All Your Pretty Dreams (11 page)

“
Why haven’t you answered
my emails? I sent you, like, seventy.” Daria leaned her head on the
elevator wall, scooting back as a man in a wheelchair got
on.

Isabel had stopped
answering emails long ago, unless they came from her professors.
She knew it irked her family. Maybe that was why.

“
I’m proud of you, Iz. You
didn’t ask me about Alec.”

“
I don’t give a rat’s ass
about Alec.”

The man in the wheelchair
looked at them. Daria said, “He is definitely not worth a second
thought.”

“
Damn
straight.”

The man rolled off. Daria
turned to her. “Tell the truth. When did you get back from Spain? I
know you were lying about it being last week.”

“
A month ago.” Two
actually.

“
A month? Christ, Iz.
Daddy will be pissed.”

Her parents, aunt, and
cousin were in the private room, gathered at the end of the bed.
Her mother’s father, Egon Warwick, who never had a kind word for
anyone, lay still except for the slow rise and fall of his chest,
hooked up to tubes and monitors. Egon, who made his money the old
fashioned way, inheriting it from his father, was dying.

Isabel grabbed the door
jam. She wouldn’t have driven down in the night for any other
reason but imminent death. Egon looked so fragile. His skin was
transparent. Any minute he might open his eyes and bark at them for
staring at him, for coveting his money. He thought everyone was
after his money. Most of the time he was right.

Daria took Isabel’s arm.
“Come on.” She pulled her sister into the room behind
her.

“
Ta-da!
Guess who I found?” Daria’s voice was entirely
too loud for a sick room. Isabel winced, her eyes darting again to
her grandfather’s withered face. “The wayward angel, home at
last.”

They all stared, eyes wide.
Her aunt Lulu nearly fell off her chair. Her mother froze, a frown
on her collagen-plumped lips. Isabel straightened her shoulders.
That damn Ricky had made her unrecognizable. Then her father sprung
up and hugged both daughters, muttering to Daria about her good
deed and to Isabel about how wonderful it was to see her. He
ruffled her short hair, tweaked her ear, and she laughed. Her
lovely father could make her feel so warm inside— when he got
around to it.

“
Good God, Isabel. What
have you done to your hair?” The shrill voice scraped across her
daughter’s mind. Edie, of course. Appearances first and
foremost.

“
She’s back,” Max said,
his arm still around her shoulders. “She came back to see us. To
see Egon. All the way across the ocean.”

They sat at a round table
with a starched white tablecloth in the sort of ancient eatery
where her grandfather’s cronies made deals and smoked cigars. They
had managed somehow to navigate through the hospital, into cars,
and meet up again some miles away at the Stock House. Dark paneling
with animal heads, pretension, and oversized cuts of beef. Isabel
slipped in next to her cousin Frederick who at seventeen made
everyone call him Frick. Dressed in prep gray slacks and a navy
tie, Frick was insolent and catty, the best sort of lunch
companion.

She hardly got to talk to
him before the inquisition began.

Edie wore a black and white
print summer dress that hugged her slender curves, still a
knock-out in that department. Her hair was long and highlighted
like Daria’s, identical in fact. She’d had a little work done. Her
eyes almost popped out of her face.

“
Where exactly are you,
Isabel?” her mother demanded.

“
Little town in Minnesota.
You’ve never heard of it.”

Edie demanded the name.
“And you’re chasing bees around with a net?”

“
It’s called a field
study. You wouldn’t understand.”

Her father Max shot her a
warning look. Edie’s eyes were like stones. “Because I’m too
stupid?”

If the shoe
fits
. Isabel ground her molars.

“
Because it has to do with
insects, Mother,” Daria said. “They are so
complicated
.” She whispered to
Isabel: “
Stop it
.” Edie sipped her wine, eyes hot on her younger
daughter.

“
You know what they say,”
Frick chirped. “Give bees a chance.”
Har
har.

“
So you’ve been in
Europe?” Aunt Lulu sat forward, interceding in the
malice.

“
France and Spain mostly.
I spent the winter in Barcelona.”

“
Barcelona?” Max said
sharply.

“
I love that city,” Daria
said a little too quickly. “And the beach near there, is it
Tarragon, like the herb? Did you hear Andrea got mugged in Madrid?
Almost broke her arm. That wouldn’t happen in Barcelona. It’s
lovely there, the fountains…” Her voice faded.

Then Edie said, ice in her
voice: “We were in Barcelona in February. For a week.”

Isabel glanced at her
father. He looked older, more gray in his temples, less hair on
top. His trendy new glasses looked silly, like he was trying to be
a hipper hedge fund manager. He fiddled with his fork. They could
have seen her there but for her stubborn refusal to communicate.
They could have gone out for tapas, walked the boulevards. Met her
boyfriend. Because that worked out so well last time.

His face, the hurt, made
her feel terrible. She never meant to hurt him— did she? Edie and
her sister Lulu exchanged looks, nostrils flaring. How could Max
stand Edie? Was he that strong— or that deluded? But— she hardly
knew him. Edie was so brittle, so bossy, that poor Max, in her
shadow on the domestic front, barely registered with his own
children. Did he love Edie? Did he just marry her for her
money?

Isabel squinted at her
plate. She hoped her father wasn’t that sort of man. Yet, why else
would he have married her? What else had she brought to the table?
Society contacts? Interior decorating? Max was frowning into his
wine glass.

