Foxglove

by Mary Anne Kelly

  “Darling,” said Claire in a lower key, taking a newer tack. “I’m here with Dharma Dover. You haven’t met Dharma yet, have you? No, I think you were on duty that day.” (If the orphan part didn’t get him, the reference to his responsibility and authority surely would.)

  Johnny opened the door all the way. From the look on his face, Claire knew it was the orphan part that got him. Johnny’s mother had died when he was eleven. He’d come home from school one day and all his neighbors had been in the kitchen. Sometimes, late at night, Claire would be awakened by flailing arms and legs. Johnny would be trying to fight off those neighbors and get into the bedroom to hold onto his pretty mother. (“She’s already cold,” Nicky Antonelli’s mother kept shrieking in his nightmare. “Don’t let him get to her!”)

  Claire would leave the bed (she’d learned to after three or four times of getting bopped in the eye) and would come back with a glass of cool water to hold to his lips when he’d wake up and find himself crying. When it first started happening, he used to tell her it was from Nam, something that happened to him in Nam. He thought it wouldn’t be manly to tell her the truth, a grown man crying like a baby over the death of his mother. But once he had told her. And she’d done the right thing, she hadn’t followed form reactions, which were to hold him in her arms and comfort him. Something told her this wouldn’t work. She’d turned her back on him and gone into the bathroom, coming back a good two minutes later with the water.

  “Dharma Dover, eh?” Johnny crossed his arms suspiciously and looked the small girl up and down. “If you have any idea of bringing that mutt in here you’d better head straight up to the bathroom with it and give it a bath.”

  From the expression on her face, Claire thought Dharma was going to bolt or burst into tears. Instead, she said, “Tch,” and went off to look for the bathroom. Anthony, all eyes and open mouth, flew from his hiding spot and led girl and dog up the stairs. Claire looked at Johnny, and he narrowed his eyes at her. “And you,” he said, “don’t be thinking I’ll go suddenly softhearted on you and fall in love with that ugly scrap of dog meat. Jeez, that’s an ugly dog! I hate dogs. You should never have brought it here. And what do you think you’re doing with the kid?”

  “Johnny.” Claire shook her head distractedly while she pulled a pan from under the cabinet, lit the stove, and started to pull chicken and vegetables from the refrigerator. “If you could have seen how that kid was being taken care of! The grandmother was supposed to watch her and you know where I found her? Drunk and out cold in a car by the waiting room with a run up her stocking and her daughter-in-law inside dead. It was a sin. The kid was playing out in the parking lot! Well, not playing. Sitting there on the back steps of the funeral parlor, Johnny, with her mother in the casket hardly cold.

  “And I even went up and talked to Andrew Dover. You know, sort of to notify him of the state of his mother out there drunk when she should have been looking after the child, and I asked if I could be of assistance and said I would be happy to look after the girl for the afternoon. I didn’t even get to the part about giving him our number yet and he says, ‘Sure.’ Just like that. No asking me for my number or anything. I mean, I gave it to him, but I’m sure he lost it. Can you believe it? I mean, I know he must be crazed, but you have to think of the child. That would be your only reason to hold it together, wouldn’t it? I mean, it would be for me. Or you. I hope. I think. I mean, God forbid.” She raved on. She hardly knew Johnny was there after a while, she just kept talking, angry, trembling, brutally scrubbing the chicken with coarse kosher salt. They could hear the two children up the stairs laughing at the ugly dog. Johnny came up behind her and put his big head down on her shoulder from behind. Claire stood there with a knife and a carrot in her hand and Johnny pressing on her, and she realized she hadn’t heard her son laugh like that in a while.

  The front doorbell rang. It had a rich, refined, grand-piano-in-the-drawing-room ring to it that Claire never got tired of hearing, but just now she could have done without it. She handed the knife and carrot to Johnny and went to answer it. It was Portia McTavish, pretty as a picture. Her eyebrows were up in polite interest, her nice hair arranged in a more stylish twist now, her eyes, slightly mocking, held back and above Claire.

