Lingerie For Felons

by Ros Baxter

  And God, the idea of her being sick was even worse. Eve sometimes used to go and visit the sick people when she was in the hospital for a while. She’d make friends with everyone, and she seemed to feel a special empathy for those who were really sick. The idea of my big, brave mother lying in some hospital bed, intubated and frightened, made me feel cold all over. And there was something else too. Something small and mean.

  Something I recognized but that made me feel ashamed.

  A bit of me that was saying oh no, not more, how much more can I take?

  I was so tired of being worried, so tired of being sad. We’d just gotten through the worst with Eve. The idea of watching my mother become sick, of resuming my daily pilgrimage to the hospital… It all just seemed like some cruel joke.

  ‘Mom,’ I tried to say, but my voice wouldn’t come out properly. I got up and wrapped my arms around her. I squeezed her hard in my embrace. I wanted to hold on to her forever. Already she seemed to feel more delicate in my arms. I could feel the bones in her shoulders and arms. I couldn’t decide if I was just imagining it because of what I now knew. I imagined myself ripping the filthy cancer right out of her body there and then. I wanted to reach my hands inside her, like how magical healers always do it in bad fantasy films, and pluck the thing out. And then stomp on it. Many times.

  How dare it even be there, where it had no right to be?

  ‘Oh, Lola’ she soothed. ‘Don’t worry, my darling. It’s not going to get me. I’ve far too much to live for. And I’ve got this wonderful doctor. Well, actually, he has this incredibly irritating facial tic and a bad hairpiece, but that aside…’

  With that, Mom seemed to switch channels.

  She started telling me all about the oncologist, and his habits and his atrocious method of delivering bad news. Poor Dr Klaus sounded like a man who had not been smiled on by God in the looks, charm or humor departments. But he did sound like a very good and well-qualified specialist. And God knows, I could not imagine my mother to be an easy patient. I sent up a small prayer to the universe, as had become my habit since the whole Eve thing. I asked for blessings on Dr Klaus, and maybe some extra patience and wiles for him when it comes to managing my mother, too.

  I felt the story come alive as Mom told it, felt like I was in the clinic with them. Before any of us knew it, we were all laughing. When we stopped and were wiping tears from our eyes, I got down to practicalities.

  ‘Mom, Dad, seriously. I don’t think I should leave Eve here tomorrow. You guys have enough going on.’

  ‘Don’t you dare take her. Cancer’s not catching, you know.’ Mom was talking loudly, but I could hear the break at the back of her voice. ‘I’ll write you out of the will if you dare take her away. Fancy denying a dying woman her small moments of pleasure.’

  ‘Mom,’ I pointed out, trying to act normal, trying not to hear that her big, booming, bossy voice was cracking. ‘You don’t have any money.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ she hinted mysteriously.

  ‘Yes I do,’ I continued. ‘I’ve been doing your accounts with Dad since I was seven.

  ‘Ugh, mathematicians,’ she complained. ‘Far too many of them in this family.’

  I didn’t mention taking Eve somewhere else again. But when I left that night I held onto them both. Mom could sense my hesitation. She pulled back from my embrace, looked into my eyes and offered me some Yeats as a parting gift: ‘Don’t worry darling. “I am of a healthy long lived race, and our minds improve with age.”’

  And I left, thinking I love you Mom, because I knew I couldn’t speak without crying.

  Winds of change — Lola’s apartment; later that night

  It sounds cheesy, but as I turned the key in my lock, I suddenly remembered the lyrics of that old Scorpions song. I’d been 16 and it had really felt like the world was waking up from some bad dream. The Berlin Wall had been falling. It looked like apartheid was on the way out and we’d really thought a brave new era was dawning.

  And I’d loved that bit: ‘where the children of tomorrow dream away’.

  For the second time that night, I had that sense of trying to remember something half forgotten. I decided I’d do some work before I started working on my statement, to take my mind off all of it. Just for an hour or so.

  I fired up my PC and opened the manila folder Heidi had sent over. I looked through the latest statements and opened a spreadsheet to check how things were tracking.

