Magnificence A Novel

5


First she thought she’d have the housewarming catered, for ease and novelty. She’d never thrown a catered party and this occasion was ceremonial: an end, a start again. But then she decided to invite Steven and his son, who wanted to contest the will. She didn’t want to see them, of course; it was a purely diplomatic move, a hope that sociability would sway them. To that end she decided a caterer was out of the question: at the sight of such pretension, or at least such disposable income, the cousins might well descend upon her in fury.

So she called a cleaning crew to mop and vacuum and dust the mounts; she placed strategic vases of flowers. She enlisted Casey’s help with the groceries and they bought prepared foods in plastic trays, frozen appetizers in cardboard boxes from Costco. In the unlikely event that Steven and Tommy mistook the hummus and dips for gourmet fare, she planned to leave the empty containers, with price tags showing, piled on the kitchen counter. The slovenliness of the gesture would irritate her, but she was nervous enough for petty schemes. Would it make a difference to them? No doubt it would not: but it made a difference to her. She couldn’t help herself.

She invited a couple of women she liked from the old neighborhood and some teaching friends from way back. Casey invited friends of her own, some of whom were in chairs—the big house was finally equipped with ramps, rails and door retrofits—calculating that their presence might make the gathering more sympathetic. “That a*shole Steven,” she said, as she watched Susan take a tray of small crab cakes out of the oven, “if he sees how you’re basically a halfway house for cripples here, how can he sue you then?”

“I think you overestimate Steven.”

“Oh, and you know who else I invited?”

“Who? Oh no. Wait, don’t tell me,” said Susan. “Sal.”

But she was secretly pleased. Sal was her favorite of Casey’s ex-boyfriends because he was a spectacle; Sal could be counted on to misspeak and offend. There was the possibility he should be kept from the cousins, but on the other hand, not unlike them, he was a blunt instrument.

“Who else?”

“Nancy. Plus she’s bringing Addison, but he’s a walker. And then there’s Rosie. You remember her, the one at UCLA? With the MS?”

Susan looked across the island. There were no shadows under her daughter’s eyes anymore, no purple crescents. Her insomnia must be gone, she must be sleeping again . . . but the guests, she thought: the list was familiar. It was the guest list from Casey’s last dinner party, from the night before Hal flew out of the country. The last night they ever saw him. The last night anyone did, or at least anyone she knew, anyone here. Except T., of course, who had walked with him in the tropics, talked to him, sat with him in a shallow rowboat.

She would ask T. She had to. This flashed across her mind now though it had never flashed before, there had been no previous flash. She had these blind spots, since the death, these failures to inquire. She would ask him how it had been.

He had seen Hal long after she last saw him, had known that other Hal, whom she had only talked to by telephone. That man altered unknowably by his destination, a high arc toward disappearance, long gone from them and frozen in time before dying—somehow committed to that death, alone in the tropics. She saw him looking out to sea. She put him there, on a beach she’d never seen. He stood there eternally, looking to the horizon, one hand raised to shield his eyes from brightness. Sun on his face, wind-scalloped waves.

The white, white, white, white sand.

“And some others,” Casey was saying. “But those are the only gimps. Four of us, in total. What can I say, I had to call in some favors so we could make a strong showing. You know: I don’t have an unlimited supply of wheelchair buddies. There’s no spigot. There’s just the ones from the support group, that’s it.”

“Who else?” asked Susan, but she was distracted and forgot to listen.

Now she had an idea of tropical islands and death. She was in the grip of a memory, the gentle trade winds stirring the palm trees and then the stillness and the wavering heat. The stasis of an island in the middle of the sea. As a child she had gone to a cut-rate Caribbean resort on a family vacation; her parents ate jerked pork and drank frozen drinks, but all she did was snorkel all day long a few feet off the beach. She had a sunburn on her back in the shape of an X, her swimsuit straps. It was the island of St. Lucia.

She remembered the sound of thatch rustling on the palapas in the breeze that came off the water, that swept up her legs and arms and made her feel borne aloft. For years her most treasured memory had been of this feathery caress of the trade winds—a wistful memory that tried to capture the longing carried on that breeze. But now, she thought, the question was answered. Those pillowing winds whose touch had been a signal she would only receive long afterward, far in the future when the salt air of the ocean was gone. The smoothness of her skin gone too, the clearness of her eyes, the girlish hopes, who knew what they had been—to be unique, probably, beautiful or loved by masses of humanity. No doubt some kind of yearning; all young girls did was yearn.

That hush, that light stillness were ominous, had the quiet of an expectant pause. One day the tropics would bring her someone else’s death. The lull, the sough, the doldrums—sailors had called them that, those equatorial calms that could be dangerous when stronger winds were needed to push their sailing ships—the trade winds blew like a soft dream of dying. Even the fragrant trees with their long names, their showy red blooms—flamboyant. That was the name of the tree that grew all over the Caribbean, planted on the resorts but native to somewhere else, a distant and vast continent, Australia or India, who could recall, and the locals said it like this, in their Jamaican patois: flom-boy-on . . . red flowers in the trees.

