Going Out in Style

by Gloria Dank

  “Whatever you want, Susie.”

  Susan went back to the closet and ripped several gowns off their hangers. “Look at these clothes. What a waste,” she said. “I could have bought ten outfits for the price she spent on one of these gowns. Twenty, maybe.”

  “Mother never counted the money she spent.”

  “Not on herself.” Susan sounded bitter. She folded the clothes and stuffed them into an already overloaded box. “By the way, Albert, talking about birthday presents reminded me. We have to send out invitations to Aunt Etta’s birthday party. You know she’d literally die of disappointment if we didn’t do something for her eightieth. She’s been talking about nothing else since last year.”

  “I know. I know. It’s just such a bad time, Sue.”

  “Yes. Poor Aunt Etta. It couldn’t have come at a worse time.” She straightened up and put her hands on her hips. Her hair was escaping from the rubber band and curling madly around her face. She pushed it back with an impatient gesture. “Do you think Mrs. MacGregor would mind helping us out with the party? Would you mind asking her?”

  “No, no, of course not. I’ll ask her the next time she comes in.”

  “Good. Listen, Albert, I have to get home soon. Even Dora has a time limit with Harold. Last time she babysat, he tried to hit Pumpkin over the head with one of his toys.”

  “Which one?”

  Susan regarded him with irritation. “What do you mean, which one? What difference does it make?”

  “A lot of difference, Susie,” he said vaguely. “If it was a pillow, for instance, that would be fine, but if it was a baseball bat, say, or that club he carries around sometimes—”

  “Oh, Albert, you drive me crazy. Harold is a difficult child—I’m the first to admit that, aren’t I?—but there’s nothing really wrong with him. He’s not a killer. Nobody in this family is a killer. Nobody!”

  Albert stared at her, surprised by the vehemence in her tone. “Of course not, Susan. Don’t be silly.”

  “Nobody,” she repeated to herself, and tore one of her mother’s gowns angrily off its hanger.

  The next day, Susan and Dora were sitting in Susan’s tiny dining room after dinner. Susan was addressing the party invitations, and Dora was breastfeeding Pooh. Dora was gazing beatifically at some drawings that Harold had recently brought home and which Susan had taped up on the dining room wall. They showed a house, robin’s-egg blue, and a buttercup yellow sun. There were trees around the house and a stick figure in a rust-colored outfit (“This is you, Mommy”) in the yard.

  “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the boy at all,” Dora said dreamily. Breastfeeding always made her feel warm and sleepy. “Look at those drawings. He’s perfectly happy.”

  “He tried to kick a little girl in school today,” said Susan, savagely addressing the envelopes.

  “You wait and see. Harold is going to grow up into those fabulous looks of his. By the time he’s a teenager he’ll be an angel, a perfect angel.”

  “Dreamer,” said Susan, and cocked her head toward her son’s bedroom. “Did you hear anything? Is he asleep?”

  “He’s asleep. I went in there a while ago and he was out cold.”

  “Okay.”

  “You should have seen that handsome detective when I started feeding Pooh,” Dora said. “He didn’t know where to look. Men are so … so priggish about things like that.”

  “You love to make people uncomfortable that way, Dora. You know you do.”

  “It’s true, Susie. I’m a devil, what can I say. The man thinks I’m an idiot, anyway. I talked to him about Gilligan’s Island and he looked at me like I was scum.”

  “That’s your act, Dora. Your stupid act. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I guess not.” Dora sighed and detached Pooh, who squalled briefly and then fell asleep, drooling. “I wish I could come to Aunt Etta’s party, dear. I would give anything not to be going away that weekend.”

  “It’s not going to be anything special. Just Albert and me and a few other people. We can’t do anything big right now, not that Albert and I would have the faintest idea what we were doing if we tried to plan a big party. Where are you going away to?”

  “Oh, we have to visit Phil’s parents in Boston. You know how I feel about that. Phil’s father always has a cold and he gives it to Pooh, and Phil’s mother takes me aside and asks me if Phil’s eating properly, he looks so thin and peaked. The last time I got so fed up I told her we were on a macrobiotic diet, just rice and seaweed and sometimes a little fish, and she believed me. She believed me, Susan.”

