We all lifted our eyes and checked each other out with wan smiles, and the eating commenced. Molly jabbered, Matilda begged, Maggie ate in silence, and I watched Missy and Jeff as closely as I could without being obvious about it. Clearly, new things had come upon them since I saw them last, and I wanted to try to assess the effects.
Jeff sat at the head of the table and Missy was at his right side, next to me. At some point he’d put his hand on hers on the tabletop and said, “Good job, Honey. It’s delicious.” He said it rather low and he didn’t insist on the girls chiming in. It seemed like a sincere, private moment. At another point Missy dabbed at Jeff’s cheek with her napkin, blotting off a bit of mushroom soup—whether from the green bean casserole or from the chicken pot pie, I don’t know; cream of mushroom soup was to Missy as olive oil was to Italians—and the gesture seemed a tender one, which he received with a smile.
And after dinner Jeff declared, “Okay girls”—by which he meant Molly and Maggie—“let’s give the other sisters a chance for some quality time. Let’s do the dishes.”
Missy looked faintly surprised but she patted Jeff on the spot where the mushroom soup had been and she said, “Thanks, Sweetie.”
And so Missy and I ended up on a bench at the top of the cliff at the western edge of Sea Cliff’s one square mile. We looked across the harbor and out into Long Island Sound. The day was fading. The first lights were barely visible across the water, far off in New Rochelle and Larchmont. We’d sat here once or twice before. The tone of our conversation seemed to change, slightly, perhaps from the presence of the water, perhaps from not having to look at each other. I even wanted, at times, to put my arm around my sister. I did love her. I loved Mama. And Daddy, of course. I guess loving Daddy was pretty much what all the crap between Missy and me was about. The crap with Mama, too, though the loving part got pretty complicated there. This was the stuff in my head with the sound of the trees rustling around Missy and me, and the sailboat bells tinkling below us in the harbor, and behind us, the occasional slow turn of a car at the end of Sea Cliff Avenue and its descent down to the water.
“You have two great girls,” I said.
“That’s what it’s all for.”
I looked at her. She kept her eyes out to the distant shore. “All what?” I asked.
“All everything,” she said. “You do it all for the kids.”
I waited and she said no more, essentially refusing to answer my question about what the all was that you did for your kids. Missy’s Mighty Armor of Family seemed as if it had a wee chink, and her letting me see it, especially without instantly covering it up when I pressed her, surprised the hell out of me. But maybe she was just exasperated over the girls fighting.
I looked out to where she looked: a flat, slate-gray stretch of water, a rim of faraway land. Then she said, “Did you figure out who the guy was?”
So much for having the edge on Missy. She’d let her guard down for a moment but now she was counterpunching. I didn’t want to get into the matter of Trevor, so I stalled. “The guy?”
“The one you fell for at the auction.”
“I just let that go,” I said, which was true. It was all she needed to know. “It was no big thing.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Okay. It just sounded like something at lunch.” She put a faint drag of sarcasm in the “something.”
“It wasn’t.”
I felt Missy shrug. I was ready to ignore that, but she had to take it another step, my sister. “Is it ever?” she said.
“Ever what.” It wasn’t a question. I was saying, If you’re going to do your self-righteous critical thing, then at least say it all.
“Something.”
“Meaning?”
“Forget it.”
I imagined her in her crazy-quilt home. The couch was new. Leather furniture was Jeff’s taste. The girls were asleep. Jeff sat with his feet up on one recliner, and along the vast curve of that couch, at the distant other end, Missy sat with her feet up on the other recliner. The television was on. The room was filled with a sitcom laugh track in surround-sound. Jeff had the zapper. This was something?
I said, “I do not know which to prefer, the bitchiness of inflections or the bitchiness of innuendoes.”
“What does that mean?”
“Forget it,” I said.
“Another thing,” Missy said. “Mama didn’t hate Daddy.”
It took me a moment to realize that this was another issue at our last lunch. Usually our get-togethers didn’t take quite this toll on her, at least not that I’d ever been aware of. I said, “Of course she hated him.”
“What makes you think so?”
“All you’d have to do was look at how they sat in a room together.” Only after I’d said this did I realize I was testing my little vision of Missy’s marriage.
Missy made a tiny sucking sound and she shifted away from me ever so slightly and I knew I was right. I didn’t feel guilty about my bitchy innuendo, but I hadn’t meant to draw this much blood. It was one sort of deed to attack a sister for all the things she doesn’t have and another sort of deed to attack a sister for the only thing she does. Still, I didn’t know how to close the wound. We were silent for a long, squirmy moment, and then Missy said, very softly, “You trust too much to that auctioneer baloney of yours, trying to read people by little signs that don’t mean shit.”
I could not remember the last time Missy had said “shit.” It might have been when I primed her to say it at her fourth birthday party. It definitely was time for me to start back-pedaling now.
“She loved him,” Missy said.
“Sure,” I said.
“You don’t mean it,” Missy said.
“I mean it,” I said.
“So you were wrong?”
She was pushing this too hard. She knew not to do that. “There was a time when she loved him,” I said.
“And then she started hating him, you’re saying.”
