Souvenir of Cold Springs

by Kitty Burns Florey

  She finished the second joint and butted it out in the tin box. Then she took the box back and replaced it under Margaret’s pillow. The cat was still asleep, still unmoving, wrapped in her alien stillness. Hesitantly, Heather petted her; the cat stirred, then raised her head and yawned. Heather said, “Hey—cat.” The cat blinked at her and curled up again. Heather stretched out on the bed. Dinah began to purr—a warm vibrating deep in her core—and Heather laid her face along the cat’s soft flank and closed her eyes.

  The house was very warm—an old lady’s house—and completely silent, as if everyone downstairs had fallen asleep, or died; even the television was still. Heather lay there, half-dozing, and dreamed she was lying in the sun at some pool where a precision swimming team was performing. She watched the swimmers falter, heard their screams, watched them sink, one by one, still in formation, not knowing if she should intervene or if it was all part of the routine, and conscious always of the chenille bedspread, the purring cat warm against her cheek.

  When she woke up, her contact lenses felt dry and her mouth had a bad taste. From downstairs, the television was loud again: she heard the Baroque music of a wine commercial. Her father said something, and there was laughter. In the bathroom she looked in the mirror; the pattern of the bedspread was imprinted on her cheek. She wet her lenses, and then she went into Aunt Nell’s room, where there was a phone. She sat down on the bed and called Information in Palm Beach and got the number of the resort hotel her mother’s postcard was from. She dialed it and asked for Kay Quinn, and the person at the desk said, “One moment, please, we’ll ring that room for you.”

  While she waited, she looked around her aunt’s bedroom. Ancient iron bed, saggy in the middle. Aunt Nell’s bathrobe hanging over the bedpost. Ancient mirrored oak dresser. Starched dresser scarf embroidered with girls in sunbonnets. Hairbrush, nail file, hand lotion, tissue box, handleless china cup with pins in it. Index card on which was written, “Call about windows. Get elastic. Vaseline.” Stuck in the mirror frame, one of Lucy’s photographs: Thea laughing, her gray hair tied back with a red scarf.

  Heather closed her eyes and hunched over with her head to her knees, the phone pressed tight against her ear. She felt vaguely, distantly ill—as if another person living inside her body was being sick to her stomach. Pregnancy, cancer, indigestion. Mom, I’ve got cancer, I haven’t told anyone, I wanted you to be the first to know. No. Mom, I’m pregnant, what should I do, help me, help me.

  When the phone had rung twelve times, the receptionist said, “We don’t seem to be getting an answer in 406. Shall I keep ringing?”

  Heather said, “Yes,” and on the next ring it was answered by a voice that said, “Well, I’m obviously no match for this kind of persistence. Hello, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Mom? Is that you?”

  “Heather! God, I couldn’t imagine who this could be, ringing and ringing on Thanksgiving evening. How are you, honey? All through chowing down with the relatives?”

  “I didn’t know if you’d be there,” Heather said. She had never expected to reach Kay, and she felt suddenly, unreasonably happy. “I thought you’d be out eating dinner or something.”

  “I’m between events,” her mother said. “In fact, I was getting ready to go out, which is why I wasn’t inclined to pick up the phone. So how are you, honey? How’s everyone? How’s the old man?”

  “Oh, everyone’s fine. Dad’s in top form as usual.”

  “Is he still seeing Marie, do you know?”

  “I have no idea. He didn’t mention her.”

  “Hitting the bottle?”

  “Some.” Heather settled back on her aunt’s bed and studied her fingernails, picked at a chip in the pink polish. “He and Mark insulted each other like crazy at dinner, as always. Dad got in a few good digs. Then Mark and Lucy started in. You know. Typical Thanksgiving dinner. Uncle Jamie is here with the famous Sandra, and they’re both being rather frightfully boring. And Margaret’s gone punk.”

  Kay laughed. “Anyone mention me? Anyone regretting my absence? Tell me everything. Don’t spare my feelings. Not that I have any, at this point.”

  “Well, Margaret was sort of fondly reminiscing about you. She was wishing you were here to liven things up. She has happy memories of when you used to put curses on Dad—that whole voodoo routine.”

