Commune of Women (22 page)

Her collection kept growing. It filled up the basement and so she started hanging things from the garage rafters wrapped in old sheets, with manila labels dangling on white string:
Christmas; Valentine’s Day; Memorial Day; Feast of the Assumption.

It was her nod to spirituality. She was as industriously ceremonial as any pagan. On February 15
^th
, the red roses and flocked red hearts on stems came out of their Styrofoam block, were dusted under running water, left to dry on the drainboard, then bundled back into an old florist’s box and returned to their crypt in the basement, as vivid and ever-living as Dracula.

Then out to the garage for the Styrofoam Presidents Lincoln and Washington in their polyester winding cloth, swinging from the spanners like primitive tree burials. Along with them came embalmed foliage – whatever she could assemble that was red, white and blue.

She had the routine down pat: take the step ladder from its hooks by the window; mount three steps; un-twist the wire holding the bundle to the two-by-four; twitch her nose against the dust; lower the package and herself carefully down three steps; rest the bundle on the hood of the car; put the ladder back on its rack. Then scoop up the prize and scuttle away with it to her living room bay window like a spider with a fresh fly – all very neat and tidy.

Of course, with so many different themes, she needed lots of containers. At first, she just crowded them on top of the refrigerator, but then one fell off and broke and that led to the complete emptying-out and repainting of the old butler’s pantry to keep them safe and display them better. Then, slowly and insidiously, they began consuming the canning shelves in the basement.

Larry called it
The Invasion of the House-eating Vase Creatures
. He said all those open mouths gave him the creeps.

They came from garage sales, the Salvation Army, Wal-Mart, her friends’ gift rejects, and mail order catalogues. They were tall, squat, elegant, cozy, shiny, matte, plain white, brightly colored, patterned, wide-mouthed, narrow-mouthed, metal, porcelain, pottery, wood, plastic and basketry. Each one was tawdry and uneventful in its own right, but as a collection they assumed gravity and power. In combination with the flowers and the enormity of the holidays they took on the grandeur of sacred relics.

So it was only right, a matter of religious virtue, when Betty refused to let her husband’s departure from her life dissuade her from her mission.

One day, Larry just couldn’t take it anymore. He was upset because he couldn’t reach his fishing pole without moving a bale of hot pink spider mums she’d found at a discount store for pennies. And that was that. He threw his shorts and socks in a brown paper grocery bag, slung his shirts over his elbow and left.

But Betty wasn’t alarmed. She knew it was the Universe telling her that he wasn’t the right one. Flowers trump fishing poles, cosmically. Everyone knows that. Besides, Betty was sure – at first – that he would come back, even though Madame Zola was dubious.

It wasn’t long before her 10-year old, Sam, speaking from the banana seat of his half-sized bike, said in his soft, squeaky voice, “I think I’m gonna go live with Dad.”

This occasioned another departure, somewhat more majestic than Larry’s, of trucks and balls, bedding, chest of drawers, even the rug – although Betty knew he’d soon be rejecting it with its motif of Teddy bears frolicking – all carried out by Larry, a couple of his drinking buddies, and a bevy of neighborhood youngsters as sober and fastidious as a sultan’s slaves.

This hurt, there was no denying it. To keep herself from flying to pieces, she turned Sam’s room into her studio, a kind of Holy of Holies, and started making flower arrangements for every room of the house.

Not long after that, her 16-year old, Serena, opened the door to her bedroom, shrieking, “If you ever put another of these fucking things in here, I’ll kill myself!” and lofted a basket of plastic forget-me-nots into the hall.

She slammed her door. The bouquet smashed against the far wall, but nothing was broken. There was no water to mop up, no dirt spilled, no broken stems. Betty just scooped it up from the carpet, flounced it all back together again and took it into the master bedroom and wedged it onto the nightstand between the alarm clock and the box of Kleenex.

A few weeks after that, she smelled a weird smell in the hall. She sniffed around and it seemed to be coming from Serena’s room. Getting down on hands and knees, she put her nose under Serena’s door. For sure, the source of that smell was behind it somewhere. Betty didn’t want to intrude on Serena’s precious privacy, but that smell...

