Lorna Mott Comes Home

by Diane Johnson

  “I wish you were older,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Gilda. This shouldn’t have happened.” He glanced at Julie and felt embarrassed that she was there. Julie, though, was lost in a tumult of desire. She couldn’t help imagining him without a shirt, or aroused even. She felt her face getting red. When Gilda had to excuse herself to go to the ladies’ room, which she had to do a lot, it seemed to her, Ian said to Julie, “Take my email in case you need me or anything,” and wrote it on a scrap he found in his pocket.

  When Ian had left them, and she and Julie were waiting for Carla, Gilda said, “If my parents make me have an operation, I’m going to run away, and I might need some help.”

  “They’ll let you make that decision, I’m sure,” Julie said, far from sure. She hoped not to be put in the position of defying her grandfather or else disappointing Gilda. Gilda was wondering at what age you were a moral agent who could make that sort of decision yourself. Could they force her? Whom could she rely on?

  32

  Enjoying the company of friends is a reliable human impulse.

  With her apartment snug and presentable, Lorna began to build upon her invitation to the Reverend Train for a drinks party. She sent a little email to the Fludds, to Ursula, of course, to the Reverend Train to confirm, to her very presentable dentist Dr. Lamm and his wife, who happened to live nearby, to Marsha Fredericks, to Pam Linden, naturally—she stopped there till she heard back from these people:

  I’d be so pleased if you could join me for drinks on Friday next week, July 19, 1521 Larkin, just off Union. Call me for my parking strategies.

  She could offer one spot in her garage and another behind it, sticking out over the sidewalk. She’d been struck with the difficulties of San Francisco parking—how did people bear it? When she’d lived here years ago, you just pulled up in front of your house.

  She was pleased with her guest list, people she liked who might like each other. She’d chosen them with some care. Marsha Fredericks and Nancy Fludd were both involved with the museum—Nancy on the board—and Lorna had intrigued them with her story about the bones of Russell Woods. She would tell them more about her connection to his estate when she knew more. If it turned out to be in her power to steer one of his pictures toward SFMoMA, so much the better. Would that be insider trading? She thought of the absurd, sexist fate of the nice woman magazine editor who gave household advice, who got sent to prison for something men did all the time.

  Lorna had no doubt that the Reverend Phil Train would enjoy her museum friends or anyone else she might know—would not be doctrinaire or anything but civil and conversable. Though she hadn’t seen him for fifty years, except that once, she was familiar with his category: Stanford, Episcopalian obviously, played college—was it baseball or basketball? Other things followed from there—good works, especially among the homeless, familiarity with current novels. What she didn’t know was whether he was bringing his wife, or if there was a wife, not that it mattered.

  Lorna was aware of maybe another little concern when it came to Philip Train. Mindful of the details that had gone wrong—had not gone perfectly—at her lecture in Bakersfield, she needed to talk to him about her coming lecture to his parishioners, about the degree of interest in the Book of Revelation within an audience of San Francisco Episcopalians. She needed to learn whether or how they might differ from people in Bakersfield. Would they want the long version or the short one? She’d try to bring this up at the party, if there was a moment when it seemed natural, to get his advice on where to pitch her talk: How much did his parishioners know or care about the Book of Revelation?

  Julie agreed to come help her grandmother, though it wasn’t terribly convenient. The notable British sponsor of the Circle of Faith—they usually, discreetly, did not dare to mention his august name—would be at the Circle again, and she had been picked to assist at a reception for him there and sort of shepherd him; but she could come afterward until she had to show up for work; she had plans for earning some of the Greece tuition money by doing other jobs for the caterers who had worked Grandpa Ran’s opera benefit, and she was supposed to check in with them later that same night in case they needed someone last minute at a big reception at city hall.

