Family Linen (17 page)

Mr. Constantine is folding up the instructions slowly, in eighths, placing them back in the envelope. He really does have a sense of drama, to be such a big lumpy person. He wipes his whole face with his white handkerchief. The air conditioner in the side window isn't doing too well; Sybill wonders if Myrtle and Don will have central air put in now. Probably. If they're putting in a pool and a patio and a wrap-around driveway, they'll have central air at the very least. Sybill runs her finger down the list in her hand, unobtrusively, she thinks, and looks up to see Arthur watching her. He doesn't even bother to look away. Arthur is just a ne'er-do-well, Sybill thinks, a living example of somebody who hasn't lived up to his potential. Arthur makes Sybill so nervous, though, staring at her like this, like there's something wrong with
her
instead of him, like she's got a terrible disease instead of a memory, like she's got herpes or AIDS.

* * *

A disease which has been, of late, on Arthur's mind. It's just hit the news, 1,641 victims as of last week, 644 deaths since it was first identified. Even Arthur has got to admit it is worse than despair, more quickly terminal, even though everything is terminal these days, finally. It makes him glad he's not gay. Arthur used to wish he was gay, sometimes, anything to be delivered from total enthrallment to women, from following his cock to hell and back, a trip he's often made. But he couldn't stand the idea of fag clothes or going to antique shows, not to mention what else they do. Still, it's serious. It's a serious time in this country when sex will make you sick, AIDS or herpes, gay or straight, take your pick, both incurable.

Arthur is sure that Mrs. Palucci does not have AIDS, and doubts that she has herpes. He has not called her yet, not wishing to act with unseemly haste. But he has driven by her house five or six times, and approves of it. Mrs. Palucci's house is neat but not too neat, a plain small brick house not far from his mother's, in fact, in the old Pines subdivision off to the right at the bottom of the hill here, where the big pines used to be. Three times when he's driven by, there's been a five– or six-year-old kid out in the front yard, playing with the hose. Several times the kid has been standing in the driveway shooting the hose straight down into the gravelly dirt at his feet and making the water spew back enormously, a wonderful filthy fountain all over himself. Arthur likes his looks. He thinks it's good that Mrs. Palucci has such a kid. Arthur's assuming that Mrs. Palucci is a single woman, based on this instinct he has. Still, he's happy that no Mr. Palucci has appeared in an undershirt on a lawn chair. Mrs. Palucci has a daughter too, or apparently; a pretty young thing with a low black ponytail comes and goes, driven around in cars by boys. Mrs. Palucci herself drives a big blue Buick convertible, proving her to be—as if Arthur ever doubted it—a woman of discernment and spunk. The only fly in this ointment at all is the presence of an apparent mother in the house, or at least Arthur thinks she's a mother. He figures that Mrs. Palucci needs all the help she can get, taking care of her wild little son while she goes to work, but this mother is ridiculous, Arthur's only seen her twice, and both times she was wearing a shower cap. The first time, she was standing in the front door wearing the shower cap, and a bathrobe, and yelling at her grandson in the driveway with the hose. The second time, she was sitting on the front steps wearing a different bathrobe, but the same shower cap, and eating a piece of pie. This was red pie, and looked like it might be strawberry pie from Shoney's, one of Arthur's favorites. Still, Arthur wishes he would be interested in a single woman with no children and no mother, a woman who lives in a little loft someplace with a skylight, who eats breakfast at all hours of the day, exotic egg dishes, and wants to fuck at the drop of a hat. There are bound to be some women around like that, like the women in the Paco Rabanne ads. In fact, Arthur used to know some women like that, in Florida. But he has probably aged out of this group. And don't forget they've all got herpes now, anyway.

Mrs. Palucci's house is far too well-kept for her to have herpes, and besides, she's a nurse. Nurses keep Lysol in every room, Arthur thinks, plus pretty little containers of it in their purses. Arthur is waiting until the time is ripe, to call upon Mrs. Palucci. Women like Sybill, he's thinking, such women with no children and no boyfriends often have a gleam in their eye which means trouble, indicating an immense interest in being right. Sybill has such a gleam. Better to have mothers in shower caps and little boys with hoses than an immense interest in being right. Arthur stares at Sybill. As far as he's concerned, she might as well be from Mars, he understands so little of what makes her tick. Still, she's a lot like Mother. She's starting to
look
a lot like Mother, too. Again he remembers Miss Elizabeth standing at the door in the pearly spring dawn, saying, “Arthur, where have you been?” She was so tired-looking, so pale, that her face in retrospect appears pale blue. Where
had
he been, anyway? Probably out with the Hot Licks, chasing girls.

