The Land of Mango Sunsets

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  It was so deeply disappointing that no one had come to my aid besides Diane, who had helped me up from the floor. But she had her own agenda. She had probably moved to help me get up because in that act, her humanitarian stock would rise with some of the others who thought Agnes Willis was the epitome of every evil thing that encompassed the reputation of the imperious society matron. Her kindness had nothing to do with any loyalty to me. But, I thought, if my misstep could serve as a catalyst to ignite a backlash against the Agnes Willises of the world, it was the only redemption in the entire debacle.

  I went over it again. It was so hard to believe that not one woman there had taken a moment to reassure me that it was just an accident, that it could’ve happened to anyone, or was I all right. The bitter truth began to sink in through my thick skull. That no one cared. It was a terrible sin that they considered themselves ladies when they showed so little compassion to the world. And none at all to me.

  That one unfortunate moment, that one accidental flight across the room, had no doubt ended twenty years of hard work at no pay, with no recognition, no wooden plaque with VOLUNTEER OF THE YEAR engraved on a little brass plate, no anything but a legacy of horrible embarrassment. I would go down in infamy as the volunteer who ruined thousands of invitations and hours and hours of work. I knew I would certainly be the laughingstock of the year over so many dinner tables that night, and after that, the story would be retold all over Manhattan at every volunteer organization for years. No one would ever enjoy a cup of coffee or tea during an invitations committee meeting for the rest of recorded time. People would say, “You can thank Miriam Swanson for that.” Botched paperwork would be referred to as “a Miriam.”

  I wandered more than walked the entire way down Fifth and then Madison avenues crying all alone. I passed so many people, hundreds, maybe thousands, and no one said, “Hey, lady, are you all right?” I cried for my embarrassment and with regret over the accident and for the revulsion it had unleashed in Agnes Willis. What had she called me? A sow? How hateful! What a horrible woman she was.

  But why had I told her about her husband? I must have been insane! Two wrongs were worse than one and I had stooped to her level. I regretted it.

  I called Kevin’s cell but he wasn’t picking up. I left him two frantic messages. I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was six. I had no appetite. When I finally got home, my apartment had never seemed so empty or so shabby. I knew that I had done a terrible thing to Agnes Willis. But she had done an even worse thing to me. I could never show my face at the museum again.

  “It was a terrible day,” I said to Harry, and put a cut-up tomato in the food dish.

  He whistled, and I thought, Oh, Lord, there is nothing in my future but sadness.

  Finally, Kevin returned my call. “Petal? What has happened? Are you all right?”

  “No.” I was sobbing then.

  “I’ll be there in a flash.”

  Minutes later, our front door opened and he rapped his knuckles on my door, which I opened and then buried my face in a tissue.

  He put his arm around my shoulder and led me to my favorite chair by the fireplace. I sat down with my elbows in my lap and the tears just streamed from my eyes. I knew I looked frightful.

  “Good Lord, honey! Did someone die? What in the world?”

  “Oh, Kevin, the most awful thing happened today…”

  I told him about the accident, the terrible name that Agnes Willis called me, and the crash and burn of my volunteer career. He sat patiently on the end of a chair, listening to every single word.

  “Well, first of all, they can replace the invitations tomorrow. It’s the Met, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I know, but all that hard work…”

  “You’re right, but it will give all those women something new to complain about. Good grief. This is some mess, Ollie. I’m pouring myself a vodka. Do you want something?” He looked back at me with an arched eyebrow and said, “Why am I even asking you this question?”

  He slipped into the kitchen and returned with two double, old-fashioned tumblers half filled with straight vodka over clinking ice.

  “Lord, girl, look at your knees! They’re all bloody!”

  “I told you I fell! And I wasn’t kidding! Oh, my word! I will never live this down!”

  “I’ll go get something to clean you up. In the bathroom?”

  “Yes, in the cabinet. Or maybe under the sink. There’s Bactine and Band-Aids.” I took a sip of the cocktail, went into my room to pull off my ruined panty hose, tossed them in the wastebasket, and met him back in the living room.

  “Here, wipe your widdle knees with this. So, you never told me. What did you say to her? Agnes, I mean.”

  “Oh, Lord. This is the very worst part of all of it. I told her that Truman was having an affair with Liz.”

  He was quiet for a moment and then he said, “Please don’t tell me that. You did not.”

  “What?”

  “In another arena I would have said, well, touché. But, Miriam, darling, I would not depend on Agnes Willis’s hormone levels of self-control to keep that secret to herself. Nor would I trust anyone else who heard it. I mean, the odds of it getting back to Truman…”

  “It’s too late now.”

  “Yes, it rather is. Well, perhaps you should consider telling Liz so she knows what’s going on? You know? In case she sees him?”

  I cleaned up the scrapes and put three Band-Aids on each knee.

  “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Well, I think it’s only fair.”

  “We’ll see.”

