by Susan Swan
At the sound of my voice, Mother lifts her head and fixes me with a weird glassy stare. Her beautiful curls hang in greasy strings.
Joe? She asks. Have you come to take me home?
Mother thinks I’m Pater, I whisper.
Play along, Meredith whispers back. That shouldn’t be hard for you. She smiles.
I shoot Meredith a warning glance. Yes, Mother, it’s Joe, I reply, feeling ashamed of myself.
Thank god, Joe. I’ve been waiting so long for you. Mother grabs my hand, drool spilling from her mouth. Meredith leans forward to wipe my parent’s chin with a Kleenex. That girl there … that girl … Mother jerks her head away angrily. That girl doesn’t know how to look after me properly.
Mother, behave yourself. Meredith is being kind to you. I pat her hand, and she rounds her eyes and smiles as if she is seeing me for the first time.
You came, after all, she murmurs, sounding like her old self. And here’s Caroline. How lovely. Did Joe bring the two of you?
Yes, I mumble. Caroline smiles obligingly.
That’s what I like to hear! Mother fixes me with her hollow-socketed eyes and mutters something about Pater’s old Cartier watch. Alas, I’d been obliged to give it to the guard at Essex for safe keeping, although I don’t say so to Mother.
There’s a whispered conversation between Meredith and someone at the back of the room, and a nurse in a white uniform marches over to Mother’s bedside. She glances at me dismissively, and in that quick disapproving stare I understand she blames me for the poor state of Mother’s health. I want to tell her how wrong she is, but the woman’s manner stops me from uttering a sound.
The nurse gives Mother a shot of morphine. Immediately, my parent stops her terrible tossing and turning and lies very still, her mouth wide open. Meredith nudges me forward and I force myself to kiss Mother’s forehead. Her skin feels hot, feverish.
As we leave the bedroom, Meredith says in a wondering tone: Maybe Googie really saw Uncle Joe standing by the bed. Maybe the dying see things we can’t.
Yes, maybe so, Caroline agrees.
My poor, ailing mother dies several hours later. Meredith says Mother felt she could let go now that I am home.
6
I AM WAITING for Caroline, safe and sound in my old bed, the pine four-poster with a canopy that Esther bought years before. The bed is a reproduction like the pair of Queen Anne chairs that someone, likely Dieter, positioned in front of the gas hearth. Anticipating the lovemaking to come, I pick up the framed photo of my sweetheart on the bedside table. Draped in her bright swimwear, her lanky form floats against a backdrop of Paradise Island’s long shore of pinky sand.
I went there with Mother and Pater when the place was called Hogg Island after the wild pigs that pirates had set loose on its sand dunes. And, soon after Pater died, in a fit of nostalgia, I bought Surf Song, one of its neglected beach houses.
My beach house perched on a lot between a yoga camp and a handful of clapboard houses belonging to old white Bahamian families, although the weather-beaten homes were slowly being replaced by new four-storey villas that financial men such as myself were building.
Caroline and I met there on New Year’s Day, 2006. Meredith and Davie had set off to look for the green flash of the sun before it was swallowed by the heaving turquoise sea. On their walk, they saw a crowd from the yoga camp dipping buckets into the ocean. When they stopped to find out what was going on, Meredith ran into an old friend Caroline Worsley, who worked in a London publishing house. Caroline had flown in the night before with Charles, her half-brother, who resembles the actor Albert Finney. She told Meredith the retreat had run out of fresh water: its toilets were overflowing, and the food was being washed in seawater. Charles was sick with kidney cancer and she’d taken him there for a rest. Meredith immediately invited them to stay with us.
Meredith and I watched Caroline and Charles come down the beach, dragging their suitcases across the sand. Caroline glanced apprehensively at Charles, who swayed and lurched as if the hundred or so yards from the yoga camp to our beach house were a marathon.
