I looked up at my little brother, and all I could think of to say was “I love you, Fred.”
“Right back at you, sis.”
For a long time we sat shoulder to shoulder on that bench, letting that summer sun warm our freckled faces as we watched those around us going about their business—townspeople mailing their letters and buying their groceries and making their bank deposits, and peace marchers saving the world.
July 1986
Dear Mama,
I am coming apart at the seams. Really, it’s as if my sanity’s been basted up in a lumpy package and now it’s pressing against those wide stitches, ready to pop out.
Slip came back after visiting her brother on a peace march, and I asked her what good was possibly going to come from a bunch of old hippies walking across the country.
“Faith,” she said, “what’s really bothering you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling all panicky.
“Well, you act like everything’s so pointless lately. I was really excited to see Fred—I’m so proud of him—and the first thing I hear out of your mouth is something snide.”
“I was just kidding,” I said, my words all blustery.
“Ohhh,” said Slip. “In that case—ha ha ha.”
And now Wade’s asking me all the time, “What’s wrong, Faith?” but how can I ever tell him? How can I tell him that I’ve told so many lies that I don’t know what’s truth and what’s not anymore? That I feel as unreal as a mannequin, as fake as brass pretending to be gold? And the more fake I feel, the meaner I get, Mama—I can’t stand all these real people who feel safe enough to be themselves!
My insides are always churning, and the only reassurance that I’m not going to blow up is that they’ve churned plenty and I haven’t exploded yet. But I’m getting worse and worse at pretending I’m fine, worse and worse at keeping this TNT inside me unlit.
I’m sorry,
Faith
August 1986
HOST: MERIT
BOOK: The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
REASON CHOSEN: “I like the title—it seems we’re all accidental tourists at some point in our lives.”
“I don’t think I can go on, Frank,” she said as she sat in the tiny room that served as both a dressing room and a storage closet for cleaning supplies.
“It’s just a bit of stage fright,” counseled Mr. Paradise, who sat in a folding chair next to a mop and bucket. “All the big stars have it.”
Merit looked into the streaky mirror, trying to steady her hand so that her lipstick might reach somewhere in the vicinity of its target.
“You’re going to be wonderful,” said Frank.
“Thank you,” said Merit, squeezing the fine-boned hand that rested on her shoulder. She wasn’t convinced she believed him, but she appreciated his absolute sincerity.
In fact, she was convinced that he was about the most sincere man she had ever met, as well as the kindest, and their friendship had turned into courtship, which had turned into love. Liking the name, the Angry Housewives and Merit’s children still called him Mr. Paradise, and Frank’s friends called her Miss Mayes, and even the couple, although they most often called each other by their first names (or “darling” or “sweetheart” or “precious”) hadn’t shed their formal mode of address entirely.
Merit’s girls loved him. The man played endless games of Frisbee with Jewel and practiced the waltz and two-step with Melody before she went to her first formal dance. Reni, who had pretty much relieved Merit of the burden of cooking, loved inviting him for dinner because his pleasure at eating the food she cooked was so unabashed.
“Not only does he talk to us,” the girls told their mother, “he actually listens!”
He even went so far as to take their sartorial advice, investing in a few sport coats and a pair of loafers, although he couldn’t completely be weaned away from his leisure suits and white patent leather shoes.
Ears are the true erogenous zones, Merit thought; nothing made her feel more loved and cherished than the full attention Frank gave to what she had to say. She listened to him as well, although now, as she powdered her nose for the third time, she wished she had tuned him out when he first brought up the idea of her playing for an audience.
“I’m not the piano bar type!” she had told Frank when he broached the subject of playing at Claudio’s, one of several lounges in town he had a financial stake in.
