The Sisters Montclair (24 page)

“See if you can get
Family Feud
,” Alice said. “I think it comes on now.”

“Take it easy, Al. I’ve got to get it programmed first.”

They were still arguing good-naturedly when Adeline swept in. She hadn’t rung the bell or anything; she just walked in like she owned the place. Stella got up so Adeline could take her chair, and went into the kitchen. She stood at the kitchen window, looking out at the neatly landscaped lawn and listening to the three of them. Alice was in a fine mood, and they were all laughing and gossiping about a neighbor who was building a monstrous house at the other end of the brow.

“You know he petitioned the city council to put in his own private Incline up the mountain,” Adeline said.

“Oh good Lord,” Sawyer said. “Some people have more money than sense.”

“The house looks like a country club,” Adeline said. “It’s obscene.”

“I hope they turned him down on the private Incline,” Alice said.

“That’s exactly what they did,” Adeline said. “After they finished laughing.”

“What’s his name?”

“Petrakis.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“Greek. I think.”

“He’s from Birmingham.”

“Well that figures,” Alice said.

“Made his money in the pest control business.”

“The what?”

“Pest control. You know. Bugs. Rodents. Things like that.”

The theme song from
Family Feud
blared suddenly.

“Oh, goody,” Alice said. “You fixed it.”

Sawyer hit the mute button. “Well, I don’t know about that but I got it programmed.”

“You’re a good kid, as your father always used to say.”

“Stop it, Al.”

After he left, Alice called to Stella to come in and sit with her and Adeline. Adeline wore a tailored skirt and a blouse that tied around the throat and a pair of high-heeled pumps. Her hair, unlike Alice’s, which was curly, was straight and cut stylishly just below her jaw.

“Would you like something to drink?” Stella asked, standing in the doorway.

“A glass of water please,” Adeline said.

“Alice?”

“I guess so. I might as well hydrate while I’m sitting here.”

She and Stella grinned at each other.

Stella brought their glasses of water and then sat down in the chair vacated by Sawyer. She was nervous still, in front of Adeline, but not as nervous as she had once been.

Adeline sipped her water and then sighed, staring out the long windows overlooking Sawyer’s beautiful lawn. Her expression was distant, pensive. She set her glass down on a small table near her chair.

“We’ve lost Brooks,” she said in a deep, somber voice.

Alice stared at her a beat. “What do you mean, we’ve lost Brooks?”

“He’s gone.”

“Adeline, Brooks has been gone since 1979.”

“I had him in that urn on the mantel and when the new cleaning girl left, the urn was gone. I could see little pieces of broken pottery near the wingback chair, you know the one Mother gave me, and there was ash on the bricks. I think she knocked Brooks over and was afraid to tell me.”

“Who, Mother?”

“No, Alice, not Mother! The cleaning girl.”

“Weren’t you supposed to sprinkle his ashes over Augusta National thirty years ago?”

“Don’t start with me, Alice,” Adeline said, giving her a sullen look. “You know I never liked golf.”

They were all quiet for a few minutes, sipping their water.

“Well,” Alice said finally. “Well.”

Stella stared at the bricked circular drive in front of Sawyer’s house. His wife’s Nissan was parked in front, with Sawyer’s ten-year-old Lincoln parked behind it. It was one of the things about the old-moneyed rich that Stella found amusing, the fact that they drove ordinary cars. Not a Mercedes or Lexus in the bunch.

Adeline sighed again, putting one hand to her throat. “Poor Brooks,” she said. “Swept out with the rubbish.”

Alice snorted and looked at Stella. Stella put one hand to her mouth, stood up quickly, and walked out.

“What’s wrong with her?” Adeline said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Alice said, pulling a Kleenex out of the box and covering her face.

Later that night, as Stella was getting Alice ready for bed, Alice looked up and said, “Did I ever tell you about the time Roddy was supposed to ride the Incline and the teacher forgot to put him on? I was waiting at the top and his cousins were there, but no Roddy. So I went down to the school and Ann Ricks, his teacher, said, “Oh, did I forget Roddy? I’m sorry there are just too many little Whittingtons to keep up with.”

Stella, remembering their exchange that morning and not wanting to piss the old lady off again by laughing, widened her eyes and said, “Oh, Alice that’s terrible.”

“You’re darn right it was terrible! I let both Ann Ricks and the headmistress have it. I mean, I really lit into them.”

Stella rearranged the pillows behind Alice’s head and then began to smooth baby oil on her legs. Her skin was blue and mottled and thin as wax paper. The baby oil wasn’t even absorbed; it just sat on top of the skin, slick and shiny.

“And later when Dob said he was going to marry Ann Ricks, I said,
Oh, no you’re not.
I still had not gotten over the Roddy incident.”

Stella stopped rubbing. “Your cousin Dob?”

“He was married to Ann Ricks. She was his first wife. He married her when he got back from the War. Old lady Ricks, her mother, was the richest woman in St. Elmo. She owned real estate all over town and she’d go out every month and personally collect every rent dollar that was owed her. She was rich as Croesus but she still had the first penny she’d ever made. That woman did not believe in spending money.

Anyway, she wasn’t happy about the marriage either. She had two other daughters who had married and she’d told Ann,
You can’t marry. You have to take care of me in my old age.
She had Ann’s whole life planned and it didn’t include marriage to Dob Montclair. She wouldn’t even speak to Ann after the wedding. She disinherited her, wouldn’t give her a cent, and Ann and Dob could have used the money because Dob was a poor law school student and they had five children in quick succession.”

Stella put the cap back on the baby oil. “She sounds like a character, that old lady Ricks.”

