“Too bad,” Freddy flopped onto the handsome settee. “I was just about to offer my congratulations.”
“Ah,” said Claire, “you’ve got to come over and see it.”
“I hear she’s a beaut.”
Claire warmed. “Oh, Freddy, and just wait till we get the fireplaces opened!”
Freddy looked at her strangely. “Oh. The house. Yes. Yes, I will come. Michaelaen loves it.”
They watched the party, both rocking convivially to the now Trinidadian music.
“You didn’t mean the house, did you?” Claire said finally.
Freddy laughed. “No, I meant the horse. Johnny’s horse. Your horse, for that matter.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Oops.”
“Whose horse?”
“The horse Johnny bought that is now sitting in a stable at Aqueduct. At the track. Claire. The racehorse.”
Claire held the glass till it was upside down, and still she kept it like a hat on her nose. She watched the chandelier through it, dazzled by the kaleidoscope of shimmering crystal and knowing if she ever put the glass down she would have to think about what Freddy had just said. She did.
He said, “I hope I haven’t gone and ruined a perfectly good surprise.”
She smiled at him with her mouth closed. He covered his eyes with his hands and peeked at her through carefully buffed pink fingers.
“Uh oh. Promise me you won’t accuse him till I get there.”
“Nonsense, Freddy.” She followed the lead he’d unknowingly provided. “I wouldn’t breathe a word. I wouldn’t want to ruin his surprise. Not for the world. I think it’s sweet.” There. She’d be damned if Freddy would watch her squirm.
The bastard. The filthy, lying bastard. She would kill him. At very least, she would divorce him. She felt her stomach unclench. Yes, divorce. Anthony looked at her with puzzled, frightened eyes. All right, not divorce. She would kill him. She would take his revolver out and shoot the bloody, slimy, stinking lowlife. She searched the table in front of them for a pack of cigarettes.
Visions of herself haunting one Salvation Army after St. Vincent de Paul after another and back, on the Saturday before the antique and jumble shop owners got there, flew through her mind. She plucked a glass of white wine from one more endearing serf, capsized it neatly, and went on to the next. She hadn’t minded ferreting through other people’s garbage to find stuff renovatable enough for her family. And how many dumpy upholstery shops had she waded through till she came up with the cheapest and the best?
Lord knew, her flag went up and her heart would start pumping at the very hint of a yard sale; any heap of junk on someone’s front lawn would plunge her foot down on the brake. Some of her happiest memories were when she was pregnant and driving around Richmond Hill on a Saturday. As the older residents packed up to move to Florida, frightened by the daunting certainty of other-cultured neighbors moving (oh my God!) right down the block, they grew panicky and careless, letting go of all sorts of unbelievable treasures for a song. Fruitwood chairs hidden under studded patent leather, held sturdy for generations by four-inch European dowels and now sitting under someone’s indifferent Japanese maple with a skeptical sign asking fifty dollars Scotch-taped haphazardly on it. What would they do, take them with them? To the land of chrome and wicker? To whom would they leave them? Sons and daughters crunched into studio apartments in the city? Pay storage?
“You mean fifty dollars for each one or fifty for the set?” Claire had pointedly taken her car keys out.
“Kit and caboodle,” the fellow had said, eyeing her knees.
“I’ll take them,” she’d said, noticing somebody else parking his car and getting out with that money-in-his-pocket jaunt.
Johnny had yelled for three days over those chairs. But she’d stuck to her guns. She knew what was good. And the best part of it was the minute she’d had them at the upholsterer’s and they’d stripped off the patent leather, some woman had come in, taken one look at the first chair, and offered two-sixty for it. “So you can imagine,” she’d chirped triumphantly to Johnny, “what they would go for in the city. And what they’d be worth when I’m finished with them.”
Johnny wouldn’t let on that they were a success. Oh, God forbid. But whenever any of his friends came over they never failed to mention the chairs. “Whoa!” They’d back up appreciatively. “Must be those antique chairs Johnny found!”
