by Smith, Julie
When Jessie Swan got to Gaither, the man making tea, he waved to acknowledge that was he.
Of these, house guests included Kostelnik, the three children, Meyer, Underwood, and Gaither. Of the other four, none lived in and only Swan was full-time. Yes, she, Jessie, had been there Tuesday and, sure enough, so had Ms. Thiebaud. “All day?” asked Skip, thinking it didn’t matter what she said—she was in her boss’s house and likely to lie anyway. She’d interview the others on their own turf.
“All day and all day the day before and all day the day after,” said Swan.
That should have been that, but Proctor Gaither spoke up. “Except for when she went shopping.”
“Well, I didn’t know about that,” said Swan, slightly huffy.
“Sure. Tuesday afternoon? Around three or four, I think.”
“Well, I don’ know,” repeated Swan.
Skip said, “When did she return?”
But Gaither shrugged. “I don’t know. I just saw her leave, and then she was around for dinner.”
So Ti-Belle wasn’t getting off the hook quite so easily.
“Tell me something, Mr. Gaither.”
“Proctor.”
“Proctor. Doesn’t it get awkward with Ms. Kostelnik and Ms. Thiebaud around at the same time?”
“Awkward?” He seemed genuinely to be considering the idea. “No, I don’t think you’d call it awkward.”
“You wouldn’t?” She held her breath, not sure he’d answer.
But he was surprisingly forthcoming, even glib. “Sabrina and Nick are very good friends—as long as they don’t spend too much time with each other. She’s having a hard time, he wants to do right by his kids, so he lets her stay here, and the two of them bend over backward staying out of each other’s hair. He wants her to learn a useful trade, so she can get by on her own. Nanette’s teaching her Oriental medicine.”
“You don’t have to go to a special school for that?”
Her touched his chest. “You’re asking moi? I’m just an ol’ boy from Alabama.”
“Just out for JazzFest?”
He nodded. A shadow crossed his white-bread, good-ol’-boy face. “Getting divorced. Took some time off.”
“This is some household.”
“Never a dull moment. Nick’s a child of the sixties; look what he’s built here—an updated, upgraded, upscale commune, complete with resident guru—two if you count Nanette.” He shook his head. “No, she’s more like—don’t take this wrong, okay?— she’s more like a connection. Nothing illegal; nobody’d be so un-nineties as that—but she’s got what makes us feel good, even if it’s liver compresses nowadays.”
“Do they work?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t even know what they’re supposed to do. Nothing wrong with the massages, though.”
Skip half turned back to Jessie Swan, who was still sitting primly, patiently. “Is she around? I’d like to talk to her.”
Swan shook her head. “No’m. She and Sabrina went out some place with the roshi. Took the kids.”
“Ricky Roberts?”
“Day off.”
“Popeye’s, here we come,” said Proctor. “By the way, he cooks only nonfat vegetarian, and he can do macrobiotic if you really want it.”
Skip made a face; couldn’t help it, it just happened.
“Don’t knock it—it’s some of the best food you ever had. The man’s an artist.”
“Well, I’ll need the artist’s phone number,” she said to Swan. “Also April Thomas’s—she comes one day a week, I presume.”
Swan nodded, and went to look up numbers.
“What’s the roshi like?” she asked Proctor.
“Quiet. The one-hand-clapping type.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t being sarcastic—I just meant she’s quiet. She’s certainly not a freeloader, if that’s what you’re thinking. Nick’s known her only about five years less than he’s known me—and he’s known me a millennium. But she’s not really a roshi and doesn’t claim to be—we just call her that because she’s—you know—holier than we are. She used to manage a club in the Village, where Nick had some of his first gigs. Then she got into Zen, studied to be a monk, and married another one. They split up, and got into some kind of tangle about money that she ended up being embarrassed about in the Zen community. She and Nick ran into each other again at Tassajara, she told him the whole story, and he asked her to come here and be his teacher until she decides what to do next. She designed the zendo and everything.”