Possibly it was apprehension, fear of Steven and Tommy and their designs on her windfall, but she was in an unsteady place. From moment to moment her mood could change: a bitter taste rose in her throat and she felt herself falling into remorse. Morbidity shadowed her and she shrank from the knife—felt she was Hal, or imprisoned in Hal’s body, and had a premonition of stabbing, a phantom pain in her side and wide-awake dreams of catching her stomach as it slipped out the slit. She leaned out, hopelessly reaching; beyond her fingertips were her falling intestines, slick and purple as tongues. She felt the knife cut every day—the anticipation of it, the wince. That was the part she’d been left with. Too often she winced at the thought of the knife.

That dinner with those people: she’d been in the dark then, blissful and unaware of her new status. She’d been completely in the dark when it came to that status—her status as a future murderer, a charter member of the Future Murderers of America. And then the next time she saw the dinner guests was at the funeral. The murder had been done.

She didn’t remember talking to them then, though she might have, probably had—she’d been polite at least, she hoped. She recalled almost nothing outside the blur and only knew she had caught sight of them from the podium and been indifferent to their presence. But it was impossible to miss them entirely because they had stood out from the crowd, apart in their chairs at the ends of the pews. The support group had made a good showing—Sal, for instance, had barely known Hal and though clearly lacking in most social skills had come to the funeral to, as he put it, “like be there for Casey.” On his muscled upper arms, often shown off by grubby tank tops, he had many tattoos including weeping roses, shamrocks and daggers; but at the funeral, though still garbed in the camouflage pants and combat boots that were his signature, he had worn long sleeves.

•

T. arrived at the big house early, with his mother in tow. Well-dressed and coiffed at the hands of a live-in maid who hailed from the former Communist bloc, she could pass at first for a businesswoman or socialite—the latter of which she almost was, Susan thought, except that she had no friends.

“Susan, dear,” she said, coming into the kitchen with T. behind her and holding out a frail hand. T. must have prompted her on the name.

“I’m so glad you could come, Angela,” said Susan, and put her near-empty wineglass on the counter to clasp the thin hand in both of hers. The last time she’d seen Angela, Hal had been there too. They’d gone to her townhouse apartment to break the news that T. was gone, T. had been lost in the tropics and was unresponsive. She had served them Earl Grey and told them not to worry, vaguely protested that her son could take care of himself, and Susan had felt sorry for her.

But in the end she had been right in her confidence; Susan had been wrong. Come to think of it, if Susan had believed her—if Susan had not manifested a fussy, hen-like worry for her employer when even his mother remained unconcerned—Hal would never have flown down there. Hal would be alive now.

“I’m so very sorry for your loss,” said Angela. Her soft lower lip trembled.

Susan felt a surge of fondness. The woman was a wounded doe—the straggler on the edge of the herd, the slow-moving one a wolf would select to bring down with sharp teeth. Though not a trophy hunter.

But before she had time to act on the passing fond impulse, Casey was there.

“Come with me,” she commanded, reaching up to touch Angela’s hand. “I’ll show you things,” and Angela smiled briefly at Susan and turned to follow.

The house was far too large for the small party so they had tried to set it up in the first-floor rooms that opened onto the pool—the music room, the dining room with its wolves and foxes, the long hall. At certain junctures, she realized, a tall man would have to bend down to avoid the antlers of moose or elk. The mounts were a hodgepodge in the corridors, hung without regard for the obstacles they might make. She opened the row of French doors between the terrace and the rooms, let their floor-length drapes flutter, and walked around surveying. The old hardwood gleamed, the faded rugs stretched at her feet . . . she checked the nearest ground-floor bathroom, which had been grimy when she moved in, the floor an ancient and torn-up linoleum in avocado green. Now the old flooring was replaced with tile and the walls had been painted.

The room’s small window was open to the back of an oleander hedge, pink blossoms that could be lethal, someone had warned her when she was pregnant—vomiting, diarrhea, if a kid even touches an oleander he could sink into a coma, the woman had said. And never come out. You didn’t hear that from a man, typically. As an expectant mother, or the mother of a young child, you heard many warnings from females but not so many from males. The females were protective, true, they spread their downy wings over the eggs to keep them safe and warm, but also they relished the gruesome. At least they relished the talk of it—tragedy, poisoning, accident, as long as it didn’t happen to them or theirs, they talked it up as though it was delicious.

On a tall cabinet beneath the window there were candles and a bowl of pinecones and other domestic markings.

She was nervous.

In the dining room she moved bottles onto the counter of the bar—Jim would make drinks, since he was good at that—and set music to play from her cheap stereo.

He came in and touched the back of her neck.

She could get used to him, she thought; but then, no. He was married and he was not a replacement. Through the French doors the sun had sunk and the lower half of the sky was a pale orange.

“We shouldn’t do that while the cousins are here,” she said.

“Oh, you ashamed of me?”

“You know why.”

Her friends would see she needed comfort, and if they didn’t it would only be between her and them anyway. But the judgment of the cousins, so soon after Hal’s death—the cousins would not spare her.

She heard brakes squeaking as a car pulled up and then Casey’s voice as she went out the front door—it was not the cousins yet, only her daughter’s friends. She realized she was far too nervous to hide it. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if they took this place from her. She could hardly bear the tension of not knowing.

She said so. Jim poured her a fresh drink.

