She stuck her head around the corner and called down the hall, “Lisa, is that you?”
The knock came again, louder, and she hurried to answer it, leaving the bathroom light on behind her.
“Lisa, did you forget your—?” She pulled the door open and the words died in her throat. A tall man stood in the hall, trim, black-haired, hazel-eyed, dressed in a gray woolen storm coat, holding a brown paper sack containing two wine bottles.
“Oh, Michael... it’s you.”
Her mouth got tight.
Her carriage became stiff.
He gave her a stare, his eyebrows curled in displeasure. “Bess... what are you doing here?”
“I was invited for supper. What are you doing here?”
“I was invited, too.”
Their face-off continued while she curbed the desire to slam the door in his face.
“Lisa called me last night and said, ‘Dinner at six-fifteen, Dad.’”
She had called Bess the night before and said, “Dinner at six, Mom.” Bess released the doorknob and spun away, muttering, “Cute, Lisa.”
Michael followed her inside and shut the door. He set his bottles on the kitchen cupboard and took off his coat while Bess hustled back to the bathroom to put herself as far from him as possible. In the glare of the vanity light she backcombed four chunks of hair hard enough to push them back into her skull root-first. She arranged them with a few chucks and stabs of the wire hair lifter, slashed some of Lisa’s grotesque scarlet lipstick on her mouth (the only tube she could find, considering she’d left her purse at the other end of the apartment), glared at the results and at the dark blob on her jabot. Damn it. And damn him for catching me when I look this way. She raised her brown eyes to the mirror and found them flat with fury. And damn you for squandering so much as a second caring what he thinks. After what he did to you, you don’t have to pander to that asshole.
She slammed the vanity drawer, rammed her fingers into her forelock and ground it into a satisfying mess.
“What are you doing back there, hiding?” he called irritably.
It had been six years since the divorce, and she still wanted to arrange his penis with a hot curling iron every time she saw him!
“Let’s get one thing clear,” she bellowed down the hall. “I didn’t know a damned thing about this!”
“Let’s get two things clear! Neither did I! Where the hell is she, anyway?”
Bess whacked the light switch off and marched toward the living room with her head high and her hair looking like a serving of chow mein noodles.
“She went to the store for sour cream, which I’m cheerfully going to stuff up her nostrils when she gets back here.”
Michael was standing by the kitchen table, studying it, with his hands in his trouser pockets. He was dressed in a gray business suit, white shirt and blue paisley tie.
“What’s all this?” he threw over his shoulder as she passed behind him.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Is Randy coming?” Randy was their nineteen-year-old son.
“Not that I know of.”
“You don’t know who the fourth one is for?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Or what the occasion is?”
“Obviously, a blind date for her mother and father. Our daughter has a bizarre sense of humor, doesn’t she?” Bess opened the refrigerator door, looking for wine. Inside were four individual salads, prettily arranged on plates, a bottle of Perrier water, and sitting on the top shelf in a red-and-white carton, a pint of sour cream. “My, my, if it isn’t sour cream.” She picked it up and held it on one hand at shoulder level the way Marilyn Monroe would have held a mink. “And four very fancy salads.”
He came to have a look, peering over the open refrigerator door.
“What are you looking for, something to drink?”
The smell of his shaving lotion, which in years past had seemed endearingly familiar, now turned her stomach. “I feel as if I need something.” She slammed the door.
“I brought some wine,” he told her.
“Well, break it out, Michael. We apparently have a long evening ahead.”
She took two glasses from the table while he opened the bottle.
“So... where’s Darla tonight?” She held the glasses while he poured the pale red rosé.
Over the gurgling liquid he answered, “Darla and I are no longer together. She’s filed for divorce.”
Bess got as rattled as an eighteen wheeler going over a cattle guard. Her head shot up while Michael went on filling the second glass.
She hadn’t spent sixteen years with this man not to feel a mindless shaft of elation at the news that he was free again. Or that he had failed again.
Michael set the bottle on the cupboard, took a glass for himself and met Bess’s eyes directly. It was a queer, distilled moment in which they both saw their entire history in a pure, refined state, so clear they could see through it, way back to the beginning—the splendid and the sordid, the regards and the regrets that had brought them to this point where they stood in their daughter’s kitchen holding drinks that went untasted.
“Well, say it,” Michael prodded.
“Good, it serves you both right.”
He released a mirthless laugh and shook his head at the floor. “I knew that’s what you were thinking. You’re one very bitter woman, Bess, you know that?”
“And you’re one very contemptible man. What did you do, step out on her, too?”
He walked out of the room, replying, “I’m not going to get into it with you, Bess, because I can see all it’ll lead to is a rehash of our old recriminations.”
“Good.” She followed him. “I don’t want a rehash, either. So until our daughter gets back we’ll pretend we’re two polite strangers who just happened to meet here.”
They carried their drinks into the living room and dropped to opposite ends of the davenport—the only seating in the room. The Eagles were singing “Take It Easy,” which they’d listened to together a thousand times before. The candles were burning on the glass-top table they’d once chosen for their own living room. The davenport they sat on was one upon which they’d occasionally made love and cooed endearments to one another when they were both young and stupid enough to believe marriage lasts forever. They sat upon it now like a pair of church elders, in their respective corners, resenting one another and the intrusion of these memories.
