‘How come?’
‘You’re too … I don’t know, really. I was going to say primi tive, but that’s not it. That sad little smile, but you really do enjoy life. Winsome but naughty – you’re an ingenue femme fatale – oddly calm, almost remote … You’re hard to put a finger on, Pippa.’ He smiled at his own pun.
That night, in the cab going downtown, and sitting in the movie theater, I felt especially safe, wedged between these two men, protected by their solicitude and desire. Herb took Sam’s crush as a compliment to him. It didn’t bother him in the slightest. We all knew I was Herb’s girl.
Then, one day, the phone rang. Herb answered. ‘Hi,’ he said, surprised, anxious. He listened for a long time, interjected little. When he hung up, he said, ‘Isn’t that the most extraordinary thing.’
‘What?’
‘Gigi wants us to go out to the beach house for lunch.’
‘Why?’
‘She wants us to come and make the switch there.’
‘Make the switch?’
‘She wants to be civilized, she wants to be sophisticated and show she doesn’t mind losing me. I don’t know.’
‘You mean you want to go? What happened to not answering the door in case she sticks a knife in my chest?’
‘No, no, her voice was totally different. Calm. Gigi has a rational side, it kicks in at the damnedest times.’ He shook his head, chuckling. ‘I’ll bet you she has a man. That has to be it. She’s going to unveil him at this lunch. Everything is about vanity for Gigi.’
So, the following Saturday, we drove to the beach. The glass casing of the house glared in the sun. Inside it, the quaint little cottage looked like it was on display in a museum of the future. Beside it, there might have been a sign reading: ‘This is a reconstruction of an early-twentieth-century dwelling, complete with art and cooking implements.’ Herb sprang out of the car. I stayed in my seat as though magnetized, my limbs leaden. The skin on my face felt heavy, like clay. I was becoming very sleepy.
Herb’s tread on the gravel sounded brisk, optimistic. I heard the trunk click open. I opened the door, stuck my head out, and looked back at him, trying to see what he was doing.
‘Can I go to the beach for a while?’ I asked. I thought if I lay down in the sand, I might get my strength back. I could see only the top of Herb’s face; the lid of the trunk obscured the rest. When he slammed it shut, he was holding his tennis racket. He was grabbing on to Gigi’s offer of a conciliatory lunch a little desperately, I thought. He just couldn’t resist the idea of a civilized finish to his second marriage. His first, dissolved acrimoniously over thirty years ago, he dismissed as the bloodless coupling of two neophyte intellectuals who mistook a shared passion for Also Sprach Zarathustra for love.
Just as Herb was about to answer me, Gigi came out of the house. The light breeze molded the fine cloth of her orange caftan to her statuesque form, making her look like a bustier version of the Winged Venus. She held out her arms, then thought better of it and put her hands on her hips. ‘Welcome,’ she said. Now I really had to get out of the car.
We walked into the house. The sweet, full smell of jasmine hit me like heat, seeped into my brain, and conjured up a memory of my first visit – the sight of Herb and Gigi on the beach, the sweet iced tea, the brief sense of ownership I’d felt when I looked down at the sea from the porch. Let’s face it: I had coveted Gigi’s life at that moment. It wasn’t the money – no, not exactly that. It was just that the money made everything seem all right. It made you feel safe. The smell of fresh flowers in a guest room. The taste of iced tea made by someone else. It was the oppos ite of chaos, the opposite of everything I had known until that time. I wanted to be sheltered at last. Yes, I confess: I wanted what Gigi had, and in a blind, unthinking, but ruthless way, I set about getting it.
As we entered, Jerzi the butler gave Herb a look of the darkest humor, his eyelids drooping, face impassive, one eyebrow raised. Herb shrugged and allowed himself to smile slightly. Seated in the glacial white leather couch was Sam Shapiro, looking awkward and surprised. I turned to Herb, who greeted his tense young friend with a hearty handshake, a quizzical look on his face. Could Sam be sleeping with Gigi? That would be too neat. Yet the way she let her fingers linger on Sam’s hand when she passed him a drink, her stage whisper for him to get the cheese and salami out of the kitchen, when Alfonsa would be doing it in moments – it was all adding up. Herb paid special attention to Sam, slapping him on the back and asking him how his novel was going, when he had spoken to him the day before on that very subject, just to let him know it was okay if he was sleeping with his soon to be ex-wife.