By the time her own guests got there—Dewanne and Lacy from the old street in Venice and a couple, Reg and Tony, from the last school she’d taught at—she was half-drunk and giddy. Time flowed faster, space was easier to move in . . . of course, she hoped she didn’t sabotage herself with Steven. But he and the son still weren’t there by nine-thirty and the other guests were scattered through the near-empty house, already drinking too much, already leaving empty cups on tables, smears of cheese and chip fragments on the floor. Around her she heard expressions of awe at the décor, at the plentiful zoology, awe sometimes tinged with horror.

She felt gratified anyway. She went to offer fresh drinks to Casey’s friends, sitting in the cat room. Sal had two of them backed into a corner—not an easy feat in a wheelchair, but his chair was parked at an angle and blocked them effectively. It was Nancy and Addison, her nasal-voiced, stooping boyfriend. Susan had never understood what it was that Casey and Nancy had in common, beyond the chairs, she was thinking as she crossed over to them—Nancy had prominent hobbies, the obsessive reading of fantasy novels whose covers featured women with long swirling hair and elaborate chain mail and/or bladed weapons and the copious creation, via knitting, of bright-colored afghans, scarves and baby booties. Neither of which would ever be a pastime of Casey’s.

Sal was thrusting his Walkman at her.

“It’s Bridewarrior, man. Listen. This one song is so awesome. Wait, I gotta rewind it. The album’s called The Maiden Queens of Atlantis.”

Susan remembered now: after Hal fell asleep on the bed in Casey’s guestroom, at the last supper, Sal had orated to her for half an hour on the subject of rap music, rap magazines and the East-West hip-hop rivalry. There were New York rappers and there were rappers from L.A., like two big gangs that wanted to do rapid musical drive-by shootings. They chiefly battled it out by boasting of their prowess, however, and wearing big-bore gold-plated necklaces and rings, only rarely resorting to actual weapons. While Sal was into rap, Casey had said, the women he met were typically bitches and hos. This month he was into Celtic folk metal. Women were earth-mother goddesses and busty virgins wearing fur bikinis. Though in actuality as white as the driven snow, Sal had taken the name Salvador and liked to pretend he was Hispanic and/or black.

Curiously, some people appeared to believe it.

“Bridewarrior?” asked Addison. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s like this pagan deal. Ritual nudity?”

“OK, maybe later,” said Nancy.

“We’re just trying to talk here, Salvador,” said Addison, patronizing.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Susan asked Nancy, who looked up gratefully.

“Sure, do you have cranberry juice?”

“Take a spritzer,” said Addison.

Sal fumbled with the Walkman, pressing buttons.

“So this track’s called ‘Motherblood,’ ” he said. No one was paying attention. “Wait, wait. This other one rocks even harder. ‘Black Carbuncle.’ ”

When she came back with the drinks they’d requested he was still declaiming.

“It’s on Cruel Scars of the Bone Beast. Then there’s ‘Uterus of the Earthworm.’ ”

Susan leaned down with the drinks tray, feeling like a waitress.

“Earthworms don’t have uteruses,” said Addison.

T. had just come in and was standing beside Casey, smiling faintly at the conversation. He lifted his glass to drink.

“Not the point,” said Sal. “It’s a dark hellish vision.”

“Well, but—” started Nancy.

“What she might mean,” interrupted Addison, “is it’s this, you know, kinda bad poetry.”

“It’s not f*cking gay-ass poetry, man,” said Sal. “It’s music.”

“But—”

“You just don’t get it,” said Sal, and shook his head in disgust.

“I had to dissect a worm once,” said Nancy to Casey. “Back in Invertebrate Biology.”

“Excellent,” said Sal.

“Could you check on Angela?” asked Casey, as Susan began to move away. “She’s lying down upstairs. In the room with the Arctic fox.”

“Of course,” said Susan.

She passed Reg and Tony on her way to the stairs, standing in front of an eagle diorama outside the birds-of-prey room.

“It’s totally Natural History Museum,” said Reg. “Circa 1950.”

“I love it,” said Tony.

“Me too,” said Susan, and they gazed at the eagle. It had its wings back and talons out, coming in for a landing. Beneath it, on a gritty stretch of fake sand, a mouse cowered.

Walking up the stairs, she stopped and stood still on the landing, as usual. No airplanes, but there was a searchlight weaving back and forth across the sky. Always some light, in that black square—what you observed was forms of light—she tried to assess her drunkenness. She needed to drink more water, clearly. She breathed in, found a familiar body against her, and leaned back, contented.

“Ten minutes alone,” said Jim into her ear. “I can get the job done in ten. Done and done well.”

“I have to check on Angela.”

She was drunk enough to have a pleasant feeling of chaos—a fluid chaos, not harmful but thrilling—she could welcome it, she could feel a kind of carefree anger against the cousins brewing in her and trying to supplant the fear of them. She walked with Jim along the darkened second-floor hallway and knocked on the door of the Arctic room, then, when there was no answer, pushed it open. Under the blaze of overhead light the white fox crept forever, but no older woman.

“She’s nowhere,” said Jim.

“She has this, you know, early-onset Alzheimer’s, basically,” she said in a low voice. “With some other things going on too. Mixed features, I think the shrinks call it. We need to find her.”

