Marlin looked like George—the same long face, blue eyes, and broad forehead. His manner wasn’t at all the same, however. He was both domineering and furtive, as if he weren’t entirely sure he was in control.
“I want to thank you for taking such good care of my father,” he said.
“I’m not his only aide. Emily and Lulu are the others. I imagine you’ve met them?”
“You’re the only one he talks about.”
Emily and Lulu were both in their fifties—big, strong women with large, rough-skinned hands.
“He’s a wonderful old gentleman,” Eunice said. The gin had softened her voice too much, she thought. She was in danger of giving herself away.
Marlin didn’t seem to have noticed. He was studying the plastic laminated menu. He put it face down on the table.
“You know he’s dying,” Marlin said.
“Yes. For a while now.”
“We’re bringing him home.”
“I know that, too.”
“He’s putting up a hell of a fight. Didn’t think the old guy had it in him.”
Was that pride in his voice? Admiration? The light in his eyes said it was perhaps both.
“Then why not leave him alone?” Eunice asked.
“My sister won’t have it. She needs him to die in her house.”
Needs?
There was trouble between them years before, Marlin explained. His sister, Nadine, ran off with her college sweetheart. The guy was no good. Left her flat after only a month. The ink on the marriage license was barely dry. Of course, she was pregnant. Their father offered to help. She refused every bit of advice, guidance, and support. She even refused money.
“Sounds like a fiercely independent woman.”
“She was a fool. She suffered. The child suffered.”
In some way, Nadine blamed her father for everything, the way young women so often do.
Eunice didn’t know what he was talking about. In her own life, it was her mother she blamed, never her father.
She married again. A good man, a solid man. He adopted the boy as his own. Yet Nadine always felt their father had driven her off, not been accepting enough of her. Really, it was the normal teenage stuff he’d objected to. He was never cruel about any of it. Even so, she punished him. She didn’t visit often, didn’t let him see the grandson. After their mother died, this absence was particularly painful. By then the boy, Benjamin, was in his twenties.
“It’s hard to bring a young person that age into your life when you’re an old man.”
“So, she feels guilty,” Eunice said. The drink had gone to her head. She felt loose and wobbly.
“Clearly.”
She nodded solemnly. She wondered where the waiter had gone.
“Let me come to the point,” Marlin said.
“Oh, please do.”
“I—that is, we—want you to tell our dad to come home with us.”
Eunice shook her head. Marlin reached into the pocket of his jacket, removed an envelope, and put it on the table in front of her.
“There’s two thousand dollars in there,” he said.
“You want to bribe me?”
“I want to bring my father home and have him be happy about it. As happy as he can be, at this stage of the game. If this will help you do the right thing, then it’s yours for the taking.”
Eunice stared at the envelope and thought about what it could mean. She cared deeply for George, but he didn’t have that much more time.
Wait, what kind of person was she to even consider abandoning someone she loved?
Someone who’s sick of being broke.
“Take a little time off. I’ll speak to your supervisor. They can tell George you’re sick,” Marlin said.
“He’ll worry if he hears that.”
“No doubt you’re correct. Then how about this? You have a family emergency. He’d accept that.”
And love me even more for seeing how responsible and caring I am.
“I’m sorry, did I say something to upset you?” Marlin asked.
Eunice wiped her eyes.
“No, I’m fine, thanks.”
They decided not to order any food, now that the matter had been cleared up.
Marlin drove Eunice back to Lindell. She sat in the passenger seat of his BMW, clutching her purse like the greedy cheater she was. She’d almost refused the money, then took it, just like that.
She said good-bye and walked around back where she’d left her car. Her head pounded from gin on an empty stomach. Someone had shoved a piece of paper under one of her wiper blades, asking her to stop by the reception desk before going home. She pulled herself together and walked back the way she’d come.
There was a note from Alice saying George had passed away only an hour before.
It was sudden, despite his condition, she wrote.
When had he gone? At the moment her hand touched the envelope? But that was nonsense. He didn’t know anything about it.
George’s room didn’t stay vacant long. A tiny Italian woman moved into it. She had no use for Eunice, and never made small talk. Eunice was just as glad. She didn’t want to spend a lot of time there.
Marlin never asked for the money back. Twice Eunice wrote out his address, obtained from Lindell, on a slightly larger envelope and slipped hers inside. She didn’t seal it. She didn’t even buy a stamp. Eventually she bought the Carmen Ghia its muffler, then sold the car to a collector for six thousand dollars with one condition—that he name the car George.
chapter fourteen
For her fortieth birthday, Eunice treated herself by signing up for a square dancing class at the Y. She was particularly blue. Her father had died the winter before from complications of emphysema, and her mother sang a very different tune. Suddenly, the old house she swore she’d never leave became oppressive. She begged Eunice to move back home. Eunice told her she was off her rocker. Soon after, her mother’s home was foreclosed on. Apparently, they’d been behind on everything for years. She described the court proceeding with cheer, even a touch of gusto. What she admired most was how they dressed, the lawyers. Put together, you know? So calm and dignified. It gave some little proof that the world wasn’t a complete mess. Eunice had some trouble with this disconnect. Rather than being furious over their role in removing her from her home, her mother was enchanted by their suits and ties.
