Rich Friends (51 page)

Em's fingers squeezed, then fell away.

She made an effort to see Roger at two, three, five. She could not. Nothing.

Ahh, yes.

He looks up at me, his fist clutched around a bouquet, the stems are too short. “For you, Mommy,” he says. I take the flowers, putting them in a water glass, not smiling, for these are the pansies I planted this morning, yellow and purple, from the flats that were my birthday gift. He's only three and thinks they're pretty. For you, Mommy. Vliet calls me Ma. Sheridan says Roger must be spanked for the picking, but I say no, that's not fair. I never told him he mustn't. He's not quick to smile like Vliet, but he's a good boy, no trouble, someone to be proud of in the Family. All
As
. Harvard. Johns Hopkins. Grandma, I wish you could have seen him a man, my Roger. He was a very good, decent man, my Roger.

But she.

She!

Oh God, forgive me, I wish her dead, too. She, standing there, beautiful for all men to lust after, I could smell the cologne from where I sat. Even then, cologne. Ready for the next one. Now the girls don't care about fidelity and such, they take off their skin-tight pants and lie down with as many men as they can. Nasty.

A long black hair wrote W-H-O-R-E across Em's brain.

She slept.

A little after nine they pulled into Mrs. Wynan's drive. Gene, Caroline, and Cricket. Sheridan opened the door. Redness rimmed his eyes, and his shirt collar seemed a size too big for his heavy neck.

Caroline pressed her perfumed cheek to his. “How wise you were, not going home. We've had one thousand
hideous
calls, and there're tribes of newspeople camping on our doorstep.”

Gene gripped his brother-in-law's shoulder, all enmity for once forgotten. And Cricket said, “Uncle Sheridan,” kissing him.

“How is she?” Caroline asked.

“Sleeping,” Sheridan replied.

“Thank God for Dr. Porter's magic needle.” Caroline held out a pink box. “Coffee cake, direct from my freezer.”

Sheridan said, “Mrs. Monk”—Mrs. Wynan's current nursecompanion—“gave us breakfast.”

Caroline was not to be daunted. She set minute pastries on a salver and reheated coffee. They sat around the dining table.

“Vliet, take one,” Caroline insisted.

Vliet bit. He glanced across the table at Gene. “Beats ours,” he said.

“At the price, Bailey's has to do
some
thing.” And Caroline, chattering continuously through cigarette smoke, pressed coffee and tiny, buttery cakes on everyone.

“Luv,” she asked Vliet, “did you find one?”

“In his closet,” Vliet said. “Trust Ma. She'd had it cleaned, and there it hung, in its plastic, for three years.”

“Does it still fit?” Caroline asked.

“Does it still matter?” Vliet replied.

“He didn't own a real suit!” Caroline had tears in her eyes. “My Gawd, can you imagine any twenty-five-year-old man without a suit in our day? Much less a
doctor
?”

Sheridan said, “Dad, as long as I can remember, wore the same one to church. Brown and too tight.” His voice held pride in his boyhood poverty.

“What sort of life is it now?” Caroline choked and her tears spilled, as if Roger's lack of a suit managed to sum up the entire tragedy.

“Well?” Sheridan asked Gene.

“Yes, we better.”

The two men stood. Sheridan put on his coat, which had been hanging over the back of his chair.

“You have everything?” Caroline asked. “A tie?”

“My new striped one,” Vliet said.

“And a shirt? Does he have a clean white shirt?”

“An old one,” Sheridan said.

“It won't fit!”

“Forest Lawn has the secret passed down by ancient Egyptians,” Vliet said. “It'll fit.”

“I can run down to Brand Boulevard in five—”

“Caroline,” Gene said quietly, “just calm down.”

She followed them to the door, embracing both.

Em's old room was in front. Gene's muffler on sunken paving must have disturbed her. “Vliet?” Her voice came plaintive, querulous. “Vliet, is that Aunt Caroline?”

“Me, luv,” Caroline called. She poured coffee, set two dainty twists of cinnamon on the saucer, and cigarette between her lips, navigated through the living room to the bedroom hall.

Cricket and Vliet sat on opposing couches. From a gilt frame a young woman, wickedly haughty, looked down on a tall, handsome young man and a tiny blonde cuddling a needlepoint pillow: her descendants.

