The Parallel Apartments (62 page)

“There is,” said Rose, “a lot
you
don't know either, Charlotte Durant.”

A few more moments of dewy, obstinate staring, and finally Charlotte said: “Can you drive?”

“Yeah, why, are you having contractions?”

“No, no. Are you cautious? Do you signal and practice courtesy and wave to your neighbors?”

“All but that last thing,” said Rose, truthfully. She regarded herself as the most defensive and politest of all Austin's drivers. Yesterday notwithstanding.

“Why don't you come around and meet me in the driveway.”

XXV

December 2004

Charlotte would never admit this to anyone, and in fact had grown up with self-preservative abilities sufficiently powerful where she could, if she chose, not admit it to herself, but the truth was that there had been more than a few people in her life whose deaths had come as bounties of relief, and, similarly, there still lived people whose deaths, should they come before her own, would bring carotic relief.

Among the dead was Amelia Mint. Fifth grade. A bully and teaser who circled in abusive squall around every aspect of Charlotte's school life for much of 1949, until late-onset chicken pox seized and quickly overtook the tormenter. It was the same day Charlotte first set eyes on the handsome sixth grader Lou Borger.

And there had been Ursula Calle, the polio-stricken bingo-hall shouter. The chronic pain from the disease and all its withering harrows led her to resign. Hers had been a slow, lonesome, van Goghian suicide, a pistol-shot to the intestines that took all of thirty-six hours to kill her. Charlotte was relieved Ursula was finally at peace, but, my goodness, why hadn't she shot
herself in the head, the sensible target for a small-arms suicide?

Apart from banishing Charlotte's only-ever love, Mère had visited no memorable terrors on her daughter; it was simply the lifelong compound of Mère's seedling resentments, denials, tiny crimes, ugly triflings, prejudices, peeves, and cranks, all in the name of love, of course, that Charlotte had escaped on the day a blood clot climbed into her mother's brain.

Justine. The possibility that her granddaughter should live to learn the circumstances of her conception paralyzed Charlotte so completely that she had wondered if Justine might not be better off peacefully and painlessly dead. And if this bizarre Rose person—at this very moment sitting to Charlotte's left, in the driver's seat of Charlotte's 1979 Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue, experimenting with the street-barge's various dials and toggles—was to be believed, Justine was not dead; she had been living in New York, where she'd always wanted, promised, and threatened to go.

But, according to this Rose, Justine was now home. In town. In Austin. In direct peril of an unconscionable truth. Charlotte put her hand to her breastbone, a gesture she usually accompanied with
“Oh me,”
but this time substituted with a brief, sharp inhale.

“Are you all right?” said Rose, evidently sensitized to proximate existential panic. “Do you need an Alka-Seltzer? Or some Wal-phed? Oh god, it's not the baby?”

And the child, of course. Even though there was every desolating likelihood that the baby now so improbably alive inside Charlotte's World War II–era body (she pictured a gleeful Gerber baby slobbering in the bubble of a Vought Corsair) would not succeed in coming to be—Dr. Gonzales had been predictably specific about the fetus's chances—the splinter of possibility that the baby
would
make it was in many ways even more upsetting. What kind of mother could she be, after her failures with Livia? She was a failure even as a grandmother. This child's death would be, will be, a mercy.

Let us not forget Livia.

The moment Charlotte had discovered in Dot's diaries that Livia had slept with her own father, producing Justine, Charlotte did not cry, she did not go to sleep, she did not throw up, she did not call Dr. Gonzales for Valium, she did not place the diaries in the rusty wheelbarrow in the backyard and burn them to white ash with her crème brûlée torch, she did not count days and calculate dates and estimate gestation periods, she did not
recast the memories of the last thirty-five years in this new, merciless light, she did not decide that her newfound disgust for Livia outweighed her pity for her, she did not decide to banish Livia from her life; no, all of that came in the next few days. But the moment that Charlotte read Dot's entry of January 22, 1970, she leaned back against the hallway wall, lit a cigarette, took a single drag, dropped it into her beer, went downstairs, and called the downtown Marriott.

