by Sally Mandel
“We don’t really have to do it.”
I shook my head. “I’m gonna have to dive in one of these days. Might as well be near a good beach.”
I slept late and thought up enough delaying tactics so we didn’t leave until after lunch. It was a perfect Saturday afternoon in mid-June. David suggested that I wear a new pale green linen pantsuit and stood surveying me like I was something he might want to buy in a store window.
“Let me braid your hair,” he said.
“Huh?” I said.
He came over and started fussing with it. I could tell he knew what he was doing so I sat down and handed him my comb.
“You’re doing a French braid,” I said. “Does everybody in France get born knowing how to do that?”
He let his hands drop to my shoulders and I could tell by his voice that he’d gone somewhere else.
“David?” I twisted my head to look at him. He had an expression on his face like he was listening to the Schubert Fantaisie in F minor, so sad and beautiful. I couldn’t bear to say anything.
“I used to braid my mother’s hair for her before she went to bed. It wasn’t often that we’d be alone together. Sometimes playing duets when everyone was out. Those were happy times for me…”
Did you ever hear a heart breaking? I knew that was what I was listening to so I turned around in the chair and put my arms around his waist.
“What happened to her, David?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer for a second. “She died,” he said finally. “I had a few precious hours with her long ago, and now she’s dead.”
I held him without speaking until I felt his body kind of stiffen. “No more gloom,” he said. “This is going to be a happy day.”
Phillip was downstairs waiting, and I have to say, David was lighthearted after that, making me sing a medley of trashy pop songs. He was a big Madonna fan, so he joined in on “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl,” which sounded really special in a French accent. We had a good laugh when Phillip closed the partition. But maybe the combination of David’s talking about his mother and then us singing those old tunes made me think about home. Suddenly I was half choking on nostalgia and guilt.
“David, can I ask you a big favor?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think we could stop in Rocky Beach, just for a few minutes?”
He hesitated for a second. “Has something happened?”
“We wouldn’t have to stay long, I promise. Only a couple three minutes.”
“Okay, a couple three,” he said. I’d noticed he was getting kind of peculiar about my sister lately, like when I made my daily call to Angie, he’d stay in the room and pretend not to listen. When I carried on about how smart and beautiful she was, he’d only listen politely without seconding the motion. Last week, I’d reminded her that she was due for her annual visit to the eye doctor to keep track of a muscle weakness she’d had since she was little. When I hung up, he asked me wasn’t Angie old enough to take care of her own medical care. I explained that when I turned ninety-three and Angie was eighty-six, I’d be nagging her to scrub her dentures. With siblings, it just came with the territory and since he didn’t have any, he was clueless. It seemed strange that David got along famously with my parents—even Dutch, go figure—when it was Angie I wanted him to care about. I knew she planned to be home that afternoon and thought I’d throw a rock and kill a few birds: (a) I’d reduce the guilt factor by visiting the old folks; (b) I’d get David to bond with Angie; and (c) I’d reduce the time I had to spend at the Hamptons thing.
When the neighbors saw us drive up in the limo, an audience started gathering on the lawns, like they’d been waiting around for just this moment. I was beginning to get used to that kind of thing, though, and ignored it. As usual, I asked Phillip to come in and as usual, he declined. The excuse was he wanted to smoke half a carton of Camels, but I know he felt awkward hanging out with us. Anyhow, the screen door was locked so I yelled to Mumma. In a few seconds, she came out on the porch, smoothing her hair and fingering the buttons on her blouse like she wasn’t a hundred percent sure they were fastened. Her face was flushed.
I kissed her on the mouth as usual. “Mumma, you look about sixteen,” I said, and that was no bullshit. “You been getting collagen implants?”
She blushed some more and gave me a little shove. David bent to kiss her, too, which I could see pleased her, since the neighbors got an eyeful of Marie Stallone being chummy with the great Montagnier.
“How’s Dutch?” I asked.
“Better. He’s napping but you can talk to him in a little.” More messing with the clothes. “Have some iced tea. My goodness, it’s summer today all of a sudden.”
