Bad Timing

by Betsy Berne

  As soon as the cab disappeared down Houston, I broke into a feverish trot. David Mendelsohn made Joseph Pendleton look like Jimmy Stewart. But when he called the next day, I accepted his apology. Surely he meant well.

  •

  When I related David Mendelsohn’s singular method of seduction to Hank, he smirked and said, “Have you ever watched a male dog piss on a fire hydrant?”

  Hank and I had tried another evening, and since we were both involved in equally ludicrous alliances—the new girlfriend didn’t speak English, and Hank wasn’t exactly multilingual—we relaxed our defenses. I decided to take Rachel’s advice and give him a chance. I acted like a girl, I looked him in the eye and reminisced about our more triumphant evenings. I even gamely agreed to go to his favorite bar after dinner and then raved over his jukebox selections. It was late and I’d just hailed a cab when we began kissing. This was unprecedented, and I flinched inside. As I got into the cab, he said, “What was that?”

  “I have to go,” I mumbled. There’s more than one kind of deceit when you’re dealing with the human condition, and who’s to say which is more duplicitous?”

  When we spoke the next morning, we agreed that it had been a flight of fancy.

  •

  “You have to take charge,” Rachel scolded the next day. “You’ve never given him a proper chance.”

  “Last night I did,” I pleaded. “I tried. But it was so fake for both of us.”

  She let it go, and we resumed the wedding discussion. Rachel had chosen Perry to be her maid of honor, and Perry had accepted gushingly, although she maligned the groom-to-be mercilessly to me on a daily basis. Before I left, Perry had suggested introducing me to a friend of Richard’s. I listened until she said, “It’s just perfect. He’s black, too, except he’s our age—” I hung up on her. It was no big deal—she was used to it.

  •

  The stewardess steamrolled up the aisle with her cart, and when she handed me the cardboard snack box I smiled. She had a voice like the beauty editor’s, so it was a wan smile.

  The plane was small, thirty passengers at the most. It was like an airborne submarine, so cramped that I couldn’t stand up straight without knocking my head on the ceiling, and my knees were smashed nearly chest-level by the seat in front of me. But I didn’t care because I was earthbound no longer. I tackled my cardboard snack box with gusto—plane food was one of my favorite forms of cuisine. If I’d been on a jumbo jet with a certain globetrotter, I might have feigned indifference toward a cardboard snack box, but the globetrotter would have seen right through me. And he was currently not alone. She’d left on Thursday with their son, what a doll. So no one had been home on Thursday night. Had he had special plans for us? The stubborn sprawl on the bed, the refusal to wake up, was that part of the plan? If only he’d let me in on it, I would have taken my cue. I would’ve said, “Yeah, let’s go see the band. Let’s stay out late, forget about Deejay Night.” We would have had plenty of time. But Joseph Pendleton did not share plans or goals, nor did he even admit to having them.

  My father looked so shrunken and frail I walked right past him at the gate. In fact I nearly tripped over him. We laughed, but I couldn’t help venturing, “Are you sure you’re okay?” He snapped back at me, so we shuffled together in silence.

  I shuffled a few steps behind him, a habit I’d fallen into over the years, so I could catch him in case he stumbled and fell.

  •

  It was a two-lane road, lined with droopy tropical foliage and dotted with clusters of high-rises along the ocean side. The buildings within each cluster were indistinguishable, but the clusters themselves were wildly disparate and I would have been hard-pressed to identify the architectural style of any of them. Making their way down dirt paths were pairs of leathery old people, feisty in sweat suits, their arms swinging like privates in the army.

  My father’s facial expression was inherently grim, but today his lips were pursed tighter than ever. It wasn’t until we were almost there that I noticed that the car’s interior smelled new and that I was sitting on a red seat instead of a brown one. So he was forced to tell me about the accident.

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” My voice was shrill.

  “You were coming down soon anyway. We’re fine, we’re fine. I think your mother may have a few broken ribs, but she won’t have an X ray. I know a guy in town, too, and he’s the best. I have some bruises, but I don’t dare speak up. It was raining so hard, and the fog, there was a twenty-car pileup. It was just bad luck. It could have happened to anyone.”

