The Big Shuffle (24 page)

“I've left your mom's medication on the counter,” continues Dr. Lewis. “It will probably have to be changed in six months. Or she may no longer need anything. You never know.”

Huh? This is a
doctor
talking. Aren't they supposed to
know?

“Why is that?” I ask. While I was sick I'd watched a television news show that said you're supposed to ask doctors lots of questions so they know you're paying attention.

“This type of depression seems more circumstantial rather than a permanent chemical condition.”

Oh gosh. No pressure there.

Pastor Costello comes through the back door huffing. “Sorry I'm late.”

“Late for what?” I ask.

“The van is out front,” he says. “Your mom is home!”

“Well, yeah,” I say. “Only you haven't exactly missed anything. She just went upstairs to her bedroom.”

From the way Pastor Costello and Dr. Lewis exchange a few remarks, I can tell this isn't the first time they've spoken to each other.

There's a knock at the front door, and from the kitchen I yell, “Come in!”

Dr. Lewis looks at me as if this is exactly the kind of noise we
don't
need.

Whoops. “Sorry,” I say. It's going to be a challenge for
all
of us to reduce the energy level in the dynamic Palmer household, self included.

It's three of the church ladies. They quickly head for the upstairs bedroom like hunting dogs that know where the bones are buried.

I don't seem to be needed and decide it's as good a time as any to pick up the twins. Mrs. Muldoon has a four o'clock podiatrist appointment to have her toenails cut. It's kind of scary how we've become so well informed about the intimate details of each other's private lives.

When I return with the boys, Mom is sitting in the living room with Pastor Costello and the church ladies. It looks like a little tea party. Everyone has a steaming cup nearby, and there's a plate of dainty cookies on the coffee table that definitely didn't emerge from any of our kitchen cupboards. Unless they were hidden behind the Sunny Doodles.

Mom's face lights up when she sees the twins and she stretches out her arms. I realize that I can't hand them both to her at once, but the church ladies are two steps ahead of me and they each take a child and sit next to her on the couch so she can coo over both without exerting herself.

I'm careful to refer to each one as “he” or both boys together as “they.”

“They certainly are growing,” I say.

“Look, Roddy is reaching out to me with his left hand,” says my mother. “I wonder if we have our first lefty in the family.”

Pastor Costello and I exchange surprised glances. Can she really tell them apart? Or is it the antipsychotics talking?

“My father was left-handed,” says Mom. “Though he always referred to himself as
southpaw.”

“You can tell them apart?” I ask in as casual a tone as possible.

“Of course!” says my mother.

“Okay, but how?” They still look like clones to me.

Mom glances from one to the other and says, “I just can.”

“A mother always knows her own children,” offers the church lady on the right.

The back door flies open and the onslaught begins. Pastor Costello speed-walks to the kitchen to head off the mob, I take the twins, and the church ladies escort Mom up to her bedroom. It's been decided that the children will visit one at a time after they've had a snack and settled down.

Teddy breaks through the barricade and gives Mom a huge hug and kiss, the kind of greeting I should have given her, instead of a light peck on the cheek.

The rest of the afternoon and evening is spent keeping the kids at low volume. I let them watch the Cartoon Network or whatever else they want, just so long as there aren't any broken bones, broken furniture, or breaking of the sound barrier. My goal is to allow just enough activity to disguise the fact that Louise is gone. I had the feeling that, when Dr. Lewis said Mom is to avoid stress at all costs, discovering that Louise dropped out of high school and moved in with her boyfriend just might fall into that category.

A
UNT LALA ARRIVES FROM LONDON ON MONDAY MORNING, ONLY
this time she's planning to stay for three weeks. Her thesis on the Fourth Crusade is finally finished and daughter Marci has been shipped off to a boarding school for problem children somewhere in the English countryside. Pastor Costello stops by early each morning to help get the kids ready for school before heading over to the church. He returns in time for dinner and doesn't leave until the last child is tucked safely into bed and prayed over at night.

