Everything and More

by Jacqueline Briskin

Roy was loaded enough to forget manners. “Why?” she asked truculently.

  “My father’s much better and I’m on my way home. I came over on the off-chance you’d have dinner tonight.”

  Dinner? Roy realized it was dusk.

  “Are you free?” Althea asked.

  In the gloom behind Althea, a mourning dove preened atop one of the triad of spindly silver birches. Funny name, mourning dove. What do you mourn, you slim gray bird? Death? Loss of love?

  “Roy, is anything wrong?”

  “Oh, God, oh, shit, shit, shit. What could be right?”

  Althea stepped over the threshold, switching on the living-room light. She stared at Gerry’s huge, smoothly executed paintings, blinked, then took in the couch with its Bible, bottle, and sad, solitary glass.

  “It looks,” she said quietly, “as if you’re in as bad shape as I am.”

  “You?” Roy gave a discordant titter. “You look like you stepped off the Rue de la Paix.” Balancing herself against the couch, she poured all that remained of the fifth of Scotch into the glass, drinking, shuddering as the line of heat traveled down behind her ribs.

  “Roy, listen, you shouldn’t.”

  “Are you implying I’m a lush? Isn’t it enough for you to steal my husband? Do you have to defame me, too?” “Defame” came out oddly: “de-vein.”

  “I have enough on my conscience without you turning into an alcoholic.”

  “Is that what you call having a little drinkee before dinner?”

  Althea’s long, delicate jaw tensed and her hazel eyes focused on a faraway point, as if she were hearing an interior monologue. Then she moved with swift intent through the living room to the kitchen.

  Roy careened after her.

  The liquor cabinet was open. Althea reached for the first bottle, wrenching off the top, letting the amber bourbon gurgle into the stainless-steel sink.

  “That’s my property!” Roy cried, grabbing a Haig & Haig pinchbeck to her midriff.

  Althea reached up again. Roy, attempting to force Althea from her stash of liquor, dropped the Haig & Haig. It shattered loudly. Althea continued tearing gold foil from the neck of an unopened bourbon bottle.

  “Stop it,” Roy whimpered, striking out at Althea. A faraway sector of her brain informed her she might slip on the broken glass, so she flailed like a mechanical toy boxer, but she was not close enough to impede Althea. After a minute, she ceased her efforts, snorting her tears as Althea spilled out every bottle. Finishing this task, Althea wadded and dampened quantities of paper towels to pick up the shards. She deposited the full yellow plastic weave wastebasket outside the back door.

  “Where’s your spare room?” she asked, her first words since she had come into the kitchen.

  “I don’t want you in my house!” sobbed Roy.

  “I’m going home for a few things. I’ll be back in a half-hour.”

  “Didn’t you hear me? Get out! I can’t stand being near you.”

  “That I know, dear heart. But if I’m not here, how will I make sure you aren’t backsliding?”

  “I am not an alcoholic!” Roy screamed, weeping.

  “Not yet.” Althea’s voice was steely quiet. “Not quite yet. But keep on like this and you’ll take the prize. We’re going to get you through a week without benefit of the bottle.”

  “Stay out of my life!”

  “Things have gotten too dire for you, Roy. And as for me, I can’t stand any more guilt.”

  * * *

  For the first three days of Althea’s watchful presence, Roy either stayed in her own bedroom or went out alone into the backyard. The weather was drizzly, as it often is during a Southern California May. Roy hugged her molting college camelhair around herself, trudging the perimeters of the small square of wet dichondra, around and around like a poor, blinded mill donkey.

  She missed the liquor less than she had anticipated.

  Though booze had hazed her anguish, Roy, forthright by nature, found it preferable to come directly at the truth, however cruel and raw. He is dead, she would think, circling her wet garden. He is buried in Forest Lawn. Low, keening noises escaped her lips.

  Those first days she avoided her surveillant—no easy matter when you are trapped together within the confines of a twelve-hundred-square-foot house.

  Those three long nights when Roy saw every motion of the phosphorescent green clock hands, a mournful acceptance began to seep through her. He is dead, she would think. Dead. The need to howl her misery subsided to a dull, resolute ache. She began to accept that Althea shared honors with her as chief mourner. Gerry’s death, which had forever lessened them both, had forged a fresh bond between them.