“What difference does it make now? He’s dead.”
“Right. So stop saying Mama hated him.”
“Look, nobody hates anyone in our family,” I said, though I carefully chose my verb tenses. “We all love each other.”
“Sure,” Missy said. It was a hard little nut of a word.
The water was growing dark out there before us. A dog barked somewhere over the edge of the cliff.
“I love you like a sister,” Missy said.
It had come to that. “Me too,” I said.
The next night I stood on a balcony high over Manhattan and looked into the dark null that was Long Island and sipped a Krug blanc de blanc from a Riedel tulip glass. The wine was too heavy for my tastes—for champagne, it felt almost lugubrious—but it was a touching gesture from a client who’d chosen us over Sotheby’s to sell his world-class collection of Mayan art. Normally I liked this sort of party. The room was filled with people who appreciated what I do, people I knew quite well from a thousand little things that were in fact meaningful as hell, my loving sister’s opinion notwithstanding. Normally I wouldn’t be so critical of what was probably the most expensive champagne I’d ever have a chance to drink. But I’d accepted the glass with extravagant joy and then retreated to the balcony when the string quartet started to play and I just stared out into the night. At forty stories up, there was a breeze riffling around me and I turned away from Long Island, happy I was back in the city, happy I was at this party. I followed the ribbons of headlights and taillights down past the hulk of the Empire State Building and on into the dim forest of Lower Manhattan.
“May I?”
I looked over my shoulder. It was Alain in a tux.
“I didn’t see you in there,” I said.
“I’m late. May I intrude once more?” Haydn was flittering around his words.
“No intrusion,” I said and he slid up beside me. We faced the city together.
“Last time …” he began.
�
��It wasn’t you,” I said. “I left because of someone else.” I was surprised to be confiding this much in Alain.
“Ah yes. The man at the bar.”
“The man at the bar. Did he speak to you?”
“No. Not at all. Once we’d each blundered in so obviously, we became quite perfect models of discretion.”
“You were right,” I said. “About my bidding for myself. He’s the guy I outbid.”
“A sore loser then? He came to see who had won.”
“Something like that.”
“So he must have thought …”
“It was you. Yes.”
Alain turned sideways to face me. “I hope I didn’t cause some complication.”
By rights this should have sounded sincere. He’d even tried to make it more than words—he’d turned to me to show his earnestness. But there was a not quite repressed bubble in his voice—a ripple of animation beneath the surface—that struck me with the opposite meaning. He was quite pleased to think he might have caused a complication with this man. It felt like the Alain of my first impression—determined to be in control.
So I turned to face him and said, “I think it’s time to talk about what I need to keep me at Nichols & Gray.” It was the right move, to cut through the faux personal crap and remind him that if I was a valued asset, he still hadn’t made an appropriate bid. But as soon as I said it, I realized the abrupt and aggressive change of subject could be taken as an admission that he’d caused a complication. Still, it was abrupt enough and aggressive enough to make him flinch, and I just focused on enjoying that.
He furrowed his brow and struggled to figure out what was going on between us. “Do you mean tonight? Here?”
“I mean before we go on with each other in some vaguely personal way.”
He unfurrowed his brow and bowed ever so slightly to me. “You’re quite right.” I wanted this to seem patronizing, but it didn’t. It felt respectful. I was about to interpret this impression but I suddenly grew weary of reading the little things.
“But not tonight,” I said. “Not here.”
“Good.” He turned away. And even this struck me as a gesture of respect—he resumed the posture we’d been in before he began to piss me off.
“You’re missing an expensive champagne,” I said, squaring around to Lower Manhattan, as well.
“Yes? It’s good?”
“I only said expensive. It’s a bit heavy-handed for my taste.”
I didn’t consciously mean this as a further dig at him, but he breathed one faint humph that told me he’d taken it this way. I realized that I liked—very much—this man’s ability to communicate with a woman in metaphors and indirections. And I realized that I disliked—very much—that this was one more bit of evidence he was gay.
He said, “So then I will avoid this champagne, no matter how expensive it is.”
Had I ever known a man who was straight who could talk like this?
We looked at each other briefly.
I didn’t think so.
I lifted the still half-full tulip glass of Krug Clos du Mesnil between us and then moved the glass out beyond the balcony and inverted it, dispatching the champagne into the night breeze.
I woke up in a sweat before daybreak that Monday morning, thinking, God please, no, I’ve only just turned forty, don’t let this be a hot flash. Then I tried to convince myself that the air-conditioning had gone out. But I could hear it clearly, whistling through the vent. I felt the movement of the air. Then I understood I’d been dreaming. Texas. I was in a sweat over Texas. I couldn’t remember the dream now, but I didn’t want to anyway. I turned on my back, threw off the sheet. I was still hot. Daddy was looming at my side. Not a dream. A memory now. I let myself think of him. We were walking in the smell of cattle—straw and shit and slobber and the flanks fetid like after a rain. More than the smells. The cattle were stirring in little pens on both sides. My daddy was looking this way and that, sizing them up, telling me what he was seeing, the good things. Broad muzzle, he said. Short face, strong jaws, brisket trim and neat, breast wide and full, rump long and wide and level, pin bones wide apart. And I was beside him, moving with him, it was just me and him. You’ve got a feeling for this, he said to me. You’ll understand. And I was so happy for these words that I wanted, then, more than anything, for him to take my hand as we walked. But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Keep up,” and I knew it was on me. I knew he didn’t want me to take his hand, he was teaching me to keep up, he trusted me to keep up. But he’d touch Missy. He’d take Missy’s hand for sure, I knew. Because she couldn’t keep up, I’d tell myself. This wasn’t her place. Sitting in the stands now with the tight auction floor below. The old black man moving around us, selling peanuts. The auctioneer rolling out the numbers.
