Pussy screamed. Sweat ran between her breasts and down her spine; her black satin dress slithered on the leather chair (she imagined sweat patches on the dress, but she had no time to be embarrassed). She was sinking, and grabbed the edge of the desk, clinging to it, pressing her heels against the floor. Cold and wet, trembling, sure she was going to die, she felt a surge of pure hatred, so sharp she almost could taste it. “I didn’t read your fucking papers!” she shrieked, astonishing herself as much as Lew, whose mouth—literally, she saw—dropped open. “I don’t give a shit for your papers, I don’t give a shit for your friends, I don’t give a shit for you!”
Her trembling had intensified so that her teeth were actually chattering as she scurried around the desk and rushed at Lew, so fiercely he instinctively moved aside. Crablike, she scuttled past him and kept going, not toward the front door, as she realized a moment later she should have done, but to her bedroom—only it was their bedroom— and slammed the door behind her.
He stormed in, almost on her heels, and watched her cower beside her dressing table. “Who the fuck do you think you are? Talking to me like a whore, like the whore you were when I dug you up—”
“Talking like you!” Pussy cried. “I learned from you!”
“Not a fucking thing. You didn’t learn a fucking goddamn thing. You were a stupid cunt when I found you and you’ll never change, you’re no help to me, you make a mess of every fucking thing you touch, you’re a useless piece of shit.”
“You married me!” she screamed. “You loved me!”
He gave a snort of laughter. “Loved you! For Christ’s sake, I married you because I could own you.” He snorted again. “Fucking bargain I got.”
With a strangled cry, Pussy yanked open the drawer of her dressing table and grabbed the small pistol she had been keeping close for weeks. It was black with a silver slide across the top; she had chosen it for its sleek compactness and lightness, and having it made her feel better, but she had never thought about actually using it. Now it felt heavy, and slipped inside her wet palm, and she held it up with both hands.
“You bitch,” Lew growled, and lunged for it.
Pussy closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger. But she had forgotten the safety lock on the silver slide. In the instant before Lew grabbed the gun she remembered the shop owner showing her how to release it. And then there was only the dark.
NINE
Mack set a vase of roses in the center of the table and stood back to admire his handiwork. “Dinner,” he said, and held out his arm, bent at the elbow, to Abby, who slipped her arm through his, to be escorted to the table. At the same time, his arm bent at exactly the same angle, Doug escorted Carrie, who had long since stopped giggling about it and now liked it very much.
They sat in their usual places, Abby on Mack’s right at the round table, Carrie on his left, and Doug between his sisters.
“Pretty fancy,” said Doug, looking at the centerpiece. “Are we supposed to do something special?”
“Are we celebrating something?” Carrie asked.
“We are,” Mack said. “But first…” The four of them clasped hands and bowed their heads. “For what we are about to receive,” he intoned, “we thank the Lord and ask His blessing on all our endeavors, and on poor Pussy Corcoran’s soul, and help her enter heaven even though she committed suicide.”
“Sara didn’t say that,” Doug protested. “She just said she died.”
“How do you know she killed herself?” Carrie asked.
“Do you know her?” Abby asked.
Mack threw up his hands. “Besieged on all sides,” he said dramatically, and pushed away from the table. He brought to the table the casserole Sara had made the evening before, and set a bowl of couscous beside it. “Dig in; all questioning questioners and their questing questions will be answered in good time.”
Doug sniffed the casserole suspiciously. “What is it? We never had anything like this before.”
“Moroccan chicken.” Mack ladled some onto a mound of couscous and passed the plate to Abby. “Evidently your courageous sis tried out a Moroccan restaurant one night when she was gallivanting with her mysterious beau, instead of staying home and being part of her family, and was so amorously enamored of the food she has dedicated herself to mastering preserved lemons, turmeric, and the like.”
Doug reared back. “Preserved lemons? Like, petrified?”
