The whole damn house reeks of Axe deodorant, that canned male concoction of musk and helmet-bashing testosterone and a few ozone-ravishing chemicals. I cough. We should all be wearing those white face masks Mom bought in bulk after she was briefly convinced terrorists were going to come to Nine Mile Falls for, maybe, a salmon hatchery tour, or to blow up that drive-through coffee stand that’s made out of an old school portable.
“Severin, man, open a window!” I shout.
“It’s not me.” His voice comes from his room.
“It’s Mom,” Bex says. She’s sitting on the living room floor, eating a Fudgsicle and counting her money. She’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt with a skateboarder on it, and he’s flying high in a wild arc.
Mom’s quiet, though. Guilty-quiet. I follow the scent to her room, where her work clothes are tossed onto her bed. She’s just changed into a pair of khaki shorts and a tank top. “I just wanted to freshen up,” she says.
“Mom! You smell like a guy!”
“I like it,” she says. “It smells good.”
“For guys! I’ve told you before! Axe isn’t for women. This is what half of my school stinks like. Your supposed to be smelling like baby powder. Or flowers. Vanilla is the farthest you get to go on the masculine spectrum.”
“I don’t want to smell like a baby.” She’s reaching up to pull her hair back, giving me a galloping, fresh whiff of maleness. “Ah. A ponytail makes you feel so much more like things are in control,” she says.
“Bad day at work?”
“Probably a full moon or something. You’ll never guess what the drug reps brought.” Since she works in a psychiatrist’s office, Mom’s always getting promotional items like notepads and pens and coffee mugs with brands of drugs printed on them. The names of the drugs are either so long you quit reading after the first syllable or two (benzodiazepine, thioridazine), or are soft and airy and nasal-congested (Buspar, Zoloft). I never figured out how having benzodiazepine on your coffee mug would get you to buy more of it, but okay.
Mom’s got one hand in her purse that’s on the bed, and she’s shifting the ingredients around in there. She gives up the hunt, removes the larger stuff so she can see better. Wallet, Kleenex pack, hairbrush, a pocket calendar thing she’s never used in her life, a container of Liqui-Stitch fabric glue.
“‘Sewing in a Tube’?” I read.
“My hem was coming out,” she says. Then, finally, “Here. Check it out.”
A small plastic rectangle, with a razor blade along the bottom. “A box cutter?”
“A razor blade box cutter. From this company that makes antidepressants.”
“That’s just twisted.”
“Tell me about it.” She tosses all the stuff back into her purse, a great big new jumbly personal object party. “Trevor coming for dinner?”
“Nah. He wants to get some more sanding done on Bob before we get together later.” Bob Weaver was getting a new paint job, and Trevor was doing most of the work to save money. Bob looked like he had a skin disease—splotches of gray primer showing through the old orange-red metallic. Bob was a Mustang leper. “Are you going out?”
Mom sighs. “I just want to wrap in a quilt and watch TV. Zone out.”
“So all the people out there you could be meeting will have to come knock at our front door, huh?”
She gives me a look, takes herself and her jock-smelling armpits to the kitchen. I know that’s where she ends up because I can hear Chico.
“Chico good boy,” he says. In terms of self-esteem, Chico’s got it to spare, which is probably why he can be so obnoxious. I eat linguine with clam sauce with Mom and Bex and Severin, and Bex gives us the statistics of how many were killed in the tsunami, how many homeless, how many children unidentified and separated from families.
She rolls her pasta on her fork. “One hundred sixty-four dollars so far,” she says.
“Honey, I think maybe we should see a counselor,” Mom says.
“Hey, In. Do you want to make some money waitressing at a MuchMoore party tomorrow? They really need people.” Severin says from over by the blender on the counter. For the last few months, Severin has been into protein shakes—these thick, brown slurpy drinks that smell like grass and the medicinal twinge of vitamins.
“Sure,” I say.
“Trevor, too?”
“Trevor with hors d’oeuvres on a tray? That’s hilarious, but if he gets paid, I’m sure he’d say to count him in.”
“I think maybe talking out your feelings with a professional might be helpful,” Mom says. She cuts her pasta, which she never does. A careful, overly thought-out action that reeks of concern bordering on panic.
“I don’t need a counselor,” Bex says. “I just need more hours in the day. I hate wasting time playing dodge ball.”
“Sadistic game,” I agree.
“I’m not sure if my insurance would cover it, but I could check,” Mom says. “This obsession…”
“What about your Barbies, Bex?” Severin plops some ice into the glass canister too, fits on the lid.
“She hasn’t been into Barbies for two years,” Mom says.
“I haven’t been into Barbies for two years,” Bex says. “Do you think I care about Barbies now, anyway? Do you think Barbies matter?”
