by Ann Beattie
Lowell and Daphne have decided to take a ride in the kayak, tied to the end of the pier. This may leave me alone to greet Kathryn, who should arrive in twenty minutes or so, if everything goes according to schedule. Lately, I have begun to think that she is angry because she has had to pity me for so many years. The choked-up version my uncle gave her of the event that ostensibly ruined my young life registered so strongly with her that she has never been able to put it aside. The sheer misery of what I went through gets superimposed, I suspect, on her desire to be competitive with me, makes her back off from trying, more tenaciously, to solve the puzzle that is me: a street kid who gradually became educated (nothing else to do those four long, cold years we lived in Saratoga), only to shun those with similar education—to shun everyone, in fact. What she doesn’t know is that I knew almost immediately my marriage was a mistake, I never wanted to become a father—the accident was my way out, not only from the situation, but for all time. Daphne could have spooned so much protein powder into my fruit drink it would have had the consistency of sawdust, and I would only have paid her and walked away. I’ve faltered a bit, from time to time; Kathryn would love to know with whom, and when, but my uncle spoke so graphically to her, years ago, that he managed to instill even future shame—that’s the way I think of the service he inadvertently did for me—so that she still can’t bring herself to ask outright what the story is with some hulking street kid who has no girlfriend and no friends, who is aging companion-ably, in the lower Florida Keys, with her bizarre, neurotic brother.
They descend into the kayak. Daphne has found something, already, to giggle about. She has left one shoe on the dock, it seems. I am summoned to help. Once seated, Lowell doesn’t want to risk toppling the boat, I suppose. I don’t play deaf; I respond to his entreaty, and at the edge of the dock I bend and pick up her gold flip-flop, for which she thanks me profusely, and then Prince Charming and Cinderella set sail. Which leaves me with the four-cheese tortes with rye saffron crust that I don’t mind being the first to cut into, taking out a neat wedge with the knife and admiring its firm, yet creamy consistency. It is flecked with rosemary and ground pink peppercorns: the appetizer other chefs have been stealing and altering almost from the minute Lowell invented it. What none of them have guessed, to my knowledge, is the presence of the single simmered vanilla bean. I bite off a tiny piece, chew slowly, and consider the possibility that anything as ambrosial as this might be interchangeable with love.
The Triple J Cab pulls into the drive as the sun is setting. Kathryn alights from the front seat—wouldn’t you know she’d be so ballsy, she’d sit up front. She seems to have only a small bag with her, which means, thank God, she won’t be visiting longer than she said. But then, from the backseat, a skinny woman emerges, holding her own small bag, wearing a beret and a long white scarf, which matches her white shorts and her white tee-shirt, over which she wears a droopy vest. “Paradise!” she exclaims, throwing back her head and enthusing, as if the sky were awaiting her verdict. Yes, indeed—but who is she?
She is Nancy Cummins—Cummins without a “g”—who is en route to a bris to be held in a suite at the Casa Marina Hotel, in Key West. She is an acquaintance of Kathryn’s from New York—a highlighter whom Kathryn arranged to meet at JFK, when it turned out the two women would be taking trips at the same time, almost to the same destination (“Highlighter”— meaning that she paints streaks in rich people’s hair).
I carry their two small bags. Inside one, it will later turn out, is a narcotized kitten.
“Where’s my brother?” Kathryn asks. Rushing to also ask: “Did he forget I was coming?”
“He’s in a kayak with his girlfriend,” I say.
“See?” Kathryn says to the highlighter. “No one meets anybody in New York; you come to Siberia, and bingo.”
“Bingo,” I say. “I haven’t thought of bingo in a million years.”
“They don’t play games. They read books,” Kathryn says to the highlighter, as if I’m not there.
“You know,” I say, realizing I’m about to make a fool of myself, but not caring, “when she said you were a highlighter, I thought at first she must mean of books. Those yellow markers you underline with. You know: highlighters.”
The highlighter says, “I’ve always stayed as far from school as I could get.”
I put their bags on the kitchen counter. It’s only then that the highlighter unzips her bag and removes what I take, at first, to be a wad of material. It is a six-week-old black kitten, sleeping what looks like the sleep of death, though the thing does twitch when she puts it on the counter.
“Isn’t it adorable?” Kathryn says.
Oh, absolutely. Now we have a cow, a manatee, and a kitten.
“Did he chill my favorite wine, or did he forget?” Kathryn wants to know, pulling open the refrigerator door. In the shelf sit four bottles of Vichon Chardonnay, with two cans of Tecate at either end, seeming to brace the bottles like bookends. Kathryn plucks a bottle from the shelf and closes the door. I open the drawer and silently pantomime that I would be happy to extract the cork. But no: she’s a liberated woman, none of that harmful stereotyping of the helpless female allowed. Flip forward until two A.M., when I’ll have the anxiety dream.
The highlighter opens the door and seizes a Tecate.
“Key lime?” I offer, reaching behind the slightly quivering kitten and extracting one from a basket.
“What do you do with it?”
“You squirt some in your beer,” Kathryn says.
“I hope . . . I hope it isn’t too much trouble, my just, you know, coming here,” the highlighter says, as if the idea of limes used to enhance the flavor of drinks has just defined some complexity for her.
