Good Family (20 page)

Again, I search Miriam for signs of sarcasm. But Miriam regards us placidly beneath her painted eyebrows. She cocks her head to the side.

“Okay,” I say. “So. Mom—” I have to fight to address her directly and not in the third person. “This is a song we thought you’d like.” I glance at Dana for support, but her eyes have that out-of-focus look they get when she leaves her body. “Anyway, I thought you’d like it, and Jessica and Beowulf are the only ones with musical talent, so they’re going to sing. Okay?”

Mother’s diamond pin seems to twinkle, but otherwise she’s still as a statue. Strokes can rob their victims of facial expressions along with verbal responses, leaving the impression that the person has no idea what’s going on. For all we know, Mother’s mind is a veritable symphony of thought—her world as incandescent and as artfully rendered as a Degas pastel—but any conversation is left to our imagination and thus becomes the sound of one hand clapping.

“O-kay,” I say. All the cousins are gathered. Sedgie’s arms are crossed; Adele is standing across from Miriam at the head of the bed; Derek is at the window looking out on the lake; Dana and Philip are next to each other, but do not touch; Jessica and Beo with his guitar stand at the foot of the bed. I lean against the bureau for support and give them the nod.

Jessica clears her throat and makes a sound that is haunting and pure. To a backdrop of waves breaking on the shore, her chest expands as she draws the note heavenward. Then Beo joins in, plucking a tune that supports this ladder of redemption that asks where we go when life is done, and their two voices wash over us like a fountain. I can make out the words
For my hand is cold, and needs warmth
, but it is as if there are no words—only achingly beautiful harmonies that speak of loss and hope.

To which there is no response—only the wet eyes of cousins looking on—until Miriam begins her own version of what they are singing, the essence of the Mississippi River Valley pouring out of her. Then, as if her past lives are rushing to lend their voices, Adele starts to sing. A moment later, Derek joins her, and, after several measures, so does Sedgie. All the cousins are singing—everyone but Dana and me, who believe we can’t,
that our gift isn’t song. Dana and I would rather lip-synch than vocalize the words to “Happy Birthday” and “Silent Night.” But the tender harmonies of our family are eddying around us, and Dana and I are caught up in the tide. We, too, begin to sing, jerkily adding our off-key voices until they meld into music and make some crazy sense.

T
his morning, Miriam seems snappish, and Mother is mutely agitated. Derek has removed himself to the basement to rummage around in the remnants of his former studio, and I have a headache. Whatever serenity was conjured the night before by the sonorous duo of Beo and Jessica has been replaced by the strange energy of directionless weather and too many days of togetherness.

When the phone rings, everyone runs for it. To my irritation, Dana gets there first. “Hello?” She mouths
Dr. Mead
at me. “Well, she was calm until today. Now it seems like she can’t get comfortable.” She listens for a while, and then says, “SSo what dosage do you recommend?” Pause. “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” She writes something on a pad. “And for the constipation?” Scribbles something else. “I’ll send someone in.”

Now I’m heading into Harbor Town to fill a prescription along with Jessica and Beowulf, who are on a clandestine run for hamburgers. As Mac ferries us across, we assess a monster yacht that has anchored here—Jessica with puppyish enthusiasm, Beo and me with contempt. She’s the kind of yacht that goes to the Bahamas for the winter—a white, shiny hundred-and-twenty-footer with a transom proclaiming her to be the good ship
Eureka!
I remember the furtive way I used to stare at Mr. Swanson’s racing yacht when we raced the
Green Dragon
, secretly admiring the
Swan Song’s
lines, all chrome and fiberglass, built for speed. It had felt clandestine, this comparing of boats—a small betrayal that exposed my inadequacy. Virtue lay in the fact that things stayed the same. You didn’t buy new boats; you inherited them and kept them up and nursed them through races in spite of the changing technology. You didn’t raise membership dues at the yacht club because people like the Baileys or the Hobsons might be replaced by the new people who came up from downstate with their freshly minted fortunes.

“Sweet,” says Jessica.

But in a tone worthy of my father, I say, “We never used to have boats like that around here.”

Which isn’t exactly true. Besides the
Swan Song
, there was the
Little Annie
that belonged to the Baileys since the thirties. She was an elegant white yacht with a glossily varnished cabin and two staterooms paneled in cherry. She’d been in the harbor forever. Rumor was she’d been given to the Prince of Wales, who’d sold her off as soon as he abdicated the throne. My cousins and I regarded the
Little Annie
with a sort of collective pride by virtue of her tenure in the harbor.

Now we rumble across the channel, silently regarding the much-larger
Eureka!
Cirrus clouds have congealed into gauze, and Mac offers me an umbrella to take into town, again reminding me that I’ve achieved matron status, albeit with none of the accoutrements like children and a ring. I reject the umbrella. I have no hairdo to protect. “It’s just water,” I say.

Spray spits up from the bow of the boat, misting us. Beo has tied a bandanna gypsy-style around his head, and Jessica’s bleached hair is showing an inch of black roots. These two won’t fit into Harbor Town. They lack that corn-fed openness, the easy smiles and sunny coloring of a people whose genealogies trace back to Holland, Germany, and Poland.

