The Unfortunates (39 page)
How earnestly he looks at her. How little he needs to know her, to have convinced himself. “Don’t say that,” she manages, with a we’re-just-kidding-around laugh.
“But I am. Even if you’re not as nice as I thought you were.”
“Look, where’s George? I should find him.”
“He’s chilling in the den. Said the crowd’s too much for him. Boy took a walloping, didn’t he? But I think he can wait a minute. I want to talk to you. You owe me a serious talk.”
He’s placed himself between her and the sliding glass doors to the living room. He’s swaying slightly, holding himself upright by staring at her. She starts to say something about how they can talk another time, but he cuts her off.
“You don’t care about other people, huh? I thought you were the sweetest gal. You’re very convincing. But you don’t play by the rules. Why’d you bring him? I invited
you
.”
She steps forward. He blocks her. She looks up at the glittering lights of the surrounding buildings and at the clusters of guests, blowing lovely streams of toxic mist up into the air, oblivious of how Bob is now holding her by the waist, of how she’s twisting to get away.
“I thought you were inviting both of us.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“It’s your and Martha’s apartment.”
“Martha’s leaving me.”
“Why wouldn’t she?” she says, anger in her voice.
“Now that hurts. Like your shit’s going so well. Stuck with Mr. Time-Out-Chair.”
“There’s no stuck. I love George.” But it sounds hollow. She can tell, wasted as he is, that Bob hears it too. He laughs. He jabs his stubby index finger at her, and vowels out something like “Ah-haaaa,” twice, three times.
“Fuck off, Bob.”
“Hey.” He stops laughing with the abruptness of the very drunk. A look of bewilderment passes over his features. “Hey, you owe me.”
She tries to step out from between him and the rail.
“Not yet. George and I just had a chat. A real heart-to-heart-to-heart. Want to know what he confided?”
“If you don’t get off me, I’ll scream.”
“Said you guys got into a whole mess of unmanageable debt. And I was whistling at the ceiling, pretending it was the first I’ve heard of it, keeping our secret nice-nice. But then! He made up with Mama and everything’s all fixed. That true?”
“It’s none of your business.” She goes still under his hand.
“I go, ‘What a help Iris must have been before the family dough came through.’ And you know what he says? ‘Iris? How? Her little admin job?’ So, I ask myself. What has Iris done with all that money I gave her? Why hasn’t she told her George about it? Maybe she’s keeping it for a rainy day. Maybe she’s thinking about making a break for it. Maybe I have a chance with the lovely Iris after all.”
“Gave me?”
“Made, gave. Whatever. Let me show you something.”
Before she knows what’s happening, he’s yanked her around the corner of the wraparound terrace, past a man and a woman sitting on a deck chair smoking, who smile and wave hello as she’s trying to pull free, even as she’s saying “Let go!” and dragging her feet.
“Listen. Don’t you like me, a little?”
She sees another set of sliding doors on this, the darkened, side of the apartment. “Sure, Bob, I like you. But I don’t like this. Please, let’s go back in.”
“I didn’t take a risk for you? I did. Oh, I did. You pretend it’s nothing.”
“You’re his only friend. You’re his only friend left!”
“And you’re scamming us both. Digging more than one fellow at a time? Are you so incapable of seeing what I’ve done for you?”
She hears—she is pleading. It is her voice so it must be her: “It’s true, okay, it’s true. I didn’t tell George but it isn’t what you think, and please let go of my wrists, Bob, too tight, I had the idea to give the money to my friend, now it’s for my friend, not for me, Kingsgate was a mistake and I feel so bad and Victor won’t answer. If you want it back, you can have it, it’s sitting in the bank not doing nothing! All of it. Let go, let go!” She hears herself, louder: “You’re not nice, you’re the one not being nice!” She gives up caring if he tells George. She sputters, “I’m not—I don’t give a shit what you do! You going to push me down now? That’s the type you are? You try. You dare try it and see.”
This startles him. He lets her wrists drop. He looks around the balcony. “You like me. I know you do. You don’t like me?”
“No.”
“But this isn’t how I wanted it to go,” he says, with a wild, despairing laugh.
“Why?” She is stepping back, once, twice.
“You know? I don’t know. I don’t.”
She takes a breath, hides her shaking hands. “Forget about it. Let’s go inside.”
“In a minute.”
She finds George in a corner of the kitchen, staring into a cupboard full of spices.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” George says. “Let’s go home.”