The church ladies also come and go like clockwork, making sure the little ones don't make too much noise or get in Mom's hair, and that we're all eating our vegetables and changing our underwear. The kids are told that Mom needs a lot of rest if she's going to continue to get better. They assume her illness is something more akin to a cold or a stomachache. Teddy is glued to Mom's side whenever he's not in school. They watch afternoon talk shows together, page through magazines, and share this whole world that I don't belong to. It's not that I'm jealous, exactly. But the more I become aware of this intense bond between the two of them, the more it makes me feel as if I've somehow failed.

Mom doesn't say anything about suddenly having a hundred channels on the television along with terrific reception. Perhaps she forgot that we used to live in the Stone Age of mass media. Mom also doesn't complain about the addition of a cat. I guess any creature that arrives fully housebroken is okay in her book.

In no time at all the house is back to the way it was right after Dad died, with people coming and going, flowers and fruit baskets arriving, and Jell-O salads miraculously appearing on the kitchen counter. Did Pastor Costello place an announcement in the church bulletin? More likely all the traffic is a result of what Bernard calls, “Telephone, Television, Tell-a-Woman.”

Quite frankly, the whole situation is just plain bizarre. I'm not sure what my place is anymore. Mom is here but she doesn't do much. When the kids have an argument, they want her to rule in their favor, but she just looks helplessly at me. Only they don't listen to me as much now that there's a court of appeals. To make matters worse, I can no longer use my best form of crowd control, which was to light a kitchen match and threaten to set them on fire.

On Friday morning I'm in the kitchen washing out all the Tupperware containers. At one point there are at least ten different tops and bottoms, none of them matching. I hate Tupperware. And I hate this kitchen. I hurl the mismatched pieces across the room and head out the back door. It would be a good time to start smoking. I don't know what it's like to crave a cigarette, but I'm pretty sure this is how it feels.

The minivan is blocked in by somebody else's minivan. And a Dodge Dart is behind my cabriolet. Eric took the station wagon to college when he went back after Easter. His motor-head friends are going to fix it up enough to pass inspection. Besides, with Louise gone, I'm the only one who can drive.

To hell with everything. I dig my old bike out of the garage and ride over to the Stocktons’.

Bernard is working on the computer while Rose, Gigi, Lillian, and Rocky play on the floor with Legos. The kids are awfully loud, and when Bernard sees me and says something, I can't hear him.

He claps his hands at Rocky and the girls. “It's time for mime! Let's show Hallie how good we are.”

They gleefully begin gesturing at one another and acting out everything they want to say. The room goes silent. Amazing. I can't help but wonder if it would work with my gang.

“So do you still have a job for me?” I ask.

“I thought you'd thrown in the trowel,” Bernard replies smugly, as if he knew this would happen. “What changed your mind?”

“Tupperware.”

Bernard looks intrigued.

“I couldn't get the tops and bottoms to match.”

“Promise you won't change your mind if I tell you that there are corresponding numbers and letters on each top and bottom so they can be easily matched up.”

“I never want to see them again!” I say.

“Good!” says Bernard. “Let me show you the Chinese tea garden. I hired one of the men from the nursery to get things started, just until I have time to do some work out there myself.”

B
ERNARD AND I STROLL DOWN THE FLAGSTONE PATH, PAST THE
three main gardens, until we come to a teak pagoda, two benches, and a curved walkway leading to a small shrine. The earth has been turned so that Bernard can plant flowers and some small trees. I also notice the area originally marked off for the pool has been extended farther back. “Are you allowed to build into the woods like that?”

“The property is finally all mine!” says Bernard. “Al helped me buy it from the town.”

Olivia wanders into the garden looking greatly altered in appearance since I saw her two weeks ago. Her hairstyle is completely different, her makeup is a bit brighter, and I've never seen that jewelry before.

“Ah, the roofless church of Henry David Thoreau,” she remarks while surveying the empty gardens. “He said the worst thing is to get to the end of life and find you haven't lived.”

“Mother, I've been looking for you,” Bernard says sternly.

Olivia more or less ignores him. “I thought that was Hallie's old bike in the driveway.” She gives me a hug. “How's your mom doing?”

“Okay,” I say. “Aunt Lala is staying for a while and she's good company for Mom.”

