“Want to come?” she asked Nicky Wednesday night. “I could use the company.”
“No way.” Nicky lay on the floor pedaling Pokey up and down with the soles of his feet. “I don’t like the wind at Grandmère’s,” he explained. “And it’s always cold.”
And you’re afraid of the dog, Kay thought. And the people. And you ought to be. As soon as it stops raining, she promised herself, I will take Nicky on a long holiday. We’ll go to Disneyland or a dinosaur park, someplace simple and sunny. We’ll eat watermelon and ride roller coasters. Charles Lichtman might come with us. “What do you think?” She held up her too-tight red sweater and her too-low black sweater for her son’s inspection. They were the sexiest tops she owned and she was determined to dazzle Charles Lichtman with one of them when he came in for his art book Thursday.
“Neither,” growled Nicky. “I like this one.” He pulled her brown sweater with the hood out of the drawer and handed it to her.
“Oh yick,” she said, “that makes me look like Friar Tuck,” but she packed it, along with the other two. Neal passed by the door, a stooped shadow. He had forgotten she was going to spend the night with her mother and when she’d reminded him he’d blinked and said, “Why? You’ve got your own family.” “Do I?” she’d snapped, not sure what she meant exactly, only feeling, wildly: I don’t have anything of my own. Neal had retreated, and the look he shot her now was hangdog with hurt.
“Would you please just tell me what’s bothering you?” Kay asked, her voice harsh and impatient.
“Nothing.”
He did not say goodbye, and frankly, Kay thought, as she kissed Nicky and slipped out through the rain with her backpack, I don’t care. He can go to hell. I’m going to marry Charles Lichtman and he and I and Nicky are going to talk and laugh so much we’re going to need throat lozenges before breakfast.
“I don’t like pain,” Francis said. “All it does is hurt you.” He opened the refrigerator and showed Kay a plastic beaker of yellowish fluid. “So when she starts to feel bad I give her this. We call it the Stuff. It’s something this fellow Garret cooks up. Probably illegal. I don’t ask. It does the trick, so don’t you ask either. She guzzles it like gin.”
“What’s it made out of?”
“God knows. Eye of newt and bat blood. Now these,” he continued, shaking out a handful of pink, blue, and white pills and arranging them around the saucer of a rosebud demitasse, “are just your ordinary opiates. Tonight she gets extra because of her arm.”
“What arm?”
“Her broken arm.”
“How did she break her arm?”
“The usual.” Francis set a shot glass of Scotch in the corner of the tray, picked it up, and carried it into the bedroom. “Here’s your junk, junkie,” he said to Ida.
Ida opened her eyes, smiled, and closed them again. “They get heroines in English,” she said.
“No one knows what you’re talking about.” Francis set the tray down, his voice even.
“She means,” Kay translated, “that junkies in England get heroin.”
“Lucky stiffs,” Ida corroborated.
“Glad you two understand each other,” Francis said. “Because you’re both too clever for me. I’m out of here. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. Kay will stay with you all night, dear, and Greta will be here bright and early. So you’re not to fear. Comprenezvous?”
“Wee, wee.” Ida smiled, eyes closed.
“Good.” Francis bent and kissed her forehead. He wiggled his fingers goodbye at Kay and stepped swiftly out of the bedroom. His light steps paused at the dog’s cage. “Don’t let anyone bite you,” Kay heard him tell Coco. Then he was out the kitchen door and into the Porsche and out of the driveway.
She was alone for the night with her mother.
Ida looked awful. Something had happened these last few days. Maybe it was only that she was not wearing her diamond earrings or bright red lipstick—but Kay knew it was more than that. The face on the pillow was small and damp and swollen as a lump of clay. Ida’s smile shrank the minute Francis left and she let out a quick exhalation, as if she’d been holding her breath. Putting on a show for Dad still, Kay realized. And he still doesn’t know it. She looked for a place to sit, found none, and perched on the edge of the wheelchair. Always the fear that if she relaxed into the chair, she would never get out. That she’d have to stay there forever. She pulled the cuticle she was gnawing out of her mouth and wiped it hastily on her jeans.
