By Susan Bross

Splashing and shrill childish laughter magnetically pulled David to his peephole in the gray plank fence that separated the two yards. He pressed his body close up to the wood and looked through. Right now he could see Lydia bobbing on a large, inflated Barney float. The purple dinosaur occupied most of the small, circular, three-foot pool.

The child was alone.

David figured Christine was still in bed. He shook his head in disgust. She really sucked, he thought, as a mother.
Christine tended bar at a local place and got home late, usually with a guy. No one that stuck around for long, though, as far as he could see, because she was such a nasty drunk. The whole block would wake up to hear the drunken fights at her house. David thought she must really enjoy getting hit because she didn't let up, she just kept on pushing a guy's buttons until she got knocked on her ass and it was all over but the crying. Sometimes things got out of hand and somebody would call the precinct and then the cops would come and break it up.

He marveled to think that something as pure and perfect as Lydia had come out of this aging party girl's body.

Lydia's so happy when she's in the pool. He watched as she tried to wiggle her way up on the float. The pink one-piece the little girl wore was faded and too small for a six-year-old. She should have a new bathing suit. That doesn't fit her anymore.

Lydia slid off the float and screamed with pleasure as the water soaked her hair, long white-blond hair that framed a face so heart-achingly beautiful it made him want to cry.

He remembered vividly the time he had seen her in the toy section at K-Mart. She had desperately clutched a Jet Ski Barbie to her chest, crying her heart out, looking just like a little doll herself standing at the bottom of all those pink boxes stacked high on pink shelves. He had barely registered Christine's presence, her coarse scream: "Put it back." Those blue-green eyes, pleading, filled with tears, and the pink smear of tiny lips had stopped him dead in his tracks.

That was almost a year ago. He still had the doll. After they were gone, he had scooped it off the floor, stopping to pay at the register.

Somewhere a phone was ringing, and it distracted him for a moment. He used the back of his hand to wipe away the sweat that was running down his forehead into his eyes. The blue work shirt he hadn't changed out of clung damply to his shoulders and back. His eye came back to the hole in the fence. He could see how much she'd grown by the way her bathing suit was stretched really tight in the back.

"David, are you back there?" He jumped, startled. It was just his mother at the kitchen window. He knew she couldn't see him. But if he didn't answer, she'd come looking.

"What do you want? " he shouted out.

"David, it's Janine," she yelled.

"Tell her I'll call her later," he yelled back, directing his voice around to where she was, on the side of the house. He waited until he heard the scraping metal sound of the screen being pulled down before he turned and faced the fence again.

Standing up next to the float with her back to him, Lydia was carefully attempting to balance something, he couldn't see what, on the float, but it kept falling off. He could tell she was annoyed by the way she was tossing her head and muttering.
David hadn't returned Janine's calls in over two weeks, but apparently she wasn't getting it. This whole thing with Lydia was just starting to come together, and he didn't want any distractions. He even told Mike, his foreman, that he wasn't interested in any overtime right now, because that meant Lydia would be in bed by the time he got home, and then he wouldn't be able to see her.

David knew he spent a lot of time thinking about Lydia, maybe too much. There were even times when he wanted to stop thinking about her but couldn't, and this made him anxious. Thinking about things when he didn't want to gave him a headache, it made him feel like he wasn't in control, and he didn't like that. Jesus, she was only six years old, and she already had a mother -- well, she had Christine, which was exactly the point, because having a mother like Christine, well, that was worse than no mother at all, and she'd damn well better hope that someone cared enough to step in and help. And he really did care, in a Big Brother kind of way, and what kind of world would it be, anyway, if people didn't help? He just wanted to give something to a little kid who no one else seemed to care about. He wanted to do his part and nothing for himself in return, no. It would be enough to feel her small arms hugging his neck, and see her grateful blue-green eyes staring straight up into his.

This thought set off a warm tingling that started in his groin, then spread slowly through the rest of his body, leaving his knees trembling. He closed his eyes and held onto the image a few moments longer, reluctant to let go of the sensation. He opened his eyes. This is what love feels like, he thought in awe.

