The Chocolate Money (10 page)

All of a sudden I see her. Mack’s wife, Mags. She emerges from a side door of Tea House. She is wearing khaki pants, a pink-and-blue Liberty print shirt, and gardening clogs. She is so beautiful and looks so nice, I want to cry. Like the affair is my fault. Her dark hair is pulled up in a loose chignon, and her eyes are a clear blue. Like a lake that has no swimmers. She has a visor on, and her face is unmarred by the sun, but her arms are tan. She holds her hand up to break the sun’s glare.

“Can I help you?” I know Mags sees me for what I’m not. A run-of-the-mill twelve-year-old girl in a pink-and-white sundress. A friend of her son, Hailer, perhaps.

“Um, I just need to go to the bathroom really badly.” I forget to say
please.
That’s how bad I need to go.

How did you get here?
I know she wants to ask but doesn’t. She’s a good mother. Can see how bad I need to get to the toilet.

She takes me inside the house. There is a powder room just off the front hall, as Babs said there would be. The toilet is a rose pink. I sit down. Make myself comfortable. Release my breath as a strong steady stream of pee hits the bowl. I finish. Wipe myself, pull up my underwear, and go to wash my hands. There are monogrammed linen hand towels carefully folded on the sink.
MMM.
Margaux and McCormack Morse. Problem. I do not want to mess them up, but don’t want to look like I didn’t wash my hands.

I run water from the tap. Pick up a bar of rose glycerin soap from a white porcelain dish on the sink and scrub my hands with it. When I am finished, I dig my index finger into the soap and drag it across. It leaves a long scratch. Mags will be able to tell I have used it. I have manners. I am conscientious about hygiene. I wipe my hands on my dress, leaving wet streaks.

The front hall of Tea House is messy with shoes and coats in a way that the aparthouse never is. I spot a blue sweater. Cotton roll-neck, about my size. It’s folded carefully on a frayed antique bench. Directly underneath there is a pair of children’s Topsiders. A red, blue, and yellow plaid cap. Hailer’s? I want to pick up the cap, take it with me back to the aparthouse. Maybe go to sleep wearing it.

Mags is standing outside the front door. I try to be as nice as possible. Hope to get out of there without causing any problems.

“Thank you for letting me use the bathroom. I really appreciate it.”

“Feel better?” Mags asks. I want to say
Not really,
but I don’t. I won’t get a tour of Tea House after all. I have a use-the-bathroom-only ticket.

She takes a step in my direction.

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand how you got here.” The tree in the front garden blocks my view, but I can feel that Babs has come back. I don’t know what her next move is. I just focus on Mags. Want to say something that will make sense, to come up with a story that will satisfy her.

“I was driving around with my mother and I had to go to the bathroom and she pulled into the driveway of what looked like a nice house. She saw the car out front and knew someone would be home.” Even though Babs often calls me a liar, everything that I have said so far is true.

“Why didn’t your mother drive you to the door?” Mags asks.

“Um”—I think quickly—“she had an errand to run.” Not true.

“Oh, that’s silly,” Mags says. “I’m sorry you had to walk.”

“No, it’s okay. Thank you,” I say. “I should get back to the car.” I know Babs is waiting for me. Getting impatient.

I turn to walk away, but Mags grabs my arm.

“Wait; why do you look familiar? Maybe I know your parents?”

“I don’t think so,” I say. Really not true.

“What’s your name?”

“Bettina.” Wrong. I should’ve made something up, kept working in the lie column. Mags releases my arm as if I have burned her. Probably wishes she had told me to drink the toilet water rather than pee in it.

“Bettina?” she asks, just to make sure.

“Bettina,” I repeat.

Mags’s eyes are no longer friendly or maternal.

“Bettina,” she says. “You should not go to strangers’ houses. Even when you need to use the powder room. That’s not how we do things in Grass Woods.” She is holding a trowel firmly in her other hand, digging her fingers into the handle.
Throw it at me,
I want to say. I have no good answers.

She turns her back on me and walks toward the side entrance of the house.

“Have a nice day,” she says flatly, kicking the dirt off her gardening clogs as she goes inside.

“Thank you, Mags,” I say, trying to tuck an
I’m sorry
into this goodbye.

