Although I had wondered what I should say about my appearance, there was some social contract that precluded anyone from asking. Introducing Meda went smoothly. Mr. and Mrs. Tveite met me in the foyer and I said, “This is Meda Amos. Meda this is Mr. Tveite and his wife.”
Meda smiled, and in a sweet, docile voice I didn’t recognize, said, “I’m so pleased to meet you. You have a lovely home.”
Without a word between us, we conspired to pretend we were other than what we were. I intended to cling to Meda, in an effort to present a unified front for our mutual protection, but the Chairman cut me off from the herd, forcing me to take part in a tour of his home theater with a group of men from the corporate office. The tour came complete with exhaustively boring commentary on the technology involved, and some innuendo about my date.
“That’s a beautiful girl,” the Chairman said
“Isn’t she on your staff?” someone else asked. Several of them had been to the funeral reception, and there was no way they had forgotten Meda.
“Well, a girl like that, I imagine you can get past that,” somebody else said.
“Past what?” I said. I didn’t want to be a troglodyte, but even more did I not want to have that conversation. After the tour, I regrouped with Meda, who was being monopolized by some upper management type who slithered away when he discovered he was hitting on my date.
The Chief Financial Officer was not in on the social contract, or else he’d had too much to drink, because upon seeing Meda and me, he greeted us by saying, “Hey, Beauty and the Beast. Bern, what did you run into?” He laughed at his own joke. “Does Beauty have a name?”
“I’m Meda Amos,” she said in that new, kittenish voice. “And Bernie had a little misunderstanding with someone.”
“He understood me perfectly,” I said. Meda scowled at me, and then slipped her hand into mine. We held our own against the CFO until the Chairman came back and broke us up. Trailing behind him was Lionel Petrie.
“You’re a hard man to track down,” Lionel said.
“If we could just borrow your young man, for a moment,” the Chairman said to Meda. Short of making a fuss, I couldn’t see any way out of it. They took me into custody and walked me across the house to the den, where there was an impromptu marketing meeting happening.
“Look at what they've done with their advertising,” the Executive VP of Marketing told me, even though I'd missed the beginning of the conversation. “Consumers love the feeling of purchasing a product from a company that has history. Plus, you’re younger and better looking.” He hesitated, not wanting to mention my current condition. “You’ll sell, Mr. Raleigh. You really will.”
“Lionel, you’ve got to get out to the house, and see Mr. Raleigh’s study. That was the original corporate office in 1928,” another marketing type said.
“A sense of heritage,” Mr. Tveite said. “That’s the thing.”
After nearly half an hour of it, I excused myself to go to the restroom. In the Chairman’s glistening black-tiled crapper, I found I had sweated through my shirt and the lining of my jacket. In the quiet, I realized what was wrong. The galvanizing fear had nothing to do with Meda meeting these people. I was afraid of them. I needed to find Meda and get us out of that place.
Insulting Meda
Meda
Celeste was dead-on about the Chairman’s house. The front hallway was the size of Gramma’s house, and three stories high. The whole house was full of glass and chrome and black leather and marble. Thank God it wasn’t my job to keep it all polished.
Mainly I wished that Bernie had stuck around to protect me, or something. The Chairman’s wife kept talking to me, and I tried my best to be what Bernie wanted me to be, but I could see how she was looking to make me feel like crap. She and her daughter wouldn’t even let me out of their sight. I got up to go to the bathroom and the daughter, Marcia, said, “I’ll go with you.” Afterwards she walked me right back to her mother.
“I have to say. You’d really be doing yourself a favor if you had some work done,” Mrs. Tveite said.
“M-hm,” I said. I was supposed to know what she meant.
“It’s not that you’re not lovely, but it’s all about maintenance and improvement, like road work, my dear.” She and her daughter laughed, but I kept my mouth shut. They were a pair of hyenas. “Really, a girl with a face as pretty as yours should have a smile to go with it.”
“I never heard it put that way.” I did the thing I swore I wasn’t going to do. I picked up my drink and finished it.
“You work for Mr. Raleigh, don’t you?” Mrs. Tveite said.