“Looks like you gave Lisa the whole living room after I left,” Michael remarked.
“That’s right. Down to the pictures and the lamps. I didn’t want any bad memories left behind.”
“Of course, you had your new business, so it was no trouble buying replacements.”
“Nope. No trouble at all,” she replied smugly. “And of course, I get everything at a discount.”
“So how’s the business going?”
“Gangbusters! You know how it is after Christmas—everybody looking at those bare walls after they’ve pulled down all the holiday paraphernalia, and wanting new wallpaper and furniture to chase away the winter doldrums. I swear I could do half a dozen home consultations a day if there were three of me.”
He studied her askance, remaining silent. Obviously she was happy with the way things had worked out. She was a certified interior designer now, with a store of her own and a newly redecorated house.
The Eagles switched to “Witchy Woman.”
“So how’s yours?” she inquired, tossing him an arch glance.
“It’s making me rich.”
“Don’t expect congratulations. I always said it would.”
“From you, Bess, I don’t expect anything anymore.”
“Oh, that’s funny!” She cocked one wrist and delicately touched her chest. “You don’t expect anything from me anymore.” Her tone turned accusing as she dropped the cutesy pose. “When was the last time you saw Randy?”
“Randy doesn’t give a damn about seeing me.”
/>
“That’s not what I asked. When was the last time you made an effort to see him? He’s still your son, Michael.”
“If Randy wants to see me, he’ll give me a call.”
“Randy wouldn’t give you a call if you were giving away tickets for a Rolling Stones concert and you know it. But that doesn’t excuse you for ignoring him. He needs you whether he knows it or not, so it’s up to you to keep trying.”
“Is he still working in that warehouse?”
“When he bothers.”
“Still smoking pot?”
“I think so but he’s careful not to do it in the house. I told him if I ever smell it in there again I’ll throw him out.”
“Maybe you should. Maybe that would straighten him up.”
“And then again maybe it wouldn’t. He’s my son, and I love him, and I’m trying my best to make him see the light but if I give up on him, what hope will he have? Her certainly never gets any guidance from his father.”
“What do you want me to do, Bess?” Michael spread his arms wide, the glass in one hand. “I’ve offered him the money to go to college or trade school if he wants but he doesn’t want anything to do with school. So what in the hell do you expect me to do? Take him in with me? A pothead who goes to work when he feels like it?”
Bess glared at him. “I expect you to call him, take him out to dinner, take him hunting with you, rebuild a relationship with him, make him realize he still has a father who loves him and cares about what happens to him. But it’s easier to slough him off on me, isn’t it, Michael? Just like it was when the kids were little and you ran off with your guns and your fishing rods and your... your mistress! Well, I can’t seem to find the answers for him anymore. Our son is a mess, Michael, and I’m very much afraid of what’s going to become of him but I can’t straighten him out alone.”
Their eyes met and held, each of them aware that their divorce had been the blow from which Randy had never recovered. Until age thirteen he had been a happy kid, a good student, a willing helper around the house, a carefree teenager who brought his friends in to eat them out of house and home, watch football games and roughhouse on the living-room floor. From the day they’d told him they were getting a divorce, he had changed. He had become withdrawn, uncommunicative and increasingly lackadaisical about responsibilities, both in school and at home. He stopped bringing his friends home and eventually found new ones who wore weird hairdos and army jackets and one earring, and dragged their bootheels when they walked. He lay on his bed listening to rap music through his headphones, began smelling like burned garbage and coming home at two in the morning with his pupils dilated. He resented school counseling, ran away from home when Bess tried to ground him and graduated from high school by his cuticles, with the lowest grade-point average allowable.
No, their marriage was certainly not their only failure.
“For your information,” Michael said, “I have called him. He called me a son of a bitch and hung up.” Michael tipped forward, propping his elbows on his knees, drawing gyroscopic patterns in the air with the bottom of his glass. “I know he’s messed up, Bess, and we did it to him, didn’t we?” Still hunched forward, he looked over his shoulder at her. On the stereo the song changed to “Lyin’ Eyes.”
“Not we. You. He’s never gotten over you leaving your family for another woman.”
“That’s right, blame it all on me, just like you always did. What about you leaving your family to go to college?”
“You still begrudge me that, don’t you, Michael? And you still can’t believe I actually became an interior designer and made a success of it.”
Michael slammed down his glass, leapt to his feet and pointed a finger at her from the far side of the coffee table. “You got custody of the kids because you wanted it, but afterwards you were so damned busy at that store of yours that you weren’t around to be their parent!”
“How would you know? You weren’t around, either!”
“Because you wouldn’t let me in the goddamn house! My house! The house I paid for and furnished and painted and loved just as much as you did!” He jabbed a finger for emphasis. “Don’t tell me I wasn’t around when you’re the one who refused to speak to me, thereby setting an example for our son to follow. I was willing to be sensible, for the kids’ sake, but no, you wanted to show me, didn’t you? You were going to take those kids and brainwash them and make them believe I was the only one in the wrong where our marriage was concerned; and don’t lie to me and say different, because I’ve talked to Lisa and she’s told me some of the shit you’ve told her.”
