Scott doesn’t say anything. His mouth turns down.
In the flip of a minute I decide I’ve been mean and underhanded. There’s no basis at all for my accusation about his MCATs, just some long-ago experience with my ex-friend Habitat. What apology can I offer?
“It wasn’t pot,” Scott says finally in a strangled voice. He clunks the recliner forward and struggles to his feet. Some papers spill out of the file he’s holding. A whole batch of them land in my lap.
I start shuffling his stuff up into a little pile. I make it clear I’m not reading, just organizing.
Maybe that assuages him some. Maybe he has a need to justify. “It was a girl. Her name was Danielle.” He hits her name hard and his face pinks up again as he says it.
I think, Oh, a girl who took pot. A girl who got pregnant? A girl who went to the Virgin Islands for a divorce? Romance, interesting. I love stuff like that. I’ll be here for the rest of the week. I can get this story out of him.
Danielle. My father mentioned a Danielle sometime or other.
I hand up his stack of papers.
“I was only there a year,” he says.
I decide his story isn’t true. Whatever it is. I’ll find out.
He’s still standing, looking irresolute. This idiot doesn’t want to talk, but he’s standing with his feet glued to the floor. Definitely, Danielle was important.
“A year is long enough,” I say, pulling the conversation back on its trolley. “You’ll remember some of that med training. What could Mr. Broussard have died of? Twice?”
“The nine-one-one guys said he had very low blood pressure,” he offers finally in a strangled voice.
“And what would cause that?”
“Shock. Trauma. Blood loss.”
“He wasn’t losing blood.”
“Internally.”
I try to imagine the man struggling around for a whole afternoon with something bleeding inside, not telling anyone, bumping into walls. “Wouldn’t that make you sort of crazy?”
“What are you? Madame Hercule Poirot?”
I say, “Oh, shit,” and try to organize myself for an exit. Now if he had just accused me of being Tempe Brennan or Kinsey Milhone or any one of the other thousand successful woman sleuths of the last fifty years. I am caught in the listening equipment and can’t get up.
“Egon left a printed welcome on my dresser,” I say. “It talks about our distinguished roster of scholars. It lists you and Rita and my father. Everybody’s history gets reviewed and their publications listed. You’ve got tons of those. And your field is Egyptian history. Specifically the history of the Middle New Kingdom. Dr. Scott Dillard, Memphis State University, Memphis, Tennessee.”
He interrupts, “I’m at Yale now.”
“Oh, is that better than Memphis State?” (Actually, Memphis State gives a degree in Egyptology; I checked that in Google, too.)
Scott stares. We’ve had a brisk exchange of insults this afternoon. I wonder if he has a sense of humor. Not about his career, I betcha.
I have finally gotten myself loose from the wires and am struggling up with my book. “We’re going to have a good time, aren’t we,” I ask, “talking about our work histories and our study histories and our articles? Of course, I’m not listed in Egon’s welcome document; I’m not a scholar, just the daughter of a scholar. They don’t make a category for that. But it’s very important, too. Don’t you think?
“Incidentally, did you know him?” I ask.
“Did I know who?” Scott stares and the muscles in his tan cheeks flex. I suspect that he’s perfectly aware that I mean Marcus Broussard.
“You’re not exactly making sense, Lady Blues Enthusiast.”
“See you at dinner.” I leave feeling that I’ve learned a couple of things, but I’m not sure what.
“Huh?” I ask, amazed.
“I mean, hey, I ran right into you.”
She is clutching a large purple orchid in a clay pot. She wears a silk turquoise shirt with a sequin outline of a swan on the front. Her hair is newly moussed, her face is washed; she sports one turquoise earring and a delicate smile. This Rita is a new person and not hysterical. Dressed, coiffed, trimmed. Changed, you could say.
In fact, an altered and reconstituted Rita. Remade and a bit scary for that reason. Because it’s been only a few days since I last saw her, screaming “Help,” and accusing my dad of murder. And here she is, someone who has altered her entire outer envelope. She wears a pale tasteful dab of lipstick and blusher, a tiny hint of eyeliner. Has she been having charm sessions with Cherie? She wears pale green pants. It seems that all this time she’s had pale green eyes. She is still plump, which looks sweet.
