by Amanda Cross
“Where was Arrie?”
“Locked in the bathroom, crying. She hated the fights. She used to stuff her ears with toilet paper. He and I fought about a lot of things, though never as violently as this. In the end, I threatened him. You see, my mother had mentioned her ring when Arrie and I went to see her; she wanted Arrie to have it. Arrie said I should have it because I was beautiful. My mother hugged Arrie and said: ‘You take care of Roxanna; it’s far, far better not to be beautiful, believe me, my darling.’ ”
“And you got Desmond to leave with the dog under his arm. I gather Jasper had got to know him by now.”
“Jasper takes a long time to get to know people well enough to let them pick him up. He may be small, but he’s tough. That was me.”
“In drag?”
“Great fun. I got the idea from Sherlock Holmes. ‘My walking clothes,’ Irene Adler called them. Desmond borrowed the suit for me from someone my size. I can’t remember when I had more fun. The doorman didn’t raise an eyebrow.”
“So you took Jasper–where?”
“To Desmond’s, where I stay most of the time. I walked him, and never have I used a pooper-scooper more diligently. At first, we thought we’d keep him in, but poor Jasper is well trained. I tell you, retrieving that emerald from Jasper’s shit made me feel like someone in a Dickens novel, Our Mutual Friend for choice. I well remember your talking about that novel.”
“You said you’d get the emerald back if he behaved?”
“More than behaved. I had Desmond as a witness and advisor. I said Arrie and Jasper were to live with me, that he was to give my mother a divorce under fair terms: he could keep the apartment, he had to continue to support Arrie till she finished her education, my mother was to get half his pension, and if he didn’t agree I was going to drag him into court accused of theft and abusive conduct.”
“And he bought it?”
“Not entirely. I had to give him the emerald, and a few other things besides. But I figured I didn’t need it, Arrie didn’t need it, it hadn’t done my mother much good, and it was worth her freedom and ours. I also told him I had a student lined up ready to bring charges of sexual harassment. I scared him. He even cooperated about Arrie’s retrieving Jasper. I was going to make him leave the dog at the playground, but I didn’t want him to take out his frustrations on the poor beast. So I did that too. Desmond came with me between two closings. Desmond’s been great.”
“He sounds rather unusual for a lawyer.”
“He is. He’s quitting. He says there’s no point spending your life suing about water damage and helping one firm take over another. I don’t know what he’s going to do.”
“You might suggest acting,” Kate said. “And being a waiter on the side.”
“He’s thinking of becoming a detective,” Roxanna said. “A private eye. Perhaps he could get in touch with you for pointers.”
Kate decided not to look for irony in this. “What next?” she asked.
“It’s Arrie’s vacation next week. We’re going down with Desmond to visit my mom. I think with some real encouragement, and the knowledge that the Professor is out of her life, she may actually make it. She never took up drinking, or prescription drugs either, till she met him. But she’s going to need a lot of help.”
“Speaking of ‘none of my business,’ ” Kate said, “may I ask an outrageous question? Just tell me to go to hell if you don’t want to answer it. Is the Professor Arrie’s father, or was there someone else?”
“I’ll answer that question on one condition,” Roxanna said. “That you agree to do me an enormous favor, no questions asked. Is it a bargain?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Kate said. “I don’t believe in blind promises.”
“And I don’t believe in gossip, not all of it. My mother did moon around with another guy. His main attraction was that he wasn’t lustful. My father is very lustful. He insisted on his rights; that’s how he thought of them, as rights. And he still wanted a son.”
“You’ve been angry at him a long time, haven’t you?” Kate said.
“I’m getting over it, with help. I don’t want Arrie to go through the same thing. Of course, I couldn’t have done it without Desmond, especially since the Professor had that sleazy lawyer on his side. Mr. Johnson: you met him too.”
Kate looked into her coffee cup. “All right,” she said. “It’s a bargain.”
Roxanna looked up questioningly.
