“How was the show tonight?” asks Davis.
I jump in before John Henry can say anything negative. After all, we flew all the way out here to lend our daughter support.
“Provocative,” I say. “Was it supposed to make me think of those prison abuse photos?”
Caroline shrugs. “It’s not an exact parallel,” she says. “But yeah, those photos are now definitely in the American collective unconscious, and the director was aware of it.”
“I don’t know what people expect,” says John Henry, leaning forward in his seat and looking right at Davis. “We’re at war.”
Oh Lord. I try to detach my feelings, to let them just drift away while my husband talks. I have heard this speech before.
“Exactly,” says Davis. “I mean, what do you think the Iraqis are doing to our soldiers?”
I almost spit out my beer. I look at Caroline, who is rolling her eyes.
“Can you believe he actually voted for Bush in two thousand?” she asks. “He and probably three other people in this city.”
“The few but the proud,” says Davis, smiling.
“What?” exclaims John Henry. “My little Bolshevik is dating a Republican?” He motions for the waitress. “This news calls for a toast. Let’s get another round.”
THE SUSHI IS wonderful. It comes on a white oval platter, arranged as artfully as an exhibit in a museum. Davis ordered California rolls for me, but I have to admit, they are a little boring compared to the other things on the plate. My favorite is the rainbow roll, fried shrimp inside rice with pieces of salmon, tuna, eel, and avocado on the outside. John Henry, who will never go with me to get sushi in Atlanta, who claims to hate it, eats more than his share and then orders seconds, along with a fourth round of beers. I tell the waitress I’m going to stick with water from now on, knowing that I will be sick as a dog if I drink any more. John Henry says my tolerance for alcohol has never been the same since junior year at Chapel Hill, when I drank four Tom Collinses before the formal and danced with him so provocatively I was issued a reprimand by the head of Chi Omega standards.
The more Caroline drinks, the cozier she becomes with Davis. She keeps her hand on his thigh—high up on it—and she periodically leans over to kiss him on the cheek. It occurs to me that her breath must be fishy, and I wonder if Davis minds.
“Tell Mom the story about your mother’s champagne truffles,” says Caroline. “She’ll relate.”
At one point the words champagne truffle would have sent Caroline into a long lecture about the gap between the rich and the poor, but I have a feeling that’s not the direction this story will take.
“Did someone say ‘truffle’?” I say, widening my eyes for effect. I am aware that I am coming across as slightly keyed up. Caroline says I have two states of being: hyper and flat. Of course the girl doesn’t know what flat really is. My mother spent most of my childhood in bed with the curtains drawn. She was flat.
“My mom is as big a chocolate fan as you are,” says Davis. “Her favorite is Maison du Chocolat.”
“Louise once bought a box of those,” says John Henry. “When I saw my Amex bill I thought she must have bought an actual house in France.”
“Shush, dear,” I say. “Davis is telling a story.”
Davis smiles as if John Henry and I are putting on an act for him: kooky old married couple. John Henry holds up his empty bottle of beer, indicating to the waitress that he’d like another. His fifth.
“She’s not a fetch dog,” says Caroline.
“Actually, that’s what your dad’s paying her to do,” says Davis. “Fetch things for him.”
I tense, waiting to see how Caroline reacts. It surprises me, but I actually want to see her get mad at him. Instead she smiles.
“Can you believe him?” she asks.
Frankly, I can’t believe her. She’s become so—so compliant.
John Henry looks at Davis as the waitress approaches the table. “Up for another?” he asks.
“All right,” says Davis. He turns back to me. “So you know Maison du Chocolat are really expensive.”
I nod, acting as if I am eager to hear the rest of the story, while inside my head I’m thinking, Wait, wait, wait. What’s the catch? Why is this not-so-young Young Republican with my rebel daughter?
“…went to visit my youngest brother, who lives in New York. While she was there she bought a pound of their champagne truffles and took them back with her to the Bay Area.”
“Your parents live out here?” I ask.
