Perfect Blend

by Sue Margolis

  WHILE SHE waited at the bus stop with her carrier bags of food, she called Bel.

  “Hey, you know that guy Sam I told you about? The one I said I didn’t think I fancied? Well, he just asked me out and I said yes.”

  “Brilliant. That’s great news. I had a feeling he fancied you. And from what you said about how he handled Charlie and Arthur, he sounds like a nice guy. You never know … maybe he’ll be the one.”

  Amy told her not to hold her breath.

  “By the way,” Bel said, “I dumped Mark.”

  “You did? Well done.”

  “Yeah. This afternoon. I’ve just gotten back from his place. God, I hope I don’t live to regret it. There were two things that man was generous with: his tongue and his wallet.”

  They both started laughing.

  “So how did you end it?” Amy said.

  “You’d have been proud of me. I pulled myself up to my full five foot eleven and told him precisely what I thought of him.”

  “No! God, I bet he loved that.”

  “Actually, he did. He said seeing me angry gave him a hard-on. The next minute he’s telling me to take off my clothes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What do you think I did? I got naked.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “No, but I was very tempted, particularly when he produced the feather and handcuffs. It was the sexual equivalent of walking away from the Vivienne Westwood sample sale.”

  “Well, I think you’ve done brilliantly. So how are things with Ulf?”

  “Fabulous. When we got back to his place, he read to me from Strindberg’s Röda Rummet. It’s a nineteenth-century satirical novel that relentlessly attacks the political, academic, religious, and philosophical worlds.”

  “Wow, sounds like you had a stimulating evening.”

  “Oh, we did. Ulf is a real thinker. He’s into literature and music and theater. He’s also a gentleman. He drove me home, and do you know what he did? He helped me out of the car and then kissed my hand. Can you believe that? No man has ever kissed my hand.”

  “So when are you seeing him again?”

  “Saturday night. He’s taking me to a reading of Nordic sagas. Okay, I know what you’re thinking. I know it sounds monumentally dreary, but the audience dresses up in horns, and whenever the baddies’ names are mentioned, you all shout Norse curses. Apparently, one of the worst ones means ‘Your mother wears Roman soldiers’ shoes.’ Sounds like it could be a real hoot, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, absolutely. Total blast,” Amy said.

  “DON’T GET me wrong,” Amy said to her dad as they sat finishing the profiteroles and waiting for the football to start. “I suppose this relationship with Ulf could work out, but you know Bel. She’s always been more Story of O than Strindberg.”

  That made Phil laugh. “Poor Bel. After the upbringing she had with that deadbeat father of hers, she deserves to find a decent chap. Can’t you help her find somebody suitable?”

  “I’ve tried,” Amy said as she sat rearranging bread crumbs on the dining room table. “Actually, I think she and Brian would be perfect for each other, but neither of them wants to know.”

  Phil and Val both had a soft spot for Bel. They always said how much they adored her humor and arty eccentricity. Looking back now, Amy realized that although her parents gave every impression of being committed suburbanites, they’d always had a penchant for quirky, unconventional types.

  The Christmas parties they used to throw for their charity-tin-rattling crowd were a perfect example. They always contained a smattering of oddballs. Amy remembered a couple of ecowarriors in dreadlocks and hemp shoes, an outrageously camp Buckingham Palace butler, and a woman with a six o’clock shadow who was apparently the lead singer in a band called Birds with Big Hands. Everybody was welcome, and Amy loved her parents for that, unlike Victoria, whose teenage rebellion took the form of eschewing the unconventional. As a consequence, she would retreat to her bedroom, put on some Vivaldi, and play air violin.

  “You know,” Amy said, “I sometimes think about Bel getting married and that maybe you could give her away. She’s got nobody else.”

  Phil said that if and when the time came and if he was asked, he would be more than happy to oblige. “But given the choice, I’d rather give you away.”

  Amy was still busying herself with the crumbs. “I know you would.”

  “You know your mother and I would like nothing better than to see you happy and settled.”

  “I am happy and settled.”

  “You know what I mean. And that boy of yours needs a dad.”