“I’ll keep Jasper for Arrie while she’s gone. Reed will be overjoyed. That is, I’ll pretend we have him forever, and when he finds out it’s only a week or so, he’ll be overjoyed.”
“I think women are reprehensible,” Roxanna said. “Don’t you?” And they laughed together. Kate even found herself wishing Arrie and Jasper had been there.
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF GREAT AUNT FLAVIA
Great Aunt Flavia was the only member of the older generation of Kate Fansler’s family to whom Kate would give the time of day. “Even a minute is too precious to waste on Fanslers,” she used to say. “Some people spend time with other people just because they’re family, but I spend time only with those who move me forward into experience, not backward into memory or resentment or weary tolerance.”
“You’ve got it down pat,” I said. “You must have rehearsed it. You better watch out or you’ll start sounding pompous.”
“ ‘Authoritative’ is the word you want. ‘Bossy’ if you insist, but not, I beg you, Leighton, ‘pompous.’ As you will realize before long,” Kate said, “when you decide to have nothing to do with your family, you have to have the reasons down pat; you have to live with them safely accepted by your unconscious. Otherwise, you’re more in family company than if you saw your family weekly. How did we get on that dreary subject?”
“It’s Great Aunt Flavia,” I said. Kate sometimes calls her Great Aunt Flavia because my cousin Leo and I do. Otherwise she just calls her Flavia, and with great affection. Great Aunt Flavia is, properly speaking, neither an aunt nor a Fansler except by marriage (his second) to one of Kate’s uncles. The Fanslers were, until Kate came along, unremittingly masculine. Kate has three much older brothers; Kate’s father had three brothers. One of these, left a widower, married the much younger Flavia–who, Kate conjectured, had tired of chastity and decided to try another mode. She had produced, at the latest possible moment, a son, and as her husband slipped into senility she embraced eccentricity or what the Fanslers called plain dottiness. Leo and I tended to find Great Aunt Flavia a bit much until Kate told us to see Lily Tomlin as a bag lady in touch with people from outer space. “Great Aunt Flavia to a T,” Kate said, “in spirit if not literal fact. She has too much money to be a bag lady, but I’m sure she comes as close as her income allows.” The Fanslers are very rich and very dull; Kate thought it to Great Aunt Flavia’s eternal credit that becoming, as a Fansler, the first had not entailed becoming, like a Fansler, the second.
“What’s happened to Great Aunt Flavia?” Kate asked.
“The family fears she intends to kill herself,” I said. “They thought you might rally round.” Kate’s family does not usually call upon her for assistance of any sort; doubtless they felt, in this case, that one prodigal could help another.
“How characteristic of them,” Kate said. “They have considered her nothing but a nuisance and a burden, but when she decides to take control of her life, they interfere because she isn’t playing by their rule book. Flavia is seventy-five if she’s a day; she ought to know whether she wants to live or not. Why in the world did she confide in them about her plans?”
“She didn’t. She made the mistake of consulting her lawyer about bequests and such. He sneaked to one of your brothers, or maybe a wife. Great Aunt Flavia is furious.”
“As well she might be. Can’t she just tell them to buzz off?”
“Of course. But Daddy, knowing I like you or, as he puts it, allow you undue influence over me, thought I might talk you into talking Great Aunt Flavi
a out of doing anything drastic. Between us, I don’t know if he’s worried about her or her money; most of it’s in trust for the son, of course, but Great Aunt Flavia has a good bit of her own, and under Fansler surveillance it has grown and ought not to be allowed to wander off unattended. To do them justice, they may even be feeling a pang of guilt: they’ve never really treated Great Aunt Flavia well. Anyway, it was thought that you would sneer at Daddy but listen to me. You have to give him credit for that much intelligence.”
“Are you suggesting that I call up Great Aunt Flavia and ask her intentions, counseling caution?”
“Something like that.”
“Well,” Kate said, “I may call her; I was about to anyway. But I don’t promise a thing. Not a thing. And you can tell that to your daddy.” Kate dislikes all her brothers, but my father most of all, since he is the youngest and should know better.