Astrasyne may be relevant for tomorrow’s patient
, reads the letter that comes two days after the call from the doctor,
but for the safety of today’s patients, usage should be stopped with the supervision of your coordinating physician.
The rest is written in the most general terms, presenting neither cause nor resolution, excepting the phrase
systolic dysfunction
. Most likely meaning, her doctor says, an unanticipated and statistically significant incidence of heart attack in the wider study.
NewGenA will hold a conference call at 8:30 a.m. EDT to discuss the clinical hold. Participants can access the conference call live via telephone by dialing 866-502-6497. The passcode is 43937228. An audio-only webcast of the conference call will be available for replay approximately one hour following the live broadcast.
Maybe Astrasyne is to blame for Dotty’s death, CeCe thinks. Maybe it is not. The other therapies on the market she’s already tried. Here she is, going off the drug. Already she’s tying back into a knot. Already the fatigue’s returned. She can feel the tremor is getting close, coming soon, warm, warmer, hot—the ticking down of her wrong-wound clock. This time, she does not doubt, to tick her down to zero.
“—because Iris will be more comfortable in here,” she is saying to Esme. CeCe’s sitting at the long wooden table in the kitchen, the sun coming through the window. “Can you busy yourself elsewhere this morning?”
Truth being, she’s in the kitchen not for Iris’s comfort but her own. Since the news, she’s inclined most to the kitchen, with its warm feeling of everyday use. More often than to her sitting rooms or the library—unnerving, lately, the grand lengths of tapestry and upholstery rolling and lurching away from her, the haughty, gilded backs of the chairs. Unwelcoming, as if their assemblage is no longer for her. The height of the rooms makes her uneasy. An expanse as in a cathedral. Too much air between the top of her head and the ceiling, room for her thoughts to float and gather to the corners, to strengthen one to another until she finds that by dusk, that loneliest hour, the ceiling is fear-coffered. Try as she might, she can’t read or write a letter or even watch television for the dreadful weight of the translucent hoard of herself above. The kitchen, on the other hand, smells like baking. She’s had Esme make blueberry scones and the plain shortbread Iris seemed to enjoy the last time she was over. Esme arranges the breads in a basket on the table. What will CeCe say? How will she say it? Uncertainty—it is unlike her. She feels unlike herself.
For it has occurred to her—she was in a corner of the vast library, turning distractedly through a volume of Keats she’s had since college—that she needs the girl. She’d read
… I behold, upon the night’s starred face / Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance
, and she couldn’t go on to the next line. She slammed the book shut. The line echoed in her head, so she chucked the book to the rug. Why not, with nobody to see? Because, how can it be? If she goes—if she fails, at present, she can count on no one but Iris. To protect, to preserve—her house, her son, her name. To manage the people who will manage the future. To insure her foundation continues to be run honorably by honorable people, not ransacked or folded to slow incompetence. To guard her written instructions against the greedy world. Iris. Directionless waif.
No. She isn’t ready. To will, to be well. She will be! But in case she is temporarily impaired, to be sure everything remains in order until she, or George or Patricia—maybe Patricia, who is coming to see her, but who knows how that will go?—until then, she must make friends with the girl. Not girl. The wife. Lest what she’s made of her life be undone. Lest she be forgotten.
“Leave the pot, leave it!” she says, accepting a parting tray of tea from Esme. She sounds hysterical. Come along, it’s only Iris! She must remember, Iris will do whatever she asks, being of malleable virtue, having that eagerness for instruction common to people who do not belong. And Iris has proven her devotion to George. CeCe saw it when Iris brought over that ridiculous stack of bills, looking miserable as a cashier turning in a short drawer. Still, how to begin? What are Iris’s interests? Is it possible she doesn’t have any? What do she and Iris have to talk about? George’s collapse? Local real estate? Energy policy? A dismal project, new friendship. She’s eating a fourth shortbread when she hears Javier directing Iris to the kitchen.
“Hello, you!” CeCe exclaims, thinking—Why, she looks worse than I feel!—with a little leap of delight, golden and shameful at once. “Goodness, are you tired? Come, have a cookie.”
“I had a rough night. You?” Iris sits beside her and takes a scone, revulsion fleeting across her face.