“There is no piano bar type,” said Frank. “There’s Claudio himself, Mr. Love Song, who plays even though his arthritis is killing him because he can’t bear to be away from the ladies, and there’s Madge, who’s happiest when she can sing something sad. Then there’s Lulu, the jokester down at Jake’s, and Meyer at the Tiki Room, who thinks he has to give people the history of every song they request, and—”
“Okay, okay,” said Merit. “What I meant is that all of them aren’t terrified of sitting in front of people and singing and playing!”
Frank shrugged. “And by the time you play your first chord, you won’t be either. You’ll be making music and making people happy all at the same time. Yikes, Merit, do you realize how many people wish they could have that experience?”
So Merit had let Frank take her down to Claudio’s, had let herself play a few pieces for the man whose swoop of silver hair was like a wave frozen in full crest (in the dressing room, industrial-size cans of hair spray shared shelf space with cans of Comet) and whose black silk shirt was half unbuttoned, better to display several gold chains resting on a mat of crinkly silver chest hair.
But Claudio Renatti’s ostentatiousness was limited to his dress. His personality was as open and enthusiastic as a child’s, and upon meeting Merit, he grasped her hands with his stiff, knobby ones and said, “My Thursday night pianist just gave notice, and if that’s not a sign that you should be playing here, I don’t know what is!”
THINKING SHE NEEDED a gimmick, she’d practiced songs that had something celestial in the title: “Moon River,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” “Stars and Stripes Forever,” “Sunrise, Sunset.”
“Girls,” she’d call from the piano, “help me out—what other songs have moon or sun or stars in them?”
“Mom, make it easy on yourself,” Reni counseled. “Play songs you like.”
“They probably just want you to play requests anyway,” said Melody.
“Requests,” said Merit, looking stricken. “I forgot all about requests.”
“Mr. Paradise says that’s mostly what they play in piano bars,” said Jewel, nodding.
“What if I don’t know how to play them?”
“Mom, you know how to play by ear just as well as I do,” said Melody.
The look Merit gave Melody told her what they both knew: Melody was the superior piano player, whether reading music or playing it by ear.
“We’ll help you,” said Reni, sitting next to her mother on the piano bench. “Come on, you guys, let’s request songs for Mom.”
“Okay! How about ‘Happy Birthday’?”
“Jewel,” scolded Reni as Merit launched into the song, “we’re supposed to be testing her.”
“I’ll bet a lot of people request ‘Happy Birthday,’ ” said Jewel, sitting on the other side of her mother.
“That’s not the point,” said Melody. “Okay, let’s see . . . how about ‘Alison’ by Elvis Costello?”
Merit sat frozen at the keyboard. “ ‘Alison’? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Then you ask the person who’s requesting the song to sing it,” advised Melody. “And then you just chord along with it.”
“Good idea,” said Reni.
Standing behind her mother, Melody started singing the song, and after a moment, Merit began to play chords.
“That’s it, Mom,” encouraged Jewel. “That sounds great.”
Merit knew that “great” was beyond overstatement and asked, “Give me another one.”
“Um, ‘Time After Time,’ by Cyndi
Lauper,” said Jewel, and was rewarded by a nod from her sisters.
“I’m sorry,” said Merit. “I don’t know that song, but if you sing it, I’ll try to chord along.”
“Very good, Mother,” said Reni. “Only say it as a fact, not an apology.”
Merit smiled—what would she do without the advice of her girls? She raised her hands to the keyboard, but when the girls started singing, she was reluctant to start playing, so lovely were their voices and the automatic harmony Melody took whenever singing with anyone.
“Mom, come on,” said Jewel, giving her mother a nudge, and Merit began to play, thinking there were many delights to this world, and accompanying her singing daughters, who were pressed against her on the piano bench, was one of them.
Now, having finally put her lipstick on in its proper place and patted her huge waterfall of hair (her girls had fixed it and somehow with the blow dryer and curler iron had gotten it to about four times its normal volume) Merit looked in the mirror at Frank standing behind her and said, “Well, I guess it’s show time.”
“IT’S TIMES LIKE THIS I could really use a cigarette,” said Audrey, dipping a piece of breaded shrimp in cocktail sauce.
