by Molly Giles
“She had to forgive herself,” Nicky said.
“I won’t let you watch daytime TV anymore if you talk like that, honey.”
Nicky lowered his head and said, “It’s true.”
“You’re so wise. So tell me. What do you think she had to forgive herself for?”
“For hitting me that time with her fake leg.”
Kay nodded, propped herself on her elbow, and studied her son. No visible scars. But the nightmares continued, worse all the time. And that tremor down his backbone as once again he shouted, “Sorry!”—that was new, the nervous twitch. She had not protected him well enough from herself, her marriage, or her mother. What sort of childhood had he had? She remembered yanking the artificial leg out of Ida’s hand last Easter, sticking it on a top shelf of the coat closet where the old drunk in her wheelchair couldn’t get it. Oh God, she thought. The leg is still up there. “Did you forgive her?” she asked.
Nicky didn’t answer at first. Then: “She sent me twenty dollars the next day.”
Twenty dollars and a beautifully written, heartbreaking note: yes. But all the rest, Kay thought. All that “lashing out” the art teacher had mentioned. The red lips stretched in anger: You did this to me. The stump still trying to kick. You made me a cripple. “I’m not sure I’ve ever forgiven her,” Kay said.
“You had more to forgive than the rest of us,” Stacy said.
Kay looked up. It was easy to see why Victor loved Stacy. As to why Stacy loved Victor, well—what was life without mystery. Stacy smiled toward the door and said, “Howdy, cowboy” to Victor, who had come up the ramp and was peering into the room. “Your genius nephew is wiping me out.”
Kay made room for Victor on the edge of the bed and he sank heavily beside her. “Look.” He opened his palm and showed Kay a key. “Dad gave me Mom’s Volvo.”
Kay felt a twinge, just a twinge, she told herself, of envy. She and Neal could have used that car; the Lincoln had been dying for years and Neal’s van needed new brakes. “You just got a new car,” she permitted herself. “What are you going to do with another one? Sell it?”
“That’s the trouble.” Victor’s face flushed and twisted. “I promised my pastor I’d tithe the commission of the next automobile I sold to the church.”
Stacy looked up from her place on the floor but did not say a word.
“So don’t sell it,” Kay offered. “Keep it and let Stacy drive it.”
“Stacy’s doing fine with the bus. The thing is, if I sell it, I’d have a lot of money. Volvos have fantastic resale value.”
“Sell a new BMW to Father Bliss next week and tithe that commission to the church,” Kay said.
Victor looked at the floor.
“Or will that be a big commission too?”
“Better pray,” Stacy advised. She turned back to Nicky. “And ‘Sorry’ to you, tiger,” she added as she swept up his men.
“Ah-ha,” said Francis, peering in from the doorway. He ducked and stepped inside, swaying slightly. “The children’s room. Here, children.” He threw a small silk pouch into Stacy’s lap and tossed another, larger, pouch at Kay. It struck her on the shoulder and glanced off the bed. Victor picked it up and handed it to her with a long steady look. “Mom’s jewels,” he said.
“I don’t want them.” That wasn’t true, but Kay made the gesture and pushed the bag back. Stacy, more honest than she, pressed her tongue fatly to her upper lip and began to open her pouch with poised fingers.
“Oh Daddy Francis,” Stacy cooed, her voice hushed. “The little gold watch! Are you sure? Oh I always loved this little gold watch. And the rubies! Victor! Look! He gave me the rubies!”
“Open yours,” Francis said to Kay. He rocked, smiling, his hands in his pockets. Kay could not tell how drunk he was.
“Are you sure you want us to have these?” she asked.
“I’m not sure of anything,” Francis said. “But that shouldn’t affect you.”
“Everything affects me,” Kay said.
Francis, still smiling, shrugged. Kay opened the pouch and spilled the contents into her lap. Out fell a jumble of gems and junk. Gold chains and real pearls were tangled in with the plastic lanyard Victor had made for Ida one summer in day camp and a string of seashells Kay had bought her years ago in Carmel. She picked out the diamond teardrop earrings and centered them uneasily in her palm. Then she picked up the sapphire ring. It had been on Ida’s hand the morning she died.