“My God,” I say.
She agrees, “Oh. Yeah.”
“You look great.”
“Kind of a surprise, huh?”
I remember that I was on my way to my dad’s room and turn to go in that direction, but she falls in beside me. She bounces the orchid on her hip. “This is for your father. I had it, but now I’m giving it to him. Does he like orchids, do you know?”
I can feel myself staring, mouth open.
“Unprecedented, right?” she interprets. The orchid gets shifted. “Well, I have manic-depressive tendencies. And I take meds. And sometimes I need help to get back on track.”
I’m sure there are appropriate responses, like, “I guess we all do, some,” or, “I had a good friend that had that.” But I’m still too astonished to say anything.
We arrive at Daddy’s room side by side, but can’t go in that way, because the door isn’t wide enough.
Rita enters first, orchid held out straight. “Here you are, Ed. Honest, I’m so sorry.”
“Why, my dear,” says my father. “What a beautiful color. Are you on your way to your plane?”
“No, Ed.” She positions the orchid on a table and stands back appraisingly. “I guess I was real bitchy, right?”
“I don’t think so,” Daddy says. “Let us sit down. What do you mean by bitchy? Isn’t that a handsome flower?”
Rita sits, exposing silver socks and turquoise strap sandals. Definitely, she’s been getting schooling from Cherie.
My father silences the television with the remote. He turns; he smiles a delighted smile. “My dear. What plane is it?”
She says, “No, Ed.”
“So hard on us. Travel. There was a book where they talked about simply putting you in a capsule. You could sleep the whole way. Wake up in Kazakhstan.”
Rita waits a minute. She digs something out of her pocket, a silver and ivory comb, and twiddles the comb-teeth to make it sing. “I guess I’m finding this interview sorta upsetting?”
Yeah, I think.
She snaps and unsnaps the comb.
“I would sure like it if . . .” Kazoom, a fingernail down the edge of the comb.
Maybe what we’re getting here is the original precollapse Rita. Low-key, nervous, anxious to please.
“Oh, hell. Everybody’s entitled to one bitch-day once a month during a bad PMS bout. Am I right? Right. The hell with all you clones.” Kazoom some more.
Well, not that anxious to please. “Rita, cut it out.” She flashes me a good smile and sticks the comb in her pocket.
My father says, “I think someday there will be an implosion of undifferentiated factoids.”
“Seems likely,” Rita examines him. “Some of the basic Ed is still there.”
“Much, my dear.”
“You always were a handsome bastard.”
I do a reassessment. Daddy is sprightly, trim, sturdy. Is he handsome?
Rita fixes on me. “This the way it usually is?” She flexes an eyebrow in Daddy’s direction.
“It varies.”
“Boy, did I ever adore him, once. When we were on the dig in Thebes. A great scene; maybe I should tell you. But maybe not.”
I wait.
“Ah, the hell with it. It’ll wait. You’ll be around here awhile?”
&n
bsp; I tell her yes and she says, “Dinner calls, acid reflux falls, keep cool,” and exits in a flurry. Her hair still wants to stand up straight.
It is going to be an engrossing few days at the museum.
Chapter 7
A hassled Egon Rothskellar is trying to induce the right atmosphere around his dinner table.
The right atmosphere would be one of sophistication and intelligent discourse, rising above the fact of Marcus Broussard, whom everybody at this table saw spread-eagled and, we are told, finally dead in Egon’s garden just three nights ago.
“Any news, Egon?” Scott asks.
Egon jumps. “News, Scott? I don’t think so. What kind of news would that be?”
“Studly is fishing to find out if you heard something about Marcus,” Rita says, jabbing a piece of lettuce. “Like, what did it to him? Who did it to him?”
Egon is desolate. “Marcus. Oh, dear. So dreadful.”
“Stud is Mr. Energizer Bunny,” Rita says. “He never stops, you know, on the intellectual quest? You’ve heard of it? Fill up your brain with facts?”
“Hey, Rita, cut it out, huh?” Scott says.
Rita says, “Why?”
Egon says, “Oh, dear.”