When the sale went through, her mother took her savings, which consisted of three thousand dollars she’d gotten away from Eunice’s father after his windfall, and rented an apartment downtown in a former high school that had been renovated. It happened to be the one where Eunice had suffered through four miserable years of social anxiety, in fact, and the one time she visited, she swore the tiny sitting room where her mother poured her a beer without asking if she wanted one was once the back half of her tenth grade geometry class. The view was the same: a stately Episcopal church on one side of the street, a small nicely-shaded park on the other. And the enormous elm was still there, though taller, and fuller in the trunk. Two of the branches formed a saddle that Eunice had often longed to sit in, above the world, unobserved.
The grief her mother expressed at the passing of Eunice’s father seemed to be genuine.
“You’re all I have left now,” she said, quietly, then invited Eunice to join her weekly bingo game. For a moment, Eunice was tempted to accept, then realized that if she did, she might as well have one foot in the damn grave. Hence, the square dancing class.
The instructor was a tall, young man with stooped shoulders. His shoulder-length hair
was thin on top. The frames of his glasses were heavy and black, held together across the bridge of his nose with adhesive tape. Despite all that, she found him madly attractive. His eyes got to her. They were so blue they bordered on lavender. Up to that moment, though she hadn’t seen him since, Carson had still tugged at her heart. Now Carson was really and truly gone.
His name was Hamilton, Ham for short. He was twenty-six. It was clear that he didn’t give her a second thought. When it was her turn to do-si-do, she kept trying to hold his hand, which the maneuver didn’t call for.
One evening after class, she invited him to join her for a drink. As they sat in a booth in the back of the bar, Eunice with a schooner of amber ale, Ham nursed a cup of black coffee and explained why he’d given up alcohol. The year before, there’d been a terrible tragedy. Eleanor, his dog, had been killed. She was a cocker spaniel, young and eager, always straining forward. One night he took her for her usual walk after he’d had a few too many, and his grip on the leash wasn’t tight enough. He let go. She raced into the road and got hit by a car. They’d been walking on a quiet road in the part of town where his mother still lived. It was late. That a car would come down it at that exact moment was uncanny. The driver wasn’t a neighbor but someone leaving a Bible study session at a nearby home. He was a quiet little man, heartbroken over the dead animal. He gave Ham a blanket from the trunk of his car to put over Eleanor. Then he asked Ham if he’d like to pray. Ham took Eleanor and went home. Later all he could think about was how heavy she’d felt in his arms.
He had been punished by a higher authority, not God necessarily, but a spirit guide of some sort. Eunice had no idea what the hell he was talking about. It didn’t matter really. With that keen light in his gorgeous eyes, and the pain in his voice, he could have been talking about the finer points of playing croquet, for all she cared.
“What got you into square dancing?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Wanted to learn something different, I guess.”
“Where do you work?”
“The Lindell Home.”
“Cool.”
He spooned more sugar into his coffee.
“How about you?” Eunice asked.
“Home Depot. I’m a cashier.”
“Can you get me a discount?”
“On what?”
“Just kidding.”
Then Ham said he had to be up early in the morning but that he’d love to get together again soon, outside of class. Maybe she’d like to come to his place next week for dinner?
Words failed her for a moment. Her heart glowed.
“You eat dinner, right?” he asked.
“What? Of course. I was just surprised.”
“That I invited you?”
“Well, frankly, yes.”
“Don’t be. I’m supposed to.”
“Supposed to what?”
“Meet new friends.”
“Oh.”
Ham smiled, and sipped his coffee. He returned the cup to the saucer.
“My therapist thinks it’s a good idea,” he said.
“Sure.”
“You know, recovering from the thing with Eleanor.”
“Right.”
Ham asked if a week from Friday would work for her. She said it would. He gave her his address.
“Won’t I see you in class before then?” she asked.
“Of course. But I didn’t want to give you my address then. I mean, it might look weird with other people around.”
At work, Eunice buttoned the front of Mrs. Moller’s pink sweater and asked her why Ham didn’t want the other students to know they were dating. Was he ashamed of her? Mrs. Moller pushed her hands away in annoyance. She didn’t care for her sweater to be buttoned up, thank you.
Then she said, “Why did he invite you then, if he’s ashamed?”
Eunice thought for a moment as she folded several nightgowns that had been returned from the Lindell laundry that morning.
“Maybe he thinks he’ll get lucky, you know, and that’s all he’s after,” she said.
Mrs. Moller looked up at Eunice with her brown eyes. Her wide, pink face gave her a commanding air.
