Free Darling? by Heidi Jon Schmidt Page A

said, “And, she blushes!” as if this were the proof of her perfection. Since then she had, of course, avoided him; she lived on this memory, and if she discovered he’d forgotten her, she might not be able to bear it.
    He saw her, though, before she could get away. “There she is and just when I need her,” he said. “What do you think?” He held out two packs of seedlings. “Should I put them all together higgledy-piggledy like this?”
    He was planting flowers in the forlorn square of grass in front of the building—the courtyard, the super called it, the building being named Hampton Court, which had provoked gales of laughter from Mama when they first moved in. Why not the Landfill Arms? she’d asked, and when she took Lanie to school the first time she spoke the words Hampton Court with a hint of careless snobbery, the way you might say The Dakota, and flashed Lanie a secret smile. She was going to finish up her degree, find a job, and then who knew? Uncle Buddy was going to help her, and he knew people, the kind who can speak a word in your favor and change your whole life. Lanie would see: in a few months their Hampton Court period would be over and the day they shook her father off would count as the happiest day of their lives.
    And she’d bustled around making the apartment pretty. Her husband was gone and with him all her troubles, and everything must be fresh and bright for the new life. The diabetes that had seemed a crippling burden shrank to a minor annoyance and she swiped the needle into her thigh each morning with a giddy machismo. “God never gives anyone more than he can bear,” she said. She had started going to church again—she believed in everything; her husband had carried all the world’s ills away with him. One evening she’d danced the Charleston to the ticker-tape maracas on Wall Street Week. “The sky’s the limit, my blossom!” she said, and to Lanie’s amazement she—who had sworn she would never, ever marry again, never have to do with a man—began planning a wedding for Lanie, in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with tall white candles and bridesmaids in red velvet and a wreath of roses on her head.
    That image, of all of them, remained, though it was three years now since they moved to Hampton Court, and any idea of a job had long since been abandoned—to lose the Medicaid without a really good salary and insurance—it wasn’t worth it. No, she would never let her daughter become one of those creatures who wore her latchkey around her neck; she intended to be there for Lanie. And there she was waiting, at three o’clock—she was avid, greedy to hear every minute of Lanie’s day.
    Late as she was, though, Lanie stopped to look into the flowers—they floated over their stems with a crazy brilliance, rose pink, butter yellow, tangerine. Poor Mr. Lathrop—planting a garden in this parched spot was the kind of thing he’d do, cheerful but doomed. He was gaunt and gray-cheeked, with an expression of morose intensity, his eyes popping out slightly as if no matter where he looked he was always staring at the same sad thing, and he seemed to be always alone, but his walk was quick and fluid and somehow hopeful; whenever Lanie saw him she imagined he was on his way to someplace exciting. Once he had gotten into the elevator carrying a Chinese dinner in one hand and a bunch of red tulips in the other, but it wasn’t for guests, he said—he just liked to do everything right once in a while.
    “Ummm,” she said, drawing it out, relishing the attention. “I like them all together.”
    “Higgledy-piggledy it is then,” he said, and she laughed, because she could see he hoped she would, and he started singing and dancing a high silly step, throwing his arms and legs out so wildly she felt embarrassed for him.
    “Oh, the higgledy-piggledies give her the giggledies,” he sang. “When the higgledy-piggledies give her the giggledies, I do the jiggledy, piggledy ho!”
    It was