  Heidi had asked me to help out with the shelter when Eve got sick. It sounds kind of weird, given how much I had on my plate, but she knew me so well. She saw me reading a book called When Your Child Dies and she knew my crazy, over-thinking mind needed diversion to stop my constant obsessing about what was wrong with Eve, about how sick she might get, and whether she might ever get better.

  For her part, Heidi had been trying to break the donations-dependent poverty cycle of the little network of shelters she was now running. She wanted to try to invest some of the money, so that the enterprise could have some reliable income. But she had no idea how and couldn’t afford specialist advice. She also had another problem: all the investments had to be animal-friendly.

  Initially I resisted. I told her being a mathematician did not mean I had any clue about money. But the idea intrigued me. And when Eve was asleep, I had nothing else to do. There were certainly no men. I pretty much existed only for Eve. I had no time or energy for anyone else. So, some nights, after bedtime, I started looking into it. And it was fascinating. Like a math puzzle. Trying to understand how corporations work and how to find out what they really do, and then trying to puzzle through the whole economics thing. I had always been a snob about applied math, seen it as sort of dirty and uninteresting. But it wasn’t. Learning about it was giving me this insight into how things get financed, and how money can make bad things happen. And I guess, logically, good things too.

  I didn’t really feel like I knew enough to help Heidi, so I even enrolled in this self-paced online diploma in finance and investment. It was pretty basic, and Dean Shirley would have been horrified by the lack of academic rigor in some of the content. But, really, it was just a stepping-off point for me. It pointed out where I should go, what I didn’t know, what else I needed to learn. And best of all, I could do it, or drop it for a while, or pick it up again, all at my own — and Eve’s — pace. It worked around us, and that was the key thing.

  And it was distracting.

  After about a year, I felt confident enough to go back to Heidi and tell her I might be able to help. And together, we did some tentative investing. We were faithful to the primary criterion: that our targets must do no harm to animals, given the donations had been given so faithfully for the purpose of helping them. And after a while, we began to see some modest returns. It was thrilling. And, almost as good, my new knowledge of corporations had another advantage: Heidi began to collate the information we had gleaned about the corporations that mistreated animals — tested on them, turned them into handbags, et cetera — and turn out a little newsletter for the friends of the shelter. She called it Bad Boys, and it became, for animal lovers in the area, the boycotter’s bible.

  I settled into the spreadsheet, flicking through lines and checking current rates on the investing browser I opened. As I did, I felt the old calm descend upon me. My shoulders began to loosen and the muscles in my neck unbunched.

  As I worked, the back of my mind played over the day. Seeing Wayne, having a meltdown about what I was doing and where I was going, the cemeteries, finding out about Mom. Every time all of it threatened to bubble forward to the front of my consciousness, I flicked onto another page of the spreadsheet and focused on the numbers. Breathe.

  But, somehow, plucking away at the back of consciousness, the first shard of an idea started to bind itself together. The Scorpions song, the stuff I was working on, the nagging fear at the back of my brain that I was getting it all wrong. And the work I was doing. It all started to knit itself toget
her into a persistent little voice that nagged at me.

  I was good at this. I liked this. I could do more.

  Time to party — Emmy’s apartment, Upper East Side; the next night

  As I trudged grudgingly up 86th street, I was in a really bad mood. I knew I had no right to be. Today had been my lucky day. But I always get into this really foul temper coming over this side of town. I hate the Lexington Avenue line, hate the way people are dressed on it, hate the way everyone kind of holds their breath as they ogle the streets and the rich people. Yuck. And it was really cold.

  I caught sight of my reflection in passing window and my mood improved slightly.

  Forget the hypothermia, it was worth it.

  A gift from Vera during her last visit, the dress was this kind of ochre-colored silk, and it did something for my skin, hair and eyes that gallons of under-eye rescue and liters of hair dye had been unable to achieve in the last few years. It made me look luminous, and kind of carefree. It made me look like I belonged in this part of the world. Almost. Vera had looked me up and down, taken in my skinny black jeans and PETA t-shirt, and pressed the package into my hands.

  ‘Wear it darling. And remember you are still young.’

