by Lisa Howorth
“The children have science fair proposals due tomorrow,” she sighed. “I should stay here and sit on them.”
“Those children will be fine. Eliza’s old enough to be in charge,” Mann said, picking up a caper by its stem and sucking it delicately before putting it in his rosebud mouth. “Anyway, you hate the science fair.”
“I know—but they still have to do it.” In the Thorntons’ house it was known as the science unfair, because everyone knew that the kids who either had access to their parents’ labs at the university, or had computers and fancy programs that generated cool graphics, or had plenty of money to spend on decorating their prefab display boards with grosgrain ribbon and glitter were the ones who won. The kids whose parents didn’t have extra cash or extra time got their dicks left in the dirt, science fair–wise. For a project in the category of Behavioral Science, Eliza had once carefully documented the process of teaching their old orange cat, Big Boy, to play a toy piano. It was a brilliant project for a second-grader, but it got disqualified for involving a live subject. What the hell was the Behavioral Science category, then?
“And you’re right. I certainly babysat all my brothers at her age. But we’ll be miles out of town, you know?” Mary Byrd knew the children were fine without a sitter—at eight and almost twelve, a sitter now just offended them—and when alone together, possibly because they were a little spooked and uneasy and glad for each other’s company, they got along fine. It was very hard, often, for Mary Byrd to permit them these little freedoms, to resist the urge to overprotect, because she certainly knew all too well that sometimes any amount of protection or vigilance couldn’t keep bad things from happening. Bad things were like dog shit: it could be anywhere and you had to look out for it all the time. So Mann wouldn’t hear, Mary Byrd went into the dining room booze closet to call Ashleigh from down the street to babysit.
Mary Byrd and Mann sipped their drinks and looked over the daily police and fire reports in the Mercury. The crime report was all the usual: MIPs, DUIs, public drunkenness, smoky kitchen, possession of paraphernalia, suspicious activity, driving without a license, animal rescue, animal complaint, cemetery desecration, malicious mischief, domestic disturbance, welfare check fraud, speeding, no vehicle tag, possession of controlled substance, and any combination of college and small-town crap that was testimony to the easy, relatively untroubled life of the town, although Mary Byrd knew that some of these innocent little items probably represented trauma, shock, and heartbreak for some family. It was mean to enjoy it, but they liked to discover the occasional bizarre entry, such as this latest: uttering.
Mann said, “What on earth is uttering?”
“I don’t know,” Mary Byrd said. “If I weren’t so bummed out I’d go look it up. Maybe it has something to do with lying? Or cussing?”
“Then we’d all be in jail. Maybe something kinky—like with cows?” He was actually semiseriously asking.
“No, dopey. That would be uddering, with two ds, not ts.” She laughed at him.
“I knew that,” Mann said.
“Sure you did,” Mary Byrd said. She bit a cracker and sipped her drink, scanning the paper. “This is the way things used to be in Richmond. Like you said: like Mayberry. There wasn’t real crime too much, right?” She had a sudden sinking spell, thinking of the trip ahead of her.
“Everywhere was like that,” he said. “It was Planet Donna Reed.”
There was some noise at the front door: not really knocking, but a barging-in sound, and then, a few heavy steps, then nothing.
“He’s here,” Mary Byrd said, resignedly. “Bottoms up.”
Mann put a hand over his eyes. “Please don’t say anything like that around him and get him started on me.” He threw back the last of his martini.
Edward Wiggsby had arrived, and apparently had paused in the hallway to take things in, maybe taking a photo or two. It would be something that nobody else would ever have noticed: a ding in the woodwork showing a century’s layers of old paint, or one scuffed but richly hazel Bruzzi Boot at the bottom of the stairs, or the plastic sheen on Mary Byrd’s purple “lizard” raincoat hanging on the hall tree. It might also be a pale apricot coughed-up hairball on the worn Serapi rug, or a big dead cockroach, Mary Byrd knew, and she thought about rising to intercept him but didn’t. Who cared. Whatever he shot would be a beautiful, intriguing photograph worth tons of money, and the prestige of having him photograph your hairball in your home would be priceless. Wiggs’s photographs were celebrated for their sublime subtleties of color and subject, and for his uncanny ability to notice things, or conditions of light, in a way that normal people didn’t, as if he had the sight and perceptions of another species. But all his exquisite sensitivities went into his art, and people permitted him his social breaches because of their worshipful dumbstruckness. Charles and Mary Byrd were friends with him because it was good business, but also because his insane, unpredictable life was so fascinating and out of another century, when artists had been celebrities and treated like royalty. He was an artiste roué alky like Toulouse-Lautrec who exalted the ordinary and insisted on pushing everything and everybody in his life to the limits. Whatever limits were.