“
I— I’m—” Isabel shrank in
her seat. Was she sorry? Hadn’t she run away from all of them?
Wasn’t
no contact
exactly what she wanted? She was a terrible daughter. Full of
pride and arrogance. That was the truth of it.

“
What are your plans after
this bee thing?” Max asked.

She looked up, grateful for
a civil question. “Finish my doctorate. In Urbana.”

After they ordered Frick
began telling her about pranks at prep school. Edie and Lulu
discussed an upcoming formal ball as if the fact that their father
was clinging to life was only a momentary glitch in their social
calendar. As they walked out of the restaurant, Max took Isabel’s
arm. He didn’t say anything until the others drifted
ahead.

“
I’ve missed you, honey.”
He turned toward her. “We worry about you when you don’t call. I
don’t like it when I don’t hear from you for months. Even if you’re
in Europe.”

“
I’m sorry, Daddy. Message
received.” She stuck her hands in her pockets then blurted out, “I
don’t remember hearing from you.”

He looked surprised. “Your
mother said she—” He frowned at Edie. “You’re right. I should have
called. Give me your number.” He pulled out his
Blackberry.

She gave him the motel’s
number where once in a blue moon people got messages. He could get
the university cell number from Daria. A peal of laughter erupted
from Lulu by the doorway. Isabel wondered if she would be laughing
while Max was dying. Never.

Her father, dead. The
thought made her shiver. She would try to be a better daughter. He
led her down the hallway. She would try.

But damn, it was hard to be
a Yancey.

Chapter 9

The light reflected off the
lake in tangled sparks. The mosquitoes were kept at bay by a ring
of tiki torches outside the large tent. Jonny had waited until the
last minute to arrive at the campaign fundraiser. Lenny gave him a
punch on the arm then ran off. Jonny shifted the bulky accordion
case to his other hand and made his way through the rows of folding
chairs to the stage.

The afternoon buzzed in his
head, jumbled and painful. Artie had driven down but he hadn’t been
much help. He listened, nodded, and had to leave. They’d found
Ozzie at Loreen’s and asked him come home to discuss things. The
decibels were far above ‘discussion.’

Minnesota women in general
took a stoic approach to infidelity, or went straight to homicide.
Not Margaret. She screamed at Ozzie, at Artie, at Jonny and Wendy
until her voice gave out. The middle ground between tolerance and
murder was full of blame, shame, threats, and broken
dishes.

Finally Carol Chichester
arrived with a Valium. Margaret was too beaten to object, took it,
and went to bed. Ozzie snuck out, still with a little strut in his
step. They watched as Loreen picked him up at the
corner.

Artie and Jonny went out
for coffee to discuss matters familial. They stared into their
cups. What was there to say? Their parents were who they were,
strange beings who shared their genes. Artie left for the Twin
Cities. Jonny stayed at Sid’s, hunched in a booth, avoiding family
and neighbors.

Now the hiding was over.
Lenny led the state engineer to the stage. Jonny set the accordion
behind a stool, made sure the microphone was working, and stepped
away.

Lights flared from the
corners of the tent. The groundwater scientist from St. Paul
squinted out at the crowd and began his spiel about landfills and
run-off water and lakes. Leaning against a pole on one side of the
chairs, Jonny was glad to have something as ordinary as rainfall
and common as garbage to think about. Halfway through he felt a tug
on his sleeve.

The woman at his elbow was
getting looks, and it was easy to see why, with skintight leather
pants and a sequined top. Half the crowd ditched water pollution to
stare at her. Tattoos on both shoulders, bleached hair pulled into
tufts with silver cord, and boots that made her taller than he was—
if all that didn’t guarantee that she wasn’t from Red Vine, the
fact that she was as dark as morning coffee did.

“
Audri,” she said, taking
out her gum and holding out her hand. “Your singer.” With her wide
mouth and dangling earrings she was striking, like a bolt of
lightning. Exactly the sort of girl singer any band would want out
front. Big, too, so tall no one will even see the
accordionist.

“
So what do you sing?” he
asked. This was all very casual. No rehearsal, not even a song
list. He wondered what the hell he was doing. She had brought a
tambourine.

“
You name it. Anything.
Except polka.” She frowned at the accordion as he strapped it on.
“You don’t do polka?”

“
Never.” He grinned at
her. “This isn’t an accordion.”

She shrugged. “What I
really like is soul and R-and-B. Aretha? Wilson Pickett? Roy
Orbison? You dig that old stuff?”

“
I’ll give it a try if you
tell me the songs.”

As the drinking began, as
hors d’oeuvres passed on paper plates, the crowd began to move,
shifting easily in the growing dark. After a hasty song list was
drawn up Jonny launched in old road songs, teenage songs, songs
about growing up and moving on, about love and loss and cars. The
tunes weren’t complicated and Audri sang in a deep, throaty voice.
The music enveloped him, creating a pocket of feeling. It cradled
him, rocked him. He forgot about Margaret and Ozzie, Holti and
Nora, Jonny and Cuppie. He drifted off onto a musical plane where
nothing mattered but chords and choruses and pure
harmony.

At the break he set down
his accordion and snagged two beers from the cooler. He and Audri
huddled to figure out what songs to do in the next set. They’d run
through most of Jonny’s repertoire of sixties and seventies songs,
not a great number to begin with. He could do chords while she
sang, he supposed. He felt ready to try something new, out of the
morass of everyday troubles. They were making a little list on a
scrap of paper when a drunk fell into Jonny and asked him to play
‘Lady of Spain.’ “You know, do that bellows shake.”