  I walked up to Emmy’s beautiful old building on the Upper East. It still amazed me that my sister lived amongst all this. And even though she married into it, the way she was going, she was going to end up richer than JK Rowling. Emmy and Peter didn’t have children because, apart from Eve, they repulsed her, and because she swears she never got over the shock of my labor — she’s not the only one. The situation suited Peter. I couldn’t imagine how he could have room to love another. And, if he ever wondered what it might be like to live with a child, Emmy was self-centered and aggravating enough to give him a pretty good idea.

  I took a breath as I presented myself to the doorman. Emmy had insisted on holding a little shindig as soon as she found out about the arrest, and court. She assured me it would be a quiet little dinner party, to celebrate what she was sure would be a victory. Just Emmy and Peter, Heidi and Steve, Luke and Dick, and me. Vera would have come, but she was in Buenos Aires with Esteban and hadn’t been able to get back in time.

  Oh, you might have noticed we actually let Vera’s latest flame keep his name. She’s been with Esteban for two years now — a freakish record. Emmy keeps insisting she seems to be tiring of him, but I think it’s just wishful thinking. Emmy would love to see Esteban smashed against the rocks of Vera’s powerful magnetism. Something about Vera’s fatal power impresses the hell out of her. But I’m not convinced. Vera still seems pretty smitten to me.

  Anyway, as I presented myself to the doorman I kind of wished Esteban was going to be there, because I could have used some of his ‘oh ‘ello beautiful girl what ees harpeening een your life?’ charm. Oh well, the food and drinks would be good. Emmy would have it catered because, although she’s a better cook than me, she prefers to use experts. She’s fond of saying ‘I wouldn’t ask Gordon Ramsey to write my next book, so why the fuck should I prepare the food? It’s insulting to other people’s skills.’

  On the way up, I steeled myself for the barrage of questions. I didn’t let anyone come to court, despite having to suffer Emmy’s petulant fury. I just couldn’t bear it. It was like childbirth. I knew what I had to do and — this time — I knew that I was much better off doing it solo. I was scared too, and I had learned a valuable life lesson in that birthing room: my family do nothing to allay anyone’s anxiety. They feed it. They are the emotional equivalent of cigarettes to someone with lung cancer. So, anyway, even though I’d called Mom and Emmy straight after court to let them know the results, I knew I’d be expected to give the full debrief tonight.

  As I stepped into the lush, warm cocoon that was Emmy’s beautiful penthouse apartment, the party was already in full swing.

  ‘Hey baaabe!’ Judging by Emmy’s overly-loud screech, she started on the aperitifs a little while ago.

  Everyone else was already toting drinks too, and I entered just as Steve had the hors d’oeuvres waiter practically pinned to the wall while he tasted every one of the tiny, scrumptious little delicacies on his platter.

  ‘Mm…’ He was breathing huskily. ‘Baby food for grown-ups. I love it.’

  Oh God, déjà vu. Don’t think about Wayne. Not now.

  ‘Quick, Loll,’ Emmy commanded. ‘Coat off. Let’s see that frock. Oh wow! That is be-yoo-tee-ful!’

  She sighed theatrically, but I can tell she genuinely appreciates the work of art. Everyone gathered around me, and far from feeling — as I’d expected — claustrophobic and reluctant to go over the whole thing again, I started instead to feel this low, fluttery excitement in my belly. It’s so sad when you realize those who love you maybe know you better than you know yourself. Trust Emmy to know that the best cure at this point would be a good frocking-up and a rapt audience.

  Everyone looked so good. I was impressed at the effort they’d gone to for me. Well, you know, Steve looked pretty much as usual — sort of scruffy and a little bit dirty. It’s really lucky he’s so good looking because otherwise he’d just look perennially homeless. Instead, he just manages to pull off charmingly boyish, especially in the rented tux Heidi has obviously decided he should wear. She looked good too — she was in this really soft floaty peach pants suit. It made her look like Chloe Sevigny, kind of quirky glam.

  The other boys all looked good in black tie too. Emmy’s Peter is gorgeous anyway, so that doesn’t count, but it’s so rare we all get to see each other looking truly glamorous. Even Dick was wearing a nice tux.

  And then there was Emmy. I swear they invented the word ravishing just for her. Her dress was this purple sheath. Grape, really. Backless. With a really high neckline. She was totally working it with these ridiculously high grape pumps that she walked around in as though they’re those massage sandals. She’s used to flitting around in couture and high fashion shoes, so she did it effortlessly.

