Roger and Bennett finally arrived on Friday afternoon, having driven up together from the airport in Minneapolis. They walked into Mother’s house, where Barbara had fixed tuna salad sandwiches and cole slaw, and Roger looked as if two hours in a car with his brother had driven him beyond the edge of tolerance. Fratricide glittered in his eye. Bennett plopped down in the living room, doughier than last summer, seedier too—the black turtleneck stained, the blue blazer smelled of mothballs, the black sneakers torn. He’d lost most of his hair and shaved the rest. He still had the big black horn-rimmed glasses. She shook his hand. Roger stood by the door, restless from being cooped up, his eyes flicking, his right foot twitched. Surely you couldn’t sell a gazillion dollars worth of mutual funds to people if you twitched like that. She shook his hand too. In most families you might’ve hugged your brothers whom you hadn’t seen in more than a year. And she hadn’t. And wouldn’t. Couldn’t, somehow. Mother was a hugger and she was not. She had been close to Bennett when they were kids, before he got tangled up with being an artist. She had never cared for Roger at all.
“Gwen was so sorry she couldn’t come,” said Roger. “She had plans to go to Palm Springs with some women friends, and she couldn’t change it. Another time.”
“Oh,” said Barbara. “Well maybe we should hold on to the ashes and schedule it for a time that’s more convenient for her.” She wanted to take them both by the neck and boink their heads together. She remembered their roughhousing as boys, and how Roger always won with his arm-twist hold, inflicting unbearable pain, Bennett weeping and refusing to surrender, and how she would scream at Roger to let him go, and Roger, as cool then as now, would say, “Of course,” and give one last twist, and Bennett would shriek and the arm fall limp at his side, and a few weeks later they’d do it again.
“I sent off a demo of my opera to ten different opera companies,” he said. “Audio files. You send them by e-mail attachment. It’s amazing. Sent them the Orville/Wilbur duet, ‘It’s All a Question of Balance.’ I think you heard that—” Barbara shook her head. “Maybe you forgot. It’s where they’re waiting for the wind to die down and Wilbur says, ‘Let’s try flying into the wind.’ Remember?” She didn’t. She imagined operas got scads of submissions from various bald, horn-rimmed geniuses with bad breath. She couldn’t imagine her own brother ever succeeding and dressing up in a tux for a premiere and taking a bow. It just wasn’t going to happen.
Roger had a big head of curly hair—she didn’t remember the curly part—evidently he was under a beautician’s care—and looked as if he’d stepped right out of an L. L. Bean catalogue, tan chinos, loafers, pink cashmere sweater, and a shirt with little anchors on it. Mr. Casual. He had sewn his wild oats in Miami, four solid years of bad behavior, and then got lucky and found his niche in sales, where persistent denial of reality is 90 percent of the game.
*
“And Jon and Sammy send their love. They’re in the midst of mixing a CD. They started a band together. Lemon Tree. It’s good. Folk. You know. About the environment, relationships, lots of things. Good stuff. I should send you a copy.”
“When did they become songwriters?”
“They’ve always written songs. They’re very talented. Sammy is going to songwriting camp this summer in Idaho.”
She set out the sandwiches on the table and opened a bottle of wine. Mother’s. An Oregon red wine with a portrait of a lady on the label. She poured two glasses. “I’m not drinking anymore,” she announced. “And I’m not a Lutheran anymore. Just so you know.”
“Gwen read that a glass of red wine a day pays big dividends for your heart. She likes those Italian wines, the Montepulcianos, the Amarettos and Barolos.”
Bennett asked her when she stopped being Lutheran. On Sunday afternoon, she said. “What happened?” She said that things suddenly became clear for her, thanks to Mother.
“Is this wine one of Mother’s?” asked Roger. She nodded. “Not bad,” he said. “A little oaky and the finish isn’t as smooth as the Italians but it’s okay. I had no idea they made decent wine in Oregon.”
“Mother took up wine right after Daddy died,” she said. “She took up a lot of things. Dancing. I found a blue ribbon in her dresser drawer for a tango contest at the Miranda Casablanca Hotel in Las Vegas. Bet you never knew your mother did the tango, did you?”
Roger said that dancing was an excellent exercise, one of the best. He wished that he and Gwen could get out to a ballroom more often. There was a beautiful one in Santa Barbara called the Santa Margarita with electric stars in the ceiling. Dancing, three nights a week. Unfortunately, in his line of work you often needed to work nights too.
Barbara stared at him. Shut up, shut up, shut up. Shut your dumb mouth. He leaned back and crossed his legs and spread his arms on the sofa back and said that he hoped to retire in another four or five years and then he and Gwen would start living the life they had always wanted. Keep their home in Santa Barbara for a base, and travel from there to all the places they’d hoped to see—Japan, Rio, Vancouver, Shanghai, Tuscany—maybe buy a country house in Tuscany, near Siena, or maybe Provence. Gwen loved country houses, terraces, gardens.
“Does anybody in town know we’re here?” said Bennett. “Like regular people? I’m afraid that if I walk up Main Street, I won’t remember anybody’s name. Maybe we should review.”
“They won’t remember you either,” she said. “Thirty years is a long time, sweetheart.”
“Is Miss Falconer still around?”
“She’s ninety-two, kid. She moved to Fergus Falls to live with her sister. There were a lot of kids in choir. Thousands. I don’t think she’s holding her breath waiting for you to call.”
Bennett gave her a bleak look. “She and I used to sit in the choir room after school and play duets. She was the one who encouraged me to study music. The first real compositions I ever wrote, I wrote for her. I was looking at one the other day. It’s not bad.”
“That whole world is gone,” she said. “Mother and all her friends in the Thanatopsis Club, the ladies who put on the musicales, the Community Concert series. It’s all gone. Speaking of which,” she heisted herself up in her chair, “I hope one of you wants to say something at the memorial, because we don’t have a speaker. I don’t think we should throw Mother into the waves without saying a few words.”
“How about you?” said Bennett. She shook her head. She couldn’t. Just plain couldn’t. She was going through too much now, being in recovery and everything. And she and Mother had had a lot of issues. A lot. She couldn’t honestly stand up and talk about Mother’s good points without referring to the others.
“What were the others?” said Bennett.
“Essentially she lived a lie and all of us had to live it with her. And now we’re all paying the price for it. Look at us.” Roger and Bennett looked at her.
“Mother messed us up good, and now we just have to deal with it. That was her gift to us. She gave us problems. I’m dealing with mine, I suggest you do likewise.”
“Hey,” Roger said. “Remember how to play Battleship?” He got out graph paper and explained the rules and that’s what they did. They shot at each other’s ships and Roger won and went to the bathroom to take his Compazine. “It keeps me level,” he said. He was in the bathroom a long time. She could hear him weeping. “Family reunions!” said Bennett. “Guess this is the last one, huh?” She couldn’t disagree with him there.