The Jet Ski Barbie, wrapped in a K-Mart bag, was still where he had put it a year ago, in an empty shoebox stuck all the way in the back of his closet. It's not like I'm hiding it. It just wasn't the kind of thing he could explain to his mother. It would be pointless to try, since she was incapable of understanding his feelings for Lydia and the significance of his gift to her.

David spent endless hours planning how he would give Lydia the doll, working and reworking the scene in his mind, paying close attention to small details, changing dialogue, until he felt it was perfect. There were moments when he was afraid, fearful that something would go wrong…but then David realized he could never be angry at Lydia, never hurt her.

This was different. It was nothing like that time in high school when the kid on his paper route, Elizabeth her name was, had egged him on and gotten him in trouble.

Every day after school when he delivered the paper to this kid's house she'd be sitting on the front porch step, and although she never said a word, he knew she was waiting for him. At first he had ignored her, barely stopping to fling the bagged newspaper over the fence, and then quickly pedaling away on his bicycle, never looking back.

One day he hadn't ridden away so fast. Elizabeth was sitting where she always sat, staring at him with dark brown eyes fringed by thick black lashes. She looked a little forlorn, he thought, and he had asked her, "Hey, how come you're always out here by yourself? Don't you have any friends?"
She shook her head. "We just moved here. The kids won't let me play with them," she said. She hugged her knees into her chest and began to gently rock back and forth.

He stayed a little while that day and played catch with her. As they tossed the ball back and forth, he learned that she and two little brothers were staying temporarily at their grandmother's house until their parents could come for them. The next day he stayed with her again, and the day after that. He started carrying Juicy Fruit gum in his pockets because she told him she liked it.

After the first week, she began sitting on the curb to wait for him, so she would be sure to see his bike as soon as it turned down her street. Usually they played catch, sometimes hide 'n go seek. But best of all, she liked playing ride. For this he would grasp her under the arms and spin her around and around, until she fell to the ground laughing, too dizzy to walk.

The first time he did it, the feel of her body against his had given him an erection. The last time he was so hard he had to unzip his fly. She didn't notice at first. Then she pointed her finger and said in a helpful tone, "Oh, look, David, your zipper is unzipped."

"That's okay," he had said, heart pounding in his chest, and he had smiled down at her as he reached his hand into his jeans and took it out.

Then the kid was running, running fast, through the gate and into the house. He was trying to zip his pants and catch up with her at the same time, he was trying to tell her it was nothing, it was all right, don't be scared, but she was gone. So was his job. The family called and complained, and he was let go that same day. David and his mother moved a couple of months after that.

Lydia's laughter brought him back to the present. She was slowly and deliberately inching her way to the back of the float, forcing the front end up higher and higher, until it shot out and landed her back-first underwater. She came up gasping and with both hands tried to wipe flat blond bands of hair away from her face.

A slamming screen door made David turn his head toward a concrete patio, where he could see Christine trying to balance a coffee mug and a lit cigarette as she carefully lowered herself into a beach chair.

"Liddy, stop splashing," Christine said, as she rolled her head back and closed her eyes. "Mommy has a headache."

David whistled as he took the steps up to his room two at a time. Getting the puppy had been a stroke of genius. He had gone all the way to a private breeder in Sussex County. At six-weeks old, the yellow Lab set him back nine-hundred bucks, almost a month's salary.

"That's a lot of money for one little puppy," he had complained to the breeder, hoping the guy might give him a break on the price.

"It is," the guy had conceded. "But this is a real popular breed. They're great with kids. You got any kids?"

David would have preferred a male, but there was only one in the litter, and it had been sold.

"This bitch had better be worth it," David muttered under his breath as he stopped to fill a bowl at the bathroom sink. As soon as he said it, it struck him funny, and he laughed. She already was worth it. The kid couldn't pass the house without asking to see the dog. She wanted to hold the leash, take it for walks. She even asked him if she could come over to feed it.

David walked into his room and set the bowl on the floor. In one quick motion, he scooped the puppy out of its cardboard box and raised it over his head. Little scraps of newspaper floated down and got stuck in his hair as the puppy cried and squirmed in his grip. "Yes, Lydia," he looked up at the dog and said very seriously, "it would be very nice if you could help me with the puppy."