“Mumma, what’s going on? You’re acting like you’re on something.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “David? I have some delicious chocolate chip cookies.”
“Just what the doctor prescribed,” David said, and sat down easy as you please. Mumma and I smiled at one another and I couldn’t help but think about the last time David had been in this room, and how he’d made that incredible proposition. If you’d told me he was going to get me to perform in Weill Recital Hall without keeling over, I would have told you that your elevator didn’t go to the top floor. And that he would be my true love, lounging at Mumma’s beat-up kitchen table in a pair of black linen slacks and a pale blue T-shirt to die for. My David. I had to speak severely to my impeccable sense of decorum not to go jump on his lap that instant.
“I’ll just take a plate of cookies out to your driver,” Mumma said. “Do you think he’d like some milk to go with them?”
“Jesus, Mumma,” I said. “You’re acting like you’ve OD’d on Donna Reed movies,” I said.
David got up and took the plate from her. “Let me do that. I’ll be right back.”
Mumma and I waited until he got out the door. Then I grinned at her. “So what do you think of my new boyfriend?”
“I guess I knew that would happen.”
“You could sound a little happier about it.” I chewed on a cookie.
“Oh, honey, you know I can’t help worrying. You’re not exactly from the same…”
“Planet?” I finished for her.
“That’s right. And he has the reputation … well, Mrs. Gambelli says she read he was seeing those twin models at the same time…”
“First rule, don’t believe everything you read, and for sure, don’t believe Mrs. Gambelli. Remember when I got carsick in her smelly old car on the way to church and she told you I was pregnant? Was I? Tell the truth.”
“All right. I’m happy if you’re happy.”
“Well, then you’re ecstatic. When’s Angie getting here?”
“She’s already here. She went to the beach with Jake and Pauline.”
There was that quick shifty look to the left that meant she was holding out on me.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing, I was just thinking about Jake and Pauline. You know she’s always had a little crush on him.”
“What have you been smoking?” I asked her.
Mumma’d been filling up another plate. “I’ll just take these cookies in to your father before he sleeps the day away,” Mumma said. “Shall I tell him you’ll be in to see him?”
“Yeah.”
David came back and didn’t seem to notice that my head was spinning around like Linda Blair. “Being married to Dutch has finally done her in. She’s cracked.”
“On the contrary,” David said with a grin.
“Meaning?”
“She had sex before we got here.”
I threw a cookie at him. “Get outa here!”
“Believe me. I recognize the signs.”
I remembered the little button-checking routine at the front door and tried to keep my head from rotating so fast that it flew off my neck and put a hole through the kitchen ceilin
g. Things were seriously out of whack in the Stallone household. “What signs?”
“She’s giving off a scent. I smelled it when I kissed her hello.”
“EE-yew!” I said.
“No, it’s nice, like cinnamon, and very familiar to me.” He was still smiling.
I thought it over. “Don’t tell me like mother, like daughter. That’s too sick.”
“Bess, darling, there’s only one woman I’ve ever known whose skin smells of cinnamon after making love and that’s you.”
“Maybe she’s been cooking?”
He laughed. “I’ll say.”
“Hey, that’s my pure and virginal mother you’re talking about.” But I knew for a fact that she never put cinnamon in her chocolate chip cookies, and it got me thinking. “How could they manage, I mean, with Dutch the way he is?”
He did one of those nonchalant European moves that always made me want to grab him. “Maybe they’re inventive. Besides, she said your father was better.”
“I’d go in there and say hello to Dutch but I’m afraid they may be doing something kinky.”
He got up and took my hand. “Come. I’ll cover your eyes.”
Dutch was lying on the couch with his legs draped over Mumma’s lap. They had a football game on TV with no sound. I went over and gave my father a kiss. He did look better but he sure didn’t look like my father. He was much thinner, and his face wasn’t that bright red square thing anymore. He was wearing a sweater like Mister Rogers.