She and Slip and Kari sat in a booth upholstered in a slippery gold vinyl, nursing gaudy drinks whose swizzle sticks were kabobs of pineapple and maraschino cherries.
“I know,” said Kari. “I haven’t felt this nervous since I watched Julia’s debate team in the city finals.”
“At least the crowd looks friendly,” said Slip, looking at the people seated around the piano.
“Friendly but old,” said Audrey. “I can imagine the requests she’s going to get—’Tea for Two,’ ‘Sweet Adeline.’ ”
“ ‘Good Night, Irene,’ ” said Slip.
“ ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon,’ ” said Kari. “Well, at least that would fit in with her celestial theme. Say, look—that woman over there looks like an older version of Faith.”
“She does,” agreed Slip. “Although Faith would never wear her hair like that, even when she’s eighty.”
Faith had been invited to attend Merit’s debut, but lately she always seemed to have other plans whenever the Angry Housewives got together outside of book club.
“Here comes Mr. Paradise!” said Audrey.
When they had first met the new man in Merit’s life, they were not particularly overwhelmed.
“He dresses like the kind of guy who takes a business meeting in an RV park,” Audrey told Slip.
“He looks like the kind of bad guys they have on Starsky and Hutch,” Slip told Kari.
“He reminds me of a farmhand we once had,” Kari told Faith, “and every Saturday night before he’d go to town, he’d dress up in a plaid shirt and comb his hair with rosewater.”
“You said the pickings out there were slim,” Faith said to Audrey, “but I didn’t know they were that slim!”
But now, as the three women watched the rangy man in the pale blue leisure suit lope toward the piano, they all thought how lucky Merit was to find such a kind and gentle man who so obviously thought the world of her.
Flashing his gold-highlighted smile, Mr. Paradise waved his crossed fingers at them before sitting in the seat saved for him by Claudio, who had come to support his new employee.
The piano bar owner now stood, resplendent in his gold chains and silver hair, and addressed the crowd, the older women looking at him with the same longing teenage girls direct at the school hunks.
“Ladies and germs—and you are, ya big mugs—it is my great pleasure to bring to the piano a beautiful young lady who’ll tickle all of you as she tickles the ivories. Let’s have a hand for . . . Miss Merit Mayes!”
“Hey, she’s using her maiden name,” said Slip as the Angry Housewives clapped heartily and Audrey stuck her long-nailed pinkies into her mouth and whistled.
From the back of the room, Merit approached the piano, the skirt of her long gown swishing, and people sat up straighter, their drinks held midway between the table and their mouths, surprised and somehow honored by her beauty.
“God, look at her,” said Audrey, finishing off the last of the breaded shrimp. “She looks like she’s about twenty-five.”
All of the Angry Housewives were now in their forties except for Kari, whose forties were getting to be an ever-distant memory.
“I love her hair,” said Slip, unconsciously patting down her own wild red mane.
“Reni and Melody did it,” said Kari. “They told Julia they wanted her to look like Miss America.”
“Hello,” said Merit, arranging her skirt as she sat at the piano. “As Mr. Renatti said, I’m Merit, and I’m absolutely thrilled to be here. Absolutely terrified too.”
The crowd laughed, and a few people offered words of encouragement, including Audrey, who yelled out, “We’re in your hands, Merit.”
Merit smiled. “Then how will I be able to play?”
The crowd laughed again.
“I knew she knew how to sing and play the piano,” said Slip, “but I didn’t know she knew how to banter.”
“This song,” said Merit, playing a few chords, “is for all of you.”
She proceeded to sing “You Are My Sunshine,” followed by “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” followed by “Starry Starry Night.” Each song earned a burst of applause.
“See, I thought I needed a gimmick,” said Merit. “My daughters told me it was hokey, but I thought, there’s nothing wrong with songs about the skies.”
“Especially when an angel’s singing them,” offered an old gentleman, holding up his martini glass.