  Lorna’s drinks preparations occupied a part of several days, as she had to round up the ingredients by bus, organize cases of bottles to be delivered, and do a little baking herself. Her budget didn’t stretch to champagne, so she settled for prosecco, but she’d decided there should be a French cast to her hors d’oeuvres, testimony to her twenty years in France. California since her departure seemed to have adopted French dishes almost without remembering their origins—tarte à l’oignon, for example, or crème brûlée. She’d been served these several times since coming back, dishes already solidly on American menus since America discovered Alain Ducasse and Joël Robuchon.

  She had no radio but had learned to find stations on her computer; the trouble was she didn’t understand the music in America anymore. Her ear was still tuned to French music, holding on to its twangy plaints in the Piaf mode, so unlike American pop. She settled for the classical station, itself locked into endless repeats of Vivaldi and Mozart and Brandenburg concerti, whose familiar strains she turned down to a subliminal level. She didn’t like music to be too loud—a function of her age, no doubt.

  She’d asked people for six o’clock and was startled when her doorbell rang at four-thirty; it could be Peggy early, or Julie. But it was Donna, wearing a long face, and no children with her, to Lorna’s relief—what with the dishes laid out and the nut cups filled and the chafing dish in place, though not lit. Surely the last chafing dish in use in San Francisco—they abounded in the thrift shops from which Lorna had done her furnishing. The twins would reduce all this to rubble in ten minutes.

  “I came because I want to show you this letter from Curt,” Donna said, looking around fearfully, Lorna could see, taking in the party preparations or fearing to be overheard. Clearly shattered by something, and Lorna had a stab of fear for the twins. “I should have called.”

  “Sit down, Donna,” Lorna said. “I’m having some friends in later. My first party! I hope you’ll stay.”

  “Uh…I’d offer to help, but I have to pick up the boys—I just wanted you to see this. Hear what you think.” Donna handed her the letter, and Lorna read it with dawning inquietude. She took in the salient phrases—“make my life here,” “nothing to do with you,” “the face of God.” Lorna understood Donna’s tense and scared expression, a trace of tears in her dark eyes. She made her sit down and sat beside her. This would take a while.

  “Out of the blue,” Donna added. “I don’t know how to respond.”

  Lorna had a firm policy of not seeming to intervene in the affairs of her children, however much she wanted to be helpful to them, but Curt’s case was a special one. Being deserted was terrible for a young mother, no matter how unsympathetic one might find her. There was nothing wrong with Donna, it was just—Lorna could never find the word and put her own tiny antipathy down to some natural tendency of mothers-in-law not to like the wives of favored sons. Wasn’t there a play about that?

  “Clearly he’s still suffering some kind of brain damage,” Lorna said. “Someone has to go over there and try to find him. Tell me frankly—before the accident, were the two of you getting along? It’s hard, I know, with small children…”

  “Yes, I thought so. Yes, we were.”

  “Throwing away all he’s built, it’s not normal, he’s never been religious. Do you think it’s a religious thing? Something during his coma? Maybe it was then he saw the face of God? People talk about it, the tunnel and whatnot. Near-death experiences.” They speculated for a few moments.

  “What should I do, though?” Donna insisted. Lorna heard a note of hardness in her voice, a note of sauve qui peut, for which it was hard to blame her. Lorna had sounded that note herself, when she w
as divorcing Ran, knowing that people said, behind her back, “Three children, she ought to stick it out. She shouldn’t think only of herself.”

  Lorna felt obliged to defend her son—injured, not himself—but she saw Donna’s predicament. “Do nothing right now,” Lorna said. “Wait awhile. At least you don’t have worries about the mortgage. Let’s make a date to think this through.”

  Donna suddenly saw she should not depend on Lorna and said nothing about her wish to sell the house. Nor did she mention her imagined adversary, the Thai beauty of tiny proportions and ancient Asian sexual expertise. They left it that Donna should do nothing for the moment, they would meet on the morrow, and agreed that Curt had lost his mind.

  Almost as soon as Donna had left, Phil Train came in, the first of her cocktail guests. To her surprise, he kissed her on the cheek, brushing her lips unclerically on the way.

  “It gave me a turn to see you in the 7-Eleven that day. I recognized you instantly,” he said. “I would plausibly have been within my rights as an old friend to kiss you hello then—something I wanted to do back when we were in college. Life sends opportunity but not always when you need it.”

