A Perfect Life (22 page)

“Why, Laurie,” Honey said. “What an original, thoughtful present.” She pressed her cheek to Laurel's. “I'm sure it will be one of the nicest meals of my life. And I know that your father will enjoy the Follies.” She fluffed the carnation on his lapel.

My father grabbed her hand as if he were capturing a bee. “Are these real girls we're talking about? Not boys
dressed up as girls? Yeah, sure, I'll enjoy it.” He kissed the hand, then tucked it beneath his arm for safekeeping.

“And that globe!” Honey said. “Janie, it must have cost you a fortune.”

“Well,” I said, “after everything you've both—”

My father cut in. “Two hundred dollars, am I right? If you spent a dime, you spent two hundred dollars.” He frowned the kind of frown he put on when workmen gave him an inflated estimate. Honey tugged away her hand. She knew what he was going to say next and hoped that she would have the time to stop him from saying it. “You just find us that gene, doll. There's no present on earth we could appreciate more than that.”

I glanced at my sister, thinking of Abel and Cain and how one sibling's gift had been accepted by God and the other sibling's spurned. Here Laurel had gone to all the trouble to come up with a gift our father and Honey might appreciate, and I had won the contest with a mouse.

“Laurel! Sweetie! Over here!” A plump older woman who was wearing enough beaded jewelry to stock a bazaar waved an aerogram above her head. “I've got regards for you from Hank!”

“Excuse me,” Laurel said tightly. “I hope you'll both enjoy France.” And she went to visit with the mother of her senior-year boyfriend. I moved past my father to the new mahogany table on which the wedding gifts had been piled.

“This sister of yours,” Cruz said. “What I want to know is, this business about her genes, it's on the level? It isn't
my
genes that are the problem?”

“Just be nice to her,” I said. “All right?”

“I'm asking for a straight answer here. Is anything wrong with your sister? Is she sick?”

No, I said. She wasn't sick. But someday she might be.

“Someday is a long way off. She tells me you're looking for a cure for this Valentine's thing. Just how long's that going to take? We talking months here? Years?”

It wasn't a cure, I said. It was only a test.

Cruz took this in. “To make sure she's all right? And if she's not, what? I'm supposed to say, ‘See you later, I'm out of here'? What kind of craziness you cooking up in that lab of yours?”

“I'm just not explaining it very well.”

“No explanation is going to make me see why I've got to wait for some test to be sure how I feel about your sister. Do me a favor. Make sure your father knows his daughter is the one who won't let me do the right thing.”

Cruz went to find Laurel. I felt tired and old. I wanted to tell everyone:
If you want to get married, get married. If you don't, for Pete's sake, don't.
I started for the door to take a walk and get some air, but Honey wouldn't let me. She handed me a champagne glass. From the way she was tottering on her heels, I had the impression she had already downed several glasses.

I felt the waxy seal of her lipstick on my cheek. “Teddy was so late coming in last night, Willie and I sat up talking until all hours.” She motioned to the server, took another fluted glass, and sipped. “Excuse me for prying, but it's very hard . . .” She had a gauzy, wistful look. “You've met my Teddy, haven't you? Teddy's such a sweet boy. A darling. You have no idea what a grandmother feels for a grand
child. And to think he might . . . Jane, it's one thing to take care of a sick husband. To
not
be able to take care of a sick husband. But a child, Jane. A child. To think there's nothing you can do. To think you will need to watch them suffer.”

I started to say it wasn't any of her business if I had a child. But then I realized it was. Any child I might have with Willie would be her grandchild. If Willie and I got sick, Honey might end up raising him or her. “I know you mean well,” I said. “But really, it's my decision.”

“No,” she said. “It isn't. It isn't, Jane. Promise me! You really and truly need to promise me that if anything happens between you and my son, you will not have a child!” She took a step to grab my arm. Instead, she lost her balance and tottered backward. She stretched out her arm to grab the globe and sent it toppling. We heard a terrible crack, and it suffered a jagged rift from north to south.

Willie helped her to her feet. My father rushed over and righted the toppled globe.