“Honey,” Mom says. But she doesn’t seem to know where to go from here. The word just hangs, until Severin starts the blender and there’s only the sound of crunching and grinding vitamins, the silvery core of nourishment, containing every essential thing but the nourishment itself.
Trevor’s got his fingers in my hair, and I love when he’s got his fingers in my hair. We’re lying on the grass by Pine Lake, because Pine Lake is our place. It’s not a big lake like Lake Washington or Lake Sammamish, but a summer-camp type lake, with houses tucked around it—now, in the dark, cozy and glowing from the lights inside. We have our house that we like. It’s not the biggest house, but has the lawn that rolls right to the water’s edge. The couple that lives there has a dog, and we see him sometimes paddling in the water or walking on the grass with a tennis ball in his mouth. The house has a dock with two chairs on it, sometimes an inflatable inner tube on a hot day. Someone is watching television upstairs—there’s the shadow-light blink of nervous, dancing images. My head is lying in Trevor’s lap, and he’s combing my hair with his fingers and it’s baby-sleepy-soothing. We’ve been here awhile already; we sat quiet, just watching twilight, taking in that sweet magic that happens when the light turns golden. Why do you feel like your heart could break when the hills turn pink and the trees turn yellow? Trevor asked. Why do you feel every joy and sorrow and goodness and beauty and past and present and every perfect thing? And I kissed him then, just because he was right.
The magic light passed, and dark crept in; heartbreak time changes to the hours when you tell deep and secret things. I tell Trevor about the envelope.
“So, what do you put in an envelope?” he says. Trevor’s chin is tilted up. From where I lie, even in the moonlight, I can see the narrow white place of his neck that isn’t tan like the rest. He’s got a shirt on over his T-shirt because it’s cool at the lake. It’s white cotton with pearly white snaps like cowboys wear. They make me want to pop them open with my thumb and forefinger. He makes me want to pop them open.
“A letter,” I say up into the night. “A thank-you letter.”
“That’s a card. A big envelope says…” He thinks. “Legal.”
“Business merger. I see. Wants me as his partner for my cool head and brilliant mind.”
“Or he’s suing you,” Trevor says.
“For giving him bad advice. Like those people who sue McDonald’s because their hot coffee is hot coffee.”
“Maybe he’s giving you his Vespa.”
“Ha,” I say. “Wouldn’t I love that.”
“You could sell it,” Trevor says. “What, five, six thousand? You’d be rich.”
“We could run away to Mexico and buy some big sombreros and a velvet painting,” I say.
“You’d promise me that you wouldn’t change, even if you had all that money,” he says.
“I’d promise you,” I say, and he leans down and kisses me then and his mouth is cold, but then, it’s not cold for long, and I like the feel of those snaps under my fingers.
The next morning Mom’s in the kitchen in her bathrobe, her old blue terry cloth that looks slouchy and depressed. She doesn’t, though. Maybe she’s already had too much coffee, but she’s rummaging through the junk drawer with the energy and focus of someone in those Army recruitment ads. “You’re up early,” I say.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she says. “Do you have any batteries?”
“On me?” I pat my pockets humorously (I think), but she just scowls. “Nope. None here.”
“Wait,” she says. “Aha.” Victory—she holds up the thin cylinder of a double A. By the time I’ve got the milk carton out of the fridge, she’s pulling a kitchen chair over to the counter and is climbing up. She shoves aside all of Severin’s cans of liquid protein and mystery powders that are lined up there.
“Good God,” I say, and I set down my cereal bowl and move to spot her. This is what you do as a daughter to Naomi Skye—you steady wobbly ladders as she puts up Christmas lights, you grip chairs when she screws in lightbulbs. You stand close to her jean-clad legs, or robe-clad ones, you hold on. It’s not that she’s ever actually had an accident, or fallen or broken anything, ever. Just that Mom seems perpetually at the edge of the precarious-almost. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“I am just so sick of it being ten twenty, I cannot tell you,” she says. She reaches up, plucks the kitchen clock off the wall. She flicks the battery out with her fingernail, puts the new one in, spins the hands, and sets the clock on the nail again. It’s true that it’s been ten twenty for a long time. Weeks, maybe even months. After a while, I guess, you just stop noticing.
The clock is ticking away with a newfound sense of purpose. Mom climbs down from the chair. “When you get that envelope today, just make sure Jane or someone’s there when you open it. You don’t know this guy. Maybe he’s some kind of sicko.”
“Sicko,” Chico agrees.
“He’s not a sicko,” I say. I told Mom about the envelope last night at dinner, but I didn’t think she even really heard. She was so wrapped up in Bex’s tsunami obsession that she brushed it off with an Oh really? that was an I didn’t actually hear that in disguise. I look for a clean spoon for my cereal, but no one’s turned on the dishwasher, so there are only those spiky-tipped ones for eating grapefruit and Bex’s short baby spoon with Ariel the mermaid on it. I go for Ariel.
