With Friends Like These...

by Gillian Roberts

  My mother knocked on the door frame. The figure at the sink didn’t budge.

  My mother moved closer. “Excuse me,” she trilled like dowagers in Thirties movies. “Hate to bother you, but—”

  The dishwasher remained with back to us, but turned off the water. I heard humming and a shh-bump beat, which I traced to small earphones attached to a yellow Walkman sitting on the windowsill.

  “—I had a large tin messengered here today—” my mother continued.

  “Can’t hear you,” I said.

  My mother opened a few throttles in her throat. “I wonder,” she bellowed, “whether they arrived and whether they’re being refrigerated and—”

  “Mom, don’t shout! There are earplugs in—”

  Of course my mother didn’t hear me. She was shouting too loudly. “Some of them have cream,” she bellowed. “They could go bad!”

  Smack in the middle of this last nonexchange, the person at the sink chose to remove the plugs and turn around. She—because it was now clear the round figure was female and not a man with glandular problems—opened her eyes and mouth extra wide, and screamed.

  I couldn’t blame her, really. There was a strange woman shouting at her, after all.

  She put a hand to her chest. Below the turquoise bandanna tied around her hair, her skin looked blanched with fear, and a spray of freckles on her cheeks stood out like gold sequins.

  “Why are you screaming?” My mother sounded truly baffled by the girl’s excesses.

  The young woman closed her mouth and swallowed whatever noisemaking might have been left. “Sorry,” she said, which seemed pretty inappropriate to me since she had done nothing but be frightened. Further proof of my mother’s powers.

  “I was saying that I messengered a tin today. For Mr. Zacharias. But—”

  The kitchen door swung again and a voice demanded information even before its owner was fully in the room. “Whatever is going on here? We have guests! What kind of place is this? Who screamed? Who are all of you? Why aren’t you wearing aprons?” This was barked out in the surprisingly strong voice of a woman who looked as if her face had been cross-hatched before it was put in to rise. Small eyes under baggy, crepey overhangs inspected the three of us. “Well?” she demanded. “Answer me.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the dishwasher said. “I screamed because I was startled.”

  The old woman hmmphed, as if that were a suspect alibi. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Lizzie, ma’am.”

  We were in a time warp, back to The Boarding House’s roots by way of Dickens. The steamy kitchen, the imperious old woman, and Lizzie, the cowering kitchenmaid. Surely, a little lame boy in a cap would soon hobble in.

  “You work here?” the old woman asked.

  “Yes’m. Catering. Food preparation.” Her turquoise bandanna slipped forward, down onto her forehead, and she pulled it off. Frizzy carrot-colored hair sprang free.

  “What about you?” The old woman now faced me, hooded eyes like a bird of prey’s. “Where’s your apron? What’s your name?”

  “My—I—” I sounded just like Lizzie. “Pepper. Mandy. I don’t work here, I’m one of the…” But I wasn’t really one of the guests. I spluttered a few more words but my mouth couldn’t work properly while my mind was stuck on the really relevant issue: was I so inappropriately dressed that I looked like a waitress or the kitchen staff instead of a partygoer?

  “Sorry for the noise,” my mother told the old woman. “Hope it didn’t upset anybody out there, but it was all my fault. I scared her. Not on purpose, of course.”

  “I know you,” the old woman told my mother. She cranked her head in my direction, like a wrinkled hawk, then swiveled it back to my mother. “You a Pepper, too? I once knew a family of Peppers. Way back.”

  “Aunt Hattie,” my mother said. “I should have recognized you. Mandy, this is Lyle’s aunt, Hattie Zacharias.” I smiled and shook her hand. It was dry and brittle, all bird bones.

  Aunt Hattie redirected her glare at Lizzie. “You another of them? Another Pepper? You look familiar, too.” She squinted and turned her head to view Lizzie sideways.

  Lizzie shook her head. “My name’s Chapman,” she said. “My dad and I own this place. I’m the one who talked with you on the phone, Miss Zacharias. About the reservations and menu and all.” She grinned, showing broad teeth with a wide gap between the front two.