“Come on, Arthur,” says Dr. Don. Apparently he's been standing there awhile, by Arthur's chair.

“I guess I've been in what you might call a reverie, Doc,” says Arthur.

“I guess you have,” says Don. “Let's go upstairs, why don't we, and see if there's not something you can use.”

“Such as what?” Arthur does not want to participate in this grabbing of objects, not a bit, this greedy ghoulish parceling out of his mother's things. He's only here at all because Don and Mr. Constantine told him he had to be, or the others wouldn't be able to do it, and claim what they wanted.

“The stuff I want is ephemeral, Doc,” Arthur says.

“Well, that's true for most of us,” Dr. Don says, steering Arthur toward the stairs. “But a sports coat is not a bad thing.”

Myrtle, looking distracted, flies down the stairs as they go up. “Sybill wants the flat silver!” she announces in obvious exasperation.

“Draw straws,” says Arthur. “Play hot potato.”

* * *

“Ooh!” Myrtle rushes on, then halts on the landing. “You know that's not such a bad idea,” she says, looking back at them. “I
do
want that cranberry glass globe,” she adds then, noticing the hanging fixture in the stairwell as if for the first time. Arthur and Don are laughing. A strange kind of giddiness seems to be taking over. It's the
strain
, Myrtle thinks, distracted, we've all been under such a
strain
—what with Mother dying, and then Sybill's accusations . . . Myrtle refuses to think about Sybill's accusations at all, or about this bulldozer which has just started up down there at the bottom of the hill. She will put the bulldozer right out of her head and not mention it once. Nobody will mention it, and then they can gently say to Sybill, “Okay, look, honey. There's nothing there,” and Sybill can seek appropriate treatment, as Don said. Oh, he's right, he's right. He's always right. It's best to resolve it once and for all, to leave no stone unturned, no questions unanswered, while the family is still together. Besides, it really will be nice to have a pool. Don says pools are easy now, all you do is dig a hole and then the people come and pour something in it. Don says we'll be swimming in two weeks. The phone starts to ring. “Oooh!” Myrtle says, pulling a stepladder over so she can reach the dangling rose globe to affix a sticker to it. “Can you get the phone, honey?” she calls up to Don, who picks it up at the top of the stairs.

It's Jack, again.

“Lacy,” Don calls.

* * *

Lacy gets up from the dresser in the bedroom where she's going through Miss Elizabeth's jewelry, which turns out to be all fake anyway, lots of it probably from the dimestore although you couldn't tell it, she looked so elegant always—Lacy comes to stand in the bedroom door, eyebrows raised in a question.

“Yes,” Don says to her.

Lacy shakes her head, moving toward the telephone. Don and Arthur are grinning at her.

“Jack, we're all real busy over here,” she says into the receiver. “I told you not to call anymore.”

Jack has been at the Ramada Inn since Tuesday, the day after the funeral, having left Bill with his girlfriend Susan. He says he'd just like to talk things over with Lacy, who would not like to do this at all.

“It must be exhausting,” Jack says to her brightly, over the wire. “How about dinner later? You call me when you're through there—and then maybe a movie?
Flashdance
is on in Buncoe.”

“Oh honestly, Jack! Go home!” Lacy slams down the receiver.

“What'd he say this time?” Dr. Don is amused. He never liked Jack particularly anyway, finding him supercilious, so far above the concerns of the skin.

“He wants me to go see
Flashdance
.” Lacy makes a face, and Arthur begins to laugh.

“I hear it's not bad,” Don says.

Behind Lacy, in the bedroom, Kate and Theresa start singing “What a Feeling,” and Lacy swats at Kate. “That's your father you're making fun of,” Lacy says, and Kate says, “So?” Kate and Theresa hold on to each other's shoulders and try out some cancan kicks, still giggling, but Lacy turns from her daughter and goes to stand for a moment at the window, staring out at the patches of phlox like brilliant blue scatter-rugs drying in the long grass which stops at the treeline.