  “You’re crazy to keep driving all the way down here.”

  “She won’t listen to me. Do you know the first thing she said after the accident?” He giggled. “She said, ‘Oh, Mother of God, the dishes. The case of wine.’ She got right out of the car with her broken ribs to check. Only one cup broke, and the wine was fine. Your mother would have had a breakdown—”

  “Dad, she’s crazy. She’s going to kill you both.”

  “Don’t tell her I said anything. Please don’t make trouble.” He paused to cough. “I’ve been coughing since we got here. It’s strange, I don’t have a cold.”

  “Isn’t it just the cardiac cough?”

  “That’s not a hacking cough. This is a hacking cough. Anyway, I’m on different medication now. Should we stop at the hotel first?”

  “No, no, I can go later. Aren’t you scared to drive back?”

  “A little. Listen, she upgraded you to a Holiday Inn.”

  “What got into her?”

  “Royalty called her cheap.”

  “Why’d he care where we were staying?”

  “Nobody can figure it out. We think Ellen must be slipping him Valium. The kids are really growing up. Audrey’s in that awkward stage. She’s got the braces and she looks funny, but I think she’s gonna be gorgeous. Don’t you think she’s gonna be gorgeous?”

  “If the King doesn’t turn her into an anorexic first.”

  “Oh, her stomach’s been fine since she’s been here. You know, she loves your mother. And I think Danny is damn clever. Don’t you think he’s clever?”

  “Very clever. What about the Ramona situation?”

  “I just keep my mouth shut. I’m afraid to say a word. You know how your brother is when he has a concubine, I mean wife. Should I be saying wife yet? They’re off by themselves most of the time. They’re probably shtupping behind a dune. Your mother’s so terrified the kids are gonna find them she can’t see straight.”

  •

  Our condo was located in one of two severe beige high-rises. Between them was an impenetrable labyrinth of three-foot-tall beige stone walls. After beige, the primary color in the compound was blue: the candy blue of the twin pools, the blustery blue of the sky, the faded gray-to-green-to-turquoise blue of the ocean in the distance behind a locked gate. It was De Chirico surreal, especially in the off-season.

  My mother was in the hallway when the elevator door opened. In her left hand she held the Dustbuster like a spear; with her right she thrust a sandwich at me. My father sneaked past her to his chair, where his newspaper and medical journals lay neatly stacked. In her Speedo, my mother resembled a stork. Her sizable breasts and bulging middle served as either a pivotal axis or a grounding device—I’m not quite sure which—for her long spindly legs and almost equally long spindly arms.

  “Oh, honey, the layover, was it a hell on earth? Do you mind taking off your shoes, it’s these damn white tiles, forgive me.”

  I started to open my mouth, but I wasn’t quick enough.

  “Honey, I was sick, just sick, thinking of the layover. Do you hate me? You must be exhausted. Are you starving? Honey, stuff this sandwich—no, don’t even stop to stuff it down—bring it with you to the pool. Hurry. These are prime rays. Quick, change into your suit.” She paused to listen to the special weather radio that was clipped onto her Speedo. “There are some clouds coming up from the Caribbean any minute now—cumulonimbus—that
means trouble. I beg of you, get down there. They’re all down at the pool. Audrey’s been waiting for you all morning. She’s beside herself.”

  “Mom, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about the accident.”

  “I told that son of a bitch not to say anything. That pussy, was he complaining? He’s fine, just fine. In fact I think it may have knocked some of those slipped discs back into place. The nerve—”

  “Why don’t you just fly back?”

  “It was nothing. Did he happen to mention that not one bottle of wine was scratched? And only one cup broke.”

  “What about your ribs?”

  “That snake in the grass. They’re fine, a little tender, but fine. Get in your suit, goddamn it, I see a cumulonimbus approaching.”

  She bent down to pick up a crumb with a martyred grimace. There was no time to intervene—in order to help my mother with housework of any kind, you had to brutally shove her aside, which wouldn’t help her ribs much. She was right behind me, picking up stray articles of clothing from the bedroom floor and the few beige crumbs only she could spy on the beige carpet. “Honey, are you glad you came? I wish you could stay longer. It seems like I haven’t seen you in so long.”