“Front desk, Nathan.”

Charlotte had never been so relieved to hear a friendly voice.
Now
came the crying.

“Hello, hello?” said Nathan. “Miss? Hello?”

Charlotte could not speak. She could barely breathe for the storm of the cry. Then she threw up.

“Miss?” Incredibly, Nathan had stayed on the line. “Can I call an ambulance?”

“No,” said Charlotte, with more strength and force than she thought she possessed. Far more than just tears and poisons were liberated by a good vomit-cry. They were pure deliverance. “I'm all right. I'd like a room for one, as soon as possible.”

“Certainly. And how many nights will you be staying?”

“Until I finish these diaries.”

“Pardon?”

“Never mind. Two nights, please.”

“I have an excellent single overlooking the river.”

“That's just fine.”

“I will personally make sure,” said Nathan, “that the grout is clean and the pillows fluffy.”

Charlotte had spoken to Livia only once in the last six months. The conversation had been much like a death, a violent one, but Charlotte was not entirely sure which of the two of them had died.

But it was for the most recent demise—had it already been two months?—that Charlotte felt the greatest relief, and for that relief, the greatest guilt: Bull Wheeler. Her Westlake Hills friend, pinochle opponent, and, for several decades, her secret, part-time, and by far most capable lover. If she was to be cursed with an advanced-age pregnancy, she would rather have at fault none other than Big Bull.

Still, Bull had been growing antsy at the idea of a new child (he had already imparted six boys and triplet girls unto his wife, Nance), and had uttered into his and Charlotte's increasingly antagonistic discourse on the matter the possibility of public confession. Public meaning Nance. Public meaning Livia. Public meaning the counties of Travis and surrounding. Everyone knew Bull in one way or another. Charlotte felt foolish enough wandering around in Walgreens and H-E-B and Hobby Lobby as the oldest pregnant woman in Texas, and probably the oldest pregnant
single
woman in the world. Charlotte did not need any more exposure. She begged God for relief from Bull's threats to disclose, and, lo, God silenced Bull while the man was
in flagrante doggie-style,
in his marital bed, with his marital wife. Poor Nance. Lucky Nance. She would never know of her dead husband's inimitable feat of virility.

Unless Bull had kept some kind of damn diary. No, no. The idea of Big Bull Wheeler scribbling in a pink book protected by a tiny brass lock was laughable. And Charlotte laughed.

“What's funny?” said Rose, who was testing and retesting the emergency brake.

“Not a thing,” said Charlotte. She studied Rose's slender, womanly wrists. They seemed at great risk of shattering behind the apparent power in her broad, veined forearms. “Are you satisfied with the brake's performance?”

“I don't know, I'd need a hill to park on. Where are we going, anyway?”

“I would like you to take me to an address in Tarrytown, Rose. The recent expiration of a local pizza baron promises a compelling estate sale, which, in forty-two minutes, is set to open its doors to the public.”

“Okay, then.”

“En route, I would like to hear your idea. But first, I hope you will be able to answer a few questions.”

“Okay, then.”

Charlotte paused, unsure where to begin her interrogation.

Rose seized the chance to ask a question of her own.

“Boy or girl?”

“Girl. There is little chance the child will survive.”

There was a more-than-trivial chance Charlotte wouldn't survive the baby's birth, either. She wondered if she would experience an afterlife
sentience tuned finely enough to feel the relief of her own death, or would she witness only the mass analgesia her death brought to others?

“That makes me sad.”

Charlotte felt rotten enough wishing people dead, but somehow making this odd person Rose feel sad felt worse. She appeared capable of melancholies far steeper than any in Charlotte's experience.

“Now please back out of the driveway and go thataway,” said Charlotte, as gently as she knew how.

“Did you pick out names anyway?” said Rose.