  “Me?” Lorna said lamely, dumbstruck at this flirtatious overture.

  “Well, yes, but you had a boyfriend.”

  “Yes—back then Ran.”

  “What about these days?”

  “Now that all that is behind us, my mind is on my lectures,” she said firmly. “For one thing, I need to support myself and build my reputation again.” He pursed his lips as if to say something but said nothing more. Of course she didn’t believe that “all that” was behind them, didn’t think that life—erotic, artistic, professional—was over for people of any age. Was it his being a clergyman that brought out her fit of prudery? Did he believe people should have ascended to the spiritual plane by now? Here she thought of Armand-Loup, so robustly sensual, so emphatically rooted in the mire of the physical: sex, cassoulet, a good Bordeaux. Not “mire,” wrong word—but pleasure. Pleasure in the physical. Now with a packet of blue pills, but still with cheerful vigor, even joy. Joy seemed in short supply hereabouts. Was there more joy in France than in America? She’d be as joyful as she could muster with her guests.

  People trailed decorously in. About a dozen, she’d figured, could fit in the small living room and make a satisfying buzz, with enough places to sit and things to set their drinks down upon. It was working out exactly as planned, even without Julie’s help. Peggy put hors d’oeuvres on trays in the kitchen and pitched in with the greetings. If only she’d worn something more becoming, not navy blue. Maybe Peggy should ask Ursula’s advice, they were the same physical type. Here was Ursula looking ravishing in a dark green cocktail dress with a low neckline, and very good pearls, enveloped in fragrance—what was it? Good old No. 5?

  Her friends were glad to see one another and Lorna herself. Where was Julie? With the thought, here came Julie and a familiar-looking person whom it took some seconds to identify, so improbable was it: the telegenic English politician who served as patron of the Circle of Faith. This seasoned official accepted a scotch and soda and effortlessly conquered the room. Americans always swooned before a good English accent. He talked up the Circle as his reason for being in town, to be sure, and implied that he and Julie and Lorna were practically family. In the faces of her guests, Lorna read that her social reputation was now invincible, though that was the last thing she cared about. She felt a wave of estrangement, of longing for her house, her village, French harmony, walking to the butcher, the fragrant boulangerie.

  “He was determined to come, Mom,” Julie whispered to Peggy in the kitchen about the sponsor of the Circle of Faith. “He has a couple of hours to kill before his plane. When I said I was needed at my grandmother’s drinks party, he was eager to come. He’s a people person, I guess. He’s nice,” she acknowledged, lowering her voice, “but he’s almost—um—too friendly.”

  The great man was just leaving for his plane when the company became conscious of a thumping noise against the ceiling of the living room, loud enough to stop the conversation. Thump, thump, thump, thump, it came so insistently, Lorna at first thought it must be the Chins complaining about her guests—the noise—though there had not been untoward noise.

  The thumping certainly came from the Chins’ apartment. Stepping close to her wall, she listened for something to explain the repetitive blows against it, and from inches away she thought she could make out muffled squeaks and “oofs,” sounds of effort, maybe even cries from the other side. Some of her guests came closer, leaning in to hear, and people began to agree that something was throwing something against the wall to attract their attention.

  The British politician couldn’t stay, he had the excuse of his airplane, but nonetheless exuded the aura of authority in any circumstance. “Call them if you have their phone,” he advised as Julie saw him out, “or call the police directly.” In leaving he wore the relieved expression of the student lucky to not be called upon, or the man who is able to jump aboard the train at the last second or receives the biopsy report of negative.

  The other authority figure present, Philip Train, had already called the police on his cell phone, then strode across Lorna’s porch to the door of the Chin apartment, Lorna and others following. Like many other San Francisco Victorian houses, Lorna’s consisted of her apartment on the ground floor, with another above, the two doors side by side to the street. The Chins’ apartment was the upper one, and, peering through the glass of their door, the rescuers could see only the stairs leading up to the second floor. When the Reverend Train tried the Chins’ door, it opened easily, as if the latch was broken.