I opened my eyes and I was in a bizarre little panic. Lying here, I couldn’t remember the numbers. A three-year-old Short-horn cow had dashed into the circle and I couldn’t even think what it was worth. I couldn’t hear any numbers from whenever this was. What would a fine breeding Shorthorn go for in 1972? Or even now? I had no idea. I was in a sweat again. I dragged a forearm across my face. I was letting him down. How could I not know the value of a thing to be auctioned? I listened to the auctioneer, my daddy leaning forward beside me. “Thank you, one thousand is bid and do I hear eleven? Eleven, and twelve, who’s for twelve, twelve, and now thirteen. Thirteen. Thirteen, and who’ll do fourteen. Fourteen come fifteen. Fifteen now.” And the words rolled out. I was still doubting the numbers. Was I just forcing those in?
We were standing at a fence line. Daddy was smoking. The free range was before us. Briefly he laid his palm on the top of my head. I touched the side seam of his jeans with the back of my forefinger. Lightly, so he wouldn’t know. His hand lifted from me but I held still, pressing the back of my hand gently against his leg. The horizon was flat and far away. In between, our cattle posed, not moving. The sun was hot. I was sweating.
“Daddy,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Nothing,” I said. And this was true; there was nothing in particular. I just wanted to say his name.
Missy on his lap, her arms around him. “Little dumpling,” he said. “Little moonpie.”
“Little sheep-dip,” I said. Mama’s hand came from some-where—from around the dinner table—and slapped my forearm. But this time, Daddy caught my eye and gave me a quick wink. At least I thought he did, though now he was ignoring me again. One more time, please, Daddy, please, so I’d know that what I saw was real. But Mama was going on about me eating my food and me keeping a civil tongue in my head and he wouldn’t look at me again and Missy wouldn’t climb down.
I sat up in my bed. I was drenched. I was getting old. Who the fuck in my position, knowing who I know, selling what I sell, would care what a goddam cow was worth?
I got out of bed. I stripped off my silk nightshirt on the way to the bathroom and I stepped into the shower and I turned on the water, cold at first, then I made it warmer, then warmer still until I grew calm again under water that was hot as a Texas noon.
After the shower, after dressing, after coffee and a bagel and experiencing the sunrise by watching a certain high strip of windows I could see over the rooftops from my kitchen—their glass changing from black to gray to white to the blurred yellow dazzle of reflected sun—after reading the Times and clipping the obituary of a banker whose estate would include, if my memory served correctly, a major collection of ancient Roman silver, I thought about Mama. I still hadn’t returned her last call and so I went to my couch with the portable phone and sat and dialed, looking up at the Dalí Mary and Jesus, and he was remarkable, Dalí, in his restraint. He was in a sober mood with none of the surrealistic excess. There was only a mounding up of black strokes like straw, and only by easing into the image could you see the mother’s face, without features, bending to a tiny child who then showed his eyes and an expressionless mouth. The phone rang a fourth time in Houston and I expected
her answering machine, but her voice was abruptly there.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hello, Mama. It’s me.”
“Yes? Hello?” She was playing dumb, making me pay for not calling enough.
“It’s Amy, Mama.”
“Amy. I’m so glad. Are we being taped?”
“Taped?” Though she had never shown the slightest sign of dementia I instantly assumed she thought the FBI or CIA or someone was bugging our call.
“The gol-durn machine,” she said. “I have to run to beat the fourth ring.”
I was relieved. “I think you made it in time.”
“My heart is palpitating.”
“Relax, Mama. It’s okay. The machine didn’t answer.”
“I hate machines.”
“Not all of them.”
“Your father liked machines.”
“He liked cattle.”
“He liked Lone Star Beer, too, but that’s neither here nor there.”
The conversation was already getting out of hand in a way that often happened between us. “Mama,” I said, “hello. How are you?”
“Hello, Amy. How are you? I’m not so fine.”
There was a pause.
I knew what she was waiting for. “Do you want me to ask?”
“What?”
“Why you’re not so fine.”
“Don’t ask.”
“Okay.”
“My heart is still palpitating.”
“You don’t have to run to the phone. Let the machine answer it.”
“Other times, too.”
“Go to a doctor, Mama.”
“I get lonely.”
“You’ve got friends there, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Call them.”
“It’s so gol-durn hot.”
“Turn the air-conditioning up, Mama. You don’t have to keep it at seventy-eight. You’ve got plenty of money.”
“Amy, you talk just like a man. I tell you I’ve got a problem and all you can do is offer a solution.”
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