Of course it was allowed. They probably had laws about that. Call-Me-Art handed over his clipboard; we wrote our names. I signed even more illegibly than Blue. No one would ever be able to conclusively prove that it did not, in fact, say Kathleen Claverie, the name I always wrote before. I asked Call-Me-Art to get the door for us before he could ask for our IDs. He held it wide. I had to remember to meet with my attorney, draft some sort of assurance that if I ever fell ill I would recuperate in a much more secure facility.
The doors were decked out with little sailboats now. Senior scribbles in the sails, names spelled out across the hulls. Blue and Pamela followed me and I made sure to stop and read each door so it wouldn’t seem like I knew exactly where to go. Janine!’s sail was crowded with concentric tracing; at the door that had once been Herman!’s a new tag read Saul!. A single dribbly M dominated Marjorie’s sail. She could hold a marker now. More than. An uneasy gut roil. Acidic. Tidal. Your mother was well on her way.
Pamela hesitated at the door, tracing her grandmother’s name with manicured fingers.
“Marjorie?” I poked my head in. “It’s Lida. Lida Stearl. Remember me? I’ve brought a surprise.”
“Ppft.” A new Marjorie sound, like she was pretending to be French.
“Well, look at you!” I said. Marjorie’s face was inexplicably caked with makeup. “Did you do that yourself?” Not likely, considering her wobbly sailboat M. Maybe Riverview brought in beauty school volunteers. Your mother’s lashes spiked up in dark clumpy thorns. Wide fevered circles blotched her cheeks and her eyelids were weighed down with cocoa-colored powder. Some steady hand had daubed her mouth the wrong red, too jazzy for a woman who hadn’t been outdoors in ages. It faded in places where your mother had licked her lips.
“Marjorie,” I said again. She wouldn’t look at me. Her favorite game. And fair was fair. I’d been sound and steady and then vanished without a peep. She was sitting straighter than I had ever seen her. I had to pretend like all of this was new. I had to do this without seeming excessively strange to Marjorie. “I brought someone special here for you.”
“Hi.” Pam waved. Blue stood very tall behind her.
“You.” Marjorie’s hand flapped. The cosmetic volunteer had been a bit too enthusiastic with the nail polish. Violet blobbed like a series of nasty bruises.
“Me,” said Pam. “And this is Blue.”
“Ppft.”
A frown from Pamela. A light little sigh.
“She’s had a stroke, remember?” I turned back to your mother. “That really is her, Marjorie. Clarence’s girl.”
“A Clarence girl, ppft.”
So. No more cassava. I had to keep calm. Remember the shrug I had perfected. It’s the immediate response that counts most when a body’s accused of wrong. “Pam came a long way to see you,” I said. “She brought her husband.”
Blue waved. I’d have to ask someday how he always knew the proper direction to face.
“Ppft.”
Pam said, “We drove out from St. Louis.”
Marjorie stuttered. An s sound, an l sound, a series of ts.
“That’s right, Marjorie. St. Louis. You can do it.” As long as she focused on St. Louis she couldn’t let slip I’d been there a time or twelve before. “St. Louis,” I said again, enunciating. “St. Louis.” A baffled look from Pam. I supposed she was expecting me to be unkind. Or at the very least not in my element. She knows sociability does not always come easily to me. “Say hello again, Pammie,” I said.
“Hello.” She stepped all the way into the room.
Marjorie looked and looked.
“Clarence’s girl,” I said again.
A fast series of blinks. When the word came, it came perfectly clear. “Slut.”
“Excuse me?” Pam brought a hand to her not very much of a belly. In the door frame beyond her, Blue stiffened.
“Ppft.”
“It’s nice to meet you too.” Pam stepped closer. A glance my way. “I don’t think it’s the stroke that’s the problem.”
“Hey now.” That was Blue. He joined his wife at your mother’s bedside.
“Slut.”
I said, “A stroke can affect the language center of the brain and inhibitions sometimes—”
“Thank you, Doctor Lida. And now my long-lost grandmother thinks I’m a tramp.” She leaned close to Marjorie. “I only ever slept with Blue, thank you very much. It’s obscenely quaint and I think we’re done here.” She stood, fast. She took a step back and nearly clobbered Blue.
