“Suppose you make us some toddies, Mimi,” Vincent said, but then as he saw how laboriously she waddled toward the kitchen, he said maybe he’d better do it.
“Don’t be silly,” Mimi said. “You must be exhausted.”
And he reluctantly allowed her to go. Vincent took their coats into the foyer. Steven and his mother looked at the tree.
“Is Mimi all right?” Vincent asked me when he came back in. “She looks swollen, has she been to a doctor?”
“Of course,” I said. “She goes every month.”
“What did he say?”
I shrugged. “She eats too much. She’s terribly fat.”
Mimi came back with the hot toddies and guggle-muggle for Steven.
“We always have good luck with trees,” Mimi said to the woman, who was still staring at the tree and the presents.
The woman grunted.
“This one’s even bigger than usual, though,” Mimi said. “As a matter of fact, Beth was going to make some new ornaments, some new eggshell scenes, but they didn’t work this time, they kept breaking before she even drained the insides, and then we meant to do some styrofoam balls with velvet and stuff instead, but I don’t know, maybe we’re all getting lazy.”
Nothing. Even Mimi got a little nervous. She was sitting with Steven, her arm around him as he drank his guggle-muggle.
“Myrna must be exhausted,” Vincent said. “She put in a full day before we even got to the plane, and then I won’t describe what the plane ride was like.”
Mimi nodded. Eager to believe that their difficulties explained the woman’s sullen manner.
“And then we had to find a driver who’d come all the way up to Welford.”
“I can imagine,” Mimi said. “I guess we’re lucky we’re not travelers.”
Steven twisted around to get a better look at the tree.
“I’ve only flown a couple of times,” Mimi said to the woman, “and Beth never has.” Silence. Dead silence. Aggressive silence. I began to feel a little sympathy for Steven, in spite of myself.
Mimi took Steven over to the tree to show him some of the special ornaments and his mother came to life.
“Don’t touch anything!” she said sharply. Which might have seemed logical except that one of his hands was in Mimi’s and the other hadn’t left his side.
More silence. Vincent and I facing each other with nothing to say. Barney came down in his bathrobe, took a look around the silent room and said that he couldn’t sleep because of the racket we were making. Then, scornful of winter toddies and such, he made himself a Bloody Mary. Vincent introduced him to the woman and he said that he was charmed but Vincent didn’t seem to notice that it was the wrong thing to say.
The doorbell rang and I went to get it, even though I assumed it was Josh and Lily. It was Max, though, saying that he hoped I didn’t mind his dropping by, he’d been coming home from a party and had only come down our drive when he saw that the lights were still on.
“Oh no,” I said. “You couldn’t have come at a better time.”
So he took off his heavy boots and thick sweater and we went into the living room together. Barney and Vincent sat talking on the sofa, the woman nearby, neither talking nor listening but just sitting there. Mimi was talking and Steven stood looking up at her and as he listened, apparently oblivious to what he was doing, one of his hands began lightly, slowly, in a circling motion, rubbing Mimi’s belly. Then Mimi stopped talking and rested a hand on his head except at that moment the woman looked toward them and said, loudly and harshly so that all other motion and talk stopped, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Steven?”
Startled and guilty in the same moment he pulled away his hand and stared around like someone coming into the light of a new and confusing place.
“It’s perfectly all right, Myrna,” Mimi said.
“Not with me, it isn’t,” Myrna said.
“But I don’t think he even knew what, he was doing,” Mimi said, obviously terribly upset by the woman’s tone.
“But I did,” the woman said, staring Mimi down. “And he better learn to keep his hands to himself.”
“Hey, Steve-O,” Vincent said, sudden joviality forced out of him, “I bet you’re shot. What the hell time is it, anyhow? This is a crazy time for you to be up, come on, we’ll get you to bed. It’s two in the morning, for Christ’s sake!”
“And you can watch your language, too, in front of him,” the woman snapped, not the slightest bit interested in his attempt to smooth things over. But Mimi looked at him gratefully and said she would bring up a snack for Steven.
