Souvenir of Cold Springs

by Kitty Burns Florey

  “Not bloody likely,” said Teddy.

  “And whose fault is that? Reagan’s? Isn’t there a more obvious candidate?”

  Sandra broke in. “Reagan’s a good man at heart, don’t you think?” She cut a piece of turkey and put it in her mouth, still talking. “Getting on a bit, perhaps, but he’s such an inspiring figure.”

  “He’s a younger fella than I am,” Mr. Fahey said. When Mr. Fahey chuckled he showed crooked yellow teeth, browning at their roots. “Spring chicken compared to me.”

  “He’s an old fascist,” Margaret said.

  “Please,” said Nell. “My dears. Don’t start. My digestion isn’t what it was.”

  “It’s the meat,” said Lucy. “It makes people aggressive.”

  “Then what makes you and Margaret aggressive?” Mark asked her. “Lentils?”

  “Am I being aggressive? I thought I was being a model of self-control.”

  “Maybe it’s the champagne,” Aunt Nell said, looking tired. “Teddy, you should quit bringing champagne. It gets us all fired up. We should drink something milder.”

  “Pepsi,” Mr. Fahey said, and they all laughed.

  Sandra said, “I do think American holidays are fascinating. The idea of getting together for the sole purpose of overeating.”

  “Oh my God!” Lucy put her hands over her mouth. They all looked at her. Her cheeks flamed red. She gave a little laugh. “I just ate a piece of turkey. Just absentmindedly took it off the platter and put it in my mouth and chewed it and ate it. Oh God, I can’t believe I did that.”

  “It won’t kill you,” Mark said.

  “That’s not the point. I haven’t touched a piece of meat in—how long? Nearly eight years.”

  Heather said, “See, Aunt Lucy? What did I tell you? The world is full of ex-vegetarians.”

  “I’m not an ex-vegetarian, Heather. I’m—God, this isn’t funny, it’s terrible, I feel awful.”

  “Oh Mom.” Margaret reached across Mr. Fahey to pat her mother’s arm. They had exactly the same nose and mouth, Heather noticed. Tiny and prim. Lucy was actually prettier—though if Margaret would do something with her hair it would help a lot. “Maybe you should go rinse your mouth out with water,” Margaret said. “At least you’ll get the taste out.”

  Lucy stood up. Mark said, “Lucy, forget it, for Christ’s sake. There’s no need to make a scene.”

  Heather agreed: it occurred to her that Lucy had caused nearly as much trouble at these dinners as her own mother had. The year she had the miscarriage and went into hysterics. The time she made a long, sermony public declaration of her vegetarianism that had given Heather and Peter a fit of the giggles. The time she insisted on organizing a sledding party no one wanted because she thought they all sat around too much. The way she always intervened when the kids fought, taking Margaret’s side, making everything worse. Not to mention plenty of nasty exchanges with Mark. Why they stayed married to each other was anybody’s guess.

  “I’m not making a scene, Mark,” Lucy said. “This is none of your business, anyway.”

  “It is if you keep yakking about it.”

  She left the room and they heard water running in the kitchen.

  “I quite agree,” Sandra said. She smiled at Mark. She thinks he’s attractive, Heather thought. Good God. “A lot of fuss over nothing, if you’ll pardon my opinion,” Sandra went on. “Not that I don’t think she has a point, in a way.”

  “I have to respect a strong belief,” Aunt Nell said. “I can see where she’d be upset.”

  “Right on,” Teddy said. “I don’t blame her a bit.”

  “Really?” Mark reached for the champagne bottle and poured some into Sandra’s glass, then his own. “And what strong beliefs do you have, Ted?”

  “I didn’t say I had any. I just respect them.”

  “I thought you might have one or two.”

  “Nope. Want to pass that bottle over here, sonny? Anybody want more besides me?”

  “There you go, Ted,” Mark said, tapping the bottle with his finger before he handed it over.

  “There I go what?”

  “There’s your strong belief. You believe in booze.”

  Nell said, “Mark.”

  Teddy looked at the champagne bottle, surprised. “Do I? No, I don’t think so. Booze isn’t a belief. It’s more like a way of life. A whatchamacallit—coping strategy. Helps me cope with my in-laws, for instance.” He poured more champagne into Sandra’s glass and it fizzed and slopped over. “I don’t mean you, of course, fair one.”

