“Well. I’ll be going in the house now. Floozie, come on.”
For the life of her, she didn’t know why she backed out of there, but she did, leaving them to themselves, Grace and Mr. Kinkaid. And the rest of their things.
Claire stood for a moment at the back door and looked in before she turned the knob. Stan and Swamiji sat at the kitchen table. Dharma sat on Swamiji’s lap. A long sloping row of dominoes went across the pinewood table. Mary stood, her calves in laddered stockings, at the old gas stove. All Claire wanted to do was take off her boots and climb up into an easy chair. The door opened to her touch but she was too delighted to be inside to bother carrying on that no one had locked up. Stan anyway always had a gun on him. Some tiny James Bond thing he was extremely fond of. Mary, God bless her, threw her arms up into the air as though she hadn’t seen Claire for years. She plucked the coats up off Claire’s chair. Her throne, Johnny called it, because no one else would have a big wing chair in the kitchen, but she loved it. He’d never brought the rocker downstairs for her, so she’d lugged this thing up from the cellar with Michaelaen and here it stayed, back from the table, right beside what would one day be the hearth. She’d found a pie-crust table at a yard sale to put beside it, and an old-fashioned tall reading lamp that was only ever on when she was at home. She climbed into the chair gratefully now. Stan stood with the coats Mary had dropped into his arms. He looked, puzzled, about him. There were coats in every room lately, whole lots of them. Nobody knew where to put them and no one wanted to bring the subject up. That would entail an enterprising solution, and no one wanted that job just now; hanging a pole from one end of a closet to the other. The measuring. The wedges that would first have to be nailed in.
“Stanley, put them in the dining room.” Mary rattled her face imperiously at Stan, and he did as he was told. The room was full of the grand smell of sauerbraten and red cabbage. “Oh, it’s nothing,” Mary tut-tutted, noticing Claire’s pleasure. “I’ve had it soaking since last week. Don’t you go giving it another thought, now. If I didn’t use it tonight, I’d have to put it in the freezer. Sure, no one’s been coming over to eat by me since the kids are all here at your place,” Mary admitted with a mixture of relief and regret. “Looks like my own mother’s place in here, now,” she sniffed, admiring the warm rosy glow that came from the tobacco-stained lampshade from long ago.
“Oh, Mom,” Claire said, pleased. She was a girl again, content to be curled up and taken care of. “Where’s Anthony?”
“They’re just doing the end of their Nintendo game and then they’ll be down.”
“Freddy fixed up the Nintendo?”
“He did.” Mary beamed proudly. She would never get over the fact that she had the great fortune of having someone in her own family who could fix up computers and “all that.”
“I thought Freddy spent the afternoon at the dry cleaners? Oooh, look at this. You’ve got the dog’s dinner ready as well. Ma, you’re the best.”
“I am. I am that. One splendid mum.”
“I just ran into Kinkaid in the garage. You remember Mr. Kinkaid, Daddy, he used to work for the electric company? We bought the house from the varmint.”
“Oh, Kinkaid’s not so bad,” Stan said. “He’s lived in Richmond Hill longer than I have.”
“I haven’t got the dumplings, now,” Mary lamented. “I’ve only made the egg noodles.” “Egg noodles.” Swamiji’s eyes glowed at Claire. “I can eat those.”
“Yes.” Claire looked at Dharma on his lap. “You can.”
Swamiji, a vegetarian, was the picture of good health. He had hot Quaker Oats in a bowl every morning with fresh cream and honey and bananas. Then he would have a nice bowl of Brown Cow yogurt drizzled with honey and a topping glass of Tropicana. He was fine-boned as ever, but his belly had grown to a stretchedout, accessible, and cozy pot.
“Claire,” Dharma said, addressing her directly for the first time in both their lives. “Do you know you were named for the song ‘Au Claire de la Lune’?
Mary said, “We were telling Dharma the sins of our past.” She laughed.
“And,” Dharma said, gripping Swamiji’s teapot-handle ears dotingly, “do you know what the name ‘Dharma’ means?”
Mary looked at her, interested. “No.”
“It means religion.”