“Dad said you broke your arm.”
“Oh. Is it broken? They didn’t tell me that. Could I have some pills now, darling?”
“What color?”
“One of each, please.”
Ida opened her mouth and Kay placed the pills on her tongue. She waved the Scotch away but took the water Kay offered in tiny sips.
Kay watched her, concerned. “Is it hard for you to swallow?”
“Everything’s hard.” Ida lay quiet, collecting herself. Then, “Did Francis tell you what Jim Deeds thinks is wrong with me? He thinks I’m immature.” She opened her pale lips to smile and her white teeth gleamed. “He thinks I’m the most immature nineteen-year-old he’s ever treated.”
“He likes you,” Kay said.
“Oh yes. I think so. So tell me. How’s your marriage?”
“My marriage? You’ve never asked about my marriage before.”
“I’m asking now.”
“My marriage is terrible. I’m going to leave Neal and file for divorce.”
“Is there someone else?”
“No. Sort of. A man I don’t even know.”
“It’s our fault,” Ida said. “We should have paid more attention to you.” She seemed to sleep for a moment, then in the same quiet voice, said, “Don’t get a divorce. Give old Stick-in-the-Mud another chance. Try that marriage encounter Victor talks about.”
Kay tried to unwring her hands, which had flown into automatic prayer position at the word “marriage.” “Neal isn’t into encounters.”
“Then you ought to go.”
“Alone?”
“I did such a stupid thing,” Ida murmured. “I thought I could walk.” Then she was silent again. She seemed to be truly asleep this time.
Kay, shaken, looked around the bedroom. A lamp was on by the window, throwing a yellow glow against the dark glass. Blankets and sheets and sheepskin pads were folded in piles on the floor. The vanity and the nightstand were cluttered with medicine bottles, cosmetics, jewelry, more roses from Glo, and books. So many books—junk novels, classics, biographies, how-to books, mysteries, Beginning French, the Bible, volumes of poetry. No wonder I work in a library, Kay thought. I grew up in one. She rose and walked around, trying to be quiet. For a long time she studied the familiar photographs on the dresser: Francis and Ida at their wedding, sleek and elegant, both holding cigarettes; Victor in his Boy Scout uniform; herself at age seven seated at a white Steinway for her first recital; the paired pictures of Nicky as a baby and Coco as a puppy in matched silver frames. No photos of Stacy. None of Neal. She turned as Ida stirred and opened her eyes.
“Know any good jokes?” Ida’s face was still pale, but mischievous now, expectant.
Kay, caught off guard, said, “No. Only one bad one: What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?”
“I give up.”
“‘Make me one with everything.’”
“Explain it, darling.”
“It’s … Buddhist. I’m going to pour this Scotch back into the bottle. Do you want anything from the kitchen?”
“Yes. Another twenty years please.”
“Oh Mom.”
“And check the barometer, would you?”
“What barometer? You don’t have a barometer.”
“Yes we do, dum-dum. In the hall.”
But the big brass barometer Francis had won at a golf club raffle thirty years ago was not in the mirrored hall. Kay, as always avoiding her own reflection, Red-Eyed Woman with Tea Tray, tried to remember when she had seen the clunky instrument last. Perhaps in the hall of two houses before this. Like the battered chrome toaster and the checked gingham potholders, it had been abandoned long before the move to the Heights. “Rain,” she said, obediently reading the blank wall. “Lots more rain.” That’s all it’s done for months, she reasoned, that’s all it’s ever going to do again.