  “I’ve been thinking of getting into it again, just for the hell of it.” Heather heard her mother light a cigarette and inhale. “Not that your father needs any curses. Just being a member of that godforsaken family is a curse. Oh—Heather—” Kay laughed, a little gasp. “Do you remember that time Lucy said to Daddy that he’s his own worst enemy, and Mark said not while I’m alive? Oh Lord—I can’t stand Mark but sometimes he kills me.” Heather listened to her mother’s laugh, imagining her head thrown back, her eyes crinkling at the corners, her mouth open showing her perfect teeth all the way back to the fillings. “Oh well,” her mother said. “That was ages ago. So tell me what’s happening with you.”

  Heather told her about Timmy and the New Year’s Eve dance, her problems with economics, her straight As in French.

  “Well, that’s marvelous,” her mother said. “Now tell me one other thing, Heather—do you have enough money to fly down to Charleston for Christmas? If I’m in town?”

  Heather’s heart sank. “What do you mean, if you’re in town?”

  “Oh, I’ll be there. Just pipe-dreaming. But you never know. Always hoping for that good old sunshine.”

  “One of these years we should go on a Mediterranean cruise or something together at Christmastime,” Heather said.

  “Mmm.” Her mother made a sound that could have been a chuckle or smoker’s cough. “My going on a cruise would probably depend on getting somebody else to pay for it. Of course, we could go and take our men friends. Is there something indecent about that? Or would it be fun?”

  “Might be.” Heather knew this would never happen. She tried to imagine Timmy agreeing to such a thing. Or Rob Berglund. She could just hear her mother on the subject of Rob Berglund. Her mother never introduced Heather to any of her men—Heather wondered sometimes if her mother really didn’t have any, and just pretended she did to annoy Teddy. Heather had no idea if her mother’s wild life, which she reported faithfully, did annoy him; her father kept a poker face when it came to Kay.

  She went on, “But what I was going to say, Heather honey, was that I hope you’ve got the dough or can get it from Daddy or put it on Visa or something because there’s no way I can send you an airline ticket this time. The fees at Lambert are insane, as I’m sure your father has told you. It’s outrageous what those places get. And for what? I mean, it’s not exactly Choate, is it? I mean, take the teachers. Mostly they hire kids just out of some two-bit special ed program who last maybe three semesters before they can’t take it anymore and move on. Rotten pay, I’m sure. I’ll tell you who’s raking it in—it’s that goddam headmaster, who in my opinion is good for nothing.”

  Heather said, “How is she, anyway?”

  “Don’t ask me. Please. I’m on vacation.”

  “Dad wanted to know.”

  “Did he.” There was a pause. “Well, I think she might actually last out the year. She hasn’t tried to run away yet, and she’s getting better about eating. They’ve got her on a new kind of medication for the rest of it. There’s a therapist who seems to have faith in her. Ann likes her a lot, apparently. She swears she’s going to turn over a new leaf.”

  “Well, that’s great,” Heather said. “That’s fantastic, actually.”

  “Isn’t it. Isn’t it just wonderful that my twelve-year-old daughter isn’t going to get kicked out of school again. That makes me very, very happy. Listen, Heather, I’ve got to get going. People are waiting for me.”

  “Oh—well, I’m glad I managed to catch you, Mom.” Heather got up off the bed and looked at her face in the mirror over the dresser. She asked, “How’s the weather down there, anyway? Are you having
a good time?”

  “I’m having a marvelous time.” Her mother Sounded distracted, as if she were dabbing on perfume, struggling into her satin coat, fussing with her hair as she talked—half out the door to meet the people who waited for her, whoever they were. Did they exist at all? Heather wanted to ask, just to see what her reaction would be: what people, exactly? What are their names? Where are you going?

  Her mother said, in a brisk voice, “The weather is gorgeous. The temperature was eighty-one today. We spent all morning at the pool.”

  We: who is we? Heather thought of her dream of the doomed precision swim team. “It’s snowing here,” she said.

  “Oh dear. Typical. Well, I’d better get going, baby.”