  “I wish you two would just cut it out,” Aunt Nell said.

  “Pepsi,” Mr. Fahey said. “People should drink more Pepsi.”

  This time no one laughed. Thea said, “There’s still a lot of turnips here. Can’t I give anyone a second helping?”

  Heather looked around the table, trying to sum each of them up in an adjective. Margaret: arrogant. Mr. Fahey: pathetic. Dad: drunk. Sandra: bloody. Mark: fascist.

  Lucy returned, still looking flustered. Margaret asked, “Better, Mom?”

  Lucy shrugged. She sat down and said brightly, “More peas, anyone? Lentil loaf? More potatoes?”

  Heather asked, “What’s the big deal, anyway, Aunt Lucy? I mean the whole meat thing. Turkeys, especially. These big ugly birds that don’t seem to have much of a brain.”

  “Do you know how they raise those poor birds, Heather? In cages the size of a bread box.” She held up her hands a foot apart. “They feed them hormones so they’ll produce more white meat. They cut their beaks off so they can’t peck each other.”

  “Makes sense,” Mark said.

  “I always buy free-range birds,” Nell said. She patted her mouth with her napkin. “I have to go all the way out to that farm in Manlius.”

  “Okay—so what’s wrong with that, Aunt Lucy?” Heather asked. “They have a short happy life, pecking each other like crazy, and then it’s over. They don’t know what hit them. They don’t care.”

  “Like people,” Teddy said.

  “The birds are not the point,” Lucy said. She picked up her fork again and took a bite of lentil loaf. Lucy: priggish. “We’re the point, Heather. The whole process brutalizes us. All life is connected. We’re not one thing and turkeys another.”

  “That’s true, at least,” said Mark. “There’s more than one turkey at this table.” He smiled over at Heather, as if he had scored a point for her.

  “Har de har har,” said Teddy. “Couldn’t you just die?”

  Aunt Nell said, “Please, Teddy.”

  “I suppose the worst of it is that it permeates our whole society,” Sandra said. She had bright red hair, and she pushed at it with one plump hand while she talked. She had drained most of her overflowing glass of champagne. Nervous with Jamie’s folks, Heather thought. That had been Timmy’s excuse for not coming east with her: he said he couldn’t handle meeting the family en masse like that. Heather tried to imagine him there. Timmy: what? She couldn’t think of an adjective.

  Sandra said, “It’s almost impossible to avoid. I mean, on the plane coming over I read an appalling article on cosmetic testing—what they do to rabbits.”

  “You can buy cruelty-free cosmetics,” Lucy said. “I could give you a catalog, Sandra. There’s a place in Minneapolis that has really good products.”

  “But that’s just a drop in the bucket, Lucy. Take shoes. Or try to buy a decent pocketbook that’s not leather.”

  Lucy shrugged. “There are things you can do. I haven’t bought leather shoes in years.”

  “But there are just so many places you can wear running shoes,” Sandra said. “Or take the whole question of dairy products.”

  “Not me,” Mark said. “I’ll just take some more turkey, thanks. I’ll eat that drumstick if no one else wants it.” Heather passed it to him and put more white meat on her own plate. Fuck hormones. Lucy on the subject of meat reminded her of Timmy on the subject of acid rain. Not that they weren’t right: they were right.
But there was too much to worry about. If you even read all your junk mail you could go crazy: boycott grapes, save the whales, no nukes, adopt a starving Ethiopian.

  Mark said, “This is a big treat for me, I’ll tell you. I eat lentil loaf at home all year, and then I get my annual pig-out at Aunt Nell’s Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “You eat meat every day for lunch, Dad,” Margaret said. “And in restaurants.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing. It’s a relief not to have to feel like a sinner just because I like a nice drumstick. Some kind of leper. A pariah in my own family. Sometimes I think they let me stay around just because I pay the bills. I’m not sure I do anything else right.”

  They all looked at him with varying degrees of disapproval. Teddy was bad enough, but he usually made a joke and changed the subject before things got tense. Mark always went too far. On the other hand, he fixed washing machines when they broke down. On yet another hand, thought Heather, what must it be like to have a precocious fourteen-year-old pothead for a daughter. Or to live with Lucy, a saint who slopped around in jeans and baggy old sweaters. Though hadn’t her father once implied that Lucy had a lover somewhere?

