The Done Thing

by Tracy Manaster

  A nova of laughter from downstairs. I froze, though really, anyone who walked in would assume it was simple nosiness. I dug the rounded corner into the pad of my thumb. Kath likely misplaced it all the time, leaving it lying about. Or forgot about it entirely if she left the house in a rush. It was set to expire in two months anyhow and was right by the lollipops. Any one of the grandkids might dislodge and lose it, reaching for a sweet. A juvenile shriek from the basement, followed by a crescendo of babble. I pocketed the license, digging its edge under my thumbnail, not enough for pain but right on its margin. The first thing I had ever stolen.

  In the Claverie house, the staircase never squeaked. Framed photographs of the Gs—Blue’s sisters, Georgia, Genevieve, and Grace—and of Blue—who was himself a mutated G, Gene to Blue Jeans to Blue—lined it. The siblings grew younger as I neared the bottom.

  “Halloo,” I called, stepping into the living room, where fringed rugs, presumably hand-tied, helped to muffle the noise of the Claverie family and kept linners down to a tolerable roar. The room abutted a generous patio; a wall of glass panes and sliding doors let in the bald November light. And there they were, slant-lit: the lithe, linner-eating Claveries of St. Louis, blessed in their heights and speedy metabolisms. Blessed in their numbers. Four generations crowded the room. A dozen merry Claveries at least. I palmed Kath’s license, laminated and smooth. Most weeks, linners were just the thing. Rowdy, bustling, and they filled the day. The Claveries, young and old, were invariably warm. But there was a catch, sometimes, and I don’t think any of them had the least idea. The more rousingly they welcomed me the more apparent they made it that I was not of their same stock and was therefore in need of welcoming.

  Pam waved me over. Georgia was the G beside her. Pam had told me once that all those Gs tripped her up too. Especially with Blue going by Gene professionally. When they first started seeing each other, she had sent a highly flirtatious email to the wrong g_claverie. Georgia greeted me with a bright hello and waxy kiss on the cheek. From Pam, I got a proper hug.

  “You two sound like you’re having a grand time,” I said. The g_claverie incident was some comfort if looked at properly. Clearly, I was running away with myself. A girl who’d share an embarrassment like that with her old aunt wasn’t a girl given over to secrets. “Dare I ask what’s so funny?”

  “Long story,” said Pamela.

  And Georgia, “Just a lame joke.”

  “I’ve got plenty of those,” I said. An opening, and fast; I seldom got plum little social gifts like that. I wanted Pam to think of you, just a little. It had been a while. I wanted a reminder of what that looked like. I fingered Kath’s license. My new good luck charm. “How do you make seven even?”

  “Take away the S.” Pam turned slightly away. She wore a low ponytail and a broad collar. Add her strong chin and her profile looked like Jefferson’s on the nickel.

  “Terrible,” said Georgia, but she was smiling.

  “Why was the little cannibal kicked out of school?”

  “Oh! I know this one.” Georgia pursed her lips. Her lipstick didn’t quite suit her. “Is it something about Grade-A?”

  That gray coin hardness settled deeper into Pamela’s face. You’d sent her that joke and the previous one, Clarence. You always ended your allotted letters with jokes, an absurd bit of cruelty after the ending you’d made that was anything but one. Pamela kept her voice neutral. She delivered the punch line. “Because she kept buttering up her teacher.”

  Georgia shook her head. “You two. You should take this on the road. A family act.” Her family came out garbled. Mother-daughter, she’d been about to say.

  “Hardly,” said Pam. “Unless by ‘take this on the road’ you mean ‘take it far away from here.’”

  “Anything’s better than knock-knock jokes,” Georgia said. “Nicky’s going through a phase.”

  “We’ve got loads more,” I said. “What did the cheetah say to the witch?”

  “Save some for next week, Lida. Georgie, can I borrow my aunt a moment?” Pamela really was an extraordinary girl. Warm. Forthright without being blunt. Look at how she navigated that bit of social triangulation. I know perfectly well I’d have flubbed it, fumbled a hint to the effect of Georgia, dear, doesn’t your mother need help with the ham?

  Georgia peeled away. A pufferfish sigh from Pam. “Lida, what are you on about?”

  “Lame jokes,” I tried.