“Any more little tchochkes missing, Egon?” Rita asks. “Maybe Stud’s been collecting them.” She turns to me. “You heard about it. They’ve been disappearing at the rate of—oh—one a day. Right, Egon?”
“Alas,” Egon says. “Yes. And we are so careful. Rita, dear, settle down, please.”
Rita, who has been poised on the edge of her chair, surprises me by subsiding. Maybe it’s the presence of the extra person at the table, Mrs. Bunny Modjeska, that does it. Bunny is the guard. (“Just call me Bunny. It sure is easier than Modjeska.”) She leans forward now, exhibiting fat shoulders and flattering interest. She views the visible enmity at the table. “Wow.”
Rita settles back. “Pass the mashed potatoes, please.” Egon waves a hand over his beautiful table and its crystal, china, linen, platter of tasty-looking roast chicken. Tonight’s menu is American. There is a printed menu card, labeled AMERICAN DINNER.
“Congrats, Rita,” Scott tells her. “You look sort of like you some more.”
Rita ladles out mashed potatoes and pours gravy.
“I didn’t like that other stuff,” Scott says. “The lost Goth look. ‘Shifting of face is the name of him who’ et cetera—remember those lines, Reet?”
Rita eats a forkful of food and stares at Scott, eyes narrowed.
“And, chicklet, I bet you never looked in a mirror once. Not to mention the invective. Hey, Rita . . .”
Egon intervenes. “Scott. Please. Bygones, and . . . well, please. This is Rita back.”
Rita has been eating potatoes stolidly, her head straight forward. The platter of chicken sits in the middle of the table, untouched.
“Rita is back?” says Scott. “How do you tell? Rita, the bleater, are you back, my darling?”
Rita is still unresponsive. Back straight, even though the shoulders are twitching slightly.
Daddy says, “Oh, dear. Perhaps some of us have been out in the sun too long?”
And I’m fired to action. “Scott, for God’s sake, what’s with you? Let it go. So Rita wasn’t feeling good for a while; now she’s better. Why’re you keeping at it? I just don’t get it.”
Somehow the spectacle of Rita’s stolid back and shoulders is more touching than crying would be, or seeing her with her head in her hands. She doesn’t do any of that. She eats for a while and then raises her eyes and says at Scott, “Quit pretending like I’m dirt on your shoe. There’s plenty of times you wanted it different, if you can scrape your brains together enough to remember. And quit pretending Ed here is some kinda new acquaintance. You’ve known Ed since the flood. For Christ’s sake. You look at him now like you never saw him before.”
A sound intrudes from the outside, a train whistle. That’s from the weedy triple railway line on the other side of Route One. “Hear that lonesome whistle / Sounding on the trestle,” says, or rather, sings, my dad. He has a nice tenor voice. He supplies the chorus, “Ah—whooee, ah—whooee.”
Egon bangs a little gong for more wine.
“I really like those trains,” says my father.
I’m inspired to a speech. Maybe this isn’t a good time, but I need to make it.
“Scott, you’re being mean to Rita; she’s off-base but she’s vulnerable, she’s like . . .” I’m about to say, Like a snail without a shell, when Rita turns such a poisonous glance my way that I cancel that. “I don’t care about your history with her. Nobody cares, so cut it out. And cut it out with my dad, too.” I’m not sure what I’m talking about here, so I slow down some. “If you knew my dad sometime in the past, it’s unkind of you—not just unkind, cruel—not to act like you know him. You don’t understand how often he stumbles along and doesn’t say things because he thinks maybe he’s wrong. I’ll bet anything he looked at you and wondered, Hey do I know him, and then he just . . .” I’m amazed to hear my voice faltering. I don’t want to emote for these people.
“Okay,” says Scott, sounding muffled. “Point taken. I apologize. And I guess I better have some of this chicken, because nobody else is going to.”
“Well, another eventful day at Sunny Dell Acres,” says Scott, rising to fold his menu into a neat square and stash it in his pocket. He looks thoughtful. “Can you pluck from the mind its rooted sorrow?” he asks.
I say, “Oh, shut up.” I’m irked by people who revert to literary stuff in tense moments.
