The Mandibles

by Lionel Shriver

  “You’re not doing your marriage any favors by blaming him like that.” Florence was stalling for time. “He didn’t personally default on the national debt.”

  “Sorry, but the urge to blame someone you can get your hands on is irresistible. These days, taking on the sins of the world is Lowell’s only constructive function.”

  Once in a while, when you have a great deal at stake, like turning a small, quiet nightmare into a big, out-of-control one, your brain actually works. “Listen! Why not approach Grand Mimi?” The inspiration was such a relief that Florence felt weak.

  “But I hardly know her …,” Avery faltered. “She’s always been so remote …”

  “Like you said, this is about family, about pulling together. And she’s got two bedrooms gathering dust. She’s, what, ninety-five, ninety-six? But not that out of it. She must have some idea what’s going down. It’s not that big an ask, even if she is kind of private.”

  As they discussed the proposal further, both sisters relaxed. It was a good plan. The Stackhouses would simply need to keep to themselves, and be respectful. The caretaker Margarita was a good-hearted woman, more companion than nurse, who would surely see as well that this was a Mandible emergency.

  But when Florence mooted the idea at the dinner table, Willing was skeptical. “Why should she?”

  “Because she’s family,” Florence reiterated, with a sentimentality she didn’t quite buy herself. “We’re talking about her grandchild, and her great-grandchildren.”

  “I don’t get the impression she feels any connection to us. She’s always looked at me like some floor lamp.”

  “Willing’s right,” Nollie said. “My mother can be one cold customer.”

  “She never talks to me,” Willing said. “It’s only, you know, Do you want a cookie?”

  Grand Mimi paid her familial dues by giving a rather formal Christmas Eve cocktail party every year, and she did always seem glad when the kids skittered to their parents’ sides for removal. Mimi could barely extend herself to grown grandchildren, and giving a hoot about yet another generation was a bridge too far.

  “Maybe it’s better if I clear off,” Kurt said. “Make room for your blood kin.”

  “Even if I were willing to throw you out on the street,” Florence said, “it’s not going to help me to lose one houseguest and gain five.”

  “It’s not going to help us,” Esteban said testily. He was touchy about pronouns in relation to a house whose deed remained in Florence’s name. With their dinners now crowded with two people neither of whom he cared for, he was touchy, period.

  “Nollie?” Florence implored. “I told you my dad hoped you could check up on Grand Mimi, and you weren’t keen on the idea. But now you could go with a mission. Best of all, not on your own behalf.”

  “I’d be the worst possible emissary with that woman, on anybody’s behalf.”

  “Your appearance would have shock value,” Florence pressed. “It would underscore that these are extraordinary times, calling for extraordinary measures.”

  Nollie shrank into herself, looking queasy. It was bizarre to see a woman of seventy-three afraid of her own mother. But with enough manipulative appeals to her lifelong “bravery,” she relented.

  Nollie mobilized in a spirit of gritty resolve. Attached to a reputation as intrepid, she insisted on taking the bus to the Jay Street subway stop, though in light of the previous morning’s fat envelope she might easily have covered taxi fare. It was a Saturday afternoon, and after drilling her aunt with directions, Florence was glad for once that the woman dressed so shabbily. Public transport was getting chancy. Anonymous sneakers and jeans lowered the likelihood of her being accosted. Florence almost asked Esteban to act as an escort, but that seemed condescending, and if mother and daughter got into a heart-to-heart, he could be waiting for hours.

  Yet Nollie came back more rapidly than expected. On the return journey, she did take a taxi—stepping out shakily, looking wildly up and down the street as she pocketed the change from the fare. As Florence turned from the window, Nollie let herself inside, bolted the top lock, and secured the chain. She headed straight for the cognac.

  “So …,” Florence said. “How’d it go?”

  Nollie burrowed into the sofa and tucked her feet under her thighs, cradling her juice glass. She looked like a six-year-old with progeria.

  “Was she mean to you? Could she honestly be harboring a grudge over Better Late Than this many decades later?”

  “I have no idea,” Nollie said robotically.

  Willing crept downstairs and sat on the third step to eavesdrop.

  “You came back awfully soon,” Florence prodded. “Was she not home, then?”