Gigi hadn’t managed to look at me directly. She was all smiles and bustle, flushed and seemingly happy to be doing this highly original thing. Yet there was something acted about her movements, gestures, expressions, as if she was imitating herself. I was filled with unease. Herb was grinning, teeth clenched, determined to get through this ordeal so he could have what he wanted. Sam looked like he wanted to disappear. The little ocher cottage in the center of the room had its white shades drawn demurely, as if lowering its eyes in embarrassment. It occurred to me that I hadn’t really spoken yet. In fact, no dialogue seemed required of me in this play we were all enacting. It was more than enough for me to simply exist. I was, after all, the reason we were all here, in this new configuration. I needed no more lines than Helen of Troy. Pippa the Destroyer.
Champagne was poured; we each drank a glass. Gigi poured Herb a second glass, glancing up at him with impish insouciance, her tiny nose retreating into her face as it did when she was about to smile but didn’t. Was it possible that she was flirting with him? The champagne left a dull weight on my forehead. Again, I wanted to lie down, to sleep, to be gone. I wished they could do it all without me. Alfonsa was looking worried as she put the finishing touches on the table set for four. She kept changing the location of the butter dish, the saltcellar, her eyes traveling back and forth over the table as if she were speed-reading. ‘You can bring in the food now, Alfonsa,’ said Gigi, gently chiding, as though encouraging a forgetful child. She ushered us out onto the porch with a sweep of her arm. ‘Take a few breaths before we eat,’ she said.
‘There’s oxygen in here, too,’ said Herb, adopting his old teasing way with her. Gigi giggled, and for a moment I thought it was all going to unravel; we would drop the scene as written, go back to our old parts. Herb and Gigi: worldly married couple; me: adoptive waif kept around as a decent-looking pet, a sort of representative of the Order of Flotsam; Sam: the brilliant friend who haunted his own life like a ghost, hunted down by his talent and sheltered, as I was, in the home of two knowing benefactors. I almost wished it were true. It would have been safer that way. I looked at Herb. He seemed impossibly old, from another world. I wanted him to hold me, to break through this web I was weaving around myself, to make us real again.
Gigi went into the house to check on the food. We all sighed at once.
‘Well, this is one odd situation,’ said Sam.
‘Sorry you got roped into it,’ said Herb.
‘I didn’t know it was happening till you drove up,’ said Sam.
‘Listen, it’s a load off my mind,’ said Herb, putting his hand between my shoulder blades.
‘What is?’ asked Sam.
‘You and Gigi.’
‘What? She invited me over to lunch! That’s it!’
‘That’s what you say,’ said Herb, smiling slightly at Sam’s new predicament.
Sam looked over at me appreciatively and shook his head. ‘The mystery girl,’ he said.
Gigi opened the glass doors then and ushered us in. Our repast was laid out on the table like a grim offering to some vengeful god. A severed calf’s head stared out at us mournfully; a leathery suckling pig had its mouth stretched wide, a too-big apple stuffed into it. Between these monstrosities, a bowl of perfectly browned potatoes and glistening salad seemed like no-man’s-land.
‘This lunc
h is in honor of telling it like it is,’ said Gigi, seating Herb to her right, Sam to her left, and me across from her. Herb was on edge now; I could feel it. ‘You know, how we all eat chops and things and we don’t think of the faces, of who gets killed.’
‘It’s lucky no one’s a vegetarian,’ Herb said.
‘In America,’ Gigi said, ‘you are very realistic. I mean to say, grand gestures have no place for you. Here is the truth as I see it. A pig for a cow. A fair exchange.’
‘Who’s who?’ Sam couldn’t help asking.
Gigi shrugged, tears in her eyes.
‘Sorry,’ said Sam, staring into his plate.
‘Let’s just have lunch,’ said Herb in a subdued tone, picking up a carving knife. ‘Who wants pig?’