Claire would let them go on thinking Johnny had found them. What did she care? It only meant Johnny would love her that much more. What a gal! he must think. She had thought. But you see, now, he hadn’t. All he thought was that she’d keep on saving him money and he could go on happy, lucky to spend it. She could feel her blood boil. A racehorse! She wondered, suddenly, if she couldn’t drop dead right there from a quick cerebral hemorrhage? No, there was Anthony. She couldn’t. There was Anthony. There was no piano. And there was Freddy, still beside her, pleased to watch her expression harden like loose sand from mud to cement. And he was enjoying this, wasn’t he? All at once, it came to her. He disliked her, she realized, surprised. It weighed her down and she was transported right back to sobriety. Across the room, Portia McTavish danced. She was very pretty, Claire admitted to herself grudgingly, what with her high color and enthusiastic gracefulness. Claire watched her stupidly, entranced with the vivacious energy Portia poured out of her dress and into the room. She was quite glad that Johnny had not come. She might hate him, but at moments like these it was clear to her just how much she loved him.
Suddenly, near the wall alongside Portia McTavish’s gyrations, Claire recognized Andrew Dover. It couldn’t be. How could he be here with his wife just dead? But he was here, drowning himself in a glass of Stefan’s good Glenfiddich from the look of him. She was not shocked, she was stunned. How could a man lose his wife, the mother of his only child, and act like this? And where was Dharma? She’d practically pushed the kid home so she’d spend some time with her father, and now he was here. Claire put her glass down on the white thing, the whatever-it-was. The paint, she noticed absently, was beginning to peel. She crossed the crowded room.
“Andrew.” She had to raise her voice to be heard. “Are you all right?”
“I am,” he enunciated carefully, “getting there.”
She tried to laugh.
He leered at the dancing form of Portia McTavish.
“How’s Dharma?” Claire said to him.
Andrew’s head shook up and down wildly. “Much better,” he finally shouted back at her.
“Who’s with her?” she wanted to know.
“She’s fine,” he said.
“Andrew. Excuse me, Andrew!” she had to tug on his sleeve. “Does that mean she’s alone?”
“Mrs. Rieve next door keeps looking in on her.” He closed his eyes. “Dharma won’t let her stay. Says Mrs. Rieve’s a witch.”
“Look, Andrew. I’m going to call my sister, who is staying at my house. I could ask her to run over and take a look at how Dharma’s doing if she has a chance.”
“No, thanks.” He grinned. “Can’t dance.”
Claire thought he was overdoing the drunken slur bit.
She was angry at him for not showing more compassion toward his daughter, and angry at herself for not showing enough compassion toward a man who’d just lost his wife. She turned her back on him and left the room for the relative calm of the cool, dark hallway. There was no telephone. She climbed the impressive staircase and imagined what happy compensation it must be each morning for Carmela as she regally descended it. Compensation for what, Claire was not exactly sure. The master bedroom was the first door on the left. Claire couldn’t help remembering the time she had considered spending half her life there herself. She knocked and went cautiously in. Wow. Nice. Like the digs in an English castle. Or at least a Hollywood version of an English castle. The phone was on the nightstand and Claire perched herself carefully on the bed’s maroon silk coverlet. She dialed with the careful deli
beration of someone who had one too many under her belt. It rang a couple of times. Claire could imagine Zinnie, frowning, turning down the volume on her earphones, tripping lightly to the kitchen phone. At last she answered. Her mouth was full.
“Hi, it’s me, Claire.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything all right home?”
“Fine. All asleep. Right after you left. Oh. And Freddy’s thugs dropped off a rug. It’s rolled up in the foyer. The dog ate the whole box of Chips Ahoy, though.”
“Uh oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Keep her in the kitchen, then.”
“She’s sleeping on Anthony’s head.”
“Tch.”
“I put them both on Anthony’s bed.”
“Look. There’s something else. Dharma’s father, this Andrew Dover fellow, they live across the street in the house with the brown porch—”
“I know Andrew.”
“You do?”
“Of course.”
“Oh. Well, he’s here, can you believe it? And he’s drunk.”
“Poor guy.”
“Poor guy?! He could get drunk at home, couldn’t he? I think he left Dharma all alone. And he’s drooling all over Portia McTavish.”