“Fine, Mimi,” Vincent said. “You do that.” He waved helo to Max, who Mimi then seemed to notice for the first time although she didn’t acknowledge him in any way, but just went into the kitchen to get Steven’s snack. Max stretched out on the rug in front of the fire and five minutes later, when Josh rang the bell, was already sound asleep. (There was a small package in his back pocket. Every once in a while, as he was dropping off, his hand went to the pocket and touched the package and then fell back.) The house was very quiet, only an occasional clattering from the kitchen, crackling from the fireplace. And then surrealism burst upon us. Josh first, wearing no coat but a suit made of green plaid wool with a long jacket and flared pants, a huge red and yellow striped scarf around his neck and a green beret perched to one side of his white hair. Carrying a large purple velvet satchel.
“Heigh ho, kiddies, Mama and Tata Klaus are here!”
Lily in a fur coat belted and as short as a little girl’s dress, clear vinyl boots that went up to her knees without concealing her legs, her platinum hair loose and on it a floppy red velvet hat.
I looked at Vincent; his expression was impenetrable. I couldn’t even be sure he was concealing anything. I looked at Lily but Lily never looked at anyone when she came into a room, she was much too aware of herself.
“Merry Christmas,” Josh bleated, “and a Chappy Chanukkah, God bless us every one!” There was a hostile note to his joviality. Maybe it had always been there but I’d never noticed it before, never found myself wondering as I did now whether something was behind each new wisecrack. I glanced at Myrna and was taken aback; her mouth was open, her entire body seemed limp with awe, but not the sort of awe such a spectacle might reasonably have induced. She looked as though the golden angels on the Christmas tree had come to life and were walking amongst us. Vincent saw it, too. He looked at her and then he looked away at some distant place. And Josh saw it.
“Whommmmm have we here?” he asked resonantly, sweeping across the room toward Myrna. “I don’t believe, my dear, that we’ve been introduced.”
And Barney had seen it. “Myrna,” he said, “permit me to introduce Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.”
Lily giggled. “Oh, Barney, cut it out.”
“Well,” Barney said, “would you believe Barbara Payton and Franchot Tone?”
“Myrna,” Josh said soulfully, “that is your name, is it not, Myrna, I should like you to meet my wife, Lily. And I am Josh Cane.”
“How do you do,” Myrna breathed.
“And may I ask what fortunate twist of fate brings you to us?”
“I brought her,” Vincent said quietly. “And her son, Steven, who’s sleeping upstairs.”
“Ah, a friend of Vincent’s,” Josh said. “How-delightful. Myrna, it is time you met the delightful creature who is Vincent’s mother.”
“His mother!” Myrna exclaimed, so thoroughly shocked as to eliminate any possibility that she was trying to flatter.
“I like this girl,” Lily said. “What did you say your name was?”
“Myrna,” she said respectfully. “Myrna Bauer. I’m pleased to meet you.” Nearly curtseying.
And Vincent. Just watching. Knowing this woman had made an observer of Vincent. Now he watched things that went on between people instead of going inside himself for the truth and bursting out with it. He acted no more wisely than before but h
e thought so much more first.
“Goddamn it,” Lily said, “these lousy vinyl boots stick to your legs like glue.”
“And do you like our house, young lady?” Josh inquired in his new artificial deep warm basso-falsetto.
“For God’s sake, Josh,” Barney said. “You sound like a department store Santa.”
“Ho ho ho,” Josh said.
“Will someone help me get off these goddamn vinyl miseries?” Lily whined. I looked at Vincent; once he would have gone in spite of himself. Now Myrna went instead.
“I should’ve known better,” Lily complained, “I bought them in this freaky little boutique in Beverly Hills that only has things you can’t get in and out of without taking a trip.”
“Speaking of tripping, Lil,” Josh said, “you’re tripping over your twentieth-century Hollywood vocabulary.”
