Souvenir of Cold Springs

by Kitty Burns Florey

  Lucy kissed her cheek and said, “Don’t you look nice, Heather. I love your skirt. Is that real camel hair? And look at this.” She touched Heather’s sleeve. “It’s sweet, with the monogram. But you look more like Cambridge than California. Doesn’t everyone in California go around in jogging clothes all the time? You look very—what’s the word? Pulled together. Something I’ve never been able to achieve.” She looked down at her jeans and bare feet as if they puzzled her—as if she truly didn’t know what the alternatives were. Heather was aware that her aunt Lucy took pride in the way she looked—thought it showed how spiritual and caring and socially responsible she was. “I have a personal shopper who does it for me,” Heather said.

  Her aunt gave a dubious laugh, not sure if Heather was joking, then quit suddenly and looked worried. “Teddy was really upset last night. Wasn’t he, Aunt Nell?”

  “To say the least.” Nell stood wiping her glasses on her apron. Heather could remember the apron from her early childhood: a red gingham skirt and white cotton bib embroidered with apples and pears. It was spotlessly clean and looked starched. Without glasses, Aunt Nell’s eyes were old and squinty, pale blue. “He started on the gin right after dinner, Heather. He was so worried about you.”

  “Well, he’s drinking straight gin right now, and I’m here, so it’s obviously not my fault. I refuse to take the blame for my father’s drinking.”

  “Nobody’s talking about blame,” Lucy said.

  “Oh really.” Heather poked at the bread tin. “What on earth is this?”

  “It’s for Margaret and me. Lentil loaf. It may not look like much, but it’s very good. I hope you’ll try it.”

  “You guys are still vegetarians?”

  “Being a vegetarian isn’t something you get over, Heather, like an illness.”

  “I know plenty of ex-vegetarians.”

  “Well, I’m not one of them.”

  “Get yourself a Pepsi, Heather,” Aunt Nell said. “Mr. Fahey is still sending it over. I don’t know how to tell him I never touch the stuff. Thea drinks it once in a while with rum in it.”

  They all laughed, but Heather was embarrassed by the mention of Thea. She was Aunt Nell’s friend—companion—roommate: no one had ever inquired too closely, though Heather had once seen them embracing in the upstairs hall.

  Heather let her laugh dwindle to a polite smile. “Where is Thea?”

  “Down cellar with Mark working on the washing machine,” Nell said. “That damned thing. I’m going to have to get a new one, I guess, but I’m waiting until they go on sale at Sears. It’s terrible to be a slave to your machines.”

  “At least it’s just the machines making trouble this year,” Lucy said. “So far, anyway. No family feuds.”

  Heather turned her back on Lucy and went to the refrigerator for a Pepsi. The name hung unspoken in the room: Kay. What Lucy meant was: now that Kay’s not here, no one makes trouble, no one starts feuds. God forbid anyone should ask, how’s your mother, Heather?

  Aunt Nell glanced at the clock. “Mr. Fahey should be here any minute. And I wish Jamie and Sandra would come in from the studio. He’s out there rummaging around looking for some old sketches of his. I told him I haven’t seen them in years, but he insists they’re there.”

  “Maybe he and Sandra are snowed in,” Heather said. She put ice cubes in her glass and looked out the window. Huge white flakes drifted down, as if in slow motion. The studio was over the garage. She could see a light on. Then it went out, and she saw her great-uncle Jamie and his wife, Sandra, come down the steps and begin to struggle up the back sidewalk. They were joined in the driveway by Mr. Fahey from next door, wearing a red cap and a red-plaid wool jacket. “Nope—here they come,” Heather said.

  She was shy, suddenly, about meeting Sandra, and she got another ice cube from the refrigerator and took it in to her father and dropped it in his glass. He was sitting as she had left him, petting the cat. She noticed that the pendant around her father’s neck was the head of a dog or a wolf with grinning ferocious jaws. “One arty uncle and wife are coming up the path with one ancient neighbor.”

