The Good Life (12 page)

“It's good to get out, Mom. It's one way to make sure you're alive,” Brian said. Ron and the Pittses laughed. Mrs. Connor's face shut. Lili closed her eyes.

“Actually, we choose not to travel very much, and we generally prefer hotels. So you might say we're here under protest.”

“Well, I still say it's a generous gift,” George said.

“You don't have children, do you?” Dr. Connor asked.

Lili slipped into the kitchen for more gravy before she could hear the response, but she could see what was coming. Brushing his hand across his wife's wrist, George would talk about the two of them being a couple of kids themselves, and the Connors would close their lashless eyes, assenting.

The kitchen door swung open, and Brian wedged his shoulders, draped in a soft green sweater, inside. “If I beg, will you let me help?”

“If I beg, will you let me stay in here?”

“We can hide under the kitchen table together.” He shook his head. “I'm sorry. Usually I know better than to inflict my parents on people.”

“It's just a bad combination of personalities. They're not monsters.” Lili wiped the lip of the gravy boat and held it toward Brian, but he was gazing at the obsidian window, leaving her to study his hair, as thick as a pelt, his ears as neat as seashells.

“Nope. They're monsters.”

“Haven't you heard? Parents and kids are doomed not to agree. It's a rule.”

“Then parents and kids shouldn't live together. That should be the rule.”

“Oh,” Lili said carefully.

He turned from the window and shrugged. “They made me an offer if I would come back home. They're loaded; Dad was first to market with three different stroke medications. They didn't want to leave their house, and they didn't want strangers coming in. He told me that if I moved back, they would leave the estate to me instead of the American Heart Association. The first thing I bought was a car. The second thing I bought was a car. I didn't even know I was trapped for the first six months.”

“What happened then?”

He shrugged again. “The floor plan of their house allows 5,114 square feet. Before long I'll be able to tell you the wall space, which I'll know from crawling it.” He offered her a crooked smile, no less handsome than any other expression available to him. “I thought I'd found the ticket to the good life. Should have known better.”

“There aren't many of those,” Lili said.

“I saw a brochure for this place and forced them to come so I could see some new walls. Now they're paying me back. You get some of the payback too. I'm sorry about that.”

“They're guests. We've had worse.” From the dining room boomed George Pitts's laugh, and then Ron's voice: “Lil? You need help in there?”

Brian reached for the gravy boat. “I'll take it. Let me pretend I live here for a little while. It would be a kindness.”

“In that case, you can bring out more applesauce, too.” She lingered in the kitchen after Brian went out, listening for Dr. Connor's bone-hard voice: “My son has learned that work looks like fun when it belongs to someone else.”

“Hi, I'm Brian, and I'll be your server tonight.” She cracked the door just in time to see him pour wine into her empty glass while Ron watched with a face that ceded nothing and Jenn lifted her glass to other people's work.

 

Lili had counted on the Connors making their silent, stiff way upstairs after dinner, so she winced when they made their silent, stiff way back to the fireplace with the others, ignoring George's long joke about the man who walked into a bar with an ostrich. Mrs. Connor stumbled and Lili reached, too late, to help her. The other woman shook off her hand, settled into her chair, then looked at the ceiling and asked if anyone could manage to bring her some hot, really hot water.

“Where are you going?” George called as Lili moved back to the kitchen. “The party's in here.”

“The party's everywhere,” she said, and let the door swing shut behind her.

Outside the ticking had stopped. Waiting for the water to heat, Lili stepped onto the back porch, then grabbed for the railing as her feet slipped under her. At least a half-inch of ice covered the porch boards, the light fixture, the planter boxes. Clicks and groans scratched at the hard air, and Lili knew that every branch and blade of grass wore a sleeve of clean ice. In the morning there would be branches down, but the trees and grass would look as if they'd been dipped in light. “So beautiful,” Ron would say, and he would be right.

