Claire and Present Danger

by Gillian Roberts

  I tried to not look surprised by anything. Not the untimely arrival of the senior Macks, at the passable condition of the gigantic room, or at the miraculous apparition of tortilla chips and salsa dip on the table.

  C. K. Mackenzie’s stock shot through the roof, rose so high, the entire world economy snapped back into high gear.

  “She’s just as pretty as you said she was,” Boy Mackenzie told his son, giving him a congratulatory whomp on the shoulder. Boy’s boy had found a good ‘un.

  I knew it was a compliment, and I knew I had to look pleased, but I really didn’t love being talked about—in fact, being weighed and measured and judged—in the third person while I stood there, still encircled by Gabby Mackenzie’s arms.

  The woman was a world-class hugger. I could barely find the breath to smile in response to Boy’s appraisal of me. She finally released her grip, but held on to my arms. “She certainly is that,” she said. “Pretty as can be.”

  I wondered where they thought I actually was and when they’d decide to speak directly to me. “Thank you,” I said softly, absolutely hating this. Visions of Miss Swamp filled my head, with me next to her as the “before” image. My lipstick had worn off hours ago, and I hadn’t combed my hair since lunchtime. It didn’t bear thought. At least I could blame the ink stain on fate, not bad grooming. “And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll change into something clean and—”

  “Nonsense!” C. K.’s mother said, leaning back—still holding me—and smiling broadly. “You look fine.”

  I did not look fine. Or fahn. They were Southern. Of course they’d say I looked wonderful. I had to ask Mackenzie what they said when they were alone, what proportion of any conversation was close to sincere and how much was automatic pilot. Of course, despite his rapid acclimation to Philadelphia, he was still a Southerner, too. He’d lie graciously along with his folks.

  Meanwhile, he was looking at me with controlled eye signals that I interpreted to mean, “What did you mean when you came in the door, babbling?” while I was trying to blink, in code and eye squeezes, “Claire Fairchild was murdered!”

  Good thing nobody tried our codes in wartime. Didn’t work. We looked like people with eye disease.

  I took a deep breath and filed Emmie Cade and Claire Fairchild away until appropriate, and focused on my future family members. I let go of trivialities like murder and murderers, and made room for my hitherto unsuspected inner Southerner. At once, sharp edges softened, the light in the loft grew golden and life simpler. I gestured for everyone to sit down again, settled myself near Gabby Mackenzie, smiled, said, “Help yourself to this lovely looking salsa”—said it more than once, to tell the truth—and then said, “Tell me about your trip! You’ve gone so far and done so much, you must have had all sorts of adventures!” The exclamation points that dotted each sentence’s end came from a surprising and inexhaustible wellspring of acute hostessing and, to my amazement, each little ! sparked smiles and conversation, so we were off and running.

  Gabby was well nicknamed, but unlike my father, Boy was an equal partner in storytelling. They finished each other’s sentences, interrupted, corrected, laughed, and continued on, so that their combined narrative of far-flung children, grandchildren, homes, pets, and picnics broke the ice and, by some sleight of hand, pulled me into the great swarming mass of Mackenzies where, to my surprise, I almost felt comfortable.

  But Claire Fairchild’s death intruded, despite my best wishes. And Emmie Cade’s paranoia. Murder will out, or at least seep its vivid stain into an otherwise pastel, pleasant conversation. What had happened to Mrs. Fairchild in the middle of the night? Who had happened?

  And when I forced myself away from them again, back into the present and the warm family glow—my parents intruded themselves. This was not a mix that was going to work. Not even if Gabby and Boy spoke nonstop, which, apparently, was pretty much what they did. My mother would know they needed to catch their breath sometimes, and she’d be ready to pounce with her two cents.

  She wasn’t mean-spirited, and she meant well, but without knowing her specific agenda (though I feared it involved Handel, bouquets, and the phrase “I do”), I knew that introducing her would be like putting a tree limb into the spokes of a moving bicycle. Trees and their limbs are nice. There are, nonetheless, situations they don’t help.