“Look at this! Next Sunday’s Times Book Review—by subscription!” Kathryn says.
“Yes. We alternate with our reading of The Siberian Daily.”
“Didn’t I tell you he has a clever comeback for everything?” Kathryn says.
As if this weren’t a put-down, the highlighter extends her hand and says, “I can’t believe my good fortune in being here. I mean, it’s very generous of you to have me. Because what a coincidence, my flying to this part of Florida—I guess I’m in the right part of Florida!—just when . . .”
I shake her hand. It is what we might have done from the first, if she had said immediately how happy she was to be where she was, and if Kathryn hadn’t plunked the two bags in my hand. Does this happen to other people? This finding oneself suddenly greeting someone, or introducing oneself, long after things have gotten rolling? Roger Vergé once introduced himself to me on the second day of his visit, following his dinner of the night before, and after preparing lunch, for which he’d had me shop earlier that morning. Does some strange, sudden formality overcome people, or is there something I do that makes them feel so immediately a part of the family that they forget social form? I’ve asked Lowell, and that is his explanation. Just as his sister would never miss an opportunity to express skepticism about me, Lowell lets no opportunity pass when he can reassure me of my worthiness, by putting a positive spin on things. Leaving aside those periods when he is too depressed to speak, that is.
“And so you . . . you stay out here and create recipes together?” the highlighter asks.
“That sounds so domestic,” I say. “No, actually. I have nothing to do with composing the recipes, and now that Lowell has mastered the computer, I sometimes don’t even—”
“Tell her about tracking down the powdered rhino horn,” Kathryn says, stroking the collapsed kitten.
“She’s talking about my tracking down an herbal mixture Lowell had interest in,” I begin.
“Did you go to jail?”
“Pardon?”
“For importing the rhinoceros.”
“I didn’t. . . . I didn’t import a whole rhinoceros.”
“The drug smuggler around the corner would probably be willing to do that for a price,” Kathryn says.
> The highlighter looks at me, wide-eyed. “She told me about the guy who runs drugs.”
“And did she tell you that we disapprove, and that we’re spying on him for the federal government?”
“No.”
“Only kidding. We don’t care what out neighbors do.”
“For one thing, you’d have to be delusional to live here on the edge of nowhere and think in terms of having a neighbor,” Kathryn says.
“I know everybody in my building,” the highlighter says. “Of course, there are only four apartments.”
“Apartments,” Kathryn muses, strolling onto the back deck. “Can you stand here and imagine one going up across the way?”
“No,” the highlighter says.
“We’ve left places because of equally ridiculous scenarios,” I say.
“Kathryn told me that you two have lived just about everywhere.”
“She did? Well, as an adult I’ve only—”
“Rhinoceros,” the highlighter says. “Isn’t that an aphrodisiac, or something?”
The wall phone rings, sending a short spasm through the kitten, who has dragged itself almost underneath it, before collapsing again.
That is what we were doing, what the three of us were talking about, when a chef whose name I faintly computed called from Coral Gables, in quite a dither, wanting me to inform Lowell that George Stephanopoulos would be calling momentarily.
The president, it seems, is a lover of mango. He has recently sampled Lowell’s preparation of baked mango gratinée—usually served as an accompaniment to chicken or fish—at the home of a friend, who prepared it from Lowell’s newest cookbook. The president loved it, as well as the main course, which was apparently prepared out of the same cookbook. Furthermore, Mrs. Clinton has become intent upon sampling some of Lowell’s newer dishes (but no chocolate chip cookies, goes through my mind) and wonders if they might recruit Lowell to cook for them during an upcoming weekend at a friend’s borrowed home in Boca Raton. Mrs. Clinton will call herself, to confer about the menu, which would be for ten people—three of them teenage girls—whenever it is convenient.
I cover the receiver with my hand and whisper: “When can you talk to Hillary?”
Kathryn, from the back deck, maintains this is all a prank.
“Any time,” Lowell whispers back.
“Would Mrs. Clinton be able to talk to Mr. Cartwright now?”
“Probably she would right after the Kennedy Center performance,” George Stephanopoulos says. “Give me five minutes. Let me get back to you on that.”
The phone doesn’t ring for an hour. By the time it does ring, the kitten is upright and spunky, chasing after Key limes rolled across the kitchen floor.
“George Stephanopoulos,” the voice says. “Are you . . . there’s a landing field in Marathon, correct?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Big planes don’t come in, though?”
I see the dinner slipping away. “No,” I say.
“Is there a roasted pig?”
“I’m sorry, sir?”
“Not at the airport. I mean, is there a recipe for roasted pig?”
“Prepared with a cumin marinade, and served with pistachio pureed potatoes.”
“The Clintons have left for an evening performance, but if it wouldn’t be inconvenient, I think Mrs. Clinton would like to call when they return. It might be eleven, ten-thirty, or eleven—something like that.”
“Mr. Cartwright stays up until well after midnight.”
“I’ll bet I’m interrupting your dinner right now. Tell me the truth.”
“No. Actually, we’ve been watching what has turned out to be an incredible sunset and we’ve been waiting for your call.”
