The Age of Miracles (3 page)

“It's okay,” I said. “Go to sleep. Go on to sleep.”

I woke up in a really good mood. An orgasm is an orgasm and it's a hell of a lot better than Xanax. By nine o'clock we were in the Lincoln headed for the country house. I had one suitcase in the trunk. The one with the white suit and extremely high platform heels.

The country house was very nice. Most of the chintz and printed cotton was green and white and there were plants everywhere and plenty going on in every room. His interior decorator was there and his first wife and her husband and all four of the children and their wives and husbands. The bride-to-be and the groom-to-be were busting around fixing flowers and watching the caterers set up the tents and the bandstand. The children were all loudly and publicly fighting over a diamond ring the bride-to-be was wearing. It had belonged to wife number two and her children claimed it and were angry that Carter had given it to his daughter. Since he had given it to wife number two Carter thought it was his to bestow and he had given it to the bride because her impecunious bridegroom couldn't afford one yet. “She'll give it back to you in time,” he told the stepchildren. “Don't spoil her wedding day.”

But it was being spoiled so there was no chance of my being bored that morning. The hostility rose to fever pitch now that Carter was there to suffer it and I sat at the kitchen table with wife number one, who was sipping rum and tonic, and I thought, it's true I could be somewhere where the natives speak my language, still, nothing is ever lost on a writer. Notice everything, the older stepdaughter washing dishes in a fury. The grandchildren, the first wife smoking, the pool cleaners trying to clean the pool, the striped tent being raised, the lobster salad, the uncomfortable sofas, the yard full of BMWs, the permanent waves, the eyelash liner, the way the ring has taken the heat off my being Daddy's date. “I have ten grandchildren,” I told Donna and her dishwashing daughter. “Things won't always be this hectic in your family. It will settle down when you reach my age.”

“How old are you?” they asked.

“I'm pushing sixty,” I told them. “The older you get the better.”

The day went from bad to worse. It got hot and hotter. The air conditioning couldn't deal with the doors being opened and slammed as the hour for the wedding drew near and the two-carat diamond ring belonging to the dead wife's children was still on the bride-to-be's hand.

I went upstairs and put on the white suit and heels. The guests arrived. An anorexic internist cornered me in the hall and told me about his addiction to running. Two of his colleagues joined the conversation, praising him for looking fatter. I talked to the interior decorator. I talked to the husband of the mother of the bride, who was getting drunk enough to be jolly.

The wedding party gathered. We all pressed around. A minister read the ceremony. Video cameras were everywhere. I hid behind a group of pedestals holding potted ferns. The guests went out to the tent and began to eat and drink and listen to the music. I went upstairs and lay down on a bed and read medical journals and a bestseller on the doctor's bedside table. I read his little black book, which was beside it. There was a list of women with their names checked off. Mine was at the bottom. I went back to the novel,
Russia House
.

After a long time Carter came upstairs to find me. “What's wrong?” he said drunkenly. “Aren't you having a good time?”

“Are you going to make me come again or not?” I asked. “I'm tired of waiting.”

“Well, not right now,” he said.

“Why not? What's wrong with now?”

“I don't know, Rhoda. I don't think this is working out, do you?”

“No. As a matter of fact I was thinking of catching an earlier plane. I mean, now that we have them married and everything. There's a plane that leaves at nine. Could someone take me there? Or perhaps you could lend me a car.” I got up off the bed. “You can mail the things I left at your house. Especially that nifty dress you bought me. Someday I might want it to wear to a Halloween party.”

“I don't understand,” he said. “What have I done wrong?”

“It's a class thing,” I answered. “Your M.D. doesn't make up for the chintz.”

Well, that isn't exactly what I said. I said something more subtle than that but probably equally mean. He didn't answer for a long time. Then he handed me the keys to the Lincoln and offered to have his son drive me to the airport but I refused. The band was playing Beatles' songs. I sneaked out the kitchen door and got into the Lincoln and drove myself to the Atlanta airport and flew on home.

