Lorna Mott Comes Home

by Diane Johnson

  This feeling had undergone some revision, since, thanks to Amy’s generosity, her gorgeous house would now be free and clear, and Amy’s vote of confidence gave Donna confidence in turn that she was more deserving than she herself had thought or at least must seem worthy to the Motts and to the rest of the world. But basically she’d still like to sell the house, repay Amy, make a profit after capital gains, and buy something very, very nice in, say, Connecticut, where things, though elegant, were cheaper? She indulged herself in daydreams of this nature. Maybe she could clear a million, even two, maybe even enough to live in New York City in a small, luxurious apartment, maybe around Sutton Place; she probably didn’t have enough for the Village.

  20

  There is no gossip like family gossip.

  Soon after the dinner at Honeur’s, Misty, Hams, Donna, and Peggy had exchanged their impressions of their mother’s emotional and physical state of health, her practical situation, and whether anyone had an idea of how to be of help to her. They loved their mother, if only because she hadn’t been around enough to irritate them the way that many of their friends seemed to complain about their own mothers—such, at least, was Hams’s observation. But not being around had also been their complaint about her when they were younger.

  One issue in particular divided them: whether to reveal to Dad—Ran Mott—in his palace in Woodside, that Mother was back in town in a modest, precarious place on Russian Hill. With Lorna off to France after their divorce, the problem had never arisen before, if it was to be a problem, of the two of them living in the same town, running into each other in the Cal-Mart or at Louise Davies after the symphony. There was some difference of opinion about what to do.

  Misty, speaking for herself and Hams, thought they certainly should tell Ran; in case Lorna got sick or destitute, his advice would be important. Peggy was more sensitive than the others to Mother’s slightly abject, poor-but-genteel comedown from being the wife of an important French playboy in an elegant, twee French village. She also resented on Mother’s behalf the difference in the conditions of her two parents, Ran so rich, Mother so poor, though she thought of herself as loyal to both. Not that Ran paid much attention to her or any of her siblings in the Lorna batch. Finally they decided that probably Dad should be warned.

  Lorna had known that coming back to California would involve culture shocks of various intensities. Food would not be one of them—you could eat sumptuously in San Francisco. Between Whole Foods, Real Food, and various specialty grocery stores, the food situation was very positive, not that she was a foodie—if anything the opposite, traumatized by all the expertise and trouble people went to in Pont-les-Puits and San Francisco both. But she could put on a convincing dinner and got to thinking she ought to do this, ought to begin having old friends over, just a few at a time in Pam’s small dining space. She delayed doing it, hoping to find an apartment soon, with a proper dining room; but it was on her mind.

  And she’d need a car, that was evident. She’d tried the bus a time or two, something she willingly did in Europe, but bus riding felt strange here, felt more foreign, and you had to wait longer for the thing to come. On bus 45, the one she had to take downtown, everyone spoke Chinese. Cantonese? You were surrounded by conversations you couldn’t eavesdrop on, which made the stop-and-go progress of the bus through San Francisco traffic seem very slow, though it gave to the experience a pleasing sense of the exotic, as if you were in Hong Kong or Guangzhou.

  She’d gone downtown, among other reasons to visit the lawyer Ursula Aymes had suggested, someone who supposedly knew international divorce law and could tell her about her situation. The woman, Casey Schwartz, Esq., was nice, but the office secretary, showing Lorna where to wait, had called her “dear.” “Sit right here, dear, and Miss Schwartz will come find you.” Once, in France, someone, jostling her on the bus, said, “Excusez-moi, ma petite dame.” These people meant to be polite and welcoming, no doubt, both of them, yet these epithets piqued Lorna. Should she get a facial treatment? Was it time to see how much silver might have crept in under the hair color she had used for so long? She knew she should scorn these anxieties; she had more resources of training and reputation than most women and should be above anxiety about age. She ought to be thinking about the iconography of the Beast in the Book of Revelation.

