The Cousins

by Rona Jaffe

  Kenny took her to look at the new home gym he’d had installed in what had been the guest room. He was very proud of each piece of equipment and insisted on showing her how it worked. His round face was beaming proudly.

  “I use it every day,” he said.

  “Good for you; it’s about time,” she said, not unkindly.

  “I know.”

  “Roger would love this,” she said.

  “You could have one in your house.”

  They sat in matching big chairs in front of the fireplace in his bedroom and talked. “I’ve met a woman,” Kenny said.

  “You always do.”

  “No, this one is different. The others always had something wrong with them. But this one is very spiritual. She’s not college-educated or intellectual, but she has such a strong sense of what’s real and what isn’t. She’s one of the most perceptive people I’ve ever known. She’s bright on a really deep level. I think she’s the one.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At a singles party for Jewish professional people.”

  “You went to a singles party?”

  “Everybody was there. All the women were chasing me and I was chasing her.” He smiled. “Her husband died six months ago. He had Huntington’s chorea—a horrible disease. She nursed him for years. She was very devoted. They had no children. She’s a responsible, good person. I just had a sense she was the woman for me right away. And guess what? She’s my age.”

  “That’s new.”

  “Her name is Pam,” Kenny said. “I think I could marry her.”

  “Really!”

  “Yes.”

  Olivia thought how strange it was that at this moment of grieving for a life lost, another one was about to renew.

  “What does she look like?”

  “She’s cute.”

  Kenny had devoted himself to raising Jason, and Pam had taken care of her invalid husband. Now they were both free, or at least Kenny was freer than he had been. Pam would never desert him on top of the Himalayas as Gloria had done. He was her adventure. She would take care of him.

  “I’m looking forward to meeting her,” Olivia said.

  She slept that night in Jason’s room, on his water bed. Or rather she lay on it, rocking uncomfortably, muscles cramped and aching from the icy cold, shivering under blankets. She had never slept on one of those things before but she was sure they were highly overrated. She wondered if you could get hypothermia from a water bed. That would be a bizarre death to add to the family history. However, she was not afraid enough to sleep on the uninviting, uncarpeted floor. The room seemed singularly uninhabited and deserted.

  “I nearly froze last night,” she told Kenny at breakfast.

  “Oh, I forgot to turn the heat on in the water bed,” he said casually.

  She was sure he never had guests.

  The Church of the Spirit, where Grady and his family had worshipped, was in the Pacific Palisades, high on a bluff overlooking the ocean. It was a simple building, set among old trees, reached on foot by a gravel path. At first Olivia thought with a flicker of surprise that it was an Eastern hideaway for meditation, a compromise Stan and Earlene had reached when he decided to change his religion, but then she saw the cross on the roof.

  The simple chapel where the funeral was to be held was very peaceful. It had pews and a stained-glass window, and a plain cross on the white painted wall above where an altar would be if there was one. Instead there was a small table on top of which was an urn. It was completely surreal to see what had so recently been a large and powerful man transformed into something that would fit into that little metal urn. Olivia almost expected to see Grady jump out like a genie. Beside it was a floral arrangement from Taylor, and that was all. Some soft classical music which she didn’t recognize was playing from the loudspeakers.

  In the pews on one side of the room were Grady’s friends, ten or twelve of them, mostly couples, and on the other side was the family. You could certainly tell which was which. The men on his side looked like cowboys or ex-football players, with muscles and mustaches and outdoor skin. They wore suits, out of respect, with cowboy boots under them. Their wives were tough-looking and pretty, with none of that soft, polished Eastern look.

  Grady must have met many people in his career, but the funeral was very small—whether he’d had only a few close friends, or whether Taylor hadn’t wanted to draw a lot of attention to his suicide by having a large funeral, Olivia couldn’t tell. Whoever these friends were, they were probably fellow stuntmen. None of them were “friends from school.”

  Jenny and Paul were there, as were Melissa and Bill. Nick and his wife were not there, nor were Uncle Seymour’s middle-aged children. There were Olivia and Kenny, Uncle Seymour, Aunt Iris, Aunt Myra and Uncle David from Florida, looking sad and bewildered at this topsy-turvy event in the life cycle. Earlene was sitting in the front row, on the friend side, dabbing at her eyes with a damp handkerchief. Taylor was wandering around looking stoned, wearing a dark dress with tiny flowers on it, greeting Grady’s friends with the hand sign for “I love you” that Olivia had learned as a child.

  Index finger and pinky up, two middle fingers down, thumb sticking out; remember to use the thumb, without the thumb it’s the sign for the Devil. “I love you” was just a finger away from “You are the devil,” Olivia thought, taking liberties with the image, and wondered whether Taylor blamed these macho men and the world they lived in for Grady’s forced secrecy about his private life.

  Tim came and got Taylor then, and brought her to her seat on the side with the friends. The music stopped. One of Grady’s friends got up and went to the front of the room to speak.

