The next morning at breakfast, the day before Bobbi and I flew home, Melissa told us that Valerie was coming to visit. There was some discussion of which room should be made up, while I watched a metallic-looking red ladybird cross the table valiantly toward the sugar cubes. The insect looked like a miniature robot with robotic legs.
And we’ll have to get dinner things, Melissa was saying. A few of you can go to the supermarket, can’t you? I’ll make a list.
I don’t mind going, Evelyn said.
Melissa was slathering salted butter on a splayed-open croissant and then waving her knife around vaguely while she spoke.
Nick can take you in the car, she said. We’ll need to get a dessert, one of the nice fresh ones. And flowers. Take someone else in the car to help you. Take Frances. You won’t mind, will you?
The ladybird made it to the sugar bowl and started to ascend the glazed white rim. I looked up with what I hoped was a polite expression and said: of course not.
And Derek, you can set up the bigger dining table in the garden for us, Melissa said. And Bobbi and I will tidy the house.
Having arranged the itinerary, we finished breakfast and brought our plates inside. Nick went to find the car keys and Evelyn sat on the front steps with her elbows on her knees, looking adolescent behind her spectacles. Melissa was leaning on the kitchen windowsill writing the list, while Nick lifted up couch cushions and said: has anyone else seen them? I stood in the hallway with my back pressed flat against the wall, trying not to be in the way. They’re on the hook, I said, but so quietly that he didn’t hear me. Maybe I left them in a pocket or something, said Nick. Melissa was opening cupboards to see if they had some ingredient or other. Did you see them? he said, but she ignored him.
Eventually I lifted the keys off the hook silently and put them into Nick’s hand as he went past. Oh, aha, he said. Well, thank you. He was avoiding my eye, but not in a personal way. He seemed to be avoiding everyone’s eyes. Did you get them? Melissa said from the kitchen. Did you look on the hook?
Evelyn and Nick and I went down to the car then. It was a foggy morning but Melissa had said it would clear up later. Bobbi appeared in her bedroom window just as I turned around to look for her. She was opening up the shutters. That’s right, she said. Abandon me. Go have fun with your new friends in the supermarket.
Maybe I’ll never come back, I said.
Don’t, said Bobbi.
I got into the back of the car and put my seat belt on. Evelyn and Nick got in and closed the doors behind them, sealing us into a shared privacy where I felt I didn’t belong. Evelyn gave an expressively weary sigh and Nick started the engine.
Did you ever get that thing with the car sorted? Nick said to Evelyn.
No, Derek won’t let me call the dealership, she said. He’s ‘taking care of it’.
We pulled out of the driveway onto the road down toward the beach. Evelyn was rubbing her eyes behind her glasses and shaking her head. The mist was grey like a veil. I fantasised about punching myself in the stomach.
Oh, taking care of it, okay, said Nick.
You know what he’s like.
Nick made a suggestive noise like: hm. We were driving along by the harbour, where the ships implied themselves as concepts behind the fog. I touched my nose to the car window.
She’s been behaving herself quite well, Evelyn said. I thought. Until today.
Well, that’s the Valerie production, he said.
But until all that started, said Evelyn. She’s been relatively relaxed, hasn’t she?
No, you’re right. She has.
Nick hit the indicator to turn left and I said nothing. It was clear they were talking about Melissa. Evelyn had taken her glasses off and was cleaning the lenses on the soft cotton of her skirt. Then she put them back on and looked at herself in the mirror. She noticed my reflection and made a kind of wry face.
Never get married, Frances, she said.
Nick laughed and said: Frances would never lower herself to such a bourgeois institution. He was working the steering wheel around to take the car through a corner, and he didn’t look up from the road. Evelyn smiled and gazed out the window at the boats.
I didn’t realise Valerie was coming, I said.
Did I not tell you? said Nick. I meant to say last night. She’s only coming for dinner, she may not even stay. But she always gets the royal baby treatment.
Melissa has this little hang-up about her, Evelyn said.
Nick glanced over his shoulder out the back window, but he didn’t look at me. I liked that he was busy driving because it meant we could talk without the intensity of having to acknowledge each other. Of course, he hadn’t mentioned Valerie the night before because instead, he’d been telling me that he still loved his wife and that I meant nothing to him. The exchange about Valerie which he had been planning to have instead implied a kind of personal intimacy which I now felt we had lost for ever.
I’m sure it’ll all be fine, said Evelyn.
Nick said nothing, and neither did I. His silence was significant and mine was not because his opinion on whether things would be fine, unlike mine, was important.
It won’t be totally insufferable at least, she said. Frances and Bobbi will be there to defuse the tension.
Is that what they do? he said. I’ve been wondering.
Evelyn gave me another little smile in the mirror and said: well, they’re also very decorative.
Now that I object to, he said. Strenuously.
The supermarket was a large, glassy building outside town, with a lot of air conditioning. Nick took a trolley and we walked behind him, through the little one-way entry gates, into the section with the paperback books and men’s watches displayed inside security-tagged plastic cases. Nick said the only things that really needed to be carried by hand were the dessert and the flowers, everything else could go in the trolley. He and Evelyn discussed what kind of dessert would be least likely to cause an argument and decided on something expensive with a lot of glazed strawberries. She went off to the dessert aisle and Nick and I walked along on our own.
I’ll come and get the flowers with you on our way out, he said.
You don’t have to.
Well, if we end up getting the wrong ones, I’d rather say it was my fault.
We were standing in the coffee aisle and Nick had stopped to examine various kinds of ground coffee, in different-sized packages.
You needn’t be so chivalrous, I said.
No, I just think you and Melissa fighting might be more than I could handle today.
I put my hands down into the pockets of my skirt while he loaded various black-wrapped packages of coffee into the trolley.
At least we know whose side you’d be on, I said.
He looked up, with a bag of Ethiopian coffee in his left hand and a faintly humorous expression.