“Mom,” Willie said. “Are you all right? Did you break anything?” He looked at the globe, then at me. “I mean, you didn't hurt yourself, did you?”

“No, no, of course not.” She seemed confused. “Janie and I were just talking.”

“It's okay, Mom. Whatever it is, you and Jane can talk later. If you and Herb go to the restaurant now, the guests will have to follow.”

Tenderly, he took his mother's arm and escorted her from the room. I saw Honey make a detour to the bathroom, where she must have patted cold water on her face,
because she came out looking more sober. Then Willie drove his mother and my father to King's in the limousine, while I drove Laurel, Cruz, and Ted in my father's rusted Dodge, trying not to think about Honey's warning that I not marry her son, or at least not have his child. I couldn't help but take the cracked globe as an omen.

The restaurant was overflowing with bouquets; the flowery scent, combined with the smell of all the greasy food, made me feel ill. I was hungry, and I wasn't. I barely had time to grab an egg roll and stuff it in my mouth before the band started playing. My father pulled Honey on the dance floor. Then Willie cut in and danced with his mother, and Laurel danced with our father. I was paired with Cruz.

“Loosen up,” he said. “Dancing's what you do when you stop thinking about dancing.”

I was relieved when we switched partners.

“Hi, Sis.” Willie kissed my ear. “You look terrific.”

I shrugged. “Maureen helped me pick out the suit.”

“Not much good at taking compliments, are you.”

I pulled back to see his face. “Not when I don't know how to take them.”

“Okay,” he said. “I deserved that. Truth is, when I'm away from you, I think one thing. And then, when I get closer, I start thinking of something else.”

“Hey, Dad.” Ted tapped his father's shoulder. “Mind if I horn in?”

“As it happens, I do.”

“Tough nuts,” Ted told him. He ducked beneath his father's arm and pushed me back in a two-step, although the
song had three beats. I was glad that he'd cut in. I intended to ignore everything his father said.

“Has he popped the question yet?” Ted asked. “He's kind of goofy, with all that sixties meditation crap. I didn't see him much when I was a kid, but he's been a great dad since then. Mom's never said a bad word against him.” Ted let go and stepped back, as if he only then realized his hands were wrapped around his father's girlfriend's waist. “Uh, nice hat,” he said.

His bewilderment moved me. He was so young and naive, and so unaware that he was both. “Your father really loves you,” I said. “You do know that, don't you? You'll be careful at that rodeo?”

“Oh, go on.” He gouged a dragon's eye with his boot. “You sound like my mother.”

I
felt
like his mother.

The waiters brought our soup. I found my place and spooned down a bowl of wonton. The fat on Laurel's soup congealed while she performed a jitterbug with Cruz. The dance seemed more like an argument. Back-to-back, they locked elbows. Laurel flung her legs toward the ceiling, her dress fanning to reveal her panties. After the song ended, Cruz held her with her arms pinned behind her back. She pulled away and came to sit by me.

“You keep avoiding me,” I said. I hadn't planned to scold her, but losing my father made me all the more frightened of losing my sister, too.

“I am not,” she said. Strands of damp hair clung to her temples. She raked them back. “It's just that you always act
as if there's something I should be doing that I'm not. Even if this concert comes off the way I hope, you'll be sitting in the audience wondering when I'm going to get on with my real life. You'll ask me what I plan to do when I can't dance anymore.”

“I'm your sister. I care what happens to you.”

She laid her hand on mine. “I don't think the way you do. I don't like to plan ahead. It makes me crazy.”

“Everyone! Please!” Honey, who had changed into a pink suit and pillbox hat, ordered the guests out front. She and my father were driving to LaGuardia, then flying to France. She walked out to the limousine. “Heads up, everyone!” she cried, then hurled her bouquet as far as she could in the direction opposite me. It was caught by Irene, who was Honey's sister's child and therefore had no chance of inheriting the gene for Valentine's.

Later, in that intricate choreography of cars that happens at a wedding, I drove Cruz and Laurel home in my father's Dodge. Laurel and Cruz changed into matching leather pants, then climbed back in the MG. I bit my lip to keep from telling Cruz to drive carefully.