  “She wasn’t home.” Nollie’s rigid manner did not convey the experience of an unanswered doorbell.

  “Would you … be willing to try again? Avery’s family has to relinquish their house within days—”

  “We can’t try again.”

  “Nollie, what happened? This is pulling teeth.”

  Willing slipped to the doorway. “She likes story, she said. Stories are about not telling you what happened. When you blurt out the ending, it’s not a story.”

  Nollie eyed her grandnephew. “I’m not sure I do like story. Real story. I think maybe I only like the fake kind. Or only real stories about someone else.”

  Willing turned to his mother. “See? She’s still doing it. Carter says she’s ‘a hack.’ Who only wrote ‘one bare-all success that titillated literary circles back when there were literary circles.’ But I think she’s good at it. I think she’s got the knack.”

  Florence blushed. “Nollie, please don’t take my father’s remarks to heart. Willing’s quoting him immense out of context.”

  “I’m familiar with the context,” Nollie said. “I know what Carter thinks of my work. And if I didn’t, I’d be grateful to Willing for letting me know.”

  There already seemed a thread between those two, and now Florence appreciated how Esteban must sometimes feel: jealous.

  “Go on,” Willing said.

  “I was taken aback by Manhattan.” Nollie took a stiff swig. “All the panhandlers. Very aggressive, too. Threatening. When I lived on the Upper West Side, the bums were crazy. Now they’re sane enough, but rancorous. I was surprised: rancor is worse. Crazy people are sealed in their own world, and their energy churns around and around, like in a blender. But this bile is straight arrow. It’s aimed at other people.

  “You folks are used to it. But for me … The families camped out on the meridians in the middle of Broadway. So many shops closed. Restaurants still open keeping their shutters down. The news reports in Europe—they don’t include what it’s like to walk down the street. Less like New York, and more like Lagos.

  “I’d hopped off a station short, at Seventy-Ninth Street. I thought I’d go to Zabar’s, show up with my mother’s favorite smoked sable, as a peace offering. Zabar’s has been at Eighty-First and Broadway for a hundred years. I’ve made runs there for whole-grain mustard and pop-up sponges since I was a kid. But the store has been vandalized. Someone slashed graffiti over the plywood, EAT YOUR SALMON. I thought that was almost witty. I decided to skip bringing a present.

  “At my mother’s building, there was no more doorman. Fortunately I brought the keys, which I’ve carried all over Europe since 1996.” Nollie turned. “See, I didn’t fight this assignment that hard, Florence. I’ve never been resigned to not seeing her again. We’re both so willful, feasting on our grudges. But generating all that anger, year after year, has worn me out. And by now, the whole feud thing isn’t only exhausting, but exhausted. It’s been feeling a little stupid for quite a while.”

  “All grown up, at seventy-three,” Florence said. “There’s hope for us all, then.”

  “The floor was gritty. Mailboxes were listing open. Fifty-eight’s had a copy of Foundation Journal jammed inside, but the issue was from back in September. The elevator was broken, so I took t
he stairs. Some guy walking down bumped into me, hard, as if on purpose. His clothes were disheveled, with one exception: an immaculate white fedora. I thought, That’s weird, because when I was a kid my father had one just like it.

  “When I rang the bell, I was shaking. I’d no idea how she’d respond to me, with no warning. I didn’t want to give her a heart attack. And that was the other worry: what if she hadn’t answered the phone because of a health crisis.”

  Florence said, “If Grand Mimi were in the hospital, someone—”

  “I don’t mean that kind of health crisis. The thing is, I wasn’t shaking only because she might still refuse to speak to me. Or because she might be indisposed. Something felt wrong. After I buzzed, the peephole cover lifted. There was an eye. It wasn’t my mother’s.”

  Florence said, “Margarita—”

  “The peephole cover dropped, and spun around, as if someone flicked it. No one opened the door. I tried the bell again, and heard laughter on the other side. Youngish voices. Then the man on the stairs came back, carrying a bottle of gin. He shouldered me aside and said, ‘Got a problem, lady?’ He took out a set of keys. I recognized them. Looped with a red ORGAN DONOR tag. They had to have been my mother’s. That man didn’t look like an organ donor, unless he was planning to donate someone else’s.”