“Oh, she was a character all right. She lived in a big house next to the Incline. A huge old house that hadn’t been painted in fifty years. The city got tired of looking at that eyesore so they told her she was going to have to paint it. They wrangled back and forth for awhile but finally the city threatened to condemn the property. So she complied. She had the front painted. The other three sides she left as they were.”

“I’ll bet the city didn’t let her get away with that.”

“Oh, she got the last word.”

“How’s that?”

“She died before they could cite her.”

Stella went into the bathroom to wash her hands. When she came out, Alice was staring at the TV screen with a faraway expression on her face. Stella pulled the covers up to her chest, plumped the pillows behind her head. “Did she ever forgive Ann for marrying Dob?”

“Old lady Ricks? Oh no,” Alice said. “When she died she was worth millions but do you know how much she left each of Ann and Dob’s children? Her own grandchildren? One dollar each.”

“That’s terrible.”

“I thought so.”

“How could you do that to your own daughter? Your own grandchildren?”

“Funny what some people will do for money,” Alice said.

On the drive home, Stella thought about Ann Ricks. What was worse; to be raised in poverty knowing you had no choice, or to live in poverty knowing your mother could do something about it if she wanted to? She decided that poverty without choice was worse. There were no delusions there, no glimpses of a hopeful future.

Her cell phone beeped. She checked and it was a text from her carrier, saying that she was to call immediately on an important matter. Meaning that once again she was being threatened with disconnection if she didn’t pay her bill.

“Get in line,” she said to the phone and tossed it down on the passenger’s seat. She had so many bills to pay now it was not even worth opening the stack on the coffee table. Mostly medical bills from when she’d had to go to the emergency room last fall for a broken ankle that still bothered her on cold, rainy days. It would be better if they did disconnect her cell because then she wouldn’t be hounded by creditors calling at all times of the day or night.

And to make matters worse, Josh was loosing his patience with her. Last night he had pounded on the bathroom door and demanded that she pony up her share of the rent.

“What are you doing in there?” he said suspiciously. “You’ve been in there for hours.”

She stood and quickly cleaned herself up. “I’m going to be a little late this month,” she called to him, running the water in the sink to distract him. She put the razor away in its little case and tucked it behind the toilet.

“So what else is new?” he said.

“I’m looking for another part-time job,” she lied.

He gave a quick thump on the door with his fist and then walked away. It was the only way they talked to each other these days. He on one side of a door and she on the other. Whatever small feeling she had felt for him was gone and she was left now with only resentment and bitterness. She would leave him tomorrow if she had anywhere else to go. She would start over, if she could.

The sun was setting as she drove down the mountain, a glorious display of red and purple clouds above the city skyline. She drove with her window down, one arm resting on the sill. The air was balmy and fragrant with spring. Days like this reminded her of her earliest childhood, when it was just her and Candy traveling through the Deep South. Late spring was when they always moved, when Candy tired of her job or the man in her life, and got itchy to move on. There was a gypsy-like feel to spring, a sense of hope that things would get better, that a new life waited for them just over the next green hill.

Stella propped her elbow on the sill and leaned her head against her hand. She felt listless, depressed. Cell phone texts from collection agencies, moments of introspection could do that to her. She felt as if her life was slipping away and she was powerless to stop its inevitable slide. She had read case histories where children, even those who had been horribly abused by a parent, will choose to be returned to that parent. Fedderson had written considerably on the subject.

It seemed sad to Stella that with all her experience and education, she still had days when all she wanted was her mother.

B
ill Whittington was becoming more and more visible. He no longer shimmered at the edges with diffused light but came through clear and solid. And he came more frequently, too, standing in her bedroom doorway with one shoulder pressed to the jamb. Sometimes he was in a suit but usually he was dressed in his golf clothes.

“
We had a good life, Old Girl,
” he said to Alice one night as she was drifting off to sleep.

She opened one eye and stared at him. “Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?” she said.

“
All things considered.
”

She readjusted her pillow behind her head and lay back down. She could see him between her feet, hovering several inches off the ground.

“
I’m not saying it was perfect. I had my,
” he hesitated here. “
My indiscretion,
” he continued. “
And you, of course, had yours.
”

She sighed. It seemed unfair that the dead were privy to the secrets of the living. She wondered what she would learn about Bill Whittington once she passed over.

“
Nothing you don’t already know,
” he answered.

“Hush,” she said. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“All in all, I’d have to say it was a good life.”

“I suppose so.”

“Not everyone can say that.”

“No.”

“
I knew from the first time I saw you that you were the girl for me.
”

“Oh, for goodness sakes.”

“
You have to admit, Al, there aren’t many who’ve had the chances we had.
”

She was quiet for a moment. “I suppose not,” she said in a quiet voice. She could hear footsteps coming along the hallway. He shimmered in the doorway, beginning to fade.

“
Leave the regret behind you. Let it go.
”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

The hall light clicked on suddenly and Alice raised her head from the pillow, blinking. Elaine’s thin, startled face came into focus.

“Who are you talking to?” she asked Alice, her tone wary, suspicious. “I heard you on the monitor.”

Alice closed her eyes and lay back down, turning her face to the wall.

“No one,” she said.

Bill had made Alice pack his leather-cased traveling bar so they could stop for highballs at cocktail hour. He was a man of custom and ritual and he refused to leave the trappings of polite society behind him when he traveled. They were driving up to Charlottesville to see Roddy graduate. Sawyer was still in prep school and he couldn’t come, so it was just the two of them setting out on a lovely May morning. The azaleas were in bloom and everywhere the city was ablaze with riotous color. Alice, who, as a good Presbyterian, often made do with a splash of ginger ale and lime, would have been happy to leave the bar behind. But after twenty-five years of marriage, she had learned that it was easier to simply give in to Bill’s demands.