I said, ‘If you think of anything, you just ask the nurse to give me a call? And I'll come again. I'll come again soon.’ Then I tiptoed away.
I left my card with the nurses’ station. As I explained to them, I had a long drive ahead of me. And as I explained to myself, on that long drive, my mom didn't know me any more. All my life I'd been waiting for her to take an interest, waiting for her to mellow, but she was holding out on me to the very end. I couldn't ever remember being with her when there wasn't a stupid TV show playing.
74
I started sending flowers and soft-centre candy. Once in a while I'd phone State and get told there was no change in her condition. I'd promise myself to visit her, next weekend, next month, but I always found some welcome reason not to do it, and the only person I owned up to was my darling Grice.
I said, ‘I always complained about my mother's stony heart. Turns out I'm built just the same.’
‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Beat yourself up a little.’
I said, ‘You never talk about your mom.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I just hatched out of a giant white egg.’
We were looking through candle catalogues, trying to find something unusual for the Fisk-Melly wedding. Carrie-Ann Fisk wanted everything to look real ancient and holy.
Grice said, ‘Tell me something good about your mom.’
It took a while. I said, ‘She used to smell of Blue Fern dusting powder.’
‘That's nice,’ he said. ‘Let's hold on to that thought.’
I said, ‘I lie awake. I think about when I get old and Crystal leaves me parked in some old-age rest home. Never comes to visit. It'll be my punishment. My mom always said, “What goes around, comes around.”’
‘So did mine!’ he said. ‘Don't you hate that?’
He said he didn't think Crystal would abandon me. ‘Not Crystal,’ he said ‘She'll stick around. She'll be looking to mount you on a polished walnut plinth.’
She was gone a month before she called me. I was starting to think the whole School of Taxidermy thing was a front and she'd been kidnapped. Sold into a life of prostitution.
I said, ‘I suppose they don't have telephones yet in Bend, Oregon.’
‘That's right,’ she said. ‘Matter of fact, they haven't caught on to the wheel yet neither. They just pile their stuff on to sleds and drag it home from the mall.’
I said, ‘Well, a girl takes off into the wilderness and doesn't call home in four weeks, what's her mother supposed to do? I was this close to calling the FBI. Are you the only female taking these classes?’
‘I believe so,’ she said. But there's a couple of guys here have got bosoms bigger'n mine.’
So far she had done a ground-squirrel, two duck, an antler mount and an elk foot — might be suitable, she said, as a novelty base for a reading lamp.
I said, ‘Give me time. I may get used to the idea.’
She had also got a commendation for her fish. ‘I've done a two-pound yellow perch, and a seven-pound walleye,’ she said. ‘You have to be real careful with the fins. You have to ease them out, spread them out wet on to balsa wood and just let them dry naturally.’
I said, ‘Why are you doing fish? I thought you were intending to stuff poodle dogs?’
‘I am,’ she said. ‘But fish can be a taxidermist's bread and butter. Fish, and game heads. Anyway, you sign up for a course, you can't arrive and start picking and choosing.’ The kind of money she was paying, I'd have thought that was exactly what you could do.
She said, ‘I'm here to learn technique, Mom. If you have good technique, you can mount anything. I'm just starting on a cougar. Female, so she's not very big, kinda pale buff with black tips to her ears. Cute little thing. Could you call Dad?’
I said, ‘Excuse me?’
‘Dad,’ she said, ‘I think he'd appreciate a call. I gotta go, that was my last quarter. Bye.’
Grice was writing out cheques for me to sign. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Tell me how she is, but I don't want to hear anything about eyeballs or entrails.’
I said, ‘She sounds happy. God alone knows why. She asked me to tell you, did you know the best thing for getting skunk-scent off your clothes is tomato juice.’
‘Well, I'm obliged to her for that,’ he said. ‘Peggy? You don't think she's going to come home with a snuff habit or anything, do you?’
I didn't call Vern right away. We'd stayed pretty civil, over the years, but we weren't given to casual phone calls. Way I looked at it, if he wanted to talk to me, he knew my number. The only thing I could think was, he needed money. Only thing I could think was, the bottom had fallen out of worms. But I couldn't imagine he'd come running to me.
