Twenty-Seven Bones

8

Holly had rules. She didn’t drive stoned, she didn’t work stoned, and she didn’t get stoned around the kids, which meant that it wasn’t until nearly ten o’clock that night that she finally got a chance to sample her new purchase. She rolled the world’s thinnest joint in her room and took it outside to smoke.

It was a quiet night. There was no moon, but the stars were bright enough to read by. The temperature was perfect-if there’d been an outdoor thermostat, this was where she’d have set it-and the air smelled of the rain forest. It was a scent that was hard to describe and even harder to forget, all undertones, sweet and earthy, ripe and rotten, a rose garden planted over a shallow grave. Most of the cabins and Quonsets dotting the cleared hillside were dark, but Holly could see Peeping Fran, her nearest uphill neighbor, lying on a chaise longue on the screened-in veranda behind his cabin, writing by the blue-white light of a Coleman lantern. He looked up and waved; she held up the joint by way of invitation; Fran shook his head.

After the initial hit Holly felt herself begin to truly relax for the first time since her encounter with the dickhead at Blue Valley. After the second hit she was obliged to concede that Vincent had been telling the truth: this was indeed two-toke smoke. Which was about how long it took for word to get around among the mosquito population that supper was being served.

Holly wetted the tips of her thumb and forefinger with her tongue, clipped the joint, and turned to go back inside. As she opened the screen door she heard Dawn crying and hurried into the kids’ bedroom.

“What is it, baby?”

Sniffling; hiccups.

Holly switched on the battery-powered lamp between the twin beds-nothing short of a tornado would wake Dawn’s ten-year-old brother at this point-ducked under the mosquito netting, and crawled into the narrow bed beside Dawn. “C’mon, baby doll, tell Auntie Holly what the problem is.”

Dawn, tight-lipped, between hiccups: “Something…in my eye.”

Oops, thought Holly. My bad. “Dawnie, this afternoon, when I picked you up at school and you asked me if I’d been crying, and I said no, I’d just gotten something in my eye, that wasn’t only a lie, it was a BPM. A big fat BPM.”

Two years ago, when Holly took on the role of single mother, she’d felt so utterly unprepared that she’d decided there was no point even trying to bluff her way through it. So when she realized she’d blown a call, deciding arbitrarily to enforce bedtime by the clock instead of the sun, for instance, or insisting upon helping Marley perform some everyday task instead of letting him do it himself, regardless of how long it took or how uncomfortable it was to watch, she had no problem apologizing, declaring a BPM-Bad Parenting Move-and reversing her own ruling.

“Unh-unh.” Dawn shook her head doubtfully.

“Unh-hunh,” said Holly. “When something scares you or makes you sad, it’s always better to talk about it instead of keeping it bottled up-even when you’re a grown-up.”

“You go first, then.” Dawn rolled over to face Holly. Her eyes were startlingly bright and blue, and her skin was the color of medium toast, just a shade darker than her tawny hair in its tight cornrows. Plaiting West Indian style was another skill Holly had had to learn on the job. A shaneh yid, Holly’s late rabbi grandfather would have said of his little brown great-granddaughter-he’d have been speaking ironically, of course.

“Okay.” Holly took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, to demonstrate to her niece that this wasn’t easy for her, either. “I was working at Blue Valley, and one of my clients said something very nasty to me and really hurt my feelings.”

“Did you tell him sticks and stones?”

Holly laughed-if you didn’t find that kids had as much to teach you as you had to teach them, you just weren’t paying attention. “No, but I should have. I should have told myself, too. Instead I ran away. Your turn, now.”

“I was thinking about something bad that could happen.”

“What’s that, baby doll?”

“I was thinking what if you, well, you know.”

“Not really.”

“What if you…you know, like Mommy.”

“What if I died, you mean?”

Dawn covered her ears; her hands are still so tiny, thought Holly. “Don’t say that, Auntie.” Doan say dot, Ahntie-what her grandfather would have made of the West Indian accents the kids slipped in and out of so easily, Holly couldn’t begin to imagine.

Her first instinct was to explain that death was nothing to fear, that it was just part of life, but that would have been another BPM. It wasn’t death the child feared, it was abandonment. “Tell you what, baby doll. I give you my solemn promise, I’ll live to dance at your wedding.”

“That means if I don’t ever get married, you have to live forever,” said Dawn.

“Very funny,” said Holly. “Now go to sleep.”