Deborah let the matter pass without comment, but the girl’s brazen attitude netted her a black mark in Deborah’s eyes. Greg took their welcome for granted, offering no explanation of why they’d come or how long they meant to stay. Deborah offered them the guest room, but he and Shelly declined. They preferred to sleep in the bus, which they parked out behind the garage.
The vehicle was little more than a shell. They’d removed all the seats and outfitted the interior with beds, a low table and chairs, and a camp stove, though Shelly never lifted a hand when it came to meals. They used a milk crate to hold canned and dried goods and had cardboard boxes for everything else. Shawn slept on a tatty futon behind the driver’s seat while Greg and Shelly occupied a double-bed mattress at the rear. An Indian-print bedspread was hung between the two beds for privacy. The bus was left close enough to the pool house that the three could use the toilet and shower out there, not that any of them ever bathed as far as Deborah could tell.
They hadn’t been in the house five minutes before the little boy had peeled off his clothes and was running around naked. Deborah knew better than to raise an objection because Shelly was already warbling on about how our bodies were so precious and nothing to be ashamed of. Deborah was appalled. Greg had gone off to college, clean-cut and polite, and here he was back again, promoting this trashy little upstart whose values were equivalent to a slap in the face.
At the first opportunity, Deborah excused herself, went up to the master bedroom, and called Patrick in Los Angeles. He was a sportswear manufacturer and he spent Tuesday morning through Friday afternoon at his plant in Downey. She didn’t dare let him come home for the weekend without telling him what was going on. He listened to her description of Shelly, patient and bemused. He made sympathetic noises, but she could tell he thought she was exaggerating.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” she sang.
Patrick’s reaction to Shelly was just as swift as hers. He was more analytical than Deborah, less intuitive, but just as quick to recoil. At forty-eight, he had wiry hair, layered gray and white, cut short, wavy over his ears where the hair was slightly longer. His eyes were brown, his eyebrows a washed-out gray. He was color-blind, so Deborah selected his clothes. His everyday attire was chinos and sport coats that she kept in a range of pale browns and grays. His shirts were a crisp white, open at the collar since he refused to wear ties except on the most formal occasions. He was slim and kept fit doing five-mile runs when he was home on weekends. Deborah was four years younger, a honey-blond wash concealing the natural gray. Like Patrick, she was brown-eyed and slender. The two made a handsome pair, like an advertisement for graceful aging. They played golf together on weekends and the occasional tennis doubles match at the country club.
Patrick tolerated “the bus people,” as he referred to them, for three days, and he was on the verge of telling them they’d have to move on when Greg announced that Shelly was five months pregnant, expecting in early August, and they needed a place to stay. For one fleeting moment, Deborah wondered if he was telling the truth. Shelly was petite, so slight and bony it was hard to picture her giving birth to a full-term infant. Deborah studied her discreetly. She looked thick through the middle, but that was the sole indication that she was with child. Neither of them seemed embarrassed at her condition and there was no talk of getting married.
Shelly used the occasion to air her views about childbirth. She didn’t believe in doctors or hospitals. Childbirth was a natural process and didn’t require the services of Western medicine, which was dominated by rich white men whose only goal was to undermine a woman’s trust in her body and the freedom to control what happened to it.
That night, Patrick and Deborah had the first quarrel they’d had in years.
Deborah said, “We can’t ask them to leave. You heard Greg. They don’t have anyplace else to stay.”
“I don’t give a shit. He got himself into this and he can get himself out. What the hell’s the matter with him? The girl’s an idiot and I won’t put up with her, pregnant or not. Is he out of his mind?”
Deborah gestured to him to keep his voice down even though Greg, Shelly, and the boy had retired to the bus. “You know if we kick her out, he’ll go, too.”
“Good. The sooner the better.”
“She’ll have that baby in a cornfield.”
“If that’s what she wants, let her do it. She’s in for a rude awakening. Wait ’til she goes into labor and then let’s hear about the joys of natural childbirth.”
“She’s already had one child. I don’t see how the process could come as any big surprise.”
Deborah let Patrick rant and rave until he ran out of steam, and then she prevailed. She was just as repelled as he was, but this would be their first (and perhaps their only) grandchild. What good would it do to voice their outrage and disappointment when it wouldn’t change a thing?
Two weeks passed before Deborah found a moment alone with her son. She’d been working in the kitchen, putting together an eggplant Parmesan that would probably go untouched. Shelly was a vegetarian. Deborah had originally offered to make a tuna casserole, remembering how much Greg had liked them as a child.
Shawn licked his lips, rubbed his tummy, and said, “Yum!”
Shelly put a reproving hand on his shoulder and said, “No, thank you. We don’t believe any living creature should have to die so we can eat.”
As soon as they left the kitchen, Deborah repeated the sentiment aloud, mimicking her tone. Pious twit! Fortunately, they’d planted Japanese eggplant in the vegetable garden. Deborah had gone out and picked half a dozen, which she’d sliced, salted, and allowed to drain.
With Patrick gone the better part of the week, Deborah was accustomed to cooking for herself and she’d had to wrack her brain coming up with meatless meals in deference to Shelly’s moral stance. Deborah sprinkled cheese on top of the casserole and placed it in the refrigerator until it was time to bake it. Washing her hands, she peered out the kitchen window and spotted Greg and Shawn in the backyard. She knocked on the glass, waved to them, and the next thing she knew, the back door opened and in they came.
Greg said, “We’re in exile for the afternoon. Shelly’s tired and needs a nap.”
“I’m happy to have the company. Have a seat,” she said.
Greg was clueless when it came to entertaining Shawn. On the occasions when he was left in charge of the boy, he usually brought him into the house and left it up to his mother to provide him with paper and colored pencils or the Tinkertoys she’d had stored in the attic since Greg was his age.
Deborah had wanted to talk to him and now that she had the chance, she wasn’t sure how to go about it. She hardly knew what to make of him these days. He was tall, slim, and fair-haired, a younger version of his dad. He’d been a good-hearted kid with an easy disposition. He’d made A’s all through school though the good grades hadn’t come easily for him. Because he struggled so hard, she thought his achievements had been meaningful to him. Perhaps he’d only excelled out of a desire to please his parents. Until he left for college, there was no sign of rebellion or defiance. He wasn’t oppositional and there was nothing in his behavior to suggest he was disenchanted with the life his parents had provided.
Shelly was a revelation. Clearly, this girl embodied attitudes he’d been harboring for years without the means, or perhaps the courage, to express them. Bringing her home, he was sending a message: This is what I want and what I admire. Deborah could only hope he’d realize how far off track he was. She’d tried to be accepting of Shelly, for his sake if nothing else, but everything about the girl was repugnant.