PART VIII
THE LIVING ROOM
MINNA
Normally Minna felt calmer after sex, empty, like the world after a blizzard—almost as if she didn’t exist at all. But tonight she was full of a deep ache. He had been awful—Gary, Jerry, whatever his name was—but they were all awful, and she knew the ache wasn’t physical. It was in her teeth and hair and breathing. It was the ache of something breaking apart, the covering of ice that she depended on, the layers of snow that kept her true self buried deep underground, warm, protected.
Toadie, Danny, still hadn’t called her back. She must have left him fifteen messages by now, apologizing, then joking, then apologizing again. Nothing. She couldn’t have said why it was so important. She was plagued by the continuous sense that she had forgotten something, had failed to do something critical. She triple-checked the arrangements for the memorial service. She imagined she heard Amy shouting, worried she’d forgotten to make her lunch, or give her a bath or her vitamins. Minna signed on to check her bank accounts twice a day, worried that her emergency savings had evaporated—not that she had much of anything to begin with. She set down her sunglasses and instantly forgot where she put them. She turned her phone on and off, and even had her mother send her a text to make sure her messages were working.
But the nagging feeling persisted. Something was wrong. Something was missing.
She’d been taking too much Valium—she was nearly out. She shook one of the remaining pills into her palm and swallowed it down with a sip of red wine. Vintage Bordeaux. The good stuff. The house was stocked: trays of cold cuts, carefully wrapped under thin films of plastic; bottles of gin and whiskey and vodka, arranged in neat rows in the dining room; platters of crescent-shaped cookies and sweaty-looking cubes of cheese; tinfoil trays of lasagna.
And cards—cards addressed in handwriting Minna didn’t recognize, sent from people she didn’t know, all bearing the same combination of words, sorry, and loss, and grieving, all words that seemed by now to her foreign and meaningless, almost inappropriate. She wanted it over and done. She wanted to get home. She thought she would fire Dr. Upshaw, her therapist, or break up with her, or whatever you did with shrinks.
There had been no healing, no demons laid to rest. There had been two bad fucks, a failed kiss, and a fire.
She felt no closer to her father, and even further from her mom and brother.
It was after eleven p.m. by the time Minna finished organizing the flower arrangements, mopping the floors, counting folding chairs, setting up the guest book, and threading a chain across the stairs to prevent guests from accessing the upper floors. She checked in on Amy for the fifth time—she was asleep, bundled in a sleeping bag on the floor of the now-empty study, her hair, still wet from her bath, scattered over the pillow. She’d been thrilled when Minna had told her they would have to camp downstairs for a bit. The upstairs bedrooms still reeked of smoke, and leaks came through the ceilings, where blackened holes and cracks as thick as a finger had appeared.
Trenton had set up in the basement—Minna didn’t know how he could stand it, and knew he was only proving a point, to get as far from Minna and their mom as possible. So much the better. She didn’t trust him. There was something different about him since the accident, a look, a way of speaking, a desperateness she couldn’t identify, and it was only getting worse. Her mom wouldn’t see it. She never did. But he needed help.
They all needed help.
She went through the house, shutting off lights. Downstairs, she heard the muffled sounds of explosions—Trenton was probably playing that video game he liked, the one where you got points for shooting librarians and policemen. She closed the basement door firmly without bothering to call down to him, and the sounds of gunfire were silenced.
The smell of smoke was still following her. She kept imagining flames behind every closed door, smoke billowing down the staircase.
She wouldn’t take another Valium. Not yet, when she had so few left.
In the living room, she switched on a lamp and almost screamed. Her mom was sitting in an armchair in the corner, totally still, in front of a bottle of Jameson.
“Jesus Christ, Mom.” Her heart was racing. “What are you doing?” She registered that her mom had been sitting in the dark, apparently for a long time. Her eyes were very red. When Caroline brought a cigarette to her lips, Minna saw she was shaking. “You don’t even smoke.”
“I smoke sometimes,” Caroline said, and she flicked her ashes inexpertly into a heavy crystal tumbler Minna had set out earlier for guests of the memorial, which was posed next to the bottle on a leather ottoman. Caroline had poured her whiskey into one of the tall water glasses, no ice.
“No, you don’t,” Minna said, crossing the room to haul open the window. No wonder she had smelled smoke. “And you don’t drink whiskey, either.” Her mother stuck to vodka—colorless, odorless, like a South American poison in an old murder mystery that kills before anyone realizes it’s been administered.
“Tonight calls for whiskey,” Caroline said and tipped a little more into her glass. “Do you want some?”
“No,” Minna said automatically. The wind smelled like wild heather and rain—a sweet smell that brought back a memory of getting caught in a downpour with her dad outside the supermarket; how they’d run together, laughing, sloshing through puddles that had sprung up in a moment, how the paper bags had gotten soaked through, collapsed, and they’d scattered groceries as they ran. She was tired. And she did want a drink. Badly. She turned away from the window. “Yes. I’ll get a glass.”
She returned to the dining room and took a tumbler from the sideboard—then, thinking better of it, she grabbed one of the tall glasses and used the tumbler instead for retrieving ice from the freezer. When she got back to the living room, her mom had lit another cigarette.
Minna sat down on the floor next to the ottoman. Her thighs ached, and her breasts from where Gary, or Jerry, had mauled them. But sitting cross-legged, barefoot, in front of her mom made her feel like a kid again and reminded her of childhood Christmases. There had been plenty of Christmases out in California, when they’d gone to church in sandals and T-shirts, opening presents while palm trees hailed them from outside. But nothing compared to the Christmases in Coral River, when the world was blotted out by white, and Trenton toddled through layers of discarded wrapping paper like an explorer fording a river.
The whiskey tasted awful, but left a good feeling in her stomach: a slow spread of warmth, a flushed feeling, like when someone really good-looking leaned in and touched your lower back. It had been a long time since she’d felt that way when a man touched her.
Maybe it had been forever.
They drank in silence for a bit. Minna’s head began to feel pleasant and clouded.
“I was thinking about your father,” Caroline said, out of nowhere. She was staring out the window. “I was thinking of what I would say tomorrow.”
“Tell the truth,” Minna says.
“How can I?” she said. “He was a cheater. And a liar. He was selfish.” She shook her head. “But there were times . . . I do think he loved us. He did love us, in his way. As much as he could. I’m sure of it.” Her voice broke.
Minna said nothing. She wasn’t sure of it and had never been. Her throat was tight, and it was difficult to get the whiskey down.
“He was so proud of you.” Caroline’s words were getting slurry. “You and Trenton. When the accident happened . . . I couldn’t even tell your father. He was already sick. It would have broken his heart.”
“I doubt it,” Minna said. She reached back through the cloud, through the fog, trying to resurrect memories of her father; but instead she kept picturing Mr. Hansley, and his wrinkled chino pants, and his soft voice whispering in her ear—“That’s it, Minna. Just like that. Beautiful,” as he rocked his erection against her back, and she sat stiff and terrified, moving nothing but her hands—playing Chopin’s étude in C Major, Bach’s Concerto no. 7, as though she could escape up and out through the music.