  “My father’s jokes,” Pam said. My father’s. Not Dad’s. Don’t think for a moment it escaped my notice.

  “I know,” I said, stalling a little. I had led us to this point, yes. I had done it deliberately. But I wasn’t as canny as I sometimes thought I was. I hadn’t the least sense of how to get us from where we were to where I wanted us to be. He’s not a factor in my life: what she always said about you. Everything would be okay if I could only get her to say it. “They’re still funny,” I said.

  A blue, assessing stare. “Not really. And you made Georgia uncomfortable.”

  “She didn’t know they were his.” Nothing bad had ever touched the Claveries. Aside from Blue’s blindness, maybe, but they’d chugged domestically along, scarves up their sleeves.

  “I knew,” Pam said, palm at the base of her throat. “You made me uncomfortable.”

  I’d meant to, at least a little. I waited.

  Pamela out-waited me. One of those slight, significant fulcrums I had no idea was coming until I got there: she had never out-waited me before. “It was the conversation,” I said. “I was only trying to join in.”

  Pamela held my gaze. I didn’t turn my head. Not at the hollow, rubberized thud of a Claverie grandchild’s basketball. Not at the pipe-pitched shout of keep-away! or the maternal Archer Claverie Graham, I told you not in the house. Claveries by the score. I wished Pam had married into a petite family; I would never get used to her looking so small. “Okay,” she said, and the coin-face melted away. “This is me, deciding that you’re saying what you’re saying.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “It does. It doesn’t sound like it does, but it does. Listen. I’m this close to being worried about you.” Her thumb and forefinger pinched a sliver of air. “This is me trusting that if something’s wrong, you’ll trust me enough to say it.” It sounded like something her social worker would have spouted, ages back. Across the room, Kath Claverie fussed with a vase of flowers, three daughters in her orbit. Her father stood to join her. The flowers were heavy-petaled, bold, pink as sunburn. I knew nothing about plants. If I had to guess, I’d say they were marigolds. Gladiolas maybe. The names just sounded so chipper.

  “Kath really has an eye for flowers,” I said, pointing.

  “Grace did them,” said Pam. “She’s taking that class.”

  I stood there, stalled out, trying not to unpack the implication: this is a thing I should have known. If I really belonged I would know it.

  Pam said, “Whatever you’re thinking, un-think it.” She made her voice sonorous. “Lida Stearl, turn off thy head, go forth, and mingle.”

  18.

  I sought out Blue. Most of the Claverie height was in the legs; seated, Pamela’s husband didn’t look much taller than any other man. Everything about him was streamlined and efficient. Borderline buzzcut hair. No beard. No stubble, even. Frank had occasionally nicked himself, and he was almost 20⁄20. I wondered how Blue managed such a clean, regular shave. He cocked his head at my approach. How he managed to hear my footfalls over the gibbering of his three nephews I would never know. Seshet, his guide dog, might have somehow prompted him. She hunched still and silent at his feet, saddled with a vest of orange mesh. Even the littlest Claveries knew not to pet her.

  “It’s Lida,” I said.

  “I know.” He waved, arm snaking deliberately through the air, avoiding the semicircle of children before him.

  “My turn! My turn!” one yelled. Nicky, I thought. Georgia’s son, who was going through the knock-knock phase.

&nb
sp; Say hello to Lida, Frank would have told him, were you raised in the zoo? But Blue Claverie only laid his hand on his nephew’s head and scrunched. Fine blonde strands cropped up between Blue’s fingers. “What’s this?” Blue asked. “A mop? I don’t need a mop.”

  The three children laughed. Nicky and Benny. Lace ringed the third one’s socks. A niece. One of Genevieve’s. Emma? Emily.

  “Do you need a mop, Lida?” Blue tilted his face toward me.

  I laughed. “A snow shovel, maybe.” I gestured at the drifts outside before remembering who I was talking to.

  “It came on fast,” Blue said, rubbing his arms against an imaginary chill.

  “I know.” I was speaking too brightly and too quickly, penance for a gaffe he hadn’t even seen me make. “Last Thursday it was almost fine enough for Pam and me to eat outside.”

