Mourning In Miniature

by Margaret Grace

  “Can you add a cot to the room Rose Norman and I already have?”

  “We’re not supposed to . . .” She looked down to see Maddie struggling with her suitcase. She smiled at Maddie and took a deep breath. “Well, let’s see . . .” Click, click, click. “It will be a little tight, but . . .” Click, click, click. “There, I moved you to a slightly bigger room with space enough for a cot. I think you’ll be comfortable enough and I don’t think anyone will mind.”

  I hoped her boss was among those who wouldn’t mind her giving us special consideration.

  “Thank you very much,” Maddie said, in a sweet voice that she didn’t use for normal conversation or for computer jokes.

  I made a note to get her a special treat. As if I wouldn’t have otherwise.

  Rosie had so much luggage, I doubted there would have been room for me in her car if we’d gone with the original carpooling arrangement.

  “I brought a few wardrobe choices,” she said, out of breath from unpacking her suitcases on the bed nearer to the door. “I need your help with what to wear, Gerry.” She looked at Maddie, busy hooking her computer equipment together. (Since her birthday she’d acquired many more items that began with i.) “And yours, too, Maddie.”

  “You’d do better sticking with Maddie’s advice,” I told her, though it was no secret that my own palette ran from white to creams to beiges to the occasional pale blue. I’d brought one of my fancier beige outfits for the cocktail party, which meant that the slacks and tunic were silk, nicely complemented with long pearls from Ken. It was my standard outfit for weddings and anniversary parties.

  “You’re lucky you’re so tall and thin, Gerry. You can wear anything.”

  I heard the same thing often from other friends, all of whom seemed to have a hidden agenda—to brighten my wardrobe. Occasionally I broke loose and bought a flowery jacket or a blouse in bright green or glittery blue. My shopping bags with donations to charity were full of these purchases.

  I was surprised to see that Rosie had brought her unfinished locker room box with her. She set it on a corner of the long dresser that held the television set and took up most of one wall.

  “This is my favorite project in the group,” Maddie said, running her finger along the slatted vents in one closed locker door. She turned to me. “I love yours, too, Grandma.”

  I gave her a forgiving smile. “It’s okay. I know a cottage Christmas scene is no match for this.” It was neither the time nor the place to share my own dismay that apparently I had no Alasita-type goals for the year other than a Merry Christmas. “Do you think you’ll have time this weekend to work on the scene?” I asked Rosie.

  She shook her head. “I . . . I thought David might like to see it.”

  “I like the little toothbrush on the top shelf of the locker on the end,” Maddie said, saving me from having to make an optimistic comment.

  It took an hour before Rosie considered herself ready to meet David at the cocktail party. “I’m sure we’ll bump into him before the private party in his suite,” she said, justifying the fuss.

  From six to seven o’clock, she tried on several combinations of dresses, shoes, and jewelry, asking for our votes each time. In the end she went with a simple black dress with a low V neckline and a ruffled hem. She carried the smallest of the three black evening purses she’d brought, this one with a large silver buckle that took up most of one side of the purse, and a silver chain strap.

  “Are you sure I look okay?” she asked, moving her hammered silver pendant to the exact center of her cleavage.

  “You look cool,” Maddie said, then returned to scouting out the amenities in the room.

  “You look wonderful,” I told Rosie, meaning it.

  Maddie called out from the bathroom, ticking off the contents of the counter. “We’ve got shampoo and conditioner, a shoe shine cloth, mouthwash, a shower cap, and body lotion,” she announced. Back in the room, she came upon a book in the table between the twin beds. “This is a funny Bible,” she said.

  I took a look and was surprised to find the collected works of Duns Scotus. “It’s not a Bible,” I said. “These are writings by the monk this hotel is named after.”

  “That’s weird, naming a hotel after a monk.”

  I scanned the chronology at the front of the book, to get my dates straight. “He was a Franciscan who lived in the thirteenth century,” I said, as if that made everything clear.