  Emmy was finishing off a conversation with Luke and wanted to share it with me.

  ‘Loll, Loll,’ she beckoned, dragging me over to them. ‘Before we hear all about today, I was just telling Luke and Dick about the time Eve met Peter’s parents. God, it was so funny.’ She was doing that thing she does when she’s getting drunk — starting to laugh before she’s managed to get the story out. ‘Mar-ee and Chip dropped by one night when I was sitting Eve… By the way, that’s M-A-R-Y and, of course, should just be plain old Mary, but rich people are so messed up they always have to have some stupid name that’s pronounced totally differently from how it’s spelled… Anyway, we had a ball, of course. Eve loves it here…doesn’t she, Loll?’

  ‘Of course she loves it here, Em. You ply her with ice cream and let her ride the elevator for hours. Thanks a lot, by the way. Now she wants us to get an elevator. I had to explain that real people don’t have elevators in their apartments.’

  Emmy rolled her eyes dramatically at Luke and Dick. ‘Good to see your good luck hasn’t made you into Little Miss Sunshine. If you can’t be helpful, shut the hell up while I finish the story.’

  I made an apologetic face. ‘Sorry, go on.’

  ‘So… Mary and Chuck arrive and Eve and I’ve been watching a DVD.’

  Luke raised his eyebrows at me. We all know Emmy’s eclectic movie tastes. Two genres only: foreign films with lots of sex or disasters films. Something about her dark soul. Anyway, I can tell Luke is wondering whether I’ll tolerate her sharing this bounty with my four-year-old daughter.

  ‘Oh relax, you uptight freaks,’ Emmy scolded them. ‘It was reasonably tame. It was one Peter had bought, and I edited out any bits that were too grown-up. Jesus, have you any idea how hard it is to tell a story to you people?’

  Luke and Dick clucked apologetically this time. No one wants to get on Emmy’s bad side when she’s clearly revved up and has had a few drinks.

  She continued. ‘So, they arrive and Evie rushes to the elevator as they come up
, yelling at the top of her voice, “Come in, come in and meet the fuckers!” Isn’t that priceless? I thought Chip was going to have a coronary.’

  Dick looked puzzled. ‘What were you watching?’

  ‘Meet The Fockers!’ Emmy could hardly speak, she was laughing so hard.

  ‘Yeah,’ I confirmed, taking in Luck and Dick’s shocked faces. ‘Just right for a four-year-old, huh? Obviously Em didn’t “edit out” the foreskin bit, because I got a whole loada questions about foreskins the next day. In the end, I told her to ask her father next time she saw him. Which of course, she did. He was good, actually, although he wasn’t sure what to do when she asked him to show her.’

  Now Luke and Dick were laughing too. I was kind of mesmerized whenever Dick laughed. It’s like watching a walrus. His great big front teeth come right out of hiding — he usually tucks them behind his huge top lip — and his face goes red and blotchy.

  Please don’t think I’ve got a problem with Dick because he’s ugly. There’s far more to it than that.

  All about Dick

  Dick does some computer stuff in the marines, but his burning ambition is to be a couture designer. I’ve no idea why he joined the marines except I do know that, like Luke, he loves it beyond reason. And he, also, thinks he’s a soldier.

  Puh-lease.

  At least Luke has actually been a soldier, even if he’s a lawyer now. The closest poor old Dick’s ever come to the front line is playing those stupid war games on his — admittedly very beautiful — apple mac. That’s the weirdest thing about Dick. He’s a total freak, but he does have an incredible eye for beautiful things. I’m sure he can’t believe he managed to hook Luke. But, as I said, ugly is just the beginning of Dick’s problems.

  Get this. The first time I met Dick — when I was still working out what I thought of him — he told me he was a Reaganite. Can you believe it? This was in 2003. I told him it was ridiculous to say you were a Reaganite when Reagan hadn’t been in office for, like, twenty years and had been dead for who knows how long. Ages. I think the real reason he likes Ronnie is because he was a movie star. Dick thinks of himself as Charlton Heston.