  We were quiet for a moment. I had not considered the impact this might have on Liz. Kevin was right of course, but wasn’t it enough that I had told her that Truman was married? I wanted the entire business to go away, disappear and never return. It was why the world invented self-delusion.

  “I need for chicken soup,” I said. “Want to go to Gardenia?”

  Gardenia was our neighborhood café on Madison, where you could get perfectly poached eggs in the morning, a great grilled cheese sandwich or a burger for lunch, and at night, when the need arose, you knew they were serving hot roast beef or turkey sandwiches, fabulous meat loaf and mashed potatoes, and always, homemade chicken soup.

  “Sure. A little comfort food would do you good. Go put on some trousers, wash your face, and I’ll walk over with you.”

  I changed, freshened my makeup, and in minutes we were out the door, trying to cross Park Avenue.

  “Do you think this winter is ever going to end?” I said as we hurried across the avenue against the light, Kevin holding my elbow as I was limping a little then.

  “Whew! Made it! Do you mean the winter or the winter of our discontent?”

  “Either one.” I stopped for a moment to catch my breath. “That was one of the nicest things about being on the island. The weather, that is.”

  “Yes, you haven’t given me the whole download about this Harrison or Manny either.”

  “Kevin? Why don’t we just make a list of all my humiliations and advertise them on the side of a building in Times Square?”

  “You see? This is what happens. You go away for a few days and suddenly I’m out of step with what’s happening with you.”

  “Not true. I’m freezing!” I shuddered, and although my knees were sore, I picked up our pace. Then Kevin had to work to keep up with me.

  “Slow down, you wild thing! By the way, did you look under your bed?”

  “Dust bunnies?”

  “Treadmill. You owe me two hundred dollars.”

  “Oh, fine. Thanks, I think.”

  We hung our coats at the restaurant, got our table and menus, and although we knew what we had come here to eat, we looked over the specials anyway.

  “They’ve got stuffed peppers tonight,” I said with a heavy sigh.

  “I can’t eat peppers at night anymore. They give me heartburn.”

  “Since when did you develop such
a delicate constitution?”

  Kevin looked up from his menu with pursed lips, raised both eyebrows this time, and sighed. “Honestly, Petal, you’re not the only fragile orchid in this jungle, you know.”

  The first piece of a smile in what felt like forever crept across my face.

  We ordered two bowls of chicken soup and hot herbal tea. When our waiter walked away I looked at Kevin.

  “This has been a really, really crappy day, Kevin.”

  “I’d say so. I’m just so sorry you had to go through such an ordeal.”

  “I feel like I could start crying all over again and weep through the night.”

  “Miriam? Just stop it right now. Do not waste a single tear on this incident ever again. Seriously. I am much more concerned that Agnes Willis, in some insane jealous state, might hide in the bushes outside and throw battery acid on our Daisy Mae or some other crazy thing.”

  “Oh, please. Agnes Willis wouldn’t dare do such a thing. She talks a big game in her school yard but she wouldn’t cross over to a life of crime over Truman!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, her pride may be hurt to have someone else know about her husband running around, especially that it’s me who knows. And especially that the others surely overheard what I said. But she knows Truman is unfaithful. I guarantee it. If she’s in love with her husband, a woman always knows these things.”

  “But did you know about Charles?”

  I was quiet then and thought about it for a moment.

  “There were signs, lots of them, that I have to admit I chose to ignore. I knew that when I finally confronted him, it would blow up my world. And it did.”

  “Well, that’s precisely what concerns me, Miriam. I don’t want either one of them to take revenge on anyone besides themselves.”

  “Good grief, Kevin! Do you think I’m in danger?”

  He looked around the restaurant, mostly populated with senior citizens at that hour, and then he looked back at me.

  “I don’t know, Miriam. I just can’t answer that. But I hope not. Now, let’s talk about something more pleasant. Tell me about Harrison.”

  “You’re right. Well, this is the conundrum. When I met him, I wasn’t impressed at all. But we had dinner—”

  “Just the two of you?”

  “No, Mother, Harrison, and me. Anyway, Harrison and I went downstairs to light the grill and I know I saw, I mean, there was, you know…”

  “Interest?”

  “Yes. I mean, he’s completely inappropriate for me because he’s a little like Jungle Jim or something, but he has this quality of, I don’t know, he’s just this extremely thoughtful man. Not to mention, I decided he’s definitely my mother’s boyfriend, which is weird in the extreme.”

  “I’ll say. But being thoughtful is a greatly undervalued asset in today’s world.”

  “Truly. Anyway, next thing I know, he and Mother are smoking you-know-what and I’m shocked, and the next day he introduces me to his friend Manny.”

  “Who’s Manny?”

  “A man.”

  “God, girl, there ought to be laws passed against your jokes. Dreadful.”

  “Sorry. Anyway, I wind up at this church dinner with Manny the Man dishing out quail stew and thinking we might be, you know, a possibility.”

  “So?”

  “He has not called.”

  “Well, you are a thousand miles away.”

  “Right?”

  “He’s divorced, I assume?”

