Laura could hear the tinkling of keys on the piano as she took her place at the end of the bar. She rested her cane against the wall. Her hand was reliably steady as she found the pack of Marlboros in her purse. There was a box of matches on top of the glass ashtray. The flash of nicotine catching fire soothed her jangling nerves.
The bartender came through the swinging door. He was stout and starched with a white apron wrapped around his thick waist. “Madam?”
“Gin and tonic,” she said, her voice soft, because the cacophonous notes from the piano had turned into a familiar melody; not Rossini or even, given the locale, Edvard Grieg, but a slow tune that escalated into a familiar verve.
Laura smiled as she blew out a plume of smoke.
She recognized the song from the radio. A-ha, the Norwegian singing group with the funny cartoon video. “Take On Me” or “Take Me On” or some variation of those words repeated ad nauseam over a relentlessly chirpy electric keyboard.
When Laura’s daughter was still alive, the same type of candy synthpop had recurrently blared from Lila’s record player or Walkman or even her mouth while she was in the shower. Every car trip, no matter how short, began with her daughter tuning the radio dial to The Quake. Laura was not shy with her daughter when she explained why the silly songs grated on her nerves. The Beatles. The Stones. James Brown. Stevie Wonder. Those were artists.
Laura had never felt so old as when Lila had made her watch a Madonna video on MTV. The only semi-positive comment Laura could muster was, “What a bold choice to wear her underwear on the outside.”
Laura retrieved a pack of tissues from her purse and wiped her eyes.
“Madam.” The bartender pronounced the word as an apology, gently placing her drink on a cocktail napkin.
“May I join you?”
Laura was stunned to find Jane Queller suddenly at her elbow. Andrew’s sister was a complete stranger and meant to stay that way. Laura struggled to keep the recognition out of her expression. She had only ever seen the girl in photographs or from a great distance. Up close, she looked younger than her twenty-three years. Her voice, too, was deeper than Laura had imagined.
Jane said, “Please forgive the interruption.” She had seen Laura’s tears. “I was just sitting over there wondering if it’s too early to drink alone.”
Laura quickly recovered. “I think it is. Won’t you join me?”
Jane hesitated. “You’re sure?”
“I insist.”
Jane sat, nodding for the same from the bartender. “I’m Jane Queller. I think I saw you talking to my brother, Andrew.”
“Alex Maplecroft.” For the first time in this entire enterprise, Laura regretted a lie. “I’m on a panel with your father in”—she checked the clock on the wall—“forty-five minutes.”
Jane worked artlessly to mask her reaction to the news. Her eyes, as was so often the case, went to Laura’s hairline. “Your photo wasn’t in the conference directory.”
“I’m not much for photographs.” Laura had heard Alex Maplecroft say the same thing at a lecture in San Francisco. Along with shortening her first name, the doctor felt hiding the fact of her womanhood was the only way to make sure that her work was taken seriously.
Jane asked, “Has Father ever met you in person?”
Laura found the phrasing odd—not asking if she’d met Martin Queller, but whether or not Martin Queller had met her. “No, not that I can recall.”
“I think I’ll actually enjoy attending one of the old man’s panels, then.” Jane picked up her glass as soon as the bartender set it down. “I’m sure you’re aware of his reputation.”
“I am.” Laura raised her own glass in a toast. “Any advice?”
Jane’s nose wrinkled in thought. “Don’t listen to the first five words he says to you, because none of them will make you feel good about yourself.”
“Is that a general rule?”
“It’s carved into the family coat of arms.”
“Is that before or after the ‘arbeit macht frei’?”
Jane choked out a laugh, spitting gin and tonic onto the bar. She used the cocktail napkin to wipe up the mess. Her long, elegant fingers looked incongruous to the task. “Could I bum one off you?”
She meant the cigarettes. Laura slid the pack over, but warned, “They’ll kill you.”
“Yes, that’s what Dr. Koop tells us.” Jane held the cigarette between her lips. She picked open the box of matches, but ended up scattering them across the bar. “God. I’m so sorry.” Jane looked like a self-conscious child as she gathered the matches. “Clumsy Jinx strikes again.”
The phrase had a practiced tone. Laura could imagine Martin Queller had found unique and precise ways to remind his children that they would never be perfect.
“Madam?” The bartender had appeared with a light.
“Thank you.” Rather than cup her hands to his, Jane leaned toward the match. She inhaled deeply, her eyes closed like a cat enjoying a sunbeam. When she found Laura watching, she laughed out puffs of smoke. “Sorry, I’ve been in Europe for three months. It’s good to have an American cigarette.”
“I thought all of you young expats enjoyed smoking Gauloises and arguing about Camus and the tragedy of the human condition?”
“If only.” Jane coughed out another cloud of dark smoke.
Laura felt a sudden maternal rush toward the girl. She wanted to snatch the cigarette from her hand, but she knew the gesture would be pointless. At twenty-three, Laura had been desperate for the years to come more quickly, to firmly step into her adulthood, to establish herself, to become someone. She had not yet felt the desire to claw back time as you would a piece of wet muslin clinging to your face; that one day her back might ache as she climbed the stairs, that her stomach could sag from childbirth, that her spine might become misshapen from a cancerous tumor.
“Disagree with him.” Jane held the cigarette between her thumb and forefinger, the same way as her brother. “That’s my advice to you on Father. He can’t stomach people contradicting him.”
“I’ve staked my reputation on contradicting him.”
“I hope you’re prepared for battle.” She indicated the conference buzzing outside the barroom door. “Was it Jonah or Daniel who was in the lion’s den?”
“Jonah was in the belly of a whale. Daniel was in the lions’ den.”
“Yes, of course. God sent an angel to close the lions’ mouths.”
“Is your father really that bad?” Laura realized too late the pointedness of her question. All three Queller children had found their own particular way to live in their father’s shadow.
Jane said, “I’m sure you can hold your own against the Mighty Martin. You weren’t invited here on a whim. Just keep in mind that once he’s locked onto something, he won’t back down. All or none is the Queller way.” She didn’t seem to expect a reply. Her eyes kept finding the mirror behind the bar as she scanned the empty room. Here was the octopus from the lobby, the one who was desperately in search of something, anything, that would render her whole.
Laura asked, “You’re Martin’s youngest?”
“Yes, then Andrew, then there’s our older brother, Jasper. He’s given up glory in the Air Force to join the family business.”
“Economic advisory?”
“Oh, God, no. The money-making side. We’re all terribly proud of him.”
Laura disregarded the sarcasm. She knew full well the details of Jasper Queller’s ascendancy. “Was that you just now on the piano?”
Jane offered a self-deprecating eye-roll. “Grieg seemed too aphoristic.”
“I saw you play once.” The shock of truthfulness brought an image to Laura’s mind: Jinx Queller at the piano, the entire audience held rapt as her hands floated across the keyboard. Squaring that remarkably confident performer with the anxious young girl beside her—the nails bitten to the quick, the furtive glances at the mirror—was an unwieldy task.
Laura asked, “You don’t go by Jinx anymore?”
Another eye-roll. “An unfortunate cross I bore from my childhood.”