Patsy and her husband had a house in Barbados, and we went several times a year. Everyone remembered Daphne. At Christmas, the boys from Monty Python were staying at the next beach. Mick was at a party, and I danced near him. “Star-fucker,” my mother cooed in my ear. Claudette Colbert had us over “for luncheon.” “I think the old dyke wants me,” my mother said. Lauren Bacall came for dinner, and we called her Betty.
In Barbados my mother met the very famous lyricist. “Everyone has heard of him, and he isn’t even in the band.” He was English, agreeable and unkempt with denim sleeves too long over his hands and his jean cuffs frayed over pretty shoes. The famous lyricist came back with us to New York. His cigarettes smelled of fake mint. “They’re mentholated,” said my mother. “It hides the revolting odor.” It didn’t, but I liked it. The sickly smoke made its way across my face as the famous lyricist tucked me in at night, telling me about his mother tucking him in, about his nearly ex-wife. He kissed me on the forehead and went to my mother in the living room, leaving his smell behind.
The famous lyricist rented a house in Barbados and invited the three of us for Easter. Our mother said we weren’t to tell our grandmother. “She’d be hurt if she knew we were on the island and didn’t call.”
“Here’s your bedroom, girls, and he and I will sleep here.” She lowered her voice. “Although no one actually sleeps except you two, ha ha.”
We stayed ten days, and Penelope and I had new headbands and new bathing suits. We played backgammon, Penelope winning again and again. I was never certain of the houseguests. Band members wandered through. People appeared beside the pool. Someone might sit at the grand piano and plunge into an elaborate riff for a minute, then stop to sip his drink. The grand’s glossy top was strewn with toffee wrappers, crumpled cigarette packets and the cellophane that my sister and I liked to peel off the Benson & Hedges boxes the way we peeled skin from our sunburned shoulders. Once, the lead singer dropped by, his rented house some distance away, and a couple of skinny women who’d been hanging out on the couch sat up taller, pulling at their macramé bikini tops. The adults were always quiet during the day. They were waiting for the coke to get there, wrapped in tiny packets called sno-seals, which were squares of slick paper cleverly folded to make a miniature envelope; or they were waiting for the hour when it would be time to leave for a party. Penelope and I stashed Cadbury Fruit and Nut bars, which got mealy in the heat. We collected the tortoiseshell guitar picks, scattered throughout the house, sorting them into who-gets-what on our twin beds. People left empty sno-seals in the pantry and the bathrooms, wings opened, on stucco ledges out by the cars. In the evening lots of formal settings appeared on the table, and the butler announced dinner. Penelope and I sat down amid empty water glasses and lined-up silver. My mother was so skinny and never ate but would sit with us sometimes. She wore halter dresses and Charles Jourdan high-heeled sandals with gold under the sole of her foot. She’d pluck a grilled cristofene from my plate, and the smell of her tea rose perfume overwhelmed the fragrance of the food.
One night my sister was whining for a present so the famous boyfriend unclasped his gold chain, slid off the chunky gold charm and handed it to her. He was wearing it in all the inner-sleeve photos. She closed her fingers so I couldn’t see. “Can I have the chain, too?” she said. I wanted something but didn’t want to ask. I wasn’t a baby. He ruffled her hair and handed over the chain, and I fastened it around her neck.
Later she and I turned up in a song. My mother said, “There you are! In the song about me!” Our brief mention— “daughters”—came at the end, and we made our friends listen all the way through.
The affair ended after a few months. “We argued,” my mother told us when we asked why she’d dumped him. They must have done it privately. I missed the famous lyricist hanging out in our bedroom when my mother’s knees hurt or her back was out. He was calm, and he was generous. Right at the start of things, he had taken us to FAO Schwarz and said, “Anything, yes, anything,” and we chose an immense stuffed animal each, near the entrance. We didn’t even wander into the store, in case he revoked the offer. He bought Penelope a panther as long as her bed and a giant leopard for me. No one we knew had anything like that, and when our friends from school came over we said, “Guess who gave us these?”
© MARION ETTLINGER
SUSANNA SONNENBERG is the author of Her Last Death. She lives in Montana with her family.
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Her Last Death
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She Matters Page 25