Mary Byrd and Mann sat silently, looking at each other, eyebrows raised, waiting for the next sound. It was the echoey wooden thud of the piano cover being raised and then the rapid play of scales, then arpeggios. The cover thudded again, and in a second, there he was, Edward Wiggs, in all his splendor. Striking a theatrical but easy contrapposto in the kitchen doorway, he announced, “I’m here now. Let the fun begin. Your piano is abysmal.”
“Hey, Ed,” Mary Byrd said, getting up and crossing the kitchen to give him a loose, bent, no-pelvic-contact hug. In return she got an air kiss on each side of her head. With one hand he scrambled her curly hair affectionately. “Darlin’?” he said, and then, “Mann,” almost turning to acknowledge him.
“Hey, Ed,” said Mann. “How are you?”
“I’m wonderful. Couldn’t be better.” Wiggs’s speech was slow and halting; haughty, drunk, or both. There were so many Mississippi accents and his was the melodic, archaic drawl of white Delta planters of a couple generations earlier. “I’m just back from Japan. It was fabulous.”
“What would you like to drink?” asked Mann, ever the surrogate husband and host.
“Well, I have been indulging in a little Laphroaig. But a martini might be wonderful. Fresh horses. Or changing horses in midstream. Something like that.”
“Vodka or gin?” Mann asked and flinched like a kid realizing a dumb mistake at a spelling bee.
“Must you ask?” Wiggs sniffed. “There are only gin martinis.”
“Right,” Mann said flatly. “What was I thinking?” He reached for Rosalie’s old beat-up, silver cocktail shaker.
“And I’m so delighted to see Beefeater. Why are people drinking that abominable blue swill these days.” He paused. “Just on the rocks, please. And where is Charles?”
“He got caught in a powwow with our accountant,” Mary Byrd answered, keeping her face turned away to ease the lie. “Some problem came up that had to be fixed right away. He’s going to meet us.”
Wiggs’s old camera hung around his neck like a big chunk of moderne jewelry. While Mary Byrd put out more crackers and Mann mixed another round of drinks, he drifted around the kitchen, taking everything in. At the stove, the old Chambers handed down from Liddie, he turned on the gas and bent to light a Nat Sherman from a pack that magically appeared in his hand. For a second he watched the blue flame, and moving slightly to the side, he raised the camera with his right hand: Click. Click. Click.
“I love this stove. It is so gloriously Lucille Ball,” he said.
“Yep, that would be me,” Mary Byrd said. “Many a tuna casserole has issued from its bowels.” She examined Wiggs. He wore a very luxe-looking black cashmere crewneck over a crisp white shirt, lean khakis tucked neatly into the cognac-colored German engineer boots he always wore. The high bo
ots made his long, thin legs seem even longer. Storkish, really. She—everyone—was always awed by Wiggs’s appearance. He was gorgeous—murderously gorgeous—probably the most beautiful man Mary Byrd had ever seen. Or woman, for that matter. He had this amazing skin, pale and translucent; the kind of pallor that always made her think: blue blood. Even Mann and Charles didn’t have it, although they were both WASPily handsome.
Wiggs’s silver hair was collar-length but combed back and high, with a wisp that fell over his forehead, so slight as to suggest nonchalance and roguery, or to mock the notion of roguery. A baronial coif. His hands were long and delicate and blue and seemed to exist solely to be set impatiently on his hips, to raise his camera to his eye, or to gracefully bring booze and Nat Shermans incessantly to his thin, often curled lips. The very picture of icy gentility, dissipation, and arrogance, he was a cross between a preppy fop and some Weimar libertine out of 1930 Berlin. Sexy, too, Mary Byrd thought, in an aging, Jeremy Irons sort of way. That such a creature had ever surfaced from Freeman Bayou, like the first feathered reptile slouching out of the primordial ooze and taking flight, was astonishing to Mary Byrd, but as Charles had once said about Wiggs, the Mississippi Delta was the only place on earth where such an exotic rara avis of a man could have been hatched.
