Thanks for the Memories (30 page)
“Okay.” He sighs. “Sorry.”
“Not to me. To Peter.”
“Okay, but does that mean you won’t be collecting my dry cleaning on your way over tomorrow? You know where it is, it’s the one beside the tube station—”
The phone clicks. He stares at it in confusion. My own daughter hung up on me? I knew this Peter was trouble. He thinks again about the muffins and dials another number. He clears his throat.
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“Hello.”
“Jennifer, it’s Justin.”
“Hello, Justin.” Her voice is cold.
Used to be warm. Like honey. No, like hot caramel. It used to bounce from octave to octave when she said his name, just like the piano music he’d wake early on Sunday mornings to hear her play from the conservatory. But now?
He listens to the silence on the other end. Ice.
“I’m just calling to see whether you’d sent me a basket of muffins.” As soon as he’s said it, he realizes how ridiculous this call is. Of course she didn’t send him anything. Why would she?
“I beg your pardon?”
“I received a basket of muffins at my office today along with a thank-you note, but the note failed to reveal the sender’s identity. I was wondering if it was you.”
Her voice is amused now. No, not amused, mocking. “What would I have to thank you for, Justin?”
It’s a simple question, but because he knows her as he does, it has implications far beyond the words, and of course Justin jumps up and snaps at the bait. The hook cuts through his lip, and bitter Justin is back, the voice he grew so accustomed to during the demise of their . . . well, during their demise. She has reeled him right in.
“Oh, I don’t know, twenty years of marriage, perhaps. A daughter. A good living. A roof over your head.” He knows it’s a stupid statement. That before him, after him, and even without him, she had and always would have a roof, of all things, over her head. But it’s spurting out of him now, and he can’t stop and won’t stop, for he is right and she is wrong and anger is spurring on every word, like a jockey whipping his horse as they near the finish line.
“Travel all over the world.” Whip-crack-away! “Clothes, clothes, and more clothes.” Whip-crack-away! “A new kitchen when we didn’t need one, a conservatory, for Christ’s sake . . .” And he goes
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on, like a man from the nineteenth century who’d been keeping his wife accustomed to a good life she would otherwise have been without, ignoring the fact that she had made a good living herself playing in an orchestra that traveled the world. At the beginning of their married life they had no choice but to live with Justin’s mother. They were young and had a baby to rear, the reason for their hasty marriage, and as Justin was still attending college by day, bartending at night, and working at an art museum on the weekends, Jennifer had made money playing the piano at an upmarket restaurant in Chicago. She would return home in the early hours of the morning, her back sore and tendonitis in her middle finger, but the memory of this flies out of his mind at this moment. Finally running out of things to list from the last twenty years, and out of steam, he stops. Jennifer is silent, refusing to spar with him this time.
“Jennifer?”
“Yes, Justin.” Icy again.
Justin sighs with exhaustion. “So, was it you?”
“It must have been one of your other women, because it most certainly wasn’t me.”
Click, and she’s gone.
Rage bubbles inside him. Other women. Other women! One affair when he was twenty years old, a fumble in the dark with Mary-Beth Dursoa at college, before he and Jennifer were even married, and she carries on as though he were Don Juan. In their bedroom, he’d even put a print of
A Satyr Mourning over a Nymph
by Piero di Cosimo, which Jennifer had always loathed but which he had always hoped would send her subliminal messages. In the painting there is a young girl, semiclothed, who on first glance seems asleep, but on further viewing has blood seeping from her throat. A satyr is mourning her. Justin’s interpretation of the painting is that the woman, mistrusting her husband’s fidelity, followed him into the woods. He was hunting, not going astray as t h a n k s f o r t h e m e m o r i e s
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she thought, and shot her by accident. Sometimes during his and Jennifer’s toughest arguments, their eyes stinging with tears, their hearts breaking from the pain, their heads pounding from the analysis, Justin would study the painting and envy the satyr. Fuming, he charges down the North Terrace steps, sits down by one of the fountains, places the basket by his feet, and bites into a muffin, wolfing it down so quickly he barely has time to taste it. Crumbs fall at his feet, attracting a flock of pigeons with intent in their beady black eyes. He goes to reach for another muffin, but he is swarmed by even more overenthusiastic pigeons pecking at the contents of his basket. Peck, peck, peck—he watches dozens more flock toward him, coming in to land like fighter jets. Afraid of falling missiles from those that circle his head, he picks up his basket and shoos them away with all the butchness of an eleven-year-old. A few minutes later he breezes in the front door of his home, not even taking the time to close it, and is immediately greeted by Doris, with a paint palette in her hand.