“What else is new?”
“Really? Since when?”
“Claire, they all go for Portia. She’s prime rib. Or hadn’t you noticed.”
“I think she’s a skunk. But yes, I had noticed.”
“And?”
“And I thought maybe you could cross over and peek in on her. Like, don’t scare her or anything, just ring the bell and drag her out by the hair and make her stay at my place for the night. And leave a note indicating where she is.”
“Suppose she won’t come?”
Claire chewed her jagged thumbnail. “Then let her be, I guess. I don’t know what to do. Call child welfare? What?”
“Gee, I don’t know about that, Claire. I mean, the kid’s mother just died. You really think it’s a good idea to get her involved with a whole new set of strangers? Some of these foster-care places can be pretty scary to a kid. At least here, she’s familiar with the place. She’s got you across the street if she needs someone.”
“Go over and get her, would you, Zinnie? I’m so worried about her. I’ll call you back in half an hour.”
“How’s the party?”
“Oh, very grand, you know. Spectacular booze. I’ll call you back.”
She hung up the phone, used Carmela’s pretty bathroom and noticed, on her way past the inlaid rosewood rubbish bin, a heap of Q-Tips, stained black. Poor Carmela, she thought, standing there at the mirror, touching up her jet-black hair at the roots. She bet that parted-down-the-middle hairstyle would have to go. And soon. She went back in and dunked her face into a cold handful of water. Really, she didn’t look too bad, she admired. Nothing perked you up more than a well-lit reflection of yourself, and Carmela’s mirror was so generous. It would be, though, wouldn’t it? Everything was, in the end, how you looked at it, and reassurances like this might be fleeting, but they did do you good.
Already she felt more gently inclined toward Johnny. After all. He couldn’t very well have discussed the idea with her. He’d have known her reply would be no. Was it really so terrible? It wasn’t as though he’d taken a mistress. After all, the money he must have spent was the money he’d earned restoring cars. Everything he made on the job went straight into the mortgage and insurances and food and clothing accounts. Or it usually did. She knew what was up. He’d gambled with his car money, gambled big, and won. There was probably somebody else in on it. There always was. Probably Pokey Ryan, his old partner. No, it wouldn’t be Pokey. Pokey wasn’t quick-witted enough to make any money gambling. Unless Johnny had talked him into investing his savings. She hoped it hadn’t been Pokey. She doubted it was Red Torneo, Johnny’s dinosaur, the cop who’d practically raised Johnny after his mother had died. He was the gnarly old fellow who’d gotten Johnny into fixing stationhouse cars when it looked like the kid was hooking up with the wrong crowd. So Johnny had wound up fixing them instead of stealing them. Johnny had kept his hoodlum friends, but he’d turned his life around and ended up emulating Red Torneo and joining the department.
Not the coldhearted in-laws who’d fed him their leftovers and sent him off to school in hand-me-downs from their well-suited kids, things Johnny’s mother’s inheritance helped to buy. If Johnny considered anyone family, it was Red. She must call Red. They hadn’t seen him all summer anyway, what with the move and all the goings-on. They were due. Red used to have a floating cafe down in Sheepshead Bay. Johnny had taken her there when they’d met. A nice little place he’d retired to over there by the boats, but the zoning laws had been changed or whatever it was and Red had been forced to sell out to the city. All a crock of horseshit, Red said. Anyway, he’d found himself a new little place over in Brighton, on the boardwalk there, on the Russian Riviera. Brooklyn had changed, said Johnny. But Brooklyn had always changed, said Red. That was the point of it.
They must get over there and have a look. And soon. She switched off the light, edged herself out onto the balcony, and stood gently with her cheek against the cool, rich woodwork. The music was more to her taste way up here, where she could hear it, not reverberate in it. The hallway in darkness was cast in blue shadows. It was nice. This suited her. Johnny suited her too, she realized, missing him. She’d done the right thing marrying him. It would be all right. Claire had been through too many unhappy relationships not to appreciate the good in this one. And she was no quitter. Not when she had something real to hang onto.