  “That’s sad. You shouldn’t tease her.”

  “And then she gives me her special recipe for pound cake. We’ve been to their house exactly twenty-four times in the six years that we’ve been married, and every single time she gives me her special recipe for pound cake. I wouldn’t mind, but it isn’t even a good recipe. Now Boston cream pie, that I could get excited about.” She shifted the baby to her other arm. “So, when are you and George getting married?”

  Susan made a face. “Please, Dora. Not for a while. Albert and I can’t even plan a birthday party for Aunt Etta properly. How can we put together a wedding? George understands. He’s not in any rush.”

  “What about Albert and that woman he’s been seeing for a hundred years—Gretchen? What’s going on with them?”

  “I don’t know. Albert never talks about her. I told him to keep some of Mother’s jewels in case he ever got married, and he just looked at me like he didn’t know who I was. It’s a shame, because I like her. I think she’d be a good influence on him. By the way, Dora, you wouldn’t have any use for a sequined red silk evening gown, would you? I have to get rid of all of Mother’s clothes, and some of them are really stunning.”

  “Well, you know nobody loves dressing up more than I do, dear, but since Pooh here was born I’m lucky if I can stuff myself into a muumuu. Maybe in a year or two, if we decide not to have any more kids. Oh my God, what a thought. If I don’t lose this weight before the next baby, they’ll have to forklift me into the hospital.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll hold onto some clothes for you. You’re a little shorter than Mother, but you could have them altered. Unless you think it’s too ghastly.”

  “Nothing’s too ghastly that costs over two thousand dollars, dear. Which I presume this gown you’re talking about did. Your mother always had great taste.”

  “I could give it to Gretchen, but it doesn’t seem right somehow, not unless she and Albert make some definite plans.”

  “Oh, no, no, don’t you dare give it to her, save it for me. In about five years, give or take a few, I’ll have my figure back again, I promise. And all this talk of clothes reminds me. Did I tell you the latest about Princess Di? It seems she was out at this charity ball and …”

  Susan listened patiently for a while. Finally she said, “Dora, dear, have I mentioned to you recently that I think this whole Princess Di thing is getting a little out of hand? I mean, in my opinion, it’s not really normal anymore, if you don’t mind my saying so?”

  Dora airily waved a hand. “I know, Susie, I know. That’s what Phil tells me too. But what I say is, why should I listen to somebody like Phil who lives and dies for The Brady Bunch? Anyhow, where was I? She was out at this fabulous all-star gala and …”

  Mrs. MacGregor readily agreed to come in and “lend a hand,” as she put it, for several days before the birthday party. She was, if the truth be known, genuinely fond of Aunt Etta. “I’d be glad to help,” she told Albert. “Anything for you and Etta Pinsky.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mrs. MacGregor.”

  A little while later he came into the kitchen with the black coat bunched awkwardly in his arms. He held it out.

  “Mother’s mink coat,” he said hesitantly, his face flushed. “Susan and I discussed it, and, well, she thought you might like it. If you don’t mind. As kind of a thank-you for helping out. Susan thought—well, anyway …
here it is.” He thrust it toward her helplessly, reflecting how really bad he was at this kind of thing.

  Mrs. MacGregor took the coat and held it reverently in her arms. Her old eyes filled with tears. Her wrinkled face seemed to pinch together and tremble.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, her voice shaking. “Beautiful. I never thought—I never thought that—” She wavered and threatened to break down completely. Albert wished fervently that he was dead. “Thank you,” she managed at last. “It’s lovely—just lovely!”

  “You’re very welcome,” said Albert, and shambled hastily from the room.

  That night Mrs. MacGregor went home to her little apartment on the edge of town with her heart full.

  It was a bitterly cold day in late January, and she was wearing the mink coat. She got out of her car and, pulling it tightly around her, walked in a slow and stately fashion up her front walk.