  “Oh, I get it. San Francisco. Franciscan.”

  Apparently, clear enough.

  A few minutes later, I sent Maddie off with a group who came to the door. I felt sure she’d enjoy the special kids’ program, which started with an evening of swimming in the hotel pool, more than a cocktail party with middle-aged men and women and their teachers.

  “Here it is,” Rosie said, still concentrating on her outfit. “The final touch.”

  She’d added the pièce de résistance—the sparkling (allegedly) emerald and diamond bracelet that (also allegedly) David had sent. Why was I being such a skeptic? I wondered, and chided myself at my lack of romantic spirit. I needed to bolster my friend.

  “You look lovely, Rosie,” I said, reinforcing my earlier compliment. “And the bracelet is gorgeous.”

  That wasn’t so hard.

  One last tug on her dress, a puff up of her chestnut bob, and Rosie and I left the room. I felt as nervous as she did, hoping the evening wouldn’t end in disaster for my friend.

  We might have been in an elegant San Francisco hotel, but the decorations at the cocktail party were 100 percent Lincoln Point. We could have been entering the Abraham Lincoln High School gym—the official maroon-and-gold school banner was draped above the portable bar of the converted meeting room; small gold napkins with a maroon silhouette of Honest Abe lay on the high tables.

  We picked up our name badges, entered the room, and walked along the edges, where several large easels held poster-size collages of photos of the reunion class. The snapshots were interspersed with ALHS pennants, ticket stubs, and graduation tassels. Here and there on narrow pedestals were large sports trophies that on every other day resided in cases in the halls of ALHS.

  Rosie quickly found the one with David Bridges’s name on it. I could barely distinguish the football statuettes from those with hockey or bowling stances, let alone determine which position the figures represented, but Rosie knew exactly what was depicted in bronze on David’s trophy.

  “It’s a well-known quarterback pose,” she said.

  I knew for a fact that Rosie hadn’t been to or watched a football game of any kind since she cheered for David on the ALHS field.

  As a miniaturist and former teacher, I suffered from two occupational hazards: giving close scrutiny to even the most casual crafts project, and forgetting that I was no longer responsible for giving grades. This evening, though no one asked, I assigned no more than a C-plus to the decorations. The posters especially were crudely done, with evidence of a bad glue job congealed around the sides of the objects, which in their turn were affixed to the cheapest cardboard sold at a crafts store.

  My judgmental attitude came to a halt when I found myself in front of a memorial board with yearbook photographs of the nine class members who had died in the intervening years. I looked at each face and saw a lively teenager cut short in life’s journey. Just as parents didn’t expect to outlive their children, teachers assumed their students would carry what they learned long into the future.

  I took a breath and focused on the center of the room, alive with blaring seventies music and loud chatter.

  I was getting used to having all the professionals in my life, like doctors and repairmen, being younger than me. But seeing a large group of my former students with wrinkles around their eyes and gray at the temples was almost overwhelming. It had been many years since I’d been to one of my own school reunions. I decided to skip all such gatherings in the future.

  I took my cue from Rosie and crept along the walls of the
room while she surveyed the crowd without reserve. She frowned and screwed up her nose the way Maddie did when she was concentrating on her homework. Finally, we’d made a full circle, back to the entrance. I made a move to go to a table a few feet in when I spied a student I recognized, but Rosie pulled me along with her.

  “Stay with me, okay? I’m nervous.”

  Surely we weren’t going to circle the room again. “Why don’t you just try to find someone you know and—”

  “I know lots of people here, Gerry. But I don’t need to visit with the ones who still live in Lincoln Point. They’re my customers. I see them all the time.”

  I saw her point. Sort of.

  Unfortunately for Rosie, one of my students found me before Rosie found David.

  Frank Thayer, newly appointed principal of ALHS, and one of the brightest lights in my special Steinbeck seminar, introduced me to his wife, Paula. “This is the best English teacher I ever had,” he told her, making it well worth the trip for me already. The fact that the loud chatter and ear-splitting music (“Margaritaville” at the moment) caused him to shout out the compliment made it even better.

