A Theory of Relativity

  “It was Diane and Big Ray; they’re coming over now.”

  “Now?”

  “Lor, they want to see us. They want to see Keefer.”

  “She’s at Nora’s.”

  “Nora’s on her way here. She’s bringing Keefer. Diane and Ray want to take her in the pool at their hotel.”

  “I suppose that’s all right.”

  “I told them it would be fine.”

  “I don’t think she’ll go to them.”

  “I think she will . . .” Mark sat down on the bed, then lay down, tucking Lorraine’s head under his chin, pulling her over onto his chest. “Are you . . . do you want to get up and change, or anything?”

  “Why, Mark? Do I look like a slob?” The first time they’d met her, Diane had just come in off the tennis court. “I hate this weather,” she’d said to Lorraine. “I hate to perspire. And it’s worse if you work out. I’m a bad Southerner, for sure,” she’d said, and extended one perfectly French-manicured hand, silky as talcum powder. When Lorraine complimented her on her skirted shorts, Diane confided, “Honey, I have to buy them in the girls department at Neiman-Marcus. The missy sizes just fall right off me. . . .”

  Over Mark’s exasperated protests, Lorraine had spent the evening at the hotel in Jupiter, throwing away her own clothes.

  Now, as he looked her over where she lay on the bed, Mark said to Lorraine, “I don’t think you look like a slob, sweetie. But you might want to put on something that’s not quite so . . .”

  “So what?”

  “Well, wrinkled.”

  “Okay,” Lorraine sighed. She walked into their closet and turned on the light, offended by the sight of so many brightly colored articles of clothing, so many inanimate things that outlasted people. She pulled out her most comfortable jeans and a white shirt that was . . . well, not very wrinkled. She then reached for a soft jersey pin-striped dress, underwear, and stockings, laying out her clothes in the order she would put them on, as she had since she was a child, bra, pants, slip . . . Mark interrupted her.

  “I don’t think you need to get that dressed up for the Nyes.”

  “I’m not. I’ll just put on jeans. This is . . . it’s for tomorrow night.”

  “Oh.”

  “I just didn’t want to have to go back into the closet twice, Mark. Sweetie, I can’t explain. I’m too tired to explain.” Lorraine slipped a white button-down shirt over her head, to avoid undoing the buttons, then pulled her hair back into a semblance of its customary bun. The doorbell rang.

  Nora was there, Keefer squirming in her arms. “Nora,” Lorraine said, “you know you don’t have to knock.”

  “I know,” Nora said uneasily. “Just, things feel funny now.”

  “Nana, Nana,” Keefer leaped into Lorraine’s water-weak arms, furiously pat-patting her grandmother’s back. “Mama, Mama. Kipper Mama?” In four words, the baby’s dilemma. Where was Keefer’s Mama?

  How was Lorraine to explain?

  “She was up all night,” Nora told them softly. “It’s as if she senses it. Bradie got her to play with Dan’s drums a little. We took her to the barn to see the kitties . . .”

  “Kitties,” said Keefer, her thumb tucked securely in the far back left corner of her mouth, fingers splayed against her temple. “Nana, Mama?”

  “I told her Mommy and Daddy had gone away,” Nora said, wriggling her discomfort as Mark pillowed his head on the door frame and sighed, “I know it’s stupid. What else could I say?”

  “Well,” Lorraine sat down heavily on the hall bench, “I guess we’ll just tell her the truth. I guess we’ll tell her the truth until she gets it. That’s what Gordon thinks . . .”

  “We can tell her that Mommy’s in a better place and she’s not sick anymore.”

  “I don’t want her to hate Georgia for going to a better place without her,” Lorraine disagreed, “She’ll think they went to Disney World.”

  Keefer had fallen asleep by the time the Nyes arrived. Diane enfolded all of them in her thin arms; she looked incongruously bronzed and neat; her earrings matched her lapel pin.

  “Diane, we’re so sorry . . .” Mark began. “This is so bad and unexpected for you.”

  “We’re all in this together now,” Big Ray put in, in a comforting rumble. “We have to stand up tall for this little one here.”

  “Do you want something to eat?” Nora asked.

  “We have all the food in America,” Lorraine added.

  “We can’t eat,” Diane said.