I sent Davie off to help, and I was struck by the starry expression on my son’s face when he rushed back up the wooden steps to our patio, carrying their bags. He couldn’t stop staring at Caroline, whose large beautiful eyes were as blue as Valium capsules, and that day, she did look especially lovely even though her fair English skin was sunburned and sweat as thick as olive oil glistened on her lovely cheekbones. She hung on to Davie’s arm and surveyed the grounds. Following the direction of her gaze, I was appalled by the salt-rusted lock on the sea gate and the shabby beach umbrella made out of greying palm fronds. Sand had blown into the cracks between the coral flagstones, and the old wooden loungers needed replacing. Until Caroline appeared, I hadn’t realized how much the place needed a makeover.
She caught my look of dismay and said, What a charming cottage. I am sure we will be very comfortable here.
Sis and I adore derelict places, Charles declared and began to laugh uproariously. She gave him a fond smile; they were obviously sharing a private joke. Later, I found out that Charles had been referring to their strange childhood, when Caroline’s blueblood father had installed their family in a farmhouse in the north of England, a wreck of a place without heat or running water.
Esther chose that moment to emerge from behind the hedge of sea grapes. She had been drawn by the high-pitched sound of English voices. Take a moment to picture Esther, will you? Her frizzy blond hair, the features of her gentle face blunted by alcohol, her plump stomach an oval-shaped ball of the sort you might see on one of Caroline’s Buddha statues.
When she saw Charles sitting on our patio, she staggered over and started gushing about Hollywood films. To my horror, I realized she had mistaken him for Albert Finney.
This is Caroline and her brother, Charles, I said. Esther’s face fell slightly, but she let me lead her by the hand to one of the loungers, where she sat until lunch, criticizing the yoga camp in a loud, aggressive tone, her eyes never once leaving Charles’s face. Oh, where did she go, I wondered, the shy woman who used to laugh at my jokes?
Charles explained that acting in British commercials kept him rolling in dough, and I made some mocking retort, lofting my eyebrows to let him know how pretentious I found him, but nothing distracted the lout from his spew of loquacious babble. Talking in an absurdly plummy accent I couldn’t understand, he helped himself to another rum punch whenever he refilled Esther’s glass. By the time Irene called us for conch salad, the pair were as drunk as lords. When she tried to stand up, Esther fell down, knocking over the patio table.
As I bent down to help Esther up, Caroline threw me a consoling look, and my bad, old heart knocked with happiness; the unfamiliar sensation was as sharp and clear as the sound of a pebble ricocheting inside a dried-up desert well.
That afternoon, Meredith helped me put Esther to bed, where she stayed for the rest of the day. Charles disappeared after pleading exhaustion, and, freshly liberated, Caroline plunged into the ocean, splashing and frolicking with Meredith while Davie and I played volleyball on the beach. It was the first time in a long while that Davie seemed genuinely happy, and on several occasions, Caroline looked over at us and smiled. We were all in a mellow mood, experiencing the giddy release that comes after handling something unpleasant.
Meredith made dinner that night, and afterwards the four of us sat on the patio listening contentedly to the thud of the ocean waves hitting the sand, the security light occasionally picking up the gleam of white foam. Davie hated anyone seeing his mother drunk, and Caroline sensed his distress. She told him about the work she did rescuing albino Great Danes and how she found new homes for the animals because interbreeding had resulted in great numbers of these dogs being born congenitally blind and deaf.
(Alas, the subject of Great Danes became a sore spot between us. I felt it wro
ng to keep the poor beasts alive, and Caroline thought it was better they live even though they suffered. It was the sort of recurring squabble couples indulge in, a humdrum clash of opinions that get exhaustively argued and never resolved.)
After Meredith went to bed, the conversation turned personal.
Hey, Caroline, Davie said. It’s cool how you help your bro. He’s in pain, right?
I started to say that Charles enjoyed posing as a drunken movie star, but as soon as Davie spoke, I realized Charles had been suffering physically and hiding how he felt behind a gabby bluster of rum-soaked noise.
Then, to my chagrin, Davie asked Caroline if she thought his mother could be cured of her drinking.
She’ll have to want to be cured, Caroline replied. We can’t do it for her.
Davie sighed. I wish I could.
He sounded so miserable I wanted to throw my arm around him and say everything was going to be all right, but he would accuse me of reassuring him with a false picture. I knew that about him because I am the same way myself.
