Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,33
the deep end?”
Alice crouched while the little girl half climbed, half floated onto her hip; then she waded until she could no longer touch the pool’s bottom and had to pull one hand over the other on the long side of its flagstone edge. The deeper she went, the tighter Olivia clung, peering over her shoulder and shuddering as though having caught sight of a grisly shipwreck below. “Mayday, Mayday!” laughed Alice when Kyle’s remote-control police boat caught up with them and butted her in the breast.
“Don’t let go Olivia,” her mother called.
When they reached the far corner, the girl’s limbs were as tight around Alice as a vise. “How’s this?” Alice asked.
“Good,” Olivia murmured, teeth chattering.
Bouncing his foot and looking a little bored, Ezra asked if anyone knew any jokes.
Edwin lowered his BlackBerry. “What do you call twins before they’re born?”
“Wombmates!” Olivia shrieked in Alice’s ear.
“That’s good,” said Ezra. “What else?”
Kyle tried to stand on a kickboard. “What do you get when you cwoss a Tywannosauwus wex with a . . . with uh . . .”
“With a what?”
The kickboard popped up. “I forget.”
Ezra shook his head. “Needs work.”
“Why did the cookie go to the hospital?” said Olivia.
“Why?”
“Because he felt crummy!”
Kyle cackled; Ezra groaned. Still barnacled to Alice, Olivia turned to her and wrinkled her nose. “Needs work?”
“I’ve got one,” said Ezra. “A guy flying into Honolulu turns to the guy sitting next to him and says, ‘Say, how do you pronounce it? Hawaii or Havaii?’ ‘Havaii,’ says the other guy. ‘Thanks,’ says the first guy. And the other guy says, ‘You’re velcome.’ ”
The little ones stared at him.
“I don’t get it,” said Kyle.
“He talks funny,” said Olivia. “Right?”
“Right.”
“But what’s funny about it?” said Kyle.
“Nothing,” said Ezra. “Never mind.”
“Needs verk,” suggested Eileen.
The wind picked up, shuffling the leaves. Undeterred, the children taught Alice Sharks and Minnows, then Monkey in the Middle, then a made-up game that involved one and then the other of them climbing onto her back and pretending to whip her hindquarters with a foam-noodle riding crop.
“Do you want children, Mary-Alice?” Eileen asked.
Kyle waved the noodle above his head like a lasso, flicking water into her eyes. “Maybe,” said Alice. “When I’m forty.”
Lifting her sunglasses, Eileen shook her head. “Forty’s too old.”
“So I’ve heard. But I’m afraid to do it sooner. I’m afraid it will . . . consume me.”
“Mary-Alice is a very tender person,” explained Ezra.
Eileen nodded, squinting at the sky. “I take it back. Forty isn’t too old to have a child. Fifty is too old to have a ten-year-old child.”
When a light rain began to stipple the flagstones, Ezra pushed himself up and clapped his hands. “Who vants a jelly doughnut?” While Alice and Eileen helped them into socks that in theory would keep the ticks at bay, the children shivered, whined, whimpered, cajoled, and threw tragic glances over their shoulders at the departed water, still oscillating and densely pockmarked now with rain. The remote-control police boat bumped up against the aluminum ladder. Foam noodles lay on the surface like snakes sprung from a can. When all the remaining towels, tote bags, tubes of Coppertone and miniature goggles had been gathered up, Alice fell in line behind the others trudging in the manner of weary seafarers up the lawn: Ezra, making his long solitary strides past the redbuds no longer in bloom; Edwin and Kyle, pointing scientifically at something in the harbor; and Olivia and Eileen, on legs identically proportioned and knock-kneed. “See those trees?” Eileen was saying to her daughter, while all around them the rain made a racket like oil frying. “When Mommy was a little girl she helped Ezra plant those trees . . .”
• • •
After dinner they played Scrabble.
Kneeling on her chair, wearing a nightgown that had the Little Mermaid on it, Olivia considered her options for a long, tooth-worrying moment before at last extending an arm across the table and laying out, with maximum suspense: BURD.
“No sweetie,” said Edwin. “It’s B-I-R-D.”
“Oh,” said Olivia, slumping. “I forgot.”
“That’s okay, honey,” said Ezra. “You just had a junior moment.”
Edwin put down FRISBEE. “Sixteen points.”
“No proper names,” said Eileen.
Edwin took back FRISBEE and put down RISIBLE. “Good one,” said Alice. “Thirteen points.”
“What does it say?” asked Kyle.
“It says ‘risible,’ ” said Eileen.
“What’s ‘risible’?” asked Olivia.
“Something funny,” said Alice. “Something silly, or ridiculous, that makes you laugh.” She put down PEONY. “Twelve points.”
Ezra put down CLIT.
Alice covered her mouth with the scorepad. Over her wineglass, Eileen widened her eyes.
Screwing his lips to one side, Ezra