  “Mom? Do you think Ann will ever be a normal person?” She blurted it out—not what she had meant to say, at all—and, in the mirror, her lips stretched out tight in a mask of pain. She put her hand over her mouth. Tears filled her eyes, brimmed over, and ran, black with mascara, down her hand.

  “Oh, Heather, what a question at a time like this. How do I know? I’m not God. Listen—I really, really have to run. I’ll get back to you about Christmas. I’m sorry, honey but you can’t imagine how late I am.”

  Heather took her hand away from her mouth. “Here’s my opinion,” she said. “I think that eventually she’s going to be fine.” Her voice was perfectly steady. She pulled a tissue from the box and wiped her eyes. “I think this is something she’s got to go through and she’s going to end up surprising us all. She’s going to really settle down and quit screwing around and get her head on straight. She’ll even go to college, and then—oh, I don’t know, she and I can room together, get jobs. Really. You wait.”

  Her mother laughed—a new, harsh bark of a laugh. “Listen to the oracle. What kind of voodoo are you dabbling in, sweetie? Well. Stranger things have happened, I guess. I’ve got to go. We’ll have a good gossip at Christmas. You’ll have to tell me all about sexy Sandra—and Margaret’s shaved head.”

  “It’s not shaved, actually. Just looks like shit.”

  Her mother laughed again, and they hung up. Before she hung up the phone, Kay always made a kissing sound. Heather kept the phone to her ear for a few seconds, and then she smoothed the bed spread and brushed her hair with her aunt’s brush. Talking to her mother had made her feel better. She thought that was pathetic, even perverse. She should be too old to care. And her mother was a terrible mother, probably a terrible human being. But Heather definitely felt better. She went into the bathroom and fixed her eye makeup, and then she went downstairs and played Scrabble with Margaret.

  NELL

  1980

  She was to think, in the years afterward, that her real life, brief though it was, didn’t begin until her brother Jamie said, “I saw you.”

  They were eating dinner. It was May 17, 1980, a Saturday. She was fifty-seven years old, Jamie was fifty-two—old bachelors, both of them, a schoolteacher and a painter. They had lived together in the same house, harmoniously enough, all their lives.

  “I saw you,” Jamie said. “I think you should know that, Nell.”

  She wasn’t sure what he had seen, only that there was plenty in her life to see if you looked in the right places.

  They were eating a vegetable stew with Thea’s whole wheat rolls. Years later, Nell still remembered that, and that Dinah, their old black cat, lay striped with sunlight on the rug by the door. Nell put down her fork and took several sips of water. Jamie picked up his knife and buttered a piece of roll, but he didn’t eat it. He sat looking at it. She watched him. What a pathetic fellow he was, his shirt unironed, the collar frayed; at the neck was a grimy triangle of undershirt. His shiny bald head was freckled like a fish. He had Dad’s long nose and Mother’s prim mouth—their worst features.

  “What do you mean, you saw me?” she asked, her voice hard.

  He looked from the roll to his plate of stew—not at her. Whatever it is, he’ll mumble it, she thought. Won’t look me in the eye and call things by their names in a firm voice.

  “Saw me what?” she asked again.

  “I saw you two in the yard.” He mooshed around in the stew with his fork as if looking for bugs. “I don’t have to lay it out,” he said. “You know what I mean. This afternoon.”

  No: it wasn’t terrible. It was funny. She had dreaded this for years, and now she had to raise her napkin to her lips and smile behind it. Poor Jamie. Poor baby. “We thought you were downtown,” she said, and the smile threatened to become a laugh. “Buying turpentine and going to the library.”

  He shook his head, purse-lipped, unable to speak. He must have come back early. He must have been up in the loft, painting. In his blue work shirt and overalls, with his palette held, high. He was drab when he just sat and talked, or ate, or read library books in his favorite chair by the fireplace, but when he painted he was dramatic, impressive, a god. His students worshiped him. James Paul Kerwin, artiste extraordinaire. He painted only from photographs—he could be commissioned from a catalog in the gallery of his New York representative—and he invariably made his subjects happy. She imagined him backing away from the canvas to check the light falling on the nose of some wealthy surgeon’s wife, and catching a glimpse out the window of his sister with her friend—her so-called friend—her—Oh my God.

