“How can you be sure?”
Her mother seemed to grope for a reply. At last she said, “He left his affairs in perfect order. Cash, bankbooks . . . not a loose end anywhere. People who—who disappear the way you mean, they’ve no warning.”
Anna had lost sight of these facts. Recalling them now, she was gutted by disappointment so profound it made her lean against the balustrade. After a long silence, she said, “Do you think he’s far away?”
“I don’t think he could be nearby and not be with us.”
“Doing what?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“What do you think?”
Her mother glanced at her. “I don’t think about him, Anna. That’s the truth.”
“What do you think about?”
A spot of red had appeared on each of her mother’s cheeks. She was angry. Anna was, too, and the anger strengthened her, as if she were bracing herself against it.
“You know perfectly well what I think about,” her mother said.
*
Shortly after Silvio carried Lydia back upstairs (always calmer on the return climb), there was a perfunctory knock, and Brianne shoved open the door. She heaved herself onto a chair, gasping from the climb, and flung off her coat, swamping the room with a smell of roses and jasmine tinctured with something medicinal, like witch hazel. Lady of the Lake. For as long as Anna could remember, her aunt had worn that perfume. No man can resist it, she liked to say—sardonically, even when it was still somewhat true.
Having caught her breath, she rose and kissed Anna and her mother hello and cocked her head fondly at Lydia. “How’s life in the salt mines?” she asked Anna. “Still oiling the machine for our warmongering president?”
“Well, I’m hoping to sell you a war bond.”
“Certainly. When pigs fly.”
“We’re behind Philadelphia and Charleston. Mama won’t let me join the Ten Percent Club.”
“She’s speaking War,” Brianne remarked to Anna’s mother, who was feeding Lydia. “I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with that tongue.”
“She’d like to be paid ten percent of her wages in war bonds,” her mother said flatly. She and Anna had hardly spoken in hours.
“I’ll bet they give you some sort of gewgaw if you buy enough bonds. Eh?” Brianne said. “Tell the truth.”
“I signed a scroll that will go to sea on the USS Iowa.” Anna took pride in saying this, even knowing her aunt would find it silly.
“Listen to her! They’ve bewitched you, dearie. It wasn’t even our war. The Japs played right into Roosevelt’s hands—I’d not be surprised if he paid them to do it, the weasel.”
“You sound like Father Coughlin,” her mother said.
“They should have left Father on the air. And Lindy should have run against Roosevelt and given him the drubbing he deserves.”
“Lindbergh supports the war now, Auntie.”
“Hah! Knows they’ll run him out of town if he speaks his mind.”
“Father Coughlin is a rabid dog,” her mother said.
“Hitler needs a good spanking is all,” Brianne said. “He’s a bully in a sandlot, and our boys have to die for that? I don’t just mean the soldiers and sailors—how about the boys in the merchant marine? They’re all over Sheepshead Bay—they’ve a new maritime training station there. Food, weapons, blankets, tents—who do you suppose brings all that to the field of battle? Merchant ships are being torpedoed by the dozen, and those boys haven’t even proper guns to defend themselves.” She’d gone red in the face.
“That’s what war bonds are for, Auntie. To give Hitler a spanking.”
“Fine. How much?”
“One dollar? Two?”
“Make it five. And when are you going back to college?”
“Thank you, Auntie!”
Brianne unearthed a five-dollar bill from her pocketbook, along with a bottle of Chartreuse. For several years she’d had a “special friend”—a wholesale lobsterman who was flush enough to keep her shopping at Abraham & Straus and buying Chartreuse at ten dollars a pop. But she was ashamed for Anna and her mother to meet him.
Anna exchanged a tentative smile with her mother; Brianne made them feel their likeness to each other. She was forty-seven, stout and raspy, her crimson lipstick a memento of old times like the Cheshire cat’s disembodied grin. At seventeen, she’d rechristened herself “Brianne Belaire” and joined the Follies; Anna’s mother had come eight years later, but they’d hardly overlapped before Brianne fell out with “Mr. Z.” and moved on to more risqué revues: George White’s Scandals and Earl Carroll’s Vanities. By her own account, Brianne’s life had been one long fever of love affairs, narrow escapes, failed marriages, small parts in seven moving pictures, and various scrapes with the law arising from booze, or nudity onstage. None of it had stuck except the Scotch, she liked to say: an indictment of the world’s thin and fickle offerings that not one could compete with the reliable satisfaction of a whiskey soda. Men were the biggest failures: rats, lice, good-for-nothings—you couldn’t blame them; they’d been bumly manufactured. The best possible outcome of marriage was a wealthy, childless widowhood. Brianne had managed only to be childless.
She fixed the drinks and slid a glass toward Anna’s mother. “Say, isn’t it time you had one of these?” she said to Anna. “God knows I was drinking them by nineteen.”
“You were married at nineteen,” Anna’s mother pointed out.
“Divorced!”
“No, thank you, Auntie.”
Brianne sighed. “So virtuous. Must be your influence, Agnes.”
“We know it wasn’t yours.”
Anna was tempted sometimes to accept the drink—just to see her aunt and mother react. Her role, so firmly established that she no longer recalled its origins, was to be impervious to the vices around her—good, despite everything, in her bones, heart, teeth. The fact that she was not good in the way they thought—hadn’t been since age fourteen—should have been easy to forget in their company. But Anna never quite forgot.
Her mother put a hand on her shoulder: a peace offering. Anna touched it with her own. “Let’s get her changed and into bed,” her mother said.
“Sit down and have your drink, Aggie,” Brianne commanded. “Lydia isn’t going to run away.”
Her mother sat, oddly docile, and they raised their glasses. Across the table, Lydia drooped in her chair. Brianne took no part in her physical care—that was out of her line. Anna guessed her aunt thought it madness to keep Lydia in the apartment in diapers—a grown woman, practically. But if her mother sensed this opinion, she was unperturbed by it.
“Sad story,” Brianne said after a first long pull on her drink. “Remember that usher, Milford Wilkins? With the toupee? Who wanted to be an opera singer?”
“Why, sure,” Anna’s mother said.
“Saw him at the Apollo the other day, taking tickets. Hooked on dope.”
“No!”
“The eyes. There’s no mistaking it.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” her mother said. “He’d such a beautiful voice.”
“Was he a singing usher?” Anna asked.