“Then, sir, this one’s for you,” said Merit, launching into “I Only Have Eyes for You.” (Merit didn’t care if the title didn’t have any celestial words in it, as long as the lyrics did.)
Sitting on that tufted vinyl piano bench, Merit found that the rapid heartbeat, the clammy hands, and the slight nausea all but disappeared, and she was beyond happy. She was herself—thoroughly and fully Merit Mayes, the girl she had been before her band teacher lunged at her, before her looks got in the way of how people perceived her, before she married Eric, the man whose goal was to take away as much of her as he could.
As she breathed in the potpourri of fried appetizers, perfumes and colognes, cigarette smoke, and liquor and heard herself singing about the stars being out, she winked at Frank, whose face lived up to his name. If ever there was a man who could offer her paradise, it was he.
September 1986
Dear Mama,
I just got off the phone with Wade—he’s on a layover in Hawaii, and I needed to tell him about his mama. Dex called me tonight. For a long time they’ve been trying to believe that Patsy’s forgetfulness was only that, that her little blank-outs were just the result of being overtired, but after seeing the doctor, they got a different diagnosis: my mother-in-law has Alzheimer’s disease, which is what they call senility nowadays. Poor Wade; he broke down and cried.
“How can that be? My mama’s one of the sharpest women I’ve ever met!”
Thinking about Patsy sure doesn’t help my already bluer-than-blue mood. I’m so lonely, Mama, lonely as a mother can be in a house where there aren’t any more children. Why didn’t I have more? Why didn’t I just keep having children so I’d never be in a house with just myself?
It was the first day of school—I watched out the window as Gil pulled up to Audrey’s house in the old station wagon all the McMahon kids have driven, watched as Mike came bounding out the door and jumped in. The youngest boys in the neighborhood are now seniors in high school! Then they picked up Melody and Jewel (I can imagine the boys that’ll be hanging around Merit’s house, because her girls are absolute knockouts). Jewel’s in eighth grade and Melody’s a junior, and time feels like it’s wearing running shoes.
I had an appointment with this couple who live in a seven-thousand-square-foot house (we could have put MawMaw’s little shotgun house inside theirs about ten times), but I cance
led it—I just didn’t have the energy to do anything but drive to Beau and Bonnie’s old elementary school and sit under the big elm tree and sob my eyes out. It seems like yesterday I was packing lunches in their Partridge Family lunchboxes, and now I have no idea what they eat for lunch, let alone breakfast and dinner.
After I dried my eyes I went home and cried some more. When it seemed I’d cried myself out, I called Beau, telling him how much of the day I’d spent blowing my nose and dabbing my eyes with a tissue. (If I had told Bonnie, she would have scolded me for being a sentimental old fool, but Beau never makes me feel stupid no matter what I tell him.)
“I know this is the beginning of your sophomore year,” I said, “but at three-thirty I still looked out the window, hoping to see you coming up the sidewalk with your arms full of books.”
“I worry about you, Mama,” he said. “Why don’t you come down and visit me?”
As soon as he said it, the heaviness in my heart lifted and I thought, Yes, that’s what I’ll do; I’ll go visit Beau at Tulane and then I’ll go visit Bonnie at Oberlin. I felt as happy as a robin on the first day of spring.
“What if I did, Beau?” I said. “What if I did come and visit you? Would you regret offering the invitation?”
“Of course not, Mama. I’d love to see you. You think Daddy would like to come too?”
Bonnie’s a Yankee through and through—we’re Mom and Dad to her—but like any good southern boy, Beau still calls us Mama and Daddy.
“He probably would,” I said, “but I think I’d like you all to myself.”
“Sounds good to me, Mama. And I want you to meet someone.”
“Oh,” I said, my happy little heart beating a little faster. “You’ve met someone special?”
“I think so,” said Beau.
“What’s her name?”
“Shelby, but Mama—“
“How’s Roxanne going to feel about that?”