“Hollywood,” Myrna said. “Is that where you’re from? I should’ve known. You look like Hollywood.”
“Did you hear that Lil?” Josh asked.
“Well of course I heard it,” she said. “The girl’s right here on top of me, practically.” The tone was no longer adoring when she spoke to him; they’d been together for a couple of months and again she was taking him for granted.
“Do you think we look Hollywood?”
“Well of course we do, nobody in New York has a suntan.”
“The original cosmopolitan kid,” Josh said. “She knows from Hollywood and New York, nothing in between. Hey, Lil, is Chicago a suburb of New York or Hollywood?”
“Are you an actress?” Myrna asked Lily.
Max sat up groggily.
“No, dear,” Lily said warmly.
“She used to be,” Josh said. “She’s too modest. You should have seen her do the ‘I wore black when they hung Sacco and Vanzetti, black was my best color anyway,’ speech from The Glass Menagerie. It was stunning.”
But Lily wasn’t listening. She had seen Max, who was looking around him in such a way as to make it clear he wasn’t really awake. The little package was on the rug.
“Who,” Lily asked softly, making my blood reverse directions inside of me, “who is that beautiful boy?”
“She reached for him hungrily,” Barney murmured so that only I heard.
Max stared at her as though she were out of her mind.
“Well, now, let’s see,” Josh said, straining visibly. “It’s not Hippolytus and it’s not Adonis and it’s definitely not Mickey Rooney because he’s in L.A.”
Which helped not at all, but fortunately Mimi and Vincent came in from the kitchen with eggnog at this point.
“Haven’t you met Max?” Mimi asked. “That seems funny, he’s been around so much lately. Max, these are our parents, Josh and Lily Cane. Josh and Lily, this is Max Merganser. Max lives up Sugar Hill a couple of miles.”
“But who is he?” Lily asked. “What is he doing here?” As though she’d found him lying on a counter. His expression changed from confusion to embarrassment.
“He’s just visiting, Lily,” said Mimi, who couldn’t understand what Lily was getting at and was therefore puzzled.
“As a matter of fact,” said Barney, who understood and was amused, “he’s visiting your younger daughter, basically.”
“Beth?” Lily asked incredulously.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Josh said. “Elizabeth’s got a gentleman caller.”
Were you less careful with me than you’d once been, Josh, because it was too much trouble to be nice to someone whose trust you couldn’t again have in any circumstance? Could you really have been angry, a man as sophisticated as you, that I had insisted upon being upset by your actions instead of soothed by your interpretation of them? Yes, you really were. You had always claimed to love the contrast between Hollywood and Yiytzo but instead you had turned us into another movie set of your mind. How convenient for you. How convenient for you if we had not existed in several dimensions. When the cameras stopped, how deeply had the Gish sisters ever been wounded?
My eyes went to the purple velvet satchel which he had so carefully put under the dining room table and which was too small to contain any number of regular Christmas presents.
How easy for you, Josh, to fly out of our lives while we incorporated this new wound into ourselves, and fly back only when the surface was closed again over the wound so that we were once again fit for the selective vision of your camera eye.
Max was groping for his little package.
“Its on the rug in back of you,” Josh said.
Sheepishly Max picked it up, seemed about to pocket it again, then changed his mind and handed it to me.
“Merry Christmas,” he said.
“Christmas,” Josh exclaimed. “By God, the boy’s right, it’s Christmas!”
“Thank you, Max,” I said. “Is it all right to wait until later to open it?”
He nodded gratefully.
“Where the hell’s my satchel?” Josh asked. His gaiety just forced enough so that everyone got quiet without knowing why.
Lily trotted around the room searching for it but it was Myrna who found it and handed it to her so she could bring it back to Josh.
He took it with a flourish, deposited it on a table, said, “Ho ho ho, what have we here?”
“Three colored handkerchiefs,” Barney said, “and a rabbit in heat.”
Lily tittered. She almost tilted with eagerness.
