On Columbus Day, when Dorothy was walking her new Pomeranian puppies, enjoying the crisp morning air and minding her own damn business, she found a half-naked man curled up beneath Mack’s glider. The puppies began to growl, and the little male tinkled on the man’s shoe. Then she saw the front door open, and two skimpily clad blondes stepped out. One of them was holding a baby.
Dorothy gathered up her dogs, went straight home and suffered her first dizzy spell. Rather than call Mack, she called 911. Byron Falk admitted her to the hospital and ran tests, while Mack sat at her bedside, sipping beer from a Dixie cup and flirting with the nurses. Dizziness of unknown origin was Byron’s final diagnosis, a polite way of saying it was an emotional problem. Mack drove his mother home from the hospital, settled her in her own living room with a can of Diet Coke and a Subway sandwich, then he took off, saying he’d like to stay and keep her company, but he had a hot date with a nurse.
“The curvy one or the bottle blonde?” Dorothy asked.
When he told her it was the blonde Dorothy shut her eyes, and the room began to sway. “Oh, dear,” she gasped, but Mack just hurried out the door, leaving his mother to fend for her poor little self.
The next afternoon Clancy Jane stopped by with apple strudel and a thermos of Kona coffee. She found Mack in the driveway, shooting at the blackbirds, surrounded by empty Pabst cans. Clancy took one look and said, “Mack, you look horrible. Buddy, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “I’ve just been messing around.”
“You’ve got to stop drinking.”
“What’s the point?” He shrugged. A bird tore out of a tree and made a beeline for his roof. He lifted the gun and fired. Next door, Dorothy charged out of her house, her arms swinging back and forth. She brightened when she saw her sister. “Why, look what the cat dragged in!”
“I brought strudel,” said Clancy Jane, glancing down at the beer cans. “Mack, honey, your liver can’t take this abuse.”
“You leave his liver out of this,” Dorothy said, lumbering over. She snatched the strudel from her sister’s hands. “Worry about your own. Speaking of liver, I have the best recipe for pâté.”
A LETTER FROM CLANCY JANE FALK
December 15, 1981
Dear Bitsy,
Thank you for inviting me to New Orleans this Christmas, but Tucker and I have big plans. We promised Sunny—you remember my old friend?—that we’d have Xmas dinner with her. Last year she left Mendicino and came back to Crystal Falls to open a boutique. She sells carvings from Madagascar and rugs from Morocco. She has a loom where she makes her own rugs, too. The name of her shop is Magic Carpet Ride. Anyway, Sunny and I are cooking the holiday meal at her house—and guess what? It’s not 100% vegetarian! That’s right, I’m eating meat again. Of course, Tucker will be there, along with Zach and his new girlfriend, Helen, a die-hard vegan. A new friend, Laura—the first atheist in Crystal Falls—will be joining us. Laura is a florist, and I sure hope the church people don’t run her out of business. We get together every Friday night and discuss art, music, politics. I haven’t heard a peep from Violet, but I know she’s busy studying people’s brains. I hope you and Louie and Dorothy and Mack have a nice get-together.
Peace and Love,
Aunt C.J.
Dorothy
A centerpiece of white Christmas tulips dominated the DeChavannes’s dining room table. Dorothy wondered if they were artificial, so she bent over to smell them. No, they were real, all right. She straightened up and stepped into the kitchen, where her daughter was rushing around. She wanted to say, “Stop, let’s sit down together and talk. Tell me how you’re doing.”
Dorothy thought Bitsy looked peaked. Her cheekbones were more prominent, and her pretty black dress, which appeared to be silk, fell in loose folds around her hips. After her vacation in England, Bitsy had gotten chubby. The recent weight loss didn’t suit her, even though skinny was all the style now. The young girls starved themselves or else stuck fingers down their throats. Not that Bitsy would do that. Dorothy hoped the weight loss was due to dieting and not Louie’s extramarital antics. Although it could be due to Jennifer—after that horrible trip to England, the child had turned against her mother and stepfather.