Wiggs would descend on them from Clarksdale every month or two, bringing his camera, esoteric audio equipment, and guns. Settling into the same nonsmoking room at the Holiday Inn every time, he would smoke, disassemble the stereo and the guns for a few days, put everything back together, and leave.
Mary Byrd glanced at Mann, who was making Wiggs’s martini with an expression of faint terror, probably wishing he could pee in it. She would have to do her best to protect him. You don’t grow up gay and not have a thick hide, though. Mary Byrd knew Mann could take care of himself. She just didn’t want him to get pissed and leave.
Wiggs walked to the windowsill, where Mary Byrd had her tiny-crap display.
“M’Byrd. Wonderful tchotchkes. Where do you find these bits?” He picked up a thumbnail-size pot of lip gloss in the shape of a toilet.
“Oh, you know, here and there. Gewgaws-R-Us. June Law gave me that one. Tell us about your trip,” she said, glancing at Mann.
Like a dog pissing in all the corners, he snapped a few more shots and said, “They love me over there. I can’t say why. I hardly remember a thing.”
Mary Byrd and Mann exchanged looks. Through the fecund grapevine they had already heard about Wiggs’s trip. It was true: the Japanese did love him. And to repay their love, Wiggs had stood on stage, addressing an audience of hundreds of the most sophisticated photography enthusiasts in the world, and crooned “Love Me Tender.” Incredibly, he had received a standing ovation.
“Inscrutable, the Japanese, don’t you know,” Wiggs said, smiling devilishly and tilting his elegant head slightly as if he were actually pondering this conundrum.
“And Mops?” Mary Byrd asked. “Did she go with you? How is she?” Mops was his glamorous, longtime Austrian lady friend, also a famed photographer, who as an intrepid ingénue had run with Castro and Hemingway back in the day. Charles and Mary Byrd—everybody—loved her. Wiggs did not deserve her.
“She did not,” Wiggs said. “She had a show of her own in London. She is fabulous, as always.”
Mary Byrd was just passing the little Queen’s Bird plate with the crackers, cheese, and giant caper things when the phone sounded.
“Here, take this,” she said to Mann, handing him the plate, but the phone didn’t ring again. The non-ring seemed to her to echo more loudly than the actual sound.
“Huh,” she said. “Weird.” She handed Mann a stack of cocktail napkins.
She was reminded that she needed to call her mother, and Evagreen, but instead she said, “Y’all. We need to get going if we’re going to eat. Let me call the sitter to come on. She’s just down the street. I’ll be right back. No fighting, no biting.”
Mann had risen to transfer the martinis to go-cups and gave Mary Byrd his slittiest, hairiest evil eyeball. “Hurry up,” he mouthed.
Wiggs watched Mary Byrd cross the room and said, “M’Byrd, are you wearing underwear? I haven’t seen a north-south configuration in weeks.” He raised his eyebrows, although his eyes were practically closed.
Mary Byrd turned and gave him the finger and a sarcastic smile and said, “You’re a bad man, Wiggs. I’m telling your good friend, my dear husband Charles, that you are—besmirching my honor.” Why did he always have to provoke everybody? It was like his hobby. It was pretty funny, but she was too tired to appreciate it.
“Darlin’,” he said. “You don’t think for a minute that Charles will think your … honor is worth more than those prints he wants, do you?” He grinned evilly.
“Wiggs,” said Mary Byrd wearily. “Don’t make me come over there and beat your ass.” She’d knew she should be brownnosing him but she just didn’t want to.
Wiggs’s steely, alien-blue eyes opened wide. “Oh, that would be too lovely,” he said. She and Mann rolled eyes at each other. Wiggs took a long draw on his cigarette and exhaled in Mann’s direction. “I love these people,” he said.