She knelt in front of the door like a penitent, trying the knob. It was locked.

She went to the kitchen and found an ice pick; got her reading glasses; knelt again, this time as focused as a safe-cracker; leaned close, took aim, inserted the ice pick in the lock and jiggled it around. The pin sprang back with a little thump and she was in.

Betty opened the door and shuffled forward, still on her knees. How long had it been since she’d seen Serena? Was that basket of pink peonies on her toilet too much? Had it pushed her over the edge, even though they weren’t, technically, in her bedroom?

She floundered into the room, sniffing as she went, anxious for sight of her, thinking,
Did I make her breakfast this morning? Or was that yesterday?

All she could remember was Serena snarling at her, “This place sucks.”

Was that today? Wednesday?

There was her bed, unmade of course. Betty struggled toward it through drifts of dirty clothes like a snow shoer in deep powder. She groped around in the sheets and cast-off clothing.

No. There didn’t seem to be any bodies buried underneath.

But the smell! The smell...

Her eyes darted around: a huge pile of movie magazines on a chair; the desk, stratified like an archeological dig with papers, books, print-outs, notebooks, clothes, rat-tailed combs, used dental floss, what might be a dirty pillowcase...

And then she spied it; the metal cage on the dresser under a pile of flung clothing! And little furry bodies, plump and slow, clinging to the bars, running frantically on a metal wheel or asleep in piles.

What in God’s name were they? Whatever kind of creature they were, they – they! – were the source of the smell in Betty’s house!

And lots of them! Lots and lots and
lots
of them!

“Just an aside – I don’t often say a thing like that, ‘in God’s name.’ I think it’s blasphemous. I was raised by God-fearing parents who never uttered an oath in their lives – well, almost.

“I do remember my father watching TV when Nixon resigned and him saying, ‘The damned Communists have finally won!’

“I didn’t really know what he meant at the time. I just remember being shocked that he would swear right there in the front room in front of Momma and me.

“I remember Momma swatting him on the thigh and hissing, ‘Judd! Hush!’ and throwing a look in my direction.

“But Daddy just said it again. ‘I mean it! The damned Communists have finally won!’ And then he got up, took his coat off the hook by the front door and went out.

“I heard the car starting in the driveway and saw the look on Momma’s face; a burning red blush and the shame in her eyes.

“That was the only time I ever heard swearing in my home, growing up. It seems to me that young people are irreverent nowadays. It’s
f___
this, and
screw
that, and Jesus’ name attached to everything but what it should be.”

Betty used to like going to church on Sundays as a child. There was a nice, quiet atmosphere, somber and special, and always a fresh bouquet on the altar. It wasn’t until she was about seven or eight that she realized that she’d seen some of those bouquets before, and maybe that’s when her passion for fake flowers was born.

They get confused in her mind with organ music and old hymns and that smell church had – maybe some kind of cleaning agents, wood polish, the old paper and soft leather of the hymnals, and probably the mixture of different colognes worn by the congregation.

At Christmas, they had green candles on the pulpit, short, fat ones, and the place smelled of cedar and cinnamon. Betty always associates those smells with the Holy Ghost, like His epiphany is heralded by smells of the holidays.

She buys those same candles now for Christmas, and along with the lights on the tree – which of course doesn’t smell because it’s plastic – they make her house fill up with some of that holy energy she used to experience in church.

Nowadays, she doesn’t know if there is a God, but she she hopes there is and wishes He were as easy to contact as those candles are to buy. She could use Him right about now, with this thing with Serena.

She doesn’t know what to do, really, and she wishes He could at least send an angel or something to clue her in. Wouldn’t you think that with all the churches there are in Los Angeles and all the candles burned – look at the Catholics, alone – and all the pretty flower arrangements, that the Holy Ghost maybe would come every few months, at least, on some kind of regular round, like a circuit rider?