  “You’ve got to hear this, Manda,” Boy said, pulling my focus back into the room. I hoped my expression hadn’t been too remote. “Porter’s boys have these dogs, these dogs that—”

  Gabby burst out laughing. “Stop, stop immediately, you terrible man! I can’t bear—they are the worst behaved, most adorable things—”

  I should make it clear hereabouts that I have, from time to time, thought Mackenzie’s accent rendered him nearly unintelligible. But he tries. And he’s been in Philadelphia long enough to have clipped off some of those open-ended vowel sounds that once clouded his words. For my part, I’d retrained my ears and I can make out what he’s saying most of the time, although the more emotional he gets, the blurrier his syllables become. Most of the time, that doesn’t matter. As long as I’m sharing the emotion, who cares what he’s saying?

  But his parents were another matter. I had to assume everything they said—and they said so very much—mattered. I would only seem intelligent if I understood why they laughed so often, and it was in my best interests to comprehend what they were telling me about this family I was joining.

  Given my years of training with their son, I could understand them, but only by puzzling it through, which left me a beat behind. I felt as if I were running after phrases, grappling them to the ground, pulling off all the fuzz and sugarcoating and only belatedly saying, “Aha! Gotcha.” And then, leaping up to gallop after the next batch that had gone sliding by.

  Word-wrangling was exhausting. The good side was that it left me precious little time to think about Claire Fairchild and to appreciate my mother, whose words, however infuriating they could be, were spoken in my Yankee mother tongue.

  “You would think,” Boy said, “that they had enough on their hands with two sets of twins, so that they’d make sure their dogs behaved, because those kids surely don’t. . . .” He smiled the whole time he said it, obviously enjoying his grandchildren’s mischief. Perhaps, even the dogs’.

  “Made me miss my babies, though,” Gabby said.

  This time when I captured the words, I did a mental double take. Babies? The woman was a veritable goddess of fertility, but her eight babies were strapping adults now. And if she meant her grandchildren, why miss them when she’d been visiting them? Maybe she missed the dozens back in Louisiana?

  Mackenzie saw my expression. “These days, Mama calls her dogs her babies,” he said. “Speakin’ of lummoxy ill-behaved creatures.”

  Boy laughed again. “That’s so they’ll remind her of her real babies. Besides, the dogs mean well. Can’t say that for the kids. On the other hand, the kids were pretty smart, and Gabby’s babies—frankly, this might not be politically correct—”

  “I’m not sure dogs are into that yet, Dad,” C. K. said.

  “Well, our two—they are mentally challenged, I swear.”

  Gabby waved her spangled fingers at him. “The poor dears.”

  “The poor stupid dears,” Boy said.

  “What are their names?” I asked, to make conversation. I was already deluged with names. Eight kids, six current spouses, three or four formers, and nine million grandchildren. Enough. But names were easier to follow than narratives.

  “Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn,” Gabby said.

  Of course.

  “Finally named something for the actors themselves, not the roles they played,” C. K. said.

  His parents—or his mother, most likely—enraptured by the actors, had named C. K. and his siblings after the roles and personas they had played. They were always good people and, most often, super-rich, imaginary wealthy relatives with whom she gifted her children. My poor guy, named fo
r C. K. Dexter Haven, the loveable wastrel in The Philadelphia Story, didn’t even get a full name. I must say, however, I’m glad she opted for the C. K. part rather than the Dexter.

  With the dogs, however, she’d finally gone for the real thing.

  “Poor Cary needs his medication twice a day, and I’m so worried that dizzy little girl will forget.”

  “He’s epileptic,” Boy said.

  “Really? I didn’t know dogs had epilepsy,” I said.

  “Not uncommon,” Boy said.

  “Poor baby,” Gabby repeated. “I worry all the time Lizzie will forget the medicine and he’ll have another seizure.”

  “Now, Gabby,” Boy said. “Lizzie’s taken care of your babies before, and she always does a good job.”

  “But we’ve been gone so long this time.” She sighed.

  “They’ll be fine, Mom,” C. K. said, and the talk drifted back to human Mackenzies.