  “So I hear.” The back door slammed, there were exclamations in the kitchen, a nasal English voice that must be Sandra, old Mr. Fahey’s cough. Her father said, “Maybe you should go up and get Margaret away from that degenerate caterwauling. God. When I was her age I was listening to Iolanthe.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a wacko, Dad.”

  “I am not a wacko. I am a person of culture and refinement.” He transferred Dinah gently to the rug and stood up. “Is Mark in the kitchen?”

  “No.”

  “Then I think I’ll be sociable. Your new English auntie is quite a tomato,” he added, winking at her.

  She watched him go, the cat trailing him. He never staggered, never acted drunk. She tried to figure out how much gin he had had. The green Tanqueray bottle was almost two-thirds empty. Some of that was from last night, of course, and the bottle may not have been full to begin with. But probably it had been.

  She took the Pepsi and her bag upstairs to the room she always slept in, the cubbyhole next to where her great-grandfather had died and then her grandmother. As far as she knew, no one had died in this room. She took the barrette out of her hair and brushed it hard, and put the barrette back in, and took out her green wool dress and hung it up. Maybe she would die there. Let the dark devils come. She had death in her bag: the bottle of Seconal. She couldn’t look at it without the thought crossing her mind. Wash them down with Pepsi, and—whammo: good-bye, Mom. So long, Daddy. Drink up, folks.

  She burst in on Margaret in the middle of “Don’t Stand So Close to Me.” As far as Heather could tell, Margaret had been lying on the bed staring into space, but she jumped up when Heather came in and looked caught. “Oh God, Heather, you scared me. I didn’t know you were here.”

  “Just arrived. How are you?”

  “Okay. How about you?”

  “Slightly alienated but otherwise okay.”

  “They were really mad at you last night.”

  Heather sat down on the bed. “So what else is new? How’s it going? How’s school and all that?”

  Margaret propped herself up on her elbows and shrugged. Heather couldn’t understand why anyone would dress the way her cousin did—worse than Lucy, who was just a slob who refused to take the trouble. Margaret obviously worked at it. She wore plaid pedal pushers over white tights, and a V-necked sweater striped in black and white. Her hair was bunched up on one side in a green rubber band. Her eye makeup looked like what Heather had removed in the mirror the night before.

  “What’re you in?” Heather asked her. “Tenth grade?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s geometry?”

  “I did geometry last year. I’m in the accelerated program. This year I’ve got trig.”

  “Oh.” Heather laughed. “Well, how’s trig? God, I hated math.”

  “I kind of like it, actually. It makes things bearable. Just.”

  “Really.” Heather searched for something else to say. Talking to her cousin filled her with a mathlike boredom and despair. From where she sat, she could see out the window: still snowing. “God, what uncivilized weather. Can you believe that two days ago in California I was hiking in the mountains?” Margaret looked at her blankly, as if she wasn’t sure what hiking was, or mountains, and Heather said, “So. What’s happening in your life, Margaret? Do you have any boyfriends?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Does that mean yes or no?”

  “No.”

  “You should do something with your hair.”

  “I do,” Margaret said. “I put it up in this rubber band.”

  “Want me to French-braid it for you?”

  “No, thanks. I really prefer it like this.”

  The tape ended, and Margaret turned it over. Oh God: Spandau Ballet. Must everyone be so predictable. Heather thought of her little sister, Ann, out at her new school in Michi
gan. Lambert Prep, Ann’s fourth school in three years. Each one was slightly tougher, like a series of trials in some fairy tale. At her last school, they weren’t allowed to listen to music or use makeup. They wore uniforms and were allowed to leave school only if they were accompanied by a parent. Their letters home were supervised. Ann had run away twice, and when they brought her back the second time she said to the headmaster, “So kick me out, asshole. Who gives a fuck?”

  Heather asked, “Could you turn that down, Margaret?”

  “Oh—sure.” Margaret turned the volume down to a whisper. “What about you? Are you still going out with that same guy? The one in law school?”

  “Yes. Actually, we’re living together.”

  “In a dorm? They let you live together?”

  “No, in an apartment off campus.”

  “Wow. That sounds serious.”

  Heather laughed. “I give us two months.”