‘First,’ said Gigi, ‘a toast.’ She raised her wine. Sunlight streamed through the glass wall behind her and glinted off the crystal; a star of light exploded out of her hand. ‘To transformation,’ she said. We all raised our glasses dutifully, drank. Then she opened the little drawer in the table, the secret little drawer where she kept her bell, and took out a shiny, black thing, no bigger than a mouse. It was hard and perfect in the palm of her hand.
‘Gigi,’ said Herb, standing up. ‘Give me that thing.’ He reached out. ‘Give it to me.’ She smiled up at him, a strange smile of satiation, of victory. ‘Isn’t it funny,’ she said, ‘how men always marry women who are easier and easier to dominate, until they end up with an imbecile?’ Sam sat rigid, his face pale with terror. Gigi rested her elbow on the table, her wrist slack, the little black gun dangling in her hand like the droopy head of a fading flower. Then she turned to me. I waited for the bullet. I wondered if it would be in my chest, my head. I saw myself running to the door, shot in the back. Her eyes on mine, she parted her lips as if to speak, and wedged the tiny gun into her mouth. Herb lunged for her, grabbing her shoulder as the shell exploded. As he pulled her toward him, her head dropped to the table, and a fine spray of blood the shape of a huge Japanese fan surged out of her serpentine black hair, spattering him, all of us, like lava shooting out of an angry volcano. The glass behind her was coated ruby red. Herb was bent over his wife as if petrified, his face covered in blood. Alfonsa was screaming, running back and forth senselessly. With horrible slowness, the body slipped from the table, the chair, then flopped bonelessly to the floor.
I turned then and ran out of that bloody glass box, through the French doors, onto the porch, down the rotting wooden stairs, following the narrow path, the branches of the scrub pine snagging my dress like clawing hands. I staggered onto the beach; the sand tripped me up, it felt thick as towels. I flicked my shoes off so I could keep running, the hot sand searing the soles of my feet, and fled into the cool sea. All I remember is wanting to go under, far under, into the darkest, most frigid part of the water, where I could wash the blood off. I think I was screaming; a man came running toward me, a white dog by his side. After I went under, he pulled me to the surface and asked me what had happened as the dog paddled desperately beside me, barking. I couldn’t answer him. What had happened? Was it a suicide, or was it a murder? And if it was a murder, who did it?
Home
A month before the wedding, Herb convinced me to invite my parents. He thought if they weren’t there, the marriage might not seem as real to me. I hadn’t spoken to Suky in years. I had cut her off completely, and, though I thought she was secretly grateful for it, initially I still dreamed that she would find me somehow, turn up at my apartment clear eyed and dope free, ready to go shopping, or out for a milk shake. But it didn’t happen that way. Any news I had from the family came in the form of fact-filled letters from my father, who told me of all the plumbing and boiler repairs, my brothers’ exploits, and other local items of interest. They always ended with ‘Your mother sends you her love.’ This sentence read like a taunt; Suky had made her choice, and she hadn’t chosen me. Kat’s advice, to forget the past, to look ahead, only ahead, turned out to be very effective in the long run. Gradually I stopped crying about my mother. I bled the emotion from her memory until it hung lifeless in my mind, like a pig on a hook in a butcher shop window.
My oldest brother, Chester, called me every now and then to make sure I was all right, and we met in the city occasionally. Sometimes he gave me a little money. After I disappeared, Chester had gone to medical school. He was a doctor now. He still had the somber, disaffected delivery of his youth, but now it made him seem authoritative, a man you could trust. I was surprised to hear his voice when I finally got up the courage to call my parents’ house.
‘She’s in no shape to go to a wedding,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘She’s sick.’
‘Sick how?’
‘It’s complicated.’
Herb and I drove up to Connecticut the next weekend. Des did what he could to discourage me from coming, but now I had to see her. As we drove up to the Green, I noticed that the paint on the house was flaking off. I wondered when my father would have to retire. We rang the bell at the front door, which felt odd; I had never used the front door growing up. But I was a stranger now. Chester came to greet us. I hugged him. Behind him, Des stood, smaller now, it seemed, the pouches under his eyes reddish, his hair gray. He had always been a calm man, but now he seemed resigned. He kissed me on the part of my hair and led me into the living room.