  I was running so hard after their words that it took me longer than it should have to realize that neither Gabby nor Boy ever gave a sign of passing judgment on their large clan, except to laugh at their antics. Not a flick of a mouth, a squint of the eye, an inflection in the words. They were amused by, or surprised by, or confused by, people—related to them or not—but I didn’t see a frown of disapproval, or the heavy silences of disappointment. I didn’t even feel the prodding finger of expectation.

  I didn’t dare think about this in contrast to my mother—but I couldn’t help myself. She didn’t precisely disapprove—but she always had an agenda, a next step, and was eager to move you on to it. So if she’d been here, and in fact, when she did arrive, instead of happily spinning wheels as we were now doing, instead of enjoying the fact of the engagement and the new relationships, she’d be pushing and pulling, tugging and entreating. Move on! Move on! Most likely, at such time as I actually do feel ready to marry C. K., immediately after he kisses the bride, my mother will step up with her imaginary clipboard and say, “Okay, now you’re married. Time for children. How many? When?”

  Maybe Gabrielle Mackenzie would be able to change the tempo, keep it easy the way it was now. I watched with pleasure as she used the whole of her arms to animate her sentences, and each time I was amazed by her dazzling, glitter-dusted fingernails. The woman had never had money, and without it and the help and comforts it could have provided, she raised eight children of her own, plus numerous strays and, according to her son, did it with laughter and few complaints. I hadn’t believed him about the noncomplaints, but I was a believer now. She was a hardworking, kindhearted woman with a comic vision of life.

  Even her fingernails were laughing, in their own way. Those hands that had scrubbed and nursed and tied shoelaces and brushed hair and ironed and mended—those hands had been given their Emancipation Proclamation by their owner. Each red and green and silver nail celebrated its accomplishments and, at the same time, waved as flags of freedom, announcing that these hands were on vacation from soapy dishwater and scrub brushes.

  I decided then and there that I liked her and, more than that, I admired her.

  This was going to work out. At least when my mother wasn’t around.

  Gabby took a two-inch-thick packet of snapshots out of her pocketbook. “Meet the family,” she said, passing them to me. She leaned close and pointed a spangled nail at a face and named it, one after the other. I tried memorizing what Noah looked like and what color hair Phoebe had, and which child belonged to which adults, but there were too many, and none of them looked related to the other. I tried the same method I used in the classroom, matching names with hair color, nose size, freckles, height, jug-ears and buck teeth—anything that marked a person’s face as his own and none other. So Noah was dark-haired and relatively short and married to Angela, a woman who looked as if she ran miles every day; and Porter was a strawberry blonde—going bald—and tall and married, for the second time to the same woman, Myra, who was sharp-featured and dark-haired, and they had two sets of twin boys and two badly behaved dogs; and Lutie was slender and elfin and had surely been told lots of times that she resembled Audrey Hepburn, and had been married three times already, and was on the verge of a fourth merger, most likely also doomed, they calmly acknowledged. The marriages had been worth it, Gabby said, because they produced three equally elfin and exquisite grandbabies. “Her new beau is handsome. I’ll say that for him. So who knows what kind of adorable baby they’ll produce?”

  I’m not saying it was a great attitude, or even a sane one. I’m simply saying it was refreshing and easy to be around.

  I didn’t even try for any of the dozens of children’s names. They lived all over the country and weren’t likely to drop in, so that could wait.

  I murmured my admiration of each and every shot.

  “A motley bunch, aren’t they?” Gabby said. “Never could figure out why they all look as if we spotted them sitting by the side of the road and snapped them up and took them home.”

  And in truth, except for his rangy height, I couldn’t see any resemblance between Mackenzie and his parents, or between him and his siblings as a group. I liked the idea of a tight clan of people who looked as if they should barely know each other.

  Boy took a small notebook out of his pocket. “So here’s the tally,” he said with great satisfaction. “Two thousand, nine hundred fifty-four miles so far this trip. Decent mileage, too. Twenty-four on the highways—”

  “Zero to five all the times he refused to ask directions and we spent hours and hours lost—you would not believe how many times,” Gabby said, and then she laughed. If he was from Mars and she was from Venus, they’d found an intermediate planet where they could cohabit and enjoy the view all around them.