“They do,” says Caroline. Davis takes a sip of beer.
My God. Caroline is going to marry this man and never come back to Atlanta. She is going to marry this man and become a California housewife. She probably won’t even finish up her degree at San Francisco State.
“In Walnut Creek,” says Davis, putting his beer bottle back on the table. “Just over the Bay Bridge.”
“And through a tunnel and a lot of traffic and suburban sprawl,” says Caroline.
I practically raise my fist in the air I am so relieved to hear a little attitude coming from her. There’s the girl I know.
“So my mom took the truffles back with her through the sprawl”—Davis smiles at Caroline, indulging her criticism—“and only allowed herself to eat one a day. Of course she could have eaten the whole box in one sitting, but she wanted to savor them.”
“What self-discipline,” I say.
The waitress appears with the beers and asks if we want to order more sushi. Davis checks with John Henry before telling her no.
“Maybe they will have champagne truffles for dessert,” I say, joking.
“Not at a sushi restaurant,” answers Davis, as if I were being serious.
“So what happened to your mother? I’m dying of curiosity.”
“Tell her, she’s dying,” says Caroline.
John Henry is staring off into space, dreaming about God knows what. In the early years of our marriage I used to squeeze his knee whenever he spaced out around company, but eventually I realized it was better just to let him be on his own little planet.
“So she has this friend, Eric Ryder, who is a man of excess. He loves steaks, he loves cigars, he loves booze—”
“He really loves booze,” adds Caroline.
“Do you think he’s an alcoholic?” asks Davis, turning to her.
“Uh, yeah,” says Caroline, her tone taking me back to her high school years, when every question I asked her was answered with sarcasm and disdain.
“Really?” asks Davis.
“What happened?” I ask, trying to steer them back to the story.
“He came over for dinner. My parents made steak. They opened a good bottle of wine. After dinner, my dad poured the single malt Scotch and Mom put out a little bowl of her prized truffles. Well, Mr. Ryder picks up the bowl and starts popping the truffles into his mouth as if they were peanuts. He just throws them back, one after the other.”
“Dear Lord,” I say. “Is that justifiable cause for homicide?” I turn to John Henry, the lawyer.
“What?” he asks, jerking to attention.
“His mom was furious,” says Caroline.
“She slammed the door when he left,” says Davis.
I take a sip of my water. “Do you know the, um, Davis’s parents well?” I ask.
“The Hamiltons,” says Caroline. “We go to dinner at their house about once a week.”
“My mom loves Caroline,” says Davis, popping the last California roll in his mouth. He holds up one finger while he chews, indicating, I suppose, that we shouldn’t start talking until he’s finished with what he has to say. “I want Mom to come to one of Caroline’s shows.”
Caroline grimaces and shakes her head. “She’d be so uncomfortable,” she says. I am about to ask her why she thought we would be comfortable watching her roll around on the floor with a bunch of other naked bodies, but then I realize: I’m glad she asked us. I’m glad she thought we could handle it.
“Mom!” says Caroline.
“I see where you get your sense of humor from,” says Davis, squeezing Caroline’s knee.
THE NEXT MORNING we take a cab to Caroline’s apartment in the Mission. When John Henry gives the address, 202 Shotwell Street, the driver looks confused.
“That’s a ways from here,” he says, making a left out of the Ritz.
“Our daughter said it would take fifteen minutes, tops,” I say. I want to make sure he doesn’t try to take us on an unnecessarily long and expensive ride.
“Not distance,” he says. “What I mean is, you folks are on top of the hill right now, and the Mission is a long way down.”
“Well, that’s where our daughter lives,” I say.
“Making her pay her own rent, huh, Pops?” he asks.
“You got it,” says John Henry although that’s not exactly the truth. He sends her three hundred dollars each month, to help cover expenses.
“The Mission is completely gentrified,” I say, which are the exact same words Caroline said to me after she called to tell me she was moving out of the apartment she shared with two other girls in the Inner Sunset, and into a studio in the Mission.
