All the adults except me left before nine. By eleven, when Mrs. Parrot arrived, Diana’s two toddlers, my two, and two quarrelsome five-year-old boys from New York were installed in my house. Mrs. Parrot walked in on a mass of confused, unhappy children and the filthy, after-orgy mess. I finally disengaged myself and walked alone across town to the Washington Monument.
After listening to lengthy speeches at the Lincoln Memorial, the protesters started walking toward Virginia. They moved slowly, tens of thousands swarming toward Memorial Bridge. Still alone, I joined the crowd—and felt myself pressed forward by pushing, pulsating waves of people.
Halfway across the bridge I found myself caught up in an ocean of political hysteria. Fervor and fury ignited everyone. I was carried along by a tidal wave of antiwar passion. After years of disarray, the Movement was on the move. I felt simultaneously subsumed and enlarged.
Eventually I remembered that Mrs. Parrot had to leave by three o’clock. I had no idea of the time, but the sun was beginning to look suspiciously weak and westerly. I asked someone and found out it was almost two. Turning, I tried to wade through the crowd. As if fighting the current of a river, I pressed backwards against time and history, wondrous at the raw resolution of the people coming toward me. It took me half an hour to wind my way off Memorial Bridge.
Once back on the banks of the city, I could find no public or private transportation. The entire area had been sealed off, so I began to run along the river. I was engorged from having missed David’s noon feeding and milk began to seep through my bra and blouse. I was afraid that Mrs. Parrot would actually leave at three and the thought of all those children alone in the house made me panic. I looked back at the crowd going in the opposite direction and knew I was missing history once again because of babysitting obligations.
I was panting, still out of shape from my recent childbirth. I started to cry. Mrs. Parrot was already in her coat when I reached my front door. I paid her and apologized profusely for being late. After she left, I nursed David and dealt with the other children.
That weekend has come to symbolize the sixties for me.
I put down Sukie’s journal and rush back to the bathroom and my now lukewarm bath. It is getting late. Miranda will show up soon and if I’m not downstairs Elaine will read me the riot act for leaving them alone with the villainess of this tragedy. I decide to just wash up at the sink and while scrubbing myself with a washcloth I think about the varying responses the others might have toward this last segment of Sukie’s journal. Never having known Sukie’s view of that weekend, I remember it totally differently, but that doesn’t discredit Sukie’s vision of it. While drying and dressing myself, I try to evaluate Sukie’s judgment about events.
Certainly she had never been able to make up her mind about Miranda.
CHAPTER 8
What Sukie could never accept was that it all happened right in front of her—right across the street to be exact. Miranda Kriss and Elizabeth Morley rented the English basement opposite the Amrams’ house during what I remember as the delicious designer spring of 1979. Later, Sukie told me that Max had come in from the yard one Saturday morning to say that a former student of his and another young woman were moving into the Nelsons’ basement and he was going across to help carry some of their boxes.
Sukie met Miranda and Elizabeth later that day and liked them both, although Miranda struck her as the more interesting of the two. Both girls were graduate students at AU and the Amrams began to see them quite often, although it was mostly Miranda who was around during the daytime since she was writing her masters’ thesis. That was the year Carol began applying to colleges and she spent a lot of time across the street with them discussing schools and careers. Because Miranda gave David his first driving lessons in her Karmann-Ghia, he also became her steadfast fan.
Sukie, too, discovered Miranda’s unusual talent for initiating instant intimacies. Miranda had perfected the art of imitating the passionate exclusivity that colors close friendships. She had a reservoir of ingratiating tactics. At first she only did simple things such as taping Carol’s and David’s favorite musical groups when they came over her eternally blaring FM, but she also clipped sports articles for David from out-of-town newspapers and sent Carol a dozen red roses upon her acceptance to Kenyon College.
Because Miranda was home all day, almost every day, she frequently accepted UPS deliveries for the Amram family, helped Sukie carry in groceries when she saw her unloading the car, and always telephoned before going to the supermarket to ask if there was anything Sukie needed. After a month of casual contacts, Miranda began dropping by the Amrams’ late in the day when Sukie was puttering around the kitchen.