  Florence said, “Maybe she’s had to take in tenants—”

  Nollie ignored her niece’s jive theory. “I know I get myself into trouble. I have a temper. My last ex, Gerard, told me I have to learn to rein it in. He said I’ve no idea how small I am, how old I am, how I’m not as strong as I think. Gerard said I had to learn to be cowed. But I don’t have a talent for cowed. So when this man began to bully in the door, I demanded, ‘Where is Mimi Mandible? This is my mother’s apartment, and I need to check she’s all right.’ He repeated ‘Mimi Mandible’ as if that were the funniest, stupidest name he’d ever heard. I insisted he explain what he was doing there, and he said something like, ‘Piss off, you old bag.’ He shoved me, and I fell.”

  “Are you okay?” Florence asked.

  “Achy, but nothing broke. While I was still on the floor, the man doffed the fedora with mock chivalry, and repeated, ‘Mimi Mandible! Mimi Mandible!’ before letting himself in. No one has ever found my mother’s name quite so hilarious.

  “At that point, I should have left, I realize that now. But I was so angry. Apartment fifty-eight is my home—and somehow having been banished from it for over thirty years makes it more mine. I thought, this place has already been taken away from me once, and twice is beyond the pale. Carter and I raced each other as kids on that staircase. I grew up on the other side of that door, which is full of my mother’s things, her jewelry, her perfume, her beautiful shoes—and we wear the same size. Someday those should be my things, mementoes of my childhood and of my mother. For decades, I’ve held on to the idea that she picked the fight to begin with, and she owes me an apology. After living with Pop so many years, surely Momma of all people should appreciate the importance of a book, and how art has to take precedence over feelings.” If Nollie was sneering, it was at herself. “Anyway, suddenly it all seemed so wasteful. Even I didn’t care about my book, or any book. I had to get in there. In my imagination, I’d rescue her from that awful man who made fun of her name, and she’d cling to me, and weep in gratitude, and she’d forgive me.”

  “You used your keys,” Willing said.

  “Everything happened very fast, but I saw enough—and I wish I hadn’t. The place was a wreck. Trash, dried-up sandwiches, hypodermics on the floor. Someone sleeping or high in the hallway was rolled up in one of Momma’s Persian carpets. A girl naked below the waist wandered past wearing the shreds of Momma’s mink; that girl looked right at me and didn’t see me. It was freezing; the utilities must be shut off. And it reeked. Encrusted pieces of my parents’ wedding china, the teal with the silver edge, were crashed around everywhere in shards. It looked as if they’d been using Momma’s collection of art vases for football practice; chunks of them were rolling around the hall. Through the entrance to the living room, I could see more young people, mostly out cold. The cream upholstery was covered in what looked like vomit. Carter and I got into terrible trouble if we ever ate chocolate sitting on that set.”

  “Tell me you got out of there,” Florence said.

  “I only stood in the doorway a few seconds. Then the man in the fedora sauntered into the hall, down by the dining room, swigging from the bottle of gin. His eyes lit up, and he lunged toward me. I picked up a chunk of vase at my feet—the clear Deco one with the crystal jags; I always thought it was ugly—and I hurled it. I only hit his knee, but I think it hurt. Then I ran. When Carter and I raced on those stairs, I always won. I didn’t even turn to see if the man gave chase, just powered to Broadway and flagged down a taxi. Finally fifty years’ worth of all that tedious exercise proved good for something.” The story, more than the sprint, seemed to have worn her out.

  “We should call the police,” Florence said.

  “I already did,” Nollie said flatly. “The dispatcher promised to send someone around, but I’m not convinced. She warned me that ‘squatting’ incidents were rife, and when I explained my mother was ninety-six I could hear her lose interest. The police were ‘overstretched,’ she said. They had to ‘prioritize.’”

  “Everyone at school,” Willing said, “says contacting the police is a waste of time. They’re mostly obsessed with protecting themselves.”

  “What have those people done with Grand Mimi, and Margarita?” Florence said.

  “I’m not sure that bears thinking about,” Nollie said.

  “But how would strangers get in to begin with?”

  Nollie shrugged. “Must be easy to dog two old women with their shopping. Don’t you ever feel vulnerable, inserting a key in the front door? I sure will from now on.”

  “Nollie is right,” Willing said. “We can’t go back there. Not without a gun.”