  On the fourth morning, when she heard Althea moving around, she went into the kitchen. Althea was sipping coffee and eating a slice of apple-custard Danish—the freezer was stuffed with funerary offerings.

  Roy, giving a sheepish smile, spooned out some instant coffee.

  “There’s no cream left,” Althea said.

  “I have some powdered junk for emergencies,” Roy said, reaching into the storage cabinet for the brown-glass jar before she slid into the booth opposite Althea. At the sight of the uncomplicated friendship in Althea’s face, the remains of Roy’s embarrassment and resentment faded entirely. “Hey, jailer, good morrow to you.”

  “How’s it going?” Althea smiled.

  “No pink elephants or crawly spiders, which must be proof positive I’m not about to hit skid row.”

  “That’s good news.”

  Roy stirred white granules into her coffee. “I do sort of miss Dr. Buchmann, though. He’s my shrink.”

  “I’ll drive you over.”

  “So I’m not a trusty yet?”

  “In a couple of days the parole board will discuss your case.”

  Roy cut herself a wedge of the cake. “Althea, did Gerry ever say anything about us not having kids?”

  “We hardly ever talked about you. Once, though, he mentioned you guys had tried.” Althea stared out the window at the gloomy morning. “He did care for you, Roy, he really did.”

  Roy had not intended a purgative confessional, God knows not with Gerry’s erstwhile beloved, yet she found that she had to continue. “I feel so terrible about not giving him children.”

  Althea, looking down, fingered a crumb. “Don’t feel guilty, Roy.”

  “It’s not exactly guilt. I just feel awful he didn’t leave anybody to come after him. God knows we tried. We went to battalions of doctors—Beverly Hills is wall to wall with specialists. They asked every sort of personal question, they put us through the most embarrassing tests—one time we had to do it in the doctor’s office. I had my tubes blown, they measured the motility of Gerry’s sperm. They told us when to, and when not to.” Roy frowned. “Listen, Althea, well, this idea keeps bugging me. . . . He always thrilled me, and I was crazy for it, but well, I’m not positive I ever came. I mean, if I had, wouldn’t it have done the trick?”

  “Oh, Wace! How cretinous can you get!” Althea’s exasperation was an emergence of their old two-against-the-world friendship.

  “Well, a climax might have pushed the sperm up or something.”

  “If conception relied on female orgasm, the world would be an empty place.”

  Roy gave a pleased, embarrassed smile. “I guess you’re right,” she said.

  This conversation in the breakfast booth broke a crucial dam within Roy. She began spilling out things she had not even voiced in Dr. Buchmann’s chair. The next days she talked until her throat had a raw edge. Often it seemed to Roy she must still be stinko drunk to blab the most humiliating and ecstatic moments of her marriage to a confidante who, after all, was the woman Gerry had really loved. Yet this same confidante was Althea, her oldest friend.

  With all the flooding verbiage, however, she could not bring herself to take Althea into the locked garage studio. She didn’t understand herself at all.

  On the seventh evening of Roy’s sobriety, the two
women celebrated with a steak dinner, then took a walk.

  Their heels clicked in the darkness.

  Althea said very little until they crossed Beverwil Drive; then she stopped and took Roy’s arm. “There’s something I have to tell you,” she said quietly. “Gerry’s accident was all my fault.”

  This was the first time Althea had brought forth any details of her relationship with Gerry. “His accident?” Roy faltered. “What do you mean?”

  “My parents have a ranch in Ojai.” Althea took Roy’s arm, forcing her to walk again. They passed a house from which the aroma of lamb stew and the sound of television emanated. “We went there to ride.”

  “So that’s what he was doing in Ventura. But Gerry had never ridden a horse—or had he?”

  “Never,” Althea said. “I wanted him in the position inferior.”

  Roy stared at her, baffled. “I don’t understand.”

