Too Much Too Soon

by Jacqueline Briskin

  The attendants lifted the gantry onto the front patio. “Joss!” Honora cried, lifting her arms.

  “Hi,” Joscelyn bent down to be hugged.

  “How wonderful seeing you. I’ve missed you so much.”

  Joscelyn swallowed and her mouth trembled over her armored teeth. “Honora, I’m sorry about—”

  “Yes,” Honora interrupted. Her face was thin and very pale, which made her eyes seem enormous. “But let them bring me in and then we can catch up.”

  The attendants couldn’t maneuver the stretcher in the narrow hall to the bedrooms, so Curt carried his wife and set her down on newly ironed sheets.

  * * *

  “It’s like she’s wadded in cotton,” Curt said to Joscelyn a week later. “I can’t get through to her.”

  “It’s not your fault. You’ve been terrific.”

  He had been, too. He brought home small, humorous gifts every night, he told amusing incidents that happened at work, he held her hand when he thought Joscelyn couldn’t see. Honora accepted gifts and affection with patently spurious smiles. Joscelyn, too, had tried, talking to her sister about the “old days” in England, the new days in Beverly Hills. Her efforts met with a blank wall of smiles.

  Curt said, “She blames herself.”

  Joscelyn pulled a serious face to be worthy of this adult conversation. “I’ve never heard her cry. Does she?”

  “Not around me. She’s always so damn cheerful that I want to cry.”

  “Exactly,” said Joscelyn, whose limited patience was wilting under the strain of being perpetually pleasant to the sister who used to mother her.

  “Bear with her, Joss, give her time,” he said, and a spasm contorted his mouth. “Christ, if only I could do something, anything, to snap her out of it.”

  * * *

  Joscelyn glanced out her open bedroom window, which gave onto a small square back garden. Honora knelt before a flowerbed, carefully mounding fertilizer around each little plant. Tender upper lip held by lower teeth, a line drawn between her eyes, she had the dreamy expression of the real Honora.

  A few weeks ago, Curt’s present had been a flat of zinnias, frail, leafy shoots that looked as if they would wilt immediately in the southern California heat. That same evening Honora had taken the carton of tiny plants into the back garden, planting them a trowel’s length apart. Watching, Joscelyn had remembered Honora in outsize trousers, monitor in charge of Edinthorpe’s vegetable garden.

  Since then Honora had spent most of her time outside, pruning and fertilizing and weeding. In the evening she would sit on the narrow, flagstone patio, as if guarding her flourishing little zinnias.

  Honora pulled out a weed, dropping it into the paper grocery sack at her side.

  Joscelyn sighed: Who wants to garden on a hot day like this!

  She herself was dying to be at the beach. The southern California seaside was broad, golden of sand and blaring with records from the hamburger shacks. Curt had bought Honora a blue Studebaker which looked the same at either end, and in less than fifteen minutes they could be dabbling their toes in the curls of salt foam.

  Maybe I can talk her into going after lunch.

  * * *

  Eula Lee served a big spinach salad with bacon and chopped eggs. Honora, showered and wearing a skirt and blouse, ate very little. “What are you doing this afternoon, Joss?”

  Joscelyn carefully broke apart her third sweet roll—Eula Lee coiled rich dough around Demerara sugar, pecans and raisins. “I was thinking about the beach.”

  Honora smiled, and said as if answering a question, “Curt brought me The Disenchanted yesterday and I thought I’d start it.”

  “There’s no law against taking books to Santa Monica.”

  Honora tilted her head as if Joscelyn’s words had finally registered. “The beach?”

  “Yes, remember? Sand, big waves, cool breezes, etcetera.”

  “Some other time.”

  “When?”

  Honora rolled her tumbler between her palms, and ice tinkled in the cold, creamed coffee. She smiled absently.

  Joscelyn wanted to feel sympathetic, but instead she dropped into the black pit of rejection. “When?” she asked shrilly. “Tomorrow? Thursday week? December 25, 1999?”

  “Soon.” Honora put down her napkin. “See you later,” she said. She moved in that uniquely graceful way from the dining ell, crossing the living room, echoing down the short bedroom hall. A door closed.