  Rosie was itchy while we reminisced about the miniature project we’d worked on for the Steinbeck class—a replica of Steinbeck’s home in Salinas, California. Frank was a wonderful woodworker and had contributed his skills to the enterprise. He told us he and his family had recently celebrated a birthday lunch at the old Victorian home, which now included a restaurant and gift shop.

  If I didn’t like her so much as a friend, I’d have said Rosie was rude as she paid little attention to the conversation, though she’d also been involved in the Steinbeck seminar. She’d written an outstanding report on East of Eden, if I remembered correctly. And when it came to English term papers, I usually did.

  “Didn’t you make a set of miniature books for that project?” Frank asked Rosie. “Sort of presaging your future career as a bookshop owner.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, her eyes roaming the room for David. “There he is,” she whispered to me, her breath catching. “Two tables over, near the doorway. In the beautiful navy suit and yellow tie. His hair is still thick and dark.”

  I thought I heard her sigh, and hoped I was wrong. Was it a coincidence that “I Just Want to Be Your Everything” was now playing?

  I turned to see an older David Bridges, still looking quite fit, arguing with a man in a gray jumpsuit. A maintenance person, I thought.

  “They don’t look happy,” I told her, noticing somewhat antagonistic gestures on the part of the stocky man in the hotel uniform.

  “Remember I told you David’s in charge of the maintenance crew here at the hotel. That must be a whiny employee. You’d think the guy would leave poor David alone to celebrate for one night.”

  “We have empty seats at our table,” Frank said, commanding our attention again. I wasn’t surprised that the new principal didn’t isolate himself at a head table, in spite of his position. He pointed to a set of six bar stools and a high table not far from where we stood. “Henry Baker and his granddaughter are there. Remember him? He taught shop.”

  “Of course, he was a great help with a lot of our miniature building projects.”

  “Come and sit with us,” Paula said.

  Rosie shook her head, but too late. Frank took our drink orders and insisted on treating us.

  I felt more than saw Rosie’s glare as we made our way to the table to the tune of “Muskrat Love.” But I was more intrigued by a little girl of Maddie’s age sitting next to Henry. Either Henry didn’t know about the special kids’ program or he wanted his granddaughter by his side. I couldn’t imagine the other alternative—that a nine- or ten-year-old might insist on attending a function like this.

  I felt a bump on my right hip. “Oops, sorry,” said a booming voice behind me. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Porter,” the man added. “I didn’t mean to run into you like that.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s rather tight in here, isn’t it?” I said, not knowing exactly to whom in the crowded space.

  Rosie drew in her breath. I turned to see what had caused the reaction. It had been David Bridges, now free of his unhappy employee, who had bumped into me. No spills or dire consequences, except for Rosie, who stuttered, “D-David!”

  “Hey,” David said, steadying his drink. “Rosie Esterman, right?”

  Rosie’s face reddened, visible even in the dim light. I could have sworn she lowered her eyelids, coy and flirty. “Yes, David.”

  I took a seat on one of the stools at the table, to give Rosie clear access to David.

  The employee in the jumpsuit wasn’t through with his boss, however. He’d followed David through the spaces between the high tables, looking out of place among the dress suits and fancy (except for mine) outfits in the ballroom. “This isn’t over, Bridges,” he said. “I can burn you.”

  “Look, Ben, you’re out of line, here. Let’s take it up next week.”

  The irascible Ben locked eyes with David. “It might be too late by then,” he said and rushed out, knocking into my stool as he passed.

  This repartee was in low voices and thus caused only the slightest stir among the closest revelers.

  David turned to Rosie and me and transitioned to the broad smile that made him Most Popular Boy thirty years ago. “Don’t mind Ben. He didn’t get the raise he hoped for and he’s a little out of sorts right now. I’ll take care of him on Monday.”