Apparently I’ve found a way to become the most popular girl in the dorm.
Raise a fuss during dinner. But I doubt if it always works. My first visitor tonight is Bunny. She taps on my bedroom door and says, “Hello, dear, I wanted to tell you, I just had to say . . .”
I have to urge her to come in. She is a large lady and she fills up the whole door.
“What I mean,” she exhales, settling into an ivory-slip-covered armchair. “Boy, these rooms are real nice, aren’t they?”
She says no, she doesn’t exactly live at the museum; she has a room down the hall for when she works late, but she lives in “one of those houses in Conestoga, in back of Main Street, y’know?”
But that’s not what she wants to talk to me about. “I thought you were great for tackling that asshole,” she says. “And he is one. A real sure-of-himself bastard. And if he knew your little dad. And didn’t admit it. Well. That is real bad.
“And your dad is someone you got to side with. Know what I mean?”
I tell her uh-huh. I wait. Bunny has the look of a lady who wants to go on talking.
“Anyway, dear, you’re a smart girl. College girl, I guess, right?
“And you’re stickin’ with your dad, which is great. And I haven’t really been able to talk to anybody, y’know?”
She looks at me triumphantly.
Apparently she thinks she has piled up enough criteria to make me a confidante. “So I just thought I’d come here and ...”
She shifts and tries to find something to delay action. She moves her legs. Long ago, I guess, when she was thinner, she would have crossed them; now they are too wide to get one thigh on top of the other.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” I ask. Tea was the conversation-priming device at the Manor; Egon has supplied all the necessaries, including a professional display of tea bags.
“Dear, you just let me do that.” Bunny won’t listen to my protests that I’m the hostess here. She sets out, being extremely efficient, which cheers her up.
While she’s pouring hot water, she says, “What makes it kinda hard to say is, well, I don’t know exackly. I mean, it’s about him, that trustee. When I went to help him that first time. When he was supposed to be dead.”
Each of us sits down. There’s a rhythmic clink of stirring.
“I dunno,” Bunny says. “Something was weird.”
“Well, sure,” I say. “He looked
dead. But he wasn’t. That’s weird.”
Bunny grunts and takes a large slurp. “Sure, but. Like, when you remember back and say, this happened and that happened and then, whoa, peculi-ar.”
After a pause she adds, “I gave him mouth-to-mouth, y’know.”
“I remember.” I’d been especially impressed by the mouth-to-mouth.
“It was somethin’ special,” Bunny says. “It keeps hangin’ there on the edge of me catching it, like what happens when you want to remember a dream. Y’know?”
Yes, I do know. “Try to think,” I say. “Think about how his face looked. What color sweater he had.”
But this gets us nowhere.
We veer off into talking about dreams and then about Bunny’s two girls, one of whom dreams a lot. She’s fifteen. And then we talk some about living in Conestoga, which I’m interested in, although Bunny claims it’s just like living anywhere. “I mean, it’s the place where you are, know what I mean?”
We have a good visit, and when Bunny leaves, she says she’s glad she talked to me; it made her feel better. “I kept thinking I ought to do something, know what I mean?”
I scan him for signs that this move has been disturbing, but the signs all point in the opposite direction. He looks good; his eyes are bright; his hair stands up, fluffy and white.
A year ago I thought he was on the verge of something bad, a steep Alzheimer’s slide, but now he seems stable. They tell you Alzheimer’s is like that. There are plateaus; there are moments of brightness. Hang on to them, the books all say. Be in the moment.
Rita isn’t tentative about wanting to see me. The minute I open the door, she slips in, heads for the ivory-colored armchair, and curls up in it, feet under her. “Do you smoke?”
“Nope.”
“Neither do I. Do you mind?” She pulls a small gold cigarette pack out of her pocket; it opens to expose black cigarettes with gold tips. She lights one with a cigarette lighter and looks around. Of course, there are no ashtrays in Egon’s good hotel. I get a saucer for her.
“This is so damn much trouble.” She waves a hand at the cigarettes and lighter. “Special stuff all the way around, fags, lights, too pain-in-the-neck; I hate it; I’ve quit.”
Erased From Memory Page 5