The Land of Mango Sunsets (16 page)

“Priscilla? Dan, my other son, lets months pass with no word. He’s a computer whiz, which means his people skills are almost nonexistent. But he’s a very nice nerd. Really.”

“I’m sure,” she said, and smiled wide. “That’s how those guys are.”

“I’m the one with all the personality,” Charlie said.

Charlie was delighted by our pleasant conversation, and as the dinner went on, more champagne and then wine was consumed. Tight-lipped Priscilla became more talkative. I made a mental note to be generous with the alcohol when I was in her company.

“Priscilla? Why don’t you call me Miriam? Mrs. Swanson sounds like a name that belongs on my mother-in-law’s headstone.”

“All right. Miriam it is. And I should know this but I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t. Tell me. Has your mother-in-law passed?”

“Yes, she has, and let me tell you this—she couldn’t go fast enough!”

“Mom! That’s terrible.”

“So was she!” I said.

Priscilla and I got the girlie giggles. I liked the sound of her laughter. I finally had a small inkling that we might do just fine together.

“Well, kids? I don’t have nearly the resources as the old tightwad I divorced,” I said, throwing propriety to the wind, “but I would love to help with your wedding. In fact, I’d be honored. So why don’t y’all tell me what your plans are so far?”

They looked at each other, breathing a collective sigh of relief, and the details came rolling out. As distanced as we had been from one another, my willingness to begin anew and their natural excitement was healing old wounds.

“I have a friend who owns a loft in Tribeca that he rents out for parties,” Charlie said. “He said we could have it for almost nothing.”

“And my uncle back home is a minister. He wants to fly up and perform the ceremony,” Priscilla said.

“Oh! How lovely,” I said. “Is he a particular denomination?”

“He’s a Rasta,” Charlie said with a perfectly straight face.

I had such an adrenaline rush at the thought of Rastafarians marrying into my family that I nearly fell from my chair. I could see the pictures in
their wedding album racing through my head. Not that I had anything against Rastafarians, and in fact, I liked Bob Marley’s music quite a lot. It was just a tremor I felt, not a full-blown earthquake.

“Seriously?” I said as calmly as I could.

“Your son is a terrible liar, you know. My uncle David is a devout Baptist,” Priscilla said, and gave Charlie an affectionate slap on his arm. “Stop! You bad dog.”

“Her whole family raises ugli fruit and they sell them along the roadside from the back of their trucks,” Charlie said.

“Stop!” Priscilla said. “Miriam, what am I to do with this man?”

“Just promise me you’ll love him,” I said.

“I don’t want to live one day without him,” she said.

“That’s good enough for me,” I said. “So tell me. How many people are you thinking of inviting and how big is the loft?”

We went through the decisions they had made thus far and what they wanted for their wedding sounded like fun. They wanted a traditional band to play during dinner but reggae music for cocktails. The ceremony would be performed on a skirted riser and then we would retreat for cocktails to another area of the loft. While we would enjoy drinks made of mangoes and yes, ugli fruit, some laced with rum and others nonalcoholic, and other Jamaican traditional food, the room would be transformed to a dining room with a dance floor. The dinner itself would be a buffet of Jamaican and American specialties. And their guest list was small, only fifty to sixty people, which, I knew all too well, would grow to one hundred before it was all over with.

“Well, it sounds like it might get a little expensive,” I said. “Have you done a budget? Because you have to figure in invitations, postage, decorations, Priscilla’s gown…never mind the caterer and rentals and all that stuff.”

“Mom? I told Priscilla that you’d been doing events all my life and we were kind of hoping you would help us figure this out.”

“And I don’t have a mother to help me,” Priscilla said.

Suddenly everyone in my world was a motherless child.

I reached over and put my hand on top of hers.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, Priscilla. It would be such a pleasure to help.”

“How’s that girl, your tenant? Liz, right? How’s she doing?”

“Much better. She’s seeing Dr. Imber on Friday afternoon and the oral surgeon on Monday.”

“She looks like a nice girl and—”

“Charlie told me about her,” Priscilla said, interrupting. “What a terrible thing! And how awful for you, too!”

That was how dinner went. You would have thought there had never been an awkward moment or an unkind word between us, that Priscilla had grown up next door, and my ex-husband, Charles, was a jerk, oh yes, but that in the bigger scheme of the world, who had ever cared about that?

When I arrived at home, I peeked in on Liz. She was sound asleep, so I quietly closed her door. I put my precious Harry in his cage and covered it. Then, after I changed my clothes, I went around, checking all the doors and windows, and slipped out into my courtyard for a moment. I had not picked up the twigs and other debris in some time and it was too early to think about doing that anyway. It was still winter and we would probably get another blast of snow before the season was all over.

