Commune of Women (15 page)

Buddy and Angela were really shaken to the core, so the next day Angela takes herself down to Saint Patrick’s and marches right up to the head Virgin, up there on her pedestal, and lights a candle and says, “Mother, you’re a woman. You understand these things. Your son was crucified, and so I expect you were, too, in your heart. How could you help it? So please hear me when I say that Buddy and me are just not up to this. Twenty-eight years was enough. We can’t start over with another little Bernie. So please, for our sakes and especially for the sake of Bernie and Myrna, and most especially for the sake of the baby, who has to come into this wicked world and suffer what people do in their ignorance and cruelty, please, Mother, please...make this a normal, healthy baby. That’s all I ask. Oh...and that Buddy not lose his faith in God, too. That’s it. Thank you, Mother. Thank you for hearing my prayer.” That’s what she said to Her. And then she lit a second candle, just for good measure.

Also for good measure, she stopped by Madame Zola’s. As luck would have it, Madame Zola had time to give her an appointment. She was right in the middle of giving herself a dye job and her hair was wadded up under a plastic cap with little rivulets of black dye running down her forehead that she kept wiping away with a wad of Kleenex. She set a timer, so she wouldn’t keep the dye on too long and then she pulled out her Tarot deck and rummaged through the cards, pulling a few.

She looked at them for a long time and then she said, very gently for Madame Zola: “Go home, Angela. Stop worrying. Say your prayers for this baby that’s coming. Everything’s going to be fine.”

In retrospect, they don’t know why they worried so much. Bernie and Myrna are like two halves of one whole. Myrna’s smart as a whip and is even thinking of going back to college to get her MBA. Bernie’s so strong that anything little Myrna can’t do, he can. And they’re so tender with one another, it would make anyone just cry to see it. Together, they make a great team.

So it must have been the same with their genes – Bernie threw his good, strong, handsome ones into the pot and Myrna put her big brain ones in – and
Presto!
Out came little Mikie, cute as a bug, healthy as a horse and already lifting his head and smiling at them all like it’s Christmas.

So now, the kids come over for Sunday dinner every week with the new baby. It’s a wonder anyone has time to eat because they’re all just fighting over who gets to hold Mikie next.

So, Buddy and Angela stand on the porch after dinner and watch them go down the walk. Myrna is carrying Mikie and Bernie is carrying the diaper bag and the car seat and crooning some lullaby of his own composition to the baby, who is crooning back.

Bernie helps Myrna arrange the baby in the back seat. Then, he opens the door and helps her into the driver’s seat and gets her all buckled in behind the special controls she uses because her feet don’t touch the floor, and then he comes around and gets himself buckled in. They both turn and wave, just as they start off down the street at a snail’s pace.

Buddy turns to Angela and he has a little smile, which is always a good sign with Buddy. “Angie,” he says proudly, “I think I see some fishing trips in my future.”

“With Bernie, too?”

“With Bernie, too.”

And he whacks her on the bottom and gooses her and she starts to giggle and he grabs her and waltzes her across the kitchen toward the bedroom, with her squealing, “No! No!” But meaning yes.
Yes
.

“I have to stop now. I’m kind of choked up.”

The others are so quiet, Betty looks around for the first time wondering if they’re all asleep. But they’re just staring at her.

“I’m sorry,” Betty says, mopping her eyes. “Everything’s making me cry right now.”

“What, exactly, is making you cry?” It’s Heddi’s voice, full of her clinical authority.

Betty’s caught off guard. “Well...I don’t know...I...”

“But you
do
know. You know perfectly
well
what’s making you cry right now.”

Betty looks around, kind of embarrassed. What must the others think? She looks at Heddi, beseeching her, but she’s adamant. She just stares at Betty like she does during their sessions. No one else makes a peep.

“Well, I guess I’m crying because I’m happy for Angela and Bud. And for Bernie and Myrna. And Mikie, too, of course.”

“Really.”

And that one word cuts right through to this place where Betty’s emotions are like feet standing on slippery, slimy rocks full of crawdads. It’s a stranded place that she just wants to get to shore from, but first she has to wade there – and try to keep her balance at the same time.

