“Oh, I don’t think anyone will take much notice of you, Bill,” Elizabeth MacPherson murmured sweetly.
“That’s a great dress,” he said generously. “It looks like a party frock. It’s stylish. Basic black, right? I mean, it makes your point without being obtrusive.”
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. “If you mean that I’m not wearing jet beads, elbow-length black gloves, and an opaque veil, then, yes, in a simple black dress I’m not being obtrusive. It doesn’t matter to me whether anyone knows that I’m wearing black for mourning. I know.”
“Sorry I mentioned it,” muttered Bill. “You won’t brood about it all evening, will you?”
“I never brood.” Elizabeth made a mental note to disparage Bill at her next session with Dr. Freya.
They had driven out from town to attend their mother’s Saturday dinner party at the home of her new roommate, Casey. Elizabeth had described it to Bill as a get-acquainted party, arranged to introduce Margaret MacPherson’s family to her new set of friends. She had not managed to be more specific than that about the nature of their mother’s new life, so Bill was happily unaware of anything unusual. He’s so amazingly dim in social matters that he may not even notice, Elizabeth told herself. She resolved to keep a watchful eye on him, though, for the duration of the evening.
Margaret MacPherson’s hand-drawn map had led them down a pleasant country road into the rolling green hills of the county, and finally up a long, graveled drive to a two-story white farmhouse, gleaming in the last rays of the evening sun. “This looks quite homey,” Bill remarked as he maneuvered the car onto the grass beside half a dozen vehicles belonging to the other dinner guests. “Very nice. Two women on a farm, managing on their own. Reminds me of a book by somebody or other.”
“D. H. Lawrence?” Elizabeth suggested.
“No, that wasn’t it,” said Bill, frowning with the effort of recollection. “I think it was a chapter in Huckleberry Finn. Or was it Anne of Green Gables?”
“Never mind,” said Elizabeth. “It isn’t a working farm, anyhow. Mother says they plan to have a small herb-and-vegetable garden, and maybe a few free-run chickens, but nothing in the way of major crops or livestock.”
“Good, because Mother never took any agriculture courses at the community college, did she? Just conversational Spanish and macramé.”
“I believe she’s been branching out lately,” murmured Elizabeth, thinking of the unfortunate white-water rafting episode the previous spring.
“But not into farming, I hope,” said Bill. “I was afraid that sooner or later we might be invited to a barn raising.”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “Since Phyllis Casey is an English professor, specializing in nineteenth-century literature, I doubt you’re qualified to give her any help whatsoever.”
They got out of the car and walked to the front porch. “Maybe we should have brought a house-warming gift,” Elizabeth murmured, with a last anxious glance at the lawn full of strange cars.
“I have some root beer in the trunk,” said Bill. “Some pork and beans, too. Actually, I forgot to unload the groceries this morning.”
Elizabeth shuddered. “Never mind. We’ll bring flowers next time.”
“Okay. Well, is there anything else I should know about this party?”
Elizabeth’s hand froze in midair on its way to the door knocker. “Why? What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know. Taboo subjects? Is the new roomie a Republican, or a vegetarian, or a fan of pro wrestling? Any conversational hints?”
His sister shrugged. “I’ve never met her,” she said truthfully. She hit the knocker against the brass plate. “You might not want to say anything caustic about k.d.lang. Otherwise, just be your usual charming self.”
Bill was still trying to place k.d.lang within the ranks of nineteenth-century authors when, moments later, the door opened, and a beaming Margaret MacPherson ushered them in. “Just in time!” she said. “The hors d’oeuvres have just come out of the oven. Come in and meet everybody.”
She led them into a cozy parlor with a freshly polished pine floor, overstuffed sofas covered in rose chintz, and a collection of large, well-tended plants, all of which were visible only in glimpses around various clumps of people. The guests were congregated in groups of three and four, laughing and talking over Celtic harp music in stereo, most of them holding glasses of white wine or balancing paper plates on their laps.
“Do you know anybody?” Bill whispered to Elizabeth.
