Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,49
“Last summer, at sleepaway camp—”
Dennis started laughing. He knew the story: she’d had some spotting, so a counselor gave her a sanitary pad and explained how to use it, and Margo was so embarrassed that she’d pretended to be sick during swim time for three days. But the spotting went away as quickly as it had come, so the camp counselor explained about the hymen and said she’d probably torn it horseback riding. Margo had chronicled the whole icky affair in a letter marked FOR MOM’S EYES ONLY. When I got to the part about horseback riding, I was so relieved that I cried.
The real deal had arrived four months later, in the bathroom before school. I’d declared it a mental health day and we’d fixed a picnic lunch and gone to Dennis’s parents’ house to lie by the pool.
When he was done laughing, Dennis said, “She’s had it for a little while.” He covered my hand with his own. I felt bad for him, crammed into the little desk. I felt grateful for him.
“I can’t say with certainty that this is the best thing for your daughter,” said Mr. Oxley. “We just want to make you aware that promotion is an option.”
I was sorry he wouldn’t be Margo’s sixth-grade teacher, and her seventh-grade teacher, and so on. He went on to discuss Margo’s math skills, which though adequate had not developed at the rate of her reading or her body. Tutoring was an option. During this part of the conversation, I daydreamed of stepping out of the classroom to join my daughter in the sunlight.
Dennis had given notice in January of that year, while we were still paying off Christmas. On the evening of his last day of work, I’d found him in the backyard, sitting in one of the scooped rubber swings of Margo’s jungle gym. It was raining lightly. His shoes and socks and necktie lay on the grass and his shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest. His hair rose from his head at odd angles, as if he’d rubbed it around without smoothing it back into place. The sight of my husband disheveled was not rare, but the sight of him downhearted was. My impulse was to return to the house. I’m not proud of it, but there’s something about weakness—even momentary weakness—that hardens my heart. Get up, I wanted to say. Occupy yourself. We’re having fillet of sole for dinner. Dennis lifted his arms, palms out. A different man might have meant, Why me? But I knew that Dennis, who had never liked practicing law, not even right out of school, meant, What now? On the bright side, there were a dozen possibilities; on the downside, there were a dozen possibilities. We’d hoped Dennis would have a new job before the old one ended, but the search had taken longer than we’d anticipated, so we were poised to subsist on his year-end bonus and our meager savings, crossing our fingers. Dennis’s mother had recommended that I take a position as a teller at the bank where his father worked. She’d made the recommendation even though she and I both knew she disapproved. I found the gesture touching. I hadn’t held a job since moving to Miami.
I sat in the swing beside Dennis. Water soaked through the seat of my slacks. He said, “Babe, I have some concerns.”
“I know you do.”
He’d dug the sandpit himself. He’d carved away the grass and dry black dirt and shoveled in fifty gallons of glinting white sand. He’d secured each knuckle of the jungle gym with epoxy. Now, he wiped rain from his face and pushed against the ground to start swinging. I watched his back as he rose. The rain had soaked through the fabric of his button-down, and through it I could see the outline of his undershirt. When he drew back, I could see the round caps of his knees through his wet trousers, and the delicate bluish hollows of his pale ankles. As for his face, it wasn’t grim exactly, but I could tell he was thinking hard and trying not to think, and that he was glad I was there, sitting next to him in the rain, and that he hoped I’d swing, so there wouldn’t be any pressure to tell the story of the day. So I swung a little, but ended up circling above the pit, toeing the sand to keep out of Dennis’s way.