The Shark Curtain - Chris Scofield

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good fortune from bad, or Jane Russell from Frog Boy. We’re all the same in His eyes, inside and out. All born of the same cosmic gasses, Einstein’s star stuff,” she points at the book, “slime, ether, clusters of cells.” Jamie leans closer and breathes wine stink in my face; usually she smells like Doublemint gum. “Between you and me,” she whispers loudly, “I think Mary and Joseph are crap. The Old Testament too. I’d rather be related to a flatworm.”

      “I thought we were,” Dad says. “Unless you’ve given up evolution for something more romantic.” He’s in a good mood again.

      The four of us sit quietly together for a while until Dad looks at his watch then leaves the table. A minute later he returns with Jamie’s sweater and satchel.

      “Subtle,” she says, scooting her chair back. “Guess I’ve worn out my welcome, huh? Well, somebody had to corrupt the kids, so why not their favorite aunt?”

      “Their only aunt,” Dad says, holding out A Child Is Born. “I’m not throwing you out, James. You said you needed to leave before nine, remember? And you’re still an hour from home.”

      “Yeah, I forgot. I was having such a good time.”

      “Don’t leave your book behind.”

      “Keep it for a while. You know, in that fan of magazines on the coffee table: Time, McCall’s, Redbook, explicit photographs of fetuses in utero, Sports Illustrated.”

      “No thanks,” Dad smiles.

      I touch his arm. “Can’t we borrow it?”

      “It isn’t really about s-e-x, Paul. It’s about the wonder of life. All life.”

      “You don’t have kids, James. Everything is about s-e-x when you have kids.” He holds out her sweater while she threads her arms through its sleeves. “You okay to drive home?”

      She hiccups. “I’m fine. I’m subbing for American Poetry first thing in the morning. Thank goodness it’s community college and freshman level.”

      “Dad . . .”

      He nearly throws the book at me. “All right already. I don’t want to make it a bigger thing than it is.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry, kiddo, I’m tired.”

      Mom gives her sister a hug. When she says something in (what I think is) Romanian, they hug even harder. It’s their secret language.

      “Thanks for coming,” Mom says in English.

      “Thank you. Everything was yummy.” When Mrs. Wiggins pushes in to sniff Jamie’s pant leg, the old dog wobbles and nearly tips over again. “Poor Wanda Wiggins. I hope she’s staying home tomorrow.”

      “Lily wants her to come,” Mom says.

      Jamie looks surprised.

      “We’ll see,” says Dad.

      I still hold the ribbon Jamie made me. She’s smart but Mom’s a better artist.

       Chapter 3

       Peace Lake

      I leave the ribbon on the dining room table that night; Jamie made it for me so I can’t throw it away. The glitter twinkles, the satin shines. The next morning, when Lauren asks if she can have it, I say yes, but Mom says absolutely not, and sticks it in the china cabinet.

      We always stop at Elmer’s Pancake House on the way to Peace Lake, and sit in a booth by the window to keep an eye on Mrs. Wiggins. This year she’s too sick to climb in the front seat, or hang her head out the window, so I don’t see her over Dad’s shoulder when he raises his juice glass in a toast.

      “To the master swimmer!” he announces, then winks at me. The people behind us look over their shoulders. I raise my glass too, only my arm’s heavy, like it was at the lake the other day, and I put it down right away.

      Mom looks at me. “You already full?” She’s worried that Lauren and I won’t eat enough of the chocolate chip pancakes, fresh bananas, three strips of bacon, and OJ we each ordered. I eat most of it but when I wrap my bacon in a paper napkin to give to Mrs. Wiggins, Mom says no. “It’s too hard on her stomach, Lily.”

      Dad didn’t want to bring her, but Lauren and I whined until he gave in. I whined more because Mrs. Wiggins is my best friend, even more than Judy. Dad loves the old dog too; he gave her to Mom on their first Christmas together. I felt terrible when he lifted her in the car this morning and she groaned with pain.

      In fact, the longer I sit beside her in the back of the car, the guiltier I feel.

      Dad looks at me in the rearview mirror and smiles. “Bet you can’t wait to get your feet wet, huh?”

      Yes. No. “How much longer?” I miss my watch.

      “About forty minutes.” He clears his throat. “How’s the pooch back there?” Lying between Lauren and me, her giant head is in my lap; my legs are numb.

      “Should we pull over so she can wet?” Mom doesn’t like us to say “pee.” She waves her cigarette around the car. It almost covers the bad smell coming from Mrs. Wiggins and her blanket which Mom washes every week, “in its own load.”

      “No, no, keep going!” Lauren answers.

      Mrs. Wiggins doesn’t want to smell bad. It embarrasses her. She turns a big brown bloodshot eye at me and moans.

      * * *

      “Did I ever tell you kids how your mother and I fell in love?”

      “Yes,” Lauren pretends to be disgusted, “one hundred billion times.”

      I start: “Mom was a bathing beauty . . .”

      Lauren loves this part. She tells everyone that our mother is the most beautiful mother in Portland, Oregon.

      “That’s right,” Dad says. “At a photo shoot at Rooster Rock, modeling swimsuits for Jantzen swimwear. I hadn’t seen her in years. Who would have guessed she didn’t know how to swim? She was made to wear a Jantzen!”

      Mom whacks him on the shoulder with a rolled-up magazine. “You’re not exactly Johnny Weissmuller!” she laughs.

      Johnny Weissmuller?

      “You know, Tarzan? He won five gold medals, girls. Anyway,” Mom explains, “it was the polio scare. Everyone thought that swimming in a lake, even in a pool, could make you sick. You know, Frieda was an excellent swimmer in her day too, and—”

      “Mom tripped over you. Right?” Lauren is eager to get on with the story.

      “Right, she didn’t see me. She fell for me all right,” Daddy says. “Flat on her face!”

      Lauren laughs.

      “Just call me Grace,” Mom and I say simultaneously.

      Mrs. Wiggins moans.

      * * *

      Lauren colors, while I listen to the usual joking our parents do on car trips: Mom teases how she should have married “that good-looking Barton boy,” who became head of surgery at St. Francis Memorial Hospital, rather than a “skinny knucklehead.” Dad teases how he never had a girlfriend until he met Mom, or “maybe one, but she was blond and went to Hollywood”; he’s forgotten her name. “Marilyn-something, or something-Mansfield maybe,” he wasn’t sure. He had a French pen pal too, “one of the Bardots, I think,” but they lost touch over the years.

      Mom and Jamie rarely talk about growing up in Romania during the war, or what happened to their parents when the girls were sent to live at a Christian school in Bulgaria. Mom will sometimes discuss how Frieda’s church brought them to Portland, and how she and Jamie lived with several families when they got here, even about how they took elocution

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