by Molly Giles
Ida lay on the pillows, white and quiet, eyes open, one last tear pearled under her lid. Neal turned to Kay. “Oh babe,” he said. “You missed it.”
And she wanted to cry then but something moved, something cheerful and restless and pushy and free, urging her swiftly toward the closed windows. “Smoke,” she explained, as the siren continued to scream from the kitchen. “Smoke,” she repeated, as the fresh morning wind blew into the room, pushing the sheer white curtains inward, lifting the sheets up over Ida’s broken white arm, cuffing Francis against his wrists as he bent over the bed with the silver mirror in his hands, but it wasn’t the word “smoke” she wanted to say, it was “soul.” My mother’s soul, Kay wanted to say, wants out.
She tugged at the door to the garden, stepped into the fresh air, and walked toward the pool. The rain had just stopped and the sky was settling like a wash of winter rags, eggshell and pewter, with a core of pure silver in the center that opened as she watched. That’s where Ida’s soul longed to go: straight up. She heard something small rush by her ears and felt its quick delight as it shot through the air, tumbling like an invisible sky otter in playful release, gay and graceful and glad to be out of its crippled body at last. Oh, I’ll miss you, Kay thought. Go and God bless.
Eleven
“Sit,” Peg Forrest ordered as Kay moved past with a tray of sandwiches. “You’re working too hard. Can’t you sit down and visit?”
Kay paused before her mother’s old friend but she was reluctant to sit. The tablecloth had a large stain she hadn’t noticed before. Ida would hate to know her “going away party”—as everyone insisted on calling it—was being hosted in a hastily cleaned house with supermarket food laid out on soiled lace. She set the sandwiches over the spot, repositioned the crystal bowls of nuts and mints, relit one of the candles, and perched next to Peg on the couch. Peg looked into her face with a frank concern that made Kay want to cry. Everything made her want to cry, perhaps because she hadn’t yet. No time, she told herself. Too much to do.
“I’m sorry there’s nothing to drink,” she apologized. “Victor won’t let me serve the champagne until Father Bliss gets here.”
“No one needs a drink,” Peg assured her.
Kay nodded, not so sure. Nancy Carpezio had already asked twice. Other guests had glanced longingly at the empty glasses seton the table as they moved around the living room, chatting in small groups, subdued and pleasant. The women were wearing wool dresses and knit suits in pastel shades; the men were uniformed in grey and navy blazers. Francis wandered from group to group like an affable stray. He had changed into the dark suit Kay had laid out for him, but his cowlick stuck straight up and for some reason he had put on white socks. He held a glass of unwatered Scotch that Victor had not been able to get him to put down and Kay watched, worried, as he used it to gesture toward the swimming pool when a guest asked him where the bathroom was.
“Poor man,” Peg said. “He’s exhausted. This has been a terrible time for all of you.” Kay pulled her eyes away from Francis and nodded. Peg’s shoulder felt warm and solid and the hand covering hers was wrinkled but strong. Peg would never know that Francis called her “Pig” because of her blond eyelashes and red cheeks or that Ida used to push her nostrils up with her middle finger and mouth Oink whenever Peg phoned.
The couch sank lightly as Glo Sinclair settled beside them. Kay caught a whiff of sharp perfume and heard the scratch of manicured nails as Glo adjusted her skirt. She had arrived half an hour ago with a huge jar of Russian caviar to contribute to “Ida’s party” but she had not, Kay saw, taken her jacket off yet. “I was wondering,” Glo said in her harsh voice, “what your father’s plans are now.”
“I don’t think he has any.” Kay tried to keep her voice light. Why didn’t she like this woman? Everyone else did. Victor treated her with the reverence he accorded anyone with money, and even Neal brightened when he was around her. “It’s only been three days.”
“He needs to get away,” Glo said.