Then she told me the name of her new street. “Shotwell?” I had asked. “Shot well?”
We go over the hills of San Francisco at an alarming speed, and I am nauseated by the time we get to Caroline’s place. The beers I had last night aren’t helping. God knows how many John Henry and Davis drank by the time dinner was over. I stopped counting.
We pull up in front of her new place, which I recognize from photos she sent home. It is a yellow Victorian, newly painted, with a surrounding wrought iron fence. It is actually quite charming, although the house to the left of it looks—as John Henry would say—one step away from the wrecking ball.
Caroline buzzes us in and we climb the two flights of stairs to get to her studio. The stairs are carpeted and smell of mildew. We knock on Caroline’s door, and she opens it immediately, as if she were waiting for us just on the other side.
Caroline’s apartment holds none of the dinginess of the stairwell. It is small but perfect with gorgeous dark wood floors, a high ceiling, and crisp white walls decorated with art I have bought for her. Of course the bed is in the living room—it’s a studio, after all—but she’s arranged it in such a way that there is a clear delineation between where she sleeps and where she lives. And the place is so spotless I am convinced that Caroline must have hired someone to clean it for her.
“Darling, this is adorable!” I say.
“I recognize that,” says John Henry, pointing at the sofa. It is an old one, inherited from my parents years ago and finally passed along to Caroline when we had our house redecorated. In truth, it probably cost me more to ship that sofa out to California than it would have cost to buy her a new one.
“There are a lot of Atlanta touches in here,” says Caroline. “Remember this?”
She points to the Earl LeTrouve painting I bought her for Christmas last year. In it, a winged angel with hair as dark as Caroline’s wears a red poofy party dress and holds a Bible in one hand and a martini glass in the other. Written in cursive across the bottom of the piece are the words “party without ceasing.”
(When I saw Earl last year at the Big Angel Blowout, he said that no one was buying his tempera pieces besides me, and tempera was too taxing to do anyway, so he had decided to go back to his party dress series, which he paints with acrylics. “Got to get everyone dressed for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb,” he said, and I pretended to know what he meant.)
“Mr. LeTrouve lives near Milledgeville, not in Atlanta,” I say.
“Well, Georgia touches,” Caroline says.
John Henry is already sitting on the sofa. “No TV?” he asks.
Caroline purses her lips. “Davis keeps threatening to buy me one,” she says. “He’s such a Giants fan, it kills him not to be able to watch the games.”
He must spend a lot of time over here.
“I have to admit, I never thought you would date a sports man,” I say.
Caroline laughs. She is wearing a crisp white button-down shirt on top of her blue jeans and she looks so pretty it makes me a little sad.
“I know. It’s crazy,” she says. “Y’all take cream in your coffee, right?”
“Yes, but I’ll fix it,” I say, walking to the teeny kitchen area. “I know just how your father likes it.”
“I made Nanny Rose’s chocolate chip coffee cake,” she says. “Does she still pretend she doesn’t start with a mix?”
I nod and then roll my eyes. Caroline smiles. Her teeth look so white I wonder if she’s been bleaching them.
JOHN HENRY READS the newspaper over breakfast while Caroline and I talk about Charles.
“It’s almost as if he’s moved out,” I say. “I hardly ever see him. The only reason I know he’s still living at home is that his room is a mess and I’m always having to buy groceries.”
Caroline laughs. “It’s good he’s going out,” she says. “It means he has friends.”
“Yes, but he never brings anyone over to the house. I don’t know a single one of them.”
“I don’t think he has any,” says John Henry, looking up from his paper.
“I’m sure he does,” I say. “He just doesn’t want us to meet them.”
“God, I really don’t know Charles at all. I mean, he was what—thirteen when I left? Maybe I should call him.”
“Send him an e-mail,” says John Henry.
The phone rings.