They checked the other bedrooms, one by one—Rainforest, Himalayas, Indian Subcontinent. Then onto the barren wastes of Mongolia and The Soviet Union. She rarely came in here. Beyond an amateurishly painted Lenin, The Soviet Union had nothing but a massive, shaggy animal that looked like a bison, marked WILD TIBETAN YAK, and a sturdy horse marked EQUUS PRZEWALSKI.

“This guy shot horses?” asked Jim.

Finally they had checked every room save horned beasts. As they approached she could hear the shower running from her own bathroom and in a flash she remembered: the woman had tried to kill herself in a bathtub once, after her husband left. The onset of her decline.

“Wait,” she told Jim, and rushed forward to open the bathroom door. “Angela? Is that you?”

Only the small bulbs over the vanity were lit. When she flicked on the rest she saw Angela standing up in the bathtub—not naked, small mercies. She had a towel wrapped around her and her hair plastered down on her head and the shower water was spattering down behind her.

Susan was relieved.

“Are you OK?” she asked, and reached past Angela to turn off the faucets. Water fell on her hair and face as she stretched her arm out. She looked around hastily till she saw the hook that held her terrycloth robe. “Here. Put this on.”

Angela looked at her blankly. Soaking wet, she was pitiable.

“Here, I’ll—right arm—left arm—there you go,” and she tied the belt around the slim waist and snaked the towel out from beneath. “Why don’t you come with me.”

Angela’s clothes were nowhere to be seen so Susan led her toward the closet. Jim stood next to the open bedroom window smoking, holding his cigarette outside.

“Could you go find T.?” she asked him. “Or Casey. Either of them will do.”

She wouldn’t ask Angela what she had been doing in the shower—it seemed a rude intrusion. And when she asked about the clothes again the woman looked vacant, so she held up a dress of her own. “Do you think you could be comfortable in this one?”

Angela nodded but seemed distracted.

After some awkwardness she got the dress on, albeit with difficulty, as Angela stood limp and pliable in front of her. She was wondering if she had to find shoes for her too—whether they wore the same size—and then giving up and heading for the bathroom sink for a glass of water when T. came in.

He put an arm around his mother and steered her over to the bed to sit down.

“She suffers from trichophobia,” he said. “Now and then. One of a number of complications.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what that is,” said Susan.

“No one does. It’s a fear of loose hairs.”

Susan gazed at him dumbly, sitting on the edge of the bed with his mother, slowly patting her hand. After a few seconds she ducked through the bathroom door and filled a cup.

“It’s intermittent,” said T. “But when it—she tries to wash them off.”

“Animal hairs, too? Because in that case—”

“I don’t think so,” and he shook his head. “It’s long hair that’s the trigger, mostly. This extreme disgust with long hairs. And it’s if they’re loose, only. Not if they’re on your head.”

There was fear of everything these days, she found herself thinking—as though it was magnanimous. A generosity of fear.

The fear of litigation. Was there a name for that?

She remembered an earlier impulse.

“Listen,” she said abruptly. “I haven’t asked you yet, but I do want to know. How was he?”

“How—?”

“In those—those days you were down there with Hal. How did he seem?”

T. gazed at her levelly, idly draped an arm around his mother’s shoulders.

“He seemed all right,” he said mildly.

“It’s that—you’re the only one I can ask.”

T. nodded, his head barely moving, and gazed past her to the open window.

“He was worried about me,” he said. “I was nothing to him, but he was still worried.”

She waited. On the nightstand a clock was flashing 12:00.

“He was preoccupied, though,” he went on. “He was down there looking for something.”

“You,” she said.

“Yes, but—yes and no, I got the feeling.”

She preferred not to look at him straight on, so she switched her gaze to his mother instead, who was studying her own bare feet. The toes were polished light pink.

“I should say, I do know why he went down there,” T. said gently, after a minute. “But in the end it wasn’t that. I mean yes, he was recovering. He slept a lot. A bit of binge drinking. And in his spare time he was looking for me. But also, he was—I remember thinking he was like a child.”

“A child?” she asked. It surprised her.

“There was something childlike about him. Like someone who’s never left home. That’s what it was: someone who’s lived in one place all his life. And then suddenly travels to a new country.”

On the wall beside them the African plain was palely visible. She reached out her right hand to sweep her fingers over the painted fringe of tall grass that grew up from the floor.

Of course, you couldn’t feel the grass.

Still the smoothness of the wall was somehow disappointing.

“But he had traveled before,” she said softly. “I mean we traveled together. Mostly before the accident. We did road trips. And we went to Europe, once. He was impressed by Europe.”

“I didn’t really know him,” said T. “As you said. That was just how he struck me.”

They sat there quietly for a while in the dim light of the bedside lamp, until T. turned and looked at the wall painting, one of the big spreading trees. Possibly an acacia, Susan thought idly. They looked different over there.

“Hunting, you know, it wiped out some of them,” said T., scanning the animal figures in the background. “It’s not a leading cause of extinction around here anymore. But Africa, yeah. Monkeys killed for the bush meat market, for instance. Elephants for ivory, rhinos for powdered horn. You know: some Chinese people, a folk-wisdom group that isn’t actually particularly educated in Chinese medicine, think it’s an aphrodisiac. Globally, mostly the driver is habitat loss. But soon the leading cause is going to be climate change. Or too much carbon, anyway.”

