The Laments (38 page)

“Your letters to us have been assaults, Mummy.
How
could I live in this country? . . .
Am
I taking care of Howard properly? . . .
Why
don’t I write more often? A litany of criticism!”

Bewildered by this force of emotion, Rose blinked.

“Questions, darling. Was it wrong to ask questions?”

Julia gasped. “Questions are fine, Mummy, but did it ever occur to you to offer a compliment, to say something kind?”

Her mother paused. “I’ve always said you picked a wonderful husband.”

IN THE MORNING
, the children cleared out quickly for school, leaving mother and daughter to face each other over toast and tea. Howard slept late enough to avoid seeing everybody hurrying off with something to do.

“What’s our plan for today?” Rose asked Julia.

“Well, I have to show some houses to a client,” said Julia, “but Howard could take you into Manhattan for the day. It’s not more than ninety minutes by car.”

“Nonsense. I couldn’t impose on Howard.”

“Impose? Why? He’s got nothing planned. And as I said, I have to show some houses. . . .”

“Houses, yes,” murmured Rose. “What would they say at Abbey Gate School if they knew what you were doing now?” She sighed.

“I like selling houses,” replied Julia. “I enjoy helping people start new lives. I understand their concerns, Mummy, because my life has been spent moving from one unfamiliar place to the next. Finding the right house is no easy task. . . . And besides that, I happen to like closing a deal.”

Rose seemed amused. “Yes, Americans talk about profit as if it were a biblical virtue.”

Julia decided to be blunt.

“Mummy, we’re finally out of debt. Because of
my
job, there’s food on the table.”

“Yes, but at what cost to your husband’s pride? Howard is vexed by your career, Julia. You may have fed your family, but what have you done for him? . . . I
always
supported my husbands.”

“What?” cried Julia. “You dropped them left and right like ballast from a balloon!”

Rose’s long, tapered fingers floated skittishly over her teacup. “Perhaps you’d like me to leave,” she said quietly.

“Oh, Mummy! I meant exactly what I said last night. You really are welcome for as long as you wish to be with us! If I seem to have a short fuse, it’s only because I have so much to do.”

“Very well,” said Rose quietly. “I shall stay, but only as long as I feel welcome.” There was something frail about this ultimatum, as if Rose weren’t sure how convincing it would sound. This surprised Julia, because in the past her mother had thought nothing of making grand demands.

Rose passed her second day recovering from jet lag. Howard slipped out of the house to do some shopping, and produced an abomination for dinner (an overcooked chicken that still had its giblets inside in a paper packet). Julia ordered a pizza, after which the boys disappeared into their rooms to do homework while Julia spent the evening balancing the checkbook in Rose’s company.

When Julia inquired about her mother’s day, Rose seemed disappointed.

“It was uneventful,” said Rose. “Everyone seems very busy—even Howard, who has nothing to do.”

Julia promised to take her mother sightseeing soon.

That evening, Rose slept fitfully. She had not expected to find her daughter’s life so complicated—an aggressive career, a struggling marriage, and a husband in such pathetic condition. She had always pictured her daughter’s life as placid, because even though Will’s letters pointed out tragedy and mishap, the Laments traveled with undeterred frequency, across continents and cultures. Nothing seemed to stop them from moving. Rose, on the other hand, tired of foreign customs after a week or two.

Rose desperately needed a kindred spirit, someone in whom she could confide a most personal matter. Years of sharp criticism for friends and lovers had left her friendless and alone. The Laments were her last hope. In fact, she had counted on Howard to be her confidant, but during the drive back from the airport she was shocked by his self-involvement. As for Julia, there was too much unfinished business between them. When the early light of the morning peeked into her room, she felt most terribly alone.

The Dance

“That Dawn is a nice girl,” said Roy.

“You’ve said that twice,” replied Will.

It was a cloudy night. No moon. No stars. Only a whisper of traffic in the distance. They had been walking home together from Dutch Oil for the last six weeks. Though Roy could afford a bike, he was saving his money for something special, he told Will. Will didn’t mind walking with Roy; he was easy to talk with, and their conversations often became intimate in the darkness.

“What I mean is, English, I think I love her,” said Roy.

“What?” Will laughed, but his voice was uneasy.

“She invited me over her house last weekend. Just to talk. So I went. Sat on the porch. We talked a
lot,
English.”