A week went by, then I got a postcard from Crystal. Picture of the Cascades, and all she had written was ‘You called Dad?’
He picked up. ‘Vern's Vermiculture.’
I said, ‘You must be a proud man. You hear about your daughter getting a gold star for mounting fish?’
‘I did,’ he said. ‘She told me they have a twenty-five-pound chinook salmon in the ice chest they might let her loose on. Well, if you've spoken to her, I guess you've heard about our troubles?’
Martine was in Bangor, awaiting surgery. She had found a lump. I said, ‘They can do wonders these days.’
‘Yup,’ he said.
‘They catch these things early, they can really root it out. Give a person a clean bill of health.’
‘Yup,’ he said.
‘And there's different causes,’ I said. ‘Woman finds a lump, don't mean to say it's cancer.’
‘Yup,’ he said. ‘But it is. So she's in there, getting it all took away some time this week. Probably be Thursday. I'm going over there. Old man Beebe's coming over, give Eugene a hand with the worms. Martine's gonna be laid up a while, won't be able to drive, or even brush her hair … Then we just have to wait and see …’
He was near to crying, I could tell. ‘She's only fifty-one, Peg,’ he said.
I told him I'd send flowers. Didn't see what else I could do. They had Mom Dewey living with them, never was afraid of hard work, and from what I heard she had had a new lease of life, after Pop Dewey electrocuted himself. And they had neighbours would rally around and help. When I was married to him, I heard often enough about the neighbourliness of Maine folk.
‘Peggy,’ he said. He just caught me before I put the phone down. ‘Tell me to mind my own business, but I hope you know about all that checking women are supposed to do. You know what I mean? They told Martine she should have been checking herself all along, but she didn't know that. Nobody ever told her.’
All the years I was married to Vern Dewey he never showed me that kind of consideration. When I was carrying Crystal, he didn't want to know any of the details and neither did any other man I ever met. Now they even see their babies getting born, which as far as I'm concerned is not a good idea. A man sees a woman in that kind of disarray, it could change the way he feels about her. But it's all the fashion. Men learning about labour pains and women standing in bars, cussing like rednecks. Everything turned topsy-turvy, men acting like women and women acting like men, and, to prove it, I had a daughter up in Oregon hadn't worn a skirt in years.
I was touched, though, him mentioning such a thing. He must have been dying of embarrassment.
I said, ‘Sure, Vern. And you take care of yourself too, you hear?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘course, it's a woman's thing Martine has got. But thanks for the thought.’
75
Crystal was back by late November. I was afraid they'd get some kind of weather up in Oregon and she'd be there for the duration, but she showed up on my birthday with a picture portfolio of her achievements, the head of a mule-deer buck mounted on a plaque and a black bearskin rug lined with plaid Scottish-style material.
I said, ‘You really shouldn't have.’ Turned out she really hadn't. She never was good at remembering birthdays.
Grice was taking me to the Blu
e Bayou Cocktail Lounge so Crystal come along too. I never did care for strong liquor. The waiter picked me out something real nice, looked like pale-blue milk, tasted fruity, but the younger generation were trying to drink each other under the table with Texas Twisters. We had a reservation at the Gardenia for eight o'clock and darn it if we didn't nearly lose it they made us so late with their messing around.
I said to her, ‘You seem happy to be back.’
She said she hadn't had too many laughs in Bend, there being just nine males and herself and them being the kind of guys to keep a respectful distance from a girl unless she had her picture in Rustler magazine.
She said, ‘Are you okay? You're so quiet. Am I butting in, ruining your evening?’
It wasn't that. I loved having her there. Although of course, when you're the only one who's stone-cold sober words like ‘Wickiup’ and ‘duck-plucking’ and ‘mail-order tongues’ don't seem so humorous. I guess I just wasn't in the mood to have a birthday.
I said, ‘Gramma Shea is in hospital, doesn't know who anybody is. If I ever get like that, you're to put a pillow over my face.’