 

Where did the rest of the ten thousand dollars come in? you might well ask. Well, that's what it cost to call up my old boyfriend in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and get him to fly down to Jackson and take me to New Orleans to make love and eat oysters and beignets. That's what it cost to spend a week at the Windsor Court getting nonoxynol-9 all over the sheets and then fly back to Fayetteville, Arkansas, with him and make a down payment on a house on the mountain.

In a small city that needed me back so it wouldn't be smaller still. In a small, free city where no one I am kin to lives and where being respectable means getting your yard cut every two weeks in the summer and not smoking dope or getting your hair dyed blue.

Plus, three hundred and fifteen dollars for a reproduction of a statue of Aphrodite, which I belatedly mailed the bride and groom for a wedding present.

Madison at 69th, a Fable

T
HERE WERE FOUR PEOPLE in on the kidnapping, although only three of them were kin to the victim and the fourth really shouldn't be held accountable since she was in love. The fourth is me.

Maybe no one should be held accountable. After all, Edwina is their mother. It's not like they set out to kidnap some total stranger. Which is why it was so easy. She was staying at the Westbury, on Madison at 69th. We thought about doing it there. Then Arthur fell heir to a house in Brooklyn. Fate was running with us. The tide of fate carried us along.

Actually, no one is to blame but Edwina herself. You shouldn't tell your kids you are going to get a face-lift, especially if two of them are medical students. You shouldn't go all the way up to New York City to have it done when there are plenty of good doctors right here in Memphis, Tennessee, where we live.

The middle child, Arthur, is the one I love. He's just finished his first year in medical school at Vanderbilt. The other two are women: Cary, age twenty-two and floundering, and Kathleen, in her second year in med at Ohio State. So Edwina invites them all up to New York for four days in June to help her get ready for the surgery. Then Arthur invites me to come along and the first thing I know we are at the Westbury signing Edwina's name to chits. Later that night we went down to SoHo to go barhopping and Cary brought it up. “We're accomplices to a crime. She doesn't need a face-lift. What's she doing this for?”

“Because she broke up with your dad. Elemental.”

“She wanted the divorce. He's the one with the broken heart.”

“They take your face off and lay it on your chest.” This from Arthur. “It's nuts.”

“She left him because he had to take blood pressure pills. She doesn't have any sympathy for him.”

“So what are we doing here? Taking bribes.” This from Cary. There hadn't been a word out of Kathleen. She's a goddess. She's five eleven and she has this way of staying completely still for long periods of time and letting everyone have their say. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. Sometimes I try to do it at parties, but it never works for me. I'm not the type for it. Too manic and too short.

I guess I better stop here and tell you about myself. I'm Sara Garth from Courtland, Alabama. I play tennis for Vanderbilt and I make good grades. I'm an only child, that's my only problem. I fall in love with families. I spent my childhood at my Uncle Philip's house because he had six children. So much was going on over there. Nothing went on at home. The piano teacher came. Mother taught French in Decatur. Daddy ran the gin. We had dinner. We lit candles and put them on the table and talked about whether it would rain. We sat on the porch and talked to people who came over. We drove out to the fields and watched the cotton grow. I went to Lausanne School in Memphis, which is where I got to know the Standfields. Then I went to Vanderbilt. You get the picture. Everyone seeks that which they do not have. I seek excitement. But not to do it. Just to watch it going on. It was plenty of excitement to fly to New York with the Standfields to see an opera. Before they even decided to kidnap their mother.

Don't get me wrong. I agree in theory with what they had in mind. My mother's roommate from All Saints had her heart stop in the middle of a face-lift. I'd heard that story for years. Another friend of Momma's was blinded by a face-lift. Now she has a chauffeur and a dog and a cane.

 

“We don't have to sit by and let this happen.” Cary was still making the case. “We don't have to sit around like a bunch of sheep while she lets some guy butcher her scalp. We could kidnap her. I've been thinking about it for days. We just cart her off and keep her until it's too late to do the surgery. You have to wait months for this guy. She said it was the last operation he was going to do before he went to Europe. He won't even be here to take care of her post-op. He sprang that on her yesterday. What if she's blinded like Sara's friend? Who do you think will have to take care of her the rest of their lives?”

