At first, she called it a get-together. A few days earlier, she’d told Eugene she planned to have the neighbours over Wednesday night. The regular gang, you know. I suppose he asked what gang, because over the phone she said, The gang, Genie. Wanda and Pam. Yes, their husbands will be there. No, that one is Ko-Ko.
I lay on a towel in the grass while she recounted her plans to me and Patrick. Last month, Pamela Rice held a do with her nephew from Victoria, a barkeeper. She and her husband had returned from Cairo with a water pipe. It was a hit. No one had seen a shisha before. They sat on cushions on the floor and blew hoops of smoke in each other’s eyes. It’s all right if you can’t smoke real tobacco, Mom said.
She had asked Roy to bartend. She bought limes and salt. She ordered tall bottles of gin, white rum, bourbon, tequila. Pamela and Gerald would bring their water pipe.
What about food? Patrick asked, as if interested.
We were drinking iced tea. Patrick hadn’t been sitting long before he migrated to the hydrangea bush to complete some casual weeding. That gesture seemed fake to me—he didn’t garden. I doubted he’d ever lifted a spade.
I thought we’d do the cantaloupe, said Mom.
He separated the globes of flowers with his hand and bowed into the opening. He combed his palms over the earth. Mom watched from her chair.
What do you think? she said. What does your mom serve at parties?
Patrick ripped a weed out of the soil. He sat back to examine the leaf, then tossed it behind him and ducked back inside the shrub. Mom stood from her chair and walked behind him. She slipped her foot from her velvet slipper and planted it on the base of his spine. He yanked out another weed and glanced at her foot over his shoulder. I watched them both, unable to move.
Sounds fine.
You weren’t listening. What did I say? She kneaded her foot into his back.
He turned and her foot hung in the air.
Cantaloupe.
She lowered her heel back to the grass.
What else should we serve?
You know I’m happy with a sandwich, Aunt Dolly.
Dolly. Only Dad and Eugene called her that. My fingers screwed into the grass.
Oh hush. Tell me what you think about celery hearts.
Celery’s okay.
Ducky, what do you think?
It was the first question she’d addressed to me. I couldn’t answer. I funnelled my eyes at her accusingly.
Patrick walked his hands back into the garden bed. He remained enclosed this time, his hips flexing—buttocks clenching in his shorts. I remembered suddenly this was where he’d buried the dollhouse. Did Mom remember? Had he found fragments of it?
You’ve got a problem with aphids, he said finally. He backed out of the bush and blew a crushed insect off his thumb.
It’s not a dinner or anything, Mom went on. I’ve always believed you should leave dinners to trained chefs. On Thanksgiving, I tried to imitate a meal we ate in Seattle and it was disastrous. You remember, Willa? Milk-fed chicken, creamed spinach, Lorette potatoes. Maybe we got the wrong kind of chicken. The potatoes were all right.
Patrick stood and walked back to the terrace stool. Soil filled his fingernails and the creases of his hands. I waited to see whether he would wipe them before he touched his drink. He did not. His finger pads left a column of black prints on the glass.
The day of the party, my mother mopped the floor for the first time that summer. She opened all the French doors and the sun blew in. The house became a wind tunnel and all the chiffon curtains sucked inside. They reminded me of whale baleen—white sheets to filter out the mayflies and summer pollens. Even in the centre of the house I could feel the sun on my skin. The breeze smelled of salt.
Mother swept around me. She held the dustpan in one hand, a small brush in the other. She had tied her hair back in a green scarf. Her lips kneaded a cigarette. A ribbon of blue smoke marked her progress across the floor. She had already cleaned the windows, and if you stepped close enough to the glass you could smell vinegar. I helped tidy the cushions on the sofa. I beat the rugs outside on the porch. The dust rose around me and I coughed. Mom emptied the dustpan into the lavender bed.
Why don’t you pick some flowers? she said.