  Lorna’s guests, led by Reverend Train, crowded en masse up the stairs. In the room at the top of the stairs, they found the Chins themselves, bound to chairs and gagged, reduced to groans and gasps to show their relief at being found. The room was in immense disorder. Mr. Chin was tipped over and had pounded with his feet against the wall, the sound they’d heard. Before anyone could untie the two victims, police bounded up the stairs, guns drawn, and told everybody to freeze.

  Events followed: explanations demanded, names and addresses collected, an ambulance called, though it appeared that the Chins were not hurt. Ursula, who had rented them the apartment, was all over them with dismay. Men had been waiting in their closet and attacked them. Lorna did not hear why the burglars had waited for the Chins to be at home before ransacking the place, or what they were looking for, or whether they had found it. She and the other onlookers were shooed back to her apartment; a police sergeant took all their names.

  “Lorna, this is so upsetting, I never would have put any of you into these units if I’d known,” cried Ursula Aymes. “Normally the Chinese keep these things among themselves,” she muttered when they were back at Lorna’s.

  Later Lorna looked up crime statistics for Larkin Street. Until then she hadn’t been concerned about crime or burglars. Now she learned that San Francisco had a safety rating of 2, which reassured her until she understood what that meant: it was safer than 2 percent of America. Or, 98 percent of America was safer than it. Larkin Street was practically the most dangerous place in California. Surely there was some mistake in these statistics?

  Never mind, she was not going to become one of those timorous, fearful elderly people. She could hardly bear to frame the thought. But she would have to be more careful about locking the doors. Did she need a can of mace or a whistle? She had worried about Hams and Misty in Oakland, but here was crime in her own building.

  She had turned the second bedroom of her new apartment into her study, but had put a futon in it for anyone staying over, specifically now, Peggy after the party. Lorna hoped to go to bed promptly after the tiring day, but Peggy wanted to talk about the Chin burglary, and her mortgage, as usual, and Lorna heard herself say about that, crossly, “Peggy, you should talk to your father
, I’m sure he’d help out, at least he ought to. But you have to tell him about it.”

  “I know, but he has a lot on his plate—the thing with Gilda, for example.”

  Lorna had always found unfair the way people took care to spare those with the fewest worries, like Ran, more worries—people protected them instead—while the same people, their children, heaped their cares on her, who had no power to help. She kept this cynical observation to herself and kissed Peggy good night. As she was falling asleep, though, it wasn’t the party, or Curt’s letter, or Peggy’s mortgage she found herself thinking about but what Phil Train had said about having wanted to kiss her in college. How durable some memories, how fugitive others. Why had she said romantic feeling was in the past for people of their age, when she didn’t feel that way at all? She knew it wasn’t true; she was the same person she had always been. Well, that had been his point, they were the same, just less trim and energetic.

  Was she attracted to Phil Train? She didn’t think so. And there was also the matter of faith. She didn’t deride faith—after all, the mighty works in Angers were among its greatest testaments. She just didn’t happen to have it herself. She firmly brought her thoughts around to Donna, and how to help her, but couldn’t think how.

  * * *

  —

  Leaving Grandma Lorna’s party before the excitement at the Chins’, Julie saw the British politician into his taxi. He pressed her hand and said, “Julie, my dear, I’m so pleased you take an interest in the Circle. May I get in touch if there’s any special concerns I have? I’ll be back in a month. We could have dinner. Do I have your email?”

  Julie’s cheeks, normally rosy, blazed like a sunrise. To be spoken to kindly and personally by an English statesman seemed to symbolize the future, the possibilities in the world, the way a winning ticket might, or finding a fifty-dollar bill in the street. He appreciated her competence and enthusiasm. She thought of Ian Aymes and was immediately stabbed by the pain of knowing he was stuck with Gilda, and then stabbed again by the selfish way her thoughts had framed it. She should send Ian an email pledging her friendship to them both.