Autobiography of Us (22 page)

“Alex,” I called, waving the fruit lamely in the air.

She really did have the most extraordinary eyes. The color that complicated green and wide as a cat’s, the right one with that slightly startled look to it. “I don’t believe it,” she exclaimed, coming toward me. “For Christ’s sake. Look at you!”

“Isn’t this funny,” I said. We embraced awkwardly, my head turned in against her shoulder so my nose was pressed into the crook of her neck; there was the overwhelming scent of cigarettes and strong, musky perfume.

She kept one hand on my arm as we stepped apart. “I’m so sorry about your mother. I only just heard this morning.”

“Thank you. It was a shock.”

“Is your family here with you?”

I shook my head. “We’ve got two young boys, and it’s a long trip from New York.” My voice came out oddly cheerful; I felt myself blushing right away. “And you? Twins, I hear?”

“Emily and Kate. They turned five last week.” She looked at me closely. “God, you look terrific. I probably shouldn’t be saying that right now, but you do.”

“I don’t know—”

“No, it suits you, wearing your hair down like that.” She touched her own hair distractedly. She’d chopped it above her shoulders in a blunt cut that set off her features—that fine jawline, the delicate ears. “I’ve still never been, if you can believe it.” She looked at me. “New York.”

“You should come for a visit.” My cheeks began to ache from smiling. “Really. We’ve got more than enough room.”

“That’s sweet.”

“I mean it—we’d love to have you.” I straightened up, aware that I had been slouching. “It would be our pleasure.”

She smiled faintly. “You haven’t changed a bit. No,” she said quickly, “it’s refreshing. Change gets old.” I was struck in that moment by how tired she looked. I don’t say it to be cruel; the truth is that exhaustion somehow became her, the area under her eyes bluish in a look vaguely Victorian, that dark hair setting her pallor off to striking contrast. I can’t say I’d ever considered how tiring it must have been to be her: to be beautiful in the way she was, I mean, to find herself constantly navigating the demands of everyone’s desires. “I used to see her in here sometimes, your mother,” Alex went on. “Always made a point of telling me the latest news—did I know you’d moved to Manhattan. Had I heard you’d married a lawyer.”

“She could be charming.” I tried to keep my voice light. “Meanwhile, steel underneath, head to toe.”

“Steel,” she said approvingly. “I like that.” There was a moment’s pause. “It’s the funniest thing. I was just thinking of you the other day.”

“That
is
funny.”

“Are you…?” Alex gestured at the little patio outside the shop. The diamond on her ring finger caught the sunlight and scattered it; in some distant corner of my mind, I registered that it was strikingly large. “… in a rush?”

I pretended to check my watch. “My father’s expecting me—”

“Please,” she said, with that sudden intensity she had. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee. One little cup.”

I smiled as though I hardly cared one way or another. “Why not? It’s been forever.”

* * *

Isn’t it strange? If asked, I would have said my memory of her was like something preserved under glass, immutable and precise. But everything I remembered turned out to be no more than imagination and conjecture, a collection of blurred images like clouds reflected in a slick of oil. I’d forgotten all those small particular tics, the habits that turned her from merely attractive to extraordinary: A way she had of pursing her lips after she said something, as if every line contained a private joke; a tendency to move her hands expressively as she spoke, slicing the air to pieces. The amused look that crept across her face when she was only half listening. The color that rushed to her cheeks when she laughed—really laughed. Her smile, slightly crooked, displaying that odd bent-inward tooth. That voice.

She
had
changed. I was surprised to see it in the daylight, how dramatically her face had thinned through the cheeks, a fine latticework of lines creeping in around her eyes. She wore no makeup save a swipe of color across her lips, a red I thought too orange for her complexion. She’d always been slender, particularly those years at the U, but she seemed shrunken now, her features larger in contrast—her eyes, her mouth. When she shrugged, her shoulders jumped like a marionette’s.

“Listen,” she said suddenly, leaning forward so quickly her cup rattled. “I’ve been waiting for a chance like this. I owe you an apology. We all do.”

“It was such a long time ago,” I began.

“I don’t care if it’s been a goddamn century.” She flicked her coffee cup impatiently where it sat in its saucer and it wobbled, spilling a little. “I’d want to wring my neck if I were you.”