  He spoke of a Grady she had hardly known, of pranks and fun and good times, of a Grady who was a leader, full of life. To hear Grady described this way he seemed such a happy, vital person it was hard for her to imagine him even thinking of killing hpinimself. Then who had been that miserable, vulnerable and beaten creature she had known? The same Grady, different view. The friend sat down and a young woman came to the front of the room.

  “Miranda,” Aunt Myra whispered to Olivia. Grady’s ex-girlfriend.

  She looked like an actress, ingenue-type. She had a pretty face, thick, sun-streaked hair and a body in great shape. Her eyelashes were so long Olivia could see them defined even from where she sat, and her large dark eyes were brimming with tears.

  “Grady changed my life,” Miranda said. Her voice broke, but she composed herself and continued. “He gave me the gift of joy and spontaneity. He introduced me to my friends. He showed me how exciting and magical the world could be. I will . . . always . . . miss him.” She was sobbing now, and sat down.

  This was Miranda the girlfriend? The “phase”? The cover-up? Whatever she had been, she certainly seemed to love him. They all seemed to have loved him. It had obviously not been enough.

  Another friend of Grady’s was eulogizing now. Olivia looked across the aisle at the group of close-knit mourners. There was a young man sitting all alone, in the last row. He was rather slight and frail, dressed more formally than the others, and nobody seemed to know him. He was watching and listening with a sad intensity, but he also looked as if he were ready to break and run away if he had to. In a way he looked as if he had wandered into the wrong funeral. She wondered who he was.

  The friend who had been speaking went back to his seat. The soft music began again. The funeral was over. They all left the chapel and stood for a while in the hall outside, murmuring to each other.

  “We’re going to Taylor’s house,” Aunt Myra said. “Does everybody have the directions?”

  “Oh,” Big Earl said to Olivia, to anyone, “it’s so terrible to lose a son. It’s unnatural. A mother shouldn’t have to outlive her child.”

  You should have thought of that when you were trying to kill him, Oliv
ia thought. She noticed that Taylor kept herself as far away from her mother as possible, and that no one could bring themselves to offer Earlene condolences. She stood there, the puffy-eyed pariah, waiting for someone to tell her how tragic she was, but no one did, and finally she left.

  The young man whom no one knew went over to Taylor. She didn’t seem to know him either. “Taylor?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I speak to you?”

  Tim, who had not left Taylor’s side, began to translate. The young man led them over to the side, where no one could hear him, and very quietly began to talk.

  * * *

  They all went to Taylor’s house, which was large and open, with a view of trees and brush. The dining table was covered with platters of food for the mourners, and there was a well-stocked bar. Earlene was drinking scotch. Again, Grady’s friends kept to themselves, and the family to themselves, since the two worlds had never met and now it was too late because their link was gone; but from time to time they glanced at each other with polite sympathy.

  It was strange to see Taylor without Grady, and harder to imagine her living the rest of her life without him. She seemed terribly lost and vulnerable. She kept going up to Miranda and hugging her, and saying, “We have to stay in touch. We both loved him. I don’t want to lose you.” She was so drugged from the tranquilizers and grief that she was mumbling.

  How could Grady have deserted Taylor? All their lives they had taken care of each other whenever they could. It was hard to imagine two siblings any closer. They had protected each other, and they had both needed special protecting. Perhaps, at the end, even Taylor couldn’t give him enough.

  Olivia went to the buffet and picked at some coleslaw, and then she went to sit with Jenny and Melissa. On the way she passed Paul and Bill, who were, she was not surprised to notice, talking about business.

  “Why do you think he did it?” Jenny asked her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sometimes I worry that depression runs in our family,” Jenny said. “We don’t know why Stan killed himself either.”

  “Suicide is most common among fathers and sons,” Melissa said. “The first one breaks the taboo.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I read it.”

  “My mother told me that Earlene went to visit Grady the week before he died,” Jenny said. “You know he would never let her stay with him, but Taylor was sick and couldn’t deal with having Earlene over, and Earlene wouldn’t postpone her visit, so he agreed to have her. I wonder if she upset him.”

  “Big Earl always upset him,” Olivia said.

  “But more, I mean.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Too many funerals,” Jenny said. “I hope the next time we meet it’s when everybody’s happy.”

  “Sam’s bar mitzvah in the spring,” Melissa said. “You must be very busy.”

  “Oh, yes. You’re all coming, I hope.”

  “Of course.”

  “Kenny told me he’s getting married again,” Olivia announced.

  The two cousins turned in delight to look across the room at Kenny. “No! To who?”

  “Someone named Pam. She’s his age.”

  “Do you think he’ll invite us to the wedding?”

  “I hope so.”

  Jenny looked at her watch. “Paul!” she said. “We have to start moving along.”

  “We do too,” Melissa said.

  The family was leaving to catch their planes. They were kissing and hugging each other, saying how it was a shame they hadn’t had more time to talk, but next time it would be better. “How are you?” they asked, almost in the same breath as “Goodbye,” and they all answered “Fine,” because there wasn’t time to be anything but fine, and if they weren’t fine this wasn’t the time or place to start complaining about it. It was a funeral a continent away from home, in the middle of the week, and they all had families and jobs and lives to attend to.

