Read Online Double Happiness by Mary-Beth Hughes - Free Book Online

hysterical. She leaps off the porch, lands in the white gravel with a crunch, and speeds through the long grass, off into the low azalea to the Hendersons’s fetid pond. Philip hears the crackle, of course, of his sunglasses beneath her foot. Why even bother to look.
    He makes his way, casually, behind her. Freaking out; hisgirls are on constant high alert. And he is just their slave boy, following along to do their dirty work, to clean up the daily mess: emotionally, mentally (Lucy could barely get through
Chicken Soup for the Soul
without his exegesis), physically—here he comes—and spiritually, his taming influence was evanescent and constant. The Hendersons’s pond was two feet deep. The frogs couldn’t get enough depth to spawn.
    Sweetheart, he calls. Honey bun, he sings out tiredly, Mummy’s fine. He kicks aside the azalea and makes the turn on the path to the pond. Love bug? His forward foot snags, catches him in a tangle of cattails, and there, just ahead, is Lucy facedown in the water and motionless.
    Oh my god, oh my god, and if he could run he certainly would. He thinks, many times, a stuck and flickering reel in his tired head, I’m coming. But it is Edith who pounces on her mother, straddles Lucy’s back like a tiny fierce boxer, yanks her mother’s head, nose, and mouth above the surface, and slams her fist hard between the shoulder blades to strike out the suffocating water.
    And in this way, hair held in her daughter’s fist, neck arched, Lucy chokes on the first renewed breath. She heaves and chokes. Edith lets go. Lucy’s head lurches forward into the water again. Face under, with some strength somewhere, she tries to shake her daughter off her back. But Edith presses a cheek down hard against her mother’s in tandem. If Lucy insists on drowning, Edith is going to too.
    * * *
    Later, Jack Henderson tells Philip he lifted up the phone without thinking, before putting on his glasses to really make sense of the scene from his second story study. He tries to link this reflex to a brief patch with the Navy SEALs after Harvard, but no one is listening. Long before Philip untangled himself, the plaintive squeal of the ambulance was getting louder, coming to them.
    Now Lucy and Edith sit entwined on the Hendersons’s antique rattan recliner. Lucy wears Nonnie Henderson’s tennis sweater over snug pink sweat pants. And Edith is wrapped like an enormous infant in a blue down comforter. The police are long gone. And the emergency team. Lucy fainted, nothing more. She, too, has something vaguely viral, that and forgetting to eat, or sleep. She just fainted, face down, in the water.
    There’d been a hammy round of applause for Edith, whose timing, it turned out, had been miraculous. Now the heroine shivers against her mother’s sporty chest, while Nonnie Henderson fusses with the teapot. Philip isn’t even thinking about suing over this, he still feels a clammy sweat behind the ears, between his shoulder blades, and he’s pretty sure Jack Henderson won’t sue, either. He seems relieved, not litigious. In fact, this might give Gunner a free ride, too. They can all start fresh as neighbors. What a good idea.
    * * *
    For a tiny, happy moment, amnesty and forgiveness seem to glow around the painting as well. Maybe Philip can forget he ever saw it, leave it to his partner to sort out. Who knows who goes in and out of that office? But Fatty is emphatic: Are you crazy? Take it back. Now. This minute.
    Fatty’s one to be talking about minutes. All afternoon and all evening Philip left messages with Jamal, who still hasn’t gone back to college. (A disgrace, his mother is destroying his character.) And when Fatty finally decides to lift up the phone he can’t stop yelling. You’ve lost your senses! Entirely! I mean completely! This is an
enormous
problem, Fatty shouts. And Philip understands.
    The family never criticizes Lucy directly, but