Now Sybill and Candy are flipping for the spool bedroom suite, which Sybill wants very badly although she'll have to store it, and which Candy does not want at all but thinks might be nice for Tammy Lee to have, or Tony if he ever marries. “Heads,” Candy says. “It's
tails!
” shrieks Sybill. “I get it!” Sybill thinks this is a lot like “The Price Is Right.”

“Then you take the pineapple bed,” Myrtle says to Candy.

Candy nods, biting her lip. Tammy Lee, who is artistic, would like the pineapple bed.

“Well, I want the cedar chest,” Sybill says, consulting, again, her list.

“What cedar chest?” Candy asks.

“The one in the guest bedroom, it's mine anyway. Mother said to me one time, I distinctly remember, she said, ‘Sybill, you can have that for your hope chest.' ”

“I find that ironic,” Theresa says pointedly, to nobody in particular, as she goes to answer the phone.

Which is for Lacy again. It's Jack, asking if she'd like to go see
Trading Places
. “Eddie Murphy's in it, playing a stockbroker,” he says. “It's like an update of
The Prince and the Pauper
. Come on, it might relax you.”

“I
know
Eddie Murphy is in it,” Lacy says. “Dan Ackroyd's in it, too, and I don't need to relax. Now leave me alone, Jack.”

Kate and Theresa link arms, singing “Every breath you take, every step you make, I'll be watching you.”

“You really ought to be more serious about all of this,” Lacy says to them severely. “You'll probably want some of these things in years to come, when you have children and houses of your own.”

“Not me,” Theresa says. “I'm never going to get married or keep house. I'm going to raise all my own vegetables and have lots and lots of lovers.” Theresa's pale blond hair swings back and forth as she and Kate continue to kick, one-two-
three!
like chorus girls.

“Whoa now,” says Arthur. He and Dr. Don stand in the hall laughing.

“Every breath you
take
, every step you
make
, I'll be
watching
you!” the girls sing, kicking. They've changed the tune. Everything's changing, Arthur thinks. Boy George wears makeup and Mother is dead.

“Go on now, all of you,” Lacy says. Lacy looks harassed.

“I'll be watching
you!
I'll be watching
you!
” The girls kick and sing, out on the landing. Down below, Myrtle descends from her stepladder to deal with Sybill.

“I don't think we should break up the set.” Sybill refers to the dining-room chairs.

The phone rings, and rings again, but nobody answers. Everyone knows who it is.

“Have you seen
Star Wars?
” asks Kate. This cracks them up.

“I wish you all would just
hush!
” Myrtle throws this up the stairwell to the girls.

“Have you seen
Gone With the Wind?
” giggles Kate.

Lacy shoos them down the steps and shuts the door. Through the wall she can hear, or almost hear, Don and Arthur, going through the men's clothes in the closet where her mother put them—Jewell Rife's from long ago, her daddy's from ten years back. If any clothes are left there now—Lacy remembers her mother trying to press them on Jack, and then of course there's the PTA thrift box—somehow, the thought of poor people all over town wearing her father's clothes makes Lacy infinitely sad. As does the thought of her husband Jack, who is behaving so badly—or strangely, at least. As does her mother's jewelry—only the rings were real. The thing of it is, Mother never appeared in public without being thoroughly turned out: the blue curls in place, the stockings, heels, the earrings and matching necklace. These ensembles were so impressive that everyone assumed the jewels were real, or at the very least, good costume jewelry. Lacy locks the door. Then she seats herself at the dressing table. She affixes large pearl earrings to her ears, a pearl brooch at the center of her T-shirt. She picks up vial after vial of perfume, sniffing. There was a particular way her mother smelled in later years, first it was lilacs, but later, it was something else, something—she can't quite get it, but that's close: Estée Lauder and loose powder, old age. Lacy narrows her eyes and looks at herself in the pier glass mirror. Who's getting the pier glass mirror? Lacy can see her mother in herself already, the way the flesh droops a bit at the sides of the mouth, the mouth itself, a perfectly symmetrical bow, the wide forehead with the vertical frown mark, just there, between the eyebrows, from reading. Reading too much will age you and make you crazy, just see what it's done to Jack. Lacy will look exactly like her mother, in thirty years. And then will she be able to remember the way she feels right now, or how she felt at the funeral or at the Piggly Wiggly, or how she felt the first time her lover took her to bed in his basement apartment on Stinson Street in Chapel Hill? Will she remember Kate doing a cancan on the day they split up her mother's things, Kate wearing a slouch hat? What will she recall?