“Forgive me for saying this, dear, but I don’t think that’s it at all. I mean, you’re not unattractive by any means. You just need to fix yourself up a little.”
Wasn’t that the truth! For the last few years her closet had looked like the inside of a thrift store. She favored sweatshirts and turtlenecks in the fall and winter—brown, gray, or black, with black jeans. In summer, she wore tee-shirts in navy blue or forest green. The pants stayed black in hot weather but were a lighter weight. When she’d gone out with Ham, she wore her favorite sweatshirt. It was tan with pink flowers embroidered on the cuffs.
“How?” she asked.
“Makeup. Good makeup is the key.”
“I see.”
“I used to sell it, you know, down at Rothschild’s.”
Rothschild’s department store was the anchor of the downtown commercial core. It wasn’t as grand as it once had been, though. It was old-fashioned and fussy.
“That’s how I met my husband. He was there looking for something for his sister, which I found both charming and odd because men don’t know anything about makeup. I instructed him, naturally. His sister was blonde and fair, so I told him what sort of lipstick shades were best.”
“Would you like me to—?”
“The one he picked was Cherry Blossom. ‘Well, what do you know about that?’ he said, holding it in his hand. And that silly hat of his. All rumpled in the back, as if he’d sat on it! His sister, Marjorie—she was my bridesmaid, you know, because I didn’t really have any good girlfriends of my own at the time—wore that lipstick on our wedding day. Pretty as a picture, though of course, Martin—my husband—said she didn’t hold a candle to me. Martin was a flatterer, all right, but he was always sincere at the same time. More of a sweet-talker, I’d say. Which was a real help when it came to business. He sold cars, you know. That was a lucky thing because I always got to drive the latest model. I remember this one time I banged up the fender of a brand new Buick, can’t quite recall just how, maybe backed up too far trying to park; anyway, Martin said, ‘Oh, honey, what’s a fender compared to you? Doesn’t make a bit of difference.’ He was like that the whole fifty-three years we were married. Even at the end, when he was, you know, on the way out. Said he didn’t need any angels where he was going, on account of having had one at his side all along.”
Mrs. Moller fell silent. That long sweep of time passed over her face. Her eyes were misty. Eunice had long known that old people kept all sorts of things alive inside themselves, and sometimes, those things just had to come out.
Eunice put Mrs. Moller’s nightgowns away and left.
For the dinner with Ham, she bought a pale green sweater. Though she hadn’t worn it for a long time, the color still suited her. The sales clerk asked what color eye shadow Eunice normally wore. Eunice never wore eye shadow, even back in the days of tearing around in her Carmen Ghia. The sales clerk complimented Eunice’s fair skin and red hair and suggested that she could go pretty bold. Eunice went to the drugstore in the mall several doors down from the clothing store and stood a long time in the makeup section. She chose a hue quite close to the sweater’s shade.
Ham’s neighborhood was just as he’d described, quiet and stately. It was in the part of town where the better set lived. Professors, lawyers, doctors. He must have gotten a good deal on a rental or else was housesitting, probably for someone connected with the university. Some of them retired at Lindell. Eunice had learned tha
t they often took time off to go abroad and study and needed someone in the place for a few months.
Eunice parked her car on the street, although the curved driveway was vacant. As she got out of the car, she realized that the eye shadow made her lids itch. She tended to react aggressively to any sort of irritation and assumed that before long, her eyes would swell. Even so, she took a risk and didn’t wipe the shadow off. She loved the way it looked on her, and she was going to go for broke.
The walk was made of flagstone. The whole yard was tastefully landscaped and well maintained. Eunice thought briefly of her lost fortune. She had trained herself to move on quickly every time the memory occurred. She rang the bell. The door was opened by an elegant gray-haired woman in a long, lavender silk dress. At least, Eunice assumed that it was silk. The woman didn’t look like the kind to wear polyester.
“You must be Eunice. Won’t you please come in?”
The sound of classical music flowed from an interior room.
The woman, who stood a good head taller than Eunice, took the bottle of wine Eunice had brought and said, “I’m Hamilton’s mother. Such a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“His mother?”
“Yes. From your expression, it’s clear he didn’t mention that he still lived at home.”
“No.”
“I’m Eleanor, by the way.”
“Like the dog.”
Eleanor looked confused.
“The one that died,” Eunice said.
“Hamilton never owned a dog. He’s allergic to animals.”
Eleanor led Eunice into a large living room. A grand piano stood in one corner, next to a pair of tall, wide windows that looked out into the yard. The dim outlines of trees could still be seen. Full night was over an hour away. On one wall were floor to ceiling bookshelves. The sight of so many titles made Eunice feel like she was back in school. More books were stacked on the coffee table, the closed lid of the piano, and a glass-topped side table. Ham hadn’t struck her as much of a reader. Then she realized these were the mother’s books.
Women Within Page 12