‘What?’ she said. ‘And go to jail?’
I said, ‘I'll put it in my will that you had my permission.’
‘Don't bother,’ she said. ‘I still won't do it. It's hard enough chloroforming a pigeon.’
It was just the two of us for Christmas. Grice was away to his good friend Tucker's for a few days.
I said, ‘The hell with cooking.’
She said, ‘I'm with you, all the way.’
We ate corn chips, watched Jaws and The Omega Man, then we moved on to Pet Cherry Ice Sandwich and Love Story. In between I called England.
Kath said, ‘I've got May here. We've just had a beautiful piece of fruit cake, shop bought, and now we're putting a dent in a bottle of Double Century. First of January we're cutting down, though. We're both going on diet biscuits, otherwise they'll never let us on that airyplane to Spain. They'll be charging us excess baggage.’
I said, ‘You get a card from Audrey? She's in Chicago.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I did. But she says she can't settle, bless her. She'll be turning up at my door again, I shouldn't wonder.’
Crystal had a word, told her about Oregon, then she put me back on.
Kath said, ‘See? I told you she'd turn out lovely. How you moithered about her, and now you've got her there. You're a lucky woman, Peggy.’
On the twenty-sixth we drove out to the Palace of Wax and the Grand Prairie Craft Village. There was a car broken down, had caused several other cars to shunt into one another, and traffic backing up on the freeway.
‘Oregon's real beautiful, Mom,’ she said. ‘You get on a back road up through Deschutes Forest, drive for an hour and never see another vehicle.’
I said, ‘You're not thinking of going back there by any chance?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I was just saying.’
Before she had gone away to train for her new profession she had as good as had her first customer promised to her. A lady with a elderly shih-tzu dog, regular customer at the grooming parlour. Unfortunately for Crystal it was not to be. The animal upped and died the week after she left for Oregon, and the bereaved owner got tempted away by the new Pet Cemetery that had opened in Cedar Hill. What I had read, the prime sites, with lake views, were getting bought up fast.
After Christmas she started placing advertisements and ordering supplies. Moulding plaster, borax powder, gasoline, wire, shredded wood, resin for making glass eyes. It looked like the devil's kitchen. Perpetual Pets, she was calling herself. She set up in an old studio, used to be occupied by a person, called herself a chronicler of urban life, who had moved to New York because people there were willing to pay big money for works of art made out of old car bumpers.
Her first job was a canary, which was hardly gonna pay the rent, and her second job was a garter snake for some joker who never came back to collect it, nor to pay what he owed.
I said to Grice, ‘At least in our business the customers know how to behave.’
I spoke too soon.
We had been asked to handle the Dekker-Prowers wedding. Courtenay Dekker was marrying Scott Prowers in a poolside ceremony at her parents’ lovely ranch home and we had been given a blank cheque to ensure everything was perfect, the Dekkers being millionaires practically.
The wedding colours were soft primrose and pastel-green and the bridesmaids and flower-girls were having tiny spring blooms woven into their hair, as was the bride's horse, which was invited to the ceremony like it was a human being. We had arranged for voice coaching and then a recording of the bride's mother singing ‘Hawaiian Wedding Song’, plus a string orchestra to play some Vivaldi tunes, and’ Grice had designed the pre-dance ‘n’ dinner buffet, which included a seafood mélange, served on giant half-shells instead of plates, and French champagne.
Relatively speaking, Randy Dekker was a new name in town. Grice reckoned he was all hat and no cattle. He didn't hold his drink well neither. By the time our team of meat chefs were ready to start cooking the steaks, Randy was so tight he just had to take one of those bridesmaid's into the saddle room, show her the size of his bank roll. Which is where I found him when I went to check on the powdered ice we were planning to sprinkle on the table-flowers, help them keep that dew-fresh sparkle.
The bridesmaid saw her chance and nearly knocked me off my feet, making her getaway. Randy Dekker, meanwhile, was on the floor, with his pants round his ankles and his face an alarming shade of purple. He looked like he might be having some kind of cardiac emergency, and I was bending over him, trying to loosen his collar when in walked Mrs Dekker herself, and misread the situation. Made no difference what I said.