  Joscelyn sat at the table, picking at her sweet roll as Eula Lee cleared off. After a brief clatter of dishes being stacked, silence descended: the house might have been deserted except for an occasional rustle as the cook turned the pages of the Los Angeles Times. It was like this every weekday unless Vi dropped over for lunch.

  Into this stillness came silent questions. Is it such a big deal to drive down to the beach with me? Doesn’t she care whether I’m here or not? Will I always be the ugly tagalong who doesn’t belong anywhere?

  With a sudden leap, Joscelyn was on her feet, rushing into the back garden.

  With disbelieving horror yet unable to stop herself she began yanking out the bushy little zinnias. The stalks oozed a sourish-smelling gum which stuck in the lines of her palms. It was well over ninety, and by the time every plant was uprooted she was sweating freely. She began a witches’ dance, her skinny body circling as her fraying Keds stamped the plants into the Bermuda grass.

  The larger bedroom door opened onto the rear patio. Intent on wreaking total destruction, Joscelyn didn’t hear the creak of the screen door.

  Suddenly she was yanked from the trampled plants.

  Shaking her, Honora cried, “What have you do-o-one?” The normally soft low-pitched voice was distorted into a shrieking howl.

  Startled, guilty, Joscelyn snapped back, “So the waxwork lady’s come to life.”

  “My poor zinnias!” Honora slapped Joscelyn on the jaw so hard that her braces caught against her flesh. Joscelyn staggered backward, then struck out, raking her dirty, gum-encrusted nails down her sister’s creamy cheek. Immediately four angry red lines showed.

  “You murderer!” Honora screamed. “You’ve killed them!”

  “Your precious plants! They’re more important to you than me. Or Curt!”

  Honora dragged her across the lawn to the circular clothesline, then rushed back to sink kneeling by the mound of crushed plants. Violent sobs shuddered below the silk blouse and tears streamed down the scratched oval face onto the mangled zinnias.

  Joscelyn’s heart began to bang madly. She had no idea how to handle her sister’s maniacally out-of-proportion grief.

  “My babies, my poor babies,” Honora gasped. “I never should have left them. I’m careless, so careless . . . .”

  Joscelyn crouched next to her sister, putting her arms around the slim, heaving shoulders. “Honora, please don’t. I’m the one who dug them up.”

  “If I’d taken proper care . . . they’d be alive . . . .”

  “No, no.”

  “Oh, my God . . . .”

  “I’ve always been a monster, you know that, Honora.”

  “It’s me, me . . . my fault.” Honora clutched Joscelyn to her muddied blouse.

  In the gaudy southern California midday sun, amid the sour odor of uprooted summer flowers, the two sisters knelt on recently mowed grass, clasped together and swaying as they wept for the unalterable, irrefutable truth of death.

  * * *

  That evening when Curt opened the front door, he raised an eyebrow at the scratches on his wife’s cheek, the bruise mark on Joscelyn’s, “Looks like combat zone.”

  Joscelyn, in terror lest he dispatch her back to San Francisco, said truculently, “Honora doesn’t like my gardening.”

  “She’s dreadful,” Honora said with a rueful, genuine laugh. “You’ll have to get me some more zinnias.”

  * * *

  “I thought it was never going to happen again,” Curt said.

  Honora pressed
his head against her breasts. “I told you two weeks ago Doctor Taupin had given the go-ahead.”

  “I was waiting for a more enthusiastic invitation.”

  “Like tonight?”

  “Like tonight.”

  “Do you think Joss heard us?”

  “The walls are thick,” he said, rubbing, kissing her softness.

  24

  It was Gideon’s habit to visit the nursery before they went out for the evening. On this chilly August night his ponderous tiptoeing on patent pumps was unnecessary.

  Gid was awake.

  The crib creaked, banging against the wall as the baby jounced back and forth on his hands and knees, snuffling in misery. When his father picked him up, though, his brown eyes widened and he gave his sweet, pink-gummed smile.

  “It must be the tooth,” said Crystal. A sensual feast in her black chiffon strapless and her cloud of Chanel N° 5 perfume, she remained in the doorway.