  They all found chairs in the living room, and sat staring at one another through the shadows. No one moved to turn on a light. Diane fumbled in her huge kidney-shaped leather bag. “I brought a photo from before Christmas,” she said. Keefer and Ray, bare feet oversized in the foreground, laughing faces in the background, sitting on a knoll at Sandpiper Reserve, the golf course where the older Nyes lived.

  “This is incredibly thoughtful of you to bring us this,” Lorraine said. “Thank you, Diane.”

  “My baby,” Diane said, her thumb caressing Ray’s sun-hallowed head. “Does anyone know how this happened?”

  “We won’t know anything for a while, I guess,” Mark told her.

  “It was accidental,” Nora put in. They all turned to look at her.

  “You remember my sister,” Mark said, “Nora Nordstrom. I don’t know why I didn’t think to introduce . . . I hardly know what I’m thinking. I don’t know if I am thinking . . .”

  “We didn’t get to say good-bye,” Diane went on.

  “Mother, now,” Ray got up and settled himself around his wife, and Lorraine felt a moment’s envy. People always treated women like Diane as if they needed taking care of, like babies. For once, Lorraine would like to be treated as if she were a baby.

  “None of us got to say good-bye,” Mark told her, astounding Lorraine. This had to be the second or third longest conversation Mark had ever willingly conducted with anyone outside his immediate family. And there was something else in it, a sharpness. Did Mark feel the same way she felt about Diane? “Really, if we’d had a chance, what would we have said, anyway? They knew how much we loved them.”

  “At least we can be thankful they didn’t bring the baby along,” Big Ray said.

  “They wouldn’t have. It was the old car,” Mark murmured.

  “We want to take Keefer for the night,” Diane said, “let you folks get some rest. My daughters are here, and the grandbabies, the two little boys. They just love her to death. They’re only three and four, Brent and Brooks, they have no idea . . .”

  “They’re all in the pool right now,” Ray said, “I don’t know how Ali and her husband got back from their cruise so fast, but thank the Lord. Caroline is doing all right but Alison’s been having a hard time; she and Ray were only fifteen months apart. We raised them like twins, same outfits . . .”

  “We all loved Ray,” Mark said. “Ray loved Georgia so much.”

  “Where’s Gordon?” Diane asked, “Why isn’t he here? Is he here yet?”

  “Oh, he’s in town. He lives here, Diane That’s probably half of why she wanted to move back to Wisconsin, Gordie being here. I don’t know where he is right now, but I think, I don’t know,” Lorraine said, “I think he went to Ray and Georgia’s . . . house, to find . . . pictures . . . I guess to try to write the things he wants to say . . . tomorrow. . . .”

  “Big Ray will give our son’s eulogy,” Diane said suddenly.

  “Of course.”

  “And we are going to have a memorial service for him at the clubhouse. So many of the players want to come. They have something planned for Keefer. I think for a scholarship. You all come, if you’d like.”

  “Well,” Lorraine said, “it kind of will depend on the baby.”

  “She’s been so stressed,” Mark explained. “We want to give her a little time to adjust.”

  “This won’t be for a few weeks,” Ray said soothingly. “She’ll be all settled in by then.”

  Settled in,
Lorraine thought?

  “I talked to Alison and Caroline, just a little,” Diane said. “You know, Caroline and her hubby don’t have any of their own yet; they’re such career kids. But Alison’s thinking it over. She’s going to talk to Andy over dinner . . .”

  “Think over what?”

  “The baby. We have to decide, not that we want to bring this up now, but, well, Lorraine, you know, I’m only in my forties, how old are you?”

  “I’m fifty-nine,” Lorraine said.

  “So, you’re almost in your sixties . . .”

  “I’m actually just turning fifty-nine, but, sure, that’s right . . .”

  “Are you retired?”

  “I still teach. I imagine for a few more years.”

  “And Mark?”

  “I have my job at the plant. I head up the lab,” Mark said. “What I’ll do when I retire, it just doesn’t seem like such a big concern right now. But I’ll have to do something. Or I’ll just use myself up—”

  “Well,” Diane went on, “what we thought was, since I don’t work outside, we’ll have to think it over . . . I’m not thinking very well right now. But I do know we want Keefer to know both sides of her family.”