Caroline made a comforting maternal sound. You love your mother and she feels your love. That is the best any of us can do.
Afterwards, when Davie went to bed, Caroline confided that her ex-husband had been an alcoholic so she understood what my son and I were going through.
It’s not Esther’s fault, I replied. She and I were never compatible.
Are you sure about that? Caroline gave me a knowing glance. I suspect her drinking gave you a good reason to stay at your office. After all, nobody likes coming home to a drunk.
That’s not what I mean, I retorted.
Isn’t it? I could feel her eyes on me in the darkness; she was silent, as if reflecting on a memory, and I was sure she could hear my bad, old heart. Then she stood up and said she was going to bed. I walked her to the door of the sleeping cabin, where she gave me a hug, pressing her round, firm breasts against my chest. For an awkward moment, I didn’t know what to do, and to my surprise, she grabbed my hand and pulled me inside. Once again, I noticed the appalling household neglect. Cobwebs hung off the headboard of the ancient bed, and the windowpanes were smeared with crusts of salt blown by the ocean winds against the glass.
This place hasn’t been used for a while, I said. Does the plumbing work?
It works perfectly. She smiled and began to undress. When she turned to face me, she looked so lovely I dropped my eyes. She helped me undress, and to my embarrassment I felt myself tremble as she trailed her fingers feather-light across my chest.
I’ve always wanted to see what the Antichrist of capitalism looks like in his boxers! I’m not disappointed, Dale Paul.
I wondered what she meant. I still have all my hair, but I’m no prize at the poultry show, as Pater used to say. Yet Caroline sounded sincere. Drawing me over to the bed, she lay down on its quilted cover, generously offering up her body. And so I came to the fear that no man says aloud: Can you satisfy the woman you desire? How will you address that wild honey pot of thrills, the creamy mounds of breast waiting to be caressed, the mysterious thatched delta you are obliged to fondle as if its secrets are second nature to you?
Alas, I hadn’t the slightest idea what to do. Esther and I used to go without making love for shockingly long periods of time.
Caroline gently pulled me down beside her, kissing my lips and the rubbery skin of my ears, and when her head moved south to salute my nether regions, I tugged her hair and whispered, It’s … it’s not nice down there.
She giggled. I don’t believe it. You’re shy.
Unable to utter a sound, I lay as passive as a Victorian bride while Caroline began. And began and began. And when she finished, she began once more until both of us lay in a satiated stupor. Point being, Caroline showed me my body was more than just a fleshy pedestal that kept my head from hitting the floor.
The next day, Charles took a turn for the worse, and Caroline and her brother flew back to London. A few weeks later, she wrote me a sweet thank-you note and said there’d been good news. Charles’s cancer was in remission, and she invited me to look her up in London, where I had opened a branch of Quaestus Capital. Ablaze with lust, I wrote back saying I would. Even so, I had to send her several hundred dollars’ worth of Shropshire Lass roses before she would agree to see me, and then she made it clear she didn’t date married men. All that changed when Esther moved into her rented house in Port Washington.
7
THERE’S THE SOUND of footsteps in the hall and Caroline appears in the doorway still dressed in the suit she wore earlier. (A dismal portent for our nighttime pleasures.) I pat the side of the bed, and she shakes her head.
I’ve just come to say good night. I have menstrual cramps, darling.
Oh, quel shame. Tomorrow then?
We’ll have to see. She smiles apologetically.
I try to pull her down next to me, and she cries out teasingly: Don’t be a bad boy!
She means what she says. As far as she and Meredith are concerned, I am a child who bears watching, an overgrown adolescent who listens stony-faced while they hammer away at me with the battering ram of their good intentions.
Oh well. Sinking into the generous allotment of down pillows, I pick up the Q and A that my cousin wants me to check for errors. Nugent was the interviewer, and I imagine Meredith looking embarrassed as he fiddled with his tape recorder. Nugent is good with women so he would have made jittery small talk, trying to coax her out of her shell while she must have sat, her good eye darting about anxiously, not wanting to look at him.
Did they discuss the criminal charges against me? And deplore the way nobody takes my economic forecasts seriously now? More likely, knowing my cousin, they reminisced about our school days.
On weekdays, Mr. Eric, the family chauffeur, brought Earl and me a cache of Irene’s peanut butter and banana sandwiches so we weren’t obliged to eat the noonday slop the school fed its boarders. Once in a while, Nugent came along, but Meredith was there almost every lunch hour. Mr. Eric parked Pater’s limo beneath the shady maples in the school lot. Sometimes, before Earl and I had to go back to class, we read Classics comic books. Ivanhoe. Treasure Island. Gulliver’s Travels. My cousin brought any comic I asked for; she borrowed them from friends at her day school.
I sat in the front seat with Mr. Eric and boasted about my investments in Quaker Oats while Earl and Meredith sat in the back. If you bought a box of its cereal, you received a coupon that entitled you to a square inch of land in the Klondike. Nobody knew the lots were worthless then.
While I yakked on, Earl would pretend to listen, all the while mauling poor Meredith, who, for a while, encouraged his attention.
One noon hour, I happened to glance into the limo’s rear-view mirror and noticed Meredith’s school bloomers down around her ankles. Earl was the obvious culprit; one of his hands was hidden up to his elbow under her school tunic. I berated them both while Mr. Eric’s face assumed an eyes-forward expression, and my cousin quickly made the necessary repairs.
I had tried to warn Meredith about Earl’s credo: Any port in a storm. Just put a bag over their head and go at it. She didn’t listen. Nugent was smoother than Earl; he appeared interested in what girls were saying, and I suppose his charm has come in handy with getting Meredith to help him with his research. The day she lost her eye would always be on her mind, although she wouldn’t refer to it. People from our background are like that. We don’t talk about the elephant in the room. We assume everyone knows, so what’s the point?
Tim, before we start, I don’t want any questions about what happened that day in the woods. Can you promise that? (Ah, she slips by it so cleverly. Good girl. Nicely averted.)
Fair enough. I don’t really want to discuss it either. Let me begin by asking you about your childhood.
You mean after my parents died … when their bush plane crashed near Bear Lake … you
know this, don’t you?
Yes, but I want you to tell me in your own words.
All right. After the plane crashed, Googie and my uncle, Joe Paul, adopted me. They were living in Toronto at the time because Fairfield had just opened a branch there. Remember the Pauls’ furniture chain? Uncle Joe worked for it before it was sold. The day I arrived, Dale Paul called me a poorhouse orphan, and Uncle Joe threatened to wash his mouth out with soap, so I told him Dale Paul was too young to understand what he was saying.
Ha ha. You were always the Paul family conscience!
Oh, I don’t think so. I was too in awe of them. Their money came from Googie’s American relatives, and I didn’t know then that a woman could be richer than her husband. My father made a pittance selling his oil paintings in Toronto, so I went to St. Clemens on a scholarship. I have a few memories of my parents’ postwar bungalow in Toronto, and the image of a kind woman, likely my mother, pushing me on a park swing. But over time, my years with the Pauls made it hard to believe my parents were real.
Were the Pauls a happy family?
Googie was happy, but not Uncle Joe. Googie’s father wouldn’t let her marry an academic with a modest income, so Uncle Joe had to stop working on his PhD in history and take a job in the family firm. He didn’t do very well because his heart wasn’t in it. As for Dale Paul, he inherited Uncle Joe’s interest in books, but my cousin was always headed for business, and he certainly never doubted his self-worth. When he was a child, he insisted on being called two names, like the Pope.
He still does, doesn’t he? [Am I being paranoid or do I detect unpleasant laughter here?]
Remember the day he read out our future bios from Canada’s Who’s Who? He was pretending, of course.
You mean when he said we were going to be famous?
Yes, famous and rich. All of us. I was going to be a famous scholar like Simone de Beauvoir. He said you were going to star in Hollywood movies, like Tab Hunter and the other actors we read about in Modern Screen magazine. Dale Paul predicted he would head up the New York Stock Exchange. And Earl — I can’t remember what Dale Paul said about Earl.
