Double Happiness by Mary-Beth Hughes Page B

forced to look at whenever he stops by the office. His partner hung it up right after Philip’s “resignation.” (Don’t ever, ever say thatword out loud, Fatty said.) And there it was—bugged maybe? —each time Philip went in to the office at night to check up. To read things, to watch for new invoices, new proposals, to make sure the equipment was still there, to download new designs onto his laptop. He couldn’t, obviously, take sets of drawings, but who needed to? He’d found the original lease, and the corporation issuance. It was his right. He could take anything he wanted until the corporation was dissolved. With Fatty’s checklist, he’d found it all, easily. His partner is an idiot who doesn’t know what to hide. For a long time, the dope didn’t even get his own lawyer. When Fatty said, don’t worry, he’d act as “mediator” for the breakup, Philip’s partner failed to understand that was just a colloquial expression.
    And the painting. That strange blob on the wall reminded him of why it was good to be doing what he was doing. What people got famous for these days. Fame used to mean something. But the artist wife wasn’t rich and she wasn’t pretty, and apparently, Lucy whispered, she was having a rough time getting pregnant. Good thing she has her art, Lucy laughed, but only a little because Edith’s conception hadn’t been all that easy.
    Fuck, Lucy.
    What?
    You know what.
    But she doesn’t, and he doesn’t either, entirely. Though he suspects this is a big problem and needs to get a hold of Fattyright away for damage control. Just wrap it up. Don’t break it whatever you do.
    Me? Break it?
    Yes, you, Miss Two Left Hands. Just put it down. Find me the phone.
    That painting, that blob, was worth twenty thousand at least. He’d attended the wife’s last opening, when things were still cordial, when she wore a support stocking as a dress and refused to speak English. He remembered all the nonsense about the
personal
painting, something too intimate to be sold. That small blue mess had required safekeeping from all the waving checkbooks. And sure enough there it was in Lucy’s unreliable grasp. Maybe if Philip left right away, he could return it to the office wall before anyone was the wiser. Lucy! Wake up! Go, go, go!
    All the happy flush gone, Lucy sets the painting down then slinks out into the long grass following Gunner’s trail. He notices her posture isn’t all it once was and that makes him sad on top of everything else.
    Daddy, what’s Mummy doing?
    She’s getting the phone, princess.
    The phone is in the pond?
    Yes, darling, that’s where Gunner put it.
    Oh, Gunner.
    Umm. Let me see you. Did you sleep in those sunglasses? Philip thinks the left side stem looks bent. Edith’s crumpled dress, the haywire sunglasses, her high blonde braids frayed like rope. Sweetie, what have you done with yourself?
    Maybe Mummy needs some help? Edith sticks out a shockingly filthy finger, as if she, too, has been raiding the Hendersons’s garbage. She plunges this brownish finger behind the tilted lens of Philip’s sunglasses and rubs vigorously.
    Stop! Stop!
    The finger freezes. Her whole body freezes in its gentle collapse against the door frame. Philip takes a moment to observe: if she continues this way she’ll end up like her mother, stooped and prone to excess.
    Give me your hand, he says, and feels good about the tone: light, but in command. He’ll have her dimpled fist away from the infection and dipped in something antibacterial in no time. He’ll fix her hair and her dress while he’s at it. But just as he’s lifting himself out of the captain’s chair, Edith shrieks, finger ricocheting away from her—now Philip can see—
pustulant
eye. His three-hundred-dollar sunglasses fly into the gravel.
    Mummy’s drowning! Mummy’s drowning! Edith is