  Amy shushed him. Charlie, who was on the sofa, eating his profiteroles and watching Nickelodeon, was well within earshot. “He’s got you and Brian,” she whispered.

  “It’s not the same—you know that. And I, for one, am not getting any younger.”

  “Oh, stoppit.” She put another profiterole on his plate.

  “Or thinner,” Phil said. “So is there anybody on the scene?”

  “Dunno. There might be, but we haven’t even been on a date yet.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Architect.”

  Phil’s eyes widened with approval, as if to say “You could do a lot worse.”

  The next moment he was looking at his watch. “Hey, Charlie, time to change channels. It’s a minute to kickoff.”

  “Yay.” Charlie scrambled for the remote, which was at the other end of the sofa.

  Phil came and sat next to Charlie and put his arm around his grandson’s shoulders, and the pair of them launched into “Arsenal till I die/I’m Arsenal till I die/I know I am/I’m sure I am/I’m Arsenal till I die.” Amy smiled to herself and started gathering up the plates from dinner. At one point she stopped to finish the half profiterole Charlie had left. As she chewed, she found herself looking round the room and thinking, not for the first time, how badly it needed decorating and updating.

  The Laura Ashley floral wallpaper was faded and looked so old-fashioned. She had vague memories of it going up sometime in the eighties and how excited Val had been. A few weeks before, her mother had been looking through a copy of House and Home and discovered something called a dado rail. This was a three- or four-inch-wide strip of wood—usually pine—that was nailed all the way around a room, approximately three feet off the floor. The dado rail was a Victorian invention that had no particular place in a 1930s semi, but in the mid-1980s it was the height of interior design chic, and Val was determined to have one installed. The idea was to put wallpapers with different patterns above and below the rail. It didn’t matter if they clashed designwise so long as the colors matched. Val had mint green stripes below the rail and florals in the same color above it.

  The darker green Dralon sofas had to be twenty-five years old. They had kept their color pretty well but were dotted with bald patches. In the eighties, everybody bought Dralon: synthetic velvet that you could scrub with detergent. No matter how it was treated, it refused to wear out. Well, it finally had. Ditto for the carpet. Not only was it badly worn, unlike the sofa it hadn’t kept its color. Decades in the light had turned it from gold to pale yellow. If Amy remembered rightly, the carpet was also made of what back then had been some fancy new man-made fabric. Enkalon. She even remembered the song from the TV ad: “Squash it and it just springs back/Wash it and the color stays fast/Give it the treatment, the family treatment—Enkalon is made to last for years and years and years and …”

  She carried the plates into the kitchen. The dark mahogany units, never really the epitome of style, were chipped and warped. Upstairs the avocado bathroom suite was clean but dull and covered in lime scale.

  When had Val given up on the house and let it go? Amy couldn’t come up with a date, but she knew from things her mother had said about the marriage that it coincided with Phil losing interest in everything except the business. “There seemed no point in doing up the house,” she’d confided to Amy. “It wasn’t a h
ome to him. Just somewhere to eat, sleep, and watch TV.”

  Just then Phil appeared carrying the salad bowl, with just a few oily green dregs left at the bottom.

  “Hasn’t the football started?” Amy said.

  “Flooding on the pitch has stopped play, at least for the moment. It was already pretty wet from a few days ago. They might have to call it off.” He flicked the switch on the electric kettle. “Tea?”

  “Lovely … So, Dad. How you doing? You seem to have really cheered up.”

  Phil took two mugs off the pine mug tree and grinned. “I suppose your mother’s told you about my floozy.”

  “She did say something. So did Victoria.”

  He dropped a tea bag into each mug.

  “Your mother’s fine about it, but poor old Victoria has totally got hold of the wrong end of the stick.”

  “In what way?”

  “Joyce is a perfectly respectable woman. She’s a doctor’s receptionist. She is not some scarlet woman. It’s just that she’s … how can I put this? … a very sensual woman who enjoys a full and creative physical …”

  “Okay, Dad. Enough. I get it.”