  Margaret got up suddenly from the table and went over to Mark to embrace him. “Come on, Daddy,” she said. “It’s not that bad. You know it isn’t.” Across the table, Heather could see Mark’s hand patting Margaret’s shoulder, and Margaret humped over awkwardly with her rear sticking out. It occurred to her that this was a touching scene.

  “There,” Nell said. “That’s better.”

  Jamie said, “What it comes down to is this: the more I see of people, the more I like dogs. Somebody said that.”

  “Some pain in the ass like George Bernard Shaw,” Mark said, releasing Margaret, who went back to her seat with wet eyes and a little smile.

  “Thurber, actually,” said Teddy.

  “Well, excuse me,” said Mark.

  Nell sighed. “Will someone pass me the turnips, please?” She took the dish from Sandra and said to her, firmly, “So. Speaking of dogs, do your parents still raise pugs?”

  Dinner was the high point, Heather thought. Turkey and champagne and bickering were better than nothing. Afterward, it was just boring. Her father sat back down with the gin bottle. Thea escorted Mr. Fahey home, across the two driveways in the dark. From the kitchen, the dishwasher made its noise. Jamie put the television on loud. Sandra got out her knitting and started talking about the BBC. Everyone else sat slumped reading newspapers or magazines.

  Heather sat on the floor looking at an old Newsweek. Margaret flopped down next to her and asked if she wanted to play Scrabble.

  “Oh God,” Heather said. “Live fast, die young.”

  Margaret tossed her hair back. “Well, what else is there to do?” She had taken the rubber band out, which helped some, but not much.

  Heather raised her fingers to her lips and made a smoking motion. “Would you mind? I’ll pay you for it if you want.”

  “Forget it,” Margaret said. “Help yourself. Upstairs in my room.”

  “You’re not coming?” Margaret shook her head. Heather said, “I just feel like unwinding. These gatherings get to me.” She glanced at the television: a movie that seemed to be an idiotic modern remake of The Lady Vanishes. She said, “I wish they wouldn’t always tamper with everything, damn it. I really love those old Hitchcocks, don’t you?”

  Margaret shrugged and picked up the Newsweek—pissed off, apparently. Heather sat for another minute watching her cousin read an article on Michael Jackson as if her life depended on it, and then she got up with a sigh and went toward the stairs, feeling peevish. Lucy was coming in from the kitchen.

  “Oh—Heather,” she said. “I was just looking for you.” They stood in the hall, on the rug where Lucy had her famous miscarriage. A faint shadow of the bloodstain was still there. Heather could remember Lucy’s screams, and Margaret crying and refusing to eat. She remembered how horrible it had been, her father saying, “All my sister wants is a couple of kids, is that so much to ask,” and his hand shaking when he poured his drink.

  “I just wondered if anything was wrong,” Lucy said.

  “What do you mean—wrong?”

  “Well, you seem a little—” Lucy shrugged and smiled, spreading her hands. “A little distant from all of us, Heather. I wondered if you were unhappy—if you could use someone to talk to.”

  “Oh, Aunt Lucy.” Lucy means well, her mother always said.

  Why did that sound like such a put-down? People always said but … after it. Heather looked at her aunt—not really her aunt, as Peter was always reminding her. The sister of their stepfather. The day they went to the rifle range, Peter had made a long speech about how he felt no loyalty to Dad or his family, and how Heather shouldn’t forget he was Ann’s father, but he wasn’t their real father, and they should stop calling him Dad, anyway, and call him Teddy. And the family they should really be close to was their mother’s, out in Illinois. They had grandparents and cousins they’d never seen. They should get Mom to take them out there, back to their roots. Not let Dad’s family, Teddy’s family, take over their minds.

  Lucy stood there smiling at her. She had beautiful, sad eyes. Heather tried to imagine her meeting a lover. Would she go in jeans and old sneakers? And did she know Margaret smoked pot? At fourteen? Was that why she looked so sad?

  “Is there anything the matter, Heather? School troubles? Romantic troubles?”

  Heather said, “Not really. Just the usual.”

  “How’s your mom?” Lucy was making her voice casual. “Have you heard from her lately?”

