Three Junes (21 page)

Under the cherry trees, Véronique stands with her hands on her hips and surveys the sea of flowers. This, I realize, is a trait of hers which grates on my nerves: the appraising poise of the tireless critic. She glances at the branches above us, heavy with petaled starbursts. She sighs. “Ah, no apple. No pear. A small pity.”

“It’s magnificent,” I say. “What do you mean?”

“I mean”—she taps me on the arm, as a mentor would—“no fragrance. This garden is, safe those irises, made for the eye.”

Here we go, I think. What harangue on inferior gardening will follow?

“This garden, you know, it reminds me of my life before the girls. Oh, a lovely life, a life of pretty colors and passions. And this little wood of
cerisiers
I could say is like my marriage to Denis. But to have children . . . to have children is to plant roses,
muguets,
lavender, lilac, gardenia, stock, peonies, tuberose, hyacinth . . . it is to achieve a whole sense, a grand sense one did not priorly know. It is to give one’s garden another dimension. Perfume of life itself.”

After noticing her impressive command of flowers in English (many of her Provençal clients will be Brits or Californians), I absorb with a small wry shock that her fatuous metaphor is, to me, an insult. Does she know this? Is she assuring me, or herself, that her life has greater dimension than mine? For all her new courtesies, nothing much has changed. I think of a remark she made a few days after I met her, when she was pregnant with Laurie and I asked whether Dennis would want to name a daughter after our mother. “Maureen?” she said. “Is this not, in your culture, generally the name of a servant? And it would not ring so well in French, I believe.” Here she pronounced my mother’s name in exaggerated French, so that its rolled
r
sounded contemptibly rough, its Celtic ending snippishly nasal.

I am reviving my anger at this bygone offense when Véronique says, “I am sad for Liliane, because she knows this without knowing it. She would prefer that richer garden to this.”

I say nothing. Despite her apparent kinship with Lil, I have no desire to gossip about Lil’s heartaches.

I look openly at my watch. It’s half three and I thirst for my tea. Véronique sees my look. A breeze ruffles the branches and casts a handful of petals onto our shoulders. Hardly the bride and groom.

Véronique sighs a capaciously French sigh and touches my arm again. This time she does not remove her hand. She looks me fiercely in the eye. “I am coming to you as an ambassador.”

“Ambassador?” I repeat blankly.
Representing what military junta?
I think, but I smile and say, “I never thought you the diplomatic type.”

“I am dreading this all morning,” she says, “so please will you not make it more difficult from what it already has been.”

The ashes. Of course. Marveling at my brothers’ cowardice, I say, “Oh for God’s sake take the bleeding ashes back to Greece. I don’t know why I ever professed to care about where they get heaved.”

Véronique’s eyes are wide and glisten slightly. She looks puzzled and frightened, as if she’s lost the ability to translate my language into hers.

“Oh not ashes, no. I do not speak of ashes.”

“Then what do you speak of?” I snap.

“I speak of Liliane. I speak of Liliane and of her babies.”

Her babies. I now need tea with the sweaty desperation of an addict.

There is a stone bench behind us. Véronique sits. “Your brother cannot make babies. Do you know this? I think you do not.”

“You think right. I do not know much of anything that goes on in these parts anymore. Certainly nothing that goes on in anyone’s private parts.”

With a calm that shames me, she says, “I will ignore this anger you must always jettison. I will say what it is I have been asked to say. You will do as you wish.” She glares at me until I tell her I’m sorry and ask her to finish.

“These male doctors to whom Liliane has consulted spent a year to discover that it is David who will not make her pregnant.” Véronique speaks slowly, as if she must be careful not to err.

I sit beside her. The stone’s damp chill is a shock. “Sad.”

“Oui.”

“Is it absolute? That he can’t . . .”

“It is no longer meriting the effort, they are told.”

“And you were asked to tell me this news?”

“I was chosen to ask you to consider a favor. The favor of helping Liliane to have a child.” She pulls subtly away from my body.

I look out at the flowers before us. They are so tall—so fertile, it occurs to me—that from the street, Véronique and I must be invisible to passersby. Trespassing in the garden of a stranger, I have just been asked by a woman I have never liked (but must begin to admire) if I will impregnate another.

I start to laugh. I hide it at first as a small cough, but then it is unmistakably laughter. Véronique, who, like me, does not take her eyes off the flowers, says, “I knew this would seem absurd. But reflect and perhaps it is not. You will be intelligent enough to understand that if you will agree to this intention, what is necessary will be accomplished in the doctor’s laboratory.”

“You think right,” I say, failing to control my schoolboy’s reaction. And then I think of Lil dancing on that stage, all but naked in her leotard, the fleetingly real desire I had for her body.