  “Oh, hello,” Claire said, surprised, wiping her chin with the back of her hand, hoping it wouldn’t be coated in chicken fat.

  Portia smiled. When she smiled, she lit up like a Lutheran. “Hi,” she cooed in a three-syllable, we-understand-each-other conspiratorial song, “I’m Portia McTavish. I just found out you got stuck looking after Dharma and I just wanted to rush right by and take her off your hands.”

  “But she’s no trouble,” Claire frowned, annoyed that Portia would assume that the child would be a nuisance to her. “I’ve enjoyed having her, really. She kept me company, to tell you the truth. Drove all the way out to Port Washington with me.”

  Portia’s pretty, beady eyes took in the foyer and all that was—or wasn’t—in it. They hadn’t gotten to the foyer yet, and Claire felt it already falling short of this establishment-oriented person’s expectations. She knew Portia was establishment-oriented because of her shoes. Claire had photographed too many fashion layouts not to immediately recognize the good stuff. The life she’d once led gave her an immediate feel for what was good, what was pretending to be good, and what was just plain cheap. You can always tell how someone appears to herself by her shoes. Who she is that moment is portrayed in the shoes she’s got on. Portia’s opinion of herself was very good indeed. The leather was subtle, low to the ground, and cashew-colored, hemstitched along the rim with an intricate Indian princess Morocco stitch. Expensive shoes. Understated. Claire tried not to look down at her own vagabond unwashed Keds.

  One of the hardest things, for Claire, about not being wealthy, was the inability to buy good shoes. She loved her Keds, savored a life that was conducive to wearing them all the time, but she really did miss sticking her big long feet into sinfully gingerbread shoes. Why did this woman remind her of this? Claire didn’t need to be wealthy, felt sorry for people stuck in the appearances and the roles that it cast you into; she was all right where she was, wasn’t she? Her dream, her family in this house, had come true for her. She was standing in her own doorway in her own dream; kindly tell her why was she feeling so darned uncomfortable. Because, she knew, some people simply had that effect on you. They looked at at you under their own myopic magnifying glass, giving nothing, offering nothing, instinctively knowing you’ll fill in the slack with your kindness. They stood there, like Portia, with their minuscule waistlines accentuated sharply with a slender belt, and made you ask yourself how long it had been since you’d had one on yourself? How long had it been since you’d worn any item so fitted it required a belt?

  Johnny, who came out to have a look at who was there, had himself what seemed to Claire like a very long look. Claire found this annoying, but she didn’t like to show it. Not for Narrow-hips here. No nine-pound child had ever passed through that pelvis. And perhaps never would. She might be daintily built, but she wasn’t the youngest, noted Claire with satisfaction. It registered in her heart that this was an unworthy thought. It did. But she was still annoyed that this woman had been alive and flushed and happy (she couldn’t hide the fact that she was happy, for all her displays of deep sighs preceding tch-tch-tchs) at the funeral parlor, talking to Andrew Dover, and Tree, Claire’s only just rediscovered Tree, was dead.

  “Well, come in while I get her,” said Claire, understanding at once that this woman was not going to disappear until she had gotten that for which she’d come. She left Portia and Johnny talking in concerned tones. If Claire ever had any doubt that she was in love with Johnny, all she had to do was to leave him alone with a woman like Portia McTavish for fifteen minutes. Then the passion ran rampant in her own imagination, and she could feel her pulse clicking briskly in and out of her emerald-green heart. Never mind. A little while and she’d be gone.

  Cl
aire found the kids in Anthony’s room, the dog in a towel on the floor between them, and Claire was struck once again by Dharma’s strong resemblance to her mother. That determined, cleft chin. She had certainly charmed their Anthony. He seemed to be as captivated with Dharma as he was with the dog. They were building the dog a house of blocks. They would get her settled and in there and then she’d whack her way out of it, having figured out quickly enough that this was what was getting the big laugh. She might be ugly, but she wasn’t stupid.

  “Damn straight,” thought the dog, already world-weary and adept at telepathy.

  Claire cleared her throat. “Portia McTavish is here to pick you up, Dharma.”