  She wondered if anyone called Ursula Aymes or Pam Linden “dear”? Dear. Ma petite dame. Of course, Ursula was tall. Which night was it she had a sort of sexy dream and awoke wondering if she’d ever sleep with anyone again? Had the dream—she couldn’t remember it—featured Armand-Loup?

  Armand-Loup and Lorna had met in San Francisco when he had come to curate a Nicolas de Staël exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1988. Lorna, prominent local art historian and lecturer, had naturally been invited to the opening. It was love practically at first sight; they had exchanged telephone numbers, had lunch two days later, things had moved very fast. Looking back on it now, Lorna could no longer capture the emotions, the excitement, the euphoria, except to remember it had happened, more than twenty years before. What had she looked like then? Armand-Loup had been slender and dashing.

  Casey Schwartz, Esq., had explained to Lorna the procedure for separating or divorcing in California a person who was away in France: you sent them a letter to start it off, and the long arm of California would take it from there if there was evidence that Armand-Loup was in agreement. Lorna was not sure that Armand-Loup was, really; though he may have already filed some sort of papers in France, she suspected he would just as soon go on being married, if only for cover. Would he make trouble over being divorced in California? Lorna was confused about the California/France options, and no one, including Casey Schwartz, Esq., seemed to know much about international rules. If they had been married in California, all would be simple, things divided down the middle. But they had been married in Paris at the mairie of the first arrondissement, standing in the imposing Gothic salle de mariage. The mayor had worn a festive, official tricolor sash and medals to pronounce the solemn words. Had there been strains of Lohengrin or Haydn?

  Armand-Loup had kept some of his San Francisco friendships and connections and therefore knew whom to call for news of what Lorna might be up to in respect to their situation. It got back to her that one or two people she knew had got calls from him. Was he also behind the continuing series of harassments, as she thought of them, from Pont-les-Puits about the damned graveyard in France and the idea that she had some responsibility for her friend Russell’s bones? It was horrible, emotionally speaking, to think of poor Russ’s bones, and she certainly didn’t have the fifteen hundred euros it was looking like it would cost to do whatever it was to them.

  The latest ploy by the Pont city fathers was a claim that she was the legal executor of his estate, nonexistent except for three or four canvases left at his lodging. They’d found a note in his handwriting, they said. They even insisted—“demanded” an ambiguous word in French that could just mean “ask”—they had demanded she come back and have a look, which was out of the question; Armand-Loup, in his bitterness, had probably even changed the locks.

  The late Russell Woods had regularly sent his paintings back to his native town of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where his old friend Dave Carlson had a little gallery and some connections in Chicago. It was in Chicago the Woodses had first been remarked, then sought after, now bartered at places like Basel Miami in the high six figures, soon probably to be seven. Dave Carlson still had several in reserve, not yet on the market, and had tried to find out if any had been left behind in Pont-les-Puits. It was thus, through the vagaries of the art market, they had learned in Pont that there was a current demand for Woods’s work, and they had been pleased to realize that the commune owned outright the one that hung in the mairie, presented by Woods himself, and possibly some of the others, owed in payment to local merchants. His paintings inevitably depicted the church, a Gothic chu
rch with pre-Baroque elements that captured a play of light and shadow irresistible to a painter, a texture of gargoyle shadows and silhouettes of angelic wings, and the statues of the oxen that had reputedly hauled the builders’ stones, with names carved beneath them. No one knew if these names referred to the stonemasons or the oxen themselves.

  There were also the three or four paintings—depending on how you counted the one that appeared unfinished—left in the Hôtel La Périchole where Woods had made his home. As he’d been a little slow with the rent, and died owing Madame Lafournier more than three hundred euros, she had no compunction about putting them aside pending the ultimate resolution of his affairs. Woods had been dead more than four years, but estate resolution took a while, and his works got more valuable with time. Could Madame Dumas be of help?