Long ago, maybe ten years or so, I used to come out here with a book to read or with my scissors to cut herbs to season my family’s dinner or to entertain friends with a cocktail or a glass of wine before we all went to the theater or somewhere for a bite.

But now my garden was in a sorry state of neglect just like every other part of my life had been. It had always been so formal, with miniature boxwoods and topiaries, azaleas, and roses trained to crawl up the stone walls. I wondered how it would look with a thousand pink-and-ivory tulips growing everywhere like they were native to the space. I could almost see white hyacinths everywhere to sweeten the air. I wondered what a
new pathway would add, one that led to a cozy bench and a tiny fountain with water that trickled like music. More possibilities for change were right before me.

I pulled my bathrobe around me and looked up at the cold dark sky and around to other town houses and high-rise buildings. Lights were being turned off for the night, one by one. People were closing up their homes and going to bed, recharging minds and bodies for the challenges that lay ahead the next day. Suddenly I felt a part of things again. We were having a wedding and the dreaded dinner with my prospective daughter-in-law had gone very well. Exceedingly well, in fact. Charlie and Priscilla had not yet decided on a date, but if they married in the spring as they thought they might, perhaps it would give me time to bring my garden back into shape. I could invite their guests here for a postrehearsal get-together of some kind. It would be too late for bulbs that had not been planted, but I could bring in annuals for color and make it welcoming. I could put in bulbs the next October, and I would. I would have to ask Charlie what he thought about having a rehearsal dinner here. And Priscilla. Now I would have to ask her opinion, too. It didn’t bother me in the least. In fact, I looked forward to it because women shared an unspoken understanding about the importance of certain things. She had said she had no mother to go to, had she not? I wondered if her mother was dead or alive and made a note to ask Charlie so I could better understand what role I might play.

I called Charlie in the morning and invited him to come have a look at the diamond for Priscilla’s ring. He said he would be there at noon.

Twelve-fifteen the doorbell rang and he was there. Liz was watching an old movie in the guest room and was dressed in her sweatsuit. I was warming up some split pea soup from the deli—Charlie’s favorite—and checked my hair in the mirror before I opened the door.

“Come in! Come in! It’s freezing out there!”

“Yeah, it’s still as cold as the devil!”

“Give me your coat, sweetheart, and go say hello to Liz. I’ll have lunch on the table in a few minutes.”

“Sure. Liz?” Charlie called out to her. “How are you?”

“How are you?” Harry repeated.

I looked at Harry and stroked his feathers.

“Miriam is happy,” I said. Then I repeated it, “Miriam is happy.”

Harry cocked his head to one side and looked at me, paying attention to what I had just said. For him, they were old words strung together in a new way. I took Liz a tray and said to Charlie, “Soup’s on.”

“Thanks, Miriam. This looks delicious.”

“Good, hon. Call me if you need anything.”

Over lunch I took my grandmother’s diamond ring from my pocket and put it in front of Charlie on the table.

“What do you think?”

“Oh, Mom! This is awesome! Priscilla is going to be thrilled! Now why do you think we should change this? I think it’s great just like it is.”

It was a platinum Art Deco setting with the single round stone raised up on a little mound that was set with tiny diamond chips and filigree all around its sides. The mounting added importance to the stone and its effect was feminine and lovely, albeit old-fashioned.

“You do? Oh, Charlie! I’m so glad you like it!”

“Like it? It’s fantastic! Mom, Priscilla’s family doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. She’s the first one in her family to go beyond a basic college education. I mean, they’re very nice—her father runs a bed-and-breakfast and her brother runs a little grocery store. But trust me, nobody’s got a diamond like this.”

“That’s fine, son. I’m thrilled that I can do this. So tell me. What happened to her mother?”

He was quiet for a moment and then he said, “Well, they told Priscilla that she drowned, but I think her father caught her fooling around and took her fishing. Know what I mean?”

“Priscilla told you this?”

“No, but she’s implied it. The family line is that she drowned, but her friends claim otherwise.”

“Have you met him? The father, I mean?” What? Dear God! My pulse began to race.

“Yes, he’s a wonderful man, Mom. He’s not like a murderer or something.”

“Well, if her father pushed his wife off a boat, he damn sure is a murderer!”

“Mom. Be cool. I don’t want this to change your opinion. Maybe she slipped. Look, they live in a remote little fishing village outside of Kingston with no Coast Guard or anything…”

I took a very deep breath. He didn’t want the fact that a possible murderer would be having cocktails in my rehabilitated garden bother me?