Hearing the door, Sailor trotted out of the barn, scrabbled for traction on the glassy driveway, then skidded sideways and slammed into a tree. After a shocked moment, he whined, then went silent, then whined again, a sharper sound. Grabbing for branches, Lili picked her way from the porch. She only fell once, but she came down with her whole weight, jarring her left arm from wrist to shoulder. She was still dizzy when she minced the rest of the way to Sailor, who licked her hand.

“Come on, boy. Can you move? How many fingers am I holding up?” She fell twice more urging him to the kitchen door, unable to tell in the slick dark whether he was limping. Her arm pulsed; she could kick herself for not being more careful. “Shh, now. Don't let anyone know you're in here.” She tapped his hind end, and he scooted across the kitchen and under the table. No limp. Dog could play her like a violin.

After pouring Mrs. Connor's water and glancing once more at Sailor, now a tight doughnut of fur jammed against the baseboard heater, she joined Ron and their guests, cradling her tingling arm. The living room glowed, its golden air hot against Lili's stinging cheeks and hands. George was talking about Bangkok, which was also hot, where he and Jenn had seen an elephant with a headband walking down a side street. The elephant had looked hot too.

“Bangkok,” Brian said thickly.

“Our issue hears the siren song of foreign lands,” said Dr. Connor.

“It's a good song,” George said. “You travel, you get new ideas. Some people just travel around and around, seeing whatever they can.”

“And you admire that,” said Dr. Connor.

George leaned back heavily. “Why don't you tell us what you admire?” He kept his tone almost cordial, an effort that Lili appreciated. Ugly as things were getting, though, he might as well go ahead and slam the old fossil.

Dr. Connor smiled, displaying a ghastly spread of browned teeth. “Philosophers say that, in order to know a tree, you have to watch it for ten years.”

“And then you know a tree,” George said.

“At least you know something.”

Mrs. Connor's hand fluttered toward her teacup, a gesture Lili ignored.

“Another time,” George said, “another time I saw an old man, white hair, white stubble, in a wheelchair outside a café. He was all by himself and crying. Nobody went near him. He sat there, tears pouring down his face.”

“I don't remember this,” Jenn said.

“You weren't there,” George said.

“So much sadness,” Brian said, his voice slurring. “Such unhappy stories.”

“I've got the other kind too,” George said. “I can tell you about cancan dancers.”

“Now that sounds like a fun life,” Lili half yelled, trying to overtalk George. “Just think of the ruffles.”

“I knew a dancer once,” Jenn said. “She had it tough. Wrecked knees and no savings.”

“Every choice has a down side,” Lili said.

Dr. Connor murmured, “Syphilis.”

“So if you had to choose between cancan and this place, would you still come here?” Brian said to Lili, propping himself on one elbow.

People always asked something like this, and she had a burnished answer about their first trip to Heaven's Pride and seeing dreams come true. She watched Mrs. Connor's hand wavering above her teacup like a dull moth and felt her arm throb. Her whole side felt strange. “Sure. Choices aren't hard—what's hard comes after. You can make the biggest choice of your life, but you still need to get up and make breakfast the next morning. Things don't change as much as you think.”

“Ask any parent,” said Dr. Connor, his voice so foul that not even the Pittses could laugh.

“Dad, is it actually necessary? Is it written in a book somewhere that you have to be such a dick?” In the room's abrupt silence Brian flopped onto his back again. “Lili says it is. She says it's the rule between parents and kids.”

“I'm being quoted out of context,” she said. “I was telling Brian about our two sons.”

“They're not part of your Happy Valley enterprise,” said Dr. Connor.

“We don't pay our children to live with us,” she said.

Ron said quietly, “Lili.”

“You wouldn't have to pay me. I would stay here,” Brian said, still flat on his back, staring at the beamed ceiling. “I would stay and stay and stay.”

“You're welcome,” Lili said. “Stay as long as you like.”

“I would stay and stay and stay and stay,” Brian said.

Like punctuation, something crashed outside the window—a tree limb. Or a tree. Then from the kitchen the racing of toenails on linoleum, and terrified Sailor came banging through the door, churning, dog as locomotive. “Jesus Christ, Lili,” Ron yelled, and she grabbed at the dog, missing his back end by inches as he shot for Brian, slamming into his chest with a thud Lili could hear across the room.