  Something not quite affable shadowed his face. He didn’t know that Pamela played hooky on Thursdays. I peeked over at Pam. She had drifted back to Georgia. In the middle of the room some Claverie child had got down on hands and knees and crawled, barking, in circles. At Blue’s feet Seshet held her preternatural stillness. Pam had trained the guide dog well; Seshet had no idea those antics were the sort of things her species had rights to. I studied Blue. Tried to get a read on how much damage I had done. But I couldn’t glean a thing from the unfocused patina of the glass eye, his left, nor from the hard-boiled-egg surface of his right one, under which his iris twitched purposeless back and forth like a quick dark trapped fish.

  I forced myself to calm. Pamela wasn’t the sort to step out. And even if she were, Blue was safe. Even if he wanted to, Blue Claverie could never harm her. No matter how she hurt him first. He couldn’t see to aim.

  “Uncle Blue,” Benny whined.

  “Nephew Benjamin?” The disquiet—or whatever it was—fell away when he smiled.

  The nephew smiled back.

  “You’ll have to join us next time,” I said, covering in case Pam needed me to, normalizing, making our one-off luncheon seem a regular thing. “For lunch. If you can make it. I know you’re busy.”

  “Always,” said Blue. He extended his arms like a B-movie zombie, though he’d never seen a movie or anything else and I had no earthly idea how he’d picked up the gesture. “Billable hours . . . billable hours . . . must . . . have . . . billable hours . . .”

  The collected children shrieked.

  “Billable hours . . . or, what’s this? A bug?” Blue pinched Benny’s nose, “Yes! A bumpy little bug. Take it away! I don’t need a bug.”

  “It’s not a bug.” Benny’s voice came thin, like a telephone operator’s. Nicky and Emily shrieked.

  “Are you sure?” Blue asked, putting on his stern attorney voice.

  The child nodded.

  “It feels like a bug. A roly-poly Benny bug.”

  “It’s a nose!”

  Blue released the child with an exaggerated sigh. Knock-knock Nicky darted toward his uncle’s hand. Blue cupped the boy’s ear and wagged it back and forth. “What’s this? Lida, can you tell what it is?”

  I wasn’t a Claverie. I didn’t know this game. “It’s an ear,” I said, wishing I was the madcap sort of adult capable of guessing.

  A bracing guffaw. “Lida’s kidding. I can tell it’s not an ear. It’s a butterfly!”

  Benny and Emily squealed for their turns. A fourth and fifth child joined the group, shrieking full tilt.

  Blue went for Nicky’s other ear. “Another one! Another butterfly!”

  I stood there, mute.

  Blue jiggled the ears. “Just look at all these butterflies.” His grin spread, exaggerated, clownish. “Who needs butterflies? No one needs them.”

  Giggles. Not from me. Last Thursday, and this. The unreadable twist of Blue’s mouth. Last Thursday, and this.

  Benny grabbed his own ear. “Butterflies,” he demanded, tugging with a free hand on Blue’s sleeve.

  “Butterflies,” echoed Emily.

  “Butterflies,” repeated Benny, copying the copycat.

  “Butterflies,” the newcomers joined in with no small urgency.

  Blue’s hands traveled. Ear, nose, hair. “I don’t need butterflies. I don’t need little bugs. I don’t need a mop. You know what I need?” His arms folded around the child’s frame. My throat squeezed close, as if it was trying to force down a hardboiled egg. A bit of me would break to hear what Blue was sure to say: you, Nicky, you. You’re just what I need.

  On the center rug, the barking girl continued to turn. Whatever G she belonged to should have swooped in ages ago. Every time she—Addison? Tess?—made a full turn I caught some new feature of Blue’s. The slight bump of the Claverie nose. The thin sharp eyebrows. That wide, unreadable mouth.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Kath Claverie clinked a glass beside the buffet. Claveries froze: Georgia and Pam like cutout paper dolls; Grace and Genevieve, flanking their mother; Kath’s father slumping hangdog over his cup; Addison—it was Addison—mid yelp; the snow-dusted children tumbling in from the yard; the card-playing G husbands; Blue with one hand on Ben’s head, one on Emily’s; Nicky beside him on one foot, making an exaggerated show of his struggle not to fall.

  I held still too. Not one person in the room looked like me. Kath brushed her bangs out of her face. “Linner’s on.”

  Claveries swarmed.

