Page 44 - WTP Vol. VIII#2

Claudia Steele lifted her three-year-old brother so that he could reach the top of the vine. When she set him down, he ran off holding high a heavy bunch of dusty, dark blue grapes and calling out to the three other little kids gamboling under the sprinkler.
Counting herself, there were eight children scattered around the yard, four from each family. Claudia, 12, was the oldest. She stayed near the arbor, though
she found the sweet smell of the ripe fruit slightly sickening. She could never bring herself to eat grapes right off the vine. Their flesh warmed by the sun, they seemed too much like living tissue. But from
the arbor, she could observe the whole scene of
her family and the Coreys at their annual Fourth of July picnic: the four parents loosely grouped in the dappled shade of an apple tree. Louise Corey tend- ing chicken and steaks smoking on a grill. Jim Corey, the Steeles’ family doctor, was seated at the picnic table. Stephen Steele was rummaging in an ice chest, and her mother, Mary Ann Steele—Macy to almost everyone—stood between the men. Claudia could tell by the tilt of her head and the way Jim was leaning forward on his elbows that her mother was listening to something he was saying.
The coppery-green iridescence of a fat Japanese beetle eating a grape leaf caught Claudia’s eye. She gently plucked the insect off the leaf and deposited it on her wrist. While she looked around at every- one, she could feel the beetle’s prickly legs walk-
ing slowly up her bare arm. Claudia liked watching grown-ups. There was something closed about them that drew her, and especially her parents with the Coreys. She was shy and had only one close friend, Christine, who was away for the summer. Except
for Christine, Claudia was comfortable only with younger children, whom she could boss or pamper, and adults.
Claudia spent a fair amount of time around these particular adults. They rarely shooed her away, as they often did the other children. They knew Claudia could be relied upon to be quiet while they talked and to fade to the edges of a scene when their laughter grew loud and clannish or when their words became tightly clipped or their voices began to purr at one another. Sometimes she made clever remarks that amused them, and she was never rowdy or squirmy like the younger children, never whiny or insistent. She was a grown-up’s kind of child, self-possessed, alert, independent, rather like a cat, only with a
greater interest in what her masters were about than cats usually have.
“Claudia,” Louise Corey was calling to her. “Get those kids dried off, would you? Food’ll be ready soon.”
She had been trying to keep very still so the beetle wouldn’t fly off before it reached her shoulder, but as usual, Claudia moved to obey instantly, even though it meant losing the beetle. But her obedience was not mere cooperation or good-naturedness. She oper- ated like a sure-footed Indian hunting in the for-
est, advancing with sharpened senses through the
tall trees and tangled underbrush as if she were an organic part of it, and her rewards were a hunter’s rewards, sustenance and survival. On the porch, Claudia passed her sister Valerie and Dan Corey. They had finished their assignment of shucking corn and were busy counting sparklers and planning how few they could get away with giving the little kids before they’d protest and the grown-ups would interfere.
Claudia took the corn into the house. She put it in the large pot of water her mother had left on the stove and turned up the heat under it. She scooped a mouthful of chocolate icing off the cake with her thumb and smoothed the spot over with a wet spoon. Her mother made great chocolate icing, velvety thick and not too sweet. “Chocolate should be allowed to be itself,” she had said to Claudia that morning as
the girl slowly stirred two melting squares of baker’s chocolate in a double boiler. “You don’t want it over- powered by sugar.” Then Macy had reached across her daughter’s arm to add two drops of almond ex- tract to the pot. “My secret ingredient,” she said. “Like a drop of expensive perfume behind the knees of a beautiful woman.”
Claudia ran her tongue under her thumbnail to re- trieve a last smudge of icing. She guessed her mother was probably wearing her Chanel #5 behind her knees today. She looked so beautiful in her white sundress. It showed off her tan. Claudia was embarrassed to note that the dress also showed her unshaven underarms. She’d once told Claudia it was the style in Europe and that Claudia’s father thought it was sexy.
Claudia didn’t like knowing her father said such things. She preferred him on the periphery of the family. Since he was away all day and worked some evenings and Saturdays, that was his usual position. It wasn’t that Claudia disliked her father. She actually
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Independence Day
noelle SiCKelS