Jessica is eyeing Mac. “I love your uniform,” she says.

Mac’s eyes are hidden behind mirrored Ray-Bans. He says, “It’s just a summer job.”

But Jessica is determined to engage him. She wants to know what he does in the winter, where he grew up, what his “real” life is like. We never used to ask guards or workmen about themselves, but here is Jessica in a tank top, her almond eyes wide, looking for the world as if she’s genuinely interested. Even Mac seems surprised by this proffered intimacy. Fixing his Ray-Bans on the
Eureka
!, he tells her he goes to school at Michigan State. He straightens his shoulders, deepens his voice, but from the flush creeping up his neck, one would think Jessica has asked him to drop his pants.

Jessica doesn’t seem to notice the effect she has on people. She says something to Beowulf, who throws back his head and laughs. We have almost reached the other side. Seagulls swoop and squawk in our wake. Mac weaves his way through the moorings, reaches the pier, casts a line, and jumps up, fending off, offering me a hand. I ignore him and hop up, sprightly.

It’s a short walk to town; we won’t need the car. There is brightly colored clothing and art (mostly seascapes) hung in the windows of storefronts. I remember when it used to be a real town with a five-and-dime, a dry-goods store, a hardware store, a movie theater, and a pharmacy. Other than the pharmacy, the former businesses have given themselves over to T-shirt shops and antique stores selling the “look” of cottage life.

Jessica and Beowulf peel off to a hamburger joint while I go on to the pharmacy. Tourists clutching shopping bags clog the sidewalks, gazing into realtors’ windows. The air stinks of fudge. Navigating through a crush of bicycles and strollers, I work my way to the pharmacy that used to have a soda fountain and a newsstand.

As I push through the door, a bell rings, and I am suddenly thirty years younger. It smells exactly the same—sugary water with the hint of chocolate crunches combined with Bactine and castor oil and eucalyptus salves. The fluorescent fixtures dangling from the pressed-tin ceiling buzz cheerfully. Shelves of shampoos and cold remedies—many of them Addison products—line up in rows leading to the soda fountain and the newsstand that are, to my amazement, still intact. I used to be a regular customer as a
child, allowance money jingling in my pocket for cinnamon gum and
Archie
comics and, when I was older,
Seventeen
. Now
Yoga Journal, In Style
, and
Wired
have been added to the display. When I see a
New York Times
, I practically leap for it.

The headlines predict hurricanes, presidential candidates, the ominous coming of Y2K. I move on to the business section, start to scan the stock pages to see if what’s left of our fortune is still intact.

“Maddie Addison?” says a voice.

I look up and, for a moment, it could be 1968 with the kind face of the pharmacist blinking at me from behind the soda counter.

“Mr. Marks,” I say.

Grayer and a little stooped, he beams widely, and I shuffle the paper, guilty to be perusing without purchasing. When we were kids, Mr. Marks used to come across us reading furtively in the shelves and gently inquire if we wouldn’t be happier buying that comic book and taking it home. I quickly fold the
New York Times
and hand it to him, scanning his face for judgment concerning my absence and the reasons for it. Harbor Town is small; there is no such thing as privacy. Marriage and divorce, rumors of indiscretions, health problems, births and deaths filter through the ether like radio waves.

Yet Mr. Marks betrays no disapproval. He holds out his hand, seems delighted to see me. I offer mine. I am nine years old buying bubble gum; eleven with a comic book; sixteen buying Cover Girl blush; twenty-eight filling a prescription for Valium.

“Good to see you, sir,” I say.

“Gee, I’m sorry about your mom.” He says it perfectly, emphasizing the word sorry ever so slightly and dropping his voice. How many times has he uttered those words? More
sorrys
than
happys
from the look of him—that bit of downturn at the edge of the eyes (although they still twinkle), the yellowing of teeth that speaks of cigarettes snuck in the alley behind the store.

“Yes,” I say, muttering the usual platitude about Mother being, at the
very least,
comfortable
, and thank God for that. Then I gaze at Mr. Marks, suddenly hoping to find in him help and solutions. “You
do
think she’s comfortable, don’t you?”

Mr. Marks, who grew up in Harbor Town, a contemporary of my father’s (though slightly younger), who watched the summer people wash in like the tide, patronize his father’s store (later his), who saw us grow up, age, grow feeble, die, looks blandly back at me and says, “Of course.”

The answer doesn’t entirely satisfy me. Mother seemed restless this morning, twitchy. She lifted her hand, seemed to be plucking something off an imaginary shelf. I tell Mr. Marks this, press him for answers. The hospice brochures are inadequate. Surely she’s frightened at what lies ahead; surely she feels some remorse.

Mr. Marks gives a little chuckle and shakes his head. “She’s on thirty milligrams of morphine. You can’t get much more comfortable than that.”

Morphine is a drug I’ve never tried, but perhaps should consider—the concept of maximum comfort being particularly appealing at this moment. I nod, feign agreement, ask him about the prescription Dr. Mead phoned in.

“Ah,” say Mr. Marks, “the laxative.” He disappears behind the drug counter, briskly searching for whatever Dr. Mead has decided is just the thing, all the while asking me about where I live now. When I tell him, he says, “New
York
?” as if it’s exotic.