“Bad dog!” Ron and Lili cried, but Brian sat up, hugging and crooning at the trembling animal. “Poor dog. Poor old Sailor-boy. I'll save you from the bad noises.” Looking up, he added, “See? He came to me.”

“Don't take it personally. That dog loves everybody,” Lili said, although Sailor was cowering against Brian, plastering himself against the grass-green sweater, rooting his snout under Brian's arm as if he could crawl inside the man.

“This is what I want,” Brian said. “This, right here.”

“Listen to yourself, son,” Dr. Connor said. “Pay attention.”

“I've been
paying
attention. All
night
,” Brian said. Lili needed a moment to place her sudden memory: Rain, age thirteen, still called Kit then, wanting new shoes. She felt an unwelcome pang of sympathy for Dr. Connor. Brian flipped his hair back from his forehead. “I'm trying to get
you
to pay attention.”

“You've got us riveted.”

“This is everything I want,” Brian said, squeezing the dog, his cobalt eyes filling with quick, boozy tears.

“Everything?” his father said. “I doubt that. Hush, now.”

“It's so hard to find what I really want. And the second you know, you won't let me have it.”

“Son, you're being unfair,” Dr. Connor said quietly. Lili had used to say much the same thing to Rain in response to his wanting, wanting, wanting. So she shouldn't have been surprised when Dr. Connor lifted his gaze from his son and said to her, “If you sold this land, you would never have to look back.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” The pain in her arm made Lili's voice sharper than it should have been.

“You're tired, and our son is happy here. As a parent, you understand what your child's happiness means.”

“You could go live under a palm tree,” Brian said to Lili. “Eat coconuts.”

“If you all don't mind, this is our life you're talking about,” Lili said. She glanced at Ron, who was snapping his fingers at the oblivious Sailor. “Why, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves anywhere but here.”

“In Aruba you can hire people to carry you across the street if you don't want to get your shoes dirty,” George said.

“I crossed the street all afternoon. It was fun,” Jenn said.

Ron said, “Lil?” She wondered whether the Pittses and the Connors heard the ripple in his voice, and whether they thought they were hearing delight. Brian's smooth hand stroked Sailor's ear.

She stood and picked up Mrs. Connor's cup with her good arm. “Too much wine with dinner. Let's all go to bed.”

“I'm ready,” George said.

“You've earned a rest,” Dr. Connor said. “Look at you.”

“I'm staying up,” Brian said to the ceiling. “Nobody can make me move.”

 

At seven o'clock the next morning, her arm quivering, Lili limped out of bed and padded downstairs. Brian was no longer sprawled in the living room, she saw with relief, and she wondered when Dr. Connor had silently helped his big, handsome son upstairs.

She poured herself a glass of water and swallowed four aspirin, let Sailor out, and stood at the doorway, listening to the clicking of icy twigs. The dim moon hung late in the west, throwing watery gray light across the two shaggy firs, the lace of dogwood branches, and the hedge of lilacs, now a leafless stand of drooping canes scratching at the top of the Pittses' huge SUV. Air scraped across her face. Down her left side, her fingers began to tremble.

“I can't sleep either,” Ron said quietly. When she turned, he gestured at the sweater he'd pulled on over his robe. “Too hot in bed. Too cold out.”

“It's warm in Aruba. We could be carried across the street every day. Where is Aruba?”

“Search me.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and started to massage Lili's shoulders. His first touch shot down her spine as if she'd been speared. “Hey, gal. Breathe.”

She tilted her head so that he could get better purchase, even though the pressure made her gasp. In a minute, if she could just stay with it, she'd relax.

“I've never loved a place so much,” he said. “I used to stand up on the hillside and almost cry. It was so beautiful, my eyes hurt.”

“Easy, Ron.”

“It was more than we'd ever asked for.”

“Don't press so hard. Nobody's going anywhere.”

“I just got to thinking. What do you suppose it would mean? To leave paradise. When people leave heaven, they don't go someplace better.”