“At least you tried,” I said. She frowned. “At graduation?”

“That? I couldn’t bear the thought of a mind like yours going to waste. It made me ill. Positively ill.” She brought her hand to her forehead and drew a small circle at the center of her forehead, no bigger than a dime. “The third eye. Do you—no? A friend of mine, that’s all. Alfred. Involved with Hinduism. Higher consciousness, et cetera. Fascinating stuff.” She thumped the table. “A travesty, anyway, talent like yours going to waste. Downright criminal.”

I picked up the creamer and set it back down immediately. “And the others? Are you in touch?”

“Everyone’s scattered to the four winds, as Eleanor used to say. Lindsey’s been out in Santa Monica for years now. Husband sells something—plastics? Three kids, I think. Unless it was four. Let’s see … Robin never came back, far as I know. Stationed in Monaco or somewhere around there, though to be honest I haven’t heard a peep for years now.”

“Betsy?”

“Bingo.” She leaned in. “Dove’s the one to ask about. Left some perfectly nice husband just a few months ago and up and hightailed it to Nebraska. Apparently she has family out there, the story goes, though there’s a rumor going around she had someone waiting for her.” She arched an eyebrow. “A woman someone. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.”

“What about you?” I hesitated. “How have you been?”

She sat back, kicking the leg of the table as though she were no older than Matthew, a child restless at being made to sit still. “You know me—I’m like a cat.”

“Nine lives?”

“I was thinking more of the always-ending-up-on-my-feet bit. Though lately I don’t know.” She made a face. “I’ve been feeling more like an elephant or a pyramid. Something ancient, is the point. Dusty.”

“And Bertrand?” I forced myself to look at her directly. “Mother only just told me. I’m sorry I didn’t have your number. I would have—”

“No, you wouldn’t have. But that’s alright.” She squinted as though the sun was in her eyes, though we were well shaded out there on the patio, the leaves of the banana palms thick overhead, lush and green and crowding close together. “Bertrand is … Christ, he’s
Bertrand
. Come on, darling. We’re old friends, you and me.”

I tried to smile. “Old? Not us.”

“Pyramids,” she said with a hint of satisfaction. “Ancient ruins. Feels like it anyway. I blame all these college girls running around town. Place is lousy with them. You know the type: W-O-M-Y-N.”

“Feminists, you mean.”

“Is that what they’re calling themselves these days?” She shook her head with what looked like disgust. “I don’t know how anyone’s meant to keep up. One day they’re burning bras, the next they’re jumping into bed with anything that’s got a pulse. Terribly inconsistent.” She tapped her cigarette against the edge of the table, letting the ash crumble to the ground. “We’ve got one next door to us—Alice. She’s always gathering the troops for these evening discussions, raising consciousness or whatever. Married, Malice. You’d think the husband would put up a fight, but he’s docile as a lamb about the whole thing. Suppose he comes home every night to a house full of girls chattering about free love and God knows what else, doesn’t he. There are worse things.” She stared at the ash. “I have to say I find it depressing—all of it, really. The whole thing. Movement with a capital
M.
”

“They’re doing some good, aren’t they?” I fiddled with the sugar bowl, uncapping and capping it again. “Broadening our horizons?”

She let out a short laugh. “The only horizons they’re concerned with are their own. Trust me,
us
they consider beyond saving. Oh, Malice is very nice to me and all, but you can practically see the pity oozing out of her whenever she catches me with the twins. Gosh, aren’t I
busy
, she says. She can’t for the
life
of her imagine how I do it all day!” She shook her head. “She’s never so much as invited me over for one of those meetings. Not that I think I could stomach it,” she added quickly. “All that shouting about taking back what’s
ours
, protesting the so-called disintegration of American ideals. Constitutional rights, they claim. What—you didn’t know? This whole thing’s our fault, according to them. We didn’t fight, they’re saying. We just sat there while the years slipped through our fingers. Lay down and took it like a couple of kittens.” She waved her hand. “As though we had a shred of choice. Can you imagine?”