Dorothy wondered when her daughter would have time to sit down and chat, but the girl was too busy. Over Bitsy’s protests, Louie had hired a chef to cook the family dinner, but a rather famous photographer had just dropped in—with seven friends. The hired chef took Bitsy aside and hissed, “You told me it was dinner for four!”
“It’s twelve now.” Bitsy patted the chef’s shoulder, her hand crinkling his white uniform.
“But they’re uninvited,” stammered the chef.
“No, just unexpected,” Bitsy said. “But quite welcome. I’ll just set eight extra places.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” The chef began to smite his forehead. “That will solve nothing! Christ, there’s not enough food!”
“I have three dozen eggs in the refrigerator. We can serve omelets. Oh, come on now. Don’t look so glum. I’ll help you.”
“Omelets for Christmas?”
“We’ll throw in some red and green peppers.” Bitsy opened the refrigerator. “And we’ll make turkey salad. The food is secondary to the company.”
Dorothy gripped a Pomeranian in each arm. Ever since her days in Central State, she’d despised the smell of cooked eggs. If crazy had a smell, it would definitely be egg. At the island, the chef began hacking into the turkey breast, and Bitsy started to make the salad dressing. Dorothy would have loved a room like this, with garlic braids hung from a wrought-iron pot rack, and glazed Italian pottery arranged just so in the cupboard. On the desk, a brandy snifter was filled with matchbooks, and each one had foreign words on the cover. Next to what Bitsy called a “prep-sink,” a dish held tiny French soaps, each one infused with a different floral scent. At the opposite end of the kitchen, a door opened into a climate-controlled wine room with wooden racks in the ceiling to hang glasses.
“Can I help y’all do anything?” Dorothy asked, as the chef eyed the little dogs. Dorothy wasn’t sure, but she had a feeling that he wanted to use them to fill out the menu.
“Thanks,” Bitsy said, “but we’ve got it under control.”
Relieved, Dorothy explored the sun-filled rooms. Her shoes sank into thick Persian rugs, their patterns intricate as stained-glass windows. The entry hall was dominated by a beveled glass door with a fanlight. A long, carved table stood against the wall, holding three dozen white gladioli in a crystal vase. In the dining room, Dorothy picked up a dinner plate and turned it over. Wedgwood. How boring. It wasn’t festive or Christmasy. Back home, she was collecting pieces of Naif, a Villeroy and Boch pattern. She had first spotted the dishes at Borden’s Jewelry, and the colorful scenes on the dishes had mesmerized her. She longed to live in a place like that, where everyone in town decorated the Christmas tree and skated on ponds, their bright knit scarves floating in the snowy air.
She moved to the back staircase, looking at the black-framed photographs hung there in pleasing patterns. Pictures of Bitsy and Louie on all their travels. Dorothy recognized some landmarks from movies on TV—the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, London Bridge, the Acropolis. She even recognized Michelangelo’s David. Others were unfamiliar, like the one showing Bitsy and Louie backed by an enormous, snow-capped mountain. It looked dangerous and exciting. The wind was blowing Bitsy’s hair, and Louie was smiling. Behind them, footsteps dented the snow, leading up a steep path.
Since her marriage to Dr. DeChavannes, Bitsy had grown worldly and capable. She gets her talents from me, Dorothy told herself, although she knew better. Still, those gladioli in the entry hall haunted Dorothy—why so many? And why place them in a room where guests would only see the arrangement in passing? It reminded her of Miss Betty’s house, the way she always showed off at her bridge parties.
Dorothy felt a jolt of irritation at her daughter—irritation at all women wh
o knew how to put a spin on life. Although she would never admit it, she lacked this talent. The pretty side of life was beyond her. It wasn’t financial, either, because Albert’s insurance policy had left her wealthy. It was some intangible thing.
“I can’t get comfortable in this house,” Dorothy whispered to her dogs. In the den, she passed a down-filled sofa, noticing that the flowers in the chintz matched the flowers on a needlepoint pillow. Dorothy sat in a Louis XIV chair, covered in plaid moiré silk. She put her dogs down, but they whimpered and stood on their hind legs, begging to be held.