She just wants the others to understand that she had a solid religious upbringing, even though Heddi says she’s transferred her religious function onto flowers and forgotten about God:

Heddi leans back in her office chair, the soft light off the ocean playing across her elegant face, and says, “The gods choose their moments to intervene. You’re in an ages-old situation, Betty, the very nature of which is meant to stir you to the depths until you remember the gods.”

“Well, for one thing, is it God or gods?” Betty asks in pique. “Sometimes, I think it’s you, Heddi, who’s confused! And what have the gods got to do with Serena, anyway?”

So Heddi has her go over the incident that was the turning point with Serena one more time.

That afternoon, at the hour for Serena to return from summer school, Betty sits on the couch in the living room, composing herself.

The arrangement in the bay window, a huge burst of silk sunflowers, honors Summer. One of her splurges, silk. Not quite as durable as plastic but more lifelike.

The afternoon sun slants in and the sunflowers blaze, proclaiming Summer, and Betty sits, wondering how she’s going to keep her last remaining family member from running screaming from the house, when she announces that really, definitely, the Creatures have to go.

What in heaven’s name are they?
she practices saying.
Rats? Gerbils? Hamsters? How did they get here? Take them back. Take them back where they came from. We can’t have them in this house.

She can see Serena’s face, so plump and pink, with her brown hair lying tight against her skull like a helmet.
Pull your hair back,
Betty’s always telling her.
You’ve got such a pretty face. Don’t hide it. Wear some eye makeup. Wear some barrettes.

And Serena always giving her that poisonous look, the one that says she wishes Betty was dead.

Whether it’s hair or hamsters, Serena’s not going to capitulate. Betty can feel it in her bones.

How can this child of a neat, clean home that celebrates Beauty be so involved in dirt and disorder? Is that what Heddi means when she talks about family members having to live out parts of Betty’s unlived Shadow? She notices her hands in her lap; her fingers are laced and balled together like hibernating worms. The tips are white from tension. She looks at the clock. My God! It’s 5:30! She’s missed Oprah! She’s that upset!

And still no Serena.

She can hear the grandfather clock ticking in the family room. It’s a nice room, with turned maple furniture she inherited from her grandmother and beaded board wainscoting with wallpaper above, a tiny floral, and a matching border at ceiling level. The TV’s in there, with an arrangement of coral roses on top. It’s a nice room. It’s just that there’s no family there to enjoy it.

It’s 9:30 before Serena finally unlocks the front door. Betty is standing there, ready to say – what? She’s almost speechless by this time.

Serena throws her one of those looks that says,
Don’t even
...
!
as she brushes past. And Betty stands there and can’t say a word.

There’s a space of about 15 seconds with nothing. Then the scream – a sound like some animal that’s both badly wounded and truly enraged.

Then instantly, she’s there in Betty’s face, in a fury.

“My room! You’ve been in my
room? You’ve fucking been in my room?!
”

Betty’s hands fly out on their own, as if possessed, and make vague dancing gestures in the air between them. They’re trying to explain, to ward off her rage, to placate and cajole.

“It was the smell...” she begins, feebly.

“What smell?” Serena screams.

“Of those...of those... They smell. I smelled them. From out in the hall.”

“No way! I clean the cage every day. No way, Mom. You had no right!”

“Well, you never asked. I mean, I didn’t know. Where... how...did you get them? Where did they
come
from?”

Betty is leaning against the hall wall now, her backside lodged against a little gold bracket holding a vase of pansies. She feels defeated, like a cornered rat with a terrier snarling at it.

“It’s none of your business,” Serena scowls.

“Now listen, young lady!” Betty bristles. “I think it
is
my business. This is
my
house too, you know, and I am your
mother!
”

“Yeah, right.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“Like, when? On alternate Tuesdays?” she asks in that
duh
voice that the girls have all cultivated; the
You’re So Dumb
inflection.

“I pay the
bills
here, young lady. I put the
food
on the table for you to eat.”

“Well,
yeah!
Duh!
Because Dad sends a support check every month. Because you kept the bank account and he took
nothing!
Big fuckin’ deal, Mom! Great White Hunter, Mom! Bringin’ home the bacon!”