  “We do, too,” Lorraine agreed. “We know that’s what the kids wanted, when they wrote the will . . .” Ray and Diane exchanged glances. Or did she imagine it? “But we have to just take this one day at a time. This is all so shocking.”

  “You can’t even imagine,” Diane said. “This was my firstborn, my firstborn son.”

  “And she was our only daughter,” Mark said, “We know, Diane. We’ve lived with this for almost a year. Georgia was our firstborn.”

  “I thought Georgia was adopted,” Diane asked Mark.

  “She was. And she was still our firstborn.”

  “And the baby is all we have left,” Diane said. “All we have of Raymond.”

  “And Georgia,” Mark said.

  “We have to think of Baby,” Diane said.

  “I think we should leave it to the wishes of Georgia and Ray,” Mark said forcefully, with so much unaccustomed volume that Lorraine, who had lost track of the conversation after revealing her age, jumped, disturbing Keefer, who whined and shifted position.

  “Baba,” Keefer sighed.

  “She wants her juice ba, Nora.”

  “It’s right here,” Nora said, rooting in the bag. Lorraine settled Keefer, sucking, into the curve of her arm.

  “She’s back on the bottle,” Diane shook her head.

  “Just once in a while,” Lorraine hurried to explain, thinking, why should I feel guilty? “Just mainly when she goes in a car . . .”

  “Oh,” Diane said, smoothing her short, layered blond hair.

  “I think we should leave it to Georgia and Ray, because they provided for Keefer in their wills,” Mark explained. “We have copies of them. We’ll get you copies of them.”

  “Okay,” the Nyes said, in unison, and then Diane added, “We aren’t going to go right back home. We’ll stay a few days . . . after . . . after . . . can you imagine this? We’re all sitting here talking about this? About Raymond? Not only Georgia?”

  “It seems impossible,” Mark said.

  “But we all want this little girl to feel all safe,” Big Ray added.

  “Can we take her now?” Diane stood up.

  “I hope she doesn’t fuss,” Lorraine said. “She’s very shy.”

  Diane reached out for the baby, who shuddered and then relaxed, her auburn curls damp on her forehead. Lorraine felt a pang; she did not usually think that Keefer resembled Georgia, because she was so big and so fair, but the curve of Keefer’s dangling leg was exactly Georgia’s, the strong, prominent calf muscles, the big thighs that had driven her daughter mad.

  Georgia! Lorraine thought, and the baby screamed.

  She sat up in Diane’s arms as if someone had stolen upon her and given her an injection, her mouth gaping, the tears coursing like individual crystals, each perfectly formed. “Nana!” she screamed, gasping.

  “Yes, darling girl,” Diane shifted Keefer so that her head was facing Ray, over Diane’s shoulder, but Keefer fought, with her considerable strength, kicking Diane in the stomach as hard as she could with her boxy little sandaled feet.

  “Nana!”

  “Oh Diane, I’m so sorry, I think she means me,” Lorraine whispered, making to take the baby.

  “She’ll be fine, let’s get going,” said Big Ray.

  “Do you need her diaper bag?” Nora held the bag out wordlessly. Diane refused the offer with a toss of her blond head, turning to Keefer. “Shall we get this little missy here an ice cream cone?” Diane asked. The baby had writhed until her torso was nearly at a level with Diane’s knees. She was sweating and reaching out both hands to Lorraine.

  “Maybe we can bring her over later,” Mark suggested.

  “Nana!” Keefer sobbed. “Dory!”

  “She’s saying, ‘Gordie,’ ” Lorraine explained, trying to master her voice.

  Diane capped the baby’s churning overheated head with one hand. “It’s okay, Keefer Kathryn. Nana is here. It’s Grandma Diane. Keefer. Keefer.”

  Both McKennas were sweating, though the room was cool.

  “Keefer Kathryn, let’s go see Brooksie!”

  “Maybe if you just called her Keefer . . .” Mark suggested. “They . . . we never used her middle name.”

  “Though it’s a lovely name,” Lorraine put in, “a lovely old-fashioned name.”

  “My mother’s name,” Diane said. “We kind of pushed for her to be named Kathryn, so she could be called Kitty, like mother . . . but it was sweet how they picked Keefer . . .”

  “It’s kind of after Georgia, in a sense,” Mark said. “When he was a baby, Gordon couldn’t say her name, so he used her middle name . . .”