“You don’t know that,” she says. “He might seem normal, but look at Ted Bundy.”
“So, what, there’s going to be a bloody knife in the envelope?”
“Don’t even joke,” she says.
“No, that white powder terrorists use. I’ll give you a call before I go meet him alone in a dark alley,” I say.
“Sicko, sicko,” Chico says.
I decide to walk to work. First of all, Mom’s get-it-done has been ignited—she’s cleaned the junk drawer of old keys and dried-up pens and a manual for a VCR that died a choking death long ago after a video got stuck inside, and she’s moved on to the pantry, stacking up nearly-empty-but-never-thrown-out cracker boxes, stale cereal we all hated, a plastic bear of honey that’s crystallized, and a Fruit Roll-Up that survived World War II.
Asking her to take me now would be like asking a tornado to kindly stop for a sec. I can only hope she’ll run out of energy in the kitchen, because I can see me coming home to a bedroom empty of everything except a stripped mattress.
Anyway, it’s spring delicious out, and I don’t mind walking. We had nearly two weeks of sun so far in May, which in the Seattle area means that any day now, Mother Nature will make you PAY. Better enjoy while you can. The air smells like juniper and roses and warm cement, and Mrs. Denholm next door has her sprinkler on already, one of those old-fashioned sorts that look like a miniature fountain and only cover a three by three area, and Buddy, the Yeslers’ golden retriever, follows me only as far as the mailboxes, like a good child who stays in the yard like he’s told.
Visions of envelopes are dancing in my head, or maybe not dancing, but walking really fast. I’ve thought so much about the envelope that the idea of it is close to being worn and tired, as if it had stayed up too late having more than its share of a good time. Caution is creeping in, not bloody-knife caution, but the guardians of disappointment. The excitement of not knowing has been so fulfilling that the knowing can’t possibly compare.
Trina isn’t at Carerra’s yet, no Thunderbird at the curb. Jack the dog rises from his tired haunches and greets me with a nose to my palm as I go in.
I do a double take when I see Trina already at her booth. “Where’s your…Oh, shit,” I say.
“I don’t want to hear a word. Not one word,” Trina says.
“It’s gone,” I say.
“Good riddance,” Trina says. But something’s wrong with her face. Her cheeks seem bigger and her eyes smaller, and then I realize her face is puffy from crying.
I get this hollow-horrible feeling, that cavern of loss. Along with it comes an awareness—the kind that comes when you realize a situation is a few layers deeper than what it seemed. Getting rid of the Thunderbird is not a way to exorcise Roger. Trina needs the money. Suddenly that fact is a secret we’re all keeping—Trina from us, us from Trina. I don’t know what to do. “Pie,” I say. I put my stuff down quick, put on my apron and wash my hands, and understand why people feed grief with macaroni casseroles.
Joe ambles, shakes his head sadly, and then Nick, too.
“Who bought it?” Nick says. “Tell me it at least went to a good home.”
“Tell us you got a fair price,” Joe says. He lifts himself up onto the counter stool, opens a menu and peruses, as if it’s the first time he’s seen it.
“My cousin,” Trina says. “He’s always…” She clears her throat, straightens the wobble in her voice. “Admired it.”
The kitchen door swings open. Jane’s got a new haircut, and it’s short and swoopy-banged, youthful around her strong face. “Come on, people, it’s a car.” Her voice has the buoyancy of the well-intentioned lie. “Indigo! God. The envelope! Let me go get it.”
She bustles to the back and Funny Coyote comes in, her backpack over one shoulder, and so does the same couple with the toddler from the weekend before. Just my luck, they liked the place. I fetch the high chair and the menus and then Jane is back.
“Cute new hair,” I say.
She combs the ends with her fingers, the ones that are not holding the large yellow envelope. “You think?”
“Absolutely,” I say.
She hands the envelope to me. “Well? Here it is. Do you think he’ll be in today?”
“I don’t know,” I say. But I do know. Because as I hold that envelope and see my name on it, written in the lovely, polite loops of the Vespa guy’s handwriting in black ink pen, I understand it holds something decisive.
“What are you waiting for?” Nick Harrison says.
I turn the envelope over, run my finger against the licked-down edge. And then: “No,” I say. I don’t want to open it like this, as if its contents are a party trick for the amusement of all involved. It’s my name that’s there, it’s to me, and it’s between me and Vespa guy. I feel like this requires special surroundings, the right time. Me alone, sitting at the edge of my bed, unhurried.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Funny Coyote says. “You’re not gonna open it? Somebody hand me a knife.”
