by Alison Lurie
“No, not then.” Barbie’s voice wobbled. She looked down, trailing her cleaning rag. “At least, if he did, I didn’t know. And he was still real sweet to me, mostly. But he sorta gradually got mean with other people.”
“Oh? In what way?”
“Well. Like for instance there was this company, Tumbleweed Investment Consultants, that Bob was sorta involved in, that went bust.” Barbie got down and began to drag the stepladder to the next window. “It was his partners who were really running the firm, but after the news came out nobody could find them. So then people who had put money in the company started coming to our house. Bob wasn’t home, but they said they would wait for him. It was August and real hot out, so I let them in and gave them lemonade. They started to tell me about it, how the Tumbleweed officials seemed so nice, and swore to them it was a sure thing.”
Barbie stopped spraying the glass and sat down on the top step of Lee’s ladder. “They were such sad people,” she said. “One guy worked in the post office and had a retarded child, and there was this old lady schoolteacher who’d mortgaged her house to buy Tumbleweed stock. I figured Bob would want to do something for them, so I let them wait in the sitting room till he got home.”
“I see. And what happened then?”
“It was real bad. There were about ten or twelve of them by that time, all over the sitting room and the den. Bob was smiley and polite, but I could tell he was real upset and angry. He kind of shooed them out of the house. He said afterward they were just taking me in, they were all frauds and whiners. They put up their money, he said, they took their chances. They could have bought a CD or something, but they wanted big fast profits, wasn’t that right? So I said I guess so. Then Bob said, ‘Do you think any of those guys would help us out if we were broke?’ And I had to admit probably they wouldn’t. Because that’s how people are, mostly.
“Even after that I thought maybe we could do something, at least for a couple of them that were in real trouble. But Mom said it wasn’t possible. She explained that Bob had to be really careful, because if he repaid anybody the others would want money too, that was only fair, and if we paid them all we would go bankrupt. Besides it would look terrible in the newspapers, as if Bob was admitting he was responsible for what happened to Tumbleweed, even though he hadn’t known anything about it. Then people would vote him out of office, or maybe he’d get impeached, and all the important things he wanted to do for the state would go down the drain. Mom said, if anybody else came around I should just pretend I wasn’t home. If I couldn’t do it for Bob, she said, I should do it for Oklahoma.”
“And did you take her advice?”
“Yeah.” Barbie shrugged sadly. “But it was awful, you know. People kept on calling and coming to the house for weeks, it seemed like. The phone never stopped, and they would ring the bell and knock on the front door and shake the gate to the backyard. Sometimes they would climb over the wall and go round the house, looking through all the windows. I stayed away as much as I could, but I had to go home sometime. I started keeping the drapes closed, so the house was dark all day.
“But one time it got quiet, and I thought they had all gone, so I pulled back the white brocade curtains in the sitting room, and there was a man’s face right there a couple inches from mine, with his nose flattened out against the glass. He looked like some kinda monster. I screamed, and he screamed back at me through the window. I shut the curtain again, so I couldn’t see him, and then I just sorta sat there for I don’t know how long. I was freaked out.” Barbie sighed and fell silent.
“Lee? You home?” The front door thudded back, and Jacko came in, his yellow rubber poncho dripping with rain.
“I’m in here. How’re you doing?”
“Great,” Jacko said, with an ambiguous intonation.
“You look kind of wet. Would you like some coffee, to warm up?”
“Nah, I can’t stay, Mumsie’s still in the truck. Only I wanted to tell you the latest. Aunt Myra is coming.”
“Really? When?”
“Tomorrow. When she gets an idea, Myra doesn’t waste any time. Only what I’d like to know is, what the hell does she want here?”
Instead of answering, Lee, with a gesture of her head, indicated Barbie, who was now crouched behind the ladder, washing the lower panes of one of the windows.
“Well. Cousin Barbie.” Jacko gave her a weary glance. “I get it,” he said suddenly and even less pleasantly. “You little creep. You told your mom I was sick, didn’t you?”
“I—Ah—” his cousin bleated, retreating further behind the stepladder.