From us? Kay thought. Some of us might want him here. She released Peg’s hand with a squeeze and rose to get back to work. She still had the turkey to slice and the coffee to measure out into the percolator. Greta had left for Cabo San Lucas two days ago with atearful wringing of hands, singing out that she hoped they would understand, but she loved Ida too much to ever come back to work in her house again. Neal had silently helped with the vacuuming and dusting, but now he was nowhere to be seen; he had slipped into the television room an hour ago and had not emerged since. Nicky and Stacy had disappeared too, taking Coco on a walk up the mountain. Victor, blond hair blow-dried, cheeks healthy red, was working the living room, stopping to tell everyone that he found it “just a little odd” that Father Bliss had not shown up yet. “My pastor,” Kay heard him say, “would have been here an hour ago.”
Just then the doorbell chimed and Kay looked up but it was Zabeth; she was wearing a minidress and fishnet hose and carrying a silver tray of small black lamb tongues floating in mustard sauce, an offering so peculiar Kay could only take it and stare. “It’s delicious,” Zabeth said. “Trust me.”
“Okay.” Kay inhaled Zabeth’s familiar odors of sweat and tobacco interlaced with something light and springlike as celery. “I’m sure glad to see you.”
“I wanted to be here for you.” Zabeth pressed Kay’s elbow with her fingernails and knifed into the living room. Kay saw her walk straight toward the group where Francis stood and kiss him on the cheek, leaving an imprint of blackberry lipstick. Francis touched his cheek, pleased. There was something different about his hand, Kay noticed. It looked bigger somehow. Barer. Oh-oh. She turned to Victor.
“Dad took his wedding ring off.”
“Speak of the devil.” Victor, not hearing, pushed past her to greet Father Bliss, who had just come through the door. Kay introduced them, then carried the priest’s cashmere coat into the bedroom. She stopped in the doorway, taking in the bare polished surfaces of the vanity and nightstand, the empty space where the wheelchair had been, the stiff new bedspread heaped with the coats of Ida’s friends. She felt the weariness she had been fighting buffet her again as she laid the coat next to Hazel Kent’s Persian lamb and Peg Forrest’s hand-knit cardigan. She had been working steadily since Ida’s death. Francis had wanted all of Ida’s things cleared out of this room. Kay had filled thirteen plastic garbage bags with silk dresses and underwear to give to thrift shops. She had thrown a wheelbarrow of pills away. She had repapered the emptied drawers, vacuumed the emptied closets. She had bought new sheets, new towels. Had it made any difference? She looked at the fresh pillows piled on Ida’s side of the bed and again she saw the small golden head, the tears. She swallowed, turned, and walked to the window. What if she had misinterpreted that wild rush of wind? What if it didn’t mean Ida was released, at rest? What if it meant Ida wanted revenge for her murder? Had she been murdered? Kay rested her tired forehead against the cool glass.
She heard footsteps and saw Francis wandering outside alone, looking rumpled and lost, headed toward the swimming pool, a cigarette in one hand, the freshly filled glass of Scotch in the other. She pushed the window open. “Hey, Dad,” she called. “Come on back. The priest is here. We have to pray now.”
Francis turned and looked at her in the polite, mildly attentive way he had been looking at her, listening to her, for the past three days. “Well,” he said, “if we have to.” He ground his cigarette out on the flagstones. “Got to do what my kids tell me,” he explained to Glo Sinclair, who was outside too, Kay saw, picking her way toward him across the puddles and fallen tree branches left by the storm. “If I don’t, they’ll get mad at me. Now Victor, that’s no problem. Victor can’t stay mad. But Kay? Mad? Not a pretty sight.”
What are you talking about? Kay grumbled to herself as she closed the window and headed into the living room. When have I ever been mad at you? I’ve done everything you wanted and then some. And when have you ever thought I was a pretty sight? Nev
er. Glo Sinclair is your idea of a pretty sight. Zabeth is your idea of a pretty sight. Leave me out of it.
Nicky came up out of nowhere and took her hand, an act so welcome it made her knees buckle. She looked down into his toothy heart-shaped face. He was like a present she had forgotten to open. “Come on,” he said. “It’s time to say goodbye to Grandmère.”