  I slid a hand into my pocket, checking once more for Kath’s ID. At this and every linner, she’d laid out a display of peanut butter at the far end of the buffet, satellite to the home-cooked spread—the ham, the salads, the red potatoes still hot in their skins. The Claverie children made straight for the sandwich section—a constellation of jars, chunky, creamy, and everything anyone could imagine pairing with peanut butter—to assemble their revolting concoctions. Popcorn, tortilla chips, cheddar cheese, bologna, and pickles took their place alongside marshmallow spread, cut apples and bananas, chocolate chips. At my first linner, there hadn’t been any jam. I’d commented—just an aside, really, I avoided peanut butter, it caked in my teeth—and the next week five sticky varieties appeared, bright as stained glass.

  At the grownup end, ham fell from the bone in spirals, sugar-crusted and warm. Something smelled strongly of pepper, and Kath had put out a bowl of strawberries, bold as rubies, and, in November, almost as expensive. I stood elbow to elbow beside her. I examined her neck. The skin was almost smooth beside the birthstone necklace she always wore—my own, I knew, sagged with lines. Someone had warned Kath and she had listened; the neck is as exposed to sun and air as the face. Unless moistened and buffed with the same diligence, it’ll be quick to show age.

  Kath caught me looking.

  “You must have been in the kitchen all day,” I said.

  She shrugged. “It’s nothing, really.”

  “At least the kiddos could try it.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” And because she was Kath Claverie, matriarch of a sunny clan never touched by terror or by shame, she was able to say in good faith what followed. “The whole point of family,” Kath said, “is to make things easy on one another.”

  19.

  The next morning I dressed for Riverview. Simple slacks and a well-pressed shirt, jazzed up with one of my better scarves. The suit last time had been an error, formal and conspicuous. Instead of Frostmouth, a man was at the desk. He didn’t give me any fuss over Kath’s ID. Nor did he glance at the logbook where I wrote her name, the K spiked and deliberate, as it was on the license signature, the T crossed on a slant. It was as I often said: Women are better with the detail work.

  The Riverview carpet was the color of under-eye circles. Each door displayed a cutout turkey, inked with its occupant’s name and a tagalong exclamation point. Each turkey had a tail of construction paper feathers onto which residents had evidently been encouraged to list the things that they were thankful for. Alice! had illustrated her feathers with fat crayons, her scrawlings as indecipherable as Pammie’s kindergarten chickie-birds. On her lone yellow feather, Janine!
had printed the word steak as bold as you please. Herman!’s bird had three times the plumage of any other and every feather was crowded with names. Showoff Herman! Aside from Kath’s necklace I’d never seen anything so tacky. Marjorie!’s turkey was wordless, its feathers a symmetrical fan. Someone had completed it on her behalf. It had to have been a serious stroke then, if your mother wasn’t up for the task.

  I didn’t knock.

  The room was private but very small. You would envy her window, Clarence, though the blinds were drawn. They’d painted her walls for false cheer, wan yellow, the color of undercooked eggs. The television was on. The room flickered.

  A gummy mewl.

  Your mother sat erect, bolstered by pillows. Her mouth drooped, comma-like. She’d got heavier. Her limbs mounded under the blanket. She looked like a thing a child might sculpt. Her eyes, blue, like Pam’s, like yours, moved toward me in tiny increments. First the television screen. Then a patch of wall beside my hip. They paused at the pleats in my slacks. They rose to my face. The live half of her mouth stretched to a thin slash. I listened for the hard i that would mean she was trying for Lida.

  A low release of breath. A wet intake. A grist-ground series of ch-ch-chs.

  The television advertised a brand of leaner cat chow. I switched it off. “I thought I should see you,” I said. “Now that I know you’re in town. We haven’t really talked since the funeral.”

  A dull huff from the bed. Frank and I had kept our struggle close and private. The steady tattoo of too-short pregnancies, the paperwork and hope winging their way toward Korea. Barbra knew, and you knew, about our losses and our plans to adopt. The both of you’d promised to be discreet. It was possible that in the parking lot Marjorie hadn’t known the full twist of what she was saying.

  Another noise from the bed, a flat gluck.

  It was still a wretched thing to say.

  She was still your mother.

  We were burying my sister. She’d had no right to intrude on our goodbyes.

  Her eyes wheeled away from me. Time had yellowed the whites. Thick fluid accumulated at the tear ducts. It looked like Elmer’s glue.