Véronique is holding out a blank envelope. “This is a letter for you which Liliane has written which you will please guard from reading until you are alone. You will please tell your decision to her.” Yet one more envelope containing a mystery I long for and dread. Curiosity as ever the victor, I wouldn’t dream of refusing it.

For the hour it takes me to drive back to Tealing, we are silent. Except that Véronique, under her breath, hums Bach for a while, some solemn renowned air which I cannot quite identify, something funereal that I have heard played on the organ. Mal would know it in a flash—and scold me that I didn’t. I am sure she does this unconsciously, that it is an escape valve for her enormous relief at having put this task behind her.

In the driveway, I continue to sit behind the wheel. I listen to the motor pinging as it cools. Efficiently, without asking for my help, Véronique ferries a dozen grocery sacks into the kitchen. David’s pickup is absent—and then I remember that he and Lil are not to be present this evening and know that it was by design—but there is an unfamiliar car parked on the road out front. At the thought of sitting down to dinner with anyone, let alone strangers (or, even worse, past familiars), I shrivel with dismay.

When Véronique takes the last two shopping sacks from the car, I restart the motor. When she looks at me with surprise, I tell her that I will return by tomorrow evening. She has no ready reply. I do not wait to make her find one.

At the motorway, I must choose to head north or south. I choose north. I do not need the company of the English. I drive toward Oban, toward cruel, beautiful Glencoe, toward a landscape to scour the mind of confusion. Not till I’ve left Glasgow behind do I realize that, for the first time since my brothers’ birth, I am certainly—rivetingly—the center of my family’s attention.

NINE

S
OMETIMES I BEGAN
to see my life as one of those Joseph Cornell boxes about which I’d done so much plodding research. It was, all of a sudden, highly compartmentalized: private home life/ life at the shop/ relations with my straitlaced family across an ocean/ evenings with Mal/ and—like a dusky passionate snowscape down in a corner—mornings with Tony. Because this part of my life (especially this part) touched none of the others, I did not tell him about my mother. He knew very little about my family and did not ask.

I would leave for Scotland in a week, be absent for another two. I planned to tell him on the day of my departure, to minimize questions. Though we had been meeting nearly every day for over two months, I wanted him as desperately as ever, but I did not want his analysis or his astringent jests.

That morning, Tony was not out on his lawn, nor did he answer the bell. This was not unprecedented. On a few other mornings he had been absent, but when I’d show up the following day, he’d be there. I never asked about his absences; he never explained.

I knew Tony wouldn’t be the type to take offense, so after idling by the gate awhile, I took a banking slip from my wallet and wrote a note:
Family emergency abroad. Flying out tonight, return in 2 weeks. Will see you then.
Seeing my words to Tony on paper filled me with panic and excitement. They made real what all our sly fleshy tanglings never quite did. After I wedged the note into the doorjamb, I stood and stared at it. I wondered how I would endure the next fortnight. I resolved that, on my return, I would bring Tony—force him, if need be—fully into my life.

Chronic turncoat that I am, I began to have second thoughts about taking Mal to Tealing. (“I might have known you grew up in a house with a name,” he said wryly the night I answered his questions about my family. “Explains your aura of entitlement.”) When he called a few days before our departure, I hoped his sudden invitation for dinner meant not just that he was well enough to cook but that he’d planned a good meal as consolation to me for his own cold feet.

The woman who answered Mal’s door pulled me in with both hands, grasping my upper arms so tightly that I could feel her long nails through my sleeves. “You! You! I am so glad to meet you!” she cried, and her small oval face, pink and refined as a cameo, spread into a tissue of delicate lines, a human blueprint of joy. Simply because of her air—I could sense that she treated this home as hers—I knew she was Mal’s mother. And she looked at me (I saw this later) through his eyes—though in her face their blue was not so frosty. She looked much younger than any mother of her generation I had met; her long beaded earrings, long hair (though gray), and long cotton skirt mirrored with mica all reminded me of Cambridge twenty years before, of girls like Lil.

Mal emerged from his bedroom looking oddly theatrical. Over his trousers he wore an ivory linen tunic so large it was almost clownish. “Well good, that spared me introductions,” he said. His mother still held my arms, looking me up and down with pleasure.

She leaned toward me to peer directly into my eyes, then turned to Mal and said, “He’s got to be a Pisces. I see the fish struggling upstream and down, the valiant conflicts of a good, hardworking submarine conscience.” Then she looked back to me. “Water is the most freeing of the elements. Heavier than air, but once you get the hang of it, deeper and more rewarding, full of hidden surprises. You can’t hear so well, but the things you can see!”

Mal came toward us and pulled her off me, folding her against his side. “Mom, cut the astrology crap.” To me he said, “This is an image she projects, to test you. I’ve told her it’s sadistic, though she always insists it’s sincere.”

