she doesn’t need to understand this; he can take care of the girl, after all.

Hollis stands in the doorway to the little room. Gwen is on her bed, a blanket wrapped around her, though it’s flimsy protection. She feels all clenched up, as if she were expecting to be hit.

“If you ever bring the Judge out here again,” Hollis tells Gwen, “you will seriously regret it.”

“Wait a second,” March says, confused.

“Let me handle this.” Hollis cuts her off. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asks Gwen.

Gwen is going along with her plan of no resistance. She nods, agreeing to whatever crap he’s spouting, grateful that the blanket is covering her and he can’t see that she’s shaking. Grateful that her mother is there, for March’s presence seems to offer some immunity from Hollis coming any closer.

“I don’t want him or anyone else on my property,” Hollis informs March. “This girl needs to know that.”

He’s got that look on his face March knows far too well. He’s in a mood, he won’t back down; he’s thinking only of the doors which were closed to him, not of how they’re all open to him now.

“That’s fine,” March says. “The Judge won’t come back here.”

She counts to ten and by the time she reaches that last number, Hollis has gone outside to cool off. The screen door slams behind him, and there’s an echo, cold wood against colder wood. They can hear his footsteps on the frozen ground on this quiet December night. They can hear the clatter of a typewriter as Hank works on his senior paper on the Founder, and a soft whining from Sister, who is hiding under the bed, fur darkened by dust. March goes to the window and sees Hollis out there by himself, looking up at the stars.

“He doesn’t mean any of that,” March says to her daughter. “Not really.”

Gwen looks at her mother. She feels an odd tenderness, the way one might when finished with crying.

“Mother,” she says simply, as if she were teaching sums to a six-year-old, “he certainly does.”

Susie Justice gets home in a hurry, after a whirlwind trip to Florida. In six days she has been to Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami, then hop-skipped over to Orlando. She’s writing a four-part series for The Bugle about vacation possibilities and retirement options, which will be chock-full of places to stay and eat and swim. She will not, however, mention in this cheery article how dreadful it is to come back to the cold once your trip is over, although she might suggest it’s best to have the person who retrieves your mail while you’re away take a look at your oil burner as well, as Susie’s seems to have died during her absence, and she comes home to a stone-cold house, with pipes that are close to bursting.

Ken Helm is down in the basement, fixing the burner, and Susie is in her kitchen, still wearing her coat and her gloves, when Ed Milton arrives with a pizza and Susie’s dogs, who have been staying with him for the past few days and who now follow on his heels, staring at him with adoration, since he was the one to most recently measure out their kibble.

“Wow,” Ed says when he sees how red Susie is. Florida, after all, will do that to a blonde.

“I ran out of sunblock,” Susie explains.

“I should have gone with you,” Ed says. “I would have made sure you paid attention to the SPF.”

Maybe his arms around her feel so good because it’s freezing, or maybe she really missed him. “I wouldn’t have listened to you,” Susie murmurs.

“What is going on in here?” Ed asks. “It’s freezing.”

There is a metallic banging rising from the basement.

“Ken Helm,” Susie explains. “Oil burner.”

As much as she hates to admit it, she did miss Ed, and this makes her nervous. This is not the way Susie likes to run her life, mooning over somebody, thinking about making sure they get into bed as soon as Ken Helm leaves, even though she should be attending to the Florida article. She’s going to have to find a getaways-to-Florida book at the library tomorrow, since she paid more attention to trying to track down Hollis’s past than she did to restaurants and theme parks.

“The most interesting thing about Hollis,” she tells Ed, as he opens the pizza box and they begin to eat standing up beside the counter, “is that nobody wanted to talk about him. His lawyer down there refused to see me. I went to this huge condo complex he owns in Orlando, and no one would speak to me. Not even the janitor. When I went to the racetrack he’s part owner of down in Fort Lauderdale, people clammed up so tight they wouldn’t even tell me the temperature. It’s like he doesn’t exist, in spite of everything he owns down there, which let me tell you, is plenty.”