Swamiji nodded. “And moral duty.”
“And,” Dharma added, covering his mouth with her hand, “a way of life.”
“Yes,” Swamiji said.
“No kidding. I never gave it a second thought,” Mary marveled. “I guess I thought it was Italian. Like Parma.”
“My mother,” Dharma said, “wanted to name me ‘Dharana,’ but she pointed to the wrong word on the page of holy words and the nurse copied ‘Dharma.’ Isn’t that a scream?”
“Well, what does ‘Dharana’ mean?”
“It means rapture,” Swamiji said.
“Also good,” said Claire.
“Oh, ‘Dharma’ is far and away the better name,” insisted Mary.
“You would think that.” Claire laughed, knowing as she did, that if her mother weren’t there she’d think it herself.
“Destiny did intervene,” said Swamiji. “You see, dharma is a Buddhist and Hindu word, that on which the law of truth and virtue is based.” He patted Dharma’s head.
“Zinnie’s name is Zenobia,” Mary said. “It’s Greek. ‘Having life from Jupiter,’ it means. Of course, all my girls’ second names are Mary. After Our Lady.”
Stan came back in. “I put the coats in the dining room,” he said. “Claire, you know there are a lot of jackets and coats in there already?”
“I know, Dad. Kinkaid sold off those lion-clawed wardrobes that used to be all over the house. I wish he’d left me just a couple of them.”
“The old fox,” Mary said.
“Ma. Could you see Mr. Kinkaid and Iris von Lillienfeld together?”
“Lord, no.” She threw the noodles into the sieve in the sink with a practiced dunk.
“Neither can I.”
“What a thought! Now where is Zinnie? She said she’d be here for supper and the noodles are done.”
“Calm yourself, calm yourself, calm yourself,” Swamiji stood, deposing Dharma. “I am setting the table and lickety split.”
Claire watched them all through dazed eyes. She knew she was there, but something had her looking at them through a feathery long lens. They were small and far away. She shivered and pulled her soft cardigan around her shoulders. She yawned. The telephone jangled.
“I’ll get it,” Anthony shouted from upstairs. Several moments passed while everyone craned their ears to hear who would be called. Finally: “Ma, pick up,” and Claire picked up.
“Hullo,” Claire said.
“Claire,” Johnny said.
“All right?”
“Wait till you hear this.”
“Where are you? It’s such a racket.”
“Oh. Don Peppe’s. Hang on. Shut up!”
“Johnny?” There was a shuffle and some arguing and then Johnny was back on the phone.
“Honey? You know what happened?”
“Johnny, how come you’re at Don Peppe’s?” Don Peppe’s was their restaurant. It was the place Johnny had officially proposed, or rather where she had officially accepted. He had, at one time, proposed several times a day. Only this time he’d taken her there with Zinnie and Mary and she’d said yes. Of course, by then, she was pretty pregnant. Sometimes she wondered if the pungent, homemade red wine they served had had anything to do with it. Don Peppe’s was bright and loud and boisterous and if you didn’t like garlic you’d just as soon not go. The china was cracked, and if you gave the fellow back a dirty knife, he’d just wipe it good on his white butcher’s apron and smack it back down on the table. The restaurant was over by the track, and all the waiters had a sure-thing horse running tomorrow, or the next day. “Don’t you think you been here long enough?” one of the waiters would chide as he chewe
d a fat cigar at you as you took your last mouthful of heavenly Italian cheesecake, the wet kind, the kind you only got there or at Angelo’s over on Mulberry Street. So it wasn’t some elegant and luxurious dining spot. It was a joint. But it was a spectacular joint. Claire thought it was romantic. She hated that he was there without her. Vexed, she waited for him to tell her to get in the car and drive down. She would say no, but she still wanted him to ask.
“Are you there, Claire?”
“Me, my mother, my father, Swamiji, and Dharma are here, Johnny.”
“And me,” Anthony said from the extension. “And Michaelaen,” he added, always exact.
“Anthony, get off the phone,” he shouted.
She closed her eyes.
They heard a click. “Claire, the horse broke down.”
“What?”
“Yeah. She fell. She fell down. It was terrible. Claire?”