Then she would pour herself a glass of white wine and make herself extremely helpful during the dinner preparations. Miranda’s obvious admiration of Sukie and her eagerness to help frequently forced Sukie to invite her to stay on for dinner. Max and the kids usually enjoyed that because Miranda had grown up in Washington and knew many of the politically powerful families about whom she told scandalous stories.
Indeed, Miranda was an endless source of gossip which she relayed with much gaiety—as if illicit love affairs were only amusing anecdotes and mischief itself never really malevolent. So-and-So’s father, a former Secretary of Defense, was sleeping with So-and-So’s mother—a former famous beauty—so that So-and-So Junior had the Georgetown house all to himself for the weekend, which was where Miranda had attended a cocaine party Friday night at which So-and-So appeared with his date What’s-Her-Name.
Apparently Miranda had offered intimate details about famous people as if they were expensive baubles she specifically selected for the Amrams’ enjoyment. She was also a superior gift giver. Her stream of thoughtful little presents never stopped. There were endless new novels from Kramerbooks and Afterwords, brash geraniums from Johnson’s Flower Center on the first day of spring, baskets of herbs from the annual St. Albans School Fair, and elegant silk scarves with the label of a French boutique at the Watergate Hotel where Miranda worked out. Every few weeks she would appear with tinfoil containers of carry-out lasagna from some Georgetown pasta shop so that Sukie wouldn’t have to cook, or some too-rich chocolate torte from Avignon Frères for dessert. Other times there would be a set of hard-to-get tickets for some sold-out rock concert at the Capitol Center for David and one of his friends.
On her birthday that spring, Sukie found a bouquet of helium balloons tied to her front doorknob first thing in the morning. Twice Miranda left bottles of wine she’d bought during an import sale at Woodley’s Discount Liquor Store, saying she wanted Max to try them. Another time she gave Sukie a vial of Dexedrine, which had become popular and available on campus, and, on several occasions, some beautifully rolled joints of sinsemilla. Often there would be a large lamb or ham bone for Happy, neatly wrapped in heavy-duty tinfoil, left on the front doorstep next to the morning Post.
Miranda also began gifting Sukie with expensive castoff clothing she no longer wore. She had pressed an unpressed silk blouse upon Sukie as if it were a cotton T-shirt, saying it was too tight since she’d washed it. The shirt looked marvelous on Sukie, who could never have afforded to buy it, and she wore it endlessly.
Miranda never tired of driving Max to his office at AU when she was going to campus or dropping the kids off at their schools if she was up early enough in the morning. Since her parents lived on the Chesapeake Bay, she would often return from a weekend at the beach with baskets of chubby red country tomatoes, brown-paper bags full of zucchini—a vegetable that threatened to overrun the state of Maryland—homemade fruit jams or freshly baked breads.
As soon as summer arrived, there were insistent invitations for Sukie to use Miranda’s Chesapeake Bay home since her parents had gone to Europe and Miranda was stuck in the city attending summer school. Miranda talked constantly about a lovely little Sailfish tied to a skinny but sunny dock under which millions of mussels hugged the rocks waiting to be harvested and dev
oured. In webby calligraphy on a pale blue card, she recopied her favorite recipe for the perfect Remoulade sauce to serve with mussels.
“Please go,” she’d beg Sukie. “Just go yourself. You’ll be able to finish your book twice as fast out there. And then Max and the kids can come out for the weekend. I’ll even go with you the first time, to show you everything about the place.”
So, early in June, Sukie and Miranda drove out to the Eastern Shore in the black Karmann-Ghia. Once at the house, Miranda explained how to use all the kitchen appliances and all the boating equipment. In great detail she explained how to find the mussels, where to buy bait, which markets in town had the freshest fish, and which nearby bar-restaurants offered the most action.