  “Well, I’m not going with her,” Dharma answered without turning her eyes to Claire. She didn’t sound petulant, merely firm. Claire couldn’t help the shoot of joy that leapt through her at Dharma’s decision. It meant that she would rather be here with Claire’s family than with Portia McTavish. Claire knew it didn’t mean she didn’t want to be with her own father. A parent in grief is not a true parent for the moment, needing understanding himself the way he so understandably does, but the idea of the child rejecting Portia in her favor was undeniably agreeable.

  “She’s not going, Mom,” Anthony repeated patiently, as though his mother were an out-island Greek or intensely hard of hearing.

  Claire hesitated. Did Dharma want to be forced, the way children so often did when they were unsure? The dog crossed eyes with Claire. She didn’t look any better for having had a bath. Bedraggled little wreck, she shook like a vibrating toy installed with fresh batteries.

  “Maa-aa,” Anthony whined familiarly, “go away!”

  “Tell you what,” Claire decided. “I’ll suggest we keep things the way they are. I’ll set up your sleeping bag for Dharma—”

  “No, I want the sleeping bag!” Anthony cried.

  “Okay, so you sleep in the sleeping bag, that’s more polite anyway, and I’ll make up your bed for Dharma.”

  That decided, the children forgot her and went back to their serious and gentle investigation into the canine world. Mentally noting that she would need to do an urgent hand wash of a couple of sheets and pillowcases, spin dry them twice and then throw them into the dryer, she came down the stairs to find Portia alone. Good, she thought, then saw Johnny returning to the living room with a drink. It threw Claire off for a moment to see Johnny coming in like that, drink in hand, shit-ass grin on his face.

  Claire smiled brightly. Portia gave a characteristic shake of her wrist, her gold bangle making no sound against itself, and Claire lowered herself opposite her. Her easy chairs might not be new, but the covers were, old-fashioned muted yellow chintz. Claire had hunted through hundreds of tacky neighborhood fabric shops to come up with something like the expensive ones in the magazines, and she knew she had done well here; you couldn’t do better than these. This, and the fact that the cushions were indeed good goose down, gave her the courage to say what she did. She was, after all, the lady of the house. “Dharma will be spending the night here,” she said with more authority than she felt. “It is late and the children seem to have settled in.”

  She need not have bothered to continue. Portia seemed quite happy with the decision without even an explanation. She took a deep breath, exonerated, and let it out contentedly. She stretched her toes, settling in, and fluttered her mascaraed lashes. “John,” she said, “what were you saying?”

  “John?” Claire sucked in her cheeks. She had to sit very still while Johnny continued his story about the child murderer of Richmond Hill. He had played a role in the murderer’s capture, and Claire concentrated on her own battered fingernails while “John” embellished his part for his captive audience. This, then, was the true test of marriage. Not adultery, not the strains of time, but listening to the same, same, same story fall from your husband’s vain lips onto unmarried, unattached, feminine wide-eyed violet ears.

  She would let it go. She would let it pass. She would wrap it in an imaginary ball and breathe it out and blow it up to the sky and send it far, far away. It was up the chimney, over Forest Park, it was speeding north over Queens Boulevard on its way to the city. She would puncture the bugger on top of the Chrysler Building. It would fragment in pieces all over nonchalant Murray Hill. She smiled. She must be gracious. A good sport. She ought to be flattered. Her husband was, after all, an attractive, desirable man and she ought to have the good sense to appreciate his worth and enjoy feminine covetousness.

  She ought to, but she didn’t. Not with this woman. This, bitch. All right. Calm down. Don’t lose control. At least wait until she leaves before you do. Claire grabbed hold of the chair arm and kneaded it till her thumb grew numb. How would they get rid of her? Or, how would she get rid of her, as Johnny didn’t seem to be in any rush. Uh oh! Claire stood and ran into the kitchen, remembering her chicken, then realizing she’d better just throw some of those carrots in the soup before she went back in or they’d never have supper. Then, while she was doing it, and so as not to hear the two of them enjoying each other, she snapped on the radio. Who should it be but Mozart? I’d rather be in here with him than in there with them anyway, she snarled to herself.