“Yes, Johnny, I’m here.”
“She was hurt really bad. Her leg. It just broke. The bone was sticking out.”
“Oh my God.” She felt everyone stop in the kitchen around her. “It’s the horse,” she told them, more to relieve them than anything else.
“Johnny, what did they do?” She spoke back into the phone.
“It was bad. The ambulance came.”
Claire watched the gravy on the stove boil up and over the top and down onto the gas jet. Mary jumped to attention and went for a towel. Claire’s emotions did a loop-the-loop. If the horse was dead Johnny would be home again. It would be the end of the episode.
“They were going to put her down, you know. They had the injection all set. The vet had it up in the air. And I … I almost said okay. Only then the fucking horse starts to cry. With tears!” Claire blinked at the heartless nonchalance of fortune. Johnny talked on. He would have to go back to the animal hospital and then to the barn. Then he’d have to drive Pokey Ryan, his old partner, home.
“Yes, yes,” she murmured. Because, that was it. There was nothing else to say. She could argue logic over a dead horse. Or a losing horse. Or even a winning horse. But no one, not even she, could argue over a crying horse. Claire almost felt sorry for him. Then she remembered the great stalagmite of bills that wobbled the blotter on the desk. She heard the clatter and bustle of the waiters rushing by Johnny from the kitchen. She could imagine the overcrowded tables there and smell the oregano. The handsome Italian cooks clattering their copper pans in full view in the kitchen. The men and their wives at the tables, all dressed and made up. There was a pigeon house on top of the restaurant. Neat and painted, tidy with chicken wire. A squadron of the birds would take off suddenly, circling once over Aqueduct and heading dead north above the Queen of Martyrs belfry.
“They have to try and put a pin in the horse’s leg,” Claire told them, her voice under control when she hung up the phone. “Tomorrow. So the horse is sedated and they’ve taken her to the hospital.”
Wordlessly, Mary took a plate away from the table. Claire knew she was saying a silent Hail Mary for the horse, and she wished she herself wasn’t as coldhearted as she, at that moment, felt.
As they sat down to eat, the telephone rang once again. Johnny again, Claire figured, and stood and reached for the phone.
“Claire!”
Hungry and surly, Claire snarled, “Who is this?”
“Why it’s Jupiter Dodd, darling. Anything wrong?”
“Hi!” she squeaked, shushing the table full of noise with the frantic, important, impoverished hope of green cash in her eyes. Mary buttoned their lips with her own, and they all giggled conspiratorially with her. Mary hadn’t raised four kids for nothing.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“No.” She pulled the wire as taut as it would go into the other room.
“How’s it coming?” Jupiter asked.
For a moment she had to think what he meant. The pictures. He meant the pictures. The houses he’d given her an advance to shoot and expected—when? Next week? Could it be already next week? “Terrific,” she trilled. “Wait till you see them!” She looked around for the photos, saying this, and spotted them, far from complete, sticking out messily from underneath the lofty mountain range of coats across the table. There was a thud in her chest as if she’d been caught red-handed, just like the moment she got called on when she hadn’t done her homework. But there was also the perverse, self-destructive admiration of another self inside her, standing off to the side and marvelling “now-here’s-a-gal-who-has-more-important-things-to-do-than-make-a-living.”
“What are you doing tonight?” asked Jupiter.
“Tonight?” she envisioned the hours before her: the washing up, the bathtubs—full of children and tears from shampoos—the search for wrinkled pajamas in the great pile of clean laundry in front of the dryer, the teeth to be monitored, the stories to be read, the lights to be put out and then on again for the very, I swear, very last drink of water tonight. “Thought I’d spin down to Monte Carlo for a few rounds of baccarat. Care to join me?”
“I know, I know, your life is a muddle. No sense complaining about it, though, is there?”
“Mmm. I guess not.”
“Want to come into the city? I’ve got a thing, only black tie and cleavage. Everybody who’s anyone will be there. Have you got a nice gown?”
“A gown?”
“Oh, and please not that hippie Nepali thing you had on at Carmela’s.”
“Excuse me! That’s my best frock!”