She was sitting on her favorite little armchair, in a quilted pink bed jacket and a dress so big for her it looked like it belonged to someone else. She had shrunk to a sliver of her former size. Always petite, she was tiny now, a wilted little thing with ankles like wrists, her thinning Lucille Ball hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, eyes glittering. She looked like an object to me. My mother was nowhere. Herb was shocked, I could tell. It took a lot to knock the wind out of his general air of removed amusement; Suky did it without trying.
She smiled politely as we walked in. Her teeth had been capped. ‘Would you like some tea, you two?’ It was still that voice, that high, squeaky southern voice, with a slight whistle from the foreign teeth. The twitch in her cheek had become a violent, spastic tug. I felt like running away.
‘I would love some,’ Herb said. He sat on the edge of the sofa and admired Suky’s home. She beamed at him graciously as Chester poured the tea, then trembled uncontrollably as she tried to take a sip. Herb turned to Des and asked him about the real estate prices in the area. Had they gone up? How much? And his parish? Shrinking? Growing. How interesting. They kept that conversation up for about five minutes. Then, there was a pause.
‘I have been very lucky,’ Suky said. ‘I have four wonderful children.’
‘Five, Mom,’ said Chester.
‘Five children,’ said Suky in mock disbelief. ‘What was I thinking?’ Then she chuckled, looking at me, I thought, with a sly expression entirely devoid of warmth. It seemed impossible that she no longer loved me. I had been the passion of her life! Was it possible that I looked as empty of meaning to her as she did to me? Where the hell was she? Where was my mother? I was leaking tears through the whole visit, but no one seemed to notice, and I rubbed them away like itches in the corners of my eyes.
Later, as Des helped her upstairs for her nap, Herb and I stood in the front hall to wave her off, as though she were boarding the Queen Mary. Halfway through her slow ascent, she stopped, her back very straight. Des looked at her expectantly. I knew she would turn around and look at me. She had to. And when she did, a shard of feeling, sharp as glass, cut through her absent stare and pierced my heart. I wanted to run up the stairs and hug her that minute. My muscles began to move. But something stayed me. I couldn’t do it. The moment passed. She turned and made her way up the rest of the stairs, Des holding her wasted arm with the tips of his fingers, as if it were the fine stalk of an orchid.
Back in the living room, I slumped down on the couch, my legs weak. Chester told us in hushed tones that he was injecting her with small amounts of amphetamine combine
d with vitamins every few hours. The injections were keeping her alive at this point. She had been starving herself for years, he said ruefully, shaking his head. I thought about fat Grandma Sally. And about Suky, always standing by the stove eating a cup of rice pudding, never sitting with us at the table for a more than a few minutes. She started taking the drug so she wouldn’t want to eat, so she would have all that energy, so she could be the perfect mother, the perfect wife. Then the drug became her personality. And I had been so mean to her.
I would come back next week, I told myself. I would come back and sit with her and talk about this and that. I would hug her then. I just hadn’t been ready yet. It wasn’t the right time. As it turned out, I was so busy with planning the wedding, I had to put off my visit. I never saw her again. She was dead within a month, found lying on her bed, I am told, a plate of uneaten toast perched on her sunken belly. And now, if I could have one thing, one single thing, I would ask for an afternoon with my mother. I would like to let her know how much she is loved, in spite of everything, because of everything. I would like the chance to be kind.
Novice
My wedding dress was very light pink. I thought of it as white, with one drop of Gigi’s blood in it. In the photographs of our wedding day, I look like a child beside him. We were married in a church. I can still smell the dust in the air, see it swirling in the orange and blue light filtered through the circular stained-glass window behind the cross. I felt like a novice taking my vows. Marrying Herb was a new skin on me, my last chance at goodness. I knew if I fucked this up, I would be fallen forever.
Early Days
In the seven years Gigi had been married to Herb, she had never bothered to change her will; upon her demise, her millions reverted to her parents and their Italian pharmaceutical empire. Herb was both relieved and puzzled to learn this. It would, of course, have been outrageous for him to inherit his spurned wife’s fortune – yet why had she never changed her will? ‘She was always paranoid’ was Herb’s answer. Maybe she’d been right to be.
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee Page 15