“What?” asked Susan. “You’re kidding.”

He shook his head.

“Is it time to go home?” asked his mother, raising her head.

“I think so,” said T., and helped steady her as she got up. “Sorry,” he said to Susan. “We were hopeful she would last a little longer this evening.”

“Please, no,” said Susan, and turned to Angela. “It’s fine. I’m just glad you’re all right.”

They left the room, T. and Angela walking slowly into the wide hall with Susan behind them. She flicked on the line of sconces as they passed; it was too dark for strangers, who knew what they might bump into—dim shapes of horn and hair, the lips of elk. Then she noticed the sconces still had their basins half full of light-brown moth bodies.

We’re brittle and fading, she thought. Fading like moths, gray-blond mothers. With each day the population aged. Maybe not in the so-called third world, where there were plagues of babies, but here, where there were plagues of the elderly. Before long there would be scores of old ones for each of the young, their lives prolonged but rarely cherished—certainly not by the old themselves, who hung on by threads of pharmacology in stages of slow death. Not by their children either, the children moved away pursuing an idea of self, an idea of fulfillment as once, not all that long ago, nomads had followed the seasons. They lived their adult lives in distant cities now.

Soon all the young would be absent, lifted into the momentum of their speedy existences in which the past was only a minor point of information—the parents who had raised and loved them, even adored them with all their hearts, only the vaguest imprint.

Ahead of her Angela picked her way with care down the wide stairs, as though her bones were hollow. Yes, it was coming, the generations of the ancient would be left to their own end. The grandmothers would feed the great-grandmothers in their final falls, the ones in their seventies would tuck in the sleepers who were in their eighties, nineties, hundreds—

Hal, she thought, had been on the cusp of a whole new life.

Regret needled her, and something like envy.

“Oh,” said Angela, as they led her past the eagle. “A beautiful birdie.”

In the foyer the two of them watched as T. leaned down to Casey to say good night—Angela smiling vaguely, Susan feeling a quick, guilty flush of pride in her daughter. Together they were beautiful, it couldn’t be denied. Then T. took his mother’s arm again and Susan followed them outside and helped Angela into the passenger seat of his car. The high-end black Mercedes was an affectation he still hadn’t dropped, it turned out.

There was continuity there, at least. She felt reassured by the black Mercedes.

As she went indoors again she waved at Casey, who had moved outside and was sitting by the pool, talking to Jim and others in the dappled turquoise refractions. The lights in the library were on so she ducked in and saw piles of books all crooked on the floor, then Nancy and Addison, the quiet college girl whose name Susan forgot, and Sal. It smelled liked marijuana.

“Oh shit,” said Sal under his breath, when he saw her coming. He had the joint in his hand and seemed to be casting around for an ashtray.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ve actually seen pot before.” There was an ashtray on a sideboard, she recalled, and headed over to pick it up.

“Thanks, man,” said Sal.

“So we’ve been looking at these antique anatomy books,” said Nancy. “Animal anatomy. Some are from the 1920s. There are diagrams of earthworms.”

“Informative,” said Susan, and set the ashtray on an end table.

“It says here worms are gay,” said Sal. “Listen. ‘Two earthworms mate by attaching at their *ella and exchanging sperm.’ They sperm on each other.”

“It’s not uncommon, in nature,” said Nancy.

“The worms aren’t gay,” said the girl from UCLA, with some difficulty. It was the first time Susan had heard her speak—her voice was affected by the multiple sclerosis. “They are hermaphrodites.”

“You want?” asked Sal, and held out the joint toward Susan.

“Maybe I will,” she said. She drew on it and held in the smoke as she passed it to Addison. “Thanks,” she said after she let it out. “Been a while.”

It would allay her nervousness, she thought. If it didn’t put her to sleep instantly.

Sal took the joint back and slipped on his headphones.

“Susan?”

She turned to see Steven and Tommy at the library door just as Sal began to recite the lyrics. “All virginal maidens / Satan will ulcerate . . .”

“Oh hey! Steve, Tommy. I’m so glad you made it!”

“Whoa,” said Tommy. “I’m getting a contact high.”

“Susie. I had no idea,” said Steve, as though he’d stepped into a bordello.

“What can I say,” said Susan, cheerfully. “It’s California.”

“But Mother Earth, she heals them,” croaked Sal, head rocking, “By sending them to Hell . . .”

She would report to Casey: the possible benefits of wheelchairs were outweighed by the costs.

“Let me get you some drinks,” she persevered, and went toward the cousins, leaving Sal and the others behind.

“This place is like that Haunted House ride at Disneyland,” said Tommy. “Do you have one of those elevators where the pictures on the walls stretch out?”

She realized suddenly that she must not have seen him in years. He had thick eyebrows that met in the middle and cheekbones with a spray of acne. A show of affection was clearly called for, so she held out her arms and smiled.

“Tommy,” she said, and embraced him, remembering as she drew close and smelled his strong deodorant that he was the one his father was proud of. Unlike the unfortunate art student, or whatever the other kid was. “The prodigal engineer.”