  “I know the story,” Diane said. “Sweet.”

  Ray said evenly, “Let’s get a move on, Mother. Come on, kiddo.”

  “Okay, Keefer,” Lorraine bent to lay her cheek on the baby’s cheek, trying to ignore Keefer’s distraught attempt to grab at her shoulders, her collar, to climb off Diane like an anguished monkey. “Kiss me, so you don’t miss me, Keefer. You’ll come right home soon.” To Diane, she said, “I’m sorry, Diane. You can appreciate how hard this is . . .”

  But Keefer’s screams redoubled as the Nyes, each supporting whatever appendage of her little body they could grab, hurried down the walk. Bob and Mary Dwors, the old couple who lived next door, stood up from their rosebushes to watch helplessly, exchanging shrugs with Lorraine and Mark.

  “I know she’ll be okay,” Nora said, from the kitchen, because no one else had the strength to speak. They had forgotten Nora was there, but Lorraine suddenly smelled coffee brewing. Nora would consume coffee in hell, Lorraine thought. “I just hate to see her have to go through this. It’s like she thinks she’s being taken away from us forever.”

  Mark slammed the door. “I cannot for the life of me figure out why I feel the way I do about Diane.”

  “Why did she say it was worse for them than for us . . . I mean, for you?” Nora held a mug out to Mark.

  “For us,” Mark patted his sister’s arm, and Lorraine could feel her sister-in-law’s involuntary start of satisfaction. It made her generous.

  “Mark, she’s just lost her only son,” Lorraine said. “She’s not a bad person. She’s just not used to bad things.”

  “I don’t think she’s a bad person,” Mark said, watching Diane lurch into the backseat with Keefer. “I just think she always gets what she wants. And Ray did, too.”

  The room seemed to empty of all sound. Mark’s good opinion of almost everyone verged on the fatuous. Even the most sluggish clock-watcher at Medi-Sun was “a good kid.” Alone among the brass, Mark had urged that the bookkeeper who embezzled ten thousand dollars to put a down payment on a double-wide be given a chance to keep her job and pay the company back over time.

  Now, glowering, he added, “And
they didn’t even take the car seat.”

  “It’s only two miles to Fidelis Hill,” Lorraine comforted, amazed by his anger. “It’s not worth it. She hates the car seat.”

  “And what if someone sees them, Lorraine. There have been enough car wrecks this week, Lorraine. And both of them are probably . . . their blood pressure is soaring. Ray looks like he’s on the verge of a stroke half the time anyhow. The man must be sixty pounds overweight.”

  “Well then,” said Lorraine, “run out and stop them, then.”

  Mark rubbed his chin. Though he would later not recall having said the precise words, he told Lorraine and Nora, “Nothing would stop her.”

  And it would be at that moment that something in Lorraine, some interior body that had lain supine, put its hands firmly on the arms of the chair and stood up.

  CHAPTER four

  He felt like a thief entering the condominium.

  He felt like a thief stealing into a tomb.

  Hesitantly, Gordon made his way down the hall, keeping close to the walls, unwilling to leave marks in the thick carpeting. The place was stifling, hot air motionless and thick with smell. Gordon sniffed—lactobacillus. One of Keefer’s bottles, probably, moldering under the couch. Ray had not slept here for weeks. It would not have occurred to him, passing through, to crack the windows or to keep the air conditioner turned on low. What had made Ray an athlete was his absolute inability to think of more than one thing at one time. Their friend Carl Jurgen used to say of Ray that all guys who play golf keep looking for the zone, the place where concentration is so utter that their swing wouldn’t falter if they stepped on a rake. “But Ray’s there all the time, not just when he plays golf,” Jurgen complained.

  Gordon was looking for clues, something to add to the words he had already written, which were clumsy and expected: “Today, we come here to say good-bye to Georgia O’Keeffe McKenna Nye, a long and remarkable name for a remarkable person who did not live long enough to grow into it. And to her husband, my brother-in-law, Raymond Nye, Junior, not such an unusual name, but simply a wonderful person (crossed out), he was simply one of the world’s great guys. We come to say that these two great (crossed out) wonderful (crossed out) . . . good and gentle people, who were blessings in our lives and in their own lives . . .”