  Being decades younger than Gideon, Crystal was able to view their child’s minor ups and downs with equanimity. At six months, Gid was a solidly healthy specimen who stayed in the precise center of the normal parameters as outlined by his pediatrician. Crystal was filled with maternal affection for her son, and even proud of him, although Gid had inherited his father’s burly shoulders and short legs, the small, round, brown eyes.

  “Teething?” Gideon shook his head worriedly. “Not with this kind of congestion.”

  “Piers says it’s a tooth, and Piers knows all there is about babies.”

  Piers, nanny to nobility for a quarter of a century, had been lured from a London registry by a regal salary. This was her every-other-weekend off.

  “He’s getting slobber all over you.” Crystal whipped a clean, initialed diaper from the neatly folded stack to dab at her husband’s stiffly starched shirtfront.

  “Maybe he’s picked up the flu,” Gideon said worriedly.

  “Gid?” She wiped her son’s face and nose. “He’s never even had a cold.”

  “I don’t like leaving him.”

  “Gideon, do you have any idea of how difficult it was to get this invitation?” Crystal asked, smiling prettily. Thomas Wei, a wealthy Chinese-American, was throwing a reception at his San Rafael home to honor a committee from Taiwan, as the Chinese called Formosa. The group was in the United States to select a company to plan and oversee the building of a vast seawall that would ward off the monsoon tidal waves, a never before attempted engineering feat.

  To receive an embossed invitation and thus enable Gideon to meet the committee on an informal basis, Crystal had worked her tail off.

  Since her marriage, she had joined in a business alliance with her husband, a partnership that she found exciting, deeply satisfying and a beneficial balance to the scales of her horrendous nights. Major construction was emerging from its cyclical slump, and her exquisitely planned entertainments were helping Talbott’s win contracts. Gideon, however, nursed uncertainties about his wife’s activities: the loans of their new limousine, the lavish weekends at their Monterey house on the golf course, went against his sternly moral grain, even though, as Crystal often pointed out, she was merely following common practice.

  Continuing to stroke the back of his son’s yellow sleepers, he frowned, his mouth pulling into heavy, downward lines. “You know I don’t like pushing my way into people’s homes.”

  “Oh, Gideon! What’s so wrong with being a bit friendly?”

  “Talbott’s has never needed to smear or do favors.” His tone was harsh.

  “We’re going to a party for the Taiwan committee, not buying them each a half dozen singsong girls.” She drew a breath. “Gideon, I don’t have to remind you that Bechtel and Fluor are offering a free preliminary study. And so is McNee-Ivory. How will you feel if Taiwan awards a contract this size to them?”

  Curt’s successful highway project in Lalarhein had brought McNee several extremely large Mideast jobs: after he was with the company a little over half a year, the elderly George McNee had made him a partner. Gideon was particularly embittered because before their relationship had altered so disastrously he had been considering raising Curt to the same position.

  After a moment, Gideon gently laid his son back in his custom-upholstered crib, a gesture of acquiescence. Clear mucus bubbled at Gid’s nostrils, and he flailed fat arms and legs, emitting snorting, unhappy wails.

  Gideon hastily picked up the baby. “It’s all right, Gid, Daddy’s here,” he soothed.

  Crystal squared her shoulders. Her breasts pulled up from her low-cut gown and the dim nursery nightlights danced on the diamonds at her throat. “Gideon, dear,” she cooed, “we can’t be late. These are Chinamen, they do take offense easily, they never forgive a loss of face.”

  Gid sneezed.

  Gideon tenderly wiped the baby’s nose, then looked up. His jaw was set. “Go ahead without me,” he said. When Gideon spoke in this preemptory tone it meant that his mind was closed. He would listen to no argument or pleas.

  Settling her white fox stole over her shoulders, Crystal marched from the nursery and down the stairs to the porte cochere, where the new black Cadillac waited.

  * * *

  As she proceeded through the large, crowded hall with its baroque, curving staircase and into the two-story drawing room, gratifying zephyrs of admiration followed in her wake. Though many of the Chinese-American women were exquisite in their opulent jewelry and their latest Paris creations, Crystal outshone them all with the natural rose of her cheeks, the bright glint of her upswept hair, her firm, magnificent young bosom rising from the swathe of black chiffon. Her host escorted her to the guests of honor. The committee’s leader, a tall Manchurian with prominent gold front teeth, must have made some sort of signal. With repetitive bows, his two underlings excused themselves, backing away. Crystal gestured animatedly while she conversed about the real China, as she called Taiwan.