He let himself be embraced but barely participated. She pulled back and noticed he was unsmiling.

The father, at least, could be plied with spirits.

“Would you like a cocktail? A beer? Please, follow me.”

She kept up a patter as they headed down the hallway toward the room with the bar.

“What kind of engineering program are you in? Civil?”

“Chemical,” he said. “Going into cement.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding, but despite casting around desperately could find nothing to say about this. Doubtless there were many people qualified to speak on the cement subject, but she was not among them. “Oh, I thought you were still a student.”

“Graduating in May. Early recruitment. Already got my first job lined up.”

“Congratulations!”

“Focus on GGBS.”

“GGBS?”

“Ground granulated blast-furnace slag.”

“Right outta college,” said Steven. “Six figures.”

“Wow,” she said.

At the end of the hall, in the darkness under a rhino head, Reg and Tony were kissing.

“Are those two guys?” asked Steven. “Making out?”

“It’s two old guys,” said Tommy. “Whoa.”

She checked her impulse to comment and went through the dining room door ahead of them.

“So what can I get you, Tommy?”

“I need a strong one after that,” he said. “Gimme a vodka. Man. You got any Absolut Citron?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “We do have some mixers.”

“I’ll take a Bud,” said the father.

From behind the bar she could see Casey and Jim and some of her former neighbors outside. She missed them.

“Let’s get some fresh air, shall we?” she said, once both of them had their drinks in hand, and led them through the French doors.

“Hah-ey,” said Dewanne, smiling widely as they approached. She was a thrice-divorced Southern belle and more times than that cosmetically enhanced; she’d lived two houses down. She was also an avid catalog shopper, in a constant state of indignation at the perceived abuses of mail-order apparel companies. The indignation was a hobby. When they both had teenagers in high school—she was a housewife and Susan was substitute teaching—she would come over to the house in the late afternoon, a glass of white wine with ice cubes in her hand, and call 800 numbers to harangue operators about merchandise quality.

Susan had always liked her.

“Hi, Dewanne,” she said, and reached out to grab her hand.

“So who have we here? Introduce me to your cute friends, Susan.”

“My cousin Steven,” she said. “His son, Tommy.”

“Hey, Tommy,” said Casey. “Last time I saw you we hadn’t even hit puberty.”

“Hey, Casey,” said Tommy stiffly, but made no move in her direction.

“You were into Star Trek,” said Casey.

“I don’t remember that.”

“Denial is common. But I remember all too well. You always tried to give me a Vulcan nerve pinch.”

Tommy lifted his vodka and drank, projecting an aura of distrust.

“That was his geek period,” said Steven, and elbowed his son in the ribs.

“All in the distant past now,” said Casey, and grinned.

“He’s got a job in Portland cement!” said Susan.

“Ground granulated blast-furnace slag,” corrected Tommy.

“So, Tommy,” said Casey brightly. “Let’s catch up then, shall we? Come tell me all about that slag.”

She inclined her head toward a nearby table, and Tommy shuffled off after her with some reluctance.

“Hey, name’s Jim,” said Jim, and held out his hand to Steven.

“Sorry, how rude of me,” said Susan, and finished the round of introductions.

When Susan paid attention next Steven was saying to Dewanne, “So what are you, one of her teacher friends?”

“Just a neighbor,” said Dewanne. “From the old neighborhood. And what do you do, honey?”

“I run my own business. In programming.”

“Oh my,” said Dewanne.

She would leave the two of them alone, thought Susan, and Dewanne might win him over. Dewanne graciously liked everyone, even sleazebags.

But really, for the cousins, forget the guest list and the food selection; she should have cut straight to the chase and ordered up some working girls.

“You ready for a refill?” asked Jim.

“I’ll come with you.”

Better this way—better to leave her relatives with people who could stand them.

She and Jim slipped away for ten minutes, snuck into the room with the ducks and locked the door behind them. But then, in the yellow-green glow from the stained-glass lamps, in the drowsy aftermath of the pot, she drifted. She woke up later in the quiet and realized it, alarmed. She had fallen asleep. She sat up with a jolt. Damn it, she’d missed her own party.

The house was still beyond the door, the clock on the wall read 2:48. She had not meant to vanish. How inconsiderate, how wrong. Also, she’d screwed up the cousin thing. She felt panicky.

She got up and pulled her clothes on in a rush, the dress, the heels. The music was turned off, she thought, or she’d be hearing it. Her guests must all have left, gone to their homes. Some must have asked where she was, some must have felt ignored or irritated—but anyway she had to know, if there were any still here she had to go out there, play the hostess, take care of them.

She left Jim sleeping on his side, mouth agape on the pillow, opened the door and stepped out into the silent hall. A few lights were still on, here and there, but overall it was dim and on the edges of her vision she had an impression of orange and black shades in the rooms, great caves looming off to the sides, beer bottles on the tables, wineglasses on the windowsills. Ashtrays, empty food bowls on surfaces—how many guests had there been, after all? Thirty, she thought, thirty guests at the most, but now it looked like more, it looked like forty or fifty.