Eventually Sukie accepted Miranda’s invitation and began going out to the Kriss’s beach place mid-week and waiting for Max and/or the kids to join her on weekends. Later, Sukie told me about the wonderful times they’d all enjoyed out on the Bay before “the fall,” when Sukie discovered Max had been having a heated affair with Elizabeth all summer. By spending so much time at the Bay, Sukie had offered Max unlimited opportunities to be with Elizabeth.
The few times Sukie came to New York after she and Max separated, and I had some free time to spend with her, she talked a lot about Miranda Kriss. She could never decide whether Miranda had been complicit in Max’s affair and, if so, whether it was in a careless way. When I asked if she’d ever confronted Miranda, Sukie shook her head and said she had simply stopped speaking to her. Even after Elizabeth moved out of the English basement to take an apartment with Max, Sukie refused to respond to any of Miranda’s attempts to reestablish contact.
Since I had never met or seen either Miranda or Elizabeth, I didn’t have much feel for that situation. But by then Sukie was so distraught that her stories about Miranda were usually cut short by some spasm of grief or rage against Max. And, at that point, it would take all my resources just to calm her down, to curtail the amount of liquor she was drinking, and to try getting some food and/or coffee down her—none of which was easy.
When the front doorbell rings it is both too loud and too long.
“Hi, I’m Miranda Kriss,” she says as soon as I open the door.
She smiles uncertainly, disclosing curiously long, although very white, teeth through the window between her lips.
Somehow Miranda Kriss is standing much too close to me, trespassing the invisible line where a visitor waits until invited inside. She is attractive in the quintessential American way—one of the golden girls who takes her grace for granted. She is wearing cutoffs and a white T-shirt beneath which slouch a pair of huge breasts. The T-shirt is loose, but her breasts are still obtrusive. They are like two rambunctious children from a previous marriage that a single mother tries to subdue in the presence of a man she’s dating.
“You must be one of Sukie’s friends from New York.” Miranda’s voice is calm, although her brown eyes are full of emotion.
“Yes, I’m Diana Sargeant,” I say, assessing her in closer detail. She is indeed what Sukie always called a super-shiksa. She has a complexion more like a Brit than an American and her hair, which is the color of beer, spills close to her face. She is twenty-seven at the most.
“I live across the street,” she says. “I got to know Sukie because Mr. Amram was my professor at AU. I know he’s in Europe now. With David and Carol.”
Then she begins to cry. She makes no effort to impede her tears or muffle her sobs. She stands perfectly still and cries matter-of-factly. Now I can see that she has cried before because the areas around her eyes are reddening in places where they were already chapped. Miranda Kriss is clearly in pain.
“Come on in,” I say.
“I can’t believe Sukie’s dead,” she whimpers. “What happened?”
“She had a cerebral hemorrhage.”
Miranda sucks in her breath as she passes through the doorway. Once inside, she moves automatically toward the kitchen, and I can tell from her languid, leggy walk that she is totally comfortable with her large-framed, big-boned body and with herself. Her legs are long and have the kind of tan that looks inadvertent, a color acquired gardening or sailing rather than simply sunning. Sukie would have called it a goyische tan.
Miranda opens the kitchen door and then pauses before stepping inside. She is obviously surprised by the smoky air and the scent of marijuana.
“Hello, Miranda,” Joanne says politely. “This is a pretty sad way for us to meet, but this is Elaine Cantor and I’m Joanne Ireland. I guess you met Diana already. Sit down. Wanna beer?”
Miranda sits down. I remain standing in the doorway because I see Elaine signaling me to wait there. When she gets up, I simply back out of the kitchen and wait for her to join me. She shuts the door behind us; then we walk into the dining room, which is still hugging the heat from the day. I flick on the window air conditioner.
“So what’s her story?” Elaine asks impatiently. “What’s she doing here? I mean, the question is, would Sukie really want her to be here with us? Just because she’s looking for some kind of absolution doesn’t mean we have to come across just like that.” She snaps her fingers rather close to my face.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Actually she’s quite upset.”