She snaps around and looks right at me. Had she been another type of woman, this is the moment when she would have yelled.

Instead, she just says, “It’s Mrs. Morse. You need to go now. Goodbye, Bettina.”

I watch her disappear into Tea House. I go back down the driveway to find Babs.

She’s leaning over, picking some dandelions from the lawn. She really does look like she belongs here.

She looks at me. I have my pensive face on. Thinking about Hailer. Where is he? A tennis clinic at Hopsequesca? Sleep-away camp? I finally met Mags, but now I realize the one I really wanted to meet was him.

Babs slides into the car. I do the same. She lights up a cigarette and pauses before starting the car.

“So,” she says, “how was it?”

“Um, fine.” I’m not sure what to say.

“Did you see her?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think?”

“She was pretty.” Since Babs is beautiful, I don’t think she will mind my assessment.

“Pretty shitty. Everyone in this village looks the same. And they all share the same brain. They aren’t smart like you. They flip through coffee-table books and believe they are actually reading. Go to the ballet or opera once a year and think they are cultured. There’s got to be more going on than pretty. Did she talk to you?”

“Yes. She was mad that I was there.”

“I thought as much. These women are vicious. Now you know why Mack comes to the aparthouse. You were brave to go in there. But Tea House is beside the point. I wanted you to see firsthand how limited these women are. Never, ever live in the burbs. All the fucking tennis and golf. Gardening and driving their nasty kids everywhere. The only time they orgasm is when they have star fruit at Oscar’s Market. Thank God I got out.”

Everything she has described to me doesn’t sound that bad, but there is nothing for me to say. We leave Grass Woods once and for all.

Back at the aparthouse, I know Babs is waiting for an angry response from Mack. Anything to bring him back, even if it’s using me to mess with his wife.

I imagine the rebuttal she has planned:

My mother installed that goddamn toilet. What’s more innocent than a child asking to use the bathroom?

But there is to be no confrontation. Weeks and weeks go by. Mack still does not come.

T
WO MONTHS AFTER WE
visit Tea House, Mack dies in a car accident. He slams into a tree on his way home from Aces, a Grass Woods bar. The hood crumples, and his face smashes into the steering wheel. Too much scotch.

I think of the velocity. Mack moving, then Mack not. All of that energy absorbed in that tree. Speeding in his Austin Mini, no seat belt. Completely reckless. Completely Mack.

Babs gets the news from Tally. Babs doesn’t cry. At least not in front of me. She tells me death happens. There’s no need to get all
fucking dramatic
about it. There will be a funeral. Plans to be made, outfits to be purchased. Babs sees the service as a kind of party. All those people gathered together and dressed up to say goodbye to one of their own.

The service will be held in Grass Woods four days after the crash. There’ll be a casket. Closed, since Mack was so badly mangled, but his body will be there nonetheless. Like some kind of rotting, putrid guest.

Babs never even considers that it might not be appropriate for her to attend the funeral. She dons a black linen shift, a color she hates because so many women favor it. Wears her big black sunglasses and carries a pack of tissues in a black clutch. The pearl necklace she bought to get back at Mack is around her neck. Maybe she’s sentimental after all.

She insists on bringing me, though from what I gather, most people don’t take kids to funerals unless they are related to the deceased. She dresses me in a pale pink linen dress with pink petals sewn around the neck, like I’m some kind of accessory, a bow perhaps, for her flaxen hair.

I don’t want to go. After our trip to Tea House, Mags knows who I am. If I show up at the church, it will upset her. Part of me also believes Mack’s death is my fault. If I hadn’t fallen at the Hangover-Brunch Cruise Party and bled all over his clothes, he might have come back to the aparthouse. He would have been having sex with Babs in her bed that night, not drinking at a bar and then driving. I’m sure the whole smacking episode did the relationship in. More than he could handle. The bloody shirt too hard to explain to Mags.

Franklin drives us up to Grass Woods in the stretcher. When we get to the church, Holy Trinity, we are late. There’s no one outside, and the big white doors are shut. Babs thrusts a bouquet of white roses into my hands.

“Bettina, these are for Mack. I hate those stupid arrangements propped up on plastic legs. Makes the casket look like it’s in the winner’s circle at the Kentucky Derby. I want you to put this on the coffin. Understated, but tasteful.”