  “Yes, I have,” Heather said. “She’s great. Fine.” She paused. Lucy seemed to be waiting, and she felt mean not to say more. “I guess it’s kind of Dad I worry about.”

  “Well, I can’t say I blame you,” Lucy said. “I worry, too. But he seems in good spirits, and I think he likes teaching.”

  “If he can hold the job.”

  Lucy looked sharply at her. “What makes you think he won’t hold the job?”

  Heather shrugged. “Drinking, for one thing. And—I don’t know—is he writing? Don’t they expect him to produce something at Brown? You can’t live forever on your reputation. His book came out in—what? Seventy-three?” Her father’s book, The Kingdom Is at Hand, was a work on religious cults that was considered definitive. Privately, he joked about freaks and zealots and crackpots, the Jesus, Jesus, come and squeeze us crowd, but what was remarkable in the book was his balanced sympathy with the groups he wrote about—that and what was always referred to as his limpid prose. “That sure wouldn’t be enough at Berkeley.”

  “Well, he comes up for renewal in the spring,” Lucy said. “We’ll see then.”

  They stood in silence, looking at one of Uncle Jamie’s paintings on the wall, a stark abstraction in blue and white that always looked to Heather like a woman in trouble, a woman at the edge. It seemed out of place in that stodgy old house: Heather could imagine it in her apartment, maybe on the wall over the teak desk. Lucy folded her arms and stared at it with her head on one side, as if she’d never seen it before. Then she sighed. “I don’t know, Heather. The book is still in print, and still being talked about—that’s something. As for his new one, I have a feeling it’s on hold. He does do articles from time to time, but teaching takes a lot of his energy.”

  Heather realized her aunt was agreeing with her, that her father’s job might be in danger, and her heart flip-flopped. It would be better to have a father like Mark, who did something boring and scientific and reliable. What would happen to Ann if Daddy lost another job, never wrote another book? What would happen to her and Peter? She imagined herself marrying Timmy so that her father could drink himself to death in the spare bedroom.

  Lucy said, “Well, let’s hope for the best.” Heather smiled weakly, and Lucy put a hand on her arm. “Heather? Really. Are you all right?” She gave a hesitant laugh. “You know, we hardly ever see you. You’r
e so far away out there in California. Sometimes I feel we don’t really know you anymore. But if you ever need anything, you know you can always come to us. Any of us.”

  “Thanks, Aunt Lucy.” In spite of herself, Heather felt a lump come into her throat. She waited until it was gone. “I’m all right, though. Honestly.”

  Lucy patted her arm and smiled sadly, as if Heather had said her life was in ruins.

  Dinah was curled up on Margaret’s bed. She didn’t stir when Heather reached under the pillow for the tin box. “Hi cat,” Heather said. No response. She took the box to her own room, where she kicked her shoes off and sat on the bed, leaning against the headboard. She lit a joint—the bigger of the two—and inhaled. Immediately, she felt light-headed—maybe because she’d had a lot of champagne. She closed her eyes and let the smoke fill her lungs. She considered calling Timmy and telling him now: why wait until January? Except that she didn’t want to talk to him—didn’t even want to hear his voice. He was having dinner in Santa Rosa with his parents. Hello, is Tim there, well this is Heather. Just tell him I want him out of the apartment when I get back. Thanks. Click.

  It was tempting. She imagined going home to find all traces of him gone: no ten-speed in the front hall, no sneakers in the closet, no Sierra Club poster on the bedroom wall—no more elk staring at them while they made love. No more making love: no more Timmy heavy on her, his eyes squeezed shut as if he didn’t want to look at her, then rolling off, groaning, talking about all the work he had to do.

  The joint went fast. She lit the other one. Found a five-dollar bill in her purse and put it in the tin box, rolled up. Surprise. Maybe Margaret would light it and smoke it—wouldn’t even notice. She was spacey enough to do it.

  Okay. No more Timmy. She would clean the apartment thoroughly—get rid of every last stray sock, every copy of Mother Jones, every damned used razor blade. Then she would call Rob Berglund. And say—what? Invite him over for a beer or something. And then what? Tears filled her eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks. Hell, hell, bloody screaming hell. She didn’t want Rob Berglund. An accounting major, for Christ’s sake. Rob Berglund and his short, fat, pink, ink-stained fingers. Was it true that you could judge a man’s penis by the look of his fingers?