  How funny life was. Years ago, she would have raced back inside to supervise Johnny’s apparent interest, torture herself if she had to, but be witness to it all she must be; and now here she was, in her own happy kitchen, the evening light just the way she’d always hoped it would shine for her, right on the still life of a table there. How many people had an eat-in kitchen this big? She congratulated herself. If people wouldn’t be the way you wanted them to be, at least the things about you could comply with your dreams and moods and wishes. Claire snapped a leaf of tarragon from the overflowing window box. The next thing she’d do was go find that big tick-tock alarm clock she’d seen in the attic. The puppy would think it was her own mother’s heartbeat and sleep through the night. Maybe.

  Good old Mozart, she marvelled as the room opened about her, and how right she had been to leave that long-legged, antique stove dark blue. She’d had Johnny mortar in a blue-and-white handpainted tile she’d shlepped from Mykonos on the splashback. It was a scene of the three windmills over the village hill. The hell with them, she thought. Soon enough propriety would drive Portia away, and if it didn’t she’d make Johnny’s life such a living hell that he’d think twice about neglecting her for a woman she couldn’t stand.

  This was very simple to do when you spoiled a man rotten the way she had done, and still did Johnny. Just let him have a couple of days of no freshly ironed shirts, no coffee continental on a tray with Lorna Doones and a flower on his napkin beside the News. No bubble bath waiting for him when he walked in the door, no hot supper on the table. She didn’t do these things for him because they were expected of her. She did them because he treated her a certain way, as though he was in love with her, and she reciprocated in kind. If he thought she was going to let little googooeyes in there ruin her fantasy—always a woman’s reality—he was momentarily to be rudely awakened. She scraped a shard of nutmeg over the soup and sat back down with some nice baby white potatoes. Anthony couldn’t bear them, but if she kept them whole and out of his bowl he’d never notice. Would Dharma eat? If she wouldn’t, she’d keep it to the side for her. When her brother Michael had died she hadn’t been able to eat for days, and then would suddenly wake up ravenous in the middle of the night.

  A sharp rattling behind her turned her head. It was Carmela, making faces at her through the pane. Sophisticated women, whenever they got together they were dimwits once again. Always enemies, at least Carmela was an old, familiar enemy—and one she loved.

  “Why didn’t you knock on the door like a normal person?”

  “I was enjoying watching you thinking with your lips moving.”

  “Did I really?”

  “Just like Daddy.”

  “Why on earth did you come to the back? Great lady of the manor. What will people say? What’
s that?”

  “Oh. Your dress. The one you loaned me.”

  “Feels like a year ago.” Claire sat back down. “So much has happened. I’ve got Tree Dover’s kid Dharma upstairs with Anthony and a dog—Freddy’s frigging dog—up there with them.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Today. Everything today. What’s today’s date? I ought to write this one down. And I went to the funeral parlor—”

  Feminine laughter from inside brought their gazes together.

  “It’s what’s-her-face. Portia McTavish.”

  “Oh. Her.”

  “Yes. She’s come for Dharma. For Andrew Dover. You know.”

  “Sure.” She took a snapping bite of a carrot. “A little hot for chicken soup.”

  “Yuh. It might cool down. It’s never too hot in here, anyway.” Claire wasn’t going to say “If I didn’t make the chicken I’d have had to throw it away.” Nothing turned everybody off dinner as much as the thought it wasn’t bought, intended, and designed for that day.

  Carmela’s eyes swept the room. However much money was spent, she could never seem to capture Claire’s wizardry with color, with things, making a room come to life. Claire had old paintings even in the kitchen. Bright children’s paintings, odd things she’d collected round the world full of water and blue skies. The only prints she allowed herself were some obscure Renoirs. You couldn’t fault her for those. Claire’s style was clutter and clean empty spaces. You felt as though you were in some granny’s house, left of the ashram. Once you sat down in the easy chair it was hard to get up. Carmela knicked in the direction of the living room. “Is she staying?”