“Okay, so I’ve narrowed it down,” she begins, thrusting dozens of colors in his face. Her long leopard-print nails are each decorated with a diamanté jewel. She wears an all-in-one snakeskin jumpsuit, and her feet wobble dangerously in patent lace-up ankle stilettos. Her hair is its usual shock of red; her eyes are catlike, with inky eyeliner sweeping up from the corners of her eyes; and with her painted lips matching her hair, she reminds him of Ronald McDonald. Not sensing his mood, she begins, “Gooseberry Fool, Celtic Forest, English Mist, and Woodland Pearl, all calm tones, would look so good in this room, or even Wild Mushroom, Nomadic Glow, and Sultana Spice. Cappuccino Candy is one of my faves, but I don’t think it’ll work next to that curtain, do you?”
She waves a fabric in front of his face, and it tickles his nose, which tingles with such intensity it senses the fight that is about to brew. He doesn’t respond, but takes deep breaths and counts to
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ten in his mind. And when that doesn’t stop her from listing more paint colors, he keeps on going to twenty.
“Hello? Justin?” She snaps her fingers in his face. “Hel-lo?”
“Maybe you should give Justin a break, Doris. He looks tired.”
Al looks nervously at his brother.
“But—”
“Get your sultana spice behind over here,” he teases, and she whoops.
“Okay, but just one more thing. Bea will love her room done in Ivory Lace. And Petey too. Imagine how romantic this will be for—”
“
Enough!
” Justin screams at the top of his lungs, not wanting his daughter’s name and the word
romantic
to share the same sentence.
Doris jumps and immediately stops talking. Her hand flies to her chest. Al stops mid-gulp, his bottle freezing just below his lips, his heavy breathing above the rim making strange pipe music. Other than that, there’s absolute silence.
“Doris”—Justin takes a deep breath and tries to speak as calmly as possible—“enough of this, please. Enough of this Cappuccino Nights—”
“Candy,” she interrupts, and quickly falls silent again.
“Whatever. This is a Victorian house, from the nineteenth century, not some painted lady from an episode of
Changing
Rooms
.” He tries to restrain his emotions, his feelings on behalf of the building. “If you had mentioned Cappuccino Chocolate—”
“Candy,” she whispers.
“Whatever! To anyone during that time, you would have been instantly burned at the stake.”
She squeaks, insulted.
“It needs sophistication, it needs to be researched, it needs furniture of the period, colors of the period. It can’t have a room that sounds like Al’s dinner menu.”
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“Hey!” Al speaks up.
“I think it needs—” Justin takes another deep breath and says gently, “somebody else for the job. Maybe it’s just bigger than you thought it was going to be, but I appreciate your help, really I do. Please tell me you understand.”
She nods slowly, and he breathes a sigh of relief. Suddenly the paint palettes go flying across the room as Doris lets rip, “You pretentious little bastaaaaard!”
“Doris!” Al leaps up out of his armchair, or at least makes a great attempt to.
Justin immediately takes three steps back as she walks aggressively toward him, pointing a sparkly animal-print nail at him like a weapon.
“Listen here, you silly little man. I have spent the last two weeks researching this dump of a basement in the kinds of libraries and places you wouldn’t even think exist. I’ve been to dark, dingy dungeons where people smell of old . . . things.” Her nostrils flare, and her voice deepens threateningly. “I purchased every historic period paint brochure that I could get my hands on and applied the colors in accordance with the color rules at the end of the nineteenth century. I’ve shaken hands with people and seen parts of London you don’t even wanna know about. I’ve looked through books so old, the dust mites were big enough to hand them to me from the shelves. I’ve been to secondhand, thirdhand, even antique stores and have sat in chairs so rickety I could smell the black death that killed the last person who died sitting on them. I have sanded down so much pine, I have splinters in places you don’t wanna see. So.” She prods him in the chest with her dagger nail as she emphasizes each word, finally backing him up against the wall.