“No,” she hissed back through an unmoving smile. “Just wing it.”
“There certainly are a lot of women here,” Bill muttered. “You don’t think Mother’s trying to match me up with someone, do you?”
“I think it’s … unlikely,” Elizabeth assured him.
A hasty round of introductions told them that the guests were all members of the college English department or professors from neighboring colleges or local artists. Elizabeth tried to keep track of the names and faces as they gathered around while her mother plowed through the traditional sound-bite resumes of such gatherings. “Bill and Elizabeth, my children—everybody. He’s a lawyer, and she’s a forensic anthropologist, currently unemployed.”
“Mother!”
“But she has a Ph.D. Bill, Elizabeth, I’d like you to meet Megan Holden-McBryde, of the English department. She’s working on feminist critical theory in the works of Jack London, and this is her husband, Skip Holden-McBryde, who is a poet.”
Elizabeth shook hands with the willowy couple in matching running suits. “Ah. A poet,” she murmured, hoping that he was in the dormant phase of the condition.
“Here are Sadie Patton and Annie Graham-Robeson, feminist deconstructionists.” She nodded toward two heavyset women in their early fifties.
“Architects!” said Bill with a happy smile.
There was a brief pause while everyone tried to think of a quick way to explain literary theory on a third-grade level. Simultaneously, everyone gave up. “Something like that, dear,” said his mother, shrugging. “Miriam Malone, a kinetic sculptor. She does the most marvelous things with bathtub toys floating in blue mouthwash. And Tim Burruss, who coaches wrestling. They’re not together—his lover can’t be with us this evening.”
Elizabeth was about to mention her own bereavement-presumptive, when Tim said, “He’s driving a stock car at the speedway tonight. I said, ‘You can break your neck if you want to, but don’t expect me to go and watch.’”
“—And this is Virgil Agnew, who’s in theatre and dance.”
“He’s our token heterosexual,” said Sadie (or possibly Annie).
“I’m in therapy for it, though,” Virgil informed them. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his tweed jacket and frowned at nothing in particular.
Elizabeth ignored Bill’s elbow in her ribs. “Token hetero—wait!” she exclaimed. “I thought you said Megan and Skip were married.”
Megan Holden-McBryde nodded happily. “We are. But actually I am a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. I had past life regression and discovered that I used to be a medical student in turn-of-the-century London. I was a friend of Oscar Wilde. It explained so much.”
Skip put his arm around his spouse’s shoulders. “So we feel that we really count as a gay couple.”
After a short, leaden silence, Annie (or Sadie) remarked to Bill, “I have a son who practices law.”
“You have a son?” Since Bill’s brain was completely occupied in reformatting a mental image of his mother, he was in no condition to think before he spoke.
“Oh, yes. And two grandchildren.”
“Three if you count the step-grandchildren from your third marriage,” her partner observed.
“Third marriage?”
She nodded. “Sadie and I have only been together two years. Between us, we’ve had five husbands.”
“Political lesbians?” asked Elizabeth, who thought she was beginning to get it all sorted out.
“No. Th
at would be D. J. Squires, over by the fireplace, talking to Barnie Slusher, the chemistry professor.” She nodded toward a scowling young woman with close-cropped blonde hair, a leather biker’s outfit, and riding boots. She looked like the title character in a postmodern production of Shaw’s Saint Joan. “D.J. is a feminist historian, and she said that when she realized as an undergraduate that all seductions are a form of rape, and that marriage would mean sleeping with the enemy, she just broke off her engagement to the star quarterback. She contends that she’s never looked back.”
“It has done wonders for her career,” Tim Burruss remarked. “She’ll be one of the youngest tenured professors ever. If she makes it, I mean.”
“She’d better make it,” grunted Sadie. “The university couldn’t afford to fight the discrimination suit she’d bring if they turned her down.”
“And this is Casey,” said Margaret MacPherson, with an air of saving the best for last.