“We could show her a video of the surgery.” Kathleen spoke at last. “She's been brainwashed by her friends. We'll deprogram her.”

“You'd kidnap her?” This from me.

“Yes, I think I would.”

“Count me in,” Arthur said. “When do we do it?”

“Monday afternoon. The surgery's Tuesday. She has an appointment at the beauty parlor Monday afternoon. We'll snatch her after that.”

“And take her where?”

“I can get the Langs' house in Brooklyn. They're all in Italy. Donald offered it to us but Mother wanted to stay at the hotel so we'd be near Lincoln Center. We could take her there on some pretense and just not let her go.”

“She'll kill us.”

“She might be relieved. She was pretty mad when the doctor told her he wouldn't be here after the operation. He introduced her to some young guy who's going to take care of her. This short ugly guy. It's the old guy she's got the hots for. That's what this is about. I can tell by the way she talks about him.”

“She doesn't want to do this. Look at how she's having to psych herself up. Having us all up here. Spending all this money.”

“We have tickets to the opera on Monday night. Those tickets cost five hundred dollars. She'll die if we don't go.”

“We can't worry about details. How can we get in the Langs' house?”

“It's a combination. He gave me all the numbers.”

 

So the next thing I know it's Monday afternoon and I'm sitting in a rented Cadillac Coupe de Ville outside of Georgette Klinger's on Madison Avenue and Arthur is helping his mother into the car.

“We're celebrating,” he was saying. “Sara won a scholarship. We have champagne. We're going out to Brooklyn to pick up Donald. He wants to celebrate with us.”

“We have to be at the opera at eight. That's wonderful, Sara. I know your folks are proud. When did you find out?”

“Mother called and told me. They sent a letter. It's the Academic Excellence for Athletes Award. It's five thousand dollars.” It was true about the scholarship. Only I had won it a month ago. So I didn't feel bad about lying to her. I almost never lie. There's no need to if you're an only child.

“I don't know how Arthur can keep up with you. You must have a room full of trophies.”

“I don't keep them. Mother does. I just worry about the next tournament. Or I worry about my knee. I spend a lot of time worrying about my knee.”

“All right then. Drive on, Kathleen. Let's go get Donald and celebrate.” She smiled and patted me on the knee. Edwina's a wonderful woman. She's always been wonderful to me. I stared deep into her sweet funny face. I didn't see any lines. I just saw movement and laughter, Arthur's mother. I steeled my heart. Imagine letting anyone cut into that beloved skin.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. “Don't be afraid of success, Sara. I worry about young women fearing success. Arthur doesn't care if you excel. He brags about you to everyone, don't you, honey?” She put her other hand on his knee. She was sitting in the back seat between us. Kathleen was driving. Cary was riding shotgun. “Where are you going, Kathleen?” Edwina leaned up into the front seat. “You have to be careful where you drive in this city. Are you sure you know where you're going? Why did you rent a car?”

“I know where I'm going. I lived here for a year, remember?

“Well, we can't be late to the opera. They won't let you in.
Das Rheingold
. People are here from all over the world to see these operas. Now then, where is the champagne?”

“It's in the trunk. We wanted to wait until we got to Donald's. How was Georgette Klinger's?”

“How do I look?”

“You look great. You don't need a face-lift, Momma. You look perfectly all right like you are.”

“Well, don't start that again. Tomorrow afternoon it will all be over.”

“It won't be over.” This from Arthur. “You'll be on Nembutal and Demerol and ibuprofen, maybe for months. You'll be on antibiotics until you've compromised your immune system. Your face will be bruised and puffy. You're risking your nervous system and muscular coordination. You're risking ending up with a tic.”

“Jane Morris had it done and she looks marvelous.”

“She was in pain for six months. Her daughter told me she was in pain for six months and couldn't sleep and now she's addicted to Xanax.” This from me. I couldn't believe I said it.