  “Why two months exactly?”

  “What? Oh, I don’t know. We’re going to this big bash on New Year’s Eve, for one thing. This dance. Strauss waltzes and champagne and pink balloons released at midnight. I’m on the committee, so I’m really obligated to show up with a date.”

  “Do you know how to waltz?”

  “Of course.”

  Margaret stared at her. “You guys waltz? Wow. What is this—a new thing?”

  “It’s not that big a deal, Margaret. It’s kind of fun, and it’s very good exercise.” She picked at the chenille bedspread. “Timmy’s not crazy about it, actually, but what the hell.”

  “So—you mean you want to break up with this guy but you can’t because you’re on the committee for this dance and you’ve got like—tickets for it?”

  “Yeah—that’s roughly it. The tickets are fifty apiece.”

  “Fifty dollars?”

  “And I have this dress.”

  “What kind of dress? A formal?” Margaret sat up, as if she were about to take notes. What a pain in the neck she must be in class.

  “Well, it’s long.” Heather thought of what the dress had cost her—the hole it had put in her checkbook. It had been a mistake—all of it: tickets, dress, Timmy, life. There they’d be at the dance, herself in the dress, Timmy bored and refusing to talk to anyone. The hell with him. She would talk to Rob Berglund, her committee head. And after the dance she would tell Timmy: Happy New Year, the time has come. “And I’ve got long white kid gloves to go with it,” she said.

  “Oh my God.” Margaret flopped back on the bed again. “This is another world. I don’t think I want to go to college.” She reached under the pillow and brought out a flat tin box. Inside were three neatly rolled joints and a book of matches. “Want some?”

  “Actually, they sent me up here to get you.”

  “They can wait.” Margaret held out the box. “Here.”

  “I’m not really into this stuff at the moment, Margaret.”

  “You don’t do drugs out there?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not even pot?”

  Heather said, “Frankly, I’ve got better things to do.” This was intermittently true.

  “I suppose you can’t get high and waltz at the same time.” Margaret held out the box. “Come on. You don’t have to be into it to smoke it once in a while. On special occasions, like when your relatives are bugging you.”

  “Oh, all right.” The matchbook said Café Algiers in gold script on black. Heather knew that was a place in Cambridge. She wondered what Margaret’s life was like. She struck a match and inhaled, passed the joint to Margaret. She hadn’t smoked pot in a while, and she hoped desperately that it wouldn’t make her sick. She still felt queasy from the breakfast she’d had at the motel.

  Margaret inhaled like a pro and said, “Potent stuff, n’estce pas?”

  “Where do you kids get dope?”

  “My friend Tara’s brother brought this back from Mexico.”

  “What a coincidence. My brother’s in Mexico right now.”

  Margaret pretended to cough and pounded herself on the chest. “Excuse me, Heather, but I really can’t stand your brother, if you want my honest opinion.”

  “I don’t, thanks, actually.”

  They smoked in a slightly hostile silence. The dope was making Heather feel better, oddly enough, but it seemed wrong to her that Margaret had been the one to offer it—this teenage whiz kid who, except for the weird hair and makeup, looked like she should still be playing with her Barbies—except that she knew perfectly well Margaret had never played with a Barbie doll in her life.

  “How’s Ann doing?” Margaret asked.

  Heather shrugged. She wasn’t going to tell Margaret about Lambert Prep. “All right, I guess. They don’t get a Thanksgiving vacation at her school.”

  “They don’t? Wow. What is it? Reform school?”

  “Ha ha,” Heather said. “Not quite. Actually, my mother was up there a couple of weeks ago, but I haven’t had a report from her lately. She’s in Florida at the moment.”

  She had the postcard in her purse. Blue pool, palm trees, tanned people on chaise longues. The card read:

  Honey, I’ll miss you at Thanksgiving (so called) but when I get a chance at some sun I’m not about to pass it up. I’ll be here 2 wks, then back to S.C., then who knows. See you Xmas I hope. I’ll call. XXX. Mom

  Margaret said, “I kind of miss your mother being here on Thanksgiving. She always livened things up.” She chuckled. “Is she still casting spells on Uncle Teddy? I remember she had that voodoo doll she used to stick pins in. And she was consulting with some gypsy fortune-teller.”