  “Willing!” Florence admonished. “We don’t carry guns in this family!”

  “I should have swallowed my pride, back in the nineties,” Nollie said, “and come to terms with my mother. I thought it was a matter of artistic integrity, refusing to regret writing the very novel that made my reputation. But it was ordinary stubbornness. The truth is, the portrayal of the mother in BLT isn’t flattering. I sure wouldn’t appreciate anyone publishing that I was ‘as sexual as a dead mackerel,’ for all the world to read. I never needed to unwrite the book, which is impossible anyway. All I ever had to say was that I was sorry for hurting her feelings, which would have cost me nothing.” She rose to pour another finger. “I made a terrible mistake.”

  “The mistake,” Willing said, “was not taking a gun.”

  • CHAPTER 10 •

  SETBACKS NEVER BRING OUT THE BEST IN PEOPLE

  In theory, Avery accepted that material possessions were a trifling concern in an emergency, and all that mattered was the safety of her family. The competent characters in disaster movies didn’t dither in burning buildings about how to rescue the couch. Yet expecting herself to feel blasé about abandoning a $6,000 armchair was tantamount to assuming you could go into Settings on your fleX and select “Become completely different person.”

  So she wearied around in the same circles. They could not arrive at Florence’s narrow, depressing house with a vanload of upscale furniture. They could stash their things in storage, but the substantial monthly charges would add up. She’d heard through the grapevine that one neighboring family, also forced to sell to some opportunistic plateface—there, she’d said it, if only in her head—had gone through the whole rigmarole of storing their stuff, which was as much trouble as moving, only to default on the payments and lose everything anyway.

  The Stackhouses might have held a giant yard sale or contacted a house-clearance company, but the District was awash in objects of every description, and it was a buyer’s market in extremis. Nobody wanted your matching mango-wood side
tables, though ears might prick up if you mentioned a five-pound bag of rice. In the encampments on the banks of the Potomac, the homeless were sleeping on top-of-the-line Posturepedic mattresses salvaged from curbsides. Getting their hands on rotgut might have been challenging, but street people could take their pick of cut-glass Waterford highballs from which to sip it; in the massive impromptu flea markets that had sprung up all over town, whole sets of crystal were going for ten bucks. Hauntingly, Belle Duval had once reflected on the disconcerting discovery of coming into means: that above a surprisingly low threshold of primitive needs, “there isn’t that much to buy.” Since the affluent purchased up a storm anyway, the high-end detritus flooding American cities pressed Belle’s point: if it didn’t line your belly or protect you from the elements, it was junk.

  Thus the only intelligent option was to accept their purchaser’s derisory offer for “contents,” since their realtor advised that they could instead be charged for removal of effects. Emotionally, too, it was easier to leave everything than to cling to one side table and let its sibling go. Simply closing the door and walking away at least spared the kids a Sophie’s Choice confrontation with their own belongings, and she’d been able to sell Bing on the notion they were going on an “adventure”—a line for which the older two, alas, were too savvy.

  Yet once she accepted the inevitability of near-total divestiture, Avery felt surprisingly powerful—not only lighter and less encumbered, but strong, as if she were flinging desks and bed frames off her shoulders like an adrenalized survivor of an earthquake. She was moved to consider the dual meaning of the very word possession: an object of which you take custody, but also a wraith taking custody of you. Had she ever owned those mango-wood side tables, or had they laid claim to her?

  Meanwhile, Lowell was hopeless. He stuck her with everything: Tossing partially used cleaning products. Choosing the five best pairs of socks from a drawer of thirty. Remembering that despite the historic upheaval, they were required to keep financial records for tax purposes going back seven years. Canceling the utilities. Finally getting through to the Salvation Army, only to learn that charities were swamped with donations of household goods, and their kitchen implements, gardening tools, linens, Christmas decorations, and most of their wardrobes were destined for the dump. Researching the few stations that still sold gas for their SUV en route to New York. Meanwhile, her formerly debonair husband huddled in his office banging on his fleX in a bathrobe, claiming that someone needed to submit a “counterargument” to Ryan Biersdorfer and “restore confidence.” But a disheveled, unemployed academic wasn’t going to restore anyone’s confidence, least of all hers. It wasn’t a time for writing.