“Well,
now
I love doing it just to mortify you,” she said. “How about that?”

She reached out to shake my hand, as if we were starting over. “I’m Lucinda. I already know who you are.”

Who did she know I was? Friend? Occasional errand boy? Neighbor?

Mal broke the silence by saying, “Mom, this is beautiful, it really is, but I’m swimming in it. I look like I belong in Sherwood Forest, with leather breeches and a little dagger in my belt.” He turned to me. “Birdlike, isn’t that what I’d be called in this garment?”

“Oh, sweets, like a peacock,” said Lucinda.

“Thank you for reminding me of my vanity, darling mother.”

“I refer to your beauty. You have always been the most beautiful of my children, from the day you were born.”

Mal had a smile for her I had never seen on his face, the kind of smile you give a beloved child (the return of the smile his mother had for him). He spread his arms and looked down at the shirt I knew she must have made. “You could take it in, couldn’t you?”

“It’ll fit you when you flesh out again,” she said as he allowed her to tuck the shirt into his trousers. Then she gave him a small shove. “There now. Go sit.”

So, on Lucinda’s orders, we found ourselves seated in the living room, hands in our laps like obedient, well-mannered boys. Mal flicked his eyebrows at me once, his only admission to the acute self-consciousness we all feel, regardless of age or station in life, when anyone meets our parents. Before I could say anything, Lucinda was back, carrying stemmed drinks. Margaritas, the glasses chilled, the rims unsalted just as I like.

“Sweetheart, yours is lime juice with a splash of Grand Marnier. Would Susan permit that torsion of the rules?”

Mal faked a sigh. “Yes, Mom.”

“She wishes she could go with us,” he said when she’d left again. “She said she and my father spent a passionate weekend in Edinburgh before we children came along. Kissed on the castle ramparts. Bought Shetland sweaters they still wear, darned-up moth holes and all. Dad golfed at St. Andrews.”

So we were going. I could not picture us on a plane together, belted in side by side, let alone eating at my parents’ table or discussing current events (traditional silence fodder) with my brothers.

“I wouldn’t mind going to one of those islands,” he said. “The Shetlands and the Orkneys are too far north, of course.”

“There’s Arran. Arran’s not a bad drive.” This proposal echoed in my head with an embarrassing intimacy, but Mal simply nodded and said that sounded fine. Or he could drive himself; he didn’t wish to interfere with the family business I’d have.

As I talked about what one could see thereabouts (local sights I’d grown up seeing dozens of times, dragged along by my parents with endless sets of guests), I thought Mal dismayingly agreeable. Was he resigning himself to something, winding down? Or was he on a new drug (he hadn’t coughed once since my arrival), another powerful substance which, in altering the chemistry of his immune system, had arbitrarily softened his edge?

When Lucinda joined us with her own margarita, she sat close beside me on the couch. “To your trip,” she toasted, touching my glass first.

“To a safe trip,” I said. “I’ve never loved flying.”

“That’s what I meant about air. You can never quite trust it, can you?” Before I could answer, she said, “You know, you have a lovely brogue. Very subtle.”

“It’s called a burr, Mom, and if it’s subtle, maybe that’s because he’s been trying like the devil to lose it,” said Mal. “Don’t make him more self-conscious than he already is.”

“A funny word, burr. A burr is a thorny little ball. And isn’t it a wood-cutting tool?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said, wishing I had something witty to add.

“Well, boys, the menu,” she said, placing her glass on the table. “I am giving Mal a holiday from his brave new diet. I see no harm in a break for one night. So we are having soupe au pistou—and that, let me tell you, is a cure in itself—and sole bonne femme and haricots verts and baba au rhum. Straight, unadulterated Julia.”

“Julia?” I inquired.

“Child!
La
Julia,” she said. When she added, “My second all-time heroine,” Mal chimed in perfectly.

“So go ahead, ask her who’s number one,” he said.

“Margaret Sanger, no surprise,” said Lucinda.

“One the mistress of control, the other a mistress of indulgence,” said Mal. “And number three is, let’s see, a tie between Ginger Rogers and Cyd Charisse. The tragedy of my mother’s life is that Dad has the rhythm of a brick.” Again, Mal and Lucinda wore identical, colluding grins. They had the same slender lips, the same uniformly delicate, well-spaced teeth. Standing, she walked over and kissed him on the forehead.

“When I need a sidekick, I’ll let you know.” She stroked his hair. “Now I’ll go be that
bonne
femme
and pull things together.”

“Set the table in the kitchen,” said Mal. “No need to get fussy.”

“But I love getting fussy. And I’ll be the one washing up.”

A few minutes later, as Mal began telling me about a less than stellar review he’d had to write about a pianist he normally revered, Lucinda called from the kitchen, “Where are my dishes? Did you go and pawn them?”

“For drugs. But tremendously fun drugs, I promise!” he called back. He was looking out a window when he added, “I’ve lent them to a friend who’s giving a fancy lunch!”

“The entire set? Platters and all?”

“Platters and all, Mom!” His raised voice made the room around us feel small. He looked at me. “What do you call your mother—‘Mum’?”

“Yes. Mum.”

“It sounds so different, don’t you think? That
o
in Mom evokes so much more longing, so much more Oedipal dependency this side of the ocean. Or do I overanalyze?”

“You’re a critic, you can’t help it,” I said.

Lucinda’s meal was old-fashioned—I’d forgotten how rich food could be—but it was, as she promised, splendid. She did most of the talking, as I could see she was accustomed to doing. She told Mal about his father’s latest battles over education, tourism, land conservation and development. She asked me about my mother, then told me about a cousin of hers who’d had most of a lung removed ten years ago and still skied the black diamond trails. She quizzed us both about the city’s local politics. (“The more local the issues, the more real the fights”: clearly a personal motto—no doubt one of many.)

Mal drank a few sips of wine and ate most of his food. When Lucinda was talking and I looked at him, I saw him smiling at her in a distant way, as if at a pleasant memory. Sometimes I wasn’t sure he was listening. But after we’d finished dessert, after Lucinda had served us tea (green for Mal, Earl Grey for me, chamomile for herself), he said, “All right, Mother. Bring out your pictures. I know you’ve been dying to show off all evening.”

Happily, as if she had indeed been waiting, she reached out and pulled a Kodak envelope off the counter behind her. “My girls,” she said to me, pressing the envelope against her chest before pulling out snapshots.

“This is where she hits you up for money, so beware,” said Mal.

Lucinda laid a dozen pictures on the tablecloth, dealing them out like cards. Her long nails were unpainted, and her traditional diamond ring was outnumbered by younger, more rustic rings: silver, jade, and turquoise. Around her neck, on a black silk cord, swung a bluntly fashioned pewter cross whose descender bisected a peace sign. If I had seen that symbol in recent years, I hadn’t noticed it; now I recalled the cheap vandalism of my teens, when I and my schoolmates, without the slightest knowledge of anything
but
peace, had impudently scrawled and carved that mark everywhere from our desks to the frosted windscreens of our masters’ cars.

“Connie and Debra,” said Lucinda, turning a picture in my direction. “They’re both due at the end of this month—and can’t wait to deliver, let me tell you. To a pregnant woman,
August
is the cruelest month. But they’ve both been training with a local baker and haven’t missed a day. I’m very proud of them. Debra, I’m told, has a real knack, and if everything goes well, I may pull some of your father’s strings next year to get her a scholarship at a culinary school in Boston.”

The pregnant girls I was looking at—holding hands on the steps of a suburban brick house, flanked by squat green yews that echoed the shape of their bellies—were girls indeed. They looked no older than fifteen or sixteen; eighteen, at a stretch. I realized I had so little contact with people this age that they seemed to hail from another species. But thirteen or nineteen, I thought, these girls ought to have been vandalizing desks, not giving birth.

“So they’ll soon have tiny squalling brats and fourteen-hour jobs sweating in front of industrial ovens,” said Mal.

“They will,” said Lucinda haughtily, “have beautiful healthy babies they thank God they’ve been blessed with, loving help and wisdom from the experienced mothers at the house, and part-time jobs in an air-conditioned bakery that supplies all the fanciest restaurants and ski resorts from Middlebury north. And they will finish high school.”

“Well good for them, Mom. And good for you.” Mal reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “And you,” he said, turning to me, “get out your checkbook. Make it out to ‘The House.’ That’s what they call this utopian female refuge.” He tapped a finger on the brick house behind the two girls.

I laughed nervously.

“Not now,” said Lucinda, “but don’t you worry, you’ll be on my mailing list the minute I get back home.”

She went on to tell us about several other girls, the ones who, unlike Connie and Debra, would be giving their babies up for adoption. Lucinda spoke of them all as glowingly as she would of her own daughter (whose news she had relayed to Mal—perhaps more efficiently than fondly—over the soup). I had never mixed with social workers or crusaders for the underprivileged; I now had a concrete image of what it meant to have a “mission.” Beside Lucinda, I felt boorishly self-involved, but I was fascinated and would have been happy to stay much later than I knew was proper.

When I could see that Mal was fading (his mother seemed not to notice), I made my excuses. Lucinda saw me to the door, where we exchanged compliments. As I turned to go, she held me back. “You never told me if you
are
a Pisces.”

“On the cusp,” I said, “though I don’t give much credence to the stars.”