Charlotte had spent an hour or two browsing baby-names books at Babiverse, finally settling on Edith. She had never known anyone with that name, making it ideal by exclusion. Charlotte said it over and over in her head as she wandered around the three-acre superstore examining hemp baby blankets, electric playpens, steampunk breast pumps, and adorable onesies bearing shocking messages.

“I did.”

“Would you tell me?”

“Does Justine know who her real mother is?”

Charlotte had merely been thinking this question, but somehow, without consent, it leaped from her mouth.

“She sure does: Livia,” said Rose immediately, as if she knew the question was coming all along. “And she also knows Livia gave her up for adoption. Because she
cried
too much. And she knows that the adoptive parents returned her pretty much for the same reason. Overcrying. Like she was a pair of too-small cleats from Sears.”

“There is more to it than that. Please turn here.”

“And,” said Rose, “she knows who her father is.”

Of them all—dead and alive—Amelia Mint, Justine, Bull, Ursula, her own baby, and quite a few others—Lou Borger was the only one upon whom she sometimes wished harm and biles and agony.
Then
death. Other times Charlotte felt pity. But mostly she felt nothing; Lou was simply absent, unthought-of, a sorry oblivion.

“We looked him up on the internet,” said Rose. “Ye Moppe Hedds records get a fortune on eBay. Jerry, Gary, Larry, Cherry, and Burt. You don't still have any, do you? 45s?”

Charlotte had always envied her granddaughter's paranormal capacity
for tears. Her own, whether of grief, sadness, joy, laughter, or relief, were—the last six months notwithstanding—as scarce as moon rocks.

“Cherry—Livia—probably does. Ye honorary Moppe Hedd. But I do not.”

“Why Cherry? That's Livia? Why not Mary, Sherry, Carrie, Kerry, Terri?”

“I've never known. Livia and I do not often discuss those years.”

But they had certainly discussed Burt. On her last visit Livia had told her mother that he'd been sterile. It was not the fact but the tardiness of its delivery that been both the cause of the pursuant violence and the end of the visit.

“Let's go ask her.”

“We are going to an estate sale.”

“After?”

“Afterward, we are going to another estate sale. A lottery agent once jailed for fraud. Much is possible there. I hope you'll help me fan through all the books for hidden unredeemed tickets or hundred-dollar bills.”

“After?”

“Livia and I do not speak.”

“Why?”

Charlotte decided Rose was much like your ordinary rank-and-file four-year-old. Charlotte recollected that simple disregard effectively silenced most members of that complicated age group. Charlotte thus, silently, studied the sidewalk and its travelers as they sped by. Eventually, though, she felt the quiet in the car crawling on her neck, and so turned to Rose.

“I learned something about Livia that I did not like, to say the least. I have no interest in recognizing her as a daughter.”

“Can you guys dialogue?”

“That word, as a verb, should be struck from the lexica.”

“Well?”

“She has a perfectly attentive boyfriend to
dialogue
with.”

“Does he know this terrible thing about Livia?”

“Archibold appears to know very little about the plane of reality.”

“Archibold? His last name's not Bamberger, is it?”

“Why, yes, it is.”

“I know him. He's been delivering magazines to Crammed Shelf for
years. As long as I've been there. We're pretty good friends. He orders me special Latin American soccer magazines.”

“Please go left at the guitar statue.”

Rose was indeed a cautious driver. Gentle. Charlotte had seldom encountered a gentle driver, and she was happy to be in the reck of one for a change, now that Livia was no longer available. Charlotte had backed out of Livia's life, and Livia out of hers, repulsing magnets, south pole to south pole, with no meeting in any possible future. Asking a daughter if she slept with her dad is the sort of question Charlotte supposed only classical Greek dramatists knew how to handle. Charlotte knew no Greek theater, but surely, at the very least, some player would attack another, with a sword, a morningstar, a catapult, or, maybe, an open palm, slick from sweat, as Charlotte had finally struck Livia. Never had they had a violent exchange, and the strike stunned them both. Livia then left her mother's house and did not return.