“Really? I didn’t know you worked at RI. What department?” Marcia said. It was the middle of the winter and she had her toenails painted to match her fingernails, like a French manicure.
“I don’t.”
“You don’t? I swear I heard Daddy say you worked for Mr. Raleigh.”
“At his house. I’m his housekeeper.” I felt like a liar. Housekeeper was a nice way of saying maid or cleaning woman. I didn’t know why I said it. It was Bernie’s word. The two of them smiled at me so hard I thought their faces would break. What were they going to say if I said it for them? “I clean his house.”
When Bernie put his hand on my shoulder, it was too late. I glared up at him, because he’d left me to fend for myself with those evil, stupid women making their nasty assumptions.
“Oh, Mr. Raleigh,” Mrs. Tveite said, practically cooing. “I was just going to give Ms. Amos the name of my daughter’s orthodontist. I know you’ll like him, dear, and he’s wonderful. Marcia had a bit of an overbite, but you’d never know it from looking at her now. Beautiful work.” Marcia showed off her teeth like we were at the goddamned county fair, and she wanted a ribbon. Mrs. Tveite liked what she’d said to me so much that she said it to him, too: “A girl with a face as beautiful as Ms. Amos’ ought to have a beautiful smile to go with it, don’t you think? I can recommend an excellent cosmetic surgeon, too.”
I waited to see what Bernie would say, but he was staring at Mrs. Tveite. Second time I’d ever seen him at a loss for words. So I said what I was thinking: “Do you always insult people who come to your parties?”
I didn’t think I said it that loud, but maybe it was one of those times when something bad gets said at the exact same time everyone else is taking a drink and the band is coming to the end of a song. Whichever it was, everyone turned to look at me.
“I suppose you know a good sculptor who can put arms back on the Venus de Milo, too,” Bernie said. Mrs. Tveite looked up at him and blinked a couple of times.
“I’d like to go now,” I said.
Insulting Bernie
The Chairman followed us into the foyer, hemorrhaging apologies, although I don’t think he knew what his wife had said. I wasn’t entirely sure what all had been said that needed an apology, but Meda refused to acknowledge him, and it wasn’t my place to accept or decline an apology on her behalf. Once our coats were produced, I handed Meda into hers and followed her out into the night. When she looked back at me, she wore a dark, wrathful expression that was fearsome and arousing; a look that both asked and answered the question of why I had gotten involved with her.
“What’s that Venus de Milo remark about?” she said as we drove away.
“Even without her arms, she’s considered a great work of art.”
“I’m not a work of art.”
“No, but who is she to be suggesting improvements to you?”
“You like me better with my stupid broken teeth, anyway,” she said, disgusted.
“I like you.” It was suspiciously like agreement.
“What if I got them fixed? Would you like me less?”
“I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.”
“I think you like me because you think I’m ‘damaged goods.’ Like you.” To be fair, she seemed shocked she’d said it.
“Meda, that necklace you’re wearing. I don’t remember exactly what I
paid for it, but somewhere close to $10,000. I bought it because I thought you’d like it. If you wanted to get your teeth fixed, I’d pay for that, too. It doesn’t matter to me. I like you for what’s in you, even when what’s in you isn’t that nice.” I was trying not to be angry.
“Oh my God! This necklace cost that much money?” She put her hand up to clutch at it in horror.
“I would have bought you a new car, except our relationship would be over if you had a better car.” I regretted saying it immediately. Another plea for her pity, and I didn’t feel pitiful. I felt worthless.
“I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound it, but she didn’t say anything else.
I couldn’t tell if she was giving me the silent treatment or if she was just feeling pensive. When we got to Muriel’s trailer to pick up Miss Amos and Annadore, Meda declined to give me any signals about her state of mind, so I entered the fray prepared for the worst. Muriel had filled the trailer with flashing multi-colored lights, and every horizontal surface was covered with shabby Christmas knick-knacks. Miss Amos sat on the sofa watching TV, and in the kitchen, Loren and Muriel were talking to Meda’s Aunt Rachel.
