Killer Pancake

Mesmerized by the music, I crossed to the windows looking out on the street and gazed at the Routts’ place. To build the dwelling, the local Habitat for Humanity had relied on funds and workers from our parish, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. The house was a simple two-story affair with inexpensive wood paneling, a tiny deck, and a room with jalousie windows off the right side. Church workers had repeatedly graded the driveway during Aspen Meadow’s muddy spring. The yard was covered with freshly excavated dirt. Red clay over the septic tank was as raw as a wound. Along the sidewalk, a stand of purple fireweed had somehow survived the construction. Unlike several of our neighbors, I’d welcomed the Routts, even if they were poor. I’d enjoyed being the church person assigned with coordinating two weeks of dinners sent in during the move and unpacking. Although I’d never met the grandfather, Dusty and her mother, Sally, had been profoundly thankful. I liked them. And at the moment I was even jealous of them: The saxophone music was coming out of open windows, something I could have only when I was home.

Maybe Tom would agree to keeping the upper-story windows ajar, at least for the summer. Even if I regretted marrying the Jerk, shouldn’t I be able at least to get a summer breeze? My ex was a wimpy, jealous, temper-tantrum thrower who had given me black eyes more times than I cared to remember. But of one thing I was sure—John Richard Korman would never scale an exterior wall to get in a window.

Downstairs, the saxophone music was louder. I flopped into a wingchair and listened to the music, taking care not to look at the couch where Julian and Claire had embraced only a few hours before. Where was Arch? I checked the kitchen, where a note in his handwriting was taped on my computer screen: Todd and I came back & now we’re doing tie-dying back at his house, just like they did in the sixties. Back around 5. Have fun today, Mom.

Arch, the most serious thirteen-year-old on the planet, always hoped I had fun. It was good he wasn’t here. I didn’t want him asking forty-five questions about Julian or Claire before I had any information. Besides, with his new activity, Arch was well occupied. At his age, my son developed enthusiasms on a biannual basis, and I had learned to go with whatever was the current wave. This had not always been the case. When he’d become involved in role-playing games two years ago, I was convinced one of us was going to end up institutionalized. When he finally abandoned constructing paper dungeons and fictional dragons, he and his friend Todd Druckman had switched to elaborate trivia quizzes. For months, Guinness books of records had spilled off every available shelf. Although Arch’s ability to spout interesting facts still had not positively affected his school performance, the trivia obsession had eventually lost its lure when Todd had refused to answer one more question about Evel Knievel. Then Arch had renewed his interest in magic. He’d been intensely serious about magic all last summer. But the magic phase had been quickly followed by a C. S. Lewis phase, complete with a handmade model of the Dawn Treader.

Now Arch was fascinated by the sixties. Posters of Eugene McCarthy and Malcolm X decorated his bedroom. The walls reverberated with the sound of the Beatles and Rolling Stones. My general attitude toward these hobby-passions was that as long as they were neither extravagantly expensive nor physically dangerous, they were okay. At least he wasn’t into gangs.

Still, I sighed. I suddenly missed him intensely, and Tom, and Julian. And I didn’t even mind solitude as much as I minded a lack of information. Why didn’t somebody call to tell me how Julian was? I took a deep breath to steady myself.

Loneliness frequently brought my ex-husband to mind. I remembered the many nights I’d waited for him. Most of the time, instead of being in the delivery room with a mother-to-be, he’d been with a waitress, or a nurse, or someone he’d just met…. Marla, who’d stayed married to John Richard Korman six years less than I, told me she’d timed the trip home from the hospital to thirty-eight minutes. Anything over that, and she knew she might as well go to bed.

Speaking of Marla, she should be showing up any moment. I filled the espresso machine with coffee and water. Because Marla was plugged into every gossip network in Furman County, she heard news at the speed of sound. If it was bad news, she heard it at the speed of light. What had happened to Claire was extra-bad news, though. Incredibly, my doorbell and telephone remained resolutely silent. I poured the dark espresso over ice cubes and milk, then dialed Marla’s number. No answer.