I picked lavender and filled the empty Campari bottles that had accumulated. I planted them on the dining table and windowsills, the butcher block in the kitchen and any ledge I could find. I rubbed the oil into my wrists and behind my ears, and the scent trailed my movement like my mother’s smoke. In the living room, she put a record on. Her hips ticked to the beat as she dusted the mantelpiece. She had fixed herself a drink and held the tumbler in the same hand as her cigarette. She couldn’t hear enough Anita O’Day that summer; I think she might have been singing “How High the Moon.” The baleen blew in through the French doors. My mother sang and wiped motes off the mantel clock with her palm. Drink and sun warmed the apples of her cheeks. Nicotine cleared her eyes. She looked vital.
Darling, she said. If I give you a boost, could you reach the cobweb on the light fixture? She knit her fingers together and I stepped onto her hands. She lifted me as if I were no weight at all. A silk thread joined the fixture with the plaster. I separated it with my finger.
Good girl, she said into the backs of my knees. —Is it fun up there? She turned and whisked me in a circle through the air.
A barman from Ganges delivered the spirits. Then Roy arrived on his dumpy horse with buckets of ice. The pails did not fit in the freezer so we emptied the meat cuts and poured the ice right in. Mother marinated the celery hearts in honey. I squeezed condiments into a bowl for the shrimp cocktails: ketchup, horseradish, lemon juice, Tabasco, salt. Patrick mowed the lawn with the eggbeater mower. We couldn’t hire musicians in time, so Mother selected albums from her collection and left a stack by the record player. She offered me five cents an hour to change sides. I said okay. She said, You don’t need to decide anything. I’ve already selected an order. I scanned each paper sleeve to peruse the lineup: Anita, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Cole Porter. I slipped in Hank Williams when she wasn’t looking—near the bottom so she’d be too flushed by then to tell me off. On every windowsill the lavender smelled of dopey bees.
Then, the levee—we drew a bath of Epsom salts and rosemary oil. My mother stood naked in the tub, the water branding thick cuffs around her calves. She shifted her weight uncomfortably and rubbed her shoulders. I knelt beside the tub and rinsed water over my forearms. She crouched. Heat rashed over her thighs every time her tailbone bobbed in the water. With a sharp breath, she sat and her body unfolded along the basin. She rested back against the tile. Her skin appeared smoothed rather than smooth, as though her blemishes had been dulled by cigarette smoke and pots of expensive cream from Eaton’s. Her teeth were a fraction too large for her mouth, though square, trophy-like. I had my father’s eyes—round and gullible. My mother had eyes like two slivered almonds.
In the bath, my mother massaged cream up her calves and stripped it with a razor. I held her hair back. She had not soaped yet. A gentle odour leaked from her armpits.
Would you like to come in? she asked. We had not bathed together since I was a kid.
Is it hot?
Not too bad.
I peeled off my socks and sat on the rim of the tub. The water yellowed when I dipped my heels in. Most days, I did not wear socks. My mother sighed back and closed her eyes. Her skin was evenly tan for a woman her age. None of her friends sunbathed without a costume. I thought of the sphinx with the head of a woman, body of a cat and bird’s wings, carved from a block of stone. Outside, Patrick clattered the lawn mower back into the shed. I worried briefly he would enter the house while we padded down the hallway, swollen and ruddy from the bath, only a towel between him and our breasts.
What stands on one leg and keeps its heart in its head? said my mother. I looked at her. Her eyes remained closed.
What? I said. I pulled my dress over my head and slipped into the bath, facing her.
A cauliflower. She guided my foot into her lap and rubbed it with soap.
Joan didn’t leave any party clothes here, so I made do with my own wardrobe. I wore a green and white circle skirt. I combed my hair with a side part and fixed it out of my eyes with a metal pin. Mother wore her rosé dress with a scoop neck and fitted midriff. She curled her hair in a neat parcel around her head. She looked like something you might squeeze into a drink. We had both dressed hours before the guests were due. Now we sat on the sofa in the living room, our bodies arranged lengthwise to avoid wrinkling our skirts. It was Patrick’s turn to bathe. He had been in the bathroom a long time.
You look grown up, Mom said.
Thank you.
Who said I meant it as a compliment? Her eyebrows appeared darker than usual, as if she tinted them with pencil. —Kidding, she said.
Roy was outside filling a trough of water for his horse. We both felt their absence—Patrick and Roy’s. We sat like two acquaintances whose mutual friends had gone to the bathroom. Yet we shared a basic intimacy. Our silence was tolerable because we knew the other felt it too. And we had bathed together. She had washed my foot.