The low whine of a car interrupted their footsteps, and its distant headlights illuminated them. Roy glanced anxiously at Will.

“I know you like her, too, English. You upset?”

“Have you been back to see her?” asked Will.

“A couple times, English.”

As the car got closer, Will clambered onto the embankment. He urged Roy to join him, but Roy stubbornly remained on the edge of the road.

“Goddamn bear traps, man!”

The jagged whine became louder. Realizing whose car it was, Will leaped down, seizing Roy by the arm, and hauled him out of the path of the car, which sprayed them with crumbled asphalt and swerved back onto the road.

“Goddamn Calvin!” shouted Roy.

“
That’s
why you gotta keep off the road,” said Will, releasing Roy, who promptly clambered back down to the shoulder.

Perhaps it was gratitude that compelled Roy to come clean. “You know, English, Dawn asked me to take her to the Christmas dance.”

The worst news is often the least surprising. Will heard himself congratulate Roy while his heart hammered a hole in his chest.

WHEN JULIUS AND MARCUS BROUGHT
the girl home, they hadn’t a clue what a fuss it would cause. Sweet Cleo Pappas. Almond-shaped eyes, the lips of Buddha, and breasts that danced beneath her Peter Frampton T-shirt when Julius made her laugh. She was a godsend for the twins.

Julia invited her to stay for dinner. Cleo sat quietly, hands wedged between her thighs. When Julius spoke, she giggled. When Marcus spoke, she sighed.

The trouble started when Rose asked her name.

“Well, my friends call me Cleo, but I was christened Nancy. Nancy Pappas.”

Rose’s brow furrowed. “Pappas? That’s Greek, isn’t it?”

Cleo nodded. “Yes, my father’s Greek, but my mother’s Turkish.”

“Quite a conundrum,” remarked Rose. “After what the Turks did to Greece, it’s a wonder you came into this world!”

“Pardon?” said Cleo.

“Surely you know what the Turks did?”

“I like their hats,” Julius interrupted, prompting another giggle from Cleo.

“Am I ignorant of the facts?” said Rose. She was fanning herself in the heat of Julia’s reproachful glance. “The Turks
did
destroy the Parthenon, did they not?”

“Oh God, Mummy, so what?” cried Julia.

The twins and Cleo left to watch television in Julius’s room. When Marcus turned in after
The Six Million Dollar Man,
Julius showed Cleo one of his
National Geographic
s. When he got to a page depicting a naked Kreen Akrore tribeswoman, he asked her whether her breasts were similarly shaped. Cleo giggled, and asked whether Julius’s penis was the size of the tree on the opposite page.

“I don’t know—you’d have to compare them,” said Julius.

With astonishing timing, Cleo’s mother telephoned at that precise moment to summon her daughter home.

Julius, convinced he might have lost his virginity if Cleo had stayed a few more minutes, consoled himself with a long shower. When he reached ecstasy, Rose heard him from the kitchen.

“My, what an exceptional vibrato Julius has!” she remarked.

THE CHEERY CHRISTMAS LIGHTS
that were strung up along Oak Street by the Queenstown Chamber of Commerce gave Officer Martin Tibbs, who was an undiagnosed epileptic, a petit-mal seizure while driving his patrol car. This caused him to plow into the wrought-iron cemetery fence, shattering the gravestones of the six patriots of Queenstown. Though Officer Tibbs, father of Calvin, was unharmed, he threatened the township with a suit. Mindful of his son Otis’s successful suit against the railroad, the town fathers gave Officer Tibbs early retirement with full benefits. Meanwhile, the blinking lights made it impossible for Will Lament to ignore the season, or to forget that Roy would be dancing with the love of his life on December 23.

For the Laments it was a season of unrequited desire. Howard yearned for something to awaken his life; Julia wished for her husband’s recovery; and the twins were both lusting after a girl whose mother had an uncanny sense of when to summon her daughter home. Will, suffering over Roy’s claim on Dawn, wished for a stone heart. As for Rose, she yearned for a confidant.

ONE MORNING ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL
, Minna caught up with Will. In the weeks since she had left his house, her greetings had been sullen at best. But Minna didn’t look heartbroken this morning.

“I have a present for you, Will,” she said, matching his step, smiling giddily.

“You don’t have to give me anything,” he replied as she pressed a white envelope into his hand, his name written in script on the outside.

