The Land of Mango Sunsets (10 page)

“Well, everything is perspective; isn’t it, Mother?”

“Yes, it is, and the way I see it, you could have changed your life a thousand times and you didn’t do it.”

“Change my life? And do what? Go become a surgeon? A mathematician? A rocket scientist? Aren’t you the one who told me I would be a smart cookie to drop out of college to marry Charles?”

“Let’s try to tell things as they were, all right? You were very anxious to marry Charles and be a grown woman with your own house. You couldn’t wait to think of yourself as an adult…”

“Yes, but—”

“When you were nothing of the sort. And by your own admission, you didn’t love to study. Your father said that forcing you to stay in college was just throwing good money after bad and—”

“He said that? He actually used
those
words?”

“Honey? He’s been dead for a long time. I don’t remember his exact words…”

“Excuse me, Mother, but aren’t you the one who just said we should try to recount the past as it actually was?”

“Yes, I did. Okay. I apologize. Are you looking for a fight?”

“Absolutely not, but I think it’s important for you to realize certain facts.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, you had an enormous influence on me. I am your only child. You got married young? You pushed me into marrying young. You did tons of volunteer work to secure your family’s position? So did I when you pushed me. I joined every committee I could instead of going to NYU or something.”

“I never told you not to finish your degree.”

“Yeah, sure. You would have lectured me, saying that it took away from the time I should be spending with the boys and Charles. And you
know what? I think you would have been jealous if I had gone on to get, God forbid, a degree in anything except home economics.”

“That’s absurd.”

“No, it’s not. I followed in your footsteps as closely as I could, and what did I get? Two apathetic sons who won’t give me the right time of day. A husband who mortified me in front of every person I know. A gay man for a meaningful other and a tenant who’s a whore. And no career. Nothing to fall back on except my back.”

“But Kevin is a dear man.”

“Don’t be condescending, but yes, he is. Thank God for Kevin. But it’s not much, is it?”

“I never had a career and I managed to stay happy, you know.”

“But Daddy didn’t deceive you the way Charles did me. Daddy didn’t have two other children on the other side of Charleston as Charles did. And Daddy didn’t leave you nearly destitute as I was left.”

“And it’s all my responsibility? My fault? Tell me how that’s so.”

“Because I did every single thing that I thought you wanted me to do and it all blew up in my face.”

“You need to get over it, Miriam. I never told you that your life had to be a Xerox copy of mine.”

“Maybe not, but it was surely very strongly implied. Just as you’ve been implying for months now that my life in New York is meaningless. You see? Now that you’ve become a hippie, I should, too? Well, I’m not doing it, Mother.”

“You know what, Miriam? Your anger is as misplaced now as my supposed bossiness may have been then. But I can’t believe you would even think such a thing…”

You didn’t know her then, when I was a younger woman. I did. She wasn’t merely bossy; she was insistent. When I was on the threshold of marriage, she used every manipulative trick and maneuver she knew to mold me as her junior.

Darling, you have to have linen fingertip towels for the guest powder room.

Who’s going to iron them?

Hire someone. Miriam, watch. Here’s how we make “Cinderella’s Slipper.” Isn’t this a wonderful napkin fold?

Wonderful.

And this one’s called the “Artichoke”! Perfect for a breadbasket!

I had to take lessons in flower arranging, learn to make a pound cake and biscuits from scratch, to do needlepoint and crewelwork, and perhaps most important, how to write a sincere thank-you note. I didn’t believe she had malicious intent and all of these skills bore merit. But they were jammed down my throat like a religious fundamentalist doctrine and they gave me only a heightened sense of her, not of myself.

What if I had strung Charles along, finished college and gone on to study international finance or electrical engineering? I think she was afraid to let me live my own life. I might have become something or someone she didn’t recognize and then what? Who would she be? Her tutorial took place while I was still malleable. I was always afraid that I wouldn’t do as well as she had or that I wouldn’t live up to her expectations. And she knew it.

It was all deep in the past, and oddly, she seemed not to care any longer. Maybe it was her advancing years. Maybe she thought her project with me had failed. Or perhaps there was another reason. Maybe she had mellowed or forgotten and just plainly did not understand my resentment.