  She imagined the neighbors staring, peeking from behind their curtains and saying, “Look, there’s Harriet MacGregor, with the most fabulous black mink coat—!”

  She unlocked her door and went in. She walked over to her closet and began to take the coat off; then, hesitating, she pulled it back on. No need to take it off so soon, she thought. Not so soon. She could wear it a little while longer.

  In fact, she wore it as she watched the evening news, then as she prepared her small dinner—just mashed potatoes and a little salad and a chicken leg, she never seemed to have much appetite anymore, even when she had cooked and cleaned for other people all day long. After dinner she made herself a nice cup of tea with milk and two lumps of sugar, and settled down in her favorite armchair to watch TV. She had taken off the coat while she ate dinner—she was afraid of spilling food on it—but now she pulled it across her knobby knees as a luxurious lap rug and stroked it happily as she watched a documentary about African wildlife.

  She had always wanted to travel—although even when her husband Ian had been alive they had never had the money to go to Europe or Africa—and she watched eagerly as the camera panned across the African veldt. She lost herself in visions of giraffes moving majestically, their heads bobbing, across the plains. Elephant babies were so big, fancy that, she thought. So cute with their little trunks waving. A lion roared at the screen and she shook with a pleasurable twinge of fear. The lionesses hunted and the male of the species lay around all day stuffing himself on their spoils. She permitted herself a haughty sniff. Not unlike some human males she knew. Why, her friend Lottie had told her recently that old Mr. Thayer over on Cabbage Avenue had never worked a day in his life …!

  It was somewhere between the new hospital show and the MacNeil/Lehrer report that her hand, gently stroking the dark mink fur, suddenly paused. Harriet MacGregor sat up straight in her chair, a bewildered look on her face.

  “Well, now, that’s odd.…” she said to herself. “Very odd … very odd indeed … I wonder why that would be—?”

  The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour continued with a report about sperm whales, but Harriet MacGregor was no longer listening. She sat with her head cocked to one side, her mind slowly clicking over, a strange expression on her face.

  Well, now, she thought. That really was very odd!

  4

  Mr. Whiskers looked proudly at his reflection in the mirror. His fur was white and soft, his feet were pink and sturdy, and his whiskers—his pride and joy—were long, white and curled in a devilmay-care manner at the ends. “Hurrah!” he cried. “I am the handsomest rat in Ratdom!”

  Bernard stopped typing and put his head down on his desk. He felt himself to be dangerously close to tears. For crying out loud, the handsomest rat in Ratdom! He lay there for a while, his head cradled in his arms, thinking long weary thoughts.

  It was pitch dark in the study where he sat. He worked best in the dark. Many of his finest works, including his most popular book of all, Mrs. Woolly and the Bengal Tiger, had been conceived and executed in the dark. He was an expert in touch-typing and could keep up to one and a half pages at a time in his head. He found, more and more, that it interfered with his creative work if he could actually see what he was doing. When the sunlight filtered through the closed blinds, filling the room with a pale diffuse light, he would often type with his eyes closed.

  Now he felt close to despair. He could not concentrate on his work at all. Visions of talking rodents and intelligent sheep danced the tarantella in his head. He lay there, his eyes closed, his brain weary and confused.

  Suddenly the lights were switched on, and a voice said, “Ah, Bernard. Work going well?”

  Bernard sat up. “Just fine.”

  “Taking a little break?”

  “I was just thinking over a few small details,” Bernard said coldly.

  Snooky sat down and smiled at him over the clutter. Bernard’s desk was a massive cherrywood antique that Maya had found in a dusty little store in Vermont. It was covered with books, papers, quick sketches of rats and sheep, erasers, pencils, pens, giant paper clips which Bernard had once (in a moment of idleness) linked together into a fifteen-foot chain, one of Misty’s old flea collars, and a small silver-framed photo of Maya.

  “How’s it going, Bernard?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “I am here to tell you something which will fill your heart with joy. I have just received an invitation to Aunt Etta’s eightieth birthday party, and guess what?”

