A Quiche Before Dying jj-3

by Jill Churchill

  Jane was fascinated not only with Desiree's interesting appearance, but also with Desiree's views. She could be counted on to have an offbeat opinion on practically everything. Jane had often run into her at the grocery store. Once, chatting over the asparagus, which should have had platinum tips if the price were to be believed, they discovered that they'd both lived in Rouen, France, for a short time, albeit decades apart. Desiree had apparently taken this as a sign that they were soul sisters, and subsequently bent Jane's ear with her current enthusiasm every time they met. Last week it had been cryogenics; the time before it had been a theory that sunspots were responsible for everything from split ends to the decline in SAT scores. Desiree was so bright and fluent that she made all of her bizarre views seem downright sensible. Jane looked forward to running into her.

  Picking up Desiree's first chapter, Jane started reading: "I was born to parents who didn't want a child, so they gave birth to an adult....”

  Jane was sorry when the first chapter ended and there wasn't any more to read. The writing was as weird and wonderful as Desiree herself. In a few short pages, she'd made Jane smile twice and almost get teary once. She told of being born to parents who actually liked being compared to Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. She recounted a visit to an aunt as eccentric as she herself was now. In fact, the aunt could have been a model for the Desiree Jane knew. She hinted at lovers and marriages to come, at famous people yet to be met and savored, at heartbreak and hilarity that would unfold in good time. Desiree was an example of an interesting life coupled with a gift of storytelling. Jane hoped the rest of the autobiography was actually written and she could talk Desiree out of a copy.

  “Mom! My swimsuit's got a hole in it!" Katie's banshee screech jerked Jane out of her reverie.

  “Katie," Jane said with all the patience she could muster, "don't yell at me as if it's my fault."

  “But what am I going to do? I have to be at the pool in half an hour!"

  “Well, two solutions come immediately to my mind. One, you could fix it. Two, you could wear another one. You've got a whole drawer full of suits."

  “Oh, Mother, they're all gross!”

  The words "They weren't gross when I paid for them" were crawling up Jane's throat, trying to make a break for it. "Thread and needles are downstairs in the sewing cabinet," she said mildly instead. She got up to unload the dishwasher—just to drive home the point that she was too busy to volunteer for sewing duty.

  Katie flounced off down the stairs to the basement, where Jane had a combination household office/ sewing room, and Jane settled in again with her manuscripts. She picked up one belonging to Bob Neufield. She had only a vague recollection of him from the time she had to go to a city council meeting. She'd been there on her husband's behalf when he wanted to widen the driveway and needed zoning approval. Mr. Neufield had attended with plans for a garden shed that would violate the setback regulations. Mr. Neufield, if she was remembering the right person, was in his late fifties perhaps, with a rigid military manner. Very tidy man. Extremely well pressed, short-haired, with a brisk, curt manner.

  His manuscript was abrupt and bloodless. He stated his birth data—date, place, parents—as if filling in a resume. The sentences were short, and repetitive with their singsong subject-predicate cadence. There were very few adjectives to liven it up, and no mention of how he felt about anything he was recounting. Poor, boring man! Jane thought, skipping ahead through lists of childhood friends and endless reports of school activities.

  Katie came bounding up from the basement wearing the now-repaired swimming suit. "Mom? Aren't you ready? I'm going to be late."

  “Ready? All I have to do is pick up my purse and car keys.”

  Unfortunately, the car keys had hidden themselves, so they spent a frantic five minutes rummaging through the house and hurling accusations at each other before the keys were discovered lurking under a sofa cushion.

  Katie's job, as far as the swimming pool management was concerned, was playing with the little ones in the baby pool. In her own view, her primary responsibility was getting a tan. "It's looking good, isn't it, Mom?" she said, propping a slim brown leg on the dashboard.

  “It is, indeed," Jane said, executing what her friend Shelley called a "running stop" at the corner. "It's a shame it's not good for you. No! I really meant that conversationally," she said as a cloud of surliness drifted across Katie's face. "It wasn't a mom-nag."