  She tried to muffle a cough by bending to pick up nothing I was able to identify.

  “Mom, don’t keep bending over. I can’t take it. I saw you a couple of months ago—remember, the show? So why won’t you go and get the X ray? And how come you and Dad are coughing?”

  “I don’t know, it’s so odd. First Daddy started, and I thought, it’s the cardiac cough, but they changed his medication and now I’ve got it—who the hell knows? By the way, you won’t recognize Royalty. You know, honey, I really think he’s maturing.”

  “Mom, he’s almost fifty!”

  “Oh. Well. Still . . .”

  “Why don’t you come down to the pool with me?”

  “Oh, I’ve got to make dinner, and . . . you don’t know the half of it. Jesus, it’s almost one o’clock, prime rays will be over. Get down there. And would you bring these sandwiches down for them? And be nice to Ramona.”

  •

  They were gathered around the pool, each clutching some form of reading material. No family member was able to conduct a conversation without clutching some form of reading material, in case of emergency.

  “Hey hey hey, look who’s graced us with her presence—in what appears to be a very chic bathing suit.” The King turned to my younger brother for assistance, but he didn’t react. I guess he was trying to act mature in front of Ramona.

  “They said you were on good behavior. What happened?”

  “How was the layover?”

  “I weathered it. By the way, this bathing suit was free.”

  “Oh, a perk? Isn’t that cute?”

  “Where’s his Valium?”

  Ramona jumped up to hug me. My younger brother nodded and looked sheepish. My brothers and I didn’t hug. The only family member who hugged was my mother, who had to be sneaky to catch one of us off guard. My father delivered an old-fashioned kiss on the lips, usually at the beginning and sometimes at the end of each visit. Ellen, who came from a family of fervent huggers, was right behind Ramona. In the pool Audrey and Danny were hanging off my middle brother’s body like appendages. I heard him say, “Hey, Audrey, I’ll give you five bucks if you get Danny the hell off me,” followed by the hysterical on-the-verge-of-a-breakdown giggle he’d adopted back when he lived in our basement and worshipped Charlie Manson.

  “Hey, what about that fucking accident? We would have been dividing the goods right now. Dad’s scared shitless to drive back with her.” The King broke into a coughing spasm.

  “What is it with the coughing?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “Can’t you talk her into flying back? She might listen to you.”

  He shrugged again.

  The King was one of those people who’d peaked in college: big football star, sixties radical, an intellectual who still had time to drop acid. But after a decade in the city, his career hadn’t scaled the heights he’d anticipated and he’d realized that it might not—he didn’t have it in him to be a New York asshole. So he changed his focus to his kids. In fact, he was trying to replicate our family group, only he didn’t have as big a cast to work with. I was concerned that in his zest he might be in the process of creating two or three kids in one.

  I lay down on a lounge chair between the giant blond females, my present and future sister-in-laws. They were my best bets. Not only did they speak in complete sentences, but chances were good that they’d even listen to your response. The kids disentangled themselves from my middle brother to tackle me. My middle brother remained floating in the pool, with a Jesus-like expression, staring out at nothing with his blue eyes. He was the most handsome of my brothers. The only thing marring the perfection was the missing front tooth that my mother always begged him to get fixed. (He always retorted that it was bourgeois to care about a missing tooth. “So I’m bourgeois, I admit it, who’s pretending? Who said I was anything else? Please God, you’re so handsome, I’ll pay for the goddamn tooth,” was her comeback.) He sidled up to me on his float, and I leaned down to listen. He muttered, “The key is not to speak unless spoken to. My advice to you is stay as far away as possible from the public domain.” I nodded and watched the King try to rally the kids for a game of tennis. Danny wanted to play basketball because my middle brother had accused him of only playing white-boy sports.

  “I don’t want to go,” Audrey said. She was on my upper torso while Danny rested on my legs. “How come you’re not staying longer?”

  “I’ve told you before. I’m your weird aunt. Weird aunts are always on the go.”