Horrifying. I don’t see how I’ll be able to get them up there without everyone, especially Mags, looking at me.

My hair’s pulled back in a bun. I look like I am going to a ballet recital, not a funeral. Babs holds my hand as she calmly walks up the steps, as if we really are here just to pay our respects.

We walk in. They are in the middle of “O God, Our Help in Ages Past
.
” Babs gives me a shove to continue forward into the church and now I’m on my own. She stands resolutely in the back.

I walk up the aisle. People stop singing. Stare at me. I focus on the casket. Worry about my bouquet. There is nothing else on top of the coffin. It’s just shiny and black like a piano. I’m almost there when a hand grips my wrist. Prevents me from walking farther. It belongs to a handsome preppy man who looks like Mack. But most of the men in the church do.

He pulls me away. I see Mags standing in the front pew. Her arm is draped around a boy about my age in a blue blazer. Hailer. His hair is dark like hers. His head is down; he looks at the floor. He’s quite thin, like Mags. I see his shoes. Penny loafers. Holds a golf ball in his hand. Probably one Mack played a course or two with. Mags turns her head to look at me, but I don’t dare meet her eyes. I pray she sees this for what it is: me sent on another mission by my mother.

The man—Mack’s brother? cousin?—gently leads me off to the side of the front pew. As if he means to redirect me, not scold me. For a second, I think he’s going to escort me to a seat. Help me get settled. Instead, we keep going to the back of the church. I still have the bouquet. The stems of the roses are wrapped in pink ribbon over the green tape. Its thorns neutered in a silk cast. These are the same type of roses I saw in Mags’s garden on my visit to Tea House. Looks as if I’ve stolen them.

We make it outside the church. I think of Hailer sitting inside. He’s possibly the only one in the church who did not look up to see me. I remember the plaid hat I saw in the front hall at Tea House. Is it still sitting there? Or do you have to get all new clothes when your father dies?

I walk by myself to the stretcher. Babs is sitting inside. She probably went back to it the minute I began my walk down the aisle. She’d made her point. No need for another scene.

The engine idles and she’s sitting in the back, smoking leisurely. She studies the program for the service as if it were a
Playbill.
Fingers the stock.

“Cream is iffy,” she tells me. “It says ‘wedding.’ I would have gone with stark white. Also less feminine. And the font—a tad too informal. What the hell was she thinking?”

She holds it up to the light and inadvertently ashes on her black dress. She brushes herself clean with the program in her hand.

We’re not moving. Franklin knows better than to drive without instructions. Babs could easily say
O’Hare
or
Newport.
She finally looks up at me. Sees the bouquet. Not pleased. At all.

“Bettina,” she says, “you were supposed to put the damn thing on the casket. Even handing it to Mags would have been a nice touch. Mack actually liked you, you know. This was your chance to say thank you. I am going to have a lot of men in my life. Not many of them are going to give a shit that I happen to have a kid.”

She looks out the window. Is she going to make me go back inside, try again? The only thing I know for sure is that my bouquet of roses won’t be coming home with us.

“Maybe I could just leave them on the steps?” I offer.

“No,” Babs replies. “Someone would trip over them and fucking sue me.”

I study the hearse parked just in front of us. Maybe I can give the flowers to the driver and he can put them on the coffin. At present, he has nothing else to do.

“Bettina, he’s not a fucking florist,
”
Babs says. Reading my thoughts, as usual.

I would eat the roses if I could. I know plan B isn’t going to be any better than the first.

It is a bright day with hard shadows. I think of how many fractured nights of sleep Mack had before this eternal rest. Sex, showers, leaving the aparthouse at three, four
A.M.
Two women. Two beds in one night. Exhausting.

Babs says, “Oak Lawn,” and we’re off to the cemetery. Franklin knows exactly where it is. He drove Babs there when Mont and Eudy died. Two caskets, two hearses.

We pull into Oak Lawn. Inch down a long driveway. Babs signals to Franklin to stop and we get out to walk. Babs is wearing her
ladylike heels,
and they dig into the ground like golf tees. She pulls a heel out of the wet grass with each step. It rained the night before, and the outdoors seems to stick to us. My pink ballet flats are now a smudgy brown. They look like Babs bought them at a thrift store.