Laurel motioned me to the window. “I'll see you soon. Before the concert.”

“So we can go sailing?” I said.

Laurel looked as stricken as I had intended she look. “I did say that, didn't I. Well, I try to honor my promises. Don't I, Cruz, love?” She took his hand and kissed it. “Jane, I'm not ready to tell Dad yet, but Cruz and I decided we might get married. We're thinking of holding the ceremony
on the top of Mount Washington.” She laughed a high, false laugh. “I'm only joking. We'll hold it somewhere safe.”

They roared off down the street. Laurel believed she would marry Cruz, just as she believed she would take me sailing. She said these things in good faith, as she had thanked me for saving our mothers' linens and little yellow corn-holders. Although, when I went inside, I saw that she had left these items on her bed.

Someone rang the doorbell. Ted shambled in.

“Cool,” he said, “what's this?” He held up the mouse cage, which was sitting beside the door. “These your pets, or are they an experiment?”

“An experiment.” I explained that I was breeding the affected male to see if he might be homozygous for the Valentine's gene.

Ted smacked kisses at the mice. “Which one's the guy and which one's the girl? Both of them look healthy.”

It was true; the runt had grown. He rarely slipped into trances, and he only trembled when he was startled. Vic still maintained that the mouse had inherited two doses of the gene, but I was no longer sure. Maybe he had only been malnourished, and with all the food and attention I had lavished on him, he had thrived and caught up.

“Maybe he's just getting better,” Ted suggested.

“You don't get better with Valentine's.”

“Just because no one's ever recovered in the past doesn't mean no one ever will. It's like the sun coming up. Just because it's come up every morning for the past million years doesn't mean it has to come up again tomorrow.”

There was nothing worse than an amateur logician
.

“Maybe if a mouse has two doses of the gene, it gives it, you know, immunity? Like getting a shot of the polio virus makes you immune to polio.”

“A gene isn't a virus,” I said.

“Maybe it's a miracle. God can keep a sparrow from falling, so why can't he cure a mouse?”

“You don't really believe God performs miracles for mice.”

“Whew,” he said. “Dad was right. You're a pretty serious person.”

I said that I guessed I was. “The only miracle I believe in is that the universe got started. It's miracle enough that we're standing here talking.”

Ted grinned. “It's like that watchmaker thing.”

“Watchmaker?”

“You know, Ike Newton and the Deists.”

He made it sound like a rock group. Still, he knew who Newton was. He had heard of the Deists.

“You'll let me know what happens? If he comes down with it or not?” He meant the mouse, not his father. Ted wrote his address on a matchbook. Did he smoke? Please, God, no. “I'm like my dad,” he said. “I'm a very curious guy.” He told me about this white calf he had seen in South Dakota. Its parents had both been black, and the tribe there believed the calf was a sign from their messiah. When I unraveled the genetics that might have produced a white calf from a black cow and a black bull, I was afraid that Ted would accuse me of spoiling another miracle, but he
laughed and said, “Sure, I get it. You're pretty good at explaining all this science stuff.”

He helped me carry out my luggage. Ted squeezed into the back seat of the Jeep with the box of my mother's books, squirming like a child who is bored with a journey before he's left home. Willie had convinced him to accept a bus ticket back to Montana, and we were dropping him off at the Greyhound station in Albany. The three of us rode without speaking, but I could tell that Willie's mind was on Ted. The Jeep would drift toward the shoulder, then toward the yellow line, then back toward the shoulder. We pulled into the parking lot behind the buses. Willie unfolded some bills from his wallet. Ted jammed his fists in his jeans and refused to accept the money. His bus snorted into its stall. Ted grabbed his duffel bag and bounded up the steps.

“I'll tell you,” Willie said, stabbing the key in the ignition, “there aren't too many things you get to do a second time. But I sure wish I could get the chance to be a better dad.” We crossed the river at Albany. Three hours later, we pulled up to the tollbooths outside Newton. Willie lifted his haunches to slide his change from his pants. “How do you decide which probe to try next? Is there some kind of order? Or do you guess?”