“It’s what Ida would have wanted”—that’s what everyone said. After prayers came champagne and the party tumbled on through the long afternoon. Ida would have wanted Mimi Johns and Wes Jasper to embrace out by the pool; she would have wanted Wes’s wife to find them and throw their wineglasses in the water; she would have been glad those were the plastic glasses and not the good crystal. She would have approved of Ansel Lipscott announcing that he had “declared himself” to her once and been rebuffed. Even though everyone had heard this story a thousand times from Ida herself, it was good to get it “straight from the ass’s mouth,” as Francis whispered, none too softly, to Nancy Carpezio. “What did a beautiful woman like Ida ever see in Francis?” Ansel asked, raising his hands in a mournful show of mystification, and everyone looked at Francis, who said “I never could figure that out,” while Glo Sinclair clicked the gold clasp of her purse like a referee with a stop watch. Ida would have been glad for the late winter sun falling on Father Bliss’s silver head as he pocketed Victor’s business card, and she would have been glad for the Chinese vase of white tulips slowly opening on the dining room table, blooming in the heat of old friends’ voices before falling petal by petal onto the lace cloth with its hidden stain.
Kay fetched and carried, served and smiled. She had been to parties like this all her life and she had seen these handsome, cheerful, well-to-do people age as she aged—although none of them, she marveled, watching Hazel Bentley flirtatiously punch Howard Bernard on the shoulder, had ever quite grown up. Maybe the Forrests, who sat hand in hand, looking genuinely sad, as if they had really cometo mourn Ida, had grown up. Or maybe they were preoccupied with problems she knew nothing about. She remembered Ida saying that Pete Forrest had been having prostate trouble. Looking around, she remembered other things Ida had told her: Nancy Carpezio was going through a difficult divorce. Pepper Mills had had a mastectomy. The DeWitts’ oldest son had recently changed his name from Robert to Barbie and one of the Morrissey twins had tried to kill herself, leaving a note blaming them. Everyone here had suffered. Everyone here had been hurt. Ida had been one of the first to die, but then Ida had always been a leader.
“You’re the musical daughter?”
Kay paused with the teapot in her hand and looked into the pretty face of a woman about her age. The woman had cropped red hair and was wearing a leotard and a colorful shawl wrapped around her slim hips like a skirt. Her brown eyes held Kay’s with open curiosity. “I knew Ida from my painting class,” the woman explained. “She was one of my students. She was …”
Kay waited, the musical-daughter-smile dead on her face while the art teacher searched for the right word.
“… formidable.”
Kay exhaled, surprised and relieved.
“Her determination to succeed. And the way she lashed out when she didn’t. I’ll never forget the day she cut her canvas up. We were all afraid she was going to slash her wrists with the palette knife next. Or cut my nose off. I was the one who said her colors were muddy.” The art teacher ruffled her short hair and chuckled. “But she was wonderful, wasn’t she? Dynamic. And she was so proud of you. I meant to get to your concert last fall but the P.S. on her invitation put me off: ‘Come say hello to my daughter and goodbye to me,’ it said. ‘I have a terminal illness.’”
Kay pressed the teapot to her chest, trying to feel the heat through her clothes. “My mother sent out invitations to my concert? That announced her own death?”
“Yeah, it was a little like getting—I don’t know—cow poop inthe mail. Hey, you look shook up. I’m sorry if I said anything I shouldn’t.”
The woman grinned, showing perfect white teeth and two deep dimples. She probably says things she shouldn’t all the time, Kay thought, and gets away with it. She suddenly remembered Ida talking about this art teacher. She had called her The Braless Wonder.
“My friend Charles says I talk the way I paint,” the woman continued. “I blurt.”
“Charles Lichtman?”
“You know Charles?”
“No. I mean I’ve seen him. Are you his … girlfriend?”
“No way. But he does owe me lunch, the ho. Oops. There I go again.” The woman covered her lips and rolled her eyes. I like hos, Kay told herself. She put down the teapot and offered the woman a lamb tongue, which she accepted at once and cut into with quick satisfaction.
“We’ve got to go, dear.” Peg Forrest touched her shoulder. “We’ll see you when Francis gets back from his trip.”
“What trip?”
“He’s decided to drive up the coast and rest for a week or two. He told us you’re in charge until he gets back.”