Bernard waits impatiently for us to finish. “Mother,
where
did Aries sleep last night?”

“His name is
Darius
, as you know full well,” Olivia replies sharply.

“Well, it's certainly not
Aristotle,”
says an agitated Bernard. “So where did he sleep last night?”

“I don't know, I assume on the pullout bed in the sunroom.”

“Then how is it that when I came down to get some juice for Gigi at three o'clock in the morning, he
wasn't
there?” Bernard sounds as if he's a lawyer for the prosecution.

“Perhaps he went out for a walk,” suggests Olivia. “When I came down at seven, I saw him in there.”

“That's what I thought the last two times,” Bernard says with great suspicion in his voice. “Only now I believe that maybe he was in your room.”

“Maybe
you
drove him in there with your cold stares and constant playing of Nancy Sinatra's ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”

Bernard's eyes appear as if they're going to pop out of his head. “Mother, the boy is half your age!”

“Darius happens to be forty-three,” says Olivia. “He just looks very good for his age. And if you'd take the time to get to know him, you'd see how nice he is. Talented, too! Darius is a marvelous cook.”

“A cook?” Bernard actually snorts. “He doesn't know the difference between Teflon and Tiffany.”

“And back home he sang in the church choir,” adds Olivia.

“So did Hitler and Stalin.”

“That's
not
funny.”

Dictators, in any context, rarely amuse Olivia.

“Just look at you!” Bernard points an accusatory finger. “With your hair cut short and harlot's lipstick.”

“You've been begging me to update my look for years.” She calmly adjusts the strands of hair that make up her bangs. Olivia's silvery-white hair has been cut so that it frames her face and makes her pretty blue eyes and high cheekbones stand out. She always wore lipstick, but this one is a shade darker than her usual pink. And she has on some pretty silver Paloma Picasso earrings rather than the single strand of pearls she used to wear. Otherwise, age just seems to agree with Olivia. It's as if she'd been spun from an enchanted cloth whose threads are only enhanced by the passage of time.

“When I suggested a makeover I meant twenty-first-century-grandma chic, not the noctivagous strumpetocracy.”

“The
what?”
I ask.

“That's how Walt Whitman referred to nineteenth-century streetwalkers in Manhattan,” a bemused Olivia informs me.

“Cut it out!” I say to Bernard. “She looks fantastic.”

“She's dressed like a teenager,” says Bernard.

With her trim figure outfitted in a pale purple short-sleeved sweater and navy slacks, Olivia does look younger.

Olivia pretends to scrutinize a place directly behind Bernard's left shoulder, as if there's something growing there. “Go to the tower and ring the bell.”

Bernard quickly reaches back and covers his neck with his hands. “I do
not
have a dowager's hump. This shirt is just puffy because my sleeves are rolled up.” He yanks down his shirtsleeves. “I don't understand what's wrong with you, Mother. Why can't you become a man-hating late-in-life lesbian? Find a nice woman your own age and we'll tell everyone it's your sister from Cambridge.”

“I happen to like men, same as you,” says Olivia. “Besides,
I'm a failure as a lesbian. The one time a woman kissed me like that I spent the whole time thinking about how I was going to remove a tea stain from the front of my new white sweater.”

“But you're from
Massachusetts,”
insists Bernard. “Give it more time. She just wasn't the right one. You could take a carpentry course.”

“Sorry, darling, but I think that gene skipped a generation. However, your uncle Danforth would be proud that you share his penchant for Flemish sculpture, Italian Baroque painters, and Baccarat Medallion candelabrum from the 1860s. Before making a big impulse purchase he used to love saying,
Why not go for baroque!”

“Yes, apparently Uncle Danforth was quite a character prior to being institutionalized for dropping trou during an auction,” offers Bernard.

“It wasn't exhibitionism so much as an early example of performance art,” says Olivia. “The Burwood side of the family was always rather infamous for being ahead of the times.”

“Mother, if I can't convince you to become a lesbian, then you're forcing me to tell you the brutal but honest-to-God truth. Now, I wasn't eavesdropping or anything like that….”