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “About you and Blue.” Even I’d had Martin Dorsey, an age ago, before Frank.
“Oh my god.” A withering look from Pam. “Put me in a clown suit and it’s everyone’s worst nightmare come true.”
Blue lay a calming hand on her shoulder.
“Slut.”
“A rubber clown nose.” Pamela tweaked her own. “Right here.”
“A slut girl a liar.” Marjorie’s words were horrible and perfectly ungarbled.
We’d been very forthright in our sex talks with Pam; it had seemed the appropriate and healthy thing to do. But she’d guarded her worry so close, her fear of turning into you. And she was Barbra’s daughter as well. Afraid of following her path too, more likely than not. “Pamela, I know that you’d never—”
“Please, Lida. I just want this conversation to die.”
“Your grandmother doesn’t think you’re a slut.”
“Evidence suggests otherwise.”
“She thinks you’re your mother.” Clarence’s girl, I’d said. I should have said daughter. “Pamela, the stroke—won’t you please sit down?”
“This family.” Pam shook her head. She sat though. Blue’s hand hung in the air briefly, shaped by her absent shoulder.
“Marjorie.” I bent toward her. The greasy smell of discount makeup. “This is Pamela. Little Pam.”
Your mother brought her thumb to her front tooth. She ran it back and forth, remembering, I was certain, the dental impressions I’d permitted her to hold.
“That’s right. Pam. Clarence’s daughter. Not his—not my sister.”
“The little . . .” Her voice caught midway through the word.
“Pam.” I rubbed my thumb along my teeth.
“Come,” said Marjorie. The word came garbled, like she had twice the normal amount of tongue. Pamela scooched the chair forward. My Pam in her wide green dress, bright kite reeled in.
The reluctant scrape of Pam’s chair. “Hello again. This is really weird, isn’t it, Marjorie?”
“Grandmom Lusk. You used to call her Grandmom Lusk.”
“Lida, please.” Pam shifted. “She’s not about to pop out of bed and bake us oatmeal cookies.”
Blue jostled from one foot to the other, hands deep in his pockets. Barbra should be here. She was so good with uncomfortable meetings. When I first introduced her to Frank his shirt was missing a button. He noticed halfway through their conversation. He was nervous. I said he shouldn’t bother. She was just a little sister after all. I was nervous too, even if I didn’t tell him. Barbra bratted that she’d never like anyone as much as my first, Martin Dorsey. Frank’s fingers kept picking at the spot where the button belonged. Without once stopping her chatter, Barbra pinched the button at her cuff and twisted it right off. She gave it to Frank and he liked her from that moment on.
“Close,” said Marjorie. “More close.” She paused. “Closer. More.”
Pamela leaned in. They shared a profile. Marjorie might have been as pretty when she was young. I had to look away. The sickroom blinds cut the sky outside to ribbons.
“No. Close. Come close. More.”
“Grandmom Lusk, this is getting silly.”
I heard a hiss. I heard a gag. A muffled wh—. I whipped around. Marjorie had jammed her hand in Pamela’s mouth, her fingers going piano keys over her teeth. Pamela grunted and arched back. Blue stood perfectly still trying to figure out what had happened. His hands were out o
f his pockets and ready to help. Hard noises came from Seshet’s throat. Pam jerked away so fast not even spit linked her to her grandmother.
“What are you doing? What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Pam,” said Marjorie.
“Hands off.”
“She’s only checking your teeth, Pamela.” The plaster sets were in my purse. “She wants to be sure you’re you.”
No one could blame Marjorie for thinking I’d pull such a sorry switcheroo.
“Well she can’t. I didn’t say she could.”
“Pam,” Marjorie repeated.
“I’m not a horse. What’s her problem?”
“We’re all okay here,” said Blue. With his inflection it might have been a question.
“Your hands better be clean,” Pam stood. “I think we should go. We can warn them about pink girl at the desk.”
“Pam,” Marjorie said again. My sister shouldn’t have named her such a sad little sound.
“What, so you believe I’m me now?”
