MRS. MOCK CARRIED, WITH a little difficulty, the flat of zinnias to the patio area behind the owner’s unit. There was a sliding glass door that she could push open with her foot, but she had forgotten first to open the screen, and after standing there indecisively for a few moments, staring out into the unsparing sunlight and allowing the centrally conditioned air of the owner’s unit to escape into the desert, she set the flat down on the glass dinette table to open the screen and then returned for it, to carry it without further incident onto the patio area where her small garden plot was located. There. In the hot, dry air she felt her skin clench up immediately and classified the feeling as bracing. She could hear the sound of water slapping concrete and knew that Mr. Mock was indulging in one of his peculiarly meaningless morning rituals, the hosing down of the deck surrounding the heated swimming pool. As eggs fried, coffee brewed, and morning papers unfurled across the Las Vegas region, at least for those who lived and worked here and maintained normal schedules, as Mrs. Mock chivied her lovely, soft-spoken, unutterably stupid housekeeping staff into action, Mr. Mock could be found tightening lightbulbs in the breezeway, or testing the ballpoint pens at the front desk in the office, or hosing down the deck surrounding the heated swimming pool, whose otherwise still waters gurgled occasionally as they incorporated hose water runoff. Mrs. Mock affixed pads to her knees and donned work gloves, preparing to transplant the zinnias to her mostly luckless garden plot. The zinnias were in fact replacing an earlier, failed attempt at cultivating some rather temperamental ageratum. As she fitted the last surprisingly flexible and pain-free finger into a glove, the Trimline phone rang in the living room. The sound of the hose ceased immediately.
She heard, “Telephone!”
At least she wasn’t on her knees yet.
She’d chosen a tropical theme for the designer living room, uncomfortable with the locally dominant southwestern look. She pretended to herself that she had been motivated by boredom with the latter style’s austerity, but it was actually fear of its sterility, an eroded look that seemed an unpersuasive attempt to prepare her for her death. Anyway, she liked things that grew, not things that blew away or were bleached and scoured down to nothing in swirling storms of sand.
She thought of Beau Geste; what a fine picture that was.
So a living room in cool blues and greens, with rattan and cane furniture covered with floral patterned fabrics, and plenty of plants, and a big aquarium that had been full of tropical fish, until they died. The room sat cool and still behind the walls of glass that divided it from the desert, like the diorama of a remote ecology. It had been her idea, her decision, 100 percent. Mr. Mock didn’t care. He walked about the room, sat down in its chairs, drank bourbon highballs and watched television and read his newspaper in it. He himself looked somewhat out of place, dressed in the blown-out clothing of a backpacker on an extended journey. The heavy, dark garments that had constituted his East Coast wardrobe lined the walk-in closet, useless. If he insisted on going around like a vagrant or a hobo in cut-off chinos and a frayed old dress shirt with the tail hanging out, that was none of her concern.
She had a picture in her mind of Mr. Dick Taranutz, who lived across the highway with his adorable if somewhat strident second wife Minnie and who wore crisp khakis and a fresh polo shirt even when washing his Cadillac. He’d stop the hose to wave across the lanes of traffic when he saw her. When he dressed to take Minnie out to dinner, he looked like something that stepped from the pages of a storybook. That was what she meant by active maturity.
She passed the color console on which sat framed portraits of Guy and Ernest. She sensed that this was one of her boys calling. Which troublemaker would it be? She was a pleasant, handsome woman in her mid-sixties who sometimes caught herself trying on the word widow as a term of self-description. She enjoyed dancing and dining out. A night at the pictures was always appreciated. She kept herself as busy as she could under the circumstances, but she couldn’t help feeling sometimes as if there were a millstone tied around her neck. There were evenings when she would look across the Key lime tiles that divided the all-electric kitchen from the designer living room and see the ill-clad figure sitting in the shifting light of the television, hear the faint clink of ice cubes, and grow full with despair.
“Ma.”
“Why, Guy. What a nice surprise to hear from you.”
“I know it’s been a while.”
“Oh, don’t you worry. We’re out so much I often wonder if we don’t miss more calls than we receive.”
“All right.”
“I was even thinking that maybe we should get ourselves an answering machine.”
“That might be good, yeah. We have one at the institute.”
“Oh, your institute. And how is that going?” She wanted to sound interested because Guy was very protective of his peculiar interests, bullying and evangelical. She did not like being bullied by Guy.
“It’s going fine, Ma.”
“I’m so glad. I think it’s good that you have that, to occupy you between jobs.”
There was a slight pause. “The institute’s enough of a job, as it is.”
“Oh, I’m sure it keeps you very busy.”
“It does. You’d be surprised.”
“Not at all. I do wonder, though.” She trailed off.
“Yes?”
“Have you given some thought to a more conventional job?”
“Conventional jobs seem to take a dislike to me, Ma. It’s not like I haven’t tried.”
“Oh, well. You may be right. I certainly don’t want to argue with you.”
“Right now I’m really just trying to concentrate on the institute.”
“Hmm. Well, honestly, I just don’t see how a bunch of ex-athletes sitting around hammering away at a typewriter are going to convince anyone of anything.”
“It’s not you we’re trying to convince, Ma.”
“Well, if not me, then who? I certainly count myself among those who believe football players should spend their time outdoors knocking one another down, not cramped in a closet with their big hands all over a little Italian typewriter. I say let the football players play football. Nobody forces them to do it. And it’s been shown to build character.”
Her son’s controlled annoyance was tangible across the miles separating them. She had a picture in her mind of Guy holding the receiver away from his head and staring at it scornfully. It grieved her that he scorned her opinions. She decided she would continue to put her best foot forward with her younger son.
“Guy?” she said. Her voice sounded sharper than she’d intended.
“Yeah, Ma.”
“Are you there?”
“Yes, Ma.”
“So how is your lovely friend?” Mrs. Mock couldn’t bring herself, for some reason, to call a grown woman Randi.
“Randi’s fine. She’s laying out a garden.”
“It’s a little late for annuals, wouldn’t you say?” Mrs. Mock felt a twinge of guilt, given her own procrastination in the garden this year. But she had sent some perfectly wonderful heirloom seeds to Guy’s lady friend when she’d heard that the two of them were returning to California and it grieved her that the woman was going to plant them for naught.
“She’s actually not planting the flowers, Ma. She’s trying for tomatoes.”
“Tomatoes!” Mrs. Mock didn’t quite know how to respond to that. The two fell silent, and the line was filled with the ghostly whistling sounds of all the blasted land that lay vacantly between them.