  They were passing under a streetlamp, and Althea’s face was bleached of all color. “Your call threw Mother, and she laid into me. She didn’t know I was seeing Gerry again, and when she found out—Pow. Mother looks so timid and meek, but underneath she’s all Coyne steel. I loved Gerry, but she threw me into a tizzy about it. So I decided I had to do without him. Does that make sense?”

  “I reacted just the opposite. I clung on for dear life.” Roy sighed. “What happened at the ranch?”

  “I took him riding and told him we were through. I even told him to go back to you.”

  “Thanks,” Roy said bitterly.

  “Roy, the point of this isn’t to whitewash myself but to explain what happened. When I ran into him in New York, it was as if the intervening time didn’t exist—or you. Even when you showed up in Oaxaca, I never thought of you as Gerry’s wife. It took Mother to point out that he was your husband and you might not take a divorce lying down. There would be a huge amount of talk. Pure and simple, I couldn’t take the nasty gossip. Does that sound rotten? Well, that’s me.”

  Roy shivered in the night, recollecting Marylin’s words about the nature of poisonous snakes. But that was talk, and she was in the dark, lonely night listening to her oldest friend desolately blowing her nose—Althea, who was helping her through her period of mourning. “Althea, I blame myself for keeping him trapped.”

  “But I was the one who sent him off in a mad swivet.”

  “It was an accident,” Roy said firmly. “A highway wreck.”

  They turned homeward. Nearing the house, they saw light through the glass inset of the front door.

  “Did we leave those on?” Roy asked.

  “I’m positive not. Does your mother have a key?”

  “She and Marylin both do. But their cars would be here.”

  Exchanging apprehensive glances, they tiptoed in their walking shoes up the three brick steps to the front door. Roy pressed the button.

  “Who is it?” called a young masculine voice.

  “Oh, Billy!” Roy cried. “You terrified us!”

  The door opened; beyond the vestibule rang the sounds of televised violence. An adolescent boy with a few scattered pimples on his beaky, clever face stood grinning at them. “Behold, the housebreaker.”

  Roy hugged him. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Grandma hasn’t seen you all week.” Billy had a jagged, humorous delivery. “She infected Mom with her acute anxiety spasm. So I’m here to spy. Grandma drove me over—we almost hit a parked car on Olympic. I say it’s pure merde giving a rotten freak driver like her a license and denying a Le Mans knockout like myself on the arbitrary grounds of age. Hey, hey. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your cute lady friend?”

  Roy said, “Althea, may I present my nephew, Billy Fernauld. Billy this is Mrs. Wimborne.”

  “Mrs. Wimborne . . . let me think.” He snapped his fingers. “Althea Cunningham, of the world-renowned Beverly High Big Two.”

  “How did you know that?” Roy asked, astonished.

  “A gigantic intellect, astounding powers of intuition—also I saw her at the funeral.” To soften this reminder, he put his arm around Roy’s waist, looking at Althea. “Am I impressing you with my scintillating brilliance, Althea?”

  Charles would never have called any friend of hers by a first name, but Billy’s fast-spoken freshness made Althea smile. “Tremendously,” she said. “So you’re Marylin’s son.”

  “Out of Rain Fairburn by Joshua Fernauld, or anyway that’s what my Racing Form tells me.”

  Roy aimed a mock punch at the belt of his Levi’s. “Someday you’ll go too far,” she said. “Did you find food?”

  “I made good headway in the chocolate torte, and finished off the roast beef in the refrigerator. Is that okay?”

  “I’m glad you ate it for me,” Roy said. “I was just going to take Mrs. Wimborne in to see Gerry’s studio.”

  What?

  Roy’s mouth remained open in surprise at her own words. Shouldn’t Althea’s confession have roused hatred, not this immeasurable sympathy?

  “I’ve been longing to see more of his work,” Althea said.

  And at the same moment, Billy said, “The sanctum sanctorum. Well, you two go ahead. I return to my homework and the ineluctable problems of Elliott Ness.” He winked at Althea. “You really are a pretty lady. Come back next year when I get my driver’s license and I’ll show you where Simon’s used to be.”

  The boy returned to the sofa, which was surrounded by plates and books.

  “He’s terrific,” Althea whispered. Her cheeks were pink.

  “Very bright, too. In the genius level,” Roy said.