“Congratulations,” he said to David. “I hear you figured out how to keep Bess from falling on her ass.”
So much for Mister Rogers.
David shook hands with him and said something in Dutch. My father shot something back, and they smiled at each other. I was ready to leave already, but then the front door slammed.
“In the living room!” I shouted.
Angie, Pauline, and Jake came in looking windblown. I hugged everybody, remembering what Mumma had said about Pauline’s feelings for Jake. She was standing real close to him, but they’d always been affectionate. Then I thought about the night I’d talked Jake into doing it with me. Jake would never tell Pauline. Or would he? What if she did care for him, a guy who had fucked her friend who’d done the thumb-to-thumb needle-prick blood ritual with her in fifth grade? Oh, man. The vibes around here were getting to be more than I could handle. I’d already forgotten my goal to get Angie and David to bond.
“So, Pauls, you got a new haircut,” I said, rearranging a strand that was sticking out from the wind.
“Not so new, actually,” she said.
Hm, I thought. It had obviously been too long since we’d shared a brew, or even had a good long blab over the phone.
“Hell, cram a few more people in here and we’ll have a platoon.” Sometimes Dutch liked to pretend he was back in the marines.
“Gracious as always, Dad,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“Let’s retire to the kitchen,” I suggested to Angie.
“Leave David here,” Dutch said. “And your mother.”
“Aye, aye, your dictatorship,” I said. “Got anything you want to ask me before I go?” Like how are you? I have to say, if he and Mumma had been steaming up the place, it sure hadn’t improved his disposition any.
“Nah, I’ll get the scoop from David here.” He pronounced it the European way, which amused me in an annoyed kind of way.
Jake, Angie, Pauline and I trooped off into the kitchen. Jake poured himself a glass of juice from the fridge and sat down in front of the cookies. I was checking Pauline out, looking for telltale signs of romance. Jake looked like his usual self, comfortable in a pair of cutoffs and a beat-up polo shirt. He’d obviously been spending a lot of time outdoors because his face was browned from the sun and his hair had its summer streaks. Angie sat like a little nun with her hands folded neatly in her lap, but Pauline … there was something different, no getting away from it. For one thing, she wasn’t looking me in the eye.
“What’s with you, Stallone?” Jake asked me. “I feel like something on a specimen slide.”
“Just wondering how school is going,” I lied. “It must be tough to switch in midstream.”
“It’s the right direction for me. Even when the professor sucks, I like the material, and I get to go right out into the preserve and use what I learn.”
“Nothing like a paycheck,” Angie said.
“Okay, Ange, you lost me there,” I said.
“They promoted him,” Pauline explained, with a big proud smile. “From volunteer to assistant land steward.”
“That was quick. Good going.” I held out my hand to slap him five. “What do they have you doing?”
“Same stuff as when I was a kid. Yanking out bittersweet, picking up beer cans, trying to figure out where all those jellyfish are coming from. But I get to work with kids, too. Teaching them about clams and waterbirds.”
“He’s so good with them,” Pauline said.
“Pauline brought one of her classes to see the genius at work last week,” Jake explained.
“We learned about the return of the osprey,” Pauline said. Then she shot Jake a look like he was personally responsible for the natural order of the universe. And all this time I had thought David was. Holy shit, maybe Mumma was right.
Just then, Mumma and David showed up, which was just as well because I was about to say something tactful like Are you kidding? This is practically incest already! Instead, there was a little chitchat and everybody walked us to the limo. When we pulled away, I looked back and saw Pauline slip her hand into Jake’s as they started up the sidewalk to the house. She was leaning against him, and I have to say it didn’t look like a brother-sister thing to me.
“Wow,” I whispered under my breath.
“What is it?” David asked.
“Nothing.” You think the puzzle fits together only one way, and suddenly the pieces take on new shapes altogether: I wasn’t ready to think about the possibility of Pauline and Jake as a couple, much less discuss it.
“Your sister was wearing the same outfit as last time we saw her,” David said.
