“It was nice of you to invite Peggy and Fletcher,” Caroline said now, entering the living room.
She and Peggy had met in high school and bonded immediately, both being what is commonly referred to as “late bloomers.” “Misfits” was probably the more accurate term. Both girls had been shy and flat-chested, more interested in books than boys, although maybe that was because the boys in their class were more interested in the less-bookish, better-developed girls. They were also both fatherless: Peggy had lost her dad to cancer when she was twelve, and Caroline lost her dad to her parents’ acrimonious divorce a year later. Even though her father had tried for the better part of a year to maintain regular contact with his children, Mary had made that all but impossible, canceling agreed-upon visits at the last minute and scuttling proposed outings. Influenced by his mother, Steve had eventually refused to have anything to do with his father at all. The poor man had finally given up and moved to upstate New York, where he’d been killed in a car accident when Caroline was fifteen. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Caroline remembered her mother remarking to one of her bridge cronies. “Good riddance to bad rubbish.” The usual assortment of bitter clichés that were Mary’s stock-in-trade.
“You look nice,” Caroline said to her mother in an effort to banish such unkind thoughts. It was Thanksgiving, after all. She was supposed to be awash in gratitude, not wallowing in past grievances. She sat down on the high-backed green velvet chair opposite the floral print sofa on which her mother was perched. “Is that a new dress?”
Mary patted the curls of her freshly streaked hair, styled the way she’d been wearing it for as long as Caroline could remember. Short and sassy, she liked to say. Although short and stiff was the better description, the tight curls kept in place by a daily deluge of hairspray. “A present from your brother,” she said, caressing the folds of her silk print shirtwaist.
“That was very nice of him,” Caroline said, trying to keep the shock out of her voice.
“Yes. He’s very generous.”
He should be, Caroline thought, since he lives here rent-free and doesn’t lift a finger to help out. “Where is he anyway?”
“He had a business meeting.”
“Really? On Thanksgiving?”
“You know your brother. Always working on something.”
Always working the angles, Caroline thought. Although the angles hadn’t been working for him for some time, his life having pretty much gone off the rails in the decade since he and Becky had divorced. First the real estate market had come crashing down. Then he’d lost his job. A string of disastrous investments had cost him pretty much everything he had left, including a newly purchased waterfront condo he’d bought at the height of the market and been forced to sell less than a year later at a substantial loss. His mother had attributed each successive failure to a combination of bad timing and worse luck, and had welcomed him back home with open arms. He’d been camping out in his old bedroom for the past three years, doing little but playing copious amounts of poker, drinking copious amounts of alcohol, and watching even more copious amounts of TV.
Ironically, he’d perked up, albeit briefly, when Becky had come back into his life. She’d moved to Los Angeles immediately following their divorce, only to return four years later, having been diagnosed with terminal cancer. It turned out that the headaches that had plagued her for years were the by-product of a slow-growing but ultimately fatal brain tumor. She’d contacted Peggy, who had recently been appointed director of the newly opened Marigold Hospice, and shortly after that Becky had moved to the hospice, where she died two months after that. Surprisingly, Steve had been at her bedside every day, a sadly classic case of too little, too late and you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
“So, what’s been doing?” Caroline asked her mother.
“What should be doing?” her mother asked in return.
Caroline shrugged. Her mother obviously wasn’t going to make this easy. “I don’t know. Have you seen any good movies?”
“I don’t go to movies. You know that.”
“Actually I didn’t. I thought you loved movies.”
“I used to. But they’re all so violent now.”
“What about bridge? I know you like that. Win any tournaments lately?”
“Not with Paula Harmon as a partner, that’s for sure. I don’t know where her head is these days. I think she’s losing it. We went down two tricks the other day when everyone else in the room made an overtrick. Then she got all defensive when I very gingerly tried to point out what she’d done wrong.”
Caroline tried imagining her mother’s “gingerly” attempt to correct her partner.
“What are you smiling about?”
“Nothing. Sorry,” Caroline said, finding it odd to be apologizing for smiling. “I read somewhere that bridge players always think they’re better players than their partners.”