“Let’s just tell ourselves that she slipped, then, okay? Or got caught in an undertow? But in any case, never go fishing with him, do you hear me?”

Charlie started laughing. “God, Mom. When did you get so gullible?”

I realized then that he had been pulling my chain. Again.

“Was this a fishing trip with her Rasta uncle?”

“Got it.”

“You know what, Charlie? Your humor is decidedly worse than mine. So what happened to her mother?”

“She just disappeared and that’s the truth. Priscilla was about five.”

“Well, that’s awful. Never found her?”

“Not a trace. This soup is great. Got any more?”

“Sure.” I got up to refill his bowl. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“About what?”

“People disappearing. There are thousands of people who just disappear every year. I mean, I think most of them probably fall off a bridge or move to another town and assume another identity, but all of them just can’t forget to tell their families that they’re leaving, right?”

“Who knows? Alien abductions?”

“Whatever. Just promise me you’ll take the ring to Corey to appraise it and clean it before you give it to Priscilla, okay? He’ll make sure the stones are in there tight and all that.”

“Sure.”

After we were finished and Charlie had his coat on to leave, I put the ring in a little velvet box and back in Charlie’s hands.

“Thanks, Mom. This is incredibly generous of you, you know, and I just want to say…”

“That you love me?”

“You know I do.”

He left and I thought that I would give him the world if I could.

I was on the treadmill, thinking that walking to nowhere was a little bit stupid but that it did give me a chance to muse. Earlier that morning, Liz had put herself in a cab and gone to her appointment with the plastic surgeon. I was glad that she felt well enough to go on her own, but I encouraged her to leave her things in my apartment, as the surgery she was facing would mean more painkillers and recovery time. Meanwhile, I was walking to nowhere hoping to speed up my metabolism, shed a few lbs, and gain slimmer thighs.

I suppose I would have to admit that my reluctance to branch outside my tiny circle of people in my life had been passed on to Dan, my other son. Sometimes it seemed like he had all but disowned us. If I didn’t receive regular Mother’s Day cards and birthday cards, I would’ve thought it was true. But now that we had a wedding on the horizon, he was going to have to talk to me. Someone had to reopen the lines of communication and apparently the only way that would happen was if
I
picked up the phone and used it. Waiting for him to call was as bad as waiting for a soufflé to rise, not that I had ever had any luck with soufflés. So I resolved that I would call him as soon as my thirty minutes on the dang fool contraption had elapsed. As always, Miss Josie was right. It was up to me to keep my family together.

I still owed Kevin the two hundred dollars for the idiotic machine and reminded myself to write him a check. Gosh, there was so much to do. I still had not called Mother to tell her about all the craziness of the past week or so, nor had I discussed with her the fact that Charlie and Priscilla had decided to tie the knot. I wondered if Charlie had called her and then decided I would have heard from Mother if he had. I checked my watch. I still had eleven minutes left.

I would call Miss Josie myself, give her all the news, and ask ever so cleverly if she had seen or heard anything about Manny. How could I pose the question?
So, how’s Harrison? How’s his stupid friend who never called me?
No, that wouldn’t do. How about
Gosh, I sure had a great time when I was last down there with that guy, what’s his name?
That was better to be sure. I had a lot to learn about playing it cool. I glanced at my wristwatch again. Six minutes of torture left to go.

I had promised Liz to take her to Sullivans Island, and if I wanted the advance discount price on the airline tickets, I was going to have to plan it. Obviously, I needed to discuss that with Mother, too. I added that to the phone-call agenda.

Maybe the treadmill wasn’t so bad after all. I was getting my thoughts organized and making a plan for the day, and even I had to admit, I felt better about the world when I got off the ridiculous thing and took a shower. You know, I felt a little virtuous or something? Oh, who cared? Then, like there was someone else inside my head, that little voice I struggled to ignore said,
You’ll care when this wedding happens and you have to face Charles and Judith
. I broke a sweat born of terror.
Dear Lord, please take fifteen pounds of fat from my body and I’ll never ask for another thing. Thank You, Lord, amen. P.S. If You are so inclined, please throw in tone for my upper arms.

Intellectually, I knew better. There just wasn’t much of a point in having a panic attack over Charles and Judith. She was young and gorgeous with a body not to be believed and I wasn’t and never would be. I told
myself for the umpteenth time to simply get over it. I would enlist Kevin’s help in finding a beautiful dress that flattered my protrusions and lumps somehow and I would be so gracious that I would outshine her anyhow.

Clearly, that was a dewdrop of fantasy.