“Come sit here.” Stacy patted the stool in front of Ida’s easel and drew Francis into the room. “Tell us the story of some of these things.”
“Not much to tell.” Francis sat down, pulled out his cigarettes, and crossed his legs. “You all know about the sapphire. Ida’s reengagement ring.”
“Reengagement?” Kay turned it in her fingers. “I thought this was the original ring.”
“No, no. Ida’s first engagement ring is in there somewhere, one of the smaller diamonds. This sapphire was the one she really wanted. She saw it in a window downtown. I borrowed the money and bought it for her a few years after we married, to cheer her up.”
Kay stared at the ring, trying to repiece the past. “Was this after you came back from New York? After she tripped on my toys and fell down the stairs?”
“Correct-o.”
“The first time she was in the hospital?”
“No, Kay. The first time she was in the hospital,” Francis said, lighting a cigarette with a snap of his lighter, “was when she quote unquote almost died giving birth to you. Now these rubies that Stacy likes so much are what I bought off an Algerian in the flea market in Paris. One thing you’re not supposed to do, y’know, is buy off the street. But Ida liked them. Cost me forty dollars each. Turns out when we get home they’re worth four thousand! Al down at Straub and Levy’s made them up into earrings but he was mad; said I had too much luck; said the only thing he ever got in Paris was the clap.”
“What’s that?” Nicky asked.
“Don’t you know anything?” Francis said.
“It’s like a cold.” Kay held her breath and slipped the sapphire on her finger. It was too small for her ring finger; she had to wear it on her pinky. It perched on her freckled skin uneasily, the dark blue mocking her gnawed cuticles and reddened knuckles. Still, though it didn’t look good, it felt good, like having a solid piece of Ida to keep, a chunk of her courage and will to use as a charm. “I love it,” she lied. “I’ll never take it off.”
“Wear it, sell it, do what you want with it.” Francis stubbed his cigarette out into Ida’s old palette and rose. “It doesn’t matter to your mother anymore. And it never did matter to me.”
“Thank you so much,” Stacy breathed. She reached up her arms and hugged Francis’s knees. He looked down, looked up, made a face, droll.
“Thank you,” Kay echoed. She was about to rise and try to hug him too but Francis stepped nimbly away and down the ramp and was gone. They heard Nancy Carpezio call, “We wondered where you were,” then they sat in silence for a while. Finally Victor said, “Four thousand apiece or four thousand for the set?” and Kay reached down and wove his shoelaces together with the lanyard. She watched the ring glint as her hands moved.
“I’ll look like Jerry Lee Lewis when I play the piano,” she said, sitting up. “I hate it,” she added.
“But it’s a beaut-----” Stacy began. Seeing Kay’s face, she stopped, and, oddly gentle, added, “Don’t worry.”
· · ·
Don’t worry about anything. If your life feels bleak, and blank, and wrong, somehow wrong, if your eyes are dry, your heart empty, your breath shaky—don’t worry. If Neal goes home without saying goodbye, Nicky looking back over his shoulder to say, “But what about Mom?”—don’t worry. If that art teacher dimples as she bounces bralessly off, probably for a late date with Charles Lichtman—don’t worry. Shake hands with the guests. Look into Father Bliss’s blank eyes and thank him again. Find rides for those too drunk to drive. Accept Victor�
�s “wish” that he could help clean up and his offer to do more “next time.” Do not say, “You mean after the next funeral?” Don’t say anything at all. Just do what you’ve always done and clean up the mess yourself. If you can clean up the mess outside then maybe the mess inside will straighten out too. Do not think you killed your mother. You did not kill your mother.
Kay stood at her parents’ sink in an apron and Greta’s tight yellow rubber gloves, loading the dishwasher. It wasn’t late—a little after eight. Neal would be asleep on the couch by the time she got back to the cottage but Nicky would be waiting up for her; she’d have time to tuck him in. It seemed like ages since she had done anything as normal as tuck her son in. She looked up as Francis padded into the kitchen in his white socks. He smiled at her and, surprised, she smiled back.
“I was thinking about the times you sang Victor and me to sleep,” she said, to say something. “When Mom had one of her headaches.”