  “What were we doing?” she asked him.

  He snatched his napkin from his lap and threw it on the table. Half stood up, sat down again. Glanced at her and away. “I can’t see what you’ve got to smirk about,” he said. “It’s not funny. It’s disgusting. You had your arms around each other.”

  “We’re friends, Jamie.” The impulse to laugh receded. The word friend nearly brought tears to her eyes. Friends. My friend Thea. My dear friend, Thea Parsons. She had never had a friend until Thea—only Peggy and Jamie. One was dead, one might as well be. “We’re very good friends.”

  He made a sound that signified disgust, as if he really had found a cockroach in his stew. “You’re more than friends,” he said. “Don’t lie to me, Nell.”

  “I was getting to that,” she said. “Of course we’re more than friends. We’re also lovers. We’ve been lovers for years.”

  He stood up and left the room before she finished the sentence. Dinah woke, blinked, then curled up again in a ball and slept. Distracted, Nell ate her stew, buttered her roll and took a bite. Had she really said that? To Jamie? We’re lovers. Lovers for years. She couldn’t help herself: she did begin to laugh. She pressed her hands to her mouth and giggled, and when she calmed down she loaded the dishwasher.

  He was looking for an excuse to get mad at her: that was her theory. No one, not even Jamie, could genuinely be this disturbed to discover that his fifty-seven-year-old sister had a woman for a lover. He must have wanted to pick a fight—stir things up, like Teddy always did with Kay. “Life gets dull, Aunt Nell,” Teddy said just before the divorce, when he and Kay were having one of their battles royal. But how absurd. She and Jamie were brother and sister, after all, not husband and wife, though they’d often been mistaken for an old married couple—something that always amused her but agitated Jamie. “Heavens, no—she’s my older sister,” he would say. Vain, silly little man, bald as a trout. “He’s my baby brother,” she sometimes got in first, to annoy him.

  And life was never dull: that was Nell’s firm opinion. It wasn’t life that was dull, it was people like Jamie.

  But really, he was absurd, and now he would be a problem with Thea, at least for a while, until he got used to the idea. He would be cold; she could just see it. He would say, “Oh—hello, Thea,” when she came in, and then pointedly leave the room. He would disdain the rolls and cookies she brought as if they were poisoned. She imagined him perfecting his tight, polite little smile in front of the bathroom mirror.

  Oh dear. She would have to call Thea. They would meet tomorrow to discuss it. Where? Not here. Brunch at the bagel place. Lie low for a bit. He’s such an absurd person, Thea. I ho
pe you won’t be hurt by this, you know how he is, but he’s good at heart, he’ll get over it, promise you won’t let him get to you.

  When she came out of the kitchen, he was in the front hall with a suitcase.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m moving into the loft,” he said stonily. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the suitcase. It was Dad’s ancient leather one—of course. Jamie didn’t own a suitcase, he had never gone anywhere in his whole life.

  “Why on earth are you moving into the loft?”

  He took one hand from his pocket and gestured. “I can’t—”

  She said, “Oh Jamie,” and began to laugh again, but she was more appalled than amused. He really meant it. She had dreaded his ever finding out, but she had never expected this reaction. Shock and outrage, maybe. Disgust, too. But not rupture. Not a family feud. “Can’t what, Jamie? What can’t you do?”

  “You know damn well,” he said, mumbling.

  “Wait—yes—don’t tell me,” she said. “You can’t stay another minute in this corrupt house. Is that it? You’re afraid I’ll contaminate you? That if you live under the same roof with me for another minute you’ll start chasing boys? Making a pass at the mailman?” She clasped her hands at her chest and said, “Jamie, you poor silly thing, look at you with your daddy’s old suitcase, how can you act this way, Jamie, at your age, at my age, what does it matter whom we love as long as we love somebody?”

  He didn’t speak. From the kitchen, the dishwasher made its customary noise: beena-wab, beena-wah. A perfect fifth. Jamie had been the one to notice, last year when they had it installed.

  “Jamie?” She reached out to touch his arm. He moved away. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She meant she was sorry for her last words. She knew he didn’t love anyone, he hadn’t had a woman in years, so far as she knew. Had he ever?