  “She also enjoys writing about it. A year or so ago she started advertising erotic poetry evenings, and to her surprise she discovered that other, very ordinary folks enjoyed coming along to listen to her work. I can understand some people thinking it’s a bit odd, but Joyce is a lovely woman, and what she does is completely harmless.”

  “Don’t worry. I’d pretty much worked that out for myself. I’m just glad you’re happy, that’s all.”

  “I’m happier than I’ve been for a very long time. That side of things—you know, the physical side—had been off the menu with your mother for a good few years, you know.”

  “Yeah, Mum said.”

  He poured boiling water into the mugs. Just then the doorbell went.

  “You expecting somebody?” Amy said.

  “Actually, that’s probably Joyce. She left her phone here this morning. She said she’d be round to collect it.”

  While her dad went to answer the door, Amy poured boiling water into the mugs and tried to imagine Joyce. Her fantasy was split between middle-aged ethnic type in a tie-dyed kaftan and big earrings and a brassy barmaid. She wasn’t expecting the vision that now appeared before her.

  “Amy,” Phil said, brimming with pride, “I’d like you to meet Joyce.”

  The first thing Amy noticed was the embroidered black velvet eye mask edged with gold. Joyce was holding it to her face courtesy of a dainty stick attached to one side. Her full-length black dress was slit to the thigh. The plunging neckline showed off her impressive, if wrinkly, bosom. She was waving a purple fan made of ostrich feathers.

  “Gosh,” was all Amy could manage.

  “I know, the getup is a bit OTT,” Joyce said to Amy, her voice full of laughter. “I don’t usually go around looking like I’m on my way to one of Elton John’s masked balls. I’m doing a reading tonight, and I always like to get into the spirit of the occasion.” By then she had put the mask and fan down on the kitchen worktop and was making a beeline for Amy, arms outstretched. Amy took in the faded red curls piled into a messy chignon and the face that must have been beautiful once but was now full of smoker’s crevasses plastered in heavy foundation and powder. “So this is Amy. Your dad has told me so much about you.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t panic. It’s all highly complimentary.” When she had finally finished hugging Amy, she stood back to appraise her. “Well, aren’t you just gorgeous. I’d give my right arm, not to mention a few vital organs, for a face and figure like yours. Enjoy it while you’re young, that’s what I say. Because it won’t be long before Father Time and Mr. Gravity enter your life, and no matter how hard you try to show them the door, you won’t be able to get rid of them.”

  “My mum says the same.” Amy chuckled.

  “Anyway, I’m so sorry I have to fly. I’d love to stay and chat, but I just popped in to collect my phone.”

  Phil handed Joyce her phone, which had a Hello Kitty charm hanging from it. “Present from my five-year-old niece,” Joyce said. “What a doll—such a little cutie.”

  Just then Charlie appeared to see what was going on. “This is Joyce,” Amy said, “She’s a friend of Granddad’s.”

  Joyce bent down to Charlie’s height and shook his hand. “Hello, young man, and might I say what a pleasure it is to meet you?”

  “Are you staying to watch the football?” Charlie asked.

  “I’d really like to, sweetheart, but unfortunately I have to be going. Maybe another time?”

  Charlie nodded.

  Joyce turned to Phil. “I’m reading my new poem tonight: ‘Erogenous.’ I am soo nervous.” She touched Amy’s arm. “Now, don’t listen to anybody who says that what I do is in bad taste. Your father will tell you that I take a huge amount of my inspiration from the Bible. Check out the Song of Solomon: ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.’ Could there be a better opening line to an erotic poem?”

  With that she picked up her fan and mask, kissed Amy and Charlie goodbye, and said how lovely it had been to meet them. Then she started toward the door, followed by Phil.

  It was only as Joyce had kissed her that Amy had smelled alcohol on her breath. She’d probably had a glass of something to calm her nerves before the show, Amy thought. On the other hand, a person needed to drink more than a glass of wine or spirits for it to smell on her breath. What was more, she was driving. Then again, Amy knew for a fact that many people of her dad’s age ignored the drunk driving laws. It probably didn’t mean anything.

  “Mum,” Charlie said.

  “Yes, darling.”