Skip sighed. In matters of meditation, she could use a teacher. Swan came back, gave her the numbers she needed, and then Skip left, thinking Proctor Gaither had been a shade more talkative than was natural.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Patty stood in front of the little shotgun on Calhoun near Fontainbleau Drive, thinking it must not have been painted in fifteen years; you’d think no one lived there. The lawn hadn’t been mowed either. Her brothers usually kept up the lawn, but perhaps the house was so shabby they couldn’t do it any more, couldn’t find the heart even to do a few simple things. They couldn’t afford to have the house painted, couldn’t do it themselves—being too tired on weekends, too involved with their own families, maybe too depressed. And no one in the family would accept money from her, not that much anyway.
But they’d take a few little things, and today she’d brought clothes that she no longer wanted, some food that mourners had brought, an extra ham, a turkey, cakes, things she and George couldn’t eat. Before she left, she would give them money too, and they’d spend it on medicine, doctors, the usual things. They never had extras and they never seemed to want any. Not that they were so satisfied with their lives; they just didn’t connect the notion of themselves and luxury. Even tiny luxuries—she knew one of them would wear the denim dress she’d brought, and one might take the simple silk, but the evening dress would probably be cut up and made into costumes for children’s recitals.
She was depressed, just standing here, being here, and she hadn’t even gone in yet. A sense of futility hung over the Fournot house, always had, because of the illness. There were six of them, Patty and three sisters and two brothers—her mother had had them all before she knew she had it, or knew she could pass it on to them.
Her mother had been forty-two when she went blind for a couple of weeks and miraculously regained her sight. She had had a religious conversion before the other symptoms came on—the thing the doctors called “clumsy limb,” the slurred speech that made her think she’d had a stroke, and the facial pain. Whoever heard of facial pain? When her mother would say her face hurt, neither Patty nor the others would know what to say; they thought she must have gotten drunk and fallen down.
After an endless series of tests and misdiagnoses, one of the dozens of doctors she went to finally realized she had chronic progressive multiple sclerosis. A woman in her church had MS; she was relieved, knowing it was something you could live with. But there were two different kinds, the doctor explained: the kind the other woman had, which tended to relapse and remit; and the kind she, Lorraine, had, which would only get relentlessly worse, and which “ran in families.” Frannie, the second oldest sister, had come down with it eight years ago, at the age of thirty-two. The worse it got, the more her husband drank; he’d left her, finally.
Desiree took care of her and Lorraine. She lived here, in this small house, with her husband and two children and the two sick women.
No one came out to meet Patty. She went up the steps and knocked, lugging the clothes and a hamper. Ten-year-old Ashley, home from school, let her in, looking at her sleek hair, her tight Joan Vass pants and matching swingy little top, with the awed eyes of a child who’s never been shopping anyplace fancier than J.C. Penney. “Hi, Aunt Patty.”
“Hello, sweetness.” Patty bent to kiss her, trading the gift castoffs, nearly upending the hamper.
“Watch out!” It was her brother, Martin, catching things, taking t
hem from her, but sounding angry.
“I’ve got more stuff in the car,” she said, and went to get the turkey and some lasagna, trailed by Ashley. No one else followed.
The two of them muscled the stuff into the kitchen, where Desiree was chopping onions and crying.
“Des, for heaven’s sake. Let me do it.”
It was like old times. While she was still in high school, Patty had saved enough money for contacts, which meant she could chop onions without crying. When she’d lived in this house, it had always been her chore.
Gladly, her sister handed over the knife and stared at Patty, a vision in the chic little cream-colored outfit, whimsical lemon flats on her feet, white-blond hair falling to her shoulders.
Ashley came and caught the sheet of hair in her hands: “Aunt Patty, your hair’s so pretty.”
“Yours too, sweetness,” said Patty absently. Ashley’s was thin, mouse-colored, and badly in need of shampoo. Patty looked up at her sister, caught her staring. “What is it, Des?”