How did I think that I could really outshine Judith? Not happening. This sidebar needed a lot of thought and planning for me to be even marginally triumphant. Time was up for the dreaded exercise routine of the day and I decided that adding another ten minutes to it might be a good idea. Maybe fifteen because the wedding would come and go and my backside would still be of terrifying proportions.

After showering and dressing for the day, I steeled myself and called Dan’s cell.

“Hi, Mom.” His voice was as flat as a pancake.

“Come on, Dan! Can’t we start with
how are you?
I haven’t talked to you since the earth cooled its core!” (More humor wasted on offspring.)

“How are you?”

Would you like sausage or bacon with that short stack?

I kept my voice light, sprinkled with good nature that he appeared to have no interest in whatsoever.

“Well, I’m fine! Fine! There’s lots of news around here, you know. And how are you and your family?”

“Good. What’s up?”

Sometimes his lack of personality and affection just completely irked the devil out of me.

“Have you spoken to your brother?”

“He called a couple of times but I’ve been really busy.”

“Oh, well, are you sure everything’s okay with you? I mean, is there something you want to tell me?”

“No, I told you. We’re fine. What’s going on?”

“Well, your brother is getting married, for one thing.”

“To that black woman?”

I bristled.

“That is an unacceptable remark, Dan. Your brother is marrying Priscilla, who happens to be Jamaican and is a very beautiful woman, Dan.”

“I’m sure she is. When’s the wedding?”

“Right after Easter, and that’s why I’m calling. When you speak to him I imagine Charlie will ask you to be in the wedding party, so I wanted to know if you and Nan and the kids would like to stay with me?”

Silence.

“I didn’t ask you for a kidney, son. I’m inviting you and the children to stay with me. I would love to see them and you and Nan. It’s been such a long time.”

“I’ll have to ask Nan. I’ll call you back.”

“Sure. That’s fine. Okay, then…we’ll talk later? Give my love to everyone, will you?”

We hung up and I was reminded of the details of his annoyance with me. Every Christmas since we all but stopped speaking, I sent him a check for the family so that they could buy what they wanted. I did the same thing on birthdays. So I wasn’t completely negligent. But checks probably seemed impersonal or cold. That, however, wasn’t the worst of it. I had never been to visit them since they had named their son Independence Maybank Swanson. He was nicknamed Indy May, and if that didn’t give the poor child gender issues, I didn’t know what would. Their daughter, now seven years old, was named Mary Freedom Swanson. When all the schoolchildren nicknamed her M.F. and snickered to her face and behind her back, I told them both it was wrong for parents to give their little children a name that could be construed to mean something so very vulgar.

Dan told me to mind my own business, Nan wept for days, and we had barely spoken since.

M.F. and Indy May Swanson were seven and four, and I hoped to heaven they could forgive their parents someday. Maybe if I could send them plane tickets it would soften their hearts, I thought. Buy their forgiveness? Why not? Just because I didn’t approve of the names they gave
their children did not mean I did not care about them at all. I had stood my ground long enough to significantly damage what small relationship we had, and it was time to let it go. I mean, what if I dropped dead? Would they tell their children,
Well, sweeties, the reason you never knew your grandmother is that she didn’t like your names
. How completely horrible would that be? No, if they had any more children they could name him or her Garbage Dump McGee Finnegan Swanson, call him/her GDMF, and I would not utter one single word about it. Not one word. Sometimes it just wasn’t worth it to be right.

Where did I think I was going to find all the money to do the things I wanted to do for Charlie and Priscilla’s wedding? And to fly Liz to Sullivans Island? Or to fly Dan and his family to New York? It surely wasn’t under my mattress. I looked all around me and thought, Well, what
about
that apartment sale? I would discuss it with Kevin, who was a marvel at all retail ventures.

I mean, did I really need three silver coffee services? One was more than I cared to polish. Did I need four sterling-silver sets of flatware for twelve in different patterns and one for twenty-four? Ten sets of mother-of-pearl-handled silver flatware for fish and another six sets for dessert? Twenty silver trays, bowls, and fruit baskets? Thirty-six silver goblets? Fifty toast racks? Sixty-five sterling saltcellars with little spoons? That crazy collection of my grandfather’s German beer steins and all those risqué Meissen figurines of topless fräuleins eating fruit and playing lutes under trees in Vienna? An inventory was most definitely in order.

So was a call to Miss Josie. I dialed her number and she answered.

“Miriam? What’s new, dear?”

“How much time do you have?”

I gave her the full download on the state of my world, and when my report ended, she had a few things to say.

“Unload all that stuff that you don’t need anyway, come home, and bring Liz.”

“Are you sure? About bringing Liz, I mean?”

“Honey, that child needs an old lady’s wisdom. Big-time. And as for you, missy, Manny’s been asking after you like an old hound dog looking for his master. He’s plain pitiful.”