  “He obviously dotes on his auntie.”

  “And vice versa. I adore him and Sari. She’s one big, tender heart, all feelings. Completely vulnerable, the poor baby. This way, Althea. Mind the step.”

  The stucco, exposed beams and terrazzo floor—carefully covered with sheets of plastic—seemed to exude the mausoleum dankness of unused places, lacking the familiar aroma of paint, fixative, turpentine. The pair of enormous skylights were dark, blind eyes staring down on stacks of vivid canvases that were ranged at precise intervals around the walls. Against a steel easel was propped a brilliantly rufous canvas that Althea recognized as an abstraction of a sketch Gerry had made in Houston Street. On the cabinet counter, brushes were segregated according to size, and the paints (nowhere in view) must be neatly stored in the narrow drawers below. An atmosphere of tidy stiffness exactly the opposite of Gerry’s usual work habitat.

  “These are mine,” Roy said, smiling softly as she glanced around. “I’m not sending any to the gallery.”

  “Horaks are quite valuable. And now Gerry’s gone, even more so.”

  “I know. But I’m donating these to UCLA—I want them to name a gallery in his honor.”

  “Have you approached anyone there?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Roy, endowing museums and universities isn’t all that cinchy. First they have to agree, and then you have to hand over enough cash to provide an income for permanent upkeep.”

  Roy’s face fell. “You mean I can’t do it? I wanted so much to perpetuate Gerry’s name. . . . You know, to make up for his not having children.”

  Althea, surrounded by Gerry’s big smooth abstracts, with her oldest friend, said quietly, “That’s not true.”

  “What?”

  “He left a child.”

  “No. He had some affairs before the war, and the girls got pregnant, but—”

  “Charles is his son.”

  The words sank into Roy’s consciousness like a sharp-edged knife, and she retreated across the studio to stand over the cabinet. Her face was working wildly. Those years of uncertainty as to who could not parent a child! How absurd! She should have known Roy Wace Horak was the one with the lack.

  For a moment of swirling violence, Roy felt she could pick up a palette knife and kill Althea for offering this ultimate proof of who was more of a woman—Gerry’s woman.

  Then her emotions
swerved to the antithesis of violence and outrage. So Gerry’s generations aren’t buried below that improbably green grass, she thought, and turned back to Althea.

  “Is that why he wanted to marry you?”

  “He never knew. I never told him. I wanted to keep my son to myself. Chalk up another little item against me.”

  They stood silent amid Gerry’s inscrutable works.

  “I appreciate you telling me,” Roy said quietly. “It makes it easier knowing that a part of him is still alive.”

  “It’s not for publication,” Althea said, her voice cold. She already regretted the haphazard spilling of her secret. “You understand that?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “That’s easy to say now.” Althea had her girlhood expression of mulish, unhappy pride.

  “You have my promise, Althea.”

  Suddenly, with an odd little cry, Althea reached out and gripped Roy’s hand. “Why am I a doubting Old Faithful?”

  They left the chilly studio.

  Althea packed. Billy and Roy helped her carry the assortment of Vuitton bags to her Jaguar.

  “Thank you, Althea,” Roy said softly. “Thank you for everything.”

  “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “To the ends.” Roy softly voiced the old catch phrase from Beverly High days.

  Roy and Billy stood on the sidewalk, waving as the Jaguar drove off.

  Billy said, “The Coyne heiress is quite a dish, know that?”

  Roy ruffled her nephew’s brown hair, which was curly like her own. “Kid, Althea’s got a son older than you.” Then she drew a quick breath. Charles was Gerry’s child. “It’s cold out here,” she said. “Come on back inside.”

  “If you’ll drive me to school tomorrow, I’ll spend the night.”

  “Sold,” Roy said.

  As she stripped the spare-room daybed of sheets scented with Althea’s nonfloral perfume, she was thinking: Althea has Gerry’s son.

  And what do I have?

  Her face rigid with the effort of keeping back tears, Roy reflected on what she had. Her sobriety, the crumbs of love from her family, her niece and nephew, her work. And if these formed but a fragile bark to bear her across life’s desolate and cold sea, well, she’d never gone first class.