  David gave each of us a perfunctory hug—still very muscular, I noted—while an attractive, slight brunette approached. She looped her arm around David’s and pulled on him. I recognized the head cheerleader, Cheryl (nee Carroll) Mellace. C-minus on her As You Like It paper, I remembered. She’d changed less than any of us, looking like she could still pull off her youthful acrobatics and climb onto the shoulders of the girls in her squad.

  “I’ll see you all later,” David said, seeming to enjoy the tension on his arm from the lovely Cheryl.

  “Around ten thirty, right?” Rosie said.

  “Uh, I guess?” David seemed to be asking a question, perhaps because he was in transit from Cheryl’s pull and her high-pitched, “C’mon, Davi-i-id.”

  “What room . . . ?” Rosie’s question trailed off as David and Cheryl strolled out of earshot. Rosie looked at me. I was happy no one else seemed to notice what I’d have called a brush-off. “Well, I think the room number is on one of his gift cards,” she said. “I’m sure he expects me to know it.”

  I looked at her hands, clutching the silver chain of her purse. She’d twisted it into a tangled mess.

  Trying to make up for a distracted Rosie, I talked more than I usually do at such events. My task was made easier by Taylor, ten years old, who told us about the new dollhouse her grandfather, Henry Baker, ALHS’s former shop teacher, was building for her. My kind of family.

  “Oh? What scale is it?” I asked, feeling more and more at home at the table. Leave it to a child to provide the only cocktail (ginger ale in my case) party conversation I’d ever enjoyed. “Rosie and I are miniaturists, too,” I offered. I doubted Rosie heard me.

  “It’s regular one-twelfth scale, but it’s really an apartment complex,” Taylor explained. Using hand gestures generously, she described the three floors, the winding outside stairway, and how each apartment had a balcony. “It’s so cool,” she added, but I was already convinced.

  I heard myself gasping at this new take on dollhouses. “What a wonderful idea,” I said.

  “One balcony has a small barbeque with a really cute set of tools, and another one has a little garden, and—”

  Henry put his hand on Taylor’s arm to interrupt her.

  “They’re only one-bedroom apartments, with one bath and small kitchens.” Henry seemed apologetic about his creation.

  “I have to see it,” I said, before I realized the implication.

  “That can be arranged,” Henry said. “If you’ll show me yours.”

  It was my turn to b
lush. And was Henry’s face red, too?

  Chapter 3

  As cocktail parties went, this one wasn’t too bad. Class President Barry Cannon kept his remarks short, thanking the committee who put the weekend together. I noted that gratitude for the decorations went to Cheryl Mellace. If I were the kind of teacher who let personal feelings influence grades, I might have changed the C-plus I’d given the decorations to a D, based on her rudeness toward Rosie.

  Taylor’s presence added to the fun as she told us tales of school and her Girl Scout adventures. I hoped she and Maddie (and, yes, the grandparents) would be able to sit together at tomorrow night’s banquet. One problem with venues like this was that you could hardly hear anyone other than the people on your immediate right and left, and it was nice to know ahead of time who would occupy those slots.

  At one point, Barry Cannon visited our table and directed most of his conversation to Rosie. I thought back to the young Barry—front row seat and a solid B-plus on his Dickens paper. The math- and chess-club type rather than a sports hero. I couldn’t hear them, but Rosie seemed at times pleased and at times confused, and all of the time distracted. I guessed Barry wasn’t measuring up to David, or at least not to her fantasy of him.

  The party at our table broke up at about quarter to ten. The Thayers invited us all to join them for a late dinner at a San Francisco restaurant with a long Italian name.

  “I’m pretty full myself, but this finger food doesn’t do it for Frank,” his wife said. “We’ve scouted out a place in North Beach that stays open very late.”

  “Thank you, but I have another engagement,” Rosie said and left. To re-primp for David’s gathering, I assumed.

  I was never one for late dinners, not even in San Francisco’s highly regarded Italian neighborhood, and also declined the invitation. “I have to pick up my granddaughter at the pool,” I said. “The lifeguard goes off duty at ten.”