I found that to be surprising, but maybe he said it to amuse or compliment Mother. Men were capable of that kind of behavior.

“Then he should pick up the blessed phone and call me once in a while. And P.S., you’re not an old lady.”

“Yes, I am, and men are stupid. You know that.”

“So are women.”

“And you really like Priscilla?”

“Very much.”

“Give them a coffee service for a wedding gift.”

“Fabulous idea!”

“Say it’s from me.”

“Okay. You gave it to me in the first place. I’ll give them flatware from me.”

“Sounds good. But you had better save a coffee service and some flatware for Dan and Nan or you’ll never hear the end of it.”

A few minutes later we hung up. So Manny was asking about me, was he? Good. That was promising, even if he didn’t mean it.

I looked over the coffee services and decided to give the two less elaborate ones to my children and I would keep the third until after the wedding. There was a lovely man over on Second Avenue who polished silver and made it look like it belonged in a museum. I wrapped two of the silver services in newspaper and put them in grocery bags, threw on a coat, and hailed a cab. I would bring the trays and flatware to him on a second trip.

“Oh, these are beauties,” Mr. Lefko said as I unpacked each piece and placed them on his counter. “I can make them sing!”

“Wonderful! I’ll be right back with the trays and some flatware.”

I took a cab home, packed the other things, dropped them off, and decided to walk home. The air was brisk but it felt good against my face.
For some inexplicable reason I was in excellent spirits. I pulled out my cell and called Kevin.

“Do you have plans for dinner?”

“No, why? Is my best girl inviting me over?”

“Yes, I am. In the mood for, I don’t know, roasted chicken with mashed potatoes? Steamed carrots?”

“My mouth is watering, Petal. I’ll be home at six-thirty and I’ll help you.”

“Sounds perfect.”

I picked up what I needed for our dinner, and when I arrived at home, Liz was there in my kitchen filling a glass with water.

“Dr. Imber wants to do the surgery Tuesday morning,” she said.

“Good. Just so you know, I’m paying your bills and you can pay me back.”

“Oh, Miriam! How can you?”

“With my AmEx card? I get points. You can pay me back ten dollars a week for the rest of your life. Are you ready for that?”

“Are you kidding?” She threw her good arm around me and squeezed. “How can I thank you? I can’t wait to have this all over with. On Tuesday, I’ll have a mouth full of temps, but Dr. Imber said that was okay with him.”

“Well, good then. Because as soon as you have your stitches out, we’re heading south to visit Miss Josie.”

“Do you really mean it?”

“Yes. Prepare yourself to fall in love with a sandbar.”

That night, the three of us had dinner, and although I had cut Liz’s chicken in the tiniest pieces, she still had difficulty chewing.

“My jaw still hurts so badly,” she said. “And I’m so sick of this sling.”

Kevin, who was usually so ready with quips for every occasion, became somber.

“I just hate this entire business,” he said. “It makes me so angry.”

“How do you think I feel?” Liz said.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

Liz looked at her plate for a few moments and then said, “It just amazes me how some people get away with this kind of insane violent behavior and go on with their lives completely unfazed.”

This girl had definitely experienced some kind of abuse. I was sure of it. Kevin gave me a nod of agreement.

“Guiltless,” I said. “I can see Agnes and Truman now eating heart-healthy Dover sole and monkfish at Le Bernardin and pretending nothing ever happened, except for his heart attack, which I’m sure they blame on me. And Liz.”

“I just hope to God there’s a hell,” Liz said in a quiet voice, gently chewing a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

We smiled at her, and Kevin said, “Daisy Mae? Sometimes you are so adorable and you don’t even know it.”

Monday, Liz saw Gordon Ferguson and came home smiling.

“I really think I’m going to be okay,” she said. “Eventually. See?”

I inspected the inside of her mouth and agreed with her, although I’ll admit privately that looking inside Liz’s damaged mouth resurrected and nearly jet-propelled the undigested remains of my morning’s breakfast.

The next day Gerald Imber worked his magic and came out into the waiting room to speak to me. My hands shook as I handed my credit card to the gal behind the desk, thinking it would be twenty thousand dollars or more. But Dr. Imber’s bill was only for the anesthesiologist.

“Ms. Harper’s in recovery and did just fine.”

“Thank heaven. How many stitches did she need?” I asked.

“About a zillion, but they’re mostly internal and the others are very tiny,” he said. “The good news is there’s no apparent nerve damage and in a couple of months she’ll be able to cover it completely with makeup. Just make sure she doesn’t go out without a heavy dose of sunscreen on her face.”