“You do that so well. Like a professional.”
Patty was embarrassed. She probably hadn’t chopped an onion since she married George. “How’s Mama?”
“The same.”
“And Frannie?”
“Lively this week for some reason. They know you’re coming—I’ve brushed their hair.” And she clomped off to the last room, the one where they lived, in the two hospital beds Patty had bought for them. “Mama! Frannie! Patty’s here.”
“Well, where is she?”
“I’m coming, Mama.”
She finished the onions, washed her hands, and went in, feeling a little lift at the prospect of seeing her mother. But she didn’t look well, looked even less well than usual, smaller somehow.
Just about all she could do now was chew and swallow—and click the remote control for her television. She could talk, but she sounded as if she were drunk. Her limbs were limp, soggy logs. And Frannie was nearly as bad.
They were both diapered, didn’t even know when they excreted. Their limbs were rolled in sheets and cushions. They had to sleep on egg-crate mattresses to prevent bedsores. They were prisoners, but at least they could speak, they could eat. Patty thought how much worse it would be if they couldn’t communicate.
Frannie’s hair was almost completely gray now; she was younger than Patty and looked nearly as old as Mama. The television blathered, as always in this room. The blinds—not even miniblinds, ancient Venetian blinds, were closed. Patty had never seen them open. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live in one room, a dark one, and had begged Des to open the blinds every day, but Des said the patients wouldn’t permit it, they wanted nothing except to watch television, and who was to deny them their one pleasure? As if Patty meant them ill.
Martin had come to fix something, but now he brought chairs for Patty and himself and Des, so they could visit in the sickroom. It was stuffy and hot and it smelled of urine.
“We heard about Ham on the TV, Patty.” Her mother’s voice was barely a quaver. “We were worried sick about you.”
“I’m sorry, Mama. I phoned and told Des to tell you not to worry.”
“Couldn’t help worryin’.”
“Well, I know. That’s why I came. I wish I could have come yesterday, but I was so busy with George …”
“That’s how it always is.”
“Yes.” Patty couldn’t tell whether her mother meant to let her off the hook, merely meant that was how it was with husbands and family deaths, or meant that Patty always put her and Frannie second. “I brought you some cakes and things.”
“Don’t have much appetite lately.”
But Frannie said, “Chocolate?”
“Lemon. With white icing.”
“Oh.” There was a silence, and finally her mother said, “I’m sorry about Ham, Patty.”
“Thank you, Mama.”
“Who killed him. Melody?”
“Mama! Why would you say a thing like that?” Did her mother think she’d done that bad a job of raising Melody? That she’d raised a killer?
“Well, it just seems natural, don’t it? Melody bein’ missin’ and all.”
“Kidnapped,” said Martin. “That poor child’s … Ashley, you go play now. Don’t listen to this.”
“I just can’t believe this is happenin’ in my own family,” said Patty’s mother. “I want to cry my eyes out every time I think about it.”
Desiree nodded. “It’s been real hard on all of us.”
“Well, I’m sorry, I …” Patty realized she didn’t know what to say. How did she apologize for her stepson’s murder?
Martin gave her a narrow-eyed look that said, “How can you look that good and rich and act that dumb?” Or so it seemed to Patty. She was the oldest; he was the second youngest. She’d left when she married, and missed a lot of his growing up; they hardly knew each other, and she hardly knew Des and Frannie either, she’d been gone so long. The others barely remembered her, she thought. They treated her like an outsider, and yet she tried—didn’t she try? Not that they noticed. She would offer again, but first she must ask the question she’d come to pose.
Ashley hadn’t heeded her uncle; she was hanging in the doorway, taking it all in, looking at Patty as if she were a movie star. “Is Melody okay?” she said, and Patty thought she saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes.
But Desiree, the child’s mother, spoke before Patty could, “Yes, precious, Melody’s just fine. You go out and play now.”