  * * *

  —

  In San Francisco, Lorna invited her various children to lunch one by one, wanting to hear more about their particular circumstances, give counsel, financial support if it was modest—very modest—and generally put herself back into their lives if possible. She’d been too long away. With Peggy, she immediately discovered that these conversations would have a way of turning back on herself:

  “Mother, how long can you stay in Pam Linden’s apartment exactly?”

  “Mother, won’t you need a car? We could look for something ‘secondhand,’ they say that’s always the sensible thing, a new car loses its value the minute you drive it off the lot.”

  “I know, Peg, I’ll certainly be looking for a used car of some kind.”

  “Do you hear from Armand-Loup?”

  “Are you filing for an actual divorce?” And so it went with Peggy, with Hams—actually also with Misty, who seemed to speak for both herself and Hams, a good sign they were getting along—and even with Donna, though Donna was mostly the exception, as she had little interest in Lorna’s doings and contented herself with saying the things Curt probably would have said if he’d been there, about renting versus selling, and hybrid versus gasoline.

  Since Lorna didn’t know the answer to any of the questions her children put to her, she always equivocated. Her mind was more on reestablishing herself professionally, and this wasn’t going terribly well. She’d sent out friendly letters by way of reminding art department chairmen and museum directors she was once again in America, available and enthusiastic about her new subject, the medieval tapestries of Angers. Several program directors at the various universities and museums she’d written to didn’t respond at all, or hadn’t yet responded. Those who had were friendly but strapped for cash, or had already hardened their lecture schedules for the coming year but promised to keep in touch.

  It crossed her mind to take Phil Train up on his offer of the (unpaid) Altar Forum as a venue to give a lecture; speaking there might have some word-of-mouth legs with influential women in the audience and would help her by honing some of the details of the talk itself. For the moment, pride impeded this move, but she could foresee she’d weaken. She’d wait another week for some better responses from somewhere, for instance the lecture agent about—was it Modesto?

  The lunch with Donna was a bit of a chore. Apart from her maternal concerns, Donna had no small talk and an invincibly literal mind, which Lorna had been slow to diagnose. When Donna said, “My bedspreads are green,” Lorna’s mind would flit to the environmental implications of bedspreads, or newness, as in “greenhorns,” before understanding that the only responses were to say How lovely or What color are the curtains? Should Lorna have said, My bedspreads are white? But then what?

  Thus they had little to talk about except Marcus and Manuel, who had been disruptive at nursery school and were threatened with expulsion. “They say Marcus bit a boy.”

  “They miss their father,” Lorna diagnosed. “Small children are affected by absence. Boys especially.” She regretted saying this, in case it sounded as if she were blaming Donna. She was sure Donna was doing her best, and it wasn’t her fault Curt was so strangely absent.

  “Oh no, they don’t really notice,” Donna said.

  * * *

  —

  Hams requested a second lunch with his mother, without Misty, for a day he happened to be in San Francisco—crossing the Bay between Berkeley and the city nearly as significant a journey in people’s minds as, say, Calais to Dover, requiring reflection and resolution before trying it, though it was only twelve miles of jammed bridge, metering lights, the anxiety of choosing one of the eighteen lanes and getting it wrong. From France, Lorna had thought of the Bay and lovely bridges as positive attributes of San Francisco, but now she saw them as features of the punishing commutes exasperated people were forced into daily, a means of separating families, like herself from Hams and Misty.

  For lunch with Hams, Lorna bought a quiche on Polk Street and fixed a tuna salad. They sat in Pam’s little dining room.

  “How long are you going to be able to stay here, Mom?” he asked.

  “I may have found something right near here,” Lorna said. She gave him the details of an apartment Ursula Aymes had just shown her. Nothing was settled, but she could see he was reassured.

  “Way to go!”

  “What brings you over here today, dear?”

  “Well, I wanted to see you. Misty wasn’t feeling too well or she would’ve come.”

  “I’m sorry to miss her.”

  “I think if we could move, she’d be a lot better. It’s getting to be an obsession with her. I was wondering…”

  “You know I don’t have a bean,” Lorna said sternly. Hams looked hurt.