Phyllis Casey, who had just come in from the kitchen, was a small, tanned woman who appeared to be in her late forties, handsome in a well-scrubbed and athletic way. She was wearing a tunic and long skirt of natural linen, and her long hair was woven into a thick braid.
She set down the tray of canapés, and gave Bill and Elizabeth each a hug. “Margaret’s children. So nice to finally meet you.”
Bill kept trying to make eye contact with Elizabeth, but she was studiously avoiding him. “Nice to meet you, too,” he said with an anxious smile.
“It’s a lovely house,” said Elizabeth.
“Yes, it has a lot of space. Margaret and I have turned the spare bedrooms into home offices.”
Before Bill could figure out where the conversation was going next, someone tapped him on the arm.
“Your mother said that you are a lawyer,” said the earnest-looking young woman. She had long, crinkly brown hair, adorned with a white flower over one ear and dangling earrings in the shape of dolphins nose to nose.
“A lawyer. That’s right,” said Bill, with an inward groan. He hoped that the inevitable legal question was going to be one that he could answer with some measure of confidence. He balanced his paper plate on one palm, in case she was the earnest handshaking sort. “And you are …?”
She blushed. “Oh, my name is Miriam Malone. I’m called Miri. I’m from Florida, but I’ve moved up here to teach in the art department. I sculpt. Didn’t your mother mention me? I thought she might have.”
Bill shook his head, wondering if he had time to eat a stuffed mushroom before he had to speak again. He risked it.
“I wanted to consult you, in a general sort of way, about a legal matter. Your mother suggested it, actually. She says you’re a specialist in family law. Would you like to go out into the garden?”
What Bill truly wanted was to stay close to the refreshment table—and to rely upon the adage of safety in numbers. He thought briefly of clutching the piano leg to keep from being dragged away into the silent, threatening garden by this earnest and humorless Amazon, but a glance around at the chattering guests, oblivious to his plight, told him that it was no use. He might as well go bravely to the doom his mother had obviously arranged for him, and get it over with. “Certainly,” he said, feeling like the pig at the luau.
She led him through the kitchen, out the back door, and onto a wooden deck surrounded by scraggly rosebushes. Bill wished he’d had the presence of mind to remember his drink. He leaned against the wooden railing of the deck and gave her his most attentive and professional young-attorney smile. “What can I do for you?”
“I want to get married,” said Miri Malone.
“Where is Bill?” asked Margaret MacPherson. “I’ve hardly seen him since he got here.”
“Mingling, I expect,” said Elizabeth, without any noticeable concern for her missing sibling. “I hope he’s remembering to pass out business cards.”
“Well, perhaps he’s enjoying himself. I think it’s going rather well, don’t you?”
“It is,” said Elizabeth, glancing around the room. “It’s certainly different from the get-togethers you and Dad used to host. All the men would congregate around a televised football game, or else they’d take over the living room and fill it with smoke and loud guffaws.”
Her mother nodded sadly. “Yes, and the women would gather in the kitchen and talk about the children, or the weather, or linoleum—God knows what we talked about. I don’t know that I was listening.”
“Were you unhappy?” asked Elizabeth, surprised at this revisionist account of her childhood. “I thought you all were incredibly boring, but I didn’t know that you minded.”
“Perhaps I didn’t at the time,” said Margaret thoughtfully. “I didn’t have much to compare it with. Men don’t generally talk to women, you know. They simply listen until they can figure out what one sentence will end the discussion. Then they say, ‘Buy it,’ or ‘Take another aspirin,’ or ‘Whatever you decide will be fine, dear.’ That said, they dismiss you from the universe entirely, and go back to the newspaper, or the instant replay, or whatever constitutes reality to them at the moment.”
“And now you have someone who will talk to you?”
“Well… there is always something to talk about in new relationships, so I can’t be sure that things will turn out differently this time, but it’s all very interesting.” She wandered away then, picking up empty glasses and exchanging a word or two with each guest as she passed.