“Oh, come on,” Carrie said, heaping her plate. “Sara wouldn’t make anything we couldn’t eat. What did you mean, gallivanting instead of staying home—”
“Sorry, sorry,” Mack said. “I forgot, we never criticize Sara.”
“—and being part of her family,” Carrie said. “You don’t think she’s part of our family anymore?”
“Of course she’s—” Abby began.
“Of course she is,” Mack said lightly. “I just was thinking it would be really nice if she acted like it some of the time.” He looked at their confused faces. “For instance, Abby won’t talk to me about Sean—and after all, why would she talk to me about such intimate things?—but I’ll bet she’d like to talk to somebody and that somebody could be Sara if she just thought about her family once in a while instead of how much fun she can have with her knight in shining armor.”
“That isn’t fair,” Carrie said in a small voice. “I mean, she does think about us, a lot. And she’s not having fun tonight; she’s at a funeral.”
“Memorial service,” Mack corrected. “For an idiotic woman who shot herself to death. Everybody have enough food? Come on, then, eat while it’s hot. It is so delicious I can’t believe it came from a strange country off the coast of India.”
“That’s Madagascar!” Carrie said, giggling, her mood switching at once.
“No kidding! Then where—?”
“Africa!” Doug cried.
Mack looked astonished. “Morocco’s in Africa? You mean, near Lake Victoria?”
“No!” Doug was grinning. “Golly, didn’t you ever go to school? It’s at—”
“He’s teasing us,” Carrie said.
“—the top of Africa, across the Mediterranean from Spain. They even speak Spanish there.”
“They do not,” Carrie said, “they speak Arabic.”
“Abby, did you know all that?” Mack asked, but Abby was silent, her face tight and pale.
“So what’s a memorial service?” Doug asked. “I mean, I thought tonight was supposed to be what’s-her-name’s funeral.”
“She was cremated,” Carrie said matter-of-factly.
“Well, can’t you still have a—”
“It’s a service to remember somebody,” Mack said, helping himself to more chicken. “Usually a while after they’ve died. A funeral is right away; mourners mournfully mourning. A memorial service is later, sometimes a lot later, like Pussy’s, three weeks after she shot herself, to give people time to gather from far and near, and by then everybody’s usually more cheerful. No tears, just speeches and sighs. Hey, Abby, listen, I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “I was just saying I’m here if you want me. Don’t be mad at—”
“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at Sara!” The last words came out in a rush of tears. Mack pulled his chair close and put his arm around her, and as she clung to him, crying into his shirt, he put his other arm around her and pulled her against him.
Doug and Carrie eyed Abby lying against Mack’s chest and became uncomfortable, without knowing why. After a moment, Doug said loudly, “So where’s my gallery show?”
Over Abby’s head, Mack grinned. “Too much attention on Abby? Not enough limelight for Doug?”
“That’s really mean,” Carrie cried. “Doug was just—”
“You’re right, you’re right, I’m a mean son of a bitch, and I ought to wear a hair shirt and be shot at dawn and strung up from a lamppost and drawn and quartered and tarred and feathered and put in stocks in the village square for everyone to ogle.”
&nb
sp; Doug and Carrie were giggling and Abby had stopped crying.
Mack loosened his hold on Abby, and held out one arm. “Come on, guys, you know for me the limelight has room for everybody.”
“You’re upset about that woman killing herself,” Carrie said wisely. “We understand. It must be awful to know somebody who does that. I mean, why did she, anyway?”
Mack sighed. “Hard to know. She was a nut, actually; didn’t fit in anywhere. Sort of a pest, a pestilential, pestiferous, pestering pest. Didn’t have any interests, didn’t do a damn thing that I could see. Not like Carrie the story writer and Doug the artist and Abby the actress. She was a lousy wife, too. Maybe she finally decided there wasn’t anything worth keeping alive for.”
“What an awful thought,” Carrie said.
Abby sat up. “I feel sorry for her. She sounds lonely.”
“Was lonely,” said Carrie.
“Yes, isn’t that terrible? To think of her dead? I mean, all of a sudden, she’s not. How can somebody who was, suddenly just not be?”