  “I was trying to find out about the tarts I sent over. I baked fifty of them for Lyle,” my mother told Aunt Hattie, who nodded, as if that degree of homage were only to be expected. “Couldn’t think of what else he could possibly want or need.” She laughed nervously, still worried about her gift. “They probably need to be refrig—” At what seemed the same moment, we all saw the enormous tin with its funereal silver on black Over the Hill motto and we gravitated toward it.

  On top, a taped-on oversized tag said: FOR LYLE’S OLD TASTEBUDS ONLY. NO SHARING THIS TIME.

  My mother carefully lifted the lid to inspect the contents. “Oh, dear,” she said.

  “Something’s gone bad?”

  “That messenger must have jostled it. Some of the edges are cracked.” She tsked and shook her head and pursed her mouth, waiting.

  “They’re beautiful, Mom.”

  “Better than anybody in my class at culinary school could have done,” Lizzie said. “They look ready for a photo spread.” My mother was visibly heartened by praise from a professional.

  “Do you think they should go into the—”

  “There’s really no room just now,” Lizzie said. “Later, for sure, after dinner. Meanwhile, if you’d like, I can put them outside. There’s a small overhang and I think the tin would stay dry, although the rain’s awfully strong.”

  “Flash floods in Paoli,” my mother said. “We’d better keep it inside.”

  “You here, Aunt Hat?” Once again the voice preceded the actual entry. Maybe it was a genetic trait in that family.

  The tall man who entered was nothing at all like what I’d expected. I’d anticipated a similarity with his friends in the front parlor, an effortless slickness. Styled hair, silk suit.

  But what I saw was a man who looked as if he’d been working hard to smooth down his rough edges. Lyle Zacharias was completely bald, which made his black, piercing eyes beneath heavy brows even more compelling. His smile was charming, complicated, and half hidden in a thick beard. He looked as if his dark hair had fallen down inside his skull and was exiting via his chin.

  He didn’t belong with his friends in the front parlor. He didn’t belong anywhere I could think of.

  A pirate, I decided. A pirate pretending to be one of us. I was sure that when he undressed at night, he put on the eyepatch and the peg leg.

  I felt queasy—repelled and attracted and, for the first time, not sorry I’d wound up here…at the pirate’s party.

  Three

  “WHOOPS,” LYLE SAID upon seeing our little group. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Just looking for—oh, there you are.” He raised his hand in greeting to his aunt.

  Lizzie was truly weird when it came to authority figures. The second Lyle appeared, she relapsed into her obsequious servant mode, backing away as if to make herself invisible. She looked even more Dickensian and wretched than she had with Hattie—almost disoriented by a groveling fear. Perhaps we were too much for her, barging in, interrupting her schedule, but how odd for someone in the hotel business. Of course, cooks are probably unused to an audience.

  “We must be in your way,” I said. “Maybe we should…”

  She didn’t seem to hear. She continued to stare at Lyle Zacharias with an expression of frozen panic.

  “My birthday boy!” Hattie said.

  “Lyle,” my mother said softly. “You haven’t changed a bit in twenty years.”

  He winked at my mother. “Going bald in my twenties helped a lot. I looked old when I wasn’t, and that’s the bad news. But then I looked the same way forever. And that’s su
pposed to be the good news.”

  “I guess you don’t remember me,” my mother said.

  “But I do. Give me a second. Never forget a face—it’s just the name that’s slipped…old age, you know.”

  I steeled myself for a rash of geriatric jokes.

  “Oh, Lyle,” my mother said. “You really are just the same.” I was sure he didn’t recognize her, but she eternally believes the best—thereby fitting the definition of bleeding heart do-gooder and sucker. Now she believed Lyle, and the idea that she was memorable was audibly thrilling her. You could hear the smile cradling her words, her joy in not being forgotten.

  “Okay,” Lyle said. “I’ve got it.” He lifted his hand to his eye, index finger pointed in the manner of a gun. “Your name is—”

  Lizzie inhaled forcibly. The sound was a combination sob and gasp.