Trina hands Funny her butter knife over the back of the booth, and Funny brandishes it menacingly for a moment before setting it down on her napkin. I’m saved, though, because the people with the toddler catch my attention and ask for a banana for Junior, To help keep him busy, because Junior is scootching and squirreling way down in the high chair seat, so that his chin is nearly on the tray and his body is dangling beneath.
I fetch the banana and Junior is righted again with screaming protests and then a couple comes in and sits at Leroy’s table, which is going to piss him off. Leroy comes in and glares at the couple who will eye him nervously through the rest of their meal, though Leroy joins Joe at the counter and does something he never does: orders Joe’s same full breakfast. Bill, the creep that works at True Value, comes in and sits with Nick when he’s just been served his oatmeal, and the toddler is tossing pancakes to the floor and watching them drop, and Joe and Leroy begin to arm-wrestle and knock over a ketchup bottle.
Finally, Nick leaves; his bowl sports two leftover raisins looking at me like slightly crazed google-eyes, and I wipe the cold glue of banana off the floor and legs of the high chair. Someone comes in with the name of Ronald Reagan; he’s young and tall and has dreadlocked ringlets, and tries to disguise his name by signing his credit card slip “Ronny.” I add his name to the list of “famous” customers that we keep behind the counter. You wouldn’t believe how many regular people are saddled with the names of the rich and famous—we’ve had James Bond and Daniel Boone and Jenny Craig and Martha Stewart and even a guy named Tom Cruise, who, if I remember right, was about eighty years old. I’m working late, late enough to see Trina leave next, and she walks down the street with the saddest pair of knee-high boots you’ve ever seen, scissor flicks of despondent white disappearing around the corner. After Trina, Joe and Leroy leave together and Funny takes out her tablet and starts to write. No Vespa guy, I am right, and I work the lunch crowd of corned beef and turkey and mounds of potato salad and pickle spears until it’s time to go. I do a last favor for Jane and take Jack out for a pee, and it makes him so happy and satisfied that it makes me happy and satisfied.
Jane seems to have forgotten all about the envelope, because she is fully submerged in new haircut love/insecurity. I’ve caught her peeking at her reflection in the glass of the dessert case with the intermittent smiles/scowls of acceptance/rejection we give our new selves. There are few things that can make as us vulnerable as new hair.
“God, Jane,” I say. “You just look like a whole new person.”
“Really?” she says. She scrunches her nose. Either it’s self-doubt or her allergies are bothering her again.
“It’s great,” I say.
I pat Jack’s black satin head and leave with my envelope in my hands. Indigo Skye, it still says. When I get home, I place it under my pillow, and smooth out the cotton of the pillowcase with my palm. If I open it now, what’s coming will be instead what has come. This time, right now—it’s the instrumental before the vocals, the love before love’s been admitted, the Christmas eve before the Christmas. Some things need a delicious before, and this envelope is one of them.
We’re almost late to the MuchMoore party because I worked the lunch shift and Severin says we need to be there by four and then he tells me I need to wear nylons, which makes me want to shoot him because I hate nylons, and then I have to go hunt through Mom’s underwear drawer for a pair, and the only ones she has make my legs look Ace-bandage-y and granny pale. Nylons are in my top three worst feelings, along with tight jeans and clothes still wet from the dryer, so my legs are already cranky. Then Trevor comes, and Severin says he needs to wear a tie, and now Trevor’s gaze is murderous because he hates ties, and required strangulation clothing was not part of this deal. Severin looks around for an extra tie, and plucks out this hideous clip-on that he has from when he was maybe ten, and it’s not only too short, but it’s got penguins on it. Already, I’m getting a bad feeling about all the need to’s that apparently must be met to be acceptable in the presence of the wealthy.
We pile into Trevor’s Mustang; Bob Weaver looks hideously splotchy with the flat, steely gray of primer. A few days ago, the car developed a death rattle, which has now turned to some serious and hugely loud, thunderously pained cry for help. I clap my hands over my ears.
“The muffler,” Trevor shouts in his too-short penguin tie.
“Oh, great,” Severin says. He’s already shifting around in pre-embarrassment and it’s only us. He’s all spiffed up himself, looking sharp in the shirt and tie he wore to homecoming last year, and his face is smooth from just being shaved.
“You don’t have to ride with us, you know. You could walk,” I say.
“I’m fine,” he says, or rather, it’s what his moving lips mouth, since you can’t hear a word anyone’s saying. It’s the kind of fine that’s obviously not fine.
We drive across town, and I imagine people ducking in fear at what they think is a descending jet; I picture dogs with sensitive hearing whimpering and hiding under beds. We cross over Lake Washington, and Trevor’s driving only about thirty-five, because every time he accelerates, you can feel your kidneys rattle from the vibration. The Moores live on Meer Island, this dollop of land in an inlet of Lake Washington, which is full of waterfront houses set down at the end of secluded, gated drives.