  “Jenny's mother is bringing us home, so you don't have to pick me up," Katie said. "When is Nana coming?"

  “Sometime this afternoon. She didn't say exactly. You'll plan to stick around with her, won't you? She's coming to see you more than me."

  “Of course. I like Nana. She's excellent. Do you think she'll take me shopping? I'm off tomorrow."

  “I'm sure she will," Jane said, remembering the last time her mother and daughter had gone shopping and came home with armloads of impractical and unsuitable clothes for Katie. A silk blouse, for God's sake! That was a lifetime investment in dry cleaning, and about the time Jane was starting to feel she had a serious financial stake in the garment, Katie decided green wasn't her color and gave it to Jenny. Of course, Jane's mother had always had a staff to take care of laundry, so she probably had no idea what silk really meant to the average housewife. Jane had to believe that. The alternative explanation was that her mother really meant to make things harder for her.

  “Why isn't Grump coming?" Katie asked.

  Jane smiled at the fact that Katie still called her grandfather by the name her brother Mike had given him. It wasn't a reflection on Jane's father's personality—he was an extremely affable man—but an infant mispronunciation of "Grampa" that had stuck. "He's in some Arabian country," Jane explained, "and you know how Nana hates to go to those places where they expect women to hide indoors."

  “Yuck! I'd hate it too.”

  Jane glanced at Katie's bare legs. "You sure would. If you went out like that, they'd stone you.”

  Katie's interest in cultural comparison was fleeting. "There's a great pair of shorts and a matching top at that shop next to the jewelry store. I think we'll start there."

  “Here you are, kiddo," Jane said, pulling to a stop in front of the pool entrance.

  Jane made a quick detour to the grocery store before heading home. She felt as if she really ought to buy caviar and some of those miniature vegetables that were so trendy. Her mother was used to eating the extraordinary cuisine that the best chefs in the world turned out. But she always claimed to enjoy Jane's ordinary cooking, whether she meant it or not. Accordingly, Jane went through the store on autopilot, got the same things she did every week, and headed for home.

  Out of a sense of duty, if not enthusiasm, she did a little straightening up after she put the groceries away, then settled back down with the manuscripts. She finally picked up her mother's—neatly typed, of course—and began to read. Her mother had started out in a third-person fictional mode, telling of a girl named Cecily Burke attending her debutante ball and meeting a handsome man named Michael Grant, who had just started working for the State Department. Jane knew the story, of course, how her mother lost her charm bracelet, and it was returned by messenger the next day with a new charm attached—a silver heart engraved MHG.

  Naturally her mother's story started with meeting her father.

  The chapter was well written, spritely, and, in technical terms, as well groomed, tactful, and self-controlled as her mother. It ended: "It was as if my life before that night had been a long preparation for meeting Michael...." Nice, Jane thought. A good transition to first person and going back to the beginning in the second chapter to come. And yet, the sentiment left her feeling grouchy, and guilty about feeling grouchy. This was an old, old problem between them. Jane, you're nearly forty, she told herself, you ought to be over it by now.

  Maybe Shelley was right. Having mothers visit wasn't easy or natural. That thought took her back to Mrs. General Pryce. Just imagine having a
mother like that turn up on your doorstep with her suitcases. It was the stuff of which nightmares were made.

  Jane sat looking at the pile of manuscripts, thinking guiltily that she ought to be participating in the class if she was going to take it. But she didn't want to write an autobiography. Her own life, while certainly not ordinary, had no dramatic high points—except a few that were much too personal to share with strangers.

  So if she wasn't going to write her own life, that didn't mean she couldn't participate in some way. Just for the fun of it, she decided to invent a person to write about.

  She sat thinking for a moment, then pulled a legal pad and pencil from the kitchen "everything" drawer and started writing:

  “They say I was born in London to the woman I learned to call Mother, but when I was seventeen I learned that my origins were quite different. The woman who actually gave birth to me—in the rude colonial town of Boston—would not have dared darken the doors of the mansion I grew up calling home.”