  Bernard did not show any inclination to guess.

  “You’re invited, too. You must have made quite an impression on her at that reception, eh, Bernard? Well, what do you say? Will you go?”

  Bernard regarded him thoughtfully. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t go. You know that.”

  “But you’ll go this time?”

  “No. Of course not. But I want you to go. And keep your eyes open, Snooky. You know as well as I do that one of the people at that party probably murdered your friend.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Bernard. I’m like a cat.”

  Bernard flinched at the mention of the hated word. “What do you mean?”

  “I always land on my feet.”

  “Cats don’t always land on their feet. It’s a myth.”

  “No, really? Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “How would you know that, Bernard?”

  “There are a lot of myths about cats. That they make good pets, for instance. The only good pets are dogs.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “I don’t have time to argue with you about it, Snooky. Just take my word for it. And if you’re going to go to this party, try to be careful. Your sister is worried enough about you as it is.”

  Snooky smiled cheerfully. “Oh, I’ll be careful. I’m always careful. And I’ll keep my eyes open, like you said. Who knows, maybe I’ll see something important.”

  “Somehow I doubt that very much,” said Bernard sourly.

  Snooky wandered into the next room. This was Maya’s study. Like Bernard’s, it looked out over the back lawn through tall, narrow windows, but there the resemblance ended. Whereas Bernard’s study was small, dominated by the big old desk and cluttered with books, papers and oddments, Maya’s study was clean, light and airy. She worked at an antique pine table covered with dark knobbly whorls. The room itself was big and square, the wallpaper was sprigged in blue and violet flowers, and a glowing Turkish rug lay on the hardwood floor. Snooky sank with a sigh of relief into the overstuffed armchair.

  Maya looked up from her word processor. “What is it, Snooks? Be brief. I have an article due tomorrow.”

  “What’s it on?”

  “Quetzals.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Pharomachrus mocino, you dumbhead. A Central American bird. I have to write three thousand words on its feeding habits by tomorrow morning. Kindly state your purpose, then get out.”

  Snooky explained about the party and Bernard’s refusal. “But you’re welcome to come if you want, Maya.”

  “Thank you,
but no. And I wish you’d forget it too, Snooks. I think it’s dangerous to get too friendly with those people.”

  “It is not. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I’m not being ridiculous. I’m being practical, a virtue I have in common with William, one which you apparently never inherited. Listen to me, Snooky. You’re an adult now and I can’t tell you what to do, but I wish you wouldn’t go. You know it’s not safe.”

  “Please, Maya. Don’t do this. Nobody is out to get me, after all.”

  “They might be if they thought you saw something,” she said shrewdly. “And the longer you hang around with them, the more likely it is that you will see something.”

  Snooky looked away. “Bella was my friend.”

  She looked at him. Snooky’s face was set in the stubborn expression she remembered so well from his childhood—the expression she referred to as his you’re-not-the-boss-of-me face. She sighed. It was true, she was not the boss of him. She wondered briefly whether she ever had been. Out loud she said:

  “Yes. I do understand, Snookers. You go to that party and have yourself a good time.”

  Mrs. MacGregor was cackling merrily to herself as she got the broom out of the closet. Aunt Etta said sharply,

  “What is it, woman? What’s so funny?”

  Mrs. MacGregor cast a sly eye at her. “Nothing.”

  “Then why all the giggling?”

  MacGregor shook her head mutely and set to work with unaccustomed vigor. Aunt Etta watched critically.

  “You’ve missed that spot over there,” she said at last, in triumph. “And over there. Honestly, sometimes I wonder why I hire you, MacGregor. You do a lousy job.”

  Ordinarily MacGregor would have bristled at this, and demanded a full apology and a rest break before she went on. Etta waited in anticipation. Instead, MacGregor simply smiled, shook her head and laughed. Etta felt vaguely annoyed. She drummed her fingers on the sink and said gruffly, “Cup of tea?”

  Yes, thank you, said Mrs. MacGregor. A cup of tea would be very nice.