  Lyle looked at her quizzically, as did my mother and I. “Is something wrong?” I asked stupidly. Of course something was out of kilter, even if it was no more than a breathing difficulty or a serious tic.

  But she was less sure than I. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know why, but I—I—” She sounded scared, and near tears, and her eyes remained wide and wild. She made a soft moan.

  This was more than overawe of authority or a minor physiological problem. Something was profoundly awry. Something was also profoundly touching about her confusion and vulnerability. She reminded me of the adolescents I teach—seemed one of them, in fact, even though she had probably been out of high school for half a decade or more.

  Lyle didn’t seem to notice the cook’s confusion. His concentration was focused on my mother. And then he pointed his index finger again and said, “Bea Pepper, as I live and breathe!”

  I had been wrong about him, unduly suspicious and cynical. The old pirate actually remembered my mother.

  Bea gurgled and babbled and launched into a long tale about my father’s accident, which, of course, highlighted my uninvited, second-string status. I tried to melt into the black and white floor tiles, although our host immediately made hospitable sounds. “Of course any daughter of yours is welcome here! Don’t be silly.” He was so effusive, I was sure he was faking the emotion.

  My mother pulled over a wire-backed chair and sat down next to the black and silver tin, gesturing to everybody to find seats, but no one else was as much of a settle-in-the-kitchen kind of partier as she. “I baked you tarts, Lyle,” she said. “Fifty of them. All different flavors, all special, the way you used to like them.”

  “Now, Bea,” he said, “that’s not fair! I’m an old man now! I have to count calories and fat grams. I have to practice Olympic level self-control, and now—my favorite food in the world, Bea’s tarts—how could you do this to me?” His tone and expression belied his words. He smiled broadly, white teeth dramatic against his black beard. “Tell me you aren’t tempting me with the one with the macadamias and peaches.”

  My mother’s expression was the very definition of bliss. Even I was impressed by his memory—or by his taste buds.

  “I certainly am.” My mother’s voice was love-struck. “But I never thought you’d remember.”

  “Unfortunately for my waistline, I remember it all too well.”

  “You’ll only turn fifty once. Enjoy yourself, and don’t you give them away to anybody.” My mother sounded flirtatious. Maybe that’s why my father disliked Lyle Zacharias. “In fact, why don’t you sample one now, while nobody’s watching?” She grabbed a wooden spoon from a large crockery container and used its handle to push a bit of whipped cream off a tart. “Look at that—I found it right away,” she said. “I remember putting it in and thinking this was your very favorite. Peach and macadamia. Try it.” She found a clear glass plate and put the tart on it and then, for good measure, added a second, and held the dish out to Lyle.

  He shook his head. “Not a chance tonight. I’m really counting calories, aren’t I, Aunt Hattie?”

  Hattie viewed him as if he were a work of art. “When Lyle says something, believe him. I always do, because he always really means it,” she said. “Since he was a child.”

  “Have to lose a couple or ten pounds,” he said. “Tonight—a little birthday cake, for sentiment’s sake, but that’s all.”

  Hattie seemed inappropriately proud of him for this self-control. My mother stared at the glass plate with the tarts. I knew she was silently deciding whether to be happy about Lyle’s praise or depressed about his diet.

  While she pondered, the swinging doors opened with less fanfare than they had before. This time the newcomer checked out the room before speaking.

  She looked like a woman who enjoyed entrances and made sure her audience shared the thrill. She was voluptuous, barely covered with something sequined, and she had a perfect-featured, vacant face, like the Draw Me girls who used to be inside match covers. I think I’m being objective and not speaking out of jealousy. I honestly think so, even though her body was as symmetrical and perfect as her face, only more clever-looking. I put her age at mid-twenties.

  “Lyle,” she said, in a little-girl whine. “There you are. It’s just so annoying, Lyle.”

  “What’s up, Tiff?” He didn’t rush to her side, although surely most men would have.

  “It’s not a suite. It’s not even an inside room, and I can’t be a hostess and negotiate with the staff here. I can’t even find the staff.” She stuck out her bottom lip in a pout. It was a facial expression seldom seen past the age of two. Somebody must have told her she looked cute when she was angry. Actually, she did, so who cared about age-appropriate behavior?