Is that my shirt? she asked.
No.
It was a blouse I had adopted from Joan as she stopped wearing it. I hadn’t washed it and I could smell the honeyed fragrance of her body odour and roll-on deodorant.
It’s nice having you around the house, she said.
I had never left the house and didn’t know what she meant. We smiled at each other.
At six we heard an engine up the drive. It was too early for guests. I stood from the couch and entered the dining room, where I could see the driveway from the window. Every movement in that skirt felt unattached from the earth, my feet loosed from the floorboards. I could get into this role of women who float. I expected to find Pamela Rice’s Plymouth in the drive, or even Roy’s parents. I did not anticipate Eugene’s Buick, which he took on the vehicle ferry to Victoria. He sat behind the steering wheel in his work suit and an olive tie. Luke squirmed in the centre seat, grinning at me from under his cowboy hat. Joan perched next to him. She opened the door and untucked her legs from the car. She wore pale stockings and a pleated dress, her pearl hair pinned into a roll. She had our father’s squared jaw and china-blue eyes, and in that moment, I wished she had stayed at Linda’s.
Hey, Mom?
She joined me at the window. We watched our family trail to the house. We turned to face the front door. She didn’t open it for them, but pulled a cigarette from her carton and lit it. Eugene opened the door and stood on the mat while Luke beetled around his legs toward me. Then he too stopped short. We must have been a sight, given they had left us with unwashed hair and bare feet, Mom in her kimono, me in an onion sack. Joan paused beside Eugene, then continued over the threshold. She touched Luke’s shoulder and guided him toward her.
Well I hope we’re invited, she said. Her tone was breezy.
Mom blew a stream of smoke from her mouth.
I’m sorry, said Eugene. Are we interrupting?
You should have said something, said Mom.
The guests were due in an hour.
Luke removed his cowboy hat. He had acquired a string tie in Victoria, and played with the silver horse medallion distractedly. —Can I wear my cowboy hat? he asked.
Eugene half-stomped, half-limped after Mom into the living room, his bad foot sweeping the floorboards behind him. Joan and I followed. I could feel her stare roaming up my hips to her blouse tucked into my waistband. I didn’t meet her eyes.
Yes, Luke, I said.
In the living room Mom stood next to a vase of tall peonies. The petals were a similar pink to her dress, and they made her appear as part of a greater apparatus—a system of plants.
Roy walked in from the back of the house. He had changed into suit trousers and a shirt that looked pressed long ago, as though he’d worn them once for a funeral, then carefully hung each item back in his closet.
Who are you? asked Eugene.
The bartender, said Mom.
My name is Roy. His eyes gravitated toward Joan. She smiled at him and looked down. I understood the courtesy of this gesture. She pretended not to notice his gaze so he could stare less bashfully. Mom had observed the same moment. Our eyes met, then slid to opposite corners of the room.
Then Patrick appeared from upstairs in grey slacks and a white collared shirt, his school’s emblem stitched onto the collar. He took in Joan too, appraised her silently, as you would a sculpture in a museum.
You’re involved too? said Eugene.
Patrick pried his eyes off my sister—scanned all of us, calculating who was angry at whom, which side to take. He didn’t answer his father.
Are those my socks? said Eugene.
I followed his stare to Patrick’s feet. He wasn’t wearing shoes. I recognized them from the wash in Victoria. They were cranberry. The cloth winged slightly from Patrick’s toe.
That’s it, said Eugene.
That’s what? said Mom.
I’ll talk to the owner of the marina. Kenneth can take a week off.
What has he got to do with anything?
I came home to discuss the options with you, but you’re carrying on like a deadbeat. He fixed his eyes on Roy.
A deadbeat? my mother laughed. She clutched her cigarette to her mouth and reached her other hand for the bookshelf.
Joan, come with me upstairs. I threaded my arm through her elbow and pulled her toward the stairwell. —I want you to tell me about kissing.
What? she said. Out of surprise, she did not resist. I looked back and Mom met my eyes again. Patrick’s gaze followed us up the stairs.