Extraordinary (9 page)

“In exchange for what?”

“That's exactly what I said. But it turned out, in exchange for nothing. In fact, the guy wrote the cheques on his
wife's
account.” I went on: “I've often wondered about that gesture, her writing strangers and asking for money with the assurance of an adored child. Where did she get the outrageous confidence? And it occurs to me, and not without a certain envy, that the answer lies in the question. She
was
an adored child. And that's you, Sally. That's you.”

We both sat silently for a while. Then Sally said, “I'm not making excuses for Chloe, for her cutting me out of whole sections of her life, but she had to do a lot of things that most young girls don't, things that they usually have done
for
them. She had to learn to shop for groceries, to buy brown bread and not white bread, to buy healthy morning cereal, not the sugary junk her friends ate; how to detect a fresh cantaloupe; how to separate the whites from the darks downstairs in the laundry room; how to make scrambled eggs (no milk at a low heat). How to drive a car in the winter (turn
into
the skid). She had to learn not to forget her lunch, because she had a mother who couldn't pop by the school and drop it off. All that must have been a hardship.”

“Perhaps,” I agreed, “but it made her exceptionally
able.
”

“Almost frighteningly able. But go on, please.”

“It must have been a lonely time, those first few months in an American city. Setting up a little apartment, eating dinner alone. Trying to make friends without seeming too hungry for friends. She started to phone me again. Chloe only phones me when she's bleak. But that's fine. She joined a ‘Newcomers to Berkeley' society; she even went to church a few times. She went to Alcoholics Anonymous, not because she had a drinking problem but because there were people there. Because they all went out for coffee after the meeting and everyone was welcome.

“And then, one rainy November night, a young woman stepped out of the rain, folded up her umbrella and joined the circle of chairs. It was Miranda Treece, her old nemesis from Montreal. And she
did
have a drinking problem. She had done very little with her life in the intervening years except live on her family's money and fuck a whole bunch of guys. She'd washed up in Berkeley on the heels of a failed romance and didn't have the steam to leave town. I don't know the details or even the timing, but one day Chloe found a small parcel in her mailbox. She opened it up. It was a T-shirt. And with it was a short handwritten note:
I wore this for three days. If you like how it smells, call me.
It was signed
Miranda.
And that, as they say, was that.”

I looked over at Sally. She was frowning as if she had not heard me correctly. But I wanted her to hear the end of the story before she responded. “Chloe has always been strangely private about that chapter of her life, even with me. Which is funny, because she could be alarmingly candid about her goings-on with men. Not with this, though. But when I saw her coming out of a movie theatre in Toronto with Miranda one afternoon a year or two later, there was a bloom on her cheeks, those lovely cheeks that had made me so sad that Sunday afternoon on the sidewalk. It was the kind of illumination that even a fool can see comes from being physically loved.”

I stopped talking. We both watched the candle flame for a while. Another plane, its tail illuminated like that of a bright red goldfish, descended over the airport. The events that happened in the wake of this conversation still seem extraordinary to me, the way life does and doesn't work out. And for whom. But here's something that
did
work out. Let's jump ahead eight or nine years after that evening on the eighteenth floor. Chloe and Miranda came over to my apartment for dinner with their two children in tow (gay dads, turkey baster, enough said). Watching them from where I sat at the end of the table, I couldn't help reflecting on how delicious, how mysterious it was that Miranda, this great love of Chloe's life, now her legal wife, was the same girl who had once routed her for a boy who currently, I'm told, delivers booze in a little green car for an after-hours supplier. Near the end of the night, Miranda did a perfect handstand in the kitchen. The children were beside themselves with wonder. It turned out she'd been the San Antonio gymnastics champion during her last year of high school.

 

 

 

I
t was nearly three in the morning now.
The hum from the refrigerator clicked off, leaving the room in audible silence. It seemed as though the curtains, the lamps, the pictures on the wall were all waiting too. I was standing at the window looking down at the parking lot. A man in a white jacket moved between the cars and stepped under a spotlight. He looked up. We looked at each other for an unnaturally long time. Then he waved, a big wide wave as though he were on a boat and trying to catch the attention of a passing freighter. But I didn't wave back. He seemed like bad luck and I stepped away from the window.

Sally came out of the bathroom and sat down heavily on the indentation on the couch, her usual place, and put her crutches carefully to one side, held them in place for a moment to be sure they didn't wobble over. “I'm ready to do this thing now,” she said.

I looked at her face. It was grey and a little puffy, the face of an exhausted person, a party-goer who has come to the end of the night, knows it, but is too exhausted, among the wilting flowers and sweating cheese and lipstick-stained wineglasses, to get up and make it across the room to the door. Too tired to enjoy staying, too tired to leave.

I leaned forward in my chair. I closed my fingers together and then stretched them out. I saw she was watching my fingers. Then she looked up at me with a soft smile. “Could we skip this next part?”

I knew what she meant, of course, but I needed to hear her say it. “Which part would that be?”