“I should’ve known.” Jacko laughed shortly. “That’s why Myra sent you to Key West, isn’t it, so you could spy on me.”
“I didn’t—I wasn’t—” Barbie mumbled.
“Aw, shit. Well, she’s not going to like it here, that’s for sure,” Jacko told Lee. “So why is she coming? And she’s staying four nights at the Casa Marina; that’s not cheap.”
“Maybe she’s worried about her sister,” Lee suggested. Or her nephew, she added silently, giving Jacko a glance. In his shiny wet poncho, his curls diamond-dusted with rain, he looked as beautiful and fit as ever, but angrier than Lee had ever seen him.
“Not her,” Jacko said. “The only person Myra ever worries about is herself. If she’s coming to Key West, she wants something. Myra always wants something. The trouble is, you never figure out what until it’s too late.” He shrugged. “Well, I better get back to the house.”
“Why don’t you and your mother stay for lunch?” Lee said. “I have some curried squash soup in the fridge, and lots of cold chicken.”
Jacko shook his head. “You’re a pal, but no thanks. Mumsie is wiped out, and we’re both soaked. I’ll phone you later.”
As the door shut behind him, Lee turned toward Barbie, who was still crouched in a heap by the window, clutching a bottle of Windex and a wad of paper towels. She did not look like a pretty young woman now: her appearance was rather that of an abused homeless person. Lee considered expressing disapproval of Jacko’s attitude, then rejected this. Maybe Barbie had been sent to spy on him; how should she know?
“So what do you think your mother wants in Key West?” she asked instead, trying to make her tone sympathetic.
“I d’know.” Barbie rose to her feet slowly. “Only I guess she’ll get it, whatever it is. Mom always gets what she wants.”
“Really?” Lee asked skeptically. “How does she do that?”
“I d’know.” Barbie repeated dully. “She just does somehow.”
We’ll see about that, Lee thought. “Maybe Key West will be an exception,” she said. “Anyhow, if you’re finished with that window, come and have some squash soup.”
9
FOR THE FIRST TIME in a week the sun poured like pale syrup over Key West. Again the island assumed its travel-magazine glamour: pulsating blue sky, ostrich-feather palms, scarlet and salmon-red flowering hibiscus, bronzed and beaming tourists. Under this blue sky, rather slowly and painfully, Molly Hopkins descended her front steps and set out toward the restaurant where she had agreed to lunch. The fine warm weather had eased her arthritis, but she still walked with a limp. She would be a little late, as she often was nowadays.
Probably she should have driven, though it was only six blocks, Molly thought unhappily. Probably she shouldn’t even be here in Key West, trying to manage alone. If she were home in Convers her cleaning lady, Sally Hutchins, would have taken care of everything during the last awful week. Sally, who had been working for Molly for over thirty years, would have come every morning, shopped for groceries, and gone to the drugstore, post office, and library. When Molly wasn’t up to getting out of bed Sally would have brought her lunch, straightened her unwieldy pillows, and refilled the pink velvet-covered hot water bottle.
But there was no one like Sally in Key West: winter season provided so many jobs in the tourist industry for reliable people that anyone who didn’t have one was probabl
y delinquent or incompetent. Like nearly everyone she knew, Molly had a cleaning service. Once a week a posse of strange women, most of whom did not speak English, descended upon her house armed with mops and vacuums, and disappeared an hour later.
When Molly was ill in Key West she was dependent on friends, which embarrassed and depressed her. Two days ago, for instance, she had had to ask Lee Weiss to open a can of black bean soup because her own hands simply could not turn the crank. Maybe it was time to give up Key West and stay home through however many winters remained to her. Long, cold, icy winters, they would be, during which she would be housebound and crippled not only when the weather turned wet, but almost all the time.
Having a chronic illness, Molly thought, was like being invaded. Her grandmother back in Michigan used to tell about the day one of their cows got loose and wandered into the parlor, and the awful time they had getting her out. That was exactly what Molly’s arthritis was like: as if some big old cow had got into her house and wouldn’t go away. It just sat there, taking up space in her life and making everything more difficult, mooing loudly from time to time and making cow pies, and all she could do really was edge around it and put up with it.
