Double Happiness by Mary-Beth Hughes Page A

an ROTC recruit, and escorted to the Student Life Office. A small tired man asked to see Jamal’s identification. Jamal, a spoiled boy, really a worry to his mother, chuckled. His birthday was soon. The man with the sad gray eyes had been hired by his friends to tease him.
    The man asked again. Jamal offered a defunct Blockbuster Video card, playing along. Since that day the college has been very accommodating. There’s even an offer on the table to overlook a poor showing in macroeconomics. A new beginning. His parents have been told that Jamal was very, very helpful the two weeks he was detained. Something that surprises them, that gives them a peculiar disembodied hope, like a dream under sedation. But nothing can shake the disturbance of the strange interlude— it’s physical now, Fatty says, in the esophagus, he can’t swallow— in which their deeply unfocused, undisciplined boy was held just in case he might participate in something intricately organized.
    Can’t swallow. That’s what Fatty says every time Philip calls. He needs to call Fatty today. He will. And now it looks likeEdith has fallen asleep. And if he soaks the sunglasses in ammonia, it will clean them better than new. What was he worried about? He’s sorry. And moves closer to his wife and child. Curls over them on the wooden bench. Should he fetch some water?
    Lucy shakes her head. Right away Philip can tell Edith knows, subconsciously, that her father is on the job. All difficulties are behind them, left on shore. Her heaving shoulders— tiny fluttering tips of angel’s wings—have slowed to a gentle rise and fall. A sleeping girl in her mother’s lap. Lucy closes her eyes like she might doze now as well, her hand cups lightly over the lacy bow of Edith’s dress. She tips her own face up into the breeze. Philip will find some water anyway, just in case.
    Back at the house, Lucy gently pries Edith, fast asleep, from beneath the seat belt. She slings their daughter over one shoulder, smiles to Philip to communicate the delicious heaviness of their delicate child. But the heat pouring from Edith’s skin worries her, cancels the smile. Lucy fans Edith with her free hand, elbows open the screen door, and makes it inside. Philip lets Gunner go. Gunner circles up to bump against the screen door then back down and around until his hind side disappears into the Hendersons’s azalea. Philip decides to assess the newspaper after all, on the cool of the porch.
    Minutes later, Lucy has changed her clothes. I have a present for
you
, she smiles. She rocks one hip against the screen door,makes it squeak. Her linen pants, cropped to reveal thin ankles, are a spider web of wrinkles from being crammed into a hat case. But the color is as pale as the blue of her eyes and in this springtime afternoon light her skin looks soft and pretty. Pretty girl, Philip hums. Come ’ere pretty girl, and hollows out his lap, moves the paper to the floor.
    Right here, you. He eases off his reading glasses and glances around for the case. Lucy stays where she is, both hands, he notices, tucked behind her back. Whatcha got there, vixen-bride?
    A present.
    A present, eh? Well, check out this present. In truth, there isn’t much for her to check out, but he shifts around as if there is and she laughs and looks over her shoulder into the house, blushes, and shrugs. The shrug that says Edith will sleep fitfully and be upon them. By Philip’s reckoning Edith has been sleeping fitfully for a decade now.
    He nods, grins, Whatcha got? And crosses his legs slowly, tightly, sexily, he thinks, and Lucy teeters in the doorway, pink with pleasure. They can make each other happy this way, just making believe. Well?
    This. Lucy tugs at something in a big Gristedes bag. Don’t freak out, she says.
    Who’s freaking out? But then he spots what she has in her hand. It’s the painting! That weird, sick painting he’s