“My daddy used to say you were a bad seed. You took all the luck away from here, Yummy.” Her breath disturbed my baby’s silky curls. “All the life and the luck. You didn’t leave any behind.”
“Cass, that’s not true,” I started to say, but just then Ocean appeared in the doorway, nose in the air, sniffing.
“Phew,” she said, looking straight at Cass. “It stinks in here. Have you been smoking cigarettes again?”
“Ocean, shut up. This is grown-up time. Go away.”
But Ocean ignored me and walked right up to Cass, pausing to examine the two butts in the saucer on the way. “Listen,” she said, frowning over her baby brother’s head. “I don’t think you should smoke around us.”
“Ocean, I mean it!”
“It’s not good for Poo,” she persisted.
“Damn it, Ocean—”
“And you’re a bad influence on my mother.”
“I was the one who was smoking.”
Ocean turned slowly and stared at me, then looked back at Cass. “See?” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “See what you’ve done?”
“That’s it.” I grabbed her under the arm, fed up with her uncontrollable mouth. She cried out, but I dragged her toward the doorway until Cass spoke.
“Ocean, you’re absolutely right.”
I stopped and looked back.
“She’s right, Yummy. I shouldn’t smoke around all of you. I shouldn’t smoke at all. So how about I quit? Okay? Right now.”
She took the pack of cigarettes and held it out to Ocean, who was sniveling and rubbing her armpit. “Here, you take them. Throw them away for me.”
Ocean looked up, vindicated but still a bit scared, not quite sure this wasn’t some nasty grown-up joke with a punch line waiting to happen to her, but I gave her a little push between the shoulder blades, pitching her forward, and she took the cigarette pack. She looked at it like it contained a great and evil power.
“Where should I throw it?” she asked, voice hushed.
“How about in the garbage?” Cass whispered back.
“Okay.” She tiptoed forward, then stopped. “Where’s the garbage?”
“Under the sink,” I whispered. We were all whispering now.
She carefully opened the cabinet and deposited the cigarette pack in the garbage container, then closed it firmly and whirled around. She leaned her small bottom up against the door, breathless, as though the cigarettes might try to escape again, might pound and scrabble against the inside of the cabinet like wild things. She waited, but all was quiet, so she wiped her hands together with a great sense of closure. Task completed. Job well done.
“There,” she said in a normal voice. “I guess that’s that.” She gave us a great, beaming smile. “I’m so proud of both of you!”
“Oh, God, Ocean! Give it a rest.”
“Mommy, you have a bad attitude,” she said, frowning at me. She walked over to Cass and examined her face.
“Hey!” she said. “I saved your life!” Then she skipped off to watch some more TV.
“Want them back?” I asked, but Cass was staring toward the living room. “You want your cigarettes back?” I repeated, getting up and walking to the sink.
“No,” Cass said. “She’s right. I may as well try and quit for good.”
“You don’t have to, you know.”
“Might as well. It won’t kill me.”
So I sat down, but later, after Cass had left and the kids were asleep, I sneaked back into the kitchen and rummaged through the garbage until I found the pack, a little soggy from a wet coffee filter, but smokable still. I pocketed it and walked outside into the frostbitten landscape. The moon was shining against the ice-covered fields, and the windows of the house glowed yellow. Next to the house, Momoko’s garden was nothing but spectral stumps and stalks and mounds of tumular snow, like the site of ancient burials. Skeletal poplars bordered the garden, and beyond, the white fields stretched out forever.
The snow underfoot made a sound like chalk on a blackboard. It had iced over during the day, but that morning it had still been fresh and soft. When Ocean woke, she was enchanted. She ran to the window and announced her immediate intention to go outside and play, but I caught her at the door. She was a tropical child, with no understanding of the bitterness of cold. I took her to the mudroom and stuffed her into an old pink snowsuit I’d found, and she stood there, straining like small sausage. She was whimpering by the time I shoved a knit cap onto her head, pulling it down low to cover her ears. I zipped her up, catching her throat skin in the metal teeth and drawing a speck of blood, which I wiped off with spit on my thumb. I wrapped her neck in a scarf and knotted it, then clipped mittens onto her cuffs. I made her put Baggies on her double-socked feet and step into felt-lined galoshes. I sat back on my heels and looked at her with grim satisfaction. It’s amazing, the routines you remember.
“There. Go on outside.”
Ocean’s face, what I could see of it, twisted in despair. “But I can’t moooooooooove,” she wailed.
Go. Play, girl, play. I shoved her, sniffling, out onto the porch, and she descended the steps like an ancient woman, feeble and tentative. When she reached the ground, her rubberized feet flew out from under her and she fell down hard on her well-padded bottom. She lay there pinkly in the snow, face up, immobile. I watched her from inside the door. Phoenix joined me.
“Yummy, she’s not moving.”
“Mmm.”
“Aren’t you going to help her?”
“She’s all right. She’s dressed for the weather.”
He sighed and then pushed past me. He was wearing his surfing jams. It was zero degrees out. He ran down the steps, hauled his plug-shaped sister to her feet, and brushed her off. “Come on, Puddle,” he said. “Stand up.” He was wearing flip-flops and a T-shirt with a skateboard logo.
Now I lit the soggy cigarette in the dark and shivered. When you’re seven years old, you think know everything. When you’re fourteen, you’re certain you do. When you’re pushing forty, if you’re honest with yourself, you realize that your omniscience is wearing thin. If I’d had any foreknowledge at all, I would never have come back here. Now that I was back, I was feeling as restless as if I’d never left in the first place.
Fourteen. It seemed impossible that I had ever been so young, or so in love. So sure of everything. I exhaled and the acrid smoke mixed with the frozen air. I’d forgotten about Idaho winters, how long and punishing they could be.
elliot
It was not just bad luck that led to Elliot’s transfer to potatoes. Rather it was an ironic twist of fate, and one he found very unpleasant when his boss pointed it out. The conversation took place in Duncan’s office, on the northeast corner of the twenty-third floor of the D&W building. Twenty-three was an auspicious number. The northeast corner balanced Dragon energy with the Tortoise, auguring material wealth.
“Of course we had the offices feng shui–ed,” Duncan explained. “Powerful stuff. Do you know there’s a feng shui index in the Hong Kong stock market?”
Elliot shook his head. Clear water trickled down a craggy rock face located against the far wall of the room, gurgling as it spilled into a limpid pond. The sound was playful