  “Whass erojnus mean?”

  “Ooh, I’m not really sure. I’ll have to look that one up. Tell you what, why don’t you go back into the living room and see if the football’s started yet.”

  Phil was coming into the kitchen as Charlie was going out. He stood back to let his grandson through the doorway. “So what do you think?” he said to Amy. “A lot of people find her a bit overpowering, but she’s got a heart of pure gold.”

  “I’m sure she has,” Amy said. “Two minutes in her company and you can see how warm and kind she is. I totally get what you see in her.”

  By then their tea had gone cold, so Amy made some more.

  “So how’s the journalism going?” Phil said.

  “Not brilliant. The editors who bother to get back to me all say I write well, but it’s a question of getting ahead of the game and coming up with a story or a subject they haven’t already covered. I keep racking my brain.”

  “You know, the locals around here are up in arms about that new flyover the council’s planning. It doesn’t affect me, but for some people, the noise is going to be terrible. It’ll take thousands off property values. Now, wouldn’t that make a good article?”

  “It would, but only for the local paper.”

  He said he supposed she was right. He looked thoughtful, as if he were trying to come up with another idea. “I’ve lost my cleaning lady.”

  “Brilliant. You can see the headline: ‘Man loses home help.’”

  Phil laughed. “No. I didn’t mean it as a story. I was changing the subject, that’s all. Mrs. B left me. I only hired her a few months ago.”

  Amy asked him what happened.

  “You know how all the schools are into this healthy eating lark? Well, the older kids are going crazy about it. Mrs. B found out about this and decided to cash in. Each night, kids from the local schools phone or text her with their orders for pizza, KFC, and burgers. The next day, she collects the orders and passes them through the school railings. They pay her ten percent on top of the meal price. Apparently, she’s doing very well and there’s nothing the schools can do.”

  “No. You’re kidding. You absolutely sure they can’t put a stop to it?”

  “Positive. By pure chance, I
got to chatting to a couple of the parents, and there’s some loophole in the law, apparently.”

  “But that’s a fantastic story … the lengths kids will go to avoid healthy eating and the woman who supports them. Is she a devil or a savior?”

  “Amy, this is Mrs. B we’re talking about. She’s not the sharpest tool in the box. She can barely string two sentences together. I’m not sure she’d make the greatest interviewee.”

  “You let me worry about that. Bright or not, this is a fantastic story. Have you got her phone number?”

  Phil reached for his mobile and clicked on his contact list.

  Just then Charlie appeared in the doorway. “Granddad, Granddad … Come quick, the football’s started!”

  After Phil had disappeared into the living room, Amy wrote down Mrs. B’s number and then texted Victoria: “Just met Dad’s lady friend, Joyce. Eccentric, but definitely not hooker.”

  Amy was in the middle of doing the washing up when Victoria replied to say that she supposed they should be grateful for small mercies.

  When she’d finished doing the dishes, she noticed that the sink was covered in tea stains. She got out the bleach and soaked them. When the stains were gone, she gave the sink the once-over with Shiny Sinks. Then she had a go at the kitchen floor, which was looking a bit mucky. Her dad so needed to find a replacement for Mrs. B.

  By the time she’d finished, it was after nine. The game still had over half an hour to go, more if it went into extra time. Charlie would be exhausted in the morning. Still, tomorrow wasn’t a school day. He could lie in.

  It was clear from all the excitement and yelling coming from the living room that her presence wasn’t going to be missed, so Amy decided to go upstairs and watch TV. She was settling down with another cup of tea on what had once been her parents’ bed when her arm brushed against some sheets of paper on the nightstand. They fell onto the floor. Amy picked them up and almost put them back without giving them a second glance. Then it occurred to her that maybe the papers were in some kind of order and she ought to put them back as she’d found them. It was then that she saw it. The heading was in inch-high red letters: “Penis Extensions for U … many styles and finishes to choose from.” Her hand shot to her mouth. She found herself staring at a second sheet. Before her was a field of flesh-toned cucumbers with names like B. Cumming, Birth of Girth, and Doc Johnson Cock Master.