The Parallel Apartments (16 page)

“Well, it was some time ago, years and years. We have not been in touch since.”

Lou let go of her hand and looked down at the yard of carpet separating them. Justine's hand seemed to ice over after its withdrawal from the warm cavern. She shivered. Her interior sine wave of despair peaked for a moment.

“And are you my adoptive great-grandmother?”

Dot looked at Justine for a moment, then at Lou. She slapped Lou on the arm, then opened her mouth and shut her eyes and tom-tomed her kneecaps until she burst in a fit of crackly laughter that sent Dartmouth whistling down the hall, helplessly decanting tinkle and foams.

“Oh, me,” said Dot, wheezing and gasping. “My. No. True, Lou acts like a child and thinks I am his mother, but I am not.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“The Disfarmer women do age young, but we live forever. I am forty-six, born on the day the Brits raided the Lofoten Islands.”

“Sorry.”

“You're awful pretty,” said Dot. “You have pretty eyes. I wish I had shoes that green color.”

Dot bent over to admire her extraordinary platforms.

Justine looked around furiously for Dartmouth, who would have been a perfect barrier against the embarrassing compliment. But Dartmouth was still in hiding. Instead, Justine studied Dot's legs, specifically the six inches of flesh between the green straps of her shoes and the cuffs of her pants. Her skin was smooth and faintly coppery. On the calf of her right leg, just peeking out from under the cuff, was the edge of a bruise, fresh and angry.

Dot leaned over and pulled on the cuff. The bruise disappeared.

“Cool shoes,” said Justine. “So what are you guys doing here?”

“Dot's here to see a fellah, so we just dropped by for a little visit,” said Lou, looking over his shoulder out the picture window.

“You don't live in Austin, do you?”

“Nuuuu,” said Dot. “New Orleans.”

Justine had always wanted to go and become a genius waitress and learn how to make perfumes like Priscilla in
Jitterbug Perfume,
or go to the movies all the time like Binx in
The Moviegoer,
or sell Lucky Dogs in the French Quarter and then commit suicide and get a posthumous Pulitzer Prize, like John Kennedy Toole.

Someday, that is. First, she was going to go live in New York. The instant that Principal Yarn handed over her high-school diploma she would be on her way north. She would become a pioneer in two-point perspective collage, with works for view at MoMA and for sale at Gagosian.

“You ought come visit sometime,” said Dot. “We just live a little ways from the Quarters. Part of town called the Bywater.”

“Lot of artists in the French Quarter, right?”

Dot shut her eyes and appeared to quit breathing. Lou leaned over her.

“Dotty, let's put you down for a rest,” he said. Addressing Justine: “Can my mommy stretch out and nap right here?”

Justine smiled. It hurt a bit, so long had it been since she'd last stretched her face like that. “Okay.”

Lou took off Dot's shoes and put her feet up on the bolster. He and Justine covered her with an afghan that had lain over the back of the divan for so long the sun had bleached the exposed part from blue to light gray. Lou tucked the green suitcase between the end of the divan and the side table.

Dartmouth's tiny cortex had apparently given him the all-clear: he rocketed back into the room and went straight for the divan. He tried to bound onto it, but misjudged by several inches and instead reflected off the bolster and back onto the floor, where he whirled in damp confusion until Dot reached down, picked him up, and placed him next to her on the divan.

“Justine,” said Lou, looking down at his knuckles. “Got any Coca-Cola?”

Justine sat Lou down in Charlotte's birdwatching spot at the kitchen table by the picture window. In the refrigerator Justine found an eighth-full two-liter bottle of Coke she knew to be intolerably flat, but since she did not want to disappoint her adoptive granddaddy she put it on the table anyway and found a plastic cup in the dishwasher that might or might not have been clean and gave that to him, too.

“That might be a little old. We have beer instead if you want.”

“I quit drinking,” said Lou, who appeared to be counting the bird feeders in the backyard. “Last time I was in Austin, as a matter of fact. Some seventeen, eighteen years ago.”

“Oh. We have faucet water. It's cold if I get it from the bathroom sink. Or I can make Swiss Miss if you want.”

Lou looked at Justine for an instant. His unplaceable expression had not departed; Justine figured it must be his regular face. It was probably hard for him to make friends. Justine felt glad for him that he had Dot, whoever she was. She didn't seem like a girlfriend, but maybe she was.

“This Coke'll be just fine,” said Lou.

“I gotta go do some stuff. In my room. Charlotte and Livia'll be back soon. They just went out for black-eyed peas.”

“Okay, then,” said Lou, opening the bottle, which issued no compressed gas; it even seemed to suck a little air back in.

“It's pretty flat,” said Justine.

“I don't mind one bit.”

Lou smiled. It was the saddest smile Justine had ever seen.

Justine went upstairs to her room. She lit her own gas heater with a barbecue match and lay down on her bed. She kicked off her shoes and let her feet
dangle over the end, where the heater would toast them. She shut her eyes, breathed in the smell of schoolroom paste that always activated when the room was warming up, and tried to remember Chewbacca.

Justine had had images in her head of what Lou must look like ever since she was six, when she had first heard his name mentioned. It had been while Livia and Charlotte were arguing over some point in their common personal histories one Saturday in late fall.

“Who'sLouWho'sLouWho'sLouWho'sLouWho'sLouWho'sLou?” Justine had said while lying in the middle of the kitchen floor dressed in a Little Orphan Annie costume, its curly red wig component wadded up and stuffed under the smock component in order to create a bosom component, which Justine felt essential for her interpretation of the character.

“He is your granddad and a common roughneck,” said Charlotte. “And we do not talk about him.”

“You're talking about him,” said Justine. “My real granddad?”