Vliet held part II of the
Times
. “Dad tossed the front section,” he said, unfolding the paper, scanning. “This you won't believe, Cricket. In editorials we have replaced the war in Indochina.”

Cricket's fingers rubbed the ugly needlepoint.

“‘Have We Failed Our Children?'” he read. “How's that for a headline? ‘There is a growing trend to consider churches at best outmoded and at worst hypocritical, even tyrannical. But have we failed an entire generation by not offering adequate moral guidelines?'” He glanced up at her. “
Fantástico
? ‘Yesterday a murder was committed that will leave its echo on our decade just as the Manson murders left their imprint on the sixties. A young doctor and a talented actress were held by three youths while a fourth fatally stabbed the victims. This youth then killed himself. He had acted in accordance with the beliefs of a bizarre sect. The leader of this group, a man earlier imprisoned for homicide, stated that this was their punishment for acts contrary to their religious beliefs. Young people, he told police and reporters, seek him out because he is willing to show them a way of life.'” Vliet took a breath. “Paragraph. ‘These young killers came from so-called advantaged homes. They had been in no previous trouble with police. They simply had not found the faith that they were looking for in their homes.'” Vliet clucked his tongue. “Paragraph. ‘There is no question that many of today's youth seek values formerly found in religion. Now, in a time of national cynicism and disbelief, it is no wonder that they have turned elsewhere. Many find solace in Far Eastern faiths. Or in so-called communal living. A few, inevitably, fall into the clutches of a Giles Cooke. That such a man as Cooke can throw his spell over a group of otherwise peaceable youths is ultimately a fault of society.'” Vliet tapped newsprint. “Paragraph. ‘In essence, society has failed by no longer providing boundaries and an ethical structure. We have left our children in a moral vacuum.'”

Cricket didn't look up.

“Blessed are the simplistic minded,” Vliet said. He refolded the paper on the coffee table, then thought better of it, going out the kitchen door to crush it into a garbage can.

“There can't be anything for Ma to find in the family section, can there?”

She shook her head.

He rubbed his neck thoughtfully. “You haven't said a word, Cricket, since you got here.”

She raised her rounded little chin a fraction to indicate possibly that he was incorrect.

“What's that?” he asked.

“I think it's printed ahead of time.”

“Let's not get garrulous.”

Cricket rested a cheek on worn needlepoint.

“Come on, little cousin, you must have a word or two.” He lit a cigarette. He reached for an Indian brass dish.

Finally she said, “It's my fault.”

“What?”

“The whole thing's my fault.”

“Let's not have any of that, Cricket. You were selecting the prime cuts with us.”

“Roger met them, Genesis and Orion, through me.”

“Well?”

“That started it.”

“Roger's keen medical eye, that's what started it.”

“Remember in Carmel?” She reached across the narrow mahogany table toward him, then dropped the hand as if she'd burned herself on his cigarette. “You said they were weird.”

“I don't care for this line of reasoning, Cricket.”

“You warned me. I could've listened.”

“Really. You could've. Except at the time they weren't in business.”

“They were getting weirder,” she said, sighing. “If I hadn't gone there that Sunday, Roger never would've seen Orion's scab.”

“Christ! More third-rate inductive reasoning.”

“And think of RB.”

“I'd rather know how to avoid thinking of her.”

“She had nothing to do with them. She'd never met Genesis, even.”

“But according to this youth-attracting religion, Cricket, she was corrupt. And therefore deserved to die. And then some.”

“All through me.”

“Don't let's have the
mea culpas
,” Vliet said. “I'm not up to 'em. One thing we don't need here, Cricket, is more self-blame.”

“How can I help it?”

“Make an effort,” he said, leaning into the couch, riffing his fingers on his knees. “Siegfried's Funeral March,” he announced.

Cricket's face was intent. “This weekend Orion was talking crazy. I felt sorry for him, but also I had that sort of uncomfortable, itchy thing. You know. Something's wrong, but you refuse to let yourself think it through.”

“Cricket, no more instant replays, huhh?”

“He said Genesis had let him back into REVELATION. It hit me as far out, but I didn't ask how come, or why.”