“Ah yes.” Francis closed his eyes and in the true sweet tenor Kay remembered sang: “‘With ’er ’ead tucked underneath ’er arm, she walks the bloody tower.’”
“That song scared Victor.”
“Everything scares Victor. That’s why he’s so reliant on God Almighty.” Francis’s voice was still amiable, matter-of-fact, but there was an edge to it and Kay retreated.
“I’ve finished up so I’ll go on home now,” she said.
“What? This isn’t home? You’ve been here so long I thought you’d moved in. Not,” he continued, getting the Scotch bottle she had just put away back down from the shelf and pouring more into his glass, “that this place has ever seemed like home.”
“I thought you liked this house. You designed it.”
“We don’t always like what we create, you know. No. Your mother liked it. She had a thing for castles. I never cared for it much myself.”
“So where,” Kay asked, “would you like to live?” We’re having a conversation, she told herself. Don’t get excited—but this is a real conversation. The second or third in the last few days. Nothing big. Nothing important. But words. Back and forth. Like a regular daughter and a regular father. Amazing. Maybe he will tell me something about his childhood. Or his time in the Army, or college, or New York, or his first job, or his work now. Maybe he will tell me what he thinks and feels and wants from the world.
“I’d like a room in a hotel,” Francis said.
Kay, attentive, worked with this, and came up with a penthouse suite in the city. “Like the Mark Hopkins?”
“No. Like the Traveller’s Inn near the bus station in Rancho Valdez. A downtown dump where I could smoke cigars and read the paper all day in peace.” Francis took a swallow of his drink and pointed at the counter. “Don’t forget your loot.”
Kay saw the sapphire glowering there, abandoned. She flushed as Francis picked it up, blew it off, and slipped it onto her outheld hand.
“They had to cut it off her, y’know,” Francis said. “Henry Service, down at the morgue, called me, said, Francis, it’s stuck, what do I do? I told him, take the damn finger. What’s one more amputation.”
“Oh don’t tell me that,” Kay winced. “That makes me sick.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.” Francis set his glass down tooclose to the edge of the counter, caught it before it fell, laughed softly. He’s as lost as I am, Kay thought.
“I just feel …” she started. Stopped. Took a deep breath. “That everything I’ve ever done has hurt her. Even at the end, when we were giving her extra medication. I don’t think we helped her. I think we killed her.”
“What extra medication?” Francis’s eyes were clear, and, drunk as he was, swaying, still smiling, they were surprisingly steady.
“When we overdosed her.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Francis said. “But I know I don’t like the sound of it. This Stuff,” he finished, opening the refrigerator door and pointing to the beaker, “isn’t medication, exactly. It’s happy water.” He lifted the beaker out and held it to the light. The liquid sloshed, homely and harmless-looking as pickle juice. “Hate to see it go to waste. Want some?” He reached for a goblet.
“You mean … drink it?”
“That’s the idea, sweetie.”
“I don’t know.” Kay shifted, uneasy. She had not had anything to drink today aside from black coffee. Zabeth’s Sherman was still untouched in her purse. She’d been good. She planned to stay good, stop drinking, stop smoking. Change. But he’s my father, she thought. And he just called me sweetie.
“All right,” she said.
“Good-o.” Francis reached for another goblet and poured. There was only enough for an inch apiece. One inch couldn’t hurt her. “Good girl,” he said. He raised his glass to hers and they clicked. “You won’t regret it.”
But she did. When she woke up it was dark and she had nothing on. At first that felt fine. She had one hand over one breast and the other tucked between her thighs. Then she realized where she was. In her parents’ bed. On her father’s side. She sat up. A siren beganto buzz in her head and her heart began to swell and flare like a house collapsing in fire. She looked at the clock. One A.M. She leapt out of the bed. She found her shoes in the living room, lying in front of the leather recliner. Her nylons and underwear were in the back bathroom. Her dress was on the floor of the studio. The pouch of jewels was still in the pocket of the discarded apron and the sapphire ring was somehow in the pouch. She pulled her clothes on and slipped from room to room but there was no sign of Francis. He was not in the basement, not in the guest room. When she ran out to the garage she saw the Porsche was gone. The night was dark and cold and amazingly empty and her brain was dark and cold and empty too. She could not summon an image, a word, a single sensation from the last four hours.