“I’m exhausted,” CeCe answers, observing common experience, that universal shortcut to friendship. Except, she hadn’t expected it to be a relief to say. For a moment she can’t say anything else. They watch Esme through the window, crossing the lawn to the garden and stopping far enough away she could be a mouse among the flowers, round in her gray uniform, her hands clasped against her chest. She is explaining something to CeCe’s new gardener. He’s kneeling on a bright foam board, turning soil. CeCe can tell from the angle of Esme’s head that he’s not yet won her confidence.
“Yasser,” CeCe says, pointing. “He drives two hours to get here. We became friends at Oak Park. He’s a good man. I’ve made it worth his while.”
“I—” Iris leans forward. “I met him the day we visited. Anyway, our debt, everything’s pretty much straightened out. Let me show you what I’ve done with the budget. Our gratitude—”
“Is that why you thought I wanted you over? No, no. What’s family for?” CeCe waves the unsavory subject of money away, its mortifying claim to desire and need. “It was nothing. Don’t waste another thought on it. How are
you
?”
“Oh. Fine, excited for summer. Any new pictures of Douglas?”
This is irritating. Or,
something
is irritating. Iris looks weary. These last months have been hard, but why does Iris seem worse? Defeated, as cheerful as lead. Anguished where before she’d been anxious. What is irritating, CeCe realizes, is that a feeling of real care is springing up inside her. When she was getting better, it was tolerable to experience the occasional soft emotion. Not anymore. Her mind turns to Dotty shouting, when CeCe asked if the Astrasyne was working, “I don’t know!” Gently, despite herself, she says, “Don’t put me off with talk about babies. Are you fine? I don’t think you are.”
Iris looks at her sharply. “It’s not your right to ask.” Iris’s voice—something unfamiliar. It stops CeCe’s breath. Hatred. It is hate.
“Oh, no?”
Iris shoves her untouched scone away. “No. You ask me how I am and tell me I’m not fine when the answer around here is always supposed to be ‘I’m fine.’ It’s nothing to you, to help us? Then why didn’t you help us earlier? You didn’t want to be embarrassed. That’s why. Now you pour money on our heads for the same reason. What is my life? How should I know, one day to the next? How can I, if it’s not up to me? I’m not like you. I’m—” She raises her arms wildly, oddly pointing, it seems, to Yasser. “You take it all away by giving it back. Without once thinking what it cost. What it cost
me
. It’s enough to make a person insane.”
Well! Ingratitude is not what she expected. Fine, and fine arrives the steely, old feeling, the bracing calm of fighting with Pat, of breaking Pat, of being the one who is right. “But I didn’t know, Iris. How could I help you if I didn’t know?”
“Huh. I guess you got me there.” Iris begins to cry.
“I told George I had reservations about you, enjoying your newfound advantage. But complaining about it, I never anticipated!”
“Yes,
where
is Iris from? No one’s heard of her. Attractive, a little stupid! In it for the money, of course. For the money, money, money.” Iris puts her face in her hands. “Next time you want an update on George, pick up a phone and talk to him yourself.”
How brutal, how lucky, to be a woman that the world still sees. “You aren’t stupid,” CeCe says.
“I didn’t think I was, until I met you all. Oh, maybe I did. I’m sorry. I’m not getting along with anybody these days.”
“How is he?”
“The same. Better. Not great.”
But then, had Iris meant—
enough to drive a person insane.
Is Iris blaming her for what George has become? And she, sitting here feeling sorry for
Iris
! Sorry, for a young woman grousing about a windfall! Complaining about the unknown, about possibility, about the future rolling out ahead of her, but a bit foggy? It’s as if someone’s put a blazing candle right behind her ear, the flame encircling her skull. She would like to take Iris’s life, take it and inhale it. To take, to breathe the breath Iris is so ungrateful for. To suffocate the world into herself—and then, her fury leaves her as quickly as it came. Iris, wiping her wet cheeks and scowling at the table. To be saved by the girl. It can’t be done. All, lost. But when all is lost, what is not?
“My husband strung some ducks together and they died,” CeCe says.
“Huh?”
She can only continue. “Walter tied a piece of steak to the end of a long string. Ducks will eat meat, but do not digest it. It comes out whole. He fed the piece to the first duck. When that duck passed the meat and the string, he fed it to another and another, until they were all bound by the string, mouth to tail. You see it? Shredded their intestines, trying to pull away from each other. It took days. I discovered them too late. They wouldn’t die and they couldn’t live. I had them killed. Walter said their wretchedness was
interesting
. He was in a fit of misdirected admiration for Beuys, with that coyote.”