“Like what?”
“Like, our marriage broke up because I had an affair with Darla.”
“Well, didn’t it?”
He threw up his hands and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “God, Bess, take off your blinders. Things had soured between us before I even met Darla and you know it.”
“If things soured between us it was because—”
The apartment door opened. Bess clapped her mouth shut while she and Michael exchanged a glare of compressed volatility. Her cheeks were bright with anger. His lips were set in a grim line. She rose, donning a veneer of propriety, while he closed a button on his suit jacket and retrieved his glass from the coffee table. As he straightened, Lisa rounded the corner into the living room. Behind her came the young man whose picture stood on the piano.
Had Pablo Picasso painted the scene, he might have entitled it “Still Life with Four Adults and Anger.” The words of the abandoned argument still reverberated in the air.
Finally Lisa moved. “Hello, Mother. Hello, Dad.”
She hugged her father first, while he easily closed his arms around her and kissed her cheek. She was nearly his height, dark-haired and pretty, with lovely brown eyes, an attractive combination of the best features of both her parents. She went next to hug Bess, saying, “Missed hugging you the first time around, Mom, glad you could come.” Retreating from her mother’s arms, she said, “You both remember Mark Padgett, don’t you?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Curran,” Mark said, shaking hands with each of them. He had a shiny all-American face and naturally curly brown hair, crew-cut on top and trailing in thinned tendrils over his collar. He sported the brawn of a bodybuilder and a hand to match. When he shook their hands, they felt it.
“Mark’s going to have supper with us. I hope you stirred the stroganoff, Mom.” Lisa headed jauntily for the kitchen, where she went to the sink, turned on the hot water and began filling a saucepan. Right behind her came Bess, snagging Lisa’s elbow and forcing her to do an about-face.
“Just what in the world do you think you’re doing!” she demanded in a pinched whisper, covered by the sound of the running water and “Desperado” from the other side of the wall.
“Boiling noodles for the stroganoff.” Lisa swung the kettle to the stove and switched on a blue flame, with Bess dogging her shoulder.
“Don’t be obtuse with me, Lisa. I’m so damned angry I could fling that stroganoff down the disposal and you right along with it.” She pointed a finger. “There’s a pint of sour cream in that refrigerator and you know it! You set us up!”
Lisa pushed her mother’s arm as if it were a turnstile and moved beyond it to open the refrigerator door. “I certainly did. How’d it go?” she asked blithely, removing the carton of sour cream and curling its cover off.
“Lisa Curran, I could dump that sour cream on your head!”
“I really don’t care, Mother. Somebody had to make you come to your senses.”
“Your father and I are not a couple of twenty-year-olds you can fix up on a blind date!”
“No you’re not!” Lisa slammed down the carton of sour cream and faced her mother, nose-to-nose, whispering angrily. “You’re forty years old but you’re acting like a child! For six years you’ve refused to be in the same room with Dad, refused to treat him civilly, even for your children’s sake. Well, I’m putting an end to that if I have to humiliate yo
u to do it. Tonight is important to me and all I’m asking you to do is grow up, Mother!”
Bess stared at her daughter, feeling her cheeks flare, stunned into silence. From the countertop Lisa snagged a bag of egg noodles and stuffed them into Bess’s hands. “Would you please add these to the water while I finish the stroganoff, then let’s go into the living room and join the men as if we all know the meaning of gracious manners.”
When they entered the living room it was clear the two men, seated on the sofa, had been doing their best at redeeming a sticky situation in which the tension was as obvious as the cheeseball meant to mitigate it. Lisa picked up the plate from the coffee table.
“Daddy? Mark? Cheeseball anyone?”
Bess stationed a kitchen chair clear across the room, where the living-room carpet met the vinyl kitchen floor, and sat down, full of indignation and the niggling bite of shame at being reprimanded by her own daughter. Mark and Michael each spread a cracker with cheese and ate it. Lisa carried the plate to her mother and stopped beside Bess’s rigidly crossed knees.
“Mother?” she said sweetly.
“No, thank you,” Bess snapped.
“I see you two have found something to drink,” Lisa noted cheerfully. “Mark, would you like something?”
Mark said, “No, I’ll wait.”
“Mother, do you need a refill?”
Bess flicked a hand in reply.
Lisa took the only free seat, between the two men.
“Well...” she said brightly, clasping her crossed knees with twined hands and swinging her foot. She glanced between Michael and Bess. “I haven’t seen either one of you since Christmas. What’s new?”
They somehow managed to weather the next fifteen minutes. Bess, struggling to lose the ten extra pounds she consistently carried, refused the Ritz crackers with cheese but allowed herself to be socially manipulated by her daughter while trying to avoid Michael’s hazel eyes. Once he managed to pin her with them while sinking his even, white teeth into a Ritz. You might at least try, he seemed to be admonishing, for Lisa’s sake. She glanced away, wishing he’d bite into a rock and break off his damnably perfect incisors at the gums!