  Jane sat back and reread this, smiling. "Where in the world did that come from?" she asked herself aloud. It was funny—and a little bit scary, how easilythat had gone onto the paper. She hadn't really thought it out until she was actually writing it.

  An image of a person was forming in her mind. She bent over the paper again.

  Priscilla.

  3

  Cecily Grant arrived at three in a cab. Jane was writing at the kitchen table, where she could see the driveway, and rushed out to help bring her mother's luggage in, but there was only one medium-sized suitcase. Jane should have realized. Her mother always, of necessity, traveled light. During the whole of her married life, Cecily Grant had never had an actual home, only a long series of residences supplied by the State Department. A few were hovels and glorified tents, most were luxurious houses, a couple had been modest castles.

  Jane's father was a cultured, handsome man who had an uncanny gift for languages, being able to pick up the most obscure dialects in a matter of days. Sometimes he used these languages overtly in helping arrange treaties and trade agreements. More often he was sent in to look decorative and mildly perplexed, all the time eavesdropping like mad. Neither his wife nor his children had acquired a smidgen of this language gift, so they made a terrific cover for his more covert activities. In fact, it wasn't until Jane was an adult that she understood what her father's job really was and how important it was.

  “Mother! I'm so glad to see you!" Jane said, embracing the older woman. Now that Cecily was actually here, it was true. Cecily carried with her anenveloping air of competence. People in her presence sensed that nothing could go wrong that she couldn't cope with. It was very comforting, even when nothing was wrong.

  Cecily held her daughter at arm's length, appraisingly. "Jane, you look wonderful. Your hair's longer. It's very flattering!"

  “You look terrific, too." Cecily always looked great. She had naturally curly hair that she kept short and fluffy. She never had it set and had let it go gray so that she didn't have to worry about having roots touched up in odd corners of the globe where such amenities might not be available. Her figure was still slim and faintly athletic. She used no makeup but lipstick, and—thanks to an expert plastic surgeon in London whom she visited at regular five-year intervals—she had no unsightly wrinkles or sags in her face or neck. Every time she saw her mother, Jane found herself offering up silent prayers that she would hold up against age as well as Cecily. Unfortunately, Jane's genes didn't run to curls, nor her budget to cosmetic surgery.

  “I wish you'd let me pick you up at the airport," Jane said, taking the one suitcase into the house.

  “Oh, Jane, you know I just get shoved onto whatever plane has an empty spot. I'd feel awful if I thought you were camped out at a dreary old airport waiting for me. How are the children? Is Todd enjoying his trip with his other grandmother?" She said it brightly, but there was the slightest hint of jealousy. A tiny chink in the perfect armor, Jane was glad to realize.

  “He's having a great time. Mother, you know his trip was planned before I knew you were coming this week. I'd have changed it if I could."

  “No, no. I wouldn't want anybody's schedule altered. And Mike? Are he and his friend Scott having a wonderful time looking at colleges?" If Michael Grant had a gift for languages, Cecily had cornered the world market on remembering people and their names. Jane could hardly keep track of her kids' friends, but her mother remembered all of them.

  “Wonderful, but terrifying to me. I don't want to lose him, but I don't want him to know that."

  “Of course you don't, darling," Cecily said, taking her daughter's hands in her own cool, well-manicured ones. "You're not worried about the cost, are you?"

  “Not too much. You know I put all Steve's life insurance money into trusts for the kids. Then I get a third of the Jeffry family pharmacies' profits. I put half of that into the trusts and live on the rest. As long as the kids stay away from the ultraexpensive places like Stanford and Northwestern, I can probably afford it. The only thing I resent is that there isn't enough for any extras."

  “You know we'd be happy to help."

  “I know, Mom. So would Thelma, but I want to do it myself."

  “How is 'dear' Thelma?"