“That’s what it looks like. A frock. From a be-in.”
“That shows you how old you are. That cycle has gone complete and the only place you see that sort of thing now is on the runway in Paris.”
“More like the Khyber Pass.”
“You bitch. You lied. You told me you loved my beautiful dress!”
“Claire, only you could love that dress.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire!”
“Oh, dear. You do need to get away.”
“I can’t. I wish I could, but I can’t.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You could always come here,” she said finally. “I do miss you. Now that I talk to you and hear how you throttle me so neatly.”
“I’ll come for the play. Not before. What are you having for dinner?”
“Sour meat, red cabbage, and noodles. Maybe chocolate pudding.”
Jupiter made an obscene, shlurpy sound.
She looked frantically about at the dust and disorder. “If you hurry, I can keep it nice and warm for you.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Thank God. I thought I’d have to run through the house with a mop.”
“Not to worry.”
“Okay.”
“All my love.”
“Me, too.”
“Oh, and Claire?”
“Yes?”
“Deadline’s next week.”
“Right.”
They hung up. She looked at the ceiling and covered one eye. The phone rang again. She picked it up. “Me again,” said Jupiter. “I forgot. Remember that shot you had in your book? The black-and-white of that awful castle with the big gaudy stones like a sand castle? And the turrets out of cement? With the grotto to the one side?”
“Queens’s classiest catering hall?”
“With the young couple groping each other on the steps. And her all made up like Maria Callas and him skinny and with the unrefined shirt and tie and the pimples?”
“Of course I remember it,” she said defensively. If he wanted her to take it out of her book, she wouldn’t.
“Well, we’ve decided to run it on the cover.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I kid about life and death. Not covers.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“Fooph! They all love it. Diane Arbus stuff, they’re all saying up here.”
“Yes,” she cried excitedly. “That’s just how I meant it. Oh, to be understood!”
She could h
ear Jupiter smiling over there in Manhattan, underneath his Mary Poppins gold-and-silver stars. “Our Queens issue,” he said. “Can’t you see it?”
She had no doubt that he’d only just decided to use that shot for the cover when they’d hung up the phone. He was a kind-hearted sod, was Jupiter.
“Thank you, Jupiter Dodd.”
“You’re welcome, Claire Breslinsky.”
They hung up again.
Meanwhile, on the south side of Jamaica Avenue over Mrs. Fatima’s exclusive blue lagoon, up a couple of flights of stairs and in the deafening nearness of the el, Zinnie and Narayan, enraptured, removed each other’s soggy, tender clothes. Their bodies glowed against each other and they melted together with an unavoidable, mysterious blank pull. On the corner was an always-open, red-and-yellow bodega that pumped out one torrid marenga on top of the other. He smelled at first of cumin. She of L’air du Temps. They mingled in a brackish, taut embrace. She felt the luster of his hairy body, and he watched her creamy arm clamp hopelessly against his massive self. “Oh boy,” she said, “oh, God.”
He silently moved, under the vertigo spell and the at-last and innermost height of dharana.
Dharma, always the first into pajamas, stood at the bottom of the stairs for the cleaning-of-the-teeth inspection. Claire thought she liked this part of the routine; children always liked to do what they did well, and Dharma was so good at hygiene. Her pink hippopotamus buttons were done up demurely to the top of her soft-flannelled throat. Anthony whooped down the stairs and then came Michaelaen, a casual straggler intent on being viewed as a big boy.
“Let’s see, now,” Mary made a great fuss. Teeth, to the Irish, are of the utmost importance because they cost, if not treated as precious, such a lot. She opened their mouths like a no-nonsense browser at a horse fair.
“I’ll be handling the stories tonight, if you please,” Swamiji announced with a two-steps-back bow. He had a good one. He’d been clandestinely brushing up on his Hans Christian Andersen.
Claire had to go across the street and get Dharma’s things, she remembered. Oh, she didn’t feel like doing that at all. “Mom, will you come with me?” she asked.
“Swamiji and I will just finish up these dishes for you, Claire. We’d be most helpful that way, don’t you think?”
Foxglove Page 23