Severin is shouting directions that he reads from a piece of paper. There’s a right here and then a left and you can feel yourself curving closer to the water. Severin has been here before, but he’s getting nervous and snappish and we make a wrong turn and have to turn around in someone’s driveway, meaning Trevor’s Mustang has just shattered all the crystal in their cabinets.
Severin’s head is still bent over that piece of paper, but there’s no need to look anymore, because it’s suddenly obvious we’re here. There’s a spotlight, one of those huge, rotating, blinding columns of light outside a high pair of open iron gates, flanked by a couple of guys in black pants and vests. The guys are talking into walkie-talkies.
Trevor lets out a low whistle.
“Are they expecting the president, or something?” I ask.
“That’s just Mike,” Severin says. “He works with me in shipping. I don’t know the other one. Roll down your window.”
Mike steps over to the car. “This is a private party,” Mike says. His vest has got some man’s face on it, with HAPPY 55, CHIEF! printed underneath.
“Mike, it’s me,” Severin says from the back. “Severin?”
Mike peers inside with narrow eyes. “Oh, cool,” he says. “The waitstaff is supposed to meet in the catering kitchen. Man, you realize you got something wrong with your muffler?”
“No, hey, thanks for letting me know,” Trevor says. We roll up the window. “Maybe he should be a car mechanic,” Trevor says. “He’s obviously got some kind of intuition.” He rolls his eyes at me, and I roll mine back at him. Mike is talking on his walkie-talkie, which seems pretty ridiculous, because he’s talking to another kid with that same old guy on his vest, who’s just standing on the other end of the driveway, and who’s now gesturing wildly for us to stop.
“I’m supposed to park the car,” the guy says. “Valet.” We pile out, and Trevor hands the kid his key. “You better bring me back a Mercedes or something,” Trevor says. “Little key mix-up, heh, heh, heh.”
Trevor’s swingy and relaxed, but I’m getting this dark, rolling feeling in my stomach, black clouds moving across gray sky—maybe not dread, but the self-protective distancing that dread brings.
The house itself is sprawled and layered, three that I can count, and there are wide steps that lead to the doorway, and each step is lit with toddler-size hurricane candles and decorated with vases of tall stalks of lilies. Musicians in black suits and long black skirts set up chairs and music stands on a balcony overlooking the entry, and they are all wearing the vest with Chief’s face. The door has a big basket of umbrellas (in case of a sudden storm, I guess), and his image is on those, too. It’s getting a little bad-dream creepy, this old guy’s face everywhere. A little man with a bald head and one of those cowboy string ties runs around rabbitlike, talking into the sort of microphone head pieces that you see on movie directors or air traffic controllers. We descend the stairs and my ace-bandage nylons feel scratchy with shame. Trevor senses my nerves and takes my hand, but I let it go—displays of support seem weak and middle-class. In the entryway of the house itself, on the wide marble floor, are cutouts of Chief; his head is on various bodies—Elvis, Han Solo, Einstein (he’s wearing a wild white wig and small glasses, carrying a book that’s labeled Theory of Relativity). Chief is a bodybuilder, with perfect six-pack muscles. Chief is God, with a white robe and a halo of light behind his head. A photographer with a long lens is already snapping photos, and another black-vested man stands on a ladder and adjusts the lights that shine down on every Chief cutout.
I see a woman who can only be Mrs. Moore, wearing a stiff-skirted outfit with a jewelly sweater. “Anna! Anna!” she calls, and a barrel-shaped blond woman comes hurrying over with spot cleaner and a cloth to dab at the hem of Mrs. Moore’s sweater. We follow Severin past a stairwell with a rope across it, past huge windows overlooking the lake, past more vases now even taller than any of us. It’s a stage show, I see, because there’s the lighting man, and the soundman, the costume woman, and the set director. The only problem is, not only have I forgotten my lines, but the only play I’ve ever been to was Death of a Salesman with my freshman class, and even though Chief’s apparently being memorialized, he’s not dead yet, as he’s there in the kitchen, eyeing the cake, which has this huge photo of him and his wife on it, on the deck of some ship. Nope, this is not another cardboard cutout of Chief, it’s the real, living, breathing him, because his finger is moving toward the frosting.
“Hello, Mr. Moore,” Severin says, and the man turns. It’s the face that we’ve already seen in replicated miniature.
“Welcome,” he says. He holds his hand out and shakes Severin’s, and it’s obvious he hasn’t a clue who Severin is.
“Severin Skye,” Severin says. “This is my sister Indigo, and her friend Trevor.”