“I...I...” she stammers.

And then up it comes, like bad food. “I guess what I’m feeling is...I wish that it had ended for Larry and me the way it did for Angela and Bud. I wish Larry, just once, would of said how pretty my flower arrangements are... and danced
me
around the kitchen.

“I guess I’m really scared and it feels just raw and terrible that my family doesn’t even know where I am or what’s happening to me...or even care, as far as I can tell.”

And then Betty can’t talk anymore because all she can do is sob.

Wow! This Heddi plays hardball. She just reduced that fat chick to tears. If Erika could learn to hit people that hard right in the gut, she could rule the world!

Between bouts of pain and with Sophia’s help, Erika’s been trying to get her cell phone to work – but nothing. She needs to call her office and let them know she’s alive. Talking to somebody official like the police wouldn’t be bad, either. Gently nudge them to come and fucking
rescue
her!

Sophia got her laptop set up for her, but WIFI isn’t working, either.

That fucking deal in Berlin’s gonna go down without her! Man, that’s a burn! She worked her ass off on it and now Lathrop’s gonna get all the credit.

These women and their stories are about to make her puke. Who gives a rat’s ass? Now everybody’s clustering around, giving Betty hugs.

Yuck!

There’s one good thing about being shot – everybody leaves her alone. They let Sophia deal with her and that’s fine with Erika. Sophia doesn’t get all touchy-feely.

All she wants is to get out of this fucking hellhole and get on with her life. Every hour she spends in here is costing her money.

Everyone’s taken a break and now they’re settling in again. Heddi whispers, “How do you think things are going?” Ondine tells her she thinks her idea is brilliant.

“You go next, then,” Heddi whispers.

“
Me?
What will I say?”

“I don’t know. Whatever you want. Tell them about your aunt’s house in France.”

“What about it?”

“Anything. I doubt anyone else in this room has an 18th-century house on the ocean.
Anything
you tell them about it will be interesting.”

So Ondine agrees and Heddi gets everyone settled in again.

What on earth should she say?

“Heddi says I should tell you about my aunt’s house in France. I inherited it when Tante Collette died two years ago.

“I just came from there. Just now...when...all this... Well, anyway...

“I’ve been staying there for a month, trying to decide if I want to live there permanently or not. I’ve had it for those two years, but until now I’ve never really thought that I might want to live there.

“I love the house. I love the area it’s in – on the Atlantic seaboard, you know. And I love France. So I’m not sure why I can’t make up my mind. Anyway, let me tell you about the place...”

It’s an old house, from the early eighteenth century, and it breathes at night – random creaks and pops and groans, and there’s a kind of
shush
, like a velvet coat being dragged across the floor behind someone invisible.

In the night wind, it sighs as if it’s remembering.

Ondine likes to think that its history, deep in its bones – in those dry, hand-hewn timbers and sleeping stones – is dreaming. And she’s the current dream; this woman recently arrived with her leather mason’s satchel of mallets and chisels, a folding French easel and jars of raw pigments.

The house likes her, she thinks. It’s waking up, popping its eyes open in curiosity, asking,
What century is this?
Is that a mistress to King Louis? Old Marie with her chamber pots and brooms? Does she wear bustles or an apron or beaded flapper gowns? When she cooks, is it cabbage that fills the air or roast meat? What manner of occupant is it, this time? What’s her station in life and what’s her rhythm?

The floorboards already know her. She walks briskly but lightly, sometimes tripping when her foot catches the edge of the parquet. She doesn’t mince, or drag along, old and weak and tottering – and neither did Tante Collette, by the way. Her stride was always slow and stately.

The windows tremble in the night wind like muted tapping on a drum. A tree branch scrapes against the slate roof with the sound of an old woman sweeping, feeble and irregular.

There’s marble dust in the studio – a faint, crystalline powder sparking in the moonlight, lying in the grooves of the planking like pale ribbons of vapor. On the easel, the black lines leap forward in the silver light and colors recede, leaving an inky, tangled calligraphy where image was. Shadows run like ink along the baseboards and pool in the corners.