“Liar,” Ida called.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Kay whispered. She braced, waiting for Ida’s “I will if I want to” to come winging back to her, but Ida was quiet and for once must not have heard her. She swallowed the Scotch. It tasted great, strong and sharp. She went into the kitchen, rinsed the glass out in the sink, and opened the refrigerator. There wasn’t much there besides the beaker of Stuff. She brought it to her nose and sniffed; it smelled like mimeograph fluid. She set it back, poured herself a glass of white wine from an open bottle, and cut off a small hunk of cheese, paring the mold off at the sink. Looking down, she saw Coco bright-eyed and abject in her cage, head on paws. She bent and unlatched the wire door, prepared for the scrape of thick claws down her thighs, the sharp bark in her face, but Coco surprised her by creeping out and meekly slinking into the bedroom, where she circled the carpet on Francis’s side twice and went to sleep.
Ida’s eyes had closed again when Kay returned, but she was alert. “What are you eating?” she asked.
“Cheese.”
“We don’t have anything but cheese.”
“That’s what I’m eating.”
“I haven’t eaten since the fall.”
“When did you fall?”
“I don’t know. What day is today?”
“Wednesday.”
“It must have been Monday.”
“I talked to you Monday. You were fine.”
“No I wasn’t ‘fine,’ Kay.” Ida opened her eyes then and even across the room they were so scary Kay gasped: huge blue fire balls, the twin demon moons of her childhood nightmares. “I haven’t been ‘fine’ since you were born if you want to know the truth.”
“Not me, no ma’am, I don’t want to know nuthin’.”
“What?”
“I said, ‘Nothing.’”
“You’ve always mumbled. Scared of your own shadow. That’s one thing you and Buffy had in common.”
“Who’s Buffy?”
“That criminal you ran off from school with.”
“Biff. He wasn’t a criminal. He was a twenty-year-old boy.”
“I never could understand one word he said. I sat him right down and told him he wasn’t good enough for you and he got mad and stammered at me for five solid minutes. He did take the check though. Oh God, what am I going to do? I’ve been such a bad person. Aren’t people supposed to change on their whatever this is? Deathbed?”
“You’re not on your deathbed,” Kay corrected automatically. She pulled her cuticle out of her mouth. “Did you buy Biff off?” She remembered the last thing Biff had said to her, before he roared off on his motorcycle with the waitress: “Go back to your parents. That’s where you belong.” She had always heard him clearly. And she had taken those words as he had intended her to, as a curse.
“He was all wrong for you. You’ve never had taste. Who’s this new one?”
Kay hesitated. Then: “Charles Lichtman.” His name sparked the air as she spoke, evoking first his curls, then his eyes, then his smile, until all of him was there in the room with her, in his honeyed pinks and browns. Tomorrow, she thought. He’ll come into the library tomorrow; I’ll see him; we’ll start. Whatever it is we are going to start will start tomorrow and whatever has to end with the life I am living now will end tomorrow too. She waited, wanting something. It took her a second to recognize it herself. She wanted Ida’s blessing.
But Ida turned her head away on the pillow. “Lichtman,” she said. She wrinkled her nose. “Jewish? Say: I really am hungry. Would you cut me a piece of that cheese you were having and we’ll eat like little rats together? Nibble-nibble.”
Kay went back into the kitchen and scowled at the Bleeding Heart, which had somehow been rescued from the deck and was flourishing on the sill above the sink. She took a fresh pack from the carton of Kent Lights Francis had stashed on top of the dryer, tore it open, and smoked in spurts as she assembled a small supper for her mother. Cheese sticks stacked like faggots laid for a miniature bonfire. Applesauce sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon, strawberry yogurt three days past its shelf date. She arranged it all on a glass plate, stubbed out her cigarette, and went back into the bedroom. Ida was wide awake and had managed to pull herself up on the pillows. Her broken arm hung from a sling tied around her neck. “Let’s watch a video while we eat,” she called. Her smile was wide and incandescent. What was in those pills? Vampire plasma? Kay set the plate down and looked through the huge stack of tapes by the television set. She paused at The Taming of Tami.
“Some of these are X-rated,” she said doubtfully.
“We’re grown-ups.”
“Speak for yourself.” Kay pulled My Fair Lady out of the pile with relief.
“Wasn’t that funny,” Ida said, “when Neal was trying to set our new VCR up?”