“Long. Time,” said Marjorie. She turned to me. Her left half smiled. Gratitude. Please. Let it be that. I had found her, after all, I had brought Pamela to her side. “Long time,” she said again.
“I guess so,” Pam agreed, edging away.
“Long long time. I call you . . .” She opened her left hand to Pam and pulsed it, waiting. “I call you . . . call you . . .”
I wished Marjorie had more than present tense back. It made her sound like an imbecile. It made it sound like everything that had happened to her was happening still.
Pam looked at me, confused.
“She means a nickname, I think. She wants you to remember what she used to call you.”
“My Granna used to call me Pamcake.”
“Chub chick, chubchick,” said Marjorie.
“I’ve got a lousy memory.”
Your poor mother. I knew how it felt to get Pamela’s ice voice.
“Ppft.” Marjorie paused, strained, and copied Pam’s word “Lousy. Lida.” She grunted, eyes fixed on me. “Lida. Ppft.”
A sharp hiss. From me or from Pam, I couldn’t tell. “That’s my aunt you’re talking about.”
“Ppft, Lida.” Marjorie glared, unblinking. I was the one who got Pam out of all of this. Every recital, every kiss goodnight. I’d hate me if I was your mother. So what if I brought tulips, a bedside chair. Teaching Pammie how to read a map. Unscrewing the training wheels from her purple bike. I’d hate me if I was you. “Lida, ppft. Years, ppft. Years.”
“Lida’s the one who brought us here in the first place,” Blue broke in. The only whole soul in all of Riverview. “If you don’t mind my saying.”
“Years and years.” Marjorie clawed at Pamela. Her nails shone by the light of her bedside lamp. She was going to get that gunk all over. “Ask Lida, ppft. Ask.”
“Please don’t talk like that.” Pamela stood, a hand pressed to her belly.
Marjorie eyeballed it.
“Listen,” said Pam. “This whole thing has been really weird. I’m sorry you’re sick and I’m going to believe that’s why you’ve been so nasty. I hope you get better. I don’t—I don’t know you, but I really hope that, okay? We’re going to make sure they keep you safe here and I guess—”
“Chub chick.” It had been one word in the funeral home parking lot. One word and just as desperate. Marjorie’s hand, twitchy and curved to a permanent claw, rose toward Pam’s stomach. “A baby.”
An explosive sigh. “Yes. A baby.” Pam’s arms rocked back and forth, cradling air. “A deliberate damn baby with my lawfully wedded husband, with whom I am disgustingly, blissfully happy.”
She was halfway to the door. “Pammie. Wait. Your grandmother’s been sick.”
“I don’t care. I just don’t care.” A long pause between each word.
“I don’t think this is doing anyone any good,” Blue said.
“She’s family. She hasn’t seen you.” I knew what it was like when Pam turned completely away.
“Lida, enough.” Pamela sounded so tired.
“Wait,” Marjorie’s voice was lead-tongued. “The baby. A girl.” There was something of a pronouncement to it, witchy and unyielding.
“We want to be surprised,” Blue said, moving with Seshet to the door.
“Poor chub chick.”
“I like surprises.” Pam scowled, so tall over her grandmother. “I am way overdue for an actually pleasant surprise.”
“Your family . . .” A click from Marjorie’s throat. “Nasty girls.”
We should never have come here.
I should never have come here.
“You’re a girl in my family,” Pam’s voice was lethally bright.
“Ppft. Nasty. Lida, ppft. Barbra, ppft.” Your mother had got back all kinds of things to say. Your mother had re-learned how to point. She pointed right at me.
Marjorie didn’t get three letters a year. Marjorie didn’t get one. I took Pamela. It was my right to take her.
“Don’t you talk about my family.” Pamela at my defense. It should have warmed me more. My stomach felt gummed through and through. Pam leaned close to your mother. In a photograph she’d look like she was about to kiss her cheek. In another life. “I want you to apologize. To everyone here. To my husband. To Lida. To the dog.”
Ma died four years after Barbra.
Frank, nearly sixteen.
I fought hard for Pamela. Dirty. My sister’s daughter. Of course I fought.