“Open it,” she urged as he tried to slip it into his pocket.

Will tore open the envelope and shook out the contents. Two tickets to the Christmas concert at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic. Frank Zappa would be performing with the Mothers of Invention.

“It’s for December twenty-third,” said Minna, “the same date as the dance.”

“Minna, I can’t accept—”

“You don’t like Frank Zappa?”

“I think he’s incredibly cool,” admitted Will, “but I can’t accept this.”

“Yes you can,” Minna insisted. “How about this: you invite Dawn, and if she doesn’t accept, you take me.”

Will paused, struck by the perversity of this deal.

“But she
has
plans that night,” he replied.

“I know,” said Minna. “The big dance. What a thrill,” she added contemptuously. “If she turns you down this time, she’s a hopeless case. And if she’s the sweet thing you
think
she is, you’ll take her to the show and fuck her brains out on the train home.”

“Funny,” said Will.

“So where’s my thank-you?” she asked before he could reject the proposal.

Will was about to reply when Minna dug her fingers into the waistband of his jeans, pulling him closer until her hips bumped against his. As their tongues met, she uttered a sigh that weakened his knees and sent a whiplash of desire down to the hardening knot between his legs.

When he sought out Dawn Snedecker at lunch, Will felt charged by Minna’s dare. He wasn’t afraid of rejection anymore; he was delivering an ultimatum.

“Dawn, would you like to go to a concert with me?” he asked in the busy school corridor.

She looked at the tickets, clearly impressed.

“Oh, I’d love to but I’d have to break my date with Roy for the Chrishmash Dansh, and I jusht couldn’t do that.”

“Roy would get over it,” said Will.

She looked at Will, then at the tickets, as if weighing two different aspects of her dilemma.

“No, I’m shorry, Will. It wouldn’t be right.”

“That’s true,” Will agreed. “It wouldn’t be right. Roy’s counting on you.”

“Then why did you ashk me?” she replied.

“To test you, I guess,” Will answered. “You’ve called me a racist for years when I know I’m not one. I suppose I wanted to know if you were just full of opinions and righteous attitudes, or if you had any personal decency.”

“Well?”

“Well what?” he replied.

“What did you deshide?”

“I decided that it didn’t matter,” said Will, tucking the tickets into his pocket. “I’m over you, Dawn.” And, with that, he walked away.

Composure

The Roper Realty Christmas tree had been decorated by Mike Brautigan with all the delicacy of a hurricane. Angels hung upside down; half of the Christmas lights twinkled, while the other half were dead. The tree had been strung with popcorn, mostly nibbled to the threads by Emil DeVaux during one solitary afternoon in the office. Carey Bristol had dangled bells made of rainbow-colored crepe from the ceiling, and spray-painted snow on the windowsills.

“You might say the place needs a woman’s touch,” confessed Carey as he showed Rose around the office, “but Julia is too busy selling houses! Two, this week alone! And who buys a house in December? She’s amazing! And now I can see where she gets her good looks!”

Julia winced at Carey’s flattery, and hurried her mother out before Rose could criticize the worn carpeting, overflowing ashtrays, and shabby furniture of the place. Once they were back in the car, Rose remarked that Carey Bristol needed a new pair of shoes, and a gray suit that would match his eyes.

They drove up Route 99, then west, past miles of faded fields lined with gray-limbed trees. Julia pointed out the properties she had sold, and the ones she was showing. There were Cape Cod houses with cedar shingles nestled in the woods, and row upon row of identical split-levels. The occasional classic white farmhouse in the distance turned into a wreck of shattered glass and peeling timbers as they drove by. There were square plots of trees, with Roper Realty signs and not so much as a driveway to mark a home.

What vexed Rose was Julia’s tendency to talk about the land in terms of what it
could
be, rather than what it
was
.

“I rather like the fields the way they are,” Rose finally said. “Why can’t they just be fields?”

Julia tried to explain that the area was poor, and that development would raise the tax base, but after a moment she realized that Rose was looking at her uncomprehendingly. They came to a small town that lay between the Delaware River and a tow-barge canal—a slick, polluted ribbon of water as black and shiny as a crow’s cowl. The Tatumville restaurant resembled the other white Georgians overlooking the canal, save for a cheerful shingle that promised
HOT SOUP
. They decided to stop for lunch.