  “Thank you for coming,” Taylor said politely.

  When they left, most of Grady’s friends were still there to console her, and of course there was Tim, to comfort her and run interference between her and Earlene. On the way to the airport Olivia remembered that the young man who had gone over to talk privately with Taylor after the funeral had not come afterwards to her house with the other friends, but then she forgot about him. He probably wasn’t anybody she needed to know about anyway.

  11

  ROGER HAD FIGURED out a way to keep Olivia from giving him a fiftieth birthday party. His birthday wasn’t until summer, but she kept saying it would be impossible to make plans if he left everything to the last minute, and finally he figured out what he really wanted. He wanted to go to Paris again, just the two of them, for five days, stay at the Plaza Athénée and fly back on the Concorde. He wanted to drink champagne and dine at expensive restaurants and tell himself that he wasn’t older, just richer.

  When he told her, she loved the idea. She said it was glamorous and romantic, and insisted on paying for the whole thing. After all, she had been planning to pay for the party he wasn’t having.

  “I’m richer, too,” she said. And she was. Their practice was going as well as they had hoped it would when they pooled everything they had to buy the house, set up the clinic and merge their medical destinies.

  He told himself he had everything he needed for a happy life—success in a career he cared about, comfort, health, decent looks, a loving life companion, a sexy girlfriend, a wonderful dog and just the right amount of illicit excitement to keep him virile. Why, then, did he have disturbing dreams that made him awaken tired in the morning, unable to remember them but knowing they had been there to disturb his sleep?

  He remembered only one of these dreams. He was at a Mardi Gras, or some costume party like that, and everyone was wearing masks. He had been enjoying himself, dancing to loud music among a swirling crowd. A woman he knew was Olivia came to claim him as her partner, and then just as they were smiling at one another she pulled off her mask, and it was not Olivia at all but Wendy. Somehow he felt . . . abandoned. Where was Olivia? How could Wendy have fooled him so completely with just a party mask?

  But didn’t they always pretend she did? Wasn’t that the point? His throat felt icy-cold, and then he woke up and Olivia told him he had been moaning in his sleep again. He wondered what the dream meant. He hoped it wasn’t a prophecy of bad things to come. He didn’t want to have to lose either of them.

  And then one afternoon he was walking past one of the examining rooms, where Olivia was talking to a new client who had brought her little brown Abyssinian cat, and he realized in horror that the woman was Wendy.

  Olivia looked up and her face glowed with pleasure the way it always did when she saw him, and Wendy gazed at him as if he were a total stranger. Gregory, however, reacted with his usual hostility—when the little bastard saw him he arched his back and twitched his tail. Roger gave Olivia a little wave hello and backed away as fast as he could.

  His heart was pounding. What was Wendy up to, anyway? She had her own vet, and had always purported to like him. If Wendy had wanted to act out an office sex fantasy she would have made the appointment with him, not Olivia. No, this was obviously a visit to check out her rival, and when Roger thought of Wendy intruding on his territory—his own home was upstairs!—he wanted to pull her bodily out the front door. He was not intrigued or aroused; he was nervous and angry.

  When Wendy went up front to pay her bill he hid in the back so she wouldn’t get it into her head to approach him. He thought that when Olivia had been in California for Grady’s funeral it would have been exciting to have sex with Wendy in the operating room, for example, but he had been too busy doing double duty and hadn’t thought of it, and now with Olivia in the building it was unthinkable. There was a fine line between fantasy and true folly, and
he hoped Wendy was still aware of what it was.

  He waited until all the patients were gone, and then when Olivia went upstairs he pretended he had some paperwork to finish and called Wendy.

  “What were you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Don’t you even say hello?”

  “Hello. Why were you here?”

  To his surprise she burst into tears.

  “What is it?” he asked, concerned.

  “You’ve never yelled at me before,” Wendy said. “I hate it.”

  “But you never did anything like this.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You went to see Olivia.”

  “I wanted to see what she was like.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” She sounded incredulous. “Don’t you think I was curious?”

  “But she has nothing to do with you.”

  “Try telling her that.”

  “What did you two talk about?” he demanded, thinking that perhaps he had made a mistake, that Wendy wasn’t perfect after all, that she might even be dangerous.

  “My cat. What did you think?”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t you think I have feelings?” Wendy asked.

  “You can’t come to my office and check out my wife.”

  “She’s not your wife.”

  “She might as well be. You could have caused serious trouble.”

  “And I suppose nothing you and I ever did before was risky.”

  “It isn’t the same,” Roger said.

  She had stopped crying. “This is exciting and you know it,” Wendy said.

  Was it exciting? Why wasn’t it? “If Olivia finds out about us, I’ll have to stop seeing you,” Roger said.

  “Well, that makes me feel like I’m nothing.”