He stretched out across his unmade bed while the dog ate and went over his plan. Get her to walk the dog with me, go someplace private, and then give her the doll. Sounds simple enough. Maybe. The timing had to be right. He had to make sure no one saw them leave together. He clasped his hands behind his head and focused on an unusual pattern of cracks in the ceiling. Outside his window, a deep orange sun hung low in the sky. He swung his legs to the floor and sat up. Soon it would be dusk, and the fireflies would come out.

There were two lawn chairs set in front of the house all summer long for those warm nights when his mother liked the two of them to sit outside after dinner. He plopped the puppy on the lawn, lit a cigarette, and sat down to wait. Within minutes he heard her plastic sandals smacking the pavement.

"David," she asked breathlessly, "can I hold her?"

He flicked the cigarette and watched it arc into the darkness. "Sure you can," he said. "I think she misses you, Lydia."

"Watch my lightening bugs, okay," she said. She thrust a glass jar at him and dropped cross-legged onto the grass. "Honey," she crooned, as she pulled the dog on her lap and buried her face in the scruff of its neck. He looked around quickly. Satisfied no one was watching, he squatted down next to her, lightly balancing on the balls of his feet.

"She really misses you, Lydia," he said very softly. "She was looking for you today, Liddy, she kept waiting, but you never came."

"I was in the pool," she said tremulously. Her eyes began to fill up.

He said soothingly, "It's all right, Lydia, you didn't know. Can you come out and see her tomorrow?"

She nodded vehemently.

"In the morning?"

"Yes."

"She'd like that," he whispered.

When Lydia was gone, David started putting things in the back of the pickup. There wasn't much, and it didn't take him long. A couple of blankets, towels, a sweatshirt he had never worn, that still had the tags on it, Honey's leash, and, last, the Jet Ski Barbie.

Later he sat down at the kitchen table and tried to eat the cold supper his mother had left on the stove, but he didn't have an appetite, so he drank Pepsi and smoked instead. The house was very still. His mother was working a double at the hospital and wouldn't be home until tomorrow afternoon. After a while he went to bed. He wasn't tired, but he couldn't think of anything else to do.
He woke up alert but a little bewildered by the brightness of the morning sun because he couldn't remember falling asleep the night before. He took clean clothes and his black Speedo bathing suit and went into the bathroom. The steamy shower loosened the muscles in his back and shoulders,
and he would have enjoyed another 15 minutes, but there wasn't time because he still had to tend to the dog. He laid down some newspaper on the kitchen floor, left bowls with food and water, and blocked her in with a piece of plywood set against the door frame.

"Sorry, Honey," he said, "but I won't be needing you today."

He closed the front door behind him. He didn't see anyone. It was early. He closed his eyes and listened. He heard only the soft hissing of lawn sprinklers and insects. He listened harder: now he could hear her. Lydia was in the back.
He cut across the driveway they shared, cupped his hands to his mouth and called only as loud as he dared, "Honey! Honey! Where are you, Honey!"

It looked like she had dressed herself: Yellow shorts, a faded pink shirt that left most of her stomach bare, sockless feet in white patent leather shoes, and blond hair that was tousled and teased up in the back from her pillow.

David wrung his hands and said, "Lydia, Honey is gone. I don't know where she is. I'm so worried. I've looked everywhere. I don't know what to do next."

She clapped her hands to her mouth. "Oh, no!"

"Do you know where she might be? Can you help me look for her?"

"Yes, we have to find her!"

"What about the doggie play park? Do you think she could be there?" he asked.

"I don't know!"

"I think, Lydia, that we should get in the car and go there right now." He opened the passenger door of the pickup.

She hesitated. "I'm not supposed to."

David pulled a tiny red collar out of his pocket and said, "Lydia, Honey is lost. Now please help me find her. She could be hurt."

Lydia said, "Oh, my god, maybe she is."

She let him give her a boost into the truck because the seat was too high for her to climb into by herself.

He climbed in on the driver's side and with very precise movements turned the key in the ignition.

Then, within minutes, it seemed to David, they were at the entrance ramp to the expressway and he was stepping hard on the gas, until he felt the pickup accelerate underneath him to highway speed, and he merged smoothly into the flow of traffic.

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