  “As awful as ever," Jane answered. Cecily laughed.

  “Still trying to steal the children," Jane went on. "There are days I'm tempted to let her. Good news, though. Dixie Lee is pregnant, and she's an even more unsuitable daughter-in-law than I am. Thelma's gearing up for a new grandchild to spoil and bribe. Poor Dixie Lee."

  “Is Katie home?"

  “No, she's working at the pool this afternoon."

  “What fun this is going to be, just the three of us girls.”

  They were still standing in the kitchen doorway, and a pair of cats suddenly shot between their legs. "Where's the cowardly lion?" Cecily asked.

  “Oh, he's probably identified you as a terrorist who has come to kidnap him and hold him for an enormous ransom. He's been expecting it for years," Jane said. "Willard? Willard!”

  The basement door squeaked open and a wet nose appeared, hesitated for a long, analytical sniff, and was followed slowly by the rest of the dog. He crept cautiously to Cecily, smelled her knees approvingly, and then lovingly leaned against her so hard, she nearly toppled over.

  “Willard!" Jane exclaimed, shoving him away. "I'll take your things upstairs, Mom. Help yourself to some coffee if you want. It's decaf. You better start looking over the class work. The first meeting is tonight. This pile is yours," Jane said, patting the stack of manuscripts on the counter.

  When Jane came back downstairs, her mother had poured them both coffee and was sitting at the kitchen table, examining the manuscripts. "I'm so glad you agreed to take this class with me. I see the awful Agnes Pryce is in the class."

  “You know Mrs. Pryce?"

  “I knew her once, to my sorrow. Portugal, I think. Her husband was involved with the embassy for a mercifully short time. They were both terrible people. Mean-spirited and very superior-acting, without any good reason. He was quite the old lech, as I recall."

  “Portugal? Was I there?"

  “No, it was a year or so after you got married. Your father and I hosted a party once that they came to. Some poor man spilled champagne on her, and you'd have thought it was the outbreak of world war. She chewed him to little shreds. Fortunately, he was an American or there would have been an international incident over it. I don't suppose she's mellowed?"

  “Not that you can tell. She's on a perpetual campaign to have all children within a hundred-mile radius of Chicago confined to their homes until they're thirty. Something all the mothers are fighting.”

  Cecily Grant was skimming through the pages of Mrs. Pryce's book, holding it carefully as if the pages themselves were soiled. "Evil woman. Can you imagine writing down all these stories with pride?"

  “I haven't looked at it yet," Jane said, rummaging in the cabinet for some crackers. />
  Cecily was silent for a minute while Jane was setting the crackers on a cookie sheet in the oven for a minute to crisp them up. "Here's a story about some poor seamstress in Hawaii," Cecily said with venom. "Pryce says she fired the woman when she wanted to bring her baby to work because the grandmother had died and she had no one to keep the child. Listen to this: 'I told her, of course, that children had no role in the workplace, as all decent Americans knew very well. Though she was very unhappy about it at the time, I'm sure she benefited from the knowledge and later had cause to thank me in her prayers.' The nerve!”

  Jane was frantically searching the refrigerator. She'd bought some very good brie as a concession to her mother's visit just the day before, and couldn't find it. Where could a large, white cheese hide in a confined area?

  “Here's another one," Cecily was continuing in anoutraged tone. "Mrs. Pryce was interned in a prison camp in the Philippines during the war—can you imagine being locked up with the woman for a couple years? She turned in a young woman who had stolen some powdered milk from the stores. One of their own people. The woman was tortured to death for it. Pryce says it was 'unfortunate,' but makes the point that they had to behave in a civilized manner and keep close control of their limited food supply or face the consequences. Garr!"

  “Mother, are you sure you want to take this class?" Jane said, spying the missing cheese getting squashed under an orange juice carton. Katie must have done that.

  Cecily closed the book and shoved it aside. "Of course. I just won't look at this anymore. We can ignore her."