He waits for an answer, but Rhett has slipped away, into the darkness. He is alone.
LIKE A BURGLAR, Elliot eases back inside. Still stoned and drunk, he has to hold the wall with one hand for support as he makes his way through the house. Nothing has changed, not really. There are men’s shoes in the den, the smell of foot powder creeping out of them. On the coffee table, an almost empty snifter of brandy, a pipe, a Sail magazine. Elliot finishes off the brandy and with it gets a taste of cherry pipetobacco. He goes from familiar room to familiar room, but sees nothing else out of place.
Upstairs, he hesitates at the guest room door. For years, before he moved out, that was where his father slept. But now, it is the lumps of the Rickey sisters that he sees when he peers inside, frowning against the darkness.
“Hey,” Elliot says in his normal tone of voice.
One of the lumps moves, shifts, but the voice comes from the other one.
“Elliot?” she says.
“How was the bouillabaisse?” he asks.
“I’m allergic,” she says. “To all fish and seafood. If I eat it, I swell and ultimately choke.” She sighs, and Elliot hears her settle back into the pillows and blankets. He does not know which sister she is, but he doesn’t want her to go to sleep.
“I have some great vodka,” he says. “In the backyard.”
“Is that where you’ve been?” she says. Elliot remembers the expressionless tone of this particular Rickey sister; he just doesn’t remember which one possesses it. “Drinking vodka?” she continues, her voice flat.
“Come on,” he says, whispering suddenly.
Even in the dim hall light, seeing her face to face, Elliot does not know which sister this is. Her face has red sleeplines on one side, her hair on that side is slightly matted.
“This Thanksgiving has been awful,” she says as they wander through the quiet house and into the backyard, where Gorbachev’s head leans drunkenly against the back steps.
“Hey,” she says, “we used to have one of those too.”
Elliot tips it forward so she can drink, then drinks more himself. The buzz he had has turned into a dull headache.
“My mother is a mess,” she says with her flat voice. She stretches out on the grass. The air has turned cooler, damp, and her nipples are hard against the white cotton nightgown she wears.
Elliot thinks of books like Wuthering Heights; this Rickey sister on the grass could be a heroine from a novel like that, her hair fanning out around her, all that white. He drinks more, then thrusts his hand beneath her nightgown. She doesn’t have on any underwear, and her pubic hair surprises him. Elliot pulls his hand back.
“Yes,” she says, sitting up and pulling her nightgown over her head. “Let’s do that. Maybe it will help this rotten day.”
But, of course, it doesn’t. While Elliot is on her, his knees digging into the grass and dirt, he thinks he hears sounds from the house. He thinks there is light coming from upstairs, illuminating them, there on the grass, capturing this dispassionate act. And when they are done—finally, Elliot catches himself thinking—when he can finally turn around, he sees that there is a light on, his mother’s bedroom light.
He looks at the Rickey sister beside him, naked on the lawn, crying silently.
“I hate you, you know,” she says. “I hate your whole rotten family.”
Rotten, he thinks. And he thinks of his father and Veronica, of his mother upstairs with Mr. Rickey, of what he himself has just done.
“We were happy, you know,” she continues, crying harder now. Elliot remembers the bouquet on their kitchen table, the note. “Your mother’s a whore. A rotten whore.”
This shocks him. The girl is passionate now, sitting up, trembling.
“Do you know how long she’d been sleeping with my father? Three years. And when he didn’t leave my mother, she went and got herself pregnant so he would.”
Foolishly, Elliot covers himself with his shirt. “What?” he manages.
“My parents fought about her for three years. The way he used to sneak over here to fuck her in the middle of the night—”
“Hey,” Elliot says. “That’s not right.” But somewhere inside him he knows that it is right. All the numbers add up only this way. His mother stretching, naked, waiting for someone. The comments after those Russian parties. The suddenness of all this change. The baby.
“Oh, it’s right, Elliot. It’s right,” she says, struggling to her feet and making her way back to the house, naked.
He does not move. In the light from his mother’s bedroom window, Elliot watches her go, wonders who she is.
VERONICA AND HIS father are arguing about worms and how they reproduce. His father has bought an entire series of educational videos on animal sex. Elliot remembers the Rickey girl beneath him last night and feels nauseated.