Mr. Moore is a little disappointing, really. You expect someone who is that rich to have dashing jet-black hair or melting charisma. But Mr. Moore is plain; he’s got an average, amiable smile and folding wrinkles in his forehead, the kind a tiny dune buggy would have a blast on. He is still looking at Severin with that half-quizzical smile you give the oddly familiar—he’s seen him somewhere, but where? Trimming a hedge? Detailing his car? Dating his daughter?
Right then, with that thought, Kayleigh Moore enters, stage left. Her hair has a snowboard gloss and she’s wearing a shorter version of her mother’s stiff skirt and sweater. It’s beginning to feel like those movies where the poor boy dates some girl named Buffy, who calls her father Daddy.
But not quite. “You’re not eating that frosting, are you, Chief?” she says. “Hi, Severin.”
“Oh, you know each other,” Mr. Moore says, mystery cleared. His voice sounds familiar. Who does he sound like? Kermit? No, that’s not right. A cartoon character. A cartoon character puppet?
“I’ll show you where you’re supposed to be,” Kayleigh says.
“This is Indigo and Trev—,” Severin says, but Kayleigh interrupts.
“The Chief shouldn’t eat so much sugar—he’s got a touch of diabetes,” she says. We follow her to a separate kitchen; this is obviously the infamous catering kitchen, because here there are actually plates and food and chopping blocks and crumbs hidden from view, unlike the other kitchen, a “kitchen” in quotation marks, like those living rooms people have that no one lives in, only a kitchen no one cooks in. Where the other room had silvery wall-size appliances that look like art in a museum, and metallic pillars topped with huge blown-glass bowls, this one has people moving around and placing things on trays, and the black vests worn by all flash Chief’s miniature face. It darts and dashes and lands and dashes again, like a room of Chief flies. And speaking of vests, here are ours, placed in our hands by the caterer, a white woman in some kind of African caftan, wearing an African turban.
“Boy, do we get to take these home?” Trevor jokes. “It’d look really good with my ‘Happy 80th, Grandma’ bowling shirt.”
“Actually, we’ll want you to leave those behind,” the woman in the caftan says.
“Sure, next year you can cross out fifty-five and write in fifty-six,” I say.
Severin looks at me with a homicidal stare.
“The Chief likes to donate these to the needy,” Kayleigh says. “Well, I’ll let you people do what you need to do,” she says. She gives Severin’s hand a squeeze, and as she makes her way across the room, she lifts her skirt, already short, as she steps over some pieces of cut carrot that have fallen to the ground.
The faux African woman, who is attempting to abduct the African culture and take it as her own for borrowed depth, tells us her name is Denise. Her catering business has a reputation for being “the best,” or so she tells us. The food is some bizarre collection of cultures—there’s a sushi chef in the corner, bent over his knife and his platter of edible art, and Denise has us fill trays of Moroccan beef-tipped skewers (beef on sticks), fresh mahimahi on whole grain flat breads (tuna on crackers), and free-range chicken with sesame teriyaki and rice wine glaze (chicken on sticks). The director with the cowboy tie rushes in after a while and stirs everyone up like a wooden spoon in a soup pot, shouts that there are only five minutes to go, then four minutes, and so on, and I’m hoping we’ll have a chance to duck before the rocket ship takes off. We all (the three of us and about six other helpers) are supposed to burst into the room at once with trays of food.
The director gives us the cue and we’re off. The lights have been dimmed and the guests mingle in with glasses of champagne, handed to them as they enter. Everything’s aglitter, and the orchestra is playing—violins, cellos—“Hail to the Chief.” I’m having this overwhelming sense of the odd and laughable, only no one seems to be laughing. The women all have the same hair and are wearing clothes that probably cost what a month in college would. A booming, God-like voice comes over an intercom (kudos to the sound man), and suddenly there’s this film being played on the white walls of the second-and third-floor balconies, and it’s apparently a documentary of The Chief, and God is saying, “The Chief is a man who likes the finest things in life,” and the crowd laughs, and there’s the Chief in the film, smoking a cigar, a cap over his wrinkled forehead. “The Chief is a man who’s earned his reputation…”
It’s a group ass-kissing orgy, but I don’t have much time to think about that, because my tray is empty, and off I go to refill it, and it’s almost hard to see with all the people and the lightbulbs going constantly off. I head back to the kitchen, put Baked Egg and Red Pepper in Mediterranean Pastry (little previously frozen quiches) onto my tray. I pass Trevor, who says, “The Chief is a man who likes to bonk girls half his age,” in a God-like whisper. He nods his chin toward Mr. Moore, who is chatting with a young woman with a spilling cleavage, a grin splashed across his face, rolling forehead wrinkles in an upward arc.