Without Pamela I would wither just like your mother. My right half dying, then my left. They had your mother on medicine to bust up clots. Which meant her blood flowed easier now. Which meant that somehow she still had the heart to pump it.
“It doesn’t matter, Pamela. Not to me. Not a bit. It’s just her way.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Her lip curled down. “You aren’t this woman’s punching bag.” Pam’s arm arced back. She swung wildly at the bedside lamp. The room brightened with the ceramic thud. I’d never in my life seen her make a fist. On her way out she took a swipe at the blinds. Light danced horribly. Seshet whined. When his wife stormed past, Blue drew his arms in close. Pam tore the sailboat from Marjorie’s door. She made confetti of it. She threw it at the wall, hard, and made a terrible gut-in-the-throat noise when it drifted instead of making impact. Blue and I followed Pam down the hall. I took no leave of Marjorie and she couldn’t have been surprised. The two of us were clear in this much: my fealty would always be to Pam. She stopped at the lobby water fountain. Drank. Spat. She dug her knee into its base. It gurgled, horrible and metallic. She pushed hard at the front door. Its panes reflected Pam’s face as the door swung out. I wished they hadn’t. The human heart is only meat. A blue gaze like that could jerky it. Pamela kicked a geranium urn. She howled. She grabbed her toe and sank to the ground, rocking with pain.
Blue was there. He found her and—somehow—got her to her feet.
“I knew it. I just knew it. Of course she wouldn’t be happy we found her. This family. Of course my grandma would be a B I T C you know the rest.” We were at the car. She couldn’t find the right key. Pam leaned against the window. It was late July, midday. I could almost hear flesh sizzle. “No wonder he never told me. Not a word. When we found her I thought that was strange. Since she was so close by and all. But he knew what she’d be like. He had to know. She raised him. She’s got to be the reason why he’s such a—”
“He couldn’t tell you, Pam.”
“Sure he could’ve.”
“We had an agreement.” You’d actually honored it. Both you Lusks had. “He got to hear from you now and again so long as she never, ever tried to contact—It wasn’t kind, I know—I was afraid she’d try and—She was so grabby with you at the funeral.”
“They went along with that?” Blue asked. “Really?”
“He wanted to hear from Pam. Marjorie’s his mother. I guess he got her to go along.”
Pam’s head went back to the window. I
t rested there, sweating. “He’s not the least selfish man ever, is he?” she finally said.
I didn’t agree. I couldn’t. Not when I’d had my part in the bargain making.
“You knew that about him, Pam,” Blue said. “You knew that all along.”
“And I guess I know now he comes by it honestly,” said Pam. “That woman.”
“Your grandmother’s all alone in this world,” I said.
“Just her and her puritanical Barbra hang-up.”
“It’s not a hang-up.”
“Oh, please.”
“It’s not.” What Marjorie felt for my sister—for me—was bigger than that sporty little word. What the pair of us took from her. I knew the feeling. It blinded her. And even that wasn’t enough. It blinded her and then presumed to guide her way.
“Were you even in the same room as me today?” Pamela lifted her head. Her freckled skin warmed just the barest bit pink.
“I was there. Absolutely.”
“Oh, ppft.” The sound was bitterer when Pam made it, and sloppier. Spit flew.
“Ppft,” Blue echoed. Just like Marjorie. He probably did a spot-on Aunt Li too, when they were alone.
37.
Dear Mrs. Stearl,
There’s been a rules change. We can’t keep Polaroids in Stemble anymore. Turns out they’re made up of a zillion paper layers and it’s easy enough to stash stuff between them. Enright got caught at random check with a half dozen overstuffed pics of his grandma. He crammed them full of his own nail clippings. Bit off. We can’t be trusted with clippers to do our own.
I’ve told you all about Enright, Lida Stearl. Lida, you have to be impressed he had the brains to figure that trick out. But wasting it like that is pure Enright, wouldn’t you say so, Lida? So thanks to him I have to trash this picture or return it. I’ve been meaning to send it back regardless. Seeing as she wasn’t ever really mine. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know my sister-in-law’s street address. You should get this anyhow, if you’re still checking box 4770.
The Done Thing Page 17