“THANK YOU, DEAR,” Flavia said. “You do know how to give one a proper tea unlaced with nostalgia. Do you think we might move on to something a bit more fortified?” Kate, grinning, offered her a Scotch and soda, taking one herself. They were used to toasting each other. “None better, damn few as good,” Great Aunt Flavia liked to say,not just repeating herself, but admitting a tradition and an alliance.
“They’ve put you onto me, haven’t they?” Flavia, once fortified, asked.
“Yes,” Kate said. “But I refused. It did remind me, though, that I’d been missing you. One of the defects of liking the young is that one is always the oldest person in the room. You make a welcome change.”
“I know what you mean. And that’s especially hard for the likes of you and me who grew up used to being the youngest. Have you ever seen a movie called It’s a Wonderful Life–James Stewart at Christmas?”
“Not that I can remember,” Kate said. “Have you taken to watching old movies?”
“I’ve taken to watching television. Gives you an idea of what’s going on, what people believe in. I think it’s frightful, but I can’t keep myself from watching.”
Kate was delighted. Great Aunt Flavia had never even owned a television set. She, Kate, did not watch much television, but she hoped, at Flavia’s age, to become more open-minded. It was vital to acquire new habits in old age, boldly countering old prejudices, Kate said.
“In this movie,” Flavia explained, “James Stewart plays a man who decides to jump into the river. The reasons aren’t important, except that he considers his life a failure. He isn’t old enough for such a decision, of course, he has little children, but no one who doesn’t play a villain or a doctor can be old in movies. Things only happen to the young, even inappropriate things. One has to overlook it, in the name of sex. Anyway, he is rescued by an angel.”
“An angel?” Kate asked.
“Yes. He’s male and timid and not quite successful, and he sets out to prove to James Stewart how much poorer everyone would be had he never lived. We learn that his wife without him would have become a spinster in glasses working in a library (a fate of hideous proportions, needless to say, despite the fact that she is played by a gorgeous actress who would have had no trouble joining a well-paying high-class bordello), that some druggist would have killed someone with the wrong prescription, that the bad man, Lionel Barrymore (who is allowed to be old), would have taken over the town–you get the picture.”
“It’s clear enough,” Kate said, “and sounds a very good reason not to watch television.”
“Well, it was originally a movie, but they show it every Christmas. I’ve studied it carefully, and have decided that it is garbage in at least three different ways, but what really struck home, despite the movie, was the simple truth that because you’ve mattered in life doesn’t mean you can go on mattering. James Stewart has friends who pay his bills, and little children, and a luscious spouse, but his past–anyone’s past–is hardly the point. It’s what you have now that makes you decide whether or not to jump into the river in winter, figuratively speaking.”
“I quite agree,” Kate said. “There is only the present.”
“Thank God,” Flavia said, holding out her glass. “Someone who understands.”
“Which is not to say,” Kate said, handing it back to her refilled, “that I necessarily agree with your view of your present. I might agree, but I need to be persuaded. Try me.”
“I started talking to people about giving away my money, for scholarships, guaranteeing college to poor children who finish high school, that sort of thing. I soon discovered that while I was eagerly courted by those in charge of scholarships and such, it was my money they wanted; I was just a means of getting it, I didn’t matter. I know I can trust you not to deny so obvious an observation.”
“You can. But there’s always the matter of deciding where to give it. Only you can do that.”
“I have. Spent quite a time at it. I can leave all my money.”
“And then not have any more to live on?”
“Not even that. The income from the trust fund that is mine for life and then will go to Martin is more than ample. More than ample.”
“Yes,” Kate said. “I see.”
“You’re such a comfort to me, dear,” Flavia said. “You see things.”
“I can’t help feeling all the same that you haven’t taken advantage of your age and station in life.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you have enough money and are invisible. Have you thought where that could lead?”
“Invisible?” Flavia looked at her hand as though expecting to find it gone.