“It’s like you erased a drawing,” said Doug. “Like, maybe one of these days we could all get erased.”
“Who’ll do it?” Mack asked.
“I don’t know. Ask Carrie. She’s the one who writes things.”
Mack shook his head. “You kids. You’re not even close to dying; why think about it?”
“Because what’s-her-name—”
“Pussy,” said Abby. “She killed herself.”
“Right, but why not?” Mack asked. “There’s nothing so great about staying alive unless there’s a reason to. If you’re stupid and a nuisance, and you know it, what the hell, why fool around with getting up each morning and having another lousy day? Just get it over with, and do everybody a favor.”
Carrie was staring at him. “Don’t you want to stay alive?”
“Damn right, sweetheart; I have lots of reasons. But if they go away…” He drew his finger across his throat.
“But you could find other reasons.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Hey, don’t look so serious. Life shouldn’t be serious; it’s mostly a game. Like Monopoly, you know? If you get the right properties and hotels, you’re a big shot and you can make things go your way and you’re a happy camper. Things turn sour, what the fuck, the game’s over. Has to end sometime, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let somebody else decide when mine ends.”
Abruptly, Carrie turned to Abby. “Why are you mad at Sara?”
“What?” Abby asked, jolted from her thoughts of Pussy.
“Why are you mad?”
Abby shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t mean to say that. It slipped out.”
“Which means it was right at the surface, waiting,” Mack pointed out. “Well, I’m not really mad at her, you know, I’m just…I mean, she used to come to my room all the time and ask me how I was and what I was doing and if I wanted to talk about anything and, you know, just about me. And then she stopped.”
“But you wouldn’t tell her anything,” Carrie said. “I heard you, sometimes you wouldn’t even let her come in your room.”
“I know, but she’d keep trying. Or she’d go away and come back a few minutes later, and try again. And even if I didn’t tell her everything, I mean when I’d just sort of clam up, and it wasn’t nice of me, I know it wasn’t, but she never got mad, she’d just talk about other things, and when we’d talk like that, about, oh, whatever, it was nice. Knowing she was there, and knowing she worried about me.” Her voice rose. “But she stopped.”
“When?” Carrie asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. A while ago. It’s like she… gave up or something.”
“She’s busy,” Mack said. “Reuben, you know. But what difference does it make? You don’t need her; you’ve got us. Me. You can tell me anything; I’m the soul of discretion. Better than Sara, even, because I’m more objective and I’ve been more places. Sara’s a stay-at-home, you know; whereas yours truly’s been all over the world and knows how to get the better of everybody.”
Abby frowned. “I don’t want to get the better of anybody. I just want to be happy.”
“COULD WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE?” Doug shouted. “I’m tired of all this.”
“All this what?” Carrie asked.
“People killing themselves and Abby not being happy and… everything. Can’t we talk about happy things?”
“There aren’t any happy things,” said Abby, and tears filled her eyes.
“How about I tell a story?” Mack asked. “And doesn’t anybody want dessert?”
“A story about what?” Doug asked, diverted, as they cleared the table and Carrie brought out ice-cream dishes.
“You tell me.”
“What about that island you told us about? The one that’s a whole country? Something about that.”
“Nauru. Good memory, Doug. Well. Dessert first.”
Sniffling, Abby spooned ice cream, and Carrie brought the cookie jar to the table. Mack refilled his wineglass and Abby’s. “Okay, so it’s a very poor island; I told you about that. No more mining—they ran out of the stuff a few years ago—”
“What stuff?” Doug asked.
“Phosphate,” said Carrie. “I looked it up on the Internet. They speak English there.”
Mack nodded. “They do indeed. Plus their own language, which is sort of South Pacificish. And they have computers. They’re pretty modern, only they don’t have any money. But there are whispers on the island about a hidden treasure. It seems that, a long time ago, when Nauru became independent, the new prime minister accepted gifts, gold and silver and whatnot, from governments who wanted rights to run Nauru’s mines. The prime minister took the gifts and kept the mining rights, and then died. He told his son he’d hidden the treasure to keep it safe, but he never told him where. So one day a ten-year-old named Lagumot decided to find it.”