  “It isn’t that. I was wondering if you thought I should approach Dad? If they can give Curt three million dollars, it seems like it’s worth asking.” Hams was known to have said he would never see his father again, so enraged was he over Ran’s vague disapproval of his general existence, or so he felt; but everything changes.

  “Really, Hams, I have no idea. Your father might as well be someone I never met. Would I know him on the street? Anyway, it’s his wife who has the money, I assume.” She understood Hams’s resentment, the imbalance of fortune, the sense of having misplayed one’s hand, not that she had any regrets for herself.

  “Sometimes I think Misty thinks she married the wrong brother,” Hams said. It leapt to Lorna’s mind that Misty might well think that, Hams not much of an earner, but of course she stifled the thought. It depended on your values. Hams was still in his thirties—he might yet take fire, his music or in the chef world. And so nice-looking, robust and manly—was he her favorite after all? She advised him to try his father, what could it hurt?

  Hams had begun to agree that Misty was right and they should move. Something disturbing had happened. It was a night Hams had his chef gig at Chili Pride, and Misty, feeling uncomfortable with morning sickness, couldn’t face a bowl of chili, so though she usually had dinner with Hams at the restaurant, tonight had stayed home. Sitting in the kitchen, she was surprised to see Sarah, her colleague at the cleaners, a druggy, taciturn woman of about thirty, at her back door, though the gate to the backyard had been shut, maybe locked, since her bike had been stolen out of it a few weeks before.

  “Hi, Sarah, how surprising!” Through the screen door.

  “Can I come in? This is Scott.” With her was a spindly youth in T-shirt and jeans, carrying a briefcase. Misty didn’t like strangers, but could think of no objection, since she knew Sarah and worked with her. “We were near here. Scott has to do something. We’ll only be ten minutes.”

  “Sure, can I get you some…there’s some Sprite…”

  “Scott has to do something is all, and we were nearby. We can just stay in the kitchen.”

  “What? This is…” Misty had a bad feeling, but she knew Sarah and, as there was nothing to explain the apparently harmless but furtive apparition, she opened the screen door and they came in. “There’s some
Sprite, and fizzy water and stuff.”

  “We’re okay,” Sarah said. Scott had opened his briefcase and was pulling out a rubber tube, pipette, spoon, matches. Works. All too clear to Misty some kind of drug works.

  “You can’t do that here, absolutely not,” Misty said.

  “We’ll just stay here in the kitchen.”

  “You can’t do anything here,” Misty said. The uneasy feeling in her stomach grew, confusing the already distended and rumbling stir of the baby in there.

  Needles. “Get out of here, Sarah,” Misty said.

  “Don’t worry, we will,” Sarah said. “Scott isn’t feeling good, he needs to do this.” But Scott was wrapping a rubber tube around Sarah’s own pale, thin, pocked arm. Misty began to feel queasy and went into her living room to sit down. Strangers in her kitchen shooting up. She smelled the wave of heat from a match lit in the kitchen. Please get them out of here. Her vulnerability crushed her; why didn’t she get up and say, Sarah get out of here? Why had she opened the door? Why was she scared? It was this neighborhood, this house, they had to get away.

  She tiptoed to the kitchen door and peeked in. Sarah was injecting something into a vein in her arm below the loosened rubber tourniquet. She looked at Misty looking.

  “It’s only speed,” she said. Misty began to feel faint. Blood left her head; the scene grew pale. She looked away. In junior high school, she had fainted in first aid class at the diagram of a puncture wound in the handbook. You put your head between your knees until the wave of fainting goes away and the blood comes back. She did this.

  When Hams came home later, Misty was apparently asleep, on the sofa, on her side, her head between her drawn-up knees. No one was around, but someone had been there; there were ashes in a jar lid on the kitchen table. He had to wake her to hear the story. She had fainted and somehow slid into sleep. After he heard it, he resolved to speak to his father. He realized it was more than three years since he’d seen him or spoken to him except to tell him about Misty’s pregnancy.