She passed the ballroom and saw the doors. They all stood open still and the drapes rushed out in rills when the breeze came up. It was a chill breeze now, in the small hours. She would close the doors, she thought, and went into the room. In the dimness she stepped across a trail of crackers, crumbling to powder underfoot, and walked toward the pool, visible through the line of doors with its wavering aqua light. She started to shut the doors and then thought she saw something outside, a movement in the back garden beyond the corner of the pool enclosure. For no good reason she thought of burglars, then chided herself for paranoia.

But someone was still here, she thought. Someone remained.

She went through the doors, planning what to say if it was Steve or Tommy—how to appear gracious and pretend she hadn’t retreated into a back room to get laid and then, stoned as a twelve-year-old on his first high, abandoned them. As though, somehow, she was controlled and prim. This was how she wished to appear in their eyes: someone who was responsible, grateful, and unduly burdened. Someone straight as a pin and fully deserving of their charity.

Give it up, she told herself, moving onto the patio.

Alternatively she could confess her guilt, make a clean breast of her character flaws and throw herself on their mercy. She went around the pool and opened the gate on the far side, heard it creak behind her and stepped out onto the path that led between the koi ponds and the willows. There were footlights along the pathways and she was glad of them. She stopped on the flagstones and listened. She thought she heard a whisper; she didn’t want to interrupt anything. But then—she stopped again, holding her breath—maybe it wasn’t intimate, maybe it was just talk.

Further along the path the bushes were closer beside her, there was less room to move, and the sound of her heels on the uneven stones seemed louder. She peered through the dark. There was a bench in the trees, back there, with footlights around it—a small paved area, one of the round wrought-iron tables, and she went toward it cautiously. There were shapes under the trees, near the bench—a wheelchair, facing her, more or less, and sitting in it a girl with long hair, her face down. For a second she thought it was Casey, before she knew it wasn’t.

It must be the college girl, she thought—still shocked, in the background of her recognition, that her own daughter was not a college girl, apparently would never be. It wasn’t Nancy, because Nancy’s hair was shorter. It had to be the younger girl, the one who had multiple sclerosis.

She was about to say something to her, was wracking her brain for the name, but then she blinked, her eyes nearly aching from the strain. She could make out another figure, on its knees, its head in the young woman’s lap. A man, must be. Because of the footlights she could see lower but not higher up—see the man’s bent legs, the vertical planes of the soles of his shoes, even their patterning, with the orange light from the sodium lamp shining onto the grooved rubber surface. She moved around to try to make him out, so the wheelchair was more in profile. But his head was down and she could not see his face. Indistinct sounds of choking. Was it sex? No: the man was crying, or sniveling at least, and the girl was speaking in low, consoling tones. They were drunk, or at least the man was drunk—the man was well on his way to wasted. The girl might not be drunk at all, as Susan recalled, she probably didn’t drink—her way of speaking had stutters and pauses, had slushy consonants—it was common with her disease, Casey had said. But the man slurred when he spoke, slurred and mumbled, and with him it was all drunkenness.

On a spying impulse she crept closer, screened from them by trees.

“It’ll be OK,” said the girl, and stroked the man’s head, comforting. Who was he? Not enough light. She couldn’t tell.

“One night you pet one,” he slurred, “and the next night you come in and you have to kill it.”

“You could change jobs,” said the girl, in her soft, halting way. “If it’s too hard.”

“There’s no one else to take it,” said the man, and raised his head. He was sobering up now, or had stopped sniveling, anyway. There was a branch in front of him and she couldn’t see his features. “Someone has to do it.”

“I’m sure they do . . .”

“There’s weeks when, though, I feel it’s all on me, like the whole thing is on me. You know?”

Susan hit her anklebone on something hard, winced and looked down. It was a round river rock at the edge of a pool—mounds of rocks, dry reeds white in the nighttime, the black water. The still, black pools: she felt such an affinity for them. Who knew what he was talking about, some kind of mass euthanasia of unwanted pets? And yet the information was being dispensed as though he was a hero: he was a noble caretaker, he was a suffering martyr in his euthanizing. Repulsive.

Beneath her the pool was peaceful, black and smooth. So tranquil was the pool: look at the pools, pretend the pool alone was real, its dark relief, simplicity. She would creep backward, if she could do it silently and without tripping—back away from the conversation. After all, if these two were still here, there could be other guests lingering. She might still be able to redeem herself, as a hostess. She should sweep the rooms and make sure. She started her retreat.

Quiet.

“You’re so pretty,” said the man more loudly, in a different tone. His words still ran together, but now he was projecting.

“Shh,” said the girl.

“Come on. Lemme—”

“No.”

“Your eyes are nice.”

“We’ll get you some water,” said the girl.

He was trying to force himself on her, pushing his face up to hers. Jesus, she thought, a guy who used dead dogs as foreplay.

It was a new one on her.

There was the sound of it, the flesh sound of arms or chests, of soft fronts blundering.

“Stand up,” said the girl firmly. “It’s alcohol. That’s all.”

A long moment and then the man stood up droopily.

“We’ll go inside,” said the girl. “We’ll get you some water.”

She reached for her handrims and Susan stepped back into a nook, back behind a bush—the rhododendron, thick and waxy. In a minute they went past her, the girl ahead in the chair, the man slowly following. She recognized him from behind: Addison.