When other people first became aware of the cow, they expressed concern and anxiety. They suggested strategies for getting the animal out of Molly’s parlor: remedies and doctors and procedures, some mainstream and some New Age. They related anecdotes of friends who had removed their own cows in one way or another. But after a while they had exhausted their suggestions. Then they usually began to pretend that the cow wasn’t there, and they preferred for Molly to go along with the pretense.
Ahead of her now Molly could see Henry’s Beach House, which was not a beach house but a famous restaurant. Its fame, however, was restricted to a select clientele. Though the place was often featured in expensive magazines, most Key West tourists never saw it. It was on an out-of-the way street of large private homes, and marked with the most discreet of signs. When Howard was alive he and Molly used to eat there two or three times a month, enjoying the excellent seafood and elegant camp decor: sea-green-and-white umbrellas, sea-green china, and linen napkins. The restaurant had also appeared in several of her watercolors, embellished with the Victorian gingerbread icing for which she was so well known.
Molly, somewhat against her own best judgment, was on her way to Sunday lunch with Jacko’s aunt, Myra Mumpson. Though she had dressed carefully for the occasion, in pale-pink flowered silk and a silk-flowered straw hat, she felt uneasy. According to Jacko, his aunt was a terror. It was true that this terror was not visible on the surface: rather, Myra’s outer aspect was conventional, even reassuring. Knowing that she was Dorrie Jackson’s elder sister, Molly had expected a fierce elderly lady. But Myra seemed at least a decade younger than her sister—more from across the room. She was a handsome, healthy-looking woman with expertly cut and rather too bright reddish-brown hair. Her skin was glossily tanned and tight, like expensive leather luggage packed to capacity (one face-lift at least, Molly decided).
“But why should your aunt ask me to lunch?” Molly had inquired when Jacko conveyed the invitation. “We’ve hardly met.”
“Why not? Aunt Myra always wants to know the important people in town wherever she goes—”
“But I’m not—” Molly tried to interject.
“I told her you were a famous artist and a power on the local scene.”
“Jacko, really! You know that’s quite untrue.”
“I talked all my friends up,” he explained. “I don’t want her to think I know only riffraff.”
“Yes, but even so—”
“Maybe she wants something from you,” Jacko suggested. “Aunt Myra always wants something.”
Probably I should have said no, Molly thought. But curiosity, and her wish to get out of the house after days of total confinement, had overcome her suspicions. Anyhow I’ve got nothing Myra Mumpson could want, she thought, limping along the uneven sidewalk under the huge old sapodilla and mango trees. When Howard was alive he was on the Historic Preservation Board, and a lot of other boards having to do with history and literature and education, and people often wanted things from him, but that was years ago.
Four years now. Sometimes it seemed like yesterday: it seemed that at any moment Howard would come in from the garden, holding the Times with its white wings spread, smiling and reading out some item that had caught his attention. At other, darker moments it seemed as if their fifty-four years of marriage had been only a long happy dream—as if Molly were still a lonely, awkward art student, an excess person in any gathering of couples. Because now again she was a lonely awkward excess person. The only difference was that now she had no dreams of a brighter future.
As Molly followed the hostess through the restaurant and out onto the brilliantly sunny deck, she saw that Myra Mumpson had somehow secured a most desirable table, with an uninterrupted view of the shimmering turquoise sea. Perhaps the hostess had been impressed by her clothes: white sharkskin resort wear of the most obviously fashionable sort, and much gold jewelry.
“Lovely to see you,” Myra cried, half rising from under the green-and-white umbrella. Her manner was breezy and slightly gushing, with a touch of brisk down-home charm. “Now why don’t you just sit right here by me, so we won’t have to shout over all that noise.” She gestured at the salty, foam-glazed waves sloshing against the piers below the railing.