The sound of rustling interrupted her thoughts. It wouldn’t do to be found lurking about in the dark. So unseemly. Nosy in your sister’s boudoir. She moved forward into the light so that whoever it was would notice her and not be startled. But just as she hesitated, the drape loosened and fell across her shadow and something in a man’s urgent voice beneath her on the stairs stopped her dead. “Yeah, sure, that’s right,” he hissed, “keep it up.”
“Keep what up?” Portia McTavish yanked her arm from Andrew’s grip and faced him, laughing.
“You know what,” he said. He didn’t sound very drunk now. He sounded mean. Claire could see the back of his handsome fair head.
“Come off it.” Portia’s face was green and twisted in the awful light.
She pushed him soundly and tripped back down the stairs. Claire grasped her chest. She dared not move now. Andrew was clearly humiliated by this girl. Claire stood quite still and waited for him to move on. Instead, he stayed there, looking after Portia. His hands were knotted into lifted fists. When would he move? Claire was frightened by his stillness and the dark, unyielding rage that held his purple neck. He said something she couldn’t hear for all the music, then followed Portia back into the glittering havoc.
That was when she began to suspect Tree Dover hadn’t died the way they’d said she had. She had been murdered. And Claire knew then and there who had done it. She felt it as sure as she was standing there. A chill went up her spine. Maybe he’d had help. Maybe he’d done it on his own. But he sure as hell believed he’d gotten away with it. He was on to the next episode in his life. Well, Claire would be gol-darned. The green-and-purple drapes hung heavily and shimmered. She felt, like the moonlit passage just before her, wet and self-occupied, atonement for her grief.
Dharma, so little, sat looking in her mother’s three-way mirror. She was wearing her pretty pajamas and her hair was brushed one hundred strokes into all those ringlets. Dharma hummed, in soft angelic tones, the song her mother was to have sung in Mrs. Stefanovitch’s play. “Que Chelita Manina,” she hummed.
She took the bright-red lipstick from her mother’s golden tube. She held it, her eyes lighting up with an eerie new glow. She put the lipstick on, rolled it on, top and bottom, round and round she went, her eyes holding onto her eyes in the mirror, one small bedraggled phoenix here, taking off within
the iris of its own relentless festering. She let the lipstick go at last outside its own prim borders.
Claire stepped, after a while, carefully back into the party herself, feeling as though she’d do well to test the temperature with her toe, which of course she dared not do and so she stayed there on the sidelines of this shimmery pool of mainstreamers, hoping to spot her friendly old drink. It had been duly removed. “Sheesh,” Daddy would say, “Coney Island waiters!” She deliberated whether or not to leave. If she went home now she might be able to run over and assist Zinnie in getting Dharma. Carmela wouldn’t like it if she left, though. She would consider it to be a great breach of contract, that subtle, unspeakable contract between sisters whose terms read according to what each knows the other can and will do. Carmela was not likely to give her an Indian burn or a tickle torture, means once used with great success, but she still knew just how to get you going. She would bide her time and wait for her chance, and nothing would stop her from going through with whatever she’d decided would work. She would accuse Claire of showing off, of playing the prima donna, coming and going like that. Putting in a quick appearance and then rushing off. “So affected,” she would confess to their mother, tattling yet again. And Claire would have to watch their mother’s disappointed, cheerful face drop and wonder why Claire could not give that extra inch; it was little enough to ask after Carmela had gone to such lengths to invite all her friends for Claire’s sake.
She sighed. She gave up. She sank down into the opulent white silk sofa and resigned herself to having to remind herself, on and off, to breathe.
“Hi ya.” Jupiter Dodd tipped at the waist, took hold of her hand, and touched it with a small kiss.
Claire stood happily. “How nice of you to come and say hello!”
“If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain …”
“Oh dear. Am I that perverse?”
“Was Mohammed perverse?”
“Are you that mountainous?”
They looked together at his trim little body. Jupiter Dodd had a nimbus about him. Claire wasn’t sure just what it was. He certainly frightened most people. There was an air of nothing-to-lose about him that scared most people half to death, but also made them worship him—from afar. He wasn’t just honest, but often cruel and at anyone’s expense. So you took your life in your hands.
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