“Could it be the power of suggestion?” she asks, walking to the kitchen to answer it. It’s immediately obvious that the person on the line is not Charles. Caroline is gushing, reminding me of a girl during sorority rush.
“…just wonderful. Yes. They got in just fine. Thanks for asking. At the Ritz. Oh yes, only the best. No, no. Not yet.”
I’m thinking it must be Davis’s mother. Ten thirty on a Saturday morning and she’s calling my daughter’s apartment? For no apparent reason other than to check in and see if we arrived?
I wonder if Davis has moved in here with Caroline.
Surely I would have picked up on his presence in this space, some aura of maleness that they couldn’t hide. But maybe that’s why she had the apartment deep-cleaned before we arrived. And maybe he hid all his things under the bed—the queen-size bed, a bed awfully big for one, especially in a studio this small.
I walk to the bathroom thinking he might have left his toothbrush. It’s ridiculous, I know, my sleuthing. I should be direct with her. I mean, if she can ask me if I’ll have my vagina photographed by a stranger, surely I can ask her if she’s living with her boyfriend.
Does she plan to marry this boy? The thought makes my chest ache. I’m being ridiculous, I know. Davis is the type of boy—man—every mother wants her daughter to marry. Obviously, he’s close with his parents, he’s awfully cute, and he has nice manners. Plus, he’s an investment banker. He could provide Caroline with the type of life she grew up with, the type of life she’s used to.
It’s just—he’s so sure of himself, so arrogant, so conventional.
I walk into the bathroom and sit down on top of the closed toilet. I begin kneading my shoulders with my fingertips. This was how I felt on my own wedding day, right before Daddy walked me down the aisle. He kissed my cheek and said, “Guess this is the last time I can call you Amelia Louise Lawson.”
I wanted to turn around right there, turn around and walk out of All Saints in my silk gown and kid leather gloves. I wanted to leave John Henry standing at the front of the church in his black tuxedo, his Phi Delt brothers flanked behind him. I wanted to leave Tiny in her blue silk bridesmaid dress. She would have understood. She would have dashed home to change and met me somewhere dark and unknown where she could tell me how everyone reacted, the three hundred guests I left high and dry.
I sigh and lea
n back, letting the back of my head touch the tiled wall. I look up and am startled. There must be sixty wire birds dangling from different-colored ribbons, hung from hooks in the ceiling. I stand to look at them more closely, surprised that I didn’t notice them when I first came into the bathroom.
The birds are made from thin wire coiled together to form dense bodies and small, dense heads. Some birds are made from silver wire, some are made from gold. Attached to the tail end of each bird is a feather, some small and wispy, some large and bold, all different colors. The feathers add a marvelously ethereal contrast to the birds’ metal structures. It is as if the birds’ tail feathers have plotted against their bodies to achieve flight.
“Caroline?” I call.
She doesn’t answer.
I open the bathroom door. She is standing by the kitchen sink, washing our breakfast dishes, the steam from the water flushing her face. John Henry is stretched out on the couch, his eyes closed, his mouth half open.
“Caroline!”
She turns to look at me, the water still running.
“Would you mind coming in here for a minute?” I ask.
She turns off the water and walks toward me. “Do you need toilet paper?”
I wait until she is at the bathroom door. “Tell me about the birds,” I say.
“Oh those.” She laughs, shrugs. “I was just playing around in my friend’s art studio. Deidre, the woman who’s making the book, she runs a jewelry-making camp for kids and she had some extra supplies.”
“You made these yourself?” I ask. I look up at them again, the hanging flock.
“First I made that one right there—the one with the peacock feather for a tail—and then I just felt inspired and kept going.”
They are so pretty, I don’t want to stop looking at them, touching them. Just little balls of coiled wire, really, though so whimsical, so sweet.
“These are wonderful,” I say.
Caroline looks pleased. I think of all the origami cranes I folded for John Henry’s and my first Christmas. All that effort for our home. Did he even notice? Would it have made any difference to him if I’d just hung the gold balls Nanny Rose gave us?
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