  “Well, practically. His estranged wife lives in Charlotte. He’s been in Charleston for five years.”

  “Sounds like somebody needs to do the paperwork.”

  “Exactly, but if he doesn’t ever call me, then what do I care?”

  “I’m thinking you do.”

  “Maybe a little. Maybe it’s just pride.”

  Things were quiet for the rest of the week. I had not told Mother about my museum disaster because I knew she would say, see, I told you so, that it was a message from the Universal Spirit that it wasn’t the best use of my time anyway. That one door closes so another can open. What door? The question was, how was I going to fill my days without my committee work? There was a time when I had served on committees at the library, a dance company, and two other museums. But over time I had reduced my responsibilities, thinking I would rather be meaningful in one institution than insignificant in many. Well, I guess that didn’t go according to plan, did it?

  I needed something to do, and walking around the apartment, I decided it was as good a moment as any to clean my closets. I would give all our old clothes to Goodwill or anyone willing to come and haul them away.

  I started with the boys’ bedrooms, thinking they would be the easiest. And they were not. I did not know that emptying their closets would yield yet another burst of emotional confusion, regret, and guilt. It was a little like dealing with the bones of my own motherhood.

  First, I went to Charlie’s room. He had taken a good many things with him when he moved into his apartment, but the amount of youthful possessions that he had left behind was considerable. At first, I felt that sorting his clothes was therapeutic. When I got organized I always felt happier. It seemed like a good idea to stack his nicer shirts, pajamas, and so forth on the bed and ask him if there was anything he wanted to keep. But when I found his Little League baseball shirt and a sport coat that he must’ve worn when he was ten or twelve, I started breaking down.

  Where was that precious little boy? How many ball games had I missed? How many afternoons had I left them with sitters so I could go to a meeting to plan a raffle, design a program journal, or listen to the ladies argue over ticket prices and who was important enough to get this or that underwritten? So many it was impossible to count them. And those days I could have spent with my boys were gone forever.

  But the mind games had been the culprit. Soon after the boys were born, Charles the Elder, the one who’s the horse’s ass, had embarked on a Chinese campaign of death by a thousand cuts. The little barbs of his running commentary were designed to make me feel inferior and worthless. The worse it got, the more I struggled to make myself interesting to him. In his warped mind, it wasn’t enough to be the mother of our two boys. He knew women who had power and fully loaded résumés of elite education, national distinctions, and global experience. And he told me about them. Night after night. Instead of suspecting it was the beginning of his wandering, I signed up for and volunteered for every single job I could find. Not at the boys’ schools—that would have been too pedestrian. No, my volunteer work was squarely rooted in the world-class arena of the arts in New York. Complex and all-consuming. But because he rarely matched my efforts with substantial financial support, I had never risen to any position of importance.

  I saw then the miserable truth of all those years. A wasted life. In the process of trying to be someone Charles would admire and respect, I had walked away from my greatest joy, my children. And I did it over and over again until he left me anyway. I must have been insane.

  Just as Mother had said, even if now I was twenty years younger, twenty pounds lighter, and I would add that if I held three doctorates in the most fascinating fields of study in the universe, and throw in a Nobel Prize, Charles still would not want me. The greater question was, Why did I ever so desperately want a man who made me feel like dirt to the point that I sacrificed a minute of time with my children? I swore to myself that if God ever granted me a chance to repair my own heart and to be a worthy mother, I would grab it.

  My thoughts must have traveled the ethers because I was deep in those exact thoughts when the phone rang. It was my son Charlie.

  “I can’t believe it’s you!” I said.

  “Why’s that? Are you okay? You’re not crying, are you?”

  “No! No!” I lied, and sniffed. “There’s a lot of dust in this house! Allergies, you know.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Well, you won’t believe this, but I was
just cleaning out the closets in your room and it occurred to me that you might like to see all these things I found before I call Goodwill. I was just going to call you!”

  “I don’t want anything, Mom. You can just dump it all.”

  “Oh, come on. There are swim-team trophies and ribbons, year-books—all sorts of mementos you might like to have for your own children someday. Don’t you think?”

  “Use your own judgment, Mom. You know more about that kind of thing than I ever would.”

  “I just ran across pictures of you on a Halloween. I guess you were about ten? Dan was dressed up like Spider-Man and you were—”

  “Frankenstein?”

  “Yep! Frankenstein.”

  “I remember that year, too.” He was quiet for a moment and then said, “I don’t know where Dad was, but I remember it was cold and raining. You took us out around the block, like you always did. You made us wear big down jackets and you held this giant doorman’s umbrella over us…”

  “And all I wanted…”

  “Was a Fifth Avenue candy bar! God! Do you remember how you used to send us out to get a Fifth Avenue? Those were the days, weren’t they?”

  Was I actually hearing a sentimental chord echo from the depths of my son’s previously frozen chest cavity? I grabbed the straw.

  “Yes. They were wonderful days, Charlie. I miss them a lot. Especially now, today, going through all your things. There are just so many memories.”