She opened Coco’s cage, dragged her, alert and resistant, out to the Lincoln and shoved her into the back seat, then threw the car into gear and headed down the hill. Halfway down she braked, pulled into a stranger’s driveway, and threw up out the window. This is it, she thought. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. And I don’t even know what it is.
Twelve
Francis saw the sun rise and smiled. He’d outraced the storm. The Porsche had been missing and sparking all night, but now, after cresting the Sierras, it didn’t matter if the engine gave out or not; he was out of the mountains, back on the flatlands, safe. He rolled down his window and turned off the windshield wipers. “We made it,” he said and put his hand out to touch Ida’s shoulder, realizing even as he spoke that it was not Ida beside him at all, but a brown paper bag of groceries he must have shopped for at some point. So that’s how the Stuff worked.
He glanced down to see what other jokes had been played and was relieved to see he was dressed, if not well. He was wearing suit pants with a polo shirt, loafers with no socks. He pressed his pocket. His wallet was there; credit cards, license; he had a vague memory of stopping for gas somewhere and telling the attendant he was going to Mendocino, then thinking—Why would anyone in their right mind want to go to Mendocino?—and heading east instead.
Toward the sun. Toward the light. Toward some wide open spaces where he could take some wide open breaths. He peered through the windshield, which was a sheet of silver in the freezing dawn, and snapped the radio on, but it was still too early for news and he was in no mood for the country music, Christian quackery, and drugged human voices whispering about sextraterrestrials on the talk shows he picked up. Maybe the paper bag held some surprises. He reached in and pulled out a bottle of Cutty Sark, a pack of Benson & Hedges, two oranges, and a box of the chocolate-covered raisins he’d devoured in secret as a boy. A whole box, he thought, all to myself. Pleased, he took a long draught of the Scotch, and automatically—it would take time, that was all—held the bottle out to Ida before remembering, again, she was gone. It had been years since she had been able to get into the Porsche anyway; no room for the wheelchair. But when he’d
first bought this car there had been good times, good trips for the two of them, he in his tweed cap from Harrods, she in the big sunglasses that made her look like a bee, the wind blowing her skirt up over two perfect thighs, the silver thermos of martinis pinched between her two perfect knees.
Long ago, long ago. He leaned forward and stretched out over the wheel. If he could remember the oh-so-distant past it was only a matter of time before he would remember the not-so-distant present. It was clear he was running from something that had happened last night, and it was equally clear he’d find out soon enough. His blackouts had never lasted long. Better enjoy this one while I can, he decided. Amnesia, like everything good, passes.
He tried to focus on the scenery but that was the trouble with Nevada: you couldn’t, really; it was a state to get through as fast as you could, and with these identical new design-by-number construction sites standing out in the cold it almost hurt the eyes to look. An image of Kay’s hurt eyes floated forward as if summoned and he let it, taking another sip of Scotch. Kay’s eyes were bunny eyes—you couldn’t say anything that wouldn’t set them scurrying. Her rapid helpless blink when you raised your hand, say, to scratch your nose or push back your glasses, the blink of a victim who’d been abused all her life—but who had ever beaten Kay? He’d never hit her; he’d barely disciplined her. He never really even lectured her about her lying. Victor stole, Kay lied, they both ate like peasants, threw their clothes around, lost things, broke things, spent money like water, what else. Normal kids. Normal childhoods. No sign they ever knew how lucky they were. He paid their bills. Took care of their teeth. Gave them both cars. Almost left once. Almost stayed in New York. But didn’t. So why the hurt in Kay’s eyes all this time? What had gone wrong? She’d been such a quick little thing, bright and chatty and so intuitive that both he and Ida had almost felt frightened of her, of her ability to read their minds and parrot back what she saw.
“She still does it,” Ida had complained last Christmas, “and I still can’t stand it.” But Ida meant because of the pity; Ida never could take pity and Kay never could hide it. So was it pity he had seen last night? Contempt? Accusation? Let’s have it, Francis thought. What did I do this time?