The champagne glasses are refilled, and there is food also on long tables across the living room. The paintings in here are bigger than the walls of my house. I offer my tray to three women standing in a group. I hear they really give little to charity, one says. She’s too tan and has short, curly black hair and a beaky nose. I hear they had a poor relation who had leukemia who asked them for money. They turned her down, says another, in a sexy, glittery gold top whose skirt is way too short for her age. The girl died, she says, and plucks a second quiche to set onto her napkin.
I smile my polite servant-girl smile, but it doesn’t matter, because no one sees me. I have no money, so I am a shadow. I am so far beneath, that I am not on the plane of existence. I move to another group, a woman in long silver crepe and wearing a diamond that’s so big, it looks like the kind I had in the dress-up box when I was a kid. She’s talking to another woman with the same short curly brown hair, who’s looking resplendent (I always wanted to use the word “resplendent” and never had a chance before) in some swaying, beaded skirt. It’s obvious that he’s on the B list if he got the invitation so late. I don’t know if I even want to go with him.
Trevor cruises past again. “The Chief is a man who’s gonna get sloshed if he drinks any more champagne,” Trevor-God says. I sneak a pinch to his butt, which is the most fun I’ve had all night.
More food, more circles round the room. There’s an open bar, and the bartender has a vest on too. “Groovy vest,” I say to him.
“Hey, you too,” he says, and grins. “I saw it in GQ.”
A group of two men and their wives. How’s it going, Bob, since I saw you last? Sweetheart, can you move? They want to take our picture. I step aside, refrain from doing a Bex chop to the guy’s family jewels for calling me sweetheart. The couples stand in a group. Smiles all around, dropped after the flash goes off. One woman shakes her head at the tray; the other plucks a Fresh-Garlic-and-Lemon-Squeezed Hummus on Traditional Naan (bean dip on bread). Since you saw me last? The other man says. You mean last weekend?
I’ve lost track of Severin, but I see his girlfriend everywhere. She’s there, the real her, talking with three frat boys in suits and half-spiky haircuts. But there’s lots of fake hers, too (these people love photographs). She’s in various poses in several electronic frames of rotating photos. She’s skiing. Fade out to her in a bikini. Fade out to her and her brother on horses. Fade out to her and The Chief and Mrs. Chief on a green lawn. Appearing and disappearing images of the perfect life.
My calves are starting to burn, and the bottoms of my feet, too. I haven’t sat down in hours. My biggest wish at the moment is to take off these horrible nylons and fling them, slingshot-style, into one of the two swimming pools. There’s something about being here that’s making me feel like there’s a slow gas leak somewhere. My head hurts. Nothing feels quite real. There’s an absence of honesty, and it’s actually squeezing the blood vessels in my brain. Even the hors d’oeuvres lie.
But we’re not done yet, because plates need to be gathered, and someone claps their hands to make a speech. It’s Mrs. Moore, with her stiff face and stiff skirt; she’s giving a jingly but firm laugh that means she wants everyone’s attention. People start that tink-tinking of knives on drink glasses.
She thanks everyone for coming, then reads some poem she wrote, choking up midway at the power and beauty of her own words, which rhyme “happiest years” with “shedding of tears.” Mr. Moore takes the microphone, says a few words, thank you blah, blah, blah. It’s driving me nuts, trying to think who he sounds like. Someone on The Simpsons maybe? On this special day blah, blah, blah, he says, and then it hits me—Grover. Mr. Moore, CEO of MuchMoore Industries, is a dead-on ringer for your furry pal. Then Mrs. Moore takes the microphone back, tells everyone that there’s something very special about to happen, which turns out to be a hip-hop group singing and dancing some Chief rap, just in case you thought the Moores were out of touch with contemporary black culture. Mr. Moore watches and snaps his fingers, and Mrs. Moore sort of sways from side to side until she notices some crumbs on her skirt, which she brushes off and looks concerned with, but apparently not concerned enough to interrupt her show of finger-on-the-pulse fun (and support of inner-city blacks, to boot).
Finally, the cake is sliced up into smeary images of the now cut-up Moores. People dig in to Moore noses and elbows and shoes with the edges of their forks, eating bits of their host in a twisted version of a religious ritual. We weave around serving coffee, and then guests start to amble out, and are handed cups of hot cocoa on their way through the door. We are free to turn in our vests and go; the cleaning staff takes over from here. I’ve lost Severin, who I want to nag about going home. Trevor and I aim out into the big room, where some guests still linger, unwilling to part from the magic and memories. I’m afraid I’m going to have George Orwell dreams about the Chief.
I spot Severin, who is aiming straight toward Jim Riley, who’s on this television show called Seattle Tonight. Now, I would never go right up to the guy and introduce myself, but Severin would and is. In my opinion, there are two kinds of people in the world—the ones who actually ask salespeople for help, and the ones whose most often-used shopping phrase is Oh God, here she comes again. Severin is in the camp of the former.