Though the restaurant was crowded, something about Myra evidently attracted instant service. Almost at once a slight, handsome young Chinese man in a crisp white shirt and brief denim cutoffs appeared. “My name is Dennis,” he announced, smiling winningly and offering menus the size of tabloid newspapers. “I’ll be your waiter today.”
Myra ordered a bottle of Asti Spumante, insisted that Molly join her, and began on the usual tourist topics: weather, travel, restaurants, and accommodations. She pronounced the Casa Marina, one of the most expensive hotels in town, “surprisingly comfortable.”
“All I ever knew about Key West was that old film with Burt Lancaster, The Rose Tattoo,” she confided. “Dirt streets and shacks and chickens running around. But it’s not really like that.” She gave a loud musical laugh.
“Oh no,” Molly agreed.
“Only thing I can’t understand is, why are there so many T-shirt shops?”
“Well, people say there aren’t, not really,” Molly lowered her voice and her wine glass, which to her surprise was nearly empty. “What I’ve heard is that some of them aren’t real shops. They’re actually laundries, for laundering drug money, you know.”
“Oh yeah?” Myra leaned forward with interest.
“The idea is, nobody can really tell how many hand-painted T-shirts they sell, or how much they mark them up. So the owners can claim hundreds or thousands of dollars more than they take in legitimately. That’s what people say; I don’t know if it’s true. But rents on Duval Street have gone up incredibly over the last few years.”
“Uh-huh.” Myra nodded knowingly. “I’ve seen that sort of thing back home. It brings in a lot of cash for a while, but in the end it can’t help but lower property values.”
“They’ve ruined all that part of town, really. Most people I know never go there if they can help it.”
“Yeah, that figures. But of course there’s more than that to Key West, praise God,” Myra said, brightening. “There are some very nice residential areas. Big lots, very attractive construction and landscaping. You have a beautiful home here, for instance. Of course I’ve only seen it from outside, but I really admired the tropical planting, and those elegant double verandas.”
Was Myra angling for an invitation? Was that what she wanted? Molly resolved not to extend it; for one thing, she wasn’t physically up to entertaining yet.
“And you certainly deserve a lovely home,” Myra continued, raising her second—or was it her third?—glass of wine. “You know, I had no idea you were M. Hopkins until my nephew told me. T
hose wonderful, wonderful New Yorker covers, with the Victorian houses and gardens, and all those funny cats!” She gave her rippling laugh. “They were so much more attractive than the ugly cartoon covers they have now.”
“Thank you.” It was what Molly thought too, but would never have said.
Their waiter reappeared and began to recite the specials of the day. “Creole shrimp salad,” Myra repeated, looking at him brightly. “That sounds real good. Or should I have conch fritters? I hear they’re the Key West specialty. What’s your opinion?”
“The shrimp is excellent today,” he said with what struck Molly as an ambiguous Oriental smile.
“I get you.” Myra laughed. “Okay, I’ll have the shrimp.”
“That’s my kind of waiter,” she said when he’d gone. “The conch fritters are terrible, I take it.”
“Well, I think so.” Molly heard herself giggle. Was it the wine? She never drank at lunch anymore, or on an empty stomach.
“I wanted to thank you,” Myra said, pouring herself another glass. “For being so kind to my poor confused daughter.”
“It wasn’t—”
“Taking her in off the street, literally, when you hadn’t even met her. Barbie told me all about it.”
“It was only for one night.” Maybe she doesn’t want anything from me after all, Molly thought; maybe she’s just paying me back.
“I don’t know why she couldn’t have gone to a motel; she has credit cards,” Myra continued. “But that’s how Barbie is. She’s never really learned to take care of herself. Or how to manage a husband, poor child; I hear she told you all about that.”
“Well, a little,” Molly admitted.
“He’s a congressman, you know, so he’s awfully busy, working late a lot of the time. But Barbie got the idea he was playing around, so she ran home to Mother.” She sighed. “You’d never think she was thirty-six years old.”
“No,” Molly agreed, wondering if Myra’s version of the story were the correct one. After all, the events described were the same. It was like one of those modern sculptures, she thought: you turn the thing a few degrees and it looks wholly different.