Kay shook her head. “I was at work,” she reminded Ida as she inserted the tape.
“Oh it was funny. Neal spent hours installing it, he was so slow and careful, and he finally called us in from the swimming pool for the grand christening. But Francis had taken the remote control and was hiding it behind his back. So every time Neal turned the set on, Francis turned it off and Neal couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Mimi Johns and I were laughing so hard we thought we were going to pee in our pants.”
Kay frowned. She could see Neal working on this VCR—trying to please, screwdriver tucked behind his ear, instruction booklets strewn over the carpet, doing everything he could to be a good son-in-law. Failing. They had never given him a chance.
“Why do you want me to stay married?” she asked. “You don’t like Neal.”
“Who said that?” Ida looked genuinely amazed. “Francis and I are very fond of Neal. Now what’s on that plate you brought me? I’m too hungry to eat, if that makes sense. Starving. But you’ll have to help me. I can’t move my arm.”
Kay began to feed her. At first it felt awkward, lifting the spoonfuls, but she soon fell into known maternal rhythms, leaning toward this wrinkled old lady-baby of hers with sweet pleasure, parting her own lips to prompt Ida to part hers. “Open up,” she sang. “Open wide. Now close. I love you,” she added. The words fell out of her mouth, easy and apt.
“I love you too,” Ida said.
They smiled.
I should have fed her all her life, Kay thought.
My Fair Lady was a slow go; Ida kept falling asleep and waking up and Kay also drifted off, slumped in the wheelchair. She woke to the sound of her mother singing along to “I Could Have Danced All Night.”
“If I’d had your ability to play the piano,” Ida said in a strong conversational voice as Kay, disoriented, opened her eyes, “I never would have asked for one thing more.”
“You did other things,” Kay yawned. The bedroom shimmered around her, hot and crowded, mirrors everywhere, loud with the television and Ida’s voice. “You danced all night.”
“I was doomed as a dancer,” Ida said. “I was no good at all. My muscles were too short. Isn’t that the craziest thing? It didn’t matter how hard I worked or how long I practiced. I could not do extensions. It ruined my life.”
“Mom. Ruined? Isn’t that a little drama—”
“Okay. Sorry. I never knew you cared that much.”
“That’s because you don’t care at all. You have talent and look what you do with it. Nothing. You don’t study. You don’t practice. You could have been a concert pianist.”
“No,” Kay said wearily. “I couldn’t. I wasn’t good enough. That was your fantasy, not mine.”
“Don’t blame me. You should have had your own fantasies. Oh look.” She turned the sound up on the movie. “This is my favorite part. Where she tells ’enry ’iggins to go to ’ell. Isn’t it time for my Stuff now?”
“Dad said whenever you want it.”
“I want it now.”
“How much do you take?”
“Three bags full.”
“Let’s settle for a tablespoon.” Kay rose to go to the kitchen.
“You’re a good daughter,” Ida said as Kay returned with the beaker. “I have been meaning to tell you that. A very good daughter. Except for your temper. And your sarcasm. And your sulks. Oh don’t look like that. I’m kidding. We’ve done some terrible kidding in this family, haven’t we. Listen. Is that the wind?”
“More storms,” Kay said. “Just like the barometer said.”
“Is that ugly old brass barometer still here? I thought we left it in the house before last. I’ll be damned. No. Oops. I won’t. Ha-ha. Not anymore, thanks to the blessed Father Bliss. You ought to get yourself baptized, Kay. And Nicky too. Before it’s too late. Oh I wonder what they’re feeding Francis at that dinner meeting tonight. He always brings me his dessert. Baked Alaska the next day is not a pretty sight. But Coco likes it, don’t you, Coco? Kay? That Stuff? Give me a spoonful? Now? This is the damndest thing,” she said, her face falling into soft ripples Kay had never seen before, her forehead beading with sudden sweat. “It’s like labor, darling. Remember that, when your time comes. Just like labor. Only … different.”