That was all I could think about the next morning as the plane ascended high above the Lowcountry. I watched the blue-and-green shoreline and the curlicues of inlets and streams, tracing them with my fingertip against the window, missing them before they passed from my sight.

Soon we were suspended over fields upon fields of the thick white mounds of endless clouds. Soon I would be back on Sixty-first Street
talking to Harry, having a cocktail with Kevin, telling him about Manny, who had not called, and hearing about Liz. Over the next few days I would organize my address lists for the invitations committee, paste a smile on my face, and deal with Agnes Willis. I thought I knew what was waiting for me. I could not have been more wrong.

The tone of my note to her was terse. So what? Let her figure that out, as if she cared anyway. At least I got it in the mail as soon as I got back to New York.

Returning to New York from the Eden that is the Lowcountry of South Carolina was always a considerable shock to the nervous system. The arrival hallways of LaGuardia Airport were too small for the masses of humanity who pushed their way through them. Your bags
did
look like everyone else’s, and you were right to think that the woman who bumped against you in the taxi line might be an accomplice to the man who’s trying to pick your pocketbook.

Knowing these things makes it a little easier to confidently maneuver the obstacle course that is life in the big city, but these are not the details you savor. So you put on your street face, hold your purse firmly under your arm, keep your eyes open, and try not to get in the taxi with the Stanland terrorist schizophrenic who’s off his meds. The reorientation
continues in a cab with no shock absorbers over the bridges, down the FDR Drive, and somehow, the unseen but irresistible lure of living in Manhattan sinks its hook squarely in your heart. It always took me by surprise.

Every minute of the day and night, lights are on, things are happening, people are dying, being born, being cured. Deals are being cut, careers are made and ruined, products are launched and discontinued, beauty is lauded in every sector, and people are falling in love. Tap shoes at Radio City and on Broadway are lifting the hearts of thousands of patrons with each performance. Over at Lincoln Center, ballet dancers are in flight, sopranos are hitting impossible notes, while the genius Rembrandt and Monet wait in their glory in the museums. There are rolling racks of clothes propelling across Thirty-eighth Street, dirty water dogs and pretzels are being consumed by the ton, and at night, in orchestra seats at Carnegie Hall, old men are sleeping off the wine they drank with dinner, completely missing the first act of a visiting symphony’s interpretation of the work of Mahler or Stravinsky.

By the time you pay your cab fare and open the front door of your house, you feel rich, blessed, and somehow a little smarter than the rest of the population because you own a piece of the rock. And strangely, the place—any place—you left behind seems less appealing than it was the day before when you sang its glories. The Big Apple was my adrenaline and I was thrilled to be back.

In contrast to that, I had only been gone for a few days, but it felt like a week. I was relaxed and well rested, ready to take on Liz Harper and Agnes Willis. Harry was in his cage and got excited when he saw me come in.

“Hello, sweetheart!” I said to him, and looked inside the refrigerator to see if there were a few grapes for him. “I missed you!”

“Good morning!” he said.

I opened his door, he climbed to the top of his cage, and I fed him the fruit. As he stood, his head twitched this way and that as though he
wanted to be sure it was me. Then he wagged his red-feathered tail and stretched his wings like an archangel.

“I’m glad to see you, too,” I said.

“Charles is a horse’s ass.”

“You know it, bubba.”

The mail from the past few days was neatly stacked on my kitchen counter and my message light was blinking, which I ignored. It was only three-thirty in the afternoon and already getting dark. I switched on every full-spectrum light in the house as I walked to my bedroom rolling my luggage, gearing myself up for the unpleasant task of unpacking. I was returning lighter, since I had left my sneakers under Mother’s house and my flannel-lined baggy jeans in a heap on the floor of the closet along with my old cardigan.

As I put away my toilet articles, I caught a glance of myself in the mirror. My hair was unkempt and my face was bare. I started to laugh, knowing this wild-girl look would never get any traction in the fully coiffed world to which I had returned.

After an application of cosmetic war paint and a quick toss of dirty clothes into the washer, I decided to go to the grocery store. I rebundled to face the elements, putting on my camel-colored coat with a wide brown leather belt. I stuffed my crazy hair in my favorite crocheted hat, trimmed with dyed brown fox, and wrapped my neck with a man’s brown cashmere scarf that someone had left at my house. I put my cell and bank card in my pocket with my keys and left the house.