“Don’t. Tell. Me. That this is too big for me.”
She clears her throat and stands up straight. The anger in her voice is replaced with a vulnerable “poor me” tremble.
“But despite what you said, I will finish this project. I will go on
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undeterred. I will do it in spite of you, and I will do it for your brother, who might be dead next month, not that you even care.”
“Dead?” Justin’s eyes widen.
With that, she turns on her heel and storms off into her bedroom. She sticks her head back in the doorway. “By the way, just so you know, I would have banged the door behind me
very loudly
to show just how angry I am, but it’s currently out in the backyard ready for sanding and priming before I paint it”—and this she spits out rebelliously—“Ivory Lace.”
Then she disappears again, without a bang.
I shift from foot to foot nervously outside Justin’s front door, which is oddly wide open. Should I ring the bell? Simply call his name?
Will he call the police and have me arrested for trespassing? Oh, this was such a bad idea. Frankie and Kate have persuaded me to come here to present myself to him. They pumped me up to such a point I hopped in the first taxi that came my way and took it to Trafalgar Square, to try to catch him at the National Gallery before he left. I ended up trailing him on the street while he was on the phone, hearing him question someone about the basket. I’d felt oddly comfortable just watching him, without his knowing, reveling in the secret thrill of being able to actually see him for who he is instead of just viewing his memories.
His anger at whoever was on the phone—most likely his exwife, the woman with the red hair and freckles—convinced me it was the wrong time to approach him, and so I just continued to follow him, figuring I’d build up the courage to talk to him eventually. Would I mention the transfusion? Would he think I was crazy, or would he be open to listening—or even better, open to believing?
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It was overcrowded, people were pushing and shoving, and eye contact, never mind first-time introductions or conversations about the possible intelligence of blood, was impossible. And so after pacing up and down his street, feeling like a schoolgirl with a crush and a stalker at the same time, I now find myself standing on his doorstep with a plan. I am drawn to this man that I have barely met, in ways I’ve never been drawn to anybody, not even my husband. But my plan is once again being compromised as Justin and his brother Al begin to talk about something I know I shouldn’t be hearing, about a family secret I am more than familiar with already.
I move my finger away from the doorbell, keep hidden from all the windows, and bide my time.
u s t i n l o o k s t o h i s b r o t h e r in panic and searches quickly J for something to sit on. He drags over a giant paint tub and sits down, not noticing the wet white ring of paint around the top.
“Al, what was she talking about? About you being dead next month.”
“No, no, no.” Al laughs. “She said
might
be dead. That’s distinctly different. Hey, you got away lightly there, bro. Good for you. I think that Valium is really helping her. Cheers.” He holds up his bottle and downs the last of his beer.
“Hold on, hold on. Al, what are you talking about? Is there something you haven’t told me? What did the doctor say?”
“He told me exactly what I’ve been telling you for the last two weeks. If any members of a person’s immediate family developed coronary heart disease at a young age, i.e., a male under fifty-five years old, well then, we have an increased risk of coronary heart disease.”
“Do you have high blood pressure?”
“A little.”
“Do you have high cholesterol?”
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“A lot.”
“So, all you do is make lifestyle changes, Al. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be struck down like . . . like . . .”
“Dad?”
“No.” Justin frowns and shakes his head.
“Coronary heart disease is the number-one killer of American males and females. Every thirty-three seconds an American will suffer some type of coronary event, and almost every minute someone will die from it.” He looks at their mother’s grandfather clock, half covered by a dust sheet. The minute hand moves. Al grabs his heart and starts groaning. His noises soon turn to laughter. Justin rolls his eyes. “Who told you that nonsense?”