“The questions that have obviously occurred to me a thousand times.”

“And tonight's the night?”

“If you love me, please don't make me plead.”

“Okay.”

“Do you have them?”

“Yes.”

“Are they with you?”

I took the dark bottle from my shoulder bag, which I had laid on the floor beside my chair.

“Are there enough?”

“Yes, Sally, there are enough.”

“I don't have to take, like, two
hundred
of them, do I?”

“No.”

“How many do I have to take?”

“Thirty. Tops.”

She looked at the bottle. “It looks scary, that bottle. Can't we put them in something else?”

I got up, went into the kitchen, opened the pill bottle, removed the cotton batten (we didn't need a sinister rattle coming from my bag as I crossed the room).

The phone rang again.

“Who the hell
is
that?” she said.

“Should I get it?”

“God, no. Please don't. Let's get on with this.” After a moment, she said, “I don't want to throw up, be found half alive in a pool of vomit and spend the rest of my days with the IQ of a cabbage.”

“You know, Sally, for someone who says she's had enough, you're an awfully amusing woman.”

“Death concentrates the mind. I must have read that somewhere.”

“No, I believe that's an original.”

She thought about it for a second; quietly mouthed the words again. “You're sure? I don't want to go out on a plagiarized note.”

“It's yours. Straight up.”

“Where were we?” she said. I was about to open my mouth to protest, but she silenced me with a tilt of her head, a reminder to not make her plead.

I said, “Let's have a drink first.”

“Yes, something fun.” (A hint of postponement?)

“Okay.”

“What's fun?”

“Well,” I said, “what drink would you order if we were at the Cucaracha in Mexico?”

“A margarita.”

“Have you got the ingredients?”

“I sure as hell do.”

“You tell me what to do and I'll do it.”

“Hang on,” she said, “I'll come into the kitchen with you.”

“Stay where you are.”

“I have eternity to sit on my behind. Besides, there's a stool in there.”

So she came into the kitchen with me and told me how to make a margarita.

And when we were done, we toasted each other. Then I turned off the light and brought the drinks back into the living room and sat hers down by her side.

She said, “Would you get me a glass of water, please. A big one.”

“Cold or warm?”

“Just medium.”

I put it beside her margarita. Then I said, “Is it too late? Can we put some music on?” I found myself thinking of the man in the white jacket in the parking lot, waving. “What would you like to hear?”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “I'd like to hear ‘Take Five.' You know that one. Dave Brubeck. I've always loved that drum solo.” (The approach of death, in the same way the prospect of the day's first drink rejuvenates an alcoholic, had made her chatty). “It's the only drum solo I've ever liked.”

Or perhaps it was nerves, now that we were here, finally, at last.

“I agree.”

“Normally I hate drum solos,” she said.

I clicked through her small CD collection and there it was, the Picasso-like cover. I put it on. We listened to those delicious opening bars, cymbal and crisp snare drum.

“Now listen for the piano, that gorgeous piano,” she said. “My grandparents made me take piano for a while. They knew I was artistic, but they just had the wrong thing. But they meant well.”

The green liquid in her drink tilted to the rim. She reached into the bowl of pills and took one and then another. It dropped from her hand onto the carpet. I got it for her and put it back in the bowl.

She said, “This song makes me nostalgic for a life I never had. Have you ever had a song that does that to you?”

“Yes,” I said, “but with me it's more to do with smells. Pears soap makes me feel like that.”

“Isn't that funny. Kyle loved the smell of Pears soap. I think it evoked a life that he wanted, an organized comfort that he lacked the discipline to create for himself and knew it. Even when he was a little boy, he loved it. What do you make of that?”

“I honestly don't know.”

“Do you think he intuited, even then, how things were going to go?”

I shook my head and smiled somewhat foolishly, or so it felt. We listened to the music. The saxophone was fading, making way for the drum solo.

“I don't mean I wish I'd had a different life,” she continued. “I had a decent life. I could have done without that fucking carpet, but all in all, lots of love, a wonderful daughter . . .” Her eyes clouded for a moment; she was thinking of Kyle. “But when I hear ‘Take Five,' especially the piano (there, you hear it?), I feel like some part of me grew up in Manhattan and went to great parties. For some reason, I always think of
Playboy
magazine when I hear this song. Men with tie pins. Hugh Hefner.” She reached into the bowl and, with some difficulty, removed two pills.

“I'll get it,” I said.

“No, no, I'm fine.” She put one pill then the other in her mouth, threw back her head, her black hair falling to her shoulders, then straightened up and took a sip of water. “You know, when I was a little girl, I used to ride cows. Honest.”

I said, “How come you never came to live with us?”

She thought for a full minute. That's a long time in real time. I could feel myself sobering up more quickly than I wanted. Then: “I used to think that it was because your father didn't want to raise another man's child. For years I believed that. But near the end of her life, when the booze and the pills were starting to make her a little sloppy with her stories, Mother let something slip. I understood suddenly that it was her,
she
was the one who didn't want me around.”