Five
Upstairs, Mary Byrd didn’t call Ashleigh, who she knew was on her way; instead, she called Evagreen, wanting to be sure she was at home. Jeez—still busy. The children were watching TV in what had been their little playroom. Hearing her approach, the Quarter Pounder, who knew he was in violation of the house rule about dogs on furniture, tried to skitter back downstairs, passing her on the steps with guilt in his eyes. Puppy Sal was afraid to go upstairs at all in winter because the cats lurked there in the warmer air.
Eliza and William were stretched out and propped up on oversize pillows, side by side on an old comforter. Notebooks and textbooks were arranged around them to simulate working on science fair proposals, but neither one budged to assume a studying pose. Two spotless dinner plates and forks were pushed back into the corner, she knew, by the Pounder, who’d licked them clean. William, a mouth-breather, stared gape-jawed at the tube, absently stroking Irene, who was curled in a ball next to him.
“William,” Mary Byrd said, and he immediately snapped his mouth closed. Poor fella. “What are y’all watching?”
“Nothing,” they both said, which meant they were watching Real World, or E.R. reruns, neither of which they were supposed to watch.
“What’s wrong with the History Channel?” she asked them.
Eliza looked at her scornfully. “You mean the tank and aircraft channel?”
William looked up at her and said, with irritation, “That’s what I wanted to watch but Eliza wouldn’t let me.” Eliza cranked her forearm against his chest, rising to change the channel to Nick at Nite.
“Ow!” he yelled, making Irene startle and run off. “Look what you did to Irene!”
“Okay, quit,” said Mary Byrd. She wanted nothing more than to lie down and watch Real World with them even though she hated it and would die if her kids turned out like those people. She just wanted to crawl up with her babies in their little nest and breathe their not-very-fresh smells. Of course, she knew if she attempted to do so they would both be gone in seconds.
“Ashleigh will be over in a minute so get your showers and get ready for bed,” she said. “Soon.” She added, “And I will look at your science fair things when I get home, so leave them out, okay?”
No one responded and Mary Byrd said pointedly, “Okay, Mom.” She made the overhead light strobe to get their attention.
“Not Ash-hole again,” said William.
“William. I hope you don’t call her that.”
“He did once,” said Eliza. “She thought it was funny.”
“We’re going out to the Palace for dinner.”
“Where’s Daddy?” asked Eliza.
“He’s in Memphis with a gallery guy. He’s supposed to meet us.”
Eliza refocused on the TV. “Okay,” she said, “luvyabye.”
> On her hands and knees, Mary Byrd kissed one, then the other. She picked up the plates, forks, and ubiquitous large bowl from which William topped off his pasta with his nightly fodder of Honey Nut Cheerios. You have to choose your battles, she thought. Today was not a day for carping at children, your dear, darling, alive children, about dogs on furniture and TV and homework. “I’ll check on you when we get home. Love you both.”
“Okay,” said William, transfixed by the tube.
“Luvyabye,” Eliza said again, dismissively.
She wondered about Evagreen. She could just leave her money in the mailbox, she supposed, if she wasn’t at home.
At the bottom of the stairs stood Mann, a bottle of wine tucked under his arm.
“Mann, what are you doing? Get back in there and keep an eye on him!”
“I’m starving. I want to eat and go home. This is promising to be a very long night.” Mann was so small, with the metabolism of a hummingbird, and he could get very surly if he did not eat every two hours. “Can you please get your act in gear and let’s go?”
From the kitchen, a girl’s voice called out, “Hey-ay!”
“Here’s Ashleigh,” Mary Byrd said, coming quickly down the steps.
The teenager came through the hall and started up the stairs. In an accusatory voice she said, “Who’s that guy in the kitchen? He’s like, way hammered.” She didn’t stop for an answer.
Wiggs was indeed hammered. He sat on a kitchen stool and was leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed and his arms folded over his chest.
Mary Byrd put a hand on his arm, saying, “Wiggs, let’s go! We’re starving. And Charles might already be waiting at the Palace by now.”
“Yes, darlin’,” Wiggs said, barely opening his eyes. “And we can all go back to my room later and see the casino prints. I have scotch and Stoli.” Wiggs, usually snobby about booze, preferred the medium-priced Stoli because, he said, it was “distilled with the passion of the Russian soul.”