“In charge of what?”
“Hey, Kay,” Ansel boomed, “your dad says he can’t play golf with me again unless you say it’s all right.”
“Well he never could play golf—” Kay began.
“You tell ’em,” Francis said. “She’s the boss now, Ansel, gotta do what she says.”
“No I am not,” Kay said.
But the thought pleased her. And the sight of her slight, pale father pleased her too. He looked rumpled and rowdy. The cigarette trembled in his hand; his belt was too big and flopped out of its loops; someone had tucked a tulip into his buttonhole. If I were his “boss,” Kay thought, I would put him to bed for a week and not let him go anywhere.
“Wake up.” In one of her hot fits of kindness, Zabeth was at Kay’s elbow, slipping a Sherman cigarette into her palm as a goodbye gift. She smiled, her small red eyes as merry inside their spiked lashes as coals burning in a grate.
“Don’t go.” Kay pulled Zabeth aside. “I need to ask you something. What was in that medication Garret whipped up for Mother?”
“Who knows. Did it work?”
“I think it killed her.”
“Be real.”
“No. I think …” Kay amended, “I killed her. I gave her too much.”
“Look Kay, could I tell you something? No one—but no one—do you understand me?—could kill your mother. Ida was tough. If you gave her too much whateveritwas, it was because she was in a lot of pain and wanted you to. You always did what she wanted you to.”
“No, I did not—” Kay began, but Zabeth stopped her.
“You still think she wanted you to be this famous pianist person? Sit on a stage and get all the attention? No, no. Think again. Ida wanted you to be just who you are.” Zabeth’s voice softened. “Your own sweet self. Look. I feel bad. I’ll be a better friend. I’ll do more things with you. I know I’ve spent too much time with Garret. I’m like that when I’m in love. But I’ll be better, I promise. In the future.”
“The future. I keep forgetting I’ve got one.”
“A great one.” Zabeth looked into Kay’s eyes. “Listen to this.” And in a stoned, smoky voice she leaned close and sang “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” into Kay’s ear.
The party was still going strong in the living room. No one needed her there. She drifted down the hall toward the bathroom. On the way she heard voices from the studio so she walked up the ramp, pushed open the door, and looked inside. She hadn’t cleaned up in here yet and Ida’s old projects stood shrouded, more mournful than the real mourners downstairs. But Stacy and Nicky had found the radio, turned it on to a rock station, and were sitting on the floor, surrounded by pillows, playing Sorry.
“May I come in?” Kay asked. “Or don’t you want company?”
“You don’t have to ask,” Stacy said. “We always want you here.”
“Always,” Nicky echoed, his eyes on the board, intent, ready to score. “But you have to apologize.” He raised Pokey up with one
hand. “You left him out in the bushes.”
“Ouch. Sorry, Nicky.”
Nicky nodded, shouted “I’m ‘Sorry’ too!” to Stacy and swooped his hand down to remove one of her men.
Stacy pressed her tongue against her teeth. “You are sooooo good at this game.”
Kay kicked off her shoes, curled up on the daybed, and watched. “What did you think of Father Bliss?” she asked. “His eulogy?”
“I liked it,” said Stacy.
“I liked it too,” Kay admitted. It had been a quirky talk, hard to follow, something about God being the hurt and jilted host at an enormous dinner party no one came to, but somewhere in the middle she had thought: What if there is a God? and what if He does love us? and what if Mom is with Him? sitting at the end of His dinner table holding forth on her bowel movements? and these thoughts had pulled her lips up for a second and eased her sore heart. “Except he kept calling her Ada.” She yawned and wiggled her toes. It felt good to lie down. “You’re going to get sick if you don’t slow down,” Neal had warned her that morning. She had seen his worried look. But it hadn’t stopped her from snapping something stupid back. “I don’t want to ‘slow down,’” she’d said. “I might turn into you.” “Better than turning into your mother,” he’d said.
“What do you think makes a person get sick?” she asked now.
“Lack of forgiveness,” Stacy said promptly.
“But Mother didn’t have anyone to forgive.”