  “You are a most knowing lady,” said the official in his high-pitched English. “And delightfully beautiful, as befits this house.”

  Privately, Crystal thought this gabled and towered heap tacky in the extreme. On every wall hung folding screens, the kind of overly gilded horrors you saw in Chinatown store windows: the low, carved Oriental tables were dwarfed by mammoth, antiquated red brocade upholstery. But she smiled her gratitude for the compliment. “Our place can’t hold a candle to this, but we do have a rather nice view of the Bay.” She tilted her head. “Do you suppose that I could coax you and your friends to see it? My husband was so disappointed he was ill tonight.” She had transferred the ailment from Gid to his father. “This dreadful twenty-four-hour-flu—San Francisco’s having an epidemic.”

  “We will be delighted to accept,” the Chinese said somberly. “But I cannot express my sorriness at Mr. Talbott’s unfortunate indisposition. I was so looking forward to have discuss our project congruently with him and Mr. Ivory.”

  “Mr. Ivory?” Crystal’s voice rose in shocked surprise.

  “Mr. Curt Ivory.”

  “Curt here?”

  “Ahh, yes. You did not know that he flies up from Los Angeles for the evening? You have not yet see your brother-in-law?”

  “How clever of you to know the relationship,” she said in a strangled tone. “Hardly anyone does.”

  “But you must not be so amazed, Mrs. Talbott,” he replied. “This is my obligation, to know about your fine American engineers.”

  Crystal heard a snap and simultaneously a sharp jolt shot through her arm. Glancing down, she saw that she had broken the stem of her empty champagne goblet. With a little cry, she dropped the two pieces, jumping back as cut glass shattered on the hardwood floor. Nearby guests crowded around to ascertain that Mrs. Talbott’s delicate palm was undamaged while servants neatly swept up. In the midst of the hubbub, Crystal lowered her lashes, surreptitiously glancing around. At the far end of the vista of rooms, amid a group of patent-leather glossy heads, she glimpsed a thick mane of dark blond hair.


  Her voice high, she assured everyone that no blood had been drawn and she was absolutely all right.

  A full glass was placed in her benumbed fingers. She downed it in two gulps.

  “Now, where were we?” she asked the committee chief.

  “Ahh, yes. I did so want a discussion of these two experts on how to handle the method of sinking the pylons.”

  “You’re talking to a complete idiot about engineering.” Smile, she told herself. “But hydraulics is my husband’s forte.”

  “So I understand. Already we have decided against the Bechtel and Fluor concepts. But we are most impressed with McNee-Ivory’s, and with Talbott’s. Thus there is no problem.”

  “Problem?”

  “One family.” The gold teeth shone. “Whoever builds our seawall, McNee-Ivory or Talbott’s, the other will be glad—or maybe there will be a joint venture.”

  Crystal again managed a pretty dimple. Setting her empty glass on a passing tray, she reached for a fresh one.

  Even at the most raucous cocktail parties, she nursed a single drink. Thus it seemed surprising that the swift consumption of Taittinger did not affect her. She wasn’t even slightly tiddled. If she were, would she be able to regale her enchanted audience of one with her recently boned-up-on knowledge of Sino-American politics? From the corner of her eye she again glimpsed Curt, this time with the lesser two of the delegation. She took another glass—she had difficulty remembering whether it was her fourth or fifth—launching into accolades for General Chiang Kai-Shek, whom she knowledgeably called the Gismo. The committee chief responded with his golden smile.

  If she were drunk, wouldn’t she be verbose, loud, angry, as her father was when in his cups? Wouldn’t her vision blur? Yes, drunk, she would never see details with this preternatural clarity. Surrounding conversations drifted in and out, like a radio being turned on and off, the men talking of real estate values, the women of servants and children, just like at a regular Caucasian gathering.

  And then all at once Mr. and Mrs. Wei, the roly-poly host and hostess, were bowing and nodding, inviting their most honored guest to lead the gathering to the buffet.