  “God, Margaret—that was a joke. One of my father’s weird routines.” This was a lie: Heather had seen the doll. Her mother had mailed it to her father, a yellow-haired figure made out of one of his old shirts, stuck through with straight pins. Her father had opened the package and stared at it speechless, then he’d begun to laugh uncontrollably. Shortly after that he got his ulcer. Heather said, “My mother’s bad, but she’s not that bad.”

  “Oh well,” Margaret said mildly, obviously sick of the subject. She squeezed out one more drag and crushed the remains in the tin box. She turned off the tape in the middle of a song. “I guess we should go down. What do you think of Sandra?”

  “I still haven’t met her. What’s she like?”

  “Sort of snobby. She hates America, especially Syracuse.”

  “Who can blame her?” Heather asked.

  Uncle Jamie had found the old sketches he’d been looking for: pencil drawings from ten, twelve years ago of Heather and Peter and Margaret and Ann. He had set them up on the chair rail around the dining room, and they all exclaimed over them as they lit into the turkey and potatoes and lentil loaf.

  Weren’t they cute.

  Will you look at little Heather—those eyes.

  I know I’ve said this before, but Margaret’s the spitting image of Peggy, you’ve really captured it in that sketch, Jamie.

  As always, when Peggy’s name was spoken, there was a melancholy moment of silence. Aunt Nell bowed her head, then looked up again at the sketches and said, “And Ann—the sweetest face.”

  Heather looked at small, blonde Ann, smiling out at the world. The picture gave her an actual pain between her breasts, like indigestion. Looking at the sketches of herself wasn’t much better.

  Uncle Jamie wanted them for a show of his drawings at some gallery in London. “You’re going to put me up in a gallery?” Margaret asked. “These old pictures of me?”

  “Why not?” Sandra said. She smirked around at the table. “I should think you’d be flattered, Margaret.” Mawgrit, she pronounced it. Heathah, she had said when they were introduced. I’ve been dying to meet you, I hear you’re the absolute hope of the family.

  “I hate being conspicuous,” Margaret said.

  Sandra laughed. “Well, I hardly think any of your little friends are likely to stroll into a gallery in London and see your portrait there.”

>   “No, but I can sympathize,” said Lucy. “It’s just knowing that you’re on public exhibition. And it reminds me of those primitive peoples who don’t want their photographs taken, they think it takes away a part of themselves. I really try not to photograph people unless I have their permission and explain to them exactly what they’re getting into.”

  “But these are so sweet,” Thea said. “They really express what childhood is all about.”

  “I do think pencil sketches are rather a different thing from photographs,” Sandra said. “We really are talking about fine art.”

  Heather sighed. “There we were—innocent babes trusting our dear old Uncle Jamie to draw our pictures. Little did we know what we were getting into.”

  She had meant to joke, to lighten things up, but Jamie put down his fork and folded his hands tightly in front of his chest. “It seems to me that you’re making rather a big deal out of nothing,” he said stiffly. He jerked his head when he talked, like Sandra did, and little Britishisms were creeping into his speech—all those rathers. “This is a completely insignificant exhibit, and this is insignificant early work.”

  “Hardly, darling,” Sandra murmured.

  “I’m only including them because I was specifically asked to. I can easily leave them out. They certainly don’t represent my best efforts.”

  “Could you all argue about it after dinner?” Nell asked. She passed the turnips across the table. “Here, Jamie. Please. Have some turnips.”

  “And let me give you some more turkey,” Thea said. “I know you like dark meat, Jamie. And what about you, Heather? Did you get enough?”

  “But it’s a family tradition,” Teddy said. “We always argue at Thanksgiving dinner. Come on. Don’t stop there. Let’s talk about Thatcher. Let’s talk about Reagan.”

  “Oh God, don’t get Teddy going on Reagan,” said Lucy.

  “What’s the matter, Ted? You’re not better off than you were four years ago?” asked Mark.