“I mean, when a woman is old, no one sees her unless she comes attached to money or some other sort of power that brings her momentarily into focus. So you must hold on to your money to become visible when you choose. It will, all in good time, get to the right causes. Meanwhile, why not have on your magic cap, be invisible, discover things?”
“I see what you mean.” Like Kate and me and my cousin Leo but like no other Fanslers, Great Aunt Flavia can leap from insight to insight, passing over the connections between. “You mean like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple–pussyfoot around. Notice people when they don’t notice you. See what’s going on. Be clever.”
“Exactly,” Kate said. “Too few people take advantage of the fun of being old; they’re always trying to pass for young.”
“I’ll have another watercress sandwich,” Flavia said. “It’s almost dinnertime; this will save me having to think about eating.” She already had a faraway look in her eye.
SOME CONSIDERABLE TIME LATER, I had to tell Kate that the family was again worried about Great Aunt Flavia. “Worried” was a nice word in the circumstances; they were hysterical.
“It’s Great Aunt Flavia,” I said when I had got Kate on the phone. “She’s disappeared.”
“Disappeared!” Kate all but shouted.
“In the South,” I said.
“The South,” Kate said, softer this time. I really was annoyed with her.
“If you’re just going to keep repeating everything I say, it will not help Flavia.”
“I suppose she was visiting Georgiana,” Kate said.
“You guessed right. Georgiana was quite upset on the telephone, I understand. She called Larry, you not being available.” Larry is Kate’s brother, not my father, probably the stuffiest of the brothers, which is a little like saying that one elephant is bigger than another.
“When did Flavia disappear?”
“Several days ago. Georgiana, being Southern, wanted to wait awhile before causing a fuss.”
“What was she waiting for?” Kate shouted, but I had already decided to hang up and go see Kate in person. She tended to repeat herself more on the phone than when face to face. I knew she would call Georgiana, and I wanted to be with Kate when she decided what to do, to keep informed and be part of the action. Kate never means to overlook me, but she tends to get involved and forget to tell me things.
Georgiana Montgomery had been to Bryn Mawr with Flavia at a time wh
en few women went to college–so Great Aunt Flavia always told us–and nice young ladies from the South never went to college, and certainly never to a Northern college. But Georgiana’s mother, who was from the North, expected her daughter to do great things, to challenge Southern ladyhood. So much for parental expectations: the nearest Georgiana came in her youth to challenging anything was in befriending Flavia. They were freshman roommates by college fiat, and roommates after that by choice. Georgiana returned South after graduation and married a proper Southern gentleman, who died twenty years later leaving her a childless and (one supposed) rich widow. All Georgiana would ever tell Flavia was that she was “comfortable.”
But Great Aunt Flavia must have had more of an effect on Georgiana than anyone realized, because bit by bit Georgiana began to work for civil rights for blacks (who, Flavia said, were called colored people in those days), and by civil rights Georgiana meant the whole bag: votes, education, desegregation all along the line. Georgiana kept her local friends because she was from an important family, had married into an important family, and was a fine person, and because (Kate guessed) she stuck to civil rights, and never went in for any other fancy ideas, like the Equal Rights Amendment, or sexual liberation, or divorce, or the idea that man’s lot wasn’t just as hard as woman’s. She wanted the colored people to have their fair rights, and apart from that, she led the life of a Southern lady.
Flavia visited Georgiana for a month every spring, both before Flavia’s husband died and after. Flavia used to say life took on a new prospect in the South, where one lived in an orderly, gracious fashion, inhaling the scent of magnolias or verbena or whatever they grow in the South, having lemonade on the porch, paying calls onGeorgiana’s friends and having them to dinner. Most of the civil rights business was done by Georgiana on the telephone, and intruded little into their daily routine. They went their separate ways in the morning, had their lunch, separately or together in one of the nice restaurants in town (Georgiana said preparing lunch was just too much for her housekeeper), and met in the late afternoon for tea or, more likely, lemonade. Flavia said it was a most relaxing life, for one month a year.