Muriel made a big fuss over my face until Meda dismissed her with a short, “He got in a fight, Mom,” confirming to me that she was accustomed to that behavior from the men in her life. Then Meda poured herself a glass of wine out of the gallon jug sitting open on the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. To my horror and fascination, she drained it like it was water. Then she refilled it.
“Actually,” Loren said, “I heard that you got in a fight with Ray Brueggeman.”
“Don’t say his name in my house,” Muriel snapped.
“I wouldn’t call it a fight. He didn’t even get a chance to hit me.”
“Somebody hit you,” Rachel said.
“Well, his friends beat the crap out of me,” I admitted modestly.
Muriel hugged me around the waist. “You’re a nice guy, Bernie,” she muttered into my chest. She was drunk, and Meda was headed there after three glasses of wine. By the time I realized how much they’d all had to drink, it was too late to steer the conversation back from the cliff edge. Saying things better left unsaid was apparently an Amos family tradition. I supposed that was why I hadn’t been invited to the Amos Christmas.
Asked how Mrs. Trentam’s Christmas had been, Meda said, “Aunt M. didn’t have a lot of fun, I think. It was a real blow to Miss Oklahoma not to feel like she was better than everybody else.”
“What could have made her feel like that?” Loren gasped. “She is better than the rest of us, isn’t she? Isn’t she?”
Meda lifted a finger from the rim of her glass and pointed at me: “Meet Mr. Bernham S. Raleigh. He’s better than everybody.”
“He’s taller than everybody, too. How tall are you?”
I shrugged, lied: “Six-six.” The truth was so monstrous I wasn’t willing to admit to it, even on my driver’s license.
“What’s the S. for, Bernham S. Raleigh?” Loren said.
“Sevier.” I didn’t like the interrogatory trend of the conversation.
“Savior?” Loren shrieked. Drunk as a lord and not twenty-one. “Like, as in Jesus?”
“Sevier.” I spelled it. “It’s a traditional family name. Like Meda.”
“It’s my mother, you know, who’s at fault for Cathy’s name,” Muriel said from the living room. “You can’t imagine what she got me to name my son. We called him David, but his first name was Hezekiah. I can’t figure out where she gets this idea that we’re Jews. She lights her candles and mumbles her prayers, and makes us do the weird thing for Christmas, but I’ve never even been in a Jewish church. Come on, how many Jews have Christmas trees?” She gestured to the unlikely article in the corner of her living room.
“Then in fourth grade, Cathy decided she wanted to be called Meda, because of this girl she didn’t like who was named Cathy. My mother got me to name her after my great-great grandmother who was a whore. It’s her way of saying I don’t have any room to talk about us being come down from a whore.” Muriel put emphasis on the word and glanced at her mother. “It’s true I’ve had bad luck with men. Meda’s father, he worked as a custom cutter. Well, you know, lots of college boys came out in the summers and work the harvest. Meda’s father was a college boy.”
“So you and Mary Beth made up over Annadore and the Little Miss Pageant?” Rachel asked Meda, as though Muriel had been discussing the weather.
“As long as she doesn’t try to pull a stunt like that again, we’re made up.”
“You just don’t appreciate how far that kind of thing can take you. I mean, everybody knows who Jane Jayroe is.”
“That’s because she has a street named after her. Nobody remembers Susan Powell.”
“Who’s Susan Powell?” I said.
“See?” Meda was triumphant. “Just like Jane Jayroe, she was Miss Oklahoma and she won Miss America. Only she doesn’t have a street named after her.”
Rachel shook her head and said, “If Mary Beth hadn’t made the mistake of marrying my brother, Ari, she could have made something of herself. She had a college scholarship and everything from the Miss Oklahoma pageant. And Cathy could have done a lot better for herself than Travis if she’d tried a little harder at those pageants. If she’d worked even half as hard at it as Mary Beth did.”
“I’m so tired of everyone telling me I ought to be grateful for what Aunt M. was trying to do for me,” Meda snapped. “Everybody acts like she was doing it out of the goodness of her heart, but she gets off on that stuff. She likes doing the pageants and the dresses and the whole nine yards. That’s why she did it to me, because poor Terry wasn’t pretty enough and Aunt M. got tired of bringing home Miss Congeniality awards. That’s when she latched on to me. That’s why she’s trying to do it to Annadore, too. I wish Terry would have another daughter, a pretty one.”