  Audrey giggled and settled in more comfortably on top of me. It was a perfect vantage point from which to spy on Ramona, with whom she was entranced. Ramona had her bikini straps pulled down for an even tan so Audrey pulled hers down until her entire eleven-year-old chest was exposed. Watching Audrey grow up was torture. Whenever I tried to act the older sister, to commiserate over her stomach troubles so that maybe she’d confide the real troubles, she’d run off or change the subject. It was too late—she was one of us.

  “Kids, I brought some sodas.” My mother arrived laden down with much more than sodas. “I can’t stay long.”

  “Here, take a lounge chair.” The King got up.

  “Oh no, honey, I don’t have to lie down. I’m happy sitting.”

  “Take my chair and lie down, for Christ’s sake. We’re leaving anyway to play hoops. All your sons together. And your grandson. Doesn’t that make you happy?”

  “Not particularly.” She turned to my youngest brother: “Please God don’t break your ankle like last time.”

  “Too bad the gray pretzel can’t get out of his chair, or he could come along and watch,” the King continued. “We could prop him up by a tree.”

  “Oh, honey, would you try to get him out of the chair? He needs some air. Would you mind just going up there?” She couldn’t finish because she was wracked by a coughing spasm. “Ramona, what a nice bathing suit.” My mother was trying not to peer too closely at Ramona’s breasts, which had almost fought their way free of the bikini, European-style.

  “Oh, it’s so old, it’s falling apart. I should really get a new one.” Ramona hadn’t said much, and I didn’t blame her. I was eight or nine before I spoke in complete sentences, much less paragraphs, when the entire family was gathered.

  “I have an idea,” my mother said. “Let’s buy you a new suit for your birthday. We’ll go over to the mall. They’re having a huge sale. I hate the goddamn mall, but you can get to this store through a side door.”

  “I think the sale’s over,” said Ellen. “I took Audrey over there yesterday.”

  “Aw, no, it couldn’t be over. I was just there, wasn’t it just yesterday? I could have sworn it was just yesterday.” My mother looked perplexed. “They’ve got to be on sale still, I’m sure
it said . . . wasn’t it . . . maybe it was . . . well, there’s got to be a sale somewhere. I know we’ll find one if we go to that other mall.”

  “Let her get a full-price bathing suit.” I couldn’t help it. “Jesus, Mom, it’s her birthday!”

  “Listen to my daughter, the spoiled brat and now a fashion maven. Have I ever begrudged you kids a thing? Ramona, honey, forgive me. Ramona, we’ll get you a goddamn full-priced suit.”

  “Grandma, you swore. Twice.”

  “Honey, I slipped. Is that a crime against the goddamn nation? Kids, admit it, isn’t this heaven? Let’s live it up, just us girls. Let’s go over to the mall. We’ll go in the side entrance. What the hell? Prime rays are over.”

  “Mom, you three go. I don’t want to get back in the car. Ellen and I’ll go check out the beach.”

  The clouds had arrived a little behind schedule, and we huddled on the windy beach under a dune obscured by some scraggly bushes.

  “So what’s the latest?” Ellen asked.

  Ellen was family without the history or agenda or judgments, but still family enough to cast him as the ruthless villain and me as the helpless heroine. I delivered a brief update, and she surprised me.

  “I don’t know,” she said matter-of-factly. “If you think about it, he has more to lose than you do.”

  I could only cough in reply. Either it was a sympathy cough or I was undone by the implication of her remark—that he might actually have a stake in this.

  By dinnertime, everyone was wracked by the hacking coughing spasms. The newlyweds-to-be exchanged a lot of glances while my father and the King berated the latest philandering politician. The King ended the discussion: “She gave good head. But that’s a dime a dozen in Washington. Everyone knows the service industry in Washington is like a mink farm. They just club them over the head and drag them away. He made a bad choice, that’s all.”

  After the twelve-minute meal, I tried to help our own personal service industry clean up while she finished her vaudeville act for the kids. Then I sat on the stool watching her do everything I’d done all over again.

  When I got back to the hotel I climbed gratefully into the king-sized bed in my pink-and-blue cocoon and turned on the eleven o’clock news. The newscaster reported a curious epidemic that had overtaken a particular five-mile radius of the coast. He called it the red-tide cough. That cleared up one mystery. I kept watching, hoping the newscaster would clear up all my other mysteries, but he didn’t.