“No, you're adopted, remember?” said Livia.

“No duh.”

“Get off the floor this instant and put on your shoes and wig. We have to go in exactly one minute.”

“I'm wearing my wig!” Justine squealed.

Still stretched out flat on the kitchen floor, Justine began to rotate herself using her bottom as an axis.

“What does he look like?”

“Justine,” said Charlotte, “please get off the floor now or your understudy will have to take your place because you'll be in your room at home in a state of disapprobation.”

Justine accelerated her rotation. She did not take Charlotte's threats seriously, as they were rarely carried out.

“What's my understudy?”

“Justine, dammit!” shouted Livia, nearly tripping over Justine's feet.

“What does Lou look like? Is he old?”

“He looks like Chewy.”

“Ew.”

“Who,” said Charlotte, “is Chewy?”

“From a movie, Mother. Never mind.”

“A movie. Well, remind me not to go see that one.”

And ever since then, when the very rare subject of Lou came up, Justine had imagined him as a yeti-man who pumped gas into Charlotte's X-wing fighter, taking her MasterCard and running it through his credit-card knucklebuster while she checked her lipstick in the rearview.

But now, presented with the genuine Lou Borger, that image dissipated. The real Lou didn't look much like Chewbacca at all. Well, a tiny bit.

Justine turned on her little black-and-white. Football, football, football. She turned it off. There was nothing to do except homework, which was to read
The Once and Future King
and write a paper on it for Mrs. DeBrackton, something that she had decided even before Christmas vacation she would not do. This wouldn't be a problem, either—mental illness, for all its unpleasantness, worked great as an excuse for not doing stuff.

So she lay back on the bed and began to play her favorite (nonsexual) daydream, which was that Livia would get into a car crash and die instantly. Justine didn't necessarily want Livia to suffer, and she didn't like to think of her as a wadded corpse on an enameled-metal morgue table, or even as a name die-sunk into a gravestone; Justine just wanted her out of the picture. Livia was mean and moody and had always seemed to dislike Justine for no really good reason. Charlotte was much nicer, always sweetly apologizing for nothing, and much more like the mothers engineered for TV. Livia, on the other hand, fit tidily into the TV mold for stepmothers and foster-mothers: razor-eyed, taut-browed, suspicious and lording. Livia and Charlotte got along most of the time, but when they did fight, it was over something having to do with Justine.

For variety, Justine adjusted today's car-crash scenario in her head: Livia had Charlotte with her this time. Justine didn't want anything to happen to Charlotte, so Justine had her forget her checkbook in H.E.B. and have to go back for it; meanwhile, Livia, who is idling in the fire lane by the front doors, waiting for her mother, is blindsided by an old man in a green pickup truck who's just had a convulsion and accidentally stomped on his accelerator. The old man finishes his convulsion and is fine, but Livia is dead from blunt force trauma to the head, even though there is no blood and she never knew what hit her. Charlotte emerges from H.E.B. with her checkbook, screams and faints, but is secretly relieved that Livia's dead. Justine and Charlotte grow closer, and on the hottest nights they turn on the powerful upstairs air conditioner and sit in the hallway under blankets, drinking beer and talking shit about Livia.

“Why was she so mean, Charl?” Justine would say, opening a can of Falstaff and handing it to her beautiful grandmother.

“Darling, so many reasons.”

“I'm glad she didn't suffer.”

“Fatherlessness is one reason.”

“I'm fatherless, and I'm not mean.”

“You're just darling.”

And they'd be finished with their first beers and well into their second.

“Charl, I want to be a collage artist.”

“You may be whatever you wish.”

“I want to go to New York and enroll in art school.”

“Your mother wouldn't have wanted you to go to New York.”

“Livia's not my mother and besides, she's dead.”

“You are so right. I hope you go to art school in New York City.”

Third, fourth beers. Cuddling together under the blankets, the thermostat down to sixty.

“I love you Charl.”

“From now on, darling, call me Mother.”

“I'll never be depressed or cut myself or try to commit suicide again, I promise, and I'll take my pills. Except Cogentin and Prolixin.”

“That's just wonderful. Let us finish the Falstaff beer, and then will you show me some collage basics?”

“I love you, Mommy.”

Justine woke up freezing; the gas heater had gone off. She sat up and looked out the window.

Livia's car sat in the driveway. It did not appear to have been stove in by a convulsing man in a runaway green pickup. It looked the same as always.

Voices downstairs. Calm. Charlotte, Livia, Lou.

In the kitchen Justine encountered Lou still sitting where she'd left him, and still wearing the same expression. He had drunk all the flat Coke and had somehow managed to squeeze the white plastic cap inside the bottle. Charlotte was leaning against the kitchen counter with a Belair in one hand and a Tuborg in the other, taking delicate pulls on each. Livia stood in the kitchen doorway, arms tightly crossed under her breasts, wearing an expression
of tense uncertainty. Dot was visible through the kitchen doorway, still lying on the divan in exactly the same position, with Dartmouth stretched out alongside her; both were asleep.

Justine went over and pulled on the refrigerator door Charlotte was leaning on.

“Oh, Justine,” said Charlotte, stepping aside. “This is Lou, Livia's fa—”

“I know, I let him in. He told me.”

Justine found a Tuborg, opened it, and then shut the refrigerator with her bottom.

“Justine,” said Charlotte, her voice uncharacteristically firm, “you may not have that Tuborg. Give it to Lou before it gets flat.”

“Lou doesn't drink,” said Justine, consuming a third of it. “You have it.”

Charlotte took the beer from Justine with her cigarette hand.

“So,” said Livia, still squeezing herself, “what else did you two visit about besides sobriety?”