Mulch by Ann Ripley Page A

a light shone on her. She looked up and there he was, standing motionless on the edge of the yard. She put a hand up to shield her eyes from the glare.
    His voice was low and threatening. “My, what a pretty girl you are. But this is the last time I want to see you hanging around my house. You understand?”
    Janie mumbled, “I … I understand. I’m really sorry. I won’t ever do it again.”
    “And take your stick with you. Here it comes. Heads up.” He threw it down at her and she brought a hand up to catch it but missed, and it caromed against her body, then flipped out into the darkness.
    The man and the light had disappeared. Limbs trembling, she heaved herself up and ran back on the trail the way she had come, out of the park and down the street to home, leaving her stick behind.
    She stood in her own backyard, panting for breath, her mouth and throat dry, her body cold but wet with perspiration. She slipped up the timbered steps leading to the patio and watched through the expanse of glass windows her parents sitting at the dining room table. Her father’s arm was around her mother, and she knew this meant that later they would probably make love. If he had been sitting without touching, it would have meant one or the other had given some signal that they weren’t going to make love that night. She had figured this out recently. And the rest of the world could figure it out too, because it was all right there for them to see. Her family was just like the others—no curtains drawn—families all over this neighborhood were living in fishbowls! No wonder kids were window peepers.
    She retreated to the other side of the house, coming in through the rec room door, then quickly retired to the bathroom and locked the door. She looked at her face. The scratches were on one side only; she pulled her long, curly blond hair over the area. She was pleased to see that not only did it hide the scratches but it made her look very pretty, actually very grown-up, like that blonde in an ancient movie with hair over one eye and a lisp. Her eyes, for another thing, were still wild with excitement. The eyelashes were like little curtains sweeping the edges of her cheeks. Very becoming, she decided. Then she shuddered, remembering the man. Hoping she would never meet him again.
    “Darling, are you taking a bath?” Her mother was at the door of the bathroom. “I thought you were still doing your homework.”
    “All finished, Ma,” Janie said in a breezy voice. Shethought guiltily of the array of open books in her room. Yet any proper investigating mother would know that a person as neat as Janie would never leave them like that if she truly had finished her homework.
    She turned on the water to almost the hottest range. She took off her torn and dirty clothes and sneakers and carefully bundled them to wash later. Her mother would ask too many questions if she found them, so they would go temporarily into Janie’s superhiding place.
    The bath was now quite full of steaming water. Into it went Janie’s thin body. She lay back and put her blond head on the back of the tub.
    “Gosh, this is living,” she said to herself, and closed her eyes.

8
Kristina

    P ETER REMEMBERED WHEN HE’D FIRST MET HIS current mistress. One night, because his wife hadn’t done it earlier, he was stuck with taking the dog for a late walk. It was spring, and the air smelled of spring’s ear-liest flowering blossoms. It must have been near midnight. He walked down the path in the woods and then for some reason up to Martha’s Lane. She had been standing among the trees in her front yard. Wearing white, looking up. Looking like a nymph conferring with the moon.
    He had called to her. “Are you all right?”
    “Oh, yes, I am all right,” she had called back softly, a lilt raising the “yes” to something special. “I am only out here at this hour to enjoy the beautiful smells.”
    It turned out she was Austrian. He had gravitated toward her as