It was in the low thirties outside, windy and damp. Because I had foolishly worn a skirt with low-heeled pumps, the stiff breeze stung my legs every time I crossed a block. I took my rolling cart as I needed paper towels and other bulky and heavy things, and congratulated myself for thriftiness in saving a delivery fee, as though ten dollars more in my pocket would change my life. I was fighting my way up Third Avenue and caught a side view of myself in a shop window. I was slouching again and reminded myself that standing up straight took off years and pounds.
Then I had a sudden urge to call my mother to take my mind off the fact that I was freezing. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed.

She answered right away.

“Mother?”

“Miriam? Is that you?”

“Yes. I, uh, just wanted to let you know that I got home all right.”

“Well, praise the Lord! You sound out of breath. Where are you?”

“Walking up the street on the way to food-shop.”

“Food-shop. What an odd term. How’s the weather? It’s beautiful here.”

I noticed a handsome, well-dressed older man next to me at the corner of Sixty-fourth Street and knew instinctively he was eavesdropping on my conversation.

“It’s beautiful here, too,” I lied, and looked him in the face. “The sun’s shining and the birds are singing—it’s a gorgeous afternoon.”

He smiled and shook his head. The light changed and we crossed the street along with ten or so others. I looked around a minute later and he was gone. But that was how it was in the city. You could make a connection in a split second, and in the next, the relationship was over, having served its purpose in letting you know you were not alone on the planet.

“Well, that’s fine, sweetheart. It sure was good to see you.”

“I loved being with you, too, Mother. Good for the soul. You know, someday, you’re going to have to teach me how to cook.”

She laughed a little and I could feel her cheerfulness actually lift me a little.

“Well, you’d better hurry up,” she said. “I’m not going to last forever, you know.”

“And, Mother, I’m sorry about the unpleasant words we had on the porch last night. It’s just that sometimes I feel like my life has never been my own, you know?”

I could hear her sigh deeply and then she said, “Yes, but it is now,
Mellie, and if it’s not, you had better take control and grab all the happiness you can before it’s too late.”

I knew she was right and told her so. We talked a little more and then hung up, but not before I asked her to thank Harrison for introducing me to Manny Sinkler and to ask Harrison to tell Manny that I had enjoyed meeting him.

“Just ask him to pass it along to him, would you?”

“Sure.”

“Manny was pleasant and I didn’t get the chance to thank him for a nice evening.”

“Yes, you did say that.”

“He’s got a gorgeous house, Mother. Really gorgeous.”

“Aha! And could you see yourself living there? Hmm?”

“What? Me? Oh! Oh, no! Nothing like that. I was just thinking that if Harrison wanted to take you out there, you should go and see it. He’s got a small fortune in copper pots.”

She was quiet and I could almost hear her thinking that if I was unmotivated by romance, perhaps I was a gold digger.

“Or don’t tell him anything,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter.”

“We’ll see. If my memory holds up, I’ll pass along the message.”

Sometimes Miss Josephine could be exasperating, too.

I was nosing around the butcher’s department debating the merits of free-range chicken versus milk-fed veal versus organically raised lamb. I was in the mood for stew. Ever since I’d eaten Manny Sinkler’s stew, it was all I could think about. Not the man but the food, which told me something about my state of mind. What had I been thinking anyway? He lived a thousand miles away, was still married to some degree, and, I reminded myself for the tenth time, he had not called, although it had only been twenty-four hours.

I decided on dark-meat chicken, thinking it was the closest thing to quail that I would find without spending a fortune on specialty fowl from
some couture purveyor of exotic food. I also noted that what New Yorkers thought was rare and exotic—quail, wild turkey, pheasant, shrimp, crab, and on and on—flew or swam all over the Lowcountry and you could have all you could catch for the small cost of a hunting or fishing license. What a world, I thought.

