“I’d better go home,” she said suddenly, almost robotically. “The Afrikaner will be wondering where I got to.”
The Afrikaner was her husband, Lawrence Beukes, who had emigrated from Cape Town before I was born. At seventy, Larry Beukes was one of the most powerfully built men I knew, a former weight lifter with the sculpted arms and vein-threaded neck of a circus strongman. Being huge was his primary professional responsibility. He had made his money on a series of gyms he’d opened in the seventies, just as the oiled, mind-boggling mass of Arnold Schwarzenegger was muscling its way into the public consciousness. Larry and Arnie had once both appeared in the same calendar. Larry was February and flexed in the snow, wearing nothing but a tight black hammock for his nuts. Arnie was June and stood glistening on the beach, a girl in a bikini perched on each gargantuan arm.
Shelly darted a last look over her shoulder and then began to shuffle off, moving in a direction that would take her even farther from her house. The moment she looked away from me, she forgot me. I could see it in the way all expression dropped from her face. Her lips began to move as she whispered quiet questions to herself.
“Shelly! Hey, I was going to ask Mr. Beukes if . . . about . . .” I struggled to think of something Larry Beukes and I might have to discuss. “If he ever thought of hiring anyone to mow the lawn! He’s got better things to do, right? Mind if I walk to your house with you?” I reached for her elbow and caught her before she could drift out of reach.
She jerked at the sight of me—as if I had craftily snuck up on her—then gave me that brave, challenging smile. “I’ve told that old man we need to hire someone to cut the . . . the . . .” Her eyes dimmed. She couldn’t remember what needed cutting. At last she gave her head a little shake and went on: “ . . . the thing for I don’t know how long. Come on back with me. And you know what?” She clapped a hand over mine. “I think I’ve got some of those cookies you like!”
She winked, and for an instant I was sure she knew me and, more than that, knew herself. Shelly Beukes flickered into crisp focus, then went fuzzy again. I could see awareness slip away from her, a light on a dimmer switch being turned down to a dull glow.
So I walked her home. I felt bad about her bare feet on the hot road. It was muggy, and the mosquitoes were out. After a while I noticed a red flush across her face and a dew of sweat in her old-lady whiskers, and I thought maybe she should take the trench coat off. Although I admit that by then the notion had crossed my mind that maybe she really was naked under there. Given her disorientation, I didn’t think it could be ruled out. I fought down my unease and asked if I could carry her coat. She gave her head a quick shake.
“I don’t want to be recognized.”
This was such a wonderfully daffy thing to say that for a moment I forgot the situation and responded as if Shelly were still herself, a sensible person who loved Jeopardy! and cleaned ovens with an almost brutal determination.
“By who?” I asked.
She leaned toward me and in a voice that was practically a hiss said, “The Polaroid Man. That slick fucking weasel in his convertible. He’s been taking pictures when the Afrikaner isn’t around. I don’t know how much he’s taken away with his camera, but he can’t have any more.” She gripped my wrist. Her body was still stout and big-bosomed, but her hand was as bony and clawlike as a fairy-tale crone’s. “Don’t let him take a picture of you. Don’t let him start taking things away.”
“I’ll keep an eye out. Hey, really, Mrs. Beukes, you look like you’re melting in that coat. Let me have it and we’ll watch out for him together. You can jump into it again if you see him coming.”
She leaned her head back and narrowed her eyes, inspecting me the way she might’ve studied the small print at the bottom of a dubious contract. Finally she sniffed and shrugged out of the big coat and handed it to me. She was not naked underneath but wore a pair of black gym shorts and a T-shirt that was on inside out and backward, the tag flopping under her chin. Her legs were knotty and shockingly white, her calves crawling with varicose veins. I folded her coat, sweaty and wrinkled, over one arm, took her hand, and went on.
The roads in Golden Orchards, our little housing development north of Cupertino, were laid out like overlapping coils of rope, not a straight line in the whole thing. At first glance the houses appeared to be a scattershot mix of styles—a Spanish stucco here, a brick Colonial there. Spend enough time knocking around the neighborhood, though, and you came to recognize they were all the same house, more or less—same interior layout, same number of bathrooms, same-style windows—dressed up in different costumes.
The Beukes house was mock Victorian, but with some kind of beach theme going on: seashells embedded in the concrete path leading to the steps, a bleached starfish hung from the front door. Maybe Mr. Beukes’s gyms were called Neptune Fitness? Atlantis Athletics? Was it maybe a goof on the Nautilus machines that were used in the facilities? I don’t remember anymore. A lot of that day—August 15, 1988—is still sharp in my memory, but I’m not sure I was too clear on that particular detail even then.
I led her to the door and knocked, then rang the bell. I could’ve just let her in—it was her house, after all—but I didn’t think that suited the situation. I thought I ought to tell Larry Beukes where she had wandered and find some hopefully not-too-embarrassing way to let him know how confused she’d been.
Shelly gave no sign she recognized her own house. She stood at the bottom of the steps looking placidly around, waiting patiently. A few moments earlier, she’d seemed sly and even slightly threatening. Now she looked like a bored granny going door-to-door with her Boy Scout grandson, keeping him company while he sold magazine subscriptions.
Bumblebees burrowed into nodding white flowers. For the first time, it struck me that maybe Larry Beukes really did need to hire someone to cut his grass. The yard was unkempt and weedy, dandelions spotting the lawn. The house itself needed a power wash, had spots of mold high under the eaves. It had been a while since I’d walked by the place, and who knew when I had last really looked at it, not just let my gaze slide over it.