But at some point during her speech I’d stopped listening. I was thinking of my letters, those pages locked up in my desk, each with Alex’s name printed at the top. As she went on and on, they began to move. How do I explain? In the darkness of my half-listening mind, the letters began to shift and glow, the lines I’d written flickering like candlelight, the words burning faintly at first and then with growing intensity. Sheaves of paper glittered red and orange and yellow, the flames lying low before they leapt up, started climbing the walls.

“I should get back,” I broke in. “My father will be wondering where I am.”

“I’ve kept you too long.” But she made no motion toward getting up, only sat and watched me from under half-closed lids. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, clicking the clasp of my handbag open and closed.

“It really was so nice to see you—” I began.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she interrupted. “Don’t be like that. It’s been awkward as hell, and there’s no need to be polite about it. But I don’t think it has to be so bad. Really, I’d like to keep in touch, if you’re game.” She took out a pen and wrote something on the napkin. “Here.”

I took the pen and printed my number on my napkin—adding, inexplicably, my name:
Rebecca Turner.
“If for some reason you don’t hear from me.”

She folded the napkin into a neat square and tucked it in the
V
of her dress. “Wild horses couldn’t.”

“Sorry?”

She leaned forward. “I’m saying I plan to call.”

“Terrific,” I said. “Fantastic!”

“I really am glad this happened.”

“So am I,” I said, standing. “I couldn’t be gladder.”

* * *

We ate an early dinner together, your grandfather and I. Light shone down from the scratched chandelier, illuminating the surface of the dining table, the wood nicked badly enough that the lace runner my mother must have laid down in hopes of covering up the damage only seemed, instead, to accent it. The whole room appeared to have succumbed to a new fatigue: A water stain spread along the far corner of the ceiling, cracking it here and there; the sun had dyed the curtains a pale mustard yellow. Later, as I wandered from room to room after my father was in bed, I would see that the entire house had begun to slide into a state of disrepair—the eaves over my bedroom window sagging in a way I knew boded no good, a few hairline fractures here and there in the hallway ceiling that I remembered from my childhood now spread at what seemed an alarming rate, their lines interlocked like cobwebs. The furniture had worn down a few degrees from presentable to just this side of shabby, the fabric on a number of the seat cushions thinned to translucent.

You can imagine how awful I felt as I sat there at the table, the quilt I’d had at the U folded neatly across the back of the couch, its edges frayed despite evidence of my mother’s neat stitching. I could have changed everything, understand. I wrote checks for perfect strangers, after all; month after month, I sent money toward saving dolphins or starving babies, when all along I could have been saving my own parents with nothing more than a scribble of my name. But I was a selfish young woman, preoccupied with what I believed at the time to be a sadness I’d ended up in through no fault of my own. I shouldn’t have to tell you it was a terrible thing to realize.

“Ugly business, getting old,” my father said finally.

“They said it was unusual for someone so young—”

“I wasn’t referring to your mother.”

I had always thought of my father as a strong man, not overly large but tall like me and sturdy, as I have said, traces of his maternal grandmother’s Bavarian roots visible in his broad shoulders. Now he seemed too easily contained in his chair; he sat off-kilter, one arm bent against the table as though it was all that held him up. “You’re in perfect health,” I said. “The doctors said—”

“The doctors said.” He dropped his fork with a clatter. “You’d think they were God, to hear them talk. Men just like the rest of us, last time I knew anything about it. Bound by the same laws.” He pressed his napkin to his lips. “I’m not myself. I apologize.”

“You’ve had a shock.”

“You wouldn’t think it would have such an impact on a man, living alone a few days.” He looked around him helplessly. “Suppose you grow accustomed.”

“No need,” I said firmly. “You’re coming back with me on Friday. We’ll have someone pack up your things and send them. Hush, I already decided.”

He drew himself up. “I have no intention of becoming a burden.”

“Nonsense. We’d love to have you—” But he was already shaking his head. “Will you at least think about it?”

“This is my home.”

“It’s too big for one person. The upkeep alone—”

“I’m too old to start over again somewhere new.”

“You’re not even sixty.”

“Too old,” he repeated. “Not to mention stubborn.” He rapped his knuckles against the table. “We built a life here, your mother and I. Twenty-eight years in this house. Twenty-eight years,” he said again.