Where was Nancy? Asleep, maybe. Sleeping girlfriend in a wheelchair, dying dogs. That was the strategy. He was golden.

When they had disappeared she stepped up to the pool again and stared down into it.

•

There were others, she discovered, but they were fast asleep. Casey was lying on one length of the L-shaped couch in the cat room, a blanket pulled over her up to the chin, and Nancy was asleep on the other length. Sal was there too, asleep nearby but still in his chair—snoring, his head back to expose the jut of his Adam’s apple. An annoying tinny beat issued forth from his Walkman earphones. She didn’t see Addison or the girl.

She walked across to Sal and stood there looming over him for a second, deliberating. After a moment she reached for the dull silver cassette player lying on his lap. She lifted it delicately, turned it sideways to study the row of buttons, and gently pushed the one marked STOP.

Sal’s head jerked up. He blinked at her blearily.

“Sorry,” she said. “I thought you were . . .”

“I gotta have the music,” he said.

“When you’re—?”

“To sleep, man.”

“Oh?”

“Can’t sleep without music,” and he took the Walkman back and placed it on his thigh again.

“I apologize, then,” she said.

He grunted, pressed PLAY and crossed his arms, leaning back.

Down on the couch, Casey moved her head restlessly.

“Good night,” whispered Susan in Sal’s direction. She was turning to leave when she saw the two from the garden approaching—the girl ahead, Addison stumbling behind.

“He needs to crash,” whispered the girl, and then: “I would—go home, but all of them . . .”

“You came together,” whispered Susan.

The girl nodded. “In a van.”

“It’s always hardest for the sober ones,” said Susan, as though she knew.

Behind the girl—possibly headed for the corner recliner—Addison tripped abruptly and fell sideways onto the platform that held the rearing lion. He turned and grabbed at it as he fell and the hind paws came up off the platform, ripping off their bolts, so that he and the lion fell together, in a clinch.

“Oh my God,” said the girl.

“Oh no,” said Susan.

Sal’s head jerked up again.

“What the f*ck,” he said.

Addison lay on the shag rug loosely holding the beast, whose front paws stretched above his head.

“Passed out,” said the girl, after a second.

“I think you’re right,” said Susan.

“No shit,” said Sal, and shook his head.

“I’m sorry about the lion,” said the girl.

“Me too,” said Susan, and gazed down at the lion’s ripped feet. She bent to look closer: the four gray pads of the toes, a yellow-white fur around them, another soft pad further back. It was torn open now with a bolt sticking out to reveal part of the white-plastic mold inside. Their pose, she thought, was like two animals on a shield or flag in one of the old man’s heraldry books. Some flags pictured lions and unicorns facing each other, standing on their hind legs, or griffins and dragons. Two animals poised to pummel each other. Lying inert, Addison pummeled a lion.

“Why don’t you come with me,” she said to the girl. Sal was already nodding off. “There’s another room on this floor you can sleep in. More comfortable than here.”

They left Addison where he had fallen, tangled with the great cat, a high-pitched beat leaking out of Sal’s headphones.




“They’re going to claim he had delusions,” said Casey in the morning.

She was in the bathroom with Susan, who stood up from the sink, her face dripping, and reached for the hand towel, her eyes squeezed shut.

“What?”

“Yeah. They’ve got a lawyer. They’re going to say the will isn’t valid.”

“You’re kidding.”

“But Jim says that they’re full of it.”

“Jim knows?”

“Yeah, he was standing there when they told me.”

Susan dried her face and walked out, looking for him. He was in bed still. She pulled the curtains open and flooded them both with whiteness, bleaching the flamingo.

“You didn’t think I’d want to know?”

He groaned and rolled onto his back, feet splayed under the sheet, arms wide.

“Listen. I don’t think you really need to worry.”

“Don’t need to worry? They’re trying to take this all away from me!”

“The standard for legal capacity is low,” he said, and raised himself onto his elbows, rubbing his eyes wearily.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, Jim. What are you telling me?”

“They’d have to prove that he was delusional under 6100, and there’s no evidence of that. Or under Section 811, they’d have to have evidence he couldn’t reason logically. Or recognize familiar objects or people. Or have any memory. They’re not objecting to the trust. The trust is irrelevant to them. And that’s a benefit to you, because with trusts the legal capacity standard is higher. There’s no presumption of undue influence here, either. So chances are slim they’ll prevail.”

“Slim?”

“Very slim, Susan.”

She was silent for a second, biding her time. Then she realized the legalese was oddly erotic. His competence. His knowledge of the probate code. She wanted to get back into bed.

The door was open, though, and outside in the corridor was Casey, sitting impatiently in her chair beneath a woody canopy of fallow-deer antlers.

“You’re not just saying that?” she asked him finally.

“I’m telling you. It’s a long shot at best. It’s frivolous, in my view.”

“Do I have to—then should I do anything?”

“Try to relax.”

Now that the cousins’ decision was made, she saw, it was possible. The lawsuit was actually a relief; she could behave exactly as she wished. No more need to try to impress them, no need to fail so miserably.

She was smiling at the lawyer from the white-lit dust. Motes were adrift in the beam, and floated horizontally.