The rest of the Amos family barely registered Meda’s outburst and Rachel turned to the topic of the Amos family curse.
“As Muriel so politely puts it, the other Meda Amos, our great-great-grandmother, was a prostitute. She was pretty like Meda. Muriel was a knock-out, too, when she was younger. Had tons of boyfriends in high school. Same with Meda, our Meda. Muriel was good-looking, but you want to see beautiful, you should get Mary Beth to show you some of Meda’s pageant pictures. She was, she used to be really…wow.”
I wasn’t brave enough to mention within Meda’s hearing that I had seen the pictures, or that I vastly preferred Meda to the girl in those pageants. Instead, I said, “I think she’s ‘wow’ now.”
“I mean before.” Rachel let the unspoken words hang over us, like unshriven ghosts. “Too beautiful for her own good.” She made it sound like Meda’s fault.
“Yes, Meda’s gorgeous. Lucky for me I’m the smart one,” Loren said bitterly. “Since I’m never going to be the pretty one.”
“We’re in deep shit if you’re the smart one,” Meda said.
“Fuck you, you fat bitch.”
“Girls. I won’t kid you, Mr. Raleigh, my sister is a kook. I don’t know exactly what happened to her, except the drinking.” Rachel glanced at the wine in Meda’s hand. “But Meda, our Meda’s just too dumb to get out of this town and make something of herself.”
My Meda was stonily quiet through most of her aunt’s recitation, and even honored me with an arch look at one point, until she remembered she wasn’t speaking to me. She stood at the bar, looking into the living room, and sipped her wine with some semblance of calm.
When Rachel stepped out to smoke a cigarette on the porch, Meda said, “Crap, I’m so tired of hearing her ‘make something of yourself’ speech. She thinks she’s done so well because she got married and moved into the city. You know what she made of herself? She’s the night manager at a Circle K in Norman. If that’s making something of yourself, I’d just as soon clean your house for the rest of my life.”
“This town has been against this f
amily from the word go,” Muriel said, morose and drunk, standing in the kitchen doorway. “When Cathy was born, I was going to put her father’s name on the birth certificate, but the nurses at the hospital wouldn’t let me. Said they couldn’t since he wasn’t there to say it was okay. They didn’t believe me, and my letters all came back, so that never got done. Sure, it’s easy to look at my life and say, ‘She shouldn’t have had three kids with three different men.’ It’s not like I started out with that intention. Who plans for that sort of thing?”
As beautiful and destructive as a glacier, Meda turned toward her mother. “I feel like I’m still in first grade, when you came for open house and humiliated me.”
“Oh, God, Cathy. Do we have to—”
“Don’t ‘Cathy’ me. You named me Meda!” Muriel walked back into the living room, ignoring Meda, who turned to me to finish what she’d wanted to say to her mother. “Halfway into the open house, she shows up drunk and starts telling my teacher and all the other parents about being abducted. Just picture, she’s six months pregnant with her third bastard—no offense, Loren—and she’s standing there smoking, in a grade school classroom, talking about being abducted by aliens.”
I longed to flee from the blast radius of Meda’s fury, but fearing the consequences of my cowardice more than I feared her anger, I stayed to hear her out.
“What did you think?” Meda shouted, asking the trailer at large, then subsided. “Of course the nurses wouldn’t put his name on my birth certificate. What did you think?” She was shouting again: “What was it, again, Mom? What’s my father’s name?”
Muriel was defiant. “David Cohen. His name was David Cohen.”
“Cathy Cohen, doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?” Meda asked quietly. Her hand was shaking when she set down her drink. I rested my hands on her shoulders and when she didn’t object, I put my arms around her. She leaned into me and we stayed that way for a few minutes, with me trying to carry part of her burden. Her mother coughed several times in the front room, prompting Meda to pull away from me and say, “Let’s get out of here.”
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