I was anxious to get dinner started and opened my door, lugging the bulging cart behind me. It was a bit of a space problem to close the front door without dinging the walls, but I managed to get into my apartment with everything intact. I dropped my coat, hat, and gloves on the chair by the fireplace and then collapsed on the couch when I realized I had not seen that day’s mail. I didn’t feel like getting up and hanging my coat and unpacking my groceries, only to mess up the kitchen making a stew that might or might not turn out tasting like Manny’s quail concoction. And what if Kevin was out? What if I had to eat it alone? Was I going to feed Liz? No, I was not going to feed Liz. Then it dawned on me that if I was missing the mail, it was probably in her apartment and I became irate at the thought of it. Maybe it would reappear in the hall as soon as she realized I was home. Patience, Mellie, I told myself, was a virtue.

It crossed my mind to call Manny and ask him how he seasoned his stew; then I decided against it. I would cook first and worry about the taste later. Meanwhile, I could hear Liz overhead clomping around in what sounded like size 16 army boots on a three-hundred-pound Marine. Surely she had some modicum of understanding about acoustics. I had thought about it, and the more I considered it, the more I was convinced I had leased the apartment to the wrong person. When the moment arrived I was going to set things straight between us.

I pushed myself up from the sofa and pulled the groceries into the kitchen, deciding to start dinner. Everything was put away and onions sizzled in a small amount of bacon fat I had combined with canola oil. My kitchen smelled good and I knew the aromas would work like a lasso on Kevin’s neck the minute he stepped through the door. At least I hoped so.
I dropped some chopped celery in the pot and was digging around for the bottle of dried bay leaf when I remembered I had used the last one in a soup several weeks ago. My choices then were to go back out in the cold, borrow some from Kevin when he got home, take the odd chance that Liz had some, although I suspected she had never heard of it, or do without it.

I turned off the stove, went up the stairs, and knocked on her door.

Liz opened it with my mail in her hands.

“What are you doing with my mail?” I said with no expression. My voice was annoyed and I didn’t care.

“Oh! I just scooped it all up from the floor and brought it up here to sort and I was just about to bring it back to you when you knocked on the door…”

“Please do not touch my mail.”

“Mrs. Swanson? Are you aggravated with me?”

“Do you have any bay leaf?”

“I was just trying to do you a favor. I wasn’t going to take your catalogs. What’s bay leaf? Christmas candles?”

As I suspected, this nitwit did not even know what a bay leaf was.

“Holiday candles are indeed available with the scent of bay leaf, but I am looking for the real thing to flavor a stew I am making.”

“Mrs. Swanson? You seem really aggravated.”

She handed me the mail and I decided to reveal the source of my annoyance.

“Liz? May I come in for a moment?”

“Of course! Would you like some tea?”

“No, thank you. I can only stay for a few minutes.”

I looked around her apartment and it looked more like a college coed’s furnishings than an adult’s. I mean, she had a mug rack and a box of pizza on the kitchen counter and a Lava lamp in the living room. Everything was tidy enough but Kevin had been correct as usual—all this stuff
could’ve been bought at a yard sale or found on the curb. She sat on the sofa and it only seemed right that I sit as well, so I perched on the edge of a slipcovered armchair.

“Liz…”

“Gosh, Mrs. Swanson, what could I have done?” She was getting upset, and her big blue eyes were becoming watery and red. She probably thought her check had bounced and that I was throwing her out.

“Look, Liz…” I started again, and then became very nervous. I mean, wasn’t one of my problems that I thought I was in charge of the world?

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Um, you need a rug. Every time you walk across the floor in shoes it rattles the plates in my kitchen.”

“A rug? That’s it?”

“Actually, you need two rugs. One for the living room and something that particularly muffles sound for the bedroom. Maybe wall-to-wall. With extra padding.”

She looked at me for a moment and then it dawned on her that I could hear every spring squeak and worse. She blushed and smiled sheepishly.

“Gosh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Swanson. How terrible for you! I wondered why you were playing your music so loud.”

“Well, now you know.” I was only partially relieved, but there was the other half of the story to tell. And I had a lump in my throat the size of a walnut. “Now, you are a young woman and what you do is your business, but I think you need to know that I
know
Truman Willis.”

“Truman? How do you know Truman?”

“He’s the
husband
of one of my close friends.”

There. It was said. Her eyes expanded so wide that it seemed physically impossible that someone without an ocular disorder could perform such a feat without disaster.