Kay hurried to pour a second spoonful, but by the time she had it filled Ida was already gripped in some deep private sleep, her arm in its sling propped sideways on the blanket, her hand palm up.
She was still asleep when Francis came home at midnight. He tiptoed in, his finger to his lips, saying “Shhh” as Coco struggled to her feet and skittered toward him. Kay looked up from the piano bench, where she had been picking out the melody of a love song. She stood up quickly, her heart racing, guilty, caught. She tugged the big brown sweater down over the tee shirt she used as a nightgown, picked up the stuffed animal Nicky had slipped into her backpack as a comfort and surprise, hid it behind her back so Francis would not know she had been singing to it as if it were Charles Lichtman, and said, “What happened, Dad? What are you doing home?”
“I live here,” Francis said. He looked flushed and jocular. “How was our little im-patient?”
“Fine. We watched a movie. And she ate some dinner.”
“Well wunnerful. I see you’ve been drinking tea. Afraid I have not been drinking tea. Can I get you a nightcap before you go home?”
“I’m not going home, Dad. I thought you were going to be gone all night, remember? So I made arrangements to sleep over.”
“If you want to do that, that’s fine too. Might as well, actually, it’s storming out there. Brandy all right?”
“I’d love a brandy. Thanks.”
“Fellow sat next to me at the banquet has a great rental space out there in the new shopping center,” Francis said as he returned with the bottle and two snifters. “You ought to tell Neal about it.”
“Why? Neal likes the stables in downtown West Valley. He’s happy there.”
“Downtowns are dead.” Francis settled into his leather chair, pulled off his shoes, unhooked his bow tie, and lit a cigarette. Kay sat across from him, hands folded on the couch. “Can’t bring back the past. Neal’s living in some dream of dime stores and soda fountains.” He yawned. “Got to live in the present,” he said. “Even though it’ll kill you.”
Kay nodded. “Sometimes the past feels like it will kill you too,” she agreed. She thought about asking Francis about Biff—or the woman in New York—or his reasons for ending that affair and coming back to Ida. She opened her mouth, closed it, bounced Pokey on her knee like a child. No nerve. She had been rebuffed by Francis so often when she tried to ask about the past that she had given up. Don’t be like Neal, she scolded herself. Make an effort. “Dad?” she ventured. “All our photos are of Mom’s family. You never talk about your own parents, or your brothers and sisters or how you grew up. You’ve never told me anything about your childhood.”
“Nothing to tell,” Francis said. “I survived it. That’s all that’s asked of us.”
“Francis?” Ida’s voice from the bedroom.
“Coming dear.”
That’s not all that’s asked of us, Kay thought, watching him rise and head off to her mother. Survival is only step one. She finished her brandy, shivered, and stood. Then she went in to say goodnight. She saw Ida sitting up, pale but smiling, Francis bent over her with the rosebud cup, the dog curled at his feet. She felt like an intruder as she blew a kiss and backed out. “I’ll see you both in the morning,” she said. “Sleep tight.”
“Oh, Kay?” She turned, saw Ida leaning toward her, beaming, nightgown slipping coquettishly off her shoulder sling. She looked slight and luminous. “Buddhists don’t eat meat.” She beamed, triumphant, then paled. “What’s that thing you’re holding?”
Kay looked down at Pokey in her hand. “An old toy of Nicky’s. He snuck it in my backpack so I wouldn’t feel lonely.”
“It’s not a horse, is it?”
“It could be a horse. It could be a hippo. But I think it’s a dinosaur. Actually,” Kay remembered, “it’s something you gave to him. Years ago, when he was a baby.”
“I want it out of my house,” Ida said. “What?”
“Put it outside the house. Throw it in the garbage can.”
Francis clucked his tongue and said, “Now now, Old Crazy,” but Ida’s eyes blazed and Kay shrugged and said, “Okay.” She opened the front door and took a deep whiff of the clean black air, then placed Pokey carefully in the crook of a jade tree under the overhang, where he could stay dry and guard the house all night.