“I told you Angie’s never cared about clothes,” I said.
“She’s such a pretty girl. She could look so much better.”
“You can quit with the clothing allowance, David. She’s only going to keep it in a savings account and give it back to you, which she would do tomorrow if she wasn’t afraid of hurting your feelings.”
“You Stallone girls,” he said. “Your family is fascinating.”
“If you say so,” I said, thinking that’s because he didn’t have one. “What did you talk to my parents about?”
“They wanted to know what’s ahead for you,” David said.
“You mean my mother wanted to know.”
“No, actually, it was Dutch who asked. He seemed concerned about your flying to Europe.”
“It’s the one thing he’s petrified of. Planes. But he doesn’t give a rat’s ass what happens to me.”
“On the contrary.”
“You keep saying that. On the contrary bullshit! You saw how he acted.”
“I don’t understand what that’s about, but he does care.”
I saw there was no point in arguing. I leaned my head back against the soft leather upholstery and thanked my lucky stars that I was out of that asylum. When I started to drift off, I remembered the exchange between David and my father when we’d first got there.
“What did you say to him, anyway? When he congratulated you for fixing me.”
“I said you were the bravest person I had ever met.”
“What did he have to say about that?”
“That you had always been like that and he was sure it came from your mother.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
He crossed his heart. Then I took his fingers and kissed them one by one. “Thanks for dealing with
him.”
“What do I get for it?”
The nice thing about stretch limos is there’s lots of room to move around. I crawled into his lap. “Anything your heart desires or that I can think up,” I said.
We had a button that raised the partition when we needed privacy. The glass was tinted and soundproof, so we were safe getting naked, or at least in this case, I got naked for fear of messing up my new duds. Fortunately, we weren’t pulled over by the constabulary on the L.I.E.—Litter is Everything or Long Island Expressway, depending on how disgusted you are at any given stretch—which is, without a doubt, the ugliest hunk of highway on earth. We would have caused somewhat of a scene, but I felt David deserved a reward for taking Dutch on, and I was beginning to think that if David thought I was so tough, why get freaked out by a bunch of rich dudes in Southampton. Besides, sex was the best way I knew to distract myself, and I was dealing with massive confusion here from our visit to Walnut Avenue. My friends and family were not staying put in their accustomed ruts and I didn’t know what to make of it. But when in doubt, shut up and put out, is my motto. That’s what I did, and in my opinion, it was one of our better trips of many on America’s highways and byways.
Chapter Eleven
I’ve seen big houses in my day, but this one rivaled the Mall of America. It made me feel like I’d grown up in one of those Monopoly game houses, little green ones. I mean, why does a married couple with no kids and a cockroach of a dog need a house as big as the QE2? But hey, this wasn’t my territory so I just took David’s arm in a ladylike fashion and walked up the driveway those forty miles to the entrance. Columns Galore, that’s what they should have called the place. Columns at the doors, columns at the windows, even the little generator shed had columns. I was surprised that the hostess didn’t have columns stuck to either side of her dress. Actually, she was very welcoming, just a pleasant lady with lipstick smears where air kisses had front-ended her cheeks by mistake.
She led us through a humongous hallway and out onto a patio overlooking the Atlantic. I say patio, which sounds like a sweet little porch, but this was a stretch of flagstone that would accommodate the Los Angeles Philharmonic. There were a couple hundred people milling around. A thin cloud cover had snuck across the sky, softening the glare, and on account of some wind in the night, the waves were really giving the shore a pounding. Short of fog or light rain, it was my favorite kind of beach day. What I really wanted to do was toss off my clothes and take a dip. But I could see right away that the theme of this party was Who is Bess Stallone and what’s the scoop between her and David Montagnier? When we walked outside, all those faces swiveled around in unison like they’d been cued. There were a lot of famous people I recognized and a lot more I didn’t. I was pretty fascinated by the breasts on the famous director’s wife. They sat right under her collarbone and were so big she could easily have rested her head on them and grabbed a quick nap.
