Magnificence (13 page)

“Whoa,” said Tommy. “I’m getting a contact high.”

“Susie. I had no idea,” said Steve, as though he’d stepped into a bordello.

“What can I say,” said Susan, cheerfully. “It’s California.”

“But Mother Earth, she heals them,” croaked Sal, head rocking, “By sending them to Hell . . .”

She would report to Casey: the possible benefits of wheelchairs were outweighed by the costs.

“Let me get you some drinks,” she persevered, and went toward the cousins, leaving Sal and the others behind.

“This place is like that Haunted House ride at Disneyland,” said Tommy. “Do you have one of those elevators where the pictures on the walls stretch out?”

She realized suddenly that she must not have seen him in years. He had thick eyebrows that met in the middle and cheekbones with a spray of acne. A show of affection was clearly called for, so she held out her arms and smiled.

“Tommy,” she said, and embraced him, remembering as she drew close and smelled his strong deodorant that he was the one his father was proud of. Unlike the unfortunate art student, or whatever the other kid was. “The prodigal engineer.”

He let himself be embraced but barely participated. She pulled back and noticed he was unsmiling.

The father, at least, could be plied with spirits.

“Would you like a cocktail? A beer? Please, follow me.”

She kept up a patter as they headed down the hallway toward the room with the bar.

“What kind of engineering program are you in? Civil?”

“Chemical,” he said. “Going into cement.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding, but despite casting around desperately could find nothing to say about this. Doubtless there were many people qualified to speak on the cement subject, but she was not among them. “Oh, I thought you were still a student.”

“Graduating in May. Early recruitment. Already got my first job lined up.”

“Congratulations!”

“Focus on GGBS.”

“GGBS?”

“Ground granulated blast-furnace slag.”

“Right outta college,” said Steven. “Six figures.”

“Wow,” she said.

At the end of the hall, in the darkness under a rhino head, Reg and Tony were kissing.

“Are those two
guys
?” asked Steven. “Making out?”

“It’s two
old
guys,” said Tommy.
“Whoa
.
”

She checked her impulse to comment and went through the dining room door ahead of them.

“So what can I get you, Tommy?”

“I need a strong one after that,” he said. “Gimme a vodka.
Man
. You got any Absolut Citron?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “We do have some mixers.”

“I’ll take a Bud,” said the father.

From behind the bar she could see Casey and Jim and some of her former neighbors outside. She missed them.

“Let’s get some fresh air, shall we?” she said, once both of them had their drinks in hand, and led them through the French doors.

“Hah-ey,” said Dewanne, smiling widely as they approached. She was a thrice-divorced Southern belle and more times than that cosmetically enhanced; she’d lived two houses down. She was also an avid catalog shopper, in a constant state of indignation at the perceived abuses of mail-order apparel companies. The indignation was a hobby. When they both had teenagers in high school—she was a housewife and Susan was substitute teaching—she would come over to the house in the late afternoon, a glass of white wine with ice cubes in her hand, and call 800 numbers to harangue operators about merchandise quality.

Susan had always liked her.

“Hi, Dewanne,” she said, and reached out to grab her hand.

“So who have we here? Introduce me to your cute friends, Susan.”

“My cousin Steven,” she said. “His son, Tommy.”

“Hey, Tommy,” said Casey. “Last time I saw you we hadn’t even hit puberty.”

“Hey, Casey,” said Tommy stiffly, but made no move in her direction.

“You were into
Star Trek
,” said Casey.

“I don’t remember that.”

“Denial is common. But I remember all too well. You always tried to give me a Vