“Those were your mother’s rings, when she was small, weren’t they?”
“Yes, they were.”
“I remember them.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Your mother used to have the best reading voice, you know. I used to get very upset because Sister would always choose her to read for story time, instead of me, you see, but once she’d begun—” Claire closed her eyes, remembering. “I used to put my head down on the wooden desk and just take off—”
“Mommy!” Dharma cried, suddenly remembering all the times she’d read to her. Her shocked, poor face dissolved into renewed wracking sobs at the realization that this would never be again.
“Oh. Oh, gee,” Claire said standing up, then falling helplessly back down into the rocker. This wasn’t the kind of trouble you could cure with sentimental stories or cuddles with puppies or a sleep-over in someone else’s bed for the night. What a jerk she was for having thought she could have interfered and made a positive difference. “Oh, God, Dharma. I’m so sorry. That was so insensitive of me. Let me call your father, please. Let him come and pick you up. Or I’ll bring you home.”
Her arms hesitated, reached out, hesitated. Before she could even pull them back, Dharma was in them. She wasn’t much bigger than Anthony, so frail and all narrow elbows; all that hair gave you the impression that there was some sturdiness there, but there wasn’t. Poor thing. Poor thing. They rocked and rocked.
“Do you want me to call your father, now?”
“No.”
“Well, I’ll wait. We’ll wait till after supper, all right?”
“No. I don’t want to go home. Please.” Her voice rose up in a forlorn plea.
“Dharma, I love having you in my home. You must believe that. I just didn’t want to intrude upon your need to be with your father, now, when you must need him. I didn’t want my selfish needs to interfere with your right to grieve privately. That’s why I suggested you go home. It’s such a comfort to have you with me, you can’t imagine.” Claire felt her eyes fill with tears at the truth of what she said.
“Mommy!” There was Anthony at the door then, his face not yet past the shock and onto the recriminations part—how dare she hold another child inside her arms! They were his arms! His! She could see the blood bubble behind those black Sicilian hot spots. He was not a little animal, her Anthony; she saw his wild face soften at the sight of Dharma’s haggard, teary face lifting to look. Soften and care. He took two steps forward in pure compassion, then remembered his machismo and went back to his post in the doorway.
“Aunt Zinnie’s here, Ma,” he said with some reserve.
“Zinnie? Michaelaen come with her?”
“Yeah. I better go help him set the table.”
“Oh. Are they all staying for supper, then?”
“They sure are!” Anthony whooped and cantered down the hallway.
“Glad somebody told me,” Claire thought blandly as she went back to rocking. It was grand to rock. She hadn’t sat in this chair in months. Anthony was growing so quickly. She could put it by the window and face it towards the fireplace—or what would be the fireplace once Johnny knocked that plaster out. The dog hopped down from Dharma’s lap and raced downstairs. She’d got hold of Michaelaen’s scent, probably—or recognized his name. The dog knew Michaelaen no doubt from Freddy (her former master), before he’d given her away to North Shore. Freddy was Michaelaen’s dad, and although he and Zinnie were divorced, they remained great friends. Freddy had a few years ago decided to accept himself as he was, homosexual (bisexual, insisted Zinnie). He had separated from Zinnie and Michaelaen, given up his job as an insurance salesman, taken Zinnie’s and his savings, and risked it all opening a restaurant in Forest Hills. It turned out to be just the thing. Not only did he love doing it, the area seemed to crave an artsy, clean-tableclothed place just then. After one false start up on Queens Boulevard with an incompetent lover in charge and a place that was better suited to beef burgers and ribs for lawyers and frantic prisoners-to-be (it was, after all, just across from the courthouse), he’d been smart enough to get two beat-up stores together on a pretty street, gutted them, put roof windows in, placed tables on the sidewalk, attached an awning—even hung twinkle lights in the back yard on the trees and set tables out there, too. Then he’d made a deal with a Soho gallery and hung great big showy pictures all over the place. He was very good with the music, too, mixing Mozart with light jazz with Billie Holiday with quick shots of carefree rock and roll and then back to Telemann. Everyone wanted to eat, meet, or get drunk up at Freddy’s. You can’t mix blue collar, gay, and yuppie—you had to cater to one or the other—but Freddy did. And he did it very well indeed. He used too much garlic on everything, everyone said—you could always tell if someone had been at Freddy’s the night before—but that didn’t stop them from coming and having a damn swell time while they were there. He could be perfectly unpleasant, Freddy could. Scathing, in fact, if you crossed him (every week there was another story about some waiter reduced to tears) yet everybody was drawn to Freddy. You couldn’t help it. Which goes to show you how enigmatic a thing charm is.
Even Stan Breslinsky, stodgily conventional father of Claire, Carmela, and Zinnie, bowling champ and opera lover, kept a pile of “free coffee with dessert after lunch during the week” coupons in his hardware store behind the cash register, and when decent-looking customers came in he’d dole them stingily out like prizes at a congratulatory dinner. Freddy may have deserted his daughter, but he was, after all, the father of his grandson and entitled, therefore, to his support.
And Zinnie was not the type to abandon one of her own, leastwise the husband who’d abandoned her. She would shrug, would Zinnie, implying you didn’t know the half of it, then get on with whatever it was that had to be done. Lord knew Zinnie had plenty to do.
She’d gone through the police academy quietly—everyone said it was a tribute to her dead brother Michael; she’d idolized him after all—but hero worship wasn’t what made her a good cop. Surely it had started her on her way, Claire pointed out. Yeah, Johnny would say, but the men on the job didn’t respect steady, just-do-your-job from a woman. You really had to excel with that bunch of Brooklyn honchos. Zinnie was a hell of a cop.
Whenever Claire started going off the deep end about anything or anyone, all she had to do was think of Zinnie and her big-hearted, matter-of-fact view of life and she felt better. She just had to imitate her in attitude and her spirit followed.
She wasn’t a saint, Zinnie. She had a temper like an August squall and a vocabulary like a rollicking vacationing longshoreman, and she was as quick to criticize as to forgive, but every time Claire thought of her she was glad, and that is saying quite a bit about any human being, in the end, where we all get on each other’s nerves and we all get disgusted and fed up.
Claire rocked and sighed and thought what had to still be done before dinner could be served. She hated when everything was catch as catch can. Dinner parties ought to be planned and set with flowers on the table. All hers were haphazard, with her silver set missing a fork at least and the napkins nowhere to be found and the minute you all sat down the nice music that had been carrying everything along stopped abruptly with the scraping of the chairs and dinner invariably commenced with a long, loud commercial for Radio Shack. Ah, well, life was more important than an organized living room, hubbub preferable to a clean kitchen floor. Wasn’t it? Something crashed below. Certainly it was. The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it!” shouted Anthony and she could hear him and Michaelaen tearing through the house. She hoped it wasn’t Portia, come back again, and so it wasn’t. “There’s a man down here,” Carmela hissed from the bottom of the stairs. “A Mr. Kinkaid.”
“Oh. Him,” Claire said, relieved. “We bought the house from him.” Mr. Kinkaid was temporarily living in a half-finished basement apartment up the block. This arrangement was provided by a long-time neighbor until Mr. Kinkaid’s condominium on the golf course in Florida beca
me available. Mr. Kinkaid was becoming something of a likable old pest. He excitedly rubbed his palms together in diabolical expectation of cold weather and Johnny’s skyrocketing fuel bills. He didn’t understand how a healthy girl like that Dover woman could just up and die. He wouldn’t like to point no finger, see, but there’ve been things going on in that there house make your hair stand up on end.
“Oh, Mr. Kinkaid, do be real,” Claire would say. She had had it with violent crime, vicious neighbors and, finally, Mr. Kinkaid himself, who likes his tea sweet and he’ll take it in his old recliner under that there winder. Thanks.
“Is he all right for the moment, do you think?” Claire called down. “I’d like to try to convince Dharma to eat with us.”
“All right would be putting it mildly, I think.” Carmela twirled one fancy earring between manicured fingernails. “He’s helped himself to the easy chair in the living room. Got his feet up, too. On your new hassock.”
“Be right down,” Claire said, and she was, Dharma in tow, all cried out for the moment, curious as well to see what was going on.
Zinnie had efficiently wound up the quiche, adding sour cream and fresh spinach, Claire noticed from the mess on the table, and had had the good sense to stick the thing into the oven, so they were that much further along. She’d emptied the entire bottle of Yugoslavian wine into the soup, too, while she was about it. Claire rallied between annoyance—now they would have to drink beer or juice—and the wish that she’d thought of it herself. It smelled absolutely good. Inside, there was Mr. Kinkaid, poor gnarly thing, looking out his old window at his—or what had been his—front yard. How devastated he must be, Claire sympathized, not having it to enjoy to himself anymore. Johnny sat politely in respectful, if bored, deference to age and fellow—if former—property owner.
“Yes, sir,” Mr. Kinkaid sighed as she came in, “nothing pleases me more than the thought I’ll never have to mow that goddam lawn no more.” He let out a gleeful cackle.
Johnny’s eyes scanned his moderately long sweep of lawn protectively. He couldn’t wait for the lot to grow so he could get out there with the electric lawnmower that had come with the house.
Zinnie was out on the grass with Michaelaen, doing something, digging and sticking wires into the earth from the look of it, and after saying hello to Mr. Kinkaid and begging him to stay (really just so she wouldn’t have to face talking to him at the moment), Claire went out the front door and stood looking at them from the porch. Her porch.
“So what do you think of my asylum, eh?”
“I want to ask you something,” Zinnie said without looking up.
“Shoot.”
“Could Michaelaen and I move in with you guys for a week?”
Claire gulped. “Of course you may,” she said, looking for all the world as though it would be the most delightful experience.
“It’s just that Freddy’s having our apartment painted and Michaelaen’s allergic to paint and if we move in with Mommy, she’ll never let us go. Please, Claire? This place is as big as a boarding house. You’ll hardly know we’re here.”
“Okay, okay. You’re on the top floor. Choose a room.”
“And will you be happy, Charlotte?” Zinnie put two little sticks in her mouth as if to light them.
“Oh, Jerry. Don’t let’s ask for the moon.” Claire half covered her eyes with her lids. “We have the stars.”
Zinnie let her breath out more easily. This is what Claire had always wanted, after all. A home full of love and people and all that. She always said she did. “You’re gonna love it even more after I get done doing what I’m doing.”
Claire’s heart leapt in fright. Johnny had developed what might well be diagnosed as lawn neurosis. She sympathized. She supposed she was just pleased to be where she was. She was finally in the climate she cherished, happily strolling down long-out-of-vogue streets like some aborigine who walked apparently useless invisible song lines.
Later, Claire would look back and remember the very moment, out there on the porch, thinking all was well. Because that was the last time for a long time it would be so absolutely so.
She stood there, equal parts Chanel and holy water, surveying her domain. The dog scuttled out on her miniature legs, halting decisively between Claire’s well-worn sneakers. Down went the fluffy skull kerplunk on Claire’s big toe.
She looked down at the mutt. “I see you’ve figured out upon which side your bread is buttered.”
“Most floozies do,” Carmela muttered from behind the screen.
“Floozie’s good.” Claire enjoyed puncturing Carmela’s blast of disapproval. “It fits. What do you say, old girl? How’s that for a moniker?”
“Hullo,” the dog seemed to say, Floozie’s injured eyes looking into hers. “About time you got to me.”
“Yes. She says she likes it.”
“She does, does she?” Carmela’s tightening lips and skeptical tone indicated that Claire had, as usual, gone too far. Claire felt a sudden clear and sympathetic understanding for herself and why she’d stayed away ten years. There really was no stress to dealing only with people who didn’t matter. It was the ones you loved and who loved you who would kill you. However calm you might be, however advantageously, emotionally, your menstrual cycle was placed, there were those who wore you out and drained you just being near.
And, she thought happily, realizing suddenly that it was croquet hoops Zinnie was assembling, there were those who charged you up and filled you with energy as well.
“Floozie,” rather sweet in her newly shampooed ginger coat, trotted across the porch, put one paw out and patted the naked universe, then closed both eyes and dropped into the azaleas.
“Tch,” said Carmela.
Floozie picked herself up, sniffed about and took a discreet constitutional behind the basil bush.
“Uh!” Carmela said.
“Good girl!” Claire cried.
“Remind me never to eat pesto at your house again.”
“Oh, Carmela, you’re such a fuddy duddy.” Claire swept the puppy onto her breast and smothered her with approval and kisses. Michaelaen distributed mallets to Anthony and Dharma. The first heady game of croquet was under way.
“Uh oh!” Zinnie looked up from her spot on the lawn. “Claire! I thought you never wanted a dog again! Just look at you. Slobberin’ all over it. Jesus! That is not the dog to get involved with. Didn’t Freddy tell you how she destroyed his apartment?”
“I haven’t spoken to Freddy in weeks. He hasn’t even seen the house.” She wondered if she ought to give him a call. Freddy liked a mob.
“Well, ask him. Just ask him. That dog is trouble.”
“What rubbish.” Claire pressed her nose against the clean puppy tummy. “Freddy probably left her all alone all day long in that apartment. How can a wee doggy like this be trouble?”
Zinnie and Carmela locked world-weary eyes but said not a word.
A translucent moon but escaped them in the pale cool sky. Across the street, blue music came from Tree Dover’s house and the sun went down behind it.
CHAPTER 3
Mary came over in the morning. It was fair, with the still mist of early. She rubbed her big elbows, but that was as far as she’d go to acknowledge the cool. Mary would wear her thin housedresses straight through to the end of the year, relinquishing them only then to the sturdier armor of Orlon and white pearly buttons. Over the back yards she strode, cutting her way through the September flowers and larks in the rectory garden, across front lawns and back, her great donnering breasts and strong thighs apump, worried lines her starched uniform over the grace and the hard-earned clean lunacy of serene goodly woman, crestfallen acceptance the only haphazard of time. Mary’s neat braids were wrapped, sunlit, around her head. Without the pins they would sit there just as well, kinetically bound. She’d cut them once, in a desperate urge to assuage what was to come, but she’d felt like a faker, someone she’d never be: a woman in a corporate office, someone who
would wear those jackets, who had her nails done by the week, not by the wedding or the christening. And so, back they’d grown and here she was, herself, better off and the good Lord knew with enough to do.
“Hullo.” She clopped on the screen with big knuckles. “It’s me.”
Claire’s face lit up when she saw her out there. “Hey,” she said.
Mary didn’t love Claire any more than she loved any of them, but with Claire there was a special bond of pain; she’d lost a son and Claire a twin, and for the two of them there would be no comfort, only the ever-widening lightening of time, then the sudden horrifying grasp of remembrance. It didn’t make it better, by they shared it and kept it, the same festering pain that between them was faced, like the thought that can’t bear thinking, when done is just lost.
“I’ve brought you some puppy porridge.”
“Oh, good. She loved the hard bagel Johnny gave her, but all she did was tear it up into a million crumbs.”
“Thus the vacuum cleaner.”
“Yes.”
They looked together at the monster machine that took up so much of the kitchen. It was one of those ugly old-fashioned ones that no one wants to store but when you really needed a vacuum, you couldn’t beat it, so no one had ever gotten rid of it, just passed it on to the next likely victim. Every time Claire used it she couldn’t help marveling what an utterly magnificent machine it was, whooshing up all and anything in its way. (Putting it away was another story altogether.)
Mary watched her old vacuum cleaner, puzzled. She remembered how Stan had named it Lips Lummox, back in the days when it had been theirs. Long enough ago it had been when she’d first lain eyes on that snout. Funny how it had survived when so many others hadn’t. She and Stan had only just married when one of his horrid, silent relations descended upon them, some aunt or uncle or other toting babka and sausage and outrage that their talented piano-playing impresario Stanley would marry an Irish immigrant with not only no grand education, but who couldn’t, if her very life depended upon it, carry a tune. Their Stanley, you could just read their minds by looking at the cloud of disappointment and disgust across their wrinkled brows, their chins up suspiciously, like something here smelled off. Their Stanley: doomed.
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