Elizabeth began to mingle, or at least she stood hesitantly on the fringe of one group after another, trying to find a conversational opening. Most of it, though, escaped her completely. Barnie Slusher was telling Virgil Agnew and Annie Graham-Robeson about his difficulties in getting anyone to install asymmetrical slate flooring in his newly redecorated kitchen. The Holden-McBrydes and Sadie Patton were debating the merits of the Montessori school versus home teaching; and D. J. Squires and Tim Burruss had taken beers and a basket of tortilla chips into the other room to watch a Cincinnati Reds game on television. Everyone else was talking about university politics. Elizabeth sat down on the sofa and began to leaf through the latest issue of Vanity Fair.
“Married,” said Bill, clutching the railing of the deck for support. “Yes, well, that’s refreshing, but … you see …”
“Not to you.” Miri Malone rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I wanted to consult with you about it. You do specialize in family law, don’t you?”
“I don’t seem to be able to escape from it,” said Bill. “What did you have in mind? Prenuptial agreements? Community property laws?”
“It isn’t a question of money,” the young woman said. “We love each other and we want to get married. But some states have laws against it.”
“Interracial laws?” said Bill. “Not anymore. Those statutes were done away with years ago. Loving v. The Commonwealth of Virginia was the Supreme Court decision making that discrimination illegal. So you and your fiancé—er, your fiancé is male, isn’t he?”
Miri smiled. “Very much so.”
“And you are female?” The Crying Game had taught Bill that it isn’t safe to make any assumptions, regardless of what common sense tells you.
“Yes, I’m definitely female. Would you like to see my driver’s license?”
“I’m not sure the DMV is in a position to testify on the matter,” murmured Bill. “Well, never mind. So he’s male, and you’re female.” Another thought struck him. Not the Morgan Family Trio again! “He’s not already married, is he? And planning to stay that way?”
“No. He’s a dolphin. I met him when I was living in Florida.”
“Great!” said Bill. “Do you think they’ll make the play-offs this year? Does he know Larry Czonka?”
Miri’s stare was withering. “Not a Miami Dolphin,” she said. “A delphinidae dolphin.”
“You mean like Flipper?”
“That’s a demeaning stereotype. Dolphins are extremely intelligent and sensitive. They have a spiritual nature which is quite
beautiful. They are not, of course, vegetarians, but aside from that they are in perfect harmony with our New Age philosophies of ecology and sharing the planet.”
“Well—can’t you just be friends?” stammered Bill.
“Why can’t I marry a dolphin?” she demanded.
Bill smiled. That was an easy one. “He can’t walk. He can’t talk. And he can’t sign the papers.”
“Neither can Stephen Hawking, but you’d let me marry him.”
Bill was shocked at her flippancy toward the disabled physicist. “Oh, look here, you mustn’t—”
“Don’t be so patronizing,” she said. “Anyhow, let me tell you about Stephen Hawking. I know he’s paralyzed with ALS and for the past decade he has only been able to move the little finger of his left hand. But a couple of years ago, he left his wife for another woman!”
“How?” said Bill, momentarily diverted from the legal problems of maritime mammals.
She threw up her hands. “How should I know! He just rolled away. He took off with his nurse. It was in Discover magazine a while back. When I read about that, I said: this is absolutely the last straw! If you can’t trust a man even when he’s paralyzed from the neck down, you don’t have a cat’s chance of getting any of them to be faithful. I said to hell with it, and I decided that if feminists can become political lesbians, then an animal-rights person like myself ought to be able to become a political delphinogamist. Human males are no damned good.”
“Now you’re stereotyping my species.”
“Oh, rubbish. It’s a fact. Men remind me of those poor male spiders who keep trying to mate even after their heads have been bitten off. I mean, it is your entire raison d’être. No, I’m through with Homo sapiens. From now on, give me a dolphin.”
Bill was beginning to conclude that modern relationships for men very much resembled trying to mate while having your head bitten off, but he wisely returned to the original topic. “Even so, I’m afraid you can’t marry a dolphin. Not legally anyhow. I suppose you could get a scuba-diving Unitarian to come to the holding tank and—”
If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him Page 10