  C. K. took his father’s detour into driving adventures as a signal it was time to move on. Literally. “What shall we do about dinner?” he asked politely. “What tickles your fancy? I’m sure you noticed that we live in a trendy, cutting-edge neighborhood.”

  His animated parents went blank. Reading body language and facial expressions was easier than deciphering their speech, so I knew instantly they had donned polite Southern masks to hide the fact that they knew their son was protecting them from the ugly truth: This neighborhood, their faces said, was pathetic, but how brave of you to pretend otherwise.

  We live in Old City, which was, along with Society Hill, where Philadelphia began on the banks of the Delaware River. In the nineteenth century it grew to be the center of manufacturing. When that moved on, people like us moved in, converted the warehouses, put in and supported galleries, cafés, and excellent restaurants. Our loft had once been the top floor of an Oriental rug warehouse. Today, an art gallery occupied the ground floor.

  But I realized how provincial I was about it. I knew its value, and its place in the city’s geography and history, but C. K.’s parents might see it otherwise. Their poor children lived in one room in an abandoned warehouse. They couldn’t even afford the normal amount of interior walls. The neighborhood was sadly deficient in greenery, just like everything they’d heard about Northern slums. There was no front porch or garden, only skylights and oversized windows that viewed other former factories.

  “There’s a Spanish restaurant, a Turkish, sushi, seafood—what would you like?” C. K. asked.

  “We did our research,” Boy said. “Went to the Automobile Association, found out everything about this city. And, we read all about it on the Internet. So if it’s all right, we’d like to go a little more native than your ideas.”

  “You want Pepper Pot Soup,” C. K. said, “in honor of Ms. Pepper here. And an old Philadelphia tradition dating back to when General George Washington and the Continental Army were out in Valley Forge and near starvation. The cook only had scraps of tripe and some peppercorns, but he made a good enough soup to keep them going till they won the war.”

  A two-second and definitely suspect culinary-based explanation of the Revolution. “Pure tripe,” I said.

  He took that as v
erification, not as an insult. “Tripe was what saved the day,” he said. “Everybody knows an army travels on its stomach.”

  Meanwhile, Gabby stepped back, as if horrified that she’d offended me. “We didn’t make the Pepper connection, honey.”

  “No, no,” I said. “It isn’t my—”

  “Hell, we didn’t know about it at all,” Boy added. “It wasn’t on those Web sites. What is it?”

  “Do you think the fact that it’s made of an ox’s stomach lining has anything to do with being left off the list of must-eats?” I asked. “We aren’t known for our cuisine.”

  “Scrapple, then,” Mackenzie said.

  “Named for my aunt, Gladys Scrapple,” I said. “Just joking. And that isn’t what you want, either. First of all, it’s a breakfast dish. And second—there is no second. No.”

  “Philadelphia is famous for good eats,” Mackenzie said.

  “You’re—that’s not nice,” I said. “Just because you were raised in the land of fabulous foods.”

  “And you, in the land of—”

  “Scrapple. As in scraps.” I said. “The pieces of meat nobody wants, like ears and feet and gums and—”

  “Oh, my, how . . .” Gabby was trying to be polite and gracious about eating animal noses, but she nonetheless waved away the idea with a flash of green and red fingernails.

  “And—then it’s spiced up and held together by lard,” I said. “Are you really suggesting that isn’t more yummy than beignets?”

  “Crawfish étoufée?” Mackenzie said, grinning.

  “Bananas Foster?” Boy added.

  “Oysters Louisiana?” Gabby said.

  “Hoagies,” Boy said. “That’s what we read about and that’s what we came for tonight. Is there a restaurant like that in this neighborhood?”

  Sometimes, there is a little extra-Manda sitting in the corner, laughing hysterically at the parallel life she intended to take. I’d wanted so to appear competent in front of my beloved’s parents. We’d made extensive plans for their arrival. Beth was even at this moment orchestrating and prepping for an exquisitely designed meal for the next evening. I had intended at the very least to have clean and organized hair, and no stain on my blouse.