Jim Riley looks just like he does on TV. Blond, with a perfect smile, and a clean, putty-smooth face. Severin holds out his hand.
“Hello, Mr. Riley,” he says. “My name’s Severin Skye and I work for Mr. Moore. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your show, and that it’s an honor to meet you.”
I can hear Severin’s words just as I am walking up to him, catch the tilt of Jim Riley’s blond head, the rising of one corner of his mouth. He looks at Severin. “They sure packed you into that shirt,” he says.
Severin gives a little laugh, that uncertain kind you give when you’re faced with cloudy intentions. I look at his shirt, and I guess it’s true. Severin has grown since last year’s homecoming—the cloth pulls across his shoulders and there’s a gape at the buttons; the cuffs hit the bones of his wrists. My insides gnarl, a winding sense of shame. “Come on, Severin, let’s get out of here,” I say.
Jim Riley has already turned away. The people who should be most ashamed of themselves generally aren’t. Kayleigh Moore appears at Severin’s side to say good-bye, squeezes his hand. “Wasn’t it a great party?” She doesn’t speak as much as exude. “All the most important people in the city were here for the Chief.”
The arrow on my internal Had Enough scale suddenly shoots to the outer reaches. Hey, you know, I deal with the most important people too. I deal with James Bond, and Martha Stewart, and Daniel Boone. And they happen to be very nice people.
Trevor has retrieved the car—alas, still the Mustang. He’s got a bunch of Polaroids on the front seat—him in his penguin tie standing next to the Einstein Chief and the Bodybuilding Chief and the God Chief. I dance a Polaroid around. “Hey look, everyone, I think I’m God,” I say in a Grover voice, only I can’t do Grover, and Trevor looks at me like I’ve truly lost it this time.
“Did you inhale helium?” he asks.
Kayleigh Moore stands outside the door of the house with her frat boyfriends. Trevor’s got the car running, and I’m not sure how it’s possible, but the sound has gotten worse. Kayleigh claps her hands over her ears.
“Can we please get out of here,” I say.
“Later, Chief,” Trevor says. He hits the gas and the car rolls maybe two feet before there’s this horrible clanging metal crash, and then the catastrophic sound of iron scraping against cement. “Uh-oh,” Trevor says. He stops the car.
“Shit! What happened?” I say. “Did you run over someone’s wheelchair?”
“Oh my God,” Severin says. “They’re all watching.”
“Please excuse me for a moment,” Trevor says. He opens his car door and steps out.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Oh my God,” Severin says again. “The muffler fell out. It’s lying on the drive. Behind the car.”
He’s right, I see. There’s a huge metal object sitting behind Bob Weaver. Kayleigh and her friends are laughing, but Trevor just lifts up that muffler and carries it to the car. He places it in the backseat. Trevor does this as if mufflers falling from cars are a mere nuisance, a trifle, something that happens all the time in front of the houses of gajillionaires, no big deal. He does this with a great deal of dignity. It is one more reason to love Trevor Williams. And then he starts the car, and we rumble off, leaving the sound of a thousand fighter jets in our wake.
The night gives me the sense that I want to shake something off of me, some film of unkindness. I am sure I wear its secret odor, detectable by people with good hearts, same as the way dogs can smell when you’ve been with other, unknown dogs.
The amount of money spent tonight on flowers alone could have fed a small African village, I’m guessing; it was no doubt more than what Mom makes in several months. Something about this knowledge makes me feel slightly sick. This is not about jealousy. This is severe sadness about things unjust. A queasy shame that the rightful owners of it don’t feel. A sense that something is seriously wrong with us. I wash my hands, strip off those hideous stockings, and get into my flannel pajamas. Even though the night is warm, flannel is your most understanding clothing.
I sit at the edge of my bed, aware that the time has come to open the Vespa guy’s envelope. I lift my pillow and remove it. The house is quiet; the night is quiet, except for the faraway sound of some neighborhood dogs barking. I hold the envelope on my lap and run my fingertip across the ink. I carefully lift the flap, edge my finger along the opening. It is a letter, with a few other papers attached. Dear Indigo Skye, it reads. Consider this thanks for your kindness. I decided to do as you suggested and make my life my own…
I stop reading. A paperclip attaches all the pages, and I slip it off. At that moment, a piece of rectangular paper flutters to the floor, lands upside down. It is a check, I can see that. I crouch to my knees, turn the paper over. His name is there, Richard Howards, a signature at the bottom. I am on my knees, almost in a position of prayer, when I see the numbers.
Two and a half million dollars, it reads. Two and a half million dollars.
When I see those numbers, they are not real. It could just as well read two and a half million antelope, or two and a half million red apples or two and a half million sailing ships. It is not a number I understand. And for a long time, I cannot even rise from where I kneel.