“Is this a true story?” Doug demanded.
“Yes and no. So, Lagumot set out to find the treasure, with his friend Derog, who was thirteen.”
“Our ages,” Carrie whispered to Doug.
“Well, those two treasure hunters just about tore the island apart. They lifted stones and dug around trees, they snorkeled in the coral reefs and poked holes in the walls of houses. Then one night they broke into one of the country’s main banks.”
“Broke in?” demanded Carrie. “Where were the police?”
“They were swigging from a bottle and didn’t hear a thing. Now this bank did a lot of business with American companies, so there were rows and rows of filing cabinets with American names on them. Lagumot read the American names and remembered his father telling him stories (he always thought they were myths) about gold and silver growing like breadfruit on the trees in America, huge houses with only one small family inside, long shiny cars, skies filled with airplanes, and supermarkets heaped high with food that rolled all over the place if you pulled an orange or something out from the bottom…anyway, he thought maybe the treasure, like all treasures, was in America, or the part of America that was in the National Bank of Nauru, and he’d be the one to find it and then his father would be so proud of him he’d never stop loving him. So he and Derog began opening the drawers of the file cabinets, and they were so intent on what they were doing they didn’t know that someone was watching them from a peephole that had been drilled through the wall near the spot where they were. Neither did they hear, when it was almost dawn, the police coming down the stairs to see what was making all that noise in the basement.”
“Well?” demanded Doug when Mack stopped.
“So that’s all for tonight. You don’t expect everything in one evening, do you? Have to spread out the pleasure, then it means more.”
“You can’t stop!” Carrie cried. “I mean, I don’t stop when I’m in the middle of a story.”
“They did in the old days. One chapter each week in the newspaper. And everybody had to wait seven whole days—one fifty-second of a year!—to find out wha
t came next. Besides, it’s good for you to learn you can’t have everything at once. Be a little patient and wait your turn like the rest of the world, instead of being coddled and codlified codliferously and coswolloply.”
Abby felt a shiver and saw confusion on Carrie and Doug’s faces. They felt it, too, she thought. Mack made it sound like a joke, but his face looked as if he meant it, as if he hated them because they were spoiled.
But then he grinned and held out his arms. “More soon, and that’s a promise.” He stood up and pulled them all to him so they stood within the circle of his arms. Carrie’s confusion faded. She felt cozy, being held in an embrace, being with her family, eating dinner around the table and telling stories and talking, even about death, in their warm kitchen with soft humming noises coming from the refrigerator and freezer, and the comforting ticking of the tall grandfather clock that had belonged to great-grandparents they never knew, and the corners of the room all shadowy while the hanging lamp over the table wrapped them in a little golden tent, just big enough for the four of them.
“We don’t need Sara,” Mack said, his humming voice blending in with the hum of the kitchen. “We’re just fine, just us, together.”
Abby tensed, and Carrie and Doug began to squirm. They pulled back against the tight band of Mack’s arms. I don’t know! Carrie wailed silently. I don’t know what to think! She ran out of the room and up the stairs, to her room.
“Hey, Carrie!” Mack shouted. “What’s going on?”
“Abby?” Doug asked tentatively, looking at his sister.
“Why can’t you be nice?” Abby demanded, her voice quavering. “Why do you have to ruin things by being mean?” She closed her eyes. I want Sara.
And the telephone rang. And it was Sara.
“Where are you?” Abby cried as soon as she heard Sara’s voice.
“At the funeral home, on my cell phone. I should go back inside in a minute. What’s wrong, Abby?”
“Oh… nothing. Nothing! Everything’s fine. We’re fine, we’re great, we’re just sitting in the kitchen and talking and …laughing. You know. Having fun. We had your Moroccan chicken; it was good. Are people crying about Pussy?”
The Real Mother Page 22