“Sunset,” Stephanopoulos says, with real longing in his voice. “Okay,” he says. “Speak to you later.”
“This is amazing,” the highlighter says.
“Sting and Trudie Styler rented a house in Key West last winter,” Daphne says. “Also, David Hyde Pierce, who plays Frasier’s brother, took a date for dinner on Little Palm Island, and he tipped really well.”
Since the moment they were introduced, Daphne and the highlighter have gotten along famously. They’re sitting on the kitchen floor, rolling limes around like some variation of playing marbles, and the kitten has sprung to life and is going gonzo.
“When would the dinner be?” Lowell asks.
“They’re going to call around eleven,” I say. “You can ask.”
“You ask,” Lowell says. “I’d make a fool of myself if I had to talk to Hillary Clinton.”
On the deck, Kathryn plucks a stalk of lemon grass growing from a clay pot, puts it between her two thumbs, and blows loudly. The kitten slithers under the refrigerator.
“Reminds me of certain of the doctor’s patients,” Daphne says, watching the kitten disappear. “You know, what really drives me crazy is that when they call, they give every last detail about their problem, as if the dentist cares whether the tooth broke because they were eating pizza or gnawing on a brick.”
The kitten emerges, followed by what looks like its own kitten: a quick moving palmetto bug that disappears under the stove.
“Jesus Christ,” Lowell says. “Where’s the bug spray?”
Antonio, the chef from Coral Gables, calls back. He wants Lowell to know that since the president will be having lunch at his restaurant, he is not at all offended that the president wishes to dine with us. Every effort must be made, however, not to duplicate dishes. He asks, bleakly, if we have had any success in finding fresh estragon in southern Florida.
“If this were Frasier, Niles would run out and buy a speaker phone before the president called back. He’d hook it up, but then in the middle of the call it would blow up, or something,” Daphne says.
We all look at her.
“I always watch because I like my namesake,” Daphne says.
“That’s what he said?” Lowell says, pouring chardonnay into his glass. “He came right out and said the president liked my potato-mango gratinée?”
“What do you think he’d say to lead into the subject that Clinton wanted to come to dinner? That the president had been very depressed about the Whitewater investigation?”
“No mention of Whitewater!” Lowell says.
“It’s like: don’t think of a pink elephant,” the highlighter says.
Kathryn comes in from the back deck. “The bugs are starting to bite,” she says.
“Also, where are we going to seat them?” Lowell says.
I say: “At the dining room table.”
“Twelve, with the leaf up, but fourteen? Where will we get the chairs?”
“You can probably leave that up to someone on his staff.”
“This isn’t going to happen,” Kathryn says. “You really think the Clintons are going to come bumping down that dirt road like the Beverly Hillbillies?”
“Gravel,” Lowell says. “But you’re right. We could easily get it paved.”
“Remember when Queen Elizabeth went to Washington, and they took her to the home of a typical black family, or whatever it was, and the woman went up to the queen and gave her a big hug, and all the newspapers had the photograph of the queen going into shock when she was touched?” the highlighter says.
“A good suggestion: a simple handshake with the president and first lady will suffice,” Lowell says to the highlighter.
“If I had to talk to them I’d probably piss my pants,” the highlighter says.
“We could mention to Hillary that treatment for adult incontinence was not often covered under current health insurance policies,” I say.
“We could say that yellow water was better than white water,” Daphne chimes in.
“I just realized: I didn’t put the carpaccio out,” I say, going to the refrigerator.
“Let’s spray ourselves and knock back some more wine out on the deck before we eat,” Kathryn says.
“Yes, but . . . we won’t swallow!”
the highlighter says.
Well before eleven, we’ve run out of jokes.
“This is the most strange and exciting day I have had since Madonna came in to get her roots retouched after closing. There she was, looking like a little wet dog, with her hair shampooed and the handkerchief-size towel behind her neck, and she wouldn’t speak to me directly, she said everything to her bodyguard, who relayed it to me: all of a sudden, instead of touching up her roots, I was supposed to dry her hair, set the dryer on low and give it to him, actually, and let him dry it, and I was supposed to highlight her wig, instead. And then we had a blackout. The whole place went dark, and do you know, her bodyguard thought it was deliberate. It wasn’t Con Ed fucking up again, it was a plot to kidnap Madonna! He kept lighting this butane lighter he had with him and looking incredibly fierce. She was smoking a cigarette and talking to herself. She was dabbing at her neck and saying that she wished she could be somewhere else, and then, in almost no light, the bodyguard kept telling me to hurry up with highlighting the wig.”
“What did she name that baby?” Kathryn says.
“LuLu,” Daphne says.
I correct her. “Lourdes.”
“He reads the tabloids in the food store,” Kathryn says.
At eleven-thirty, George Stephanopoulos has not called back. After Letterman’s monologue, we decide to skip Burt Bachrach and call it a night. The kitten has been sleeping on its back, like a dog, for quite a long time. The highlighter casually reaches for it, as if it were her evening bag.
“You’re sure it was George Stephanopoulos?” Lowell says to me, as Kathryn volunteers to lead the ladies to their rooms.