“That’s not our problem,” Elaine hisses. “And she should feel bad. She hurt Sukie a lot. Her. And Max. And her girlfriend Elizabeth. They all probably helped kill Sukie and now she just walks in here like she owns the place.”
“It’s her country,” I say sourly, certain Elaine will understand. “It’s always been her country; she can do whatever she wants here.”
“God,” Elaine curses. “It’s not fair.”
“The world’s her convenience store. She doesn’t have to watch out for anyone else.”
Elaine shakes her head disbelievingly, but then silently acquiesces to my view and follows me back into the kitchen.
Joanne has unearthed several fresh bottles of liquor, a variety of mixes, and a large plastic ice bucket which she has set precariously close to Sukie’s purse on the table. Without asking, she mixes me a vodka and tonic.
Then I sit down. Because of Miranda’s arrival, everyone has changed places. Now I find myself in the chair Joanne usually occupies, which affords a view of Sukie’s wall calendar hanging above the telephone. The sight of Sukie’s handwriting makes my heart start chopping like an ax and at first I am unable to look directly at the squares in which she had penciled in appointments that now read like the dead imperatives of a crumpled old grocery list forgotten at the bottom of an everyday purse. It takes me a while to notice that Sukie had crossed out the first and last pairs of letters from Saturday, leaving TURD for the day following her death.
I shift around on the caned seat of the bentwood chair so as not to face the calendar.
“Well,” Miranda says hesitantly, “I know what you all think about me.” Her eyes make a complete circle around the table. Her hands are wrapped around her beer mug and though she appears nervous, she also seems determined to speak. “I mean, I know what Sukie must have told you, because I know what she believed. But she was wrong. I didn’t set her up. I was heartbroken about everything that happened. When I found out what was going on between Max and Elizabeth—and that was hardly at the beginning—I didn’t know what to do. I mean—well, maybe you all would have told her, but I couldn’t. I mean I didn’t, because I didn’t know how to.”
The three of us sit in silence. With our fingertips we trace the brown bracelets copied from the bottoms of a thousand hot coffee cups set down upon Sukie’s table. We touch the fingerprints of cigarettes carelessly left to etch their shadows into the wood along the edges. Occasionally, Elaine uses a fingernail to chip at the mold of crumbs stuck inside the center seam of the table where the two leaves meet.
Finally, Joanne stands up to pluck some Kleenex from a box on the kitchen radiator and blows her nose with a few ferocious snorts.
“Someone should walk Happy
,” she says.
We all look over at the poodle lying in front of the sink. No one moves. No one wants to leave the table, the kitchen, the shelter of Sukie’s home where her spirit is still in residence.
“Did you know Sukie was keeping a journal, Miranda?” I ask.
Her face tightens as she shakes her head.
“It’s a real trip,” Joanne comments grimly.
“Is it about … the split up?” Miranda asks.
“Yes.” Joanne nods. “And it’s the rawest piece of pain I’ve ever read.”
“Does she talk about … me?” Miranda whispers.
“We haven’t read all of it yet; there are parts all over the house,” I say, not liking Miranda very much, but not necessarily eager to inflict any additional pain upon her. “They’re in her bedroom and her study. On the typewriter and on the computer. They’re everywhere. But so far I haven’t seen your name.”
“You probably will,” Miranda says, gulping down some beer.
There is a very long silence now.
“But I’d like to ask you something,” Miranda says, almost defiantly. “Why did Sukie take it the way she did? Why did she fall apart?”
It is Joanne who responds first. “You didn’t meet Sukie until a few years ago, Miranda. You don’t know what she and Max were like when they first started out together. You don’t know how tight they were.”
“After a long marriage,” Elaine continues drily, “it’s rather hurtful to have your mate leave you for a younger woman.”
Everyone is tired now. Our eye makeup is smeared, our lips are licked clean of gloss or color. Elaine, who habitually runs her tongue around her mouth, has now done it so often that a narrow red rash outlines her lips. The dope we had smoked earlier has worn off and we are all feeling weary, although it is barely five o’clock.
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