“I just can’t find a cozy spot,” she told them. What she meant was, I’m afraid I’ll hurt this pretty fabric. Sometimes my bladder leaks when I laugh too hard, and even a Depends won’t hold it in. I’m afraid I look out of place on this moiré silk. I don’t fit into my daughter’s life. Not one thing in her house resembles anything that I have in Crystal Falls. She has moved beyond my reach.
After the meal, Dorothy accepted a snifter of brandy from Louie in the living room. Then she sat down on a striped loveseat. Her Poms danced around her legs, their foxy faces desperate. “Oh, all right,” she said and scooped them onto her lap.
Bitsy passed a tray of chocolates and cheesecake fingers, which the chef had hastily assembled. Dorothy sipped her brandy. The more she drank, which couldn’t have been more than a thimbleful, the louder she talked. The photographer and his friends listened politely. Mack stood up and lumbered over to the mirrored armoire that had been turned into a bar. He reached into a silver bucket and pulled out a wine bottle, the ice cubes clinking. After he poured the remains of a two-liter bottle into his glass, he stepped back, as if admiring the bar. At home, he kept his wine jugs on the kitchen floor, but here in New Orleans, Bitsy did everything right.
On his way back to the chintz sofa, Mack interrupted his mother. “Mama, they don’t want to hear about how you dyed our Easter outfits to match—Daddy’s included. They don’t want to hear about the secrets of Rit Dye.”
“Slow up with the wine, Mack,” Bitsy warned.
“But it’s the holidays.” He tottered back and forth, and the Poms leaped to the floor and ran under Dorothy’s legs for protection, peeking between her wide, muscular calves.
“Don’t spill that on Bitsy’s rug,” she told her son. Then, with a nervous laugh, she turned to the guests. “My son doesn’t normally drink this much.”
“The hell I don’t,” said Mack.
“I cook supper for him every night,” Dorothy continued, her voice rising. “But do I get any thanks?” She drained her brandy with a flourish. “No, I do not get any thanks,” she continued. “Mack just eats and runs. He’s a slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am son.”
“Oh, Dorothy, really,” said Bitsy.
Dorothy cringed and stared into her empty glass. It was the brandy talking. The photographer and one other guest laughed. The others shifted in their chairs, looking uncomfortable. “That’s very kind of you to cook for him,” said the photographer, a handsome blond fellow with a laconic grin.
“It’s all a mother can do,” she said, batting her eyes modestly. Not that she was flirting or anything. The photographer wasn’t her type. She glanced surreptitiously at Bitsy, who was glaring. Dorothy raised two fingers to her lips and turned them back and forth, as if locking her lips with an invisible key.
Across the room, Mack tossed down wine and tried to engage one of the photographer’s friends in a conversation. “My ex-wife could drive a backhoe good as any man,” he was saying. Then he began to weep. “She was a looker, and flexible. She could throw her legs plumb over her head.”
“Was she a gymnast?” asked the photographer’s friend. He had a Swedish accent that Dorothy had originally mistaken for Russian. Well, she didn’t know; he sounded to her like the people on the ice skating shows.
“No, she was just real good in bed,” Mack explained. “Yeah, she was a flexible little gal. And she didn’t have no body odor.”
“Why, that’s just plain silly.” Dorothy rolled her eyes. “Everyone has a body odor.”
“Not my Earlene. She never smelled bad a day in her life.”
“Where’s Louie gone off to?” asked the photographer. “Is he hiding from us?”
“He’s in the library, talking to Renata. She’s in Italy with her mother and stepfather.” Bitsy held out the dessert tray while the Swede studied the offerings. He selected a truffle and slipped it into his mouth.
“It’s so sweet of Louie to take time from his party to call his daughter.” Dorothy popped a truffle into her mouth and bit down. Still chewing, she added, “Speaking of daughters, have you heard from Jennifer?”
“No, but she usually writes after the first of the year.” Bitsy’s shoulders stiffened.
“She’s too busy to send you a Christmas card?” The candy bulged in Dorothy’s cheek. “She got a Princess Di haircut. But it’s a little too much fringe near her face.”