“For Chrissakes, forget it!”

“You wanted me to talk.”

“Not like this, I didn't.”

“I've been thinking and thinking.”

“And hasn't it occurred to you that others have their own thoughts?”

“You?”

“Me. If I hadn't been drinking coffee and mulling over the meat, I'd've been there with him. And he'd've had a chance, a chance is all. I mean, don't you remember who insisted we go with you on that jaunt to Carmel Valley?”

She sat forward. From the closed door of the bedroom hall came muted female voices. It was impossible, though, to tell who was talking.

“Without me, none of you would've been there, not in a million years.”

“Cricket, I don't give a damn for whom the bell tolls. I don't wanta hear about it, I don't wanta talk about it, I don't wanta think about it. So shut the hell up!”

The door to the hall opened. Mrs. Wynan moved ponderously into the room. Her stockings were knotted below the knees of her thick, veined legs. She held onto a table, then a chair.

“Heading outside, Grandma?” Vliet asked, taking her arm.

“Thank you, dear.”

Vliet opened a French door, warm breezes tagged ecru curtains, and the flat, homely old face lit.

Said the forgetful Mrs. Wynan, “I do so enjoy seeing you, Roger dear.”

She sat on the morning-shaded patio. Vliet remained where he was. Shoulders heaving, he dropped his face in his hands.

Vliet Reed, sobbing, thinks. Into this world they come alone. Not me. I came half of a twinship, which is closer than kinship, and if at times I felt like the back part of a vaudeville horse, the heavy costume suffocating me and forcing me to follow Roger, I also felt like part of a very exclusive society. Us two. This relationship being severed by the Big Break. Or, as Ma puts it, “her.” And even after it was schizo, how often I would call him or he would call me, just as the opposing twin had an opposing hand—left him, right me—on the phone for the very purpose. This I can't explain. I'm not the fuzzy-minded sort who would classify it as psychic phenomenon. Still, when I found Roger on that kitchen floor, hamburger, I had a, well, an Experience. Horror, yes. And grief, sure, grief. But more than horror or grief. It was as if certain nerves along my spinal column were being cut, certain areas in me were becoming numb. Part of me will be forever numb. And right now, that part—Roger—lies under the scalpel of some coroner, maybe the great Noguchi himself. Christ, how Roger would've appreciated the performance. Unfortunately he's there in body only.

Roger Reed, always having to buck for sainthood. Who would look after and pay surgical bills for a stranger, a freaked-out, mixed-up San Marino weirdo kid? St. Roger, that's who. Now on God's right hand, not mine.

I am half a twin.

Is there such a creature?

Half a twin is better than none.

No, half a twin is none.

He even smelled stronger than me, and Christ, whoever dreamed without him so much of me would be missing?

Vliet does not pursue that which has been taken from him. It is mostly in the area of conscience. Roger always had acted as a sort of detainer: Roger never would be doing this shitty thing, Vliet had thought, and possibly had desisted. This concept is dissolving from the electrical impulses of Vliet's brain.

“Vliet,” Cricket said, leading him to the couch. “Here,” she said, handing him her damp handkerchief. They had run out of handkerchiefs. Mrs. Monk was washing a load now.

4

“I don't see why she can't be there,” Vliet said.

“She's not Family,” Em repeated.

“In this particular case, Ma, it's beside the point.”

“Vliet,” said Sheridan, “we don't need arguments now.”

Vliet lit a cigarette. Carefully. The Reeds had finished a late lunch. (Cricket had been taken by her parents to the downtown offices of Sidney Sutherland, cousin and attorney.) Em, elbow on her raffia place mat, rested her cheek in her hand. For once she had let down on appearances and was without makeup, wrapped in an old, too-large robe of Mrs. Wynan's, a safety pin holding the neckline together.

Vliet exhaled. “Roger would want her.”

“Son, I don't think you understand.” Sheridan still wore the suit, his good navy suit, that he'd worn while making the last arrangements for his other son. “We've decided. The matter's closed.”

Em found a handkerchief in her sleeve. She blew her nose. “Family,” she said. “Only the Family.” Even now, her voice went respectful as she spoke of Van Vliets.