It struck Patty as odd that they weren’t more worried about Melody, about their niece and grandchild, who was only sixteen and missing, possibly kidnapped as far as they knew. She had called Des and spoken to her only briefly, and no one had called her back. No one in the huge Fournot family, full of siblings and in-laws and their issue, had called or come over after her stepson had been murdered and her daughter gone missing.
The thought flickered and died. She was barely aware she’d thought it before she got busy explaining the actual situation to herself.
They’re intimidated. They don’t dare come visit me Uptown, and they don’t want to call because George spooks them—they wouldn’t know what to say if he answered the phone. They can’t worry about Melody, because she seems like a fairy princess to them. They’d be worried if they thought she was human, but they just can’t grasp the idea that anything could happen to her.
Then again … maybe they know something I don’t.
She asked her question. “I was wondering—has Melody called here? Or turned up, maybe?”
Her mother snorted. “Turned up? Why, she wouldn’t know the way.”
Patty felt her face go red. It was true she’d only brought Melody over on Christmas and her mother’s birthday, though Melody adored Ashley, seemed to like the other children as well, to be happy to have cousins. But George thought it depressed her to come, and Patty thought he was right. George didn’t come at all anymore. In the days when he had, he hadn’t spoken for hours after except in monosyllables. Patty found herself stripping and jumping in the shower, or else going swimming after a visit. She never thought about it, just did it.
She and George slaved to keep Melody in the best school, in beautiful Country Day, with its arches and deep green walls upstairs, its five working artists on the faculty. They gave her a magnificent house with her own room and bath, and all the clothes she had time to shop for. They’d given her music lessons. Her life was perfect, privileged; as parents, they believed in that, preparing her for life—at Country Day, they even talked about that, preparation for life. They made the kids eat lunch with different kids every six weeks, kids they didn’t even know, so they’d learn how to handle themselves in different situations.
But this was sad, it was dirty and crowded and scary, because illness was always scary, and that of your relatives, those close to you, much more so. Patty didn’t want her exposed to it any more than George did. She hadn’t brought Melody here much; and yet, she h
ad brought her here. She wasn’t some kind of snob who didn’t want her daughter to know her own relatives. It hurt her that her mother thought so.
“Melody loves to come here,” she said. “She loves you, Mama.”
Patty didn’t know if that was true, but she knew it was true that she did, did love her Mama and didn’t understand where things had gone wrong between them. Understanding that was what she meant as soon as she said it, she felt herself tearing up, hoped they wouldn’t notice.
Her mother’s eyes got a faraway look. “I doubt that girl loves anything, really. I don’t think she knows how to love.”
“If Ashley’s listening, you’ll hurt her feelings. She’s crazy about that child, and you know it.” Patty’s voice was rising, but she felt guilty, somehow; it wasn’t pure. She didn’t feel like a protective mother animal, didn’t know why her mother’s comment made her so mad. She pretty much agreed with her. Melody did like small things—Ashley, and animals, and babies, but she hated her own parents, certainly Patty. Once, Patty had thought the girl had a bond with George, but after she reached puberty and started hating the whole adult structure of the universe, she turned against George as well.
“She’s not a bad child,” said her mother. “I don’t really think she’s bad.”
She’s just a selfish little bitch.
“She just needs some guidance.”
“Well, how’re y’all feeling. Mama and Frannie?” she said instead, making her tone light, canary-like, taking charge, changing the subject.
“I feel fine,” said Frannie. “I b’lieve I’m gon’ be the first person with this thing to get better.”
Her mother said: “Nobody gets better with this thing.” She cackled like it was funny.
Patty put a hand on the blanket, feeling mushy flesh; useless flesh. But even so, her mother’s leg felt smaller than it had, she thought. All of a sudden she knew Lorraine wasn’t going to live much longer—the doctors had been predicting her death for years. Des always said she was too mean to die, and her mama liked that, had taken it on as her special slogan and had lived ten years longer than anyone thought she would, declaring her meanness nearly every day, if anyone would listen. But she was going to go soon.