“I’m sure it’s lovely.”
“No, it’s not.” Dorothy set her empty glass on a leather-topped table, then she straightened her blouse, which had slipped to the side. Damn frilly ruffles made her look fat. “I sure appreciate the cards you and Louie send me every year,” she continued. “A card means you care. And so do phone calls. The more the better.”
“Mama, you sound like a commercial.” Mack opened another bottle of wine. “Reach out and touch someone.”
The photographer stirred in his chair. “Bitsy, I was hoping to see your lovely mother-in-law again.”
“Honora’s spending the holidays in Australia with friends,” Bitsy said.
“Australia’s lovely this time of year,” said the photographer.
The group fell silent.
“Jennifer’s lucky,” Mack said, stifling a burp. “How many kids her age have a daddy who’s a bank president, and a granddaddy who’s—”
“Would anyone care for anything else?” Bitsy interrupted.
“Hey, you didn’t let me finish,” Mack shouted. “I was telling everybody how Jennifer’s granddaddy is chairman of the board at that goddamn bank.”
Bitsy ignored her brother and turned to the photographer. “We’re not exactly a Norman Rockwell painting,” she said.
“No, but Hieronymous Bosch is interesting, too.” The photographer’s eyes crinkled in the corners as he smiled.
“Are you talking over my head?” Mack lowered his eyebrows.
“I don’t believe we were talking to you,” said Bitsy.
“Quit changing the subject.” Mack poured more wine into his glass. “You’re just pissed because Jennifer didn’t like England.”
“We’ll discuss this later,” Bitsy said in a tight voice.
“Why? You got an appointment at the mall to have your nails done? I want to discuss it now, goddammit.”
The photographer and his friends exchanged uncomfortable glances.
Mack lifted his glass and fixed his sister with a belligerent stare. “You don’t need another drink,” she told him.
“Hell, I don’t need another golf club, either, but that don’t mean I won’t buy me one.” He grinned at the Swedish man. “Hey, buddy. You play golf?”
“Let me fix some coffee,” Bitsy suggested.
“I don’t want no goddamn coffee. I want some more wine.” He drained his glass, poured another, and limped over to Bitsy. “You ought to try a little. It might take that snarl off your mouth.”
Two splotches of color appeared on Bitsy’s cheeks, and she cast a helpless glance at Dorothy.
“Go on and say it,” Mack shouted, swaying from side to side. Wine sloshed out of his glass and dribbled onto the floor. The Poms bolted forward and began sniffing the rug. “You think I’m a dumb ass.”
“No.” She looked down at the dessert tray and bit her lip. “But I’m worried that you’re an alcoholic.”
“What the fuck!” Mack’s face contorted.
“Please, let me fix you some—”
Mack tossed hi
s wine into Bitsy’s face. She staggered backward, and the tray she was holding clattered to the floor, spilling chocolates across the rug. As the photographer and his friends stood up, the Pomeranians began to bark.
The Swedish man picked up the tray and set it on a table. The frantic barking brought Louie into the room. He stood in the doorway, his forehead wrinkled. “What’s going on?” he cried.
“Don’t you mess with me,” Mack said.
Louie hurried over to Bitsy and whipped out his handkerchief. It was monogrammed, LdeC. Just like Rebecca de Winter, Dorothy thought with a shiver. Louie tenderly wiped Bitsy’s face and the front of her dress. “There,” he said in a soothing voice. “That’s better. What happened, Beauty?”
“I’m afraid her brother doused her in wine,” said the photographer.
Louie whirled around, his eyes narrowed.
“She had it coming,” Mack said.
Dorothy quickly sized up the situation. Her son-in-law was three inches taller than Mack, and outweighed him by thirty pounds. Also, Louie didn’t have a wooden leg and wasn’t drunk. She raised her hand, trying to signal her son to sit down and shut up.
“You barbarian.” Louie spoke in a hushed, furious voice. He clenched the handkerchief in his fists. “I want you to leave.”
Mack looked at Dorothy. She held his gaze. Fix this yourself, her eyes said. I’ve had enough.
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