‘Trash!’ she yelled. ‘You are fired. And I'll see you never work again in this town again. And you,’ she yelled at him, ‘you stay outta my sight.’
That old goat wasn't sick at all. He was getting to his feet, pulling up his pants, making me look a fool. ‘Lola,’ he was crying, ‘I just had gas pains, is all. I just had to lie down, loosen this goddamned cummerbund.’
Grice came looking for me. A cold wind had sprung up and he thought it was time to implement our Bad’ Weather Plan.
‘Get off my property,’ she said to me. ‘Get outta here, and take your faggot employee with you.’
Grice said it'd blow over. He said we should carry on like nothing had happened and it'd all be forgotten and who knows, the Dekkers might even settle their account. But I knew what kind of influence a woman like Lola Dekker had. She was Trinity River Tennis Club. She had her hair done at Pierre. And I was right. Two days later Mrs Bonnie Blossburg called to say she'd be making other arrangements for her daughter's marriage to Hart Twisp.
‘Relax!’ Grice said. ‘We didn't want the Blossburg-Twisp wedding anyway. Just saying it was hard work.’
I said, ‘Well, I think we're ruined. And she referred to you as my “faggot employee”. What in tarnation did she mean by that?’
He said, ‘Peggy, Lola Dekker is just an ignorant and prejudiced woman. Employee! It is common knowledge that I am your personal assistant and right-hand man.’
76
Spring of ‘75, Lois got her dearest wish. They moved to New York. They found an apartment in Yonkers, near to Sandie, and Herb went as a supervisor at a sawmill.
‘That was what swung it,’ she said. ‘The smell of wood, plus he can take the dog to work.’
She was driving into the city every day, working out of a rented cupboard, selling West Side co-ops. ‘The market's been real slow,’ she said, but I'm getting there. I just sold a six-room in the Fairchild, with a park view, and my name's getting around. I've got an exclusive on a seven-room pre-war. West End Avenue. Beautiful. Everything's coming up roses, except for my idiot son.’
Kirk had gotten a girl called Marisa in the family way, and her folks had cast her out. She was staying with Lo and Herb, lying in bed all day, eating sweet pickles and p
icking out names.
I said, ‘Does he have a job?’ The last I had heard he was learning butchery.
‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘That was what I wanted to ask you. You know he's mad on fishing. Ain't a thing he don't know about flies and all that. Would Vern know of anybody might be able to give him a start? He'd be willing to relocate.’
I said, ‘What happened to the Institute of Meat?’
‘Didn't work out,’ she said. ‘He didn't like the noise. All those guys hauling beeves around.’
I said, ‘Wouldn't they be better off staying put? There has to be more work in the city.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I think he needs a smaller place. A nice friendly little business somehere. If you could mention to Vern?’
Sounded to me like Lois wanted Kirk and his girl out of her hair. I guessed she didn't want calling on for babysitting, just as her big career was taking off.
I did call Vern. ‘For Herb Moon's boy,’ he said, ‘I'll put the word out.’
Me and Kath hardly ever talked about Lois, but I did tell her there was a grandbaby on the way.
‘I see,’ she said.
I said, ‘Poor Sandie keeps trying, gets to three months then she loses them. Kirk hits the jackpot before he even has a job or a home.’
‘How is he?’ she said. ‘He still a bit of a tearaway?’
I said, ‘No, according to Lo he's turned all peaceful and retiring. Likes a quiet night in, tying fishing flies.’
She laughed. ‘Well, I'm glad to hear it,’ she said, ‘that temper he had on him. Still … he was a funny little noggin. You just had to handle him right.’
She said she was bored. ‘Every day it's the same,’ she said. ‘Backing round the same old corners time after time. Reminding them to check their mirrors. You can tell some of them till the cows come home and they still won't remember. At least you get a bit of variety in your business.’
But things had gotten so bad in my business, I had had to give up my office downtown and work outta my spare bedroom. Lola Dekker had spread poison. Next thing was gonna be having to let Grice go.
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