The stairs click and sag, remembering a dozen generations of feet; small and bare; large, heavy and booted; satin slippered; slow and labored in wooden clogs. The old walnut wood remembers, by emitting a faint scent, the hands with veins like grapevines, patient and firm, that rubbed in beeswax and lavender oil.

In the master bedroom, the bed is a carved and tangled garden under an antique silk canopy. Old Turkistan carpets gleam like an enchantment when stroked by the moon. And two matched
Louis Quinze bombé
dressers with pink marble tops lift their smooth knees in a courtly nocturnal dance.

When she awakens, the morning sun is enflaming the rose-colored plaster of the walls. There’s a sweet odor of apples rotting in the orchard and the squabble of sparrows. She is, momentarily, both dreamer and dream.

She has to lie still and remember: this is Tante Collette’s bedroom, not the cathedral-ceilinged one with the view of the southern California beach. She’s alone in bed, not lying tense, wondering if
he
is awake, too. A day stretches its morning stretch, all hers. It won’t be chopped into appointments, arguments or shopping mall feeding frenzies.

Alone! She’s gloriously alone!

Ondine can’t tell them the relief!

When she gets up, the house unwinds before her as she moves toward the kitchen. There’s a long hall with a Persian runner, family portraits, yellow ochre plaster; then the dining room, pulsing with morning sun. She’s put apple branches there in a huge apothecary jar to force them into bloom, on a table carved with the initials
C.B
. – by Charles Baudelaire.

Finally, there’s the swinging door, nine feel tall and paneled. The kitchen will still be sleeping in shadow. It’s cold and smells of mustard and asparagus. There’s a blue-enameled cast iron cook stove hunkering against a wall of cobalt tile. A massive butcher’s block at center stage, with its heavy turned legs, reminds her of a squat old woman with her hands on her hips, defiant, like some ancient kitchen deity.

She’s still vague about the layout. It’s all dreamy, as if the rooms move around in the night. Twice, looking for the bathroom, she’s blundered into the linen closet.

Little Ondine – the barefooted version of herself, ten years old with wildly curly auburn hair down her back – remembers it still differently
. I think the library’s in there
, she’ll say, directing Ondine, instead, into the music room, where Paderewski’s edition of Chopin’s mazurkas still lies open on the music rack of the Bösendorfer. Deep indigo toile drapes are gathered back. Behind them, Alençon lace sheers mute the brilliance of the day outside, where bare branches hold shards of sky in their black fingers. The stillness in this room is deep, as if the walls were still straining to hear Tante Collette’s long, magical fingers trilling.

The house is a dreamscape partly because of Tante Collette’s long association with the
Nabis
, the French Symbolist movement of which she was a part – colors in odd juxtapositions, a certain sense of enchantment, nature honored and invited in, books everywhere, paintings, and upholstered chairs in little coveys, seeming to gossip.

“A sensual atmosphere of mild
tristesse
and pure lucidity,” as Tante Collette once described it.

“This house is the Keeper of Hours,” she told Ondine that summer long ago. “Dawn, rising sun, day, dusk, and night, with its moon and stars –
Matins, Lauds, Tierce, Sext, Nones, Vespers
, and
Compline
– every room is canonical. You will see.”

Why does a person retain such a comment for three decades? It was full of mystery then and mystifies her still. But she sees the sun already moving through the dining room, as she enters with steaming
café au lait
in hand – moving from left to right, pushing the room’s blue shadows westward like sands in an hourglass flowing horizontally.

And last night’s moon was one long beam angling through the bedroom French doors, an hypotenuse of light. Tante Collette would have plucked the string of that geometry of wildness, producing a pure note that vibrated with the feral perceptions of the
Nabis
.

“Strength is not in the arms,” she said to soothe ondine, the day she fell out of an apple tree because she couldn’t chin herself on a limb like the neighbor boy. “Strength has other muscles that articulate in the soul. It means being able to endure what we know as women. To be ligamentous. It means being able to stand and live.”

Her blouse, Ondine remembers, was aqua silk cut velvet patterned in leaves, soft and sensual as a cat, with a large pink cameo at the throat. Little Ondine looked up the length of her aunt’s long, kelp-colored skirt, as if it were a tower and listened, uncomprehending.