“Ah! Here we are!” From the satchel he took two big envelopes. “Let’s see. First, to the nominal head of the household—” he held out an envelope to Barney, “Merry Christmas, Barney, to you and Mimi and Beth and my grandchild.”
“Why, thanks, old chap,” Barney said with a fake casual British accent. “Is it all right to wait until later to open it?”
“Very funny,” Josh said.
“But I wasn’t kidding,” Barney told him.
Mimi took the envelope from him and opened it, reading for an interminable time. Then she looked up, said quietly, “Thank you, Josh, Lily, that’s very generous of you.” Dutifully she kissed each of them. Then she came to me, whispered, “Bethie, listen to me, Bethie, it’s much better than I thought. Much.”
It’s happened. Sinking and tearing. It had happened, it was happening, it is happening, I can tell, Josh, reality being relative to time and place, what is really happening, as opposed to what someone is telling me I should think has happened.
“It’s the house and more than an acre to the north,” Mimi said, reading slowly through the legalities, “. . . and then everything right in back of the house . . . all the way through to Reed Lane, and the guest house and then south . . . how much is it, Josh? It’s hard to tell exactly.”
“Almost four acres, all together,” Josh said. “There’s a lease attached, you lease us the guest house for life. I’m going to renovate it so Lily and I can use it when we want to, instead of being on top of you here. The rental I pay you will more than cover your taxes and the other stuff I’ve been paying for.”
“That’s great, Josh,” Mimi said with determined enthusiasm. “It really is.”
“It really is, old chap,” Barney said. “Thanks very much.”
Silence. Josh and Lily looked at me. Barney and Mimi avoiding looking at me.
“Don’t bother waiting,” Lily told him.
“I thought you might go through the motions,” Josh said.
“I don’t do that,” I pointed out. “Mimi does it for me.”
He looked at me thoughtfully for a long time. Finally he smiled. “You know the only thing I ever minded about being an absentee parent?” he asked. “The leverage. I never minded in the least not seeing my kids every day, you’d have a hard time convincing me that most fathers would mind a setup like ours. It’s only the leverage I occasionally missed, giving up the right to take my kid over my knee when she acted like a spoiled brat. You know what I’m talking about, sweetheart? The pleasure of socking one to you?”
“I don’t believe you even
missed that, Josh,” I said. “You’re only making up a whole story about missing it now because right now you feel like hitting me.”
“You see, Josh?” Lily whined. “You never believed me.”
Josh nodded, never taking his eyes off me. “You were always such a sweet, quiet little thing. You never gave me any real trouble at all, expense, maybe, the hospital and stuff. But never anything I’d call trouble.”
“You never handed me a piece of paper that said you were giving me something when you were really taking something away.”
“Let’s get something straight,” he said angrily, “This was my land before you were born and it’s been my land ever since. You seem to have the cockeyed idea that you acquired some kind of squatters’ rights just by living here and maybe this is as good a time as any for you to get that one out of your head, because it’s not true, it’s not your land, except now a part of it is, only you share it with your sister and her family, and if you don’t like it you know what you can do about it.”
This land was what you gave us instead of yourselves, Josh, and having concluded that bargain you lost all moral rights to take it away. Having this land, I wouldn’t cry when you died. When I explored the way I felt about Yiytzo I found a Van Gogh tree with its branches that didn’t actually end.
I turned away from him, went to a far corner of the room and opened my little package. It was a tiny beaded bag. It looked quite old. The beads were in a floral pattern and its clasp and chain were gold. When I closed my hand around it my hand hid it completely. I had a good feeling from it I could feel the individual beads and the metal of the chain. I knew that it must have belonged to someone in his family a long time ago. I felt he must be watching me. I didn’t turn around but I touched the bag to my lips.
“Well,” Josh said slowly, “here goes more of nothing.” I turned around. He threw the other envelope to Vincent. “Merry Christmas, buster—and spare yourself. From you I don’t expect thanks.”
Nine Months in the Life of an Old Maid Page 12