“Mother? Really?”

“Really.”

“Did you see much of her?” I said.

“She'd come and go. When she felt like it. When she felt sentimental.”

“But her own daughter, surely—”

“Most of the awful things in life turn out to have quite banal reasons—I've learned that. You know what I think? I think she thought her new man might like her more if she didn't come with so much furniture. It might be even more banal than that. Maybe I was too old; maybe having a daughter my age contradicted something she'd said about her
own
age. Once she got him, got him married, then it was okay to let the cat out of the bag. I remember going on a holiday with her once, one of the few times. I was all grown up and married by then, and determined to get over what a shitty mother she'd been. We went to a beach resort with black sand in Antigua. First night we were in the hotel, just as we were heading downstairs for dinner, she asked me not to tell anyone I was her daughter, to say that I was a cousin.”

I said, “Why were you determined not to hate her? Why do you have to love everyone in your family just because they're family?”

“I can see you're thinking of your brother, Jake, again.”

“He's just an example.”

She said, “The truth is, sometimes I really loved my mother. When I was a little girl, I used to daydream about falling asleep in her arms. And then she'd turn up at my grandparents' and be funny and worldly and hug me and tell me I was beautiful and we'd go for these drives and I'd forgive her all over again.”

“And then?”

“And then she'd go away again. Sometimes it looked like she wanted to be sure she still had me. Then she was free to get on with her life, knowing I was still there.”

“But you forgave her in the end.”

“Just before she died, yes, I did.”

“Did she know that?”

“Yes, yes. She let her guard down once. And I got to say everything I needed to say.”

“And what'd she say?”

“She just listened. That's what I needed her to do. Just listen and not argue; not defend herself; not go on the attack. And then she said, ‘You're right.' And then we were okay. I never quite trusted she wouldn't take off on me—people who do that seldom do it just once—but still, we had some fun. I just kept her a little distant from my heart.”

Sally took another four or five pills and threw her head back and swallowed. “Besides, at some point it seems like we all leave someone we love by the side of the road and drive away. I did it to Kyle when I put him on that bus in Mexico; she did it to me to get a new husband.”

And I did it to you, I thought. I sat up. “It sounds rather grand, but I'm going to say it anyway. All sins are not equal. Putting a self-destructive teenager on a bus is not the same as leaving your daughter to grow up elsewhere. It just isn't.”

Or not bothering to visit your crippled sister.

The drum solo from “Take Five” concluded and, like a slippered guest entering a room, the saxophone resumed.

“Anyway,” she said, and I could see she didn't want a debate. That she had arrived at an understanding from which she did not want to be dislodged.

I said, “And her new husband? What did you think of him?”

“Your father?”

“Yeah.”

“Very old school guy. Blazer and these beautiful starched white shirts and such lovely, lovely cufflinks. He smelt like Old Spice aftershave. Just a hint. We could not have been more different, but we made each other laugh—don't ask me why. I also thought he fancied me a bit. Nothing overt; there was just a little extra sparkle in the way he talked to me or the very, very gentle way he touched my back when we were going into a room together. I don't think Mother much liked that. But I did. It was an impotent way to level the score, but there you go.”

“But nothing more?”

“It crossed my mind, but that would have poisoned my heart as well as hers. No. Mother had her own inferno—you know what your dad was like. He was way out there on the margins. And not just financially. He screwed half her friends, even the unattractive ones. It sounds hostile, but it wasn't. It was just greedy. No, in the end our mother didn't get away with anything. No one does. In a way, we all have it coming.”

I wanted to keep her talking; she took such palpable pleasure in conversation, she danced such an elegant dance when she spoke, that I thought for a second it might occur to her to stay around and do some more. I also knew that if things went as planned, these were the final chapters, the final paragraphs, the final sentences I would ever get from her. From some point not so far down the road, there would be a clean line, an end, and from there I would have only past conversations to revisit; and they, like the paint on an old house, would fade gently away. And I would partially forget them and then people would forget me and then there'd be nothing left of us or this evening.

“So you grew up with your grandparents. In the country. And that was—?”

“You want to keep me talking,” she said with a smile. “And I'm happy to. Just please don't confuse it for something else. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

I nodded.

“We were seven miles out of town, the nearest neighbour was a farmer across a cornfield. The school bus came to the top of the driveway every morning. It was all fine. Until puberty. Then living in the country's not so good. It always feels like you're missing something. And you are, in fact. Then one day a car rolled up the driveway and Bruce Sanders got out. And that was that.”

She took three pills and swallowed them. Both of us, Sally and I, retreated into private thought. Surfacing, I said, “What are you thinking about?”

She jerked as if she had been suddenly startled. “Something ridiculous.”

“Tell me.”

“It's not the sort of thing you're supposed to be thinking about at times like this.” Turning a frowning, half-smiling face toward me, she said, “Do you ever have a song in your head that you can't get rid of?”

“Yes. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“It's the theme song from that television show,
The Waltons.
”