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lyle said. “Any room will be fine.”

  “But it’s your party,” Hattie said. “You deserve what you wanted.”

  “I knew we shouldn’t have it at a rinky-dink place like this,” Tiff said. “Didn’t I say so?”

  “Indeed you did. Countless times.” Lyle wore a patient, semi-amused smile, giving the impression he was quite used to small tempests and riffs. Maybe she had the nickname because she was always involved in a tiff.

  “Nostalgia!” Tiff exclaimed. “Ye gads! What’s so great about nostalgia? I looked across the street at where you lived. It was a great place to leave, if you want to know the truth. Why you wanted to come back beats me.”

  “My wife, Tiffany,” Lyle said with great calm. “Tiffany, this is Bea Pepper, a friend from a time when I was your age. And her daughter, Amanda.”

  Lizzie didn’t count and wasn’t counted. Kitchen help, scullery maid, no more. Maybe all of us had slid back to other times, other systems.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Tiffany said. But her eyes flicked over our faces with subminimal interest, and moved on until they noticed a tall copper stock pot. “You know what? Maybe I’d have fun in a store like this. Kitchen stuff. Lots of copper.”

  Hattie Zacharias rolled her eyes. “It’s easier when you know how to cook.” Her voice was low, but audible.

  “A fun place,” Tiffany said. “You know, guest chefs, demos… Either that or an exercise salon—upscale, kicky, don’t you think? But something. Something stimulating before I just go…”

  I wondered why she had chosen this time and this kitchen to request career counseling. I suspected that when and if neurons triggered within Tiffany’s brain, Tiffany’s mouth reported the results, no matter how irrelevant or inappropriate.

  “I’ll take care of the room,” Hattie told her. “Don’t worry about it anymore. Don’t worry about future jobs or hobbies, either. Why don’t you go back to being a hostess instead?”

  Tiffany shrugged, but it wasn’t the sort of inconsequential action I might have performed. It was a pneumatic rise and fall of perfectly sculpted shoulders which also managed to heighten awareness of her cleavage. Quite involved and amazing. “I forgot to tell you.” Her voice was flat now. “Reed’s here.”

  “I’ll be right along,” Lyle said. “He’ll need attention. It’s rough being fourteen at a
fifty-year-old’s birthday.” He stood up and moved closer to her.

  “He doesn’t belong at a grown-up party. It’s too”—she searched for a word—“grown up for a kid.”

  “He’s my son! Surely, you—”

  “Really, Lyle.” Once again she sounded like an aggrieved infant. “I’ve got my hands full with the real guests. Please don’t ask me to babysit, too. Besides, his mother is with him. Surprise, surprise.”

  He spoke to her quietly and, he probably thought, privately; but my mother and I and even Aunt Hattie were all openly eavesdropping. “You must have known I’d invite her,” he told his wife. “For Reed, and also because she’s a part of my life.”

  “Nostalgia again!” Tiffany snapped. Then, seemingly self-conscious for the first time, she lowered her voice. But by now every cilia in my ear was on red alert, stretched for maximum listening power. “All this looking back—this crummy hotel, this insane idea about quitting your job and New York and my whole life—I think you’re going crazy! It’s like the magazines say, the men go through a mid-life crazies! But why should I have to—”

  “Tiff,” he said, softly. “Let up. Go on out and have fun. You love parties, and this will be a good one.”

  Tiffany switched gears with a blink of her lush eyelashes. “She’s impossible,” Tiffany hissed. “And she hates me and poisons him against me and she doesn’t discipline him at all.”

  “Please. Not tonight. Not here.”

  His baby-wife stared at him with her vacant turquoise eyes. Then she reached some decision, executed another of those incredible slow-motion shrugs, turned, and slithered out of the room.

  It didn’t sound as if picking wives was one of Lyle’s talents. His choice of trophy wife put him very low on the Mandy scale. Look at a man’s woman, and you look at his soul, and sometimes, to your embarrassment, at his secret needs and preferences.

  But I’m not jealous. Honestly.