He hands me the bag, a smile fixed on his face as he says, “That’ll be it?” I expect he will ask if I wouldn’t like some ice cream, but instead he reaches out and grasps my hand. I start at his touch and his abrupt, raw earnestness. “If there’s anything I can do. Anything. Your family…all these years…your mother was my favorite.”

“Thank you,” I say, withdrawing my hand.

M
ac is waiting at the pier when I get back. I scan the parking lot for Jessica and Beo, but there’s no sign of them. Earlier today, a halo around the sun predicted trouble, and, sure enough, a bruise of black
clouds has been conjured out of nothing. The wind kicks up; the spars of the sailboats ting madly, and even the seagulls are hunkered down.

Two figures in yellow slickers jog toward us from the parking lot, gesturing madly at Mac to hold the boat. A man and a woman arrive breathless, bags in hand, and I recognize Jamie, who sees me and waves. But before he can introduce me to his wife, I have begun the inventory. Taller than I (markedly so); long auburn hair; dazzling smile; and on her left hand one of the biggest Hester tiara diamonds I’ve ever seen.

“Maddie, this is Fiona. Fiona, Maddie Addison.”

As I shake her hand, my glance drifts down Fiona’s legs, alights on alligator loafers that must have cost nine hundred dollars. I raise my eyebrow at the extravagance; I can just imagine what my father would say.

A low roll of thunder, and Mac suggests we get going. We climb aboard, Jamie and Fiona with their shopping bags, me with my mother’s laxative and my
New York Times
. The channel has grown choppy, and the eyesore yacht to the east seems to strain at its anchor. Jamie mutters something about the Dusays’ skipper working overtime, and I say, “You
know
them?” Fiona beams, and it occurs to me that she probably
would
be a friend of these yacht-owning Dusays, builders of shopping malls, wreckers of cottages. No doubt she cruises with them, creating huge wakes that pummel the beaches—that is, when she’s not imperiling small children on Jet Skis, or flying around on Learjets or—

Easy Does It
, I can hear Ian saying.
Let go and let Betty.

I breathe.

“How’s your mom?” Jamie asks, dropping his voice to tell Fiona that my mother is ill.

Fiona drops her smile and shakes her head sadly. For the first time, I realize she has no idea who I am. I find this disturbing. At the very least, she should see me as a rival, although with my pitiful hair, my oddball clothes, and my freckles, I can see why this may not be so.

I look at Sand Isle, at the Dusays’ yacht, at the threatening sky. At the worst, Jessica and Beo will spend the afternoon shopping for T-shirts if they
become marooned by the storm. Waves slap the bow, and the wind plasters Mac’s hair back. With the sharp focus of a filmmaker coupled with the desperate desire to look anywhere but at my old boyfriend and his wife, I notice that Mac’s hair is receding. I envision him at forty, fifty, and wonder if he’ll still be ferrying families to and from Sand Isle. Fiona has wrapped her head in a scarf that looks uncannily like the Pucci ones my mother used to wear. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her whispering to Jamie, see Jamie respond with a vehement shake of his head.

The driver, Mac, clears his throat. “I’ve seen your film.”

“Excuse me?” I can’t tell where Mac’s eyes are fixed behind his mirrored Ray-Bans that he insists on wearing in spite of there being no sun.

“The one on Ralph Feingold.”

Ralph Feingold, theorizer of universes. He named all his children after galaxies and constellations—Andromeda, Pleiades, and Cassiopeia that he mercifully shortened to “Cassie.” Ian and I documented Ralph’s life, his early obsession with telescopes, his vampirish sundown to sunup existence. “Where on earth did you see
that
?”

Mac pushes his sunglasses back on his head. We are almost to the other side. His eyes are alert, excited, and, to my mind, highly intelligent. “I’m a physics major. Everyone in the department is into that film.”

“Wow,” I say, torn between the urge to preen and that of distancing myself from my other life. In Sand Isle, I am Maddie Addison, daughter of Richard and Evelyn, sister of Dana, granddaughter of the formidable Bada, great-granddaughter of Edward, who was the son of Josiah, maker of cough medicine and suppositories. Like all the
begats
of the Bible, we know our place. It is heretical to expose it as otherwise.

I notice Jamie monitoring the conversation. I wonder if he’ll comment on my filmmaking, my divorce, my absence, or any other component of my life. But Jamie is too polite to inquire beyond the health of my mother.

“Pleiades,” says Mac, naming Ralph Feingold’s second child. “How could you live with a name like that?”

A
lmost four o’clock when the squall hits, and still no word of Jessica and Beowulf. Against Dana’s wishes, Philip has set out in our old Boston Whaler to retrieve them. As a wall of white moves toward us from the west, we drag in cushions, rush to fasten windows, place towels along the sills. I remember my mother years ago in her bra and girdle struggling against the French door in the master bedroom, her hair blowing straight back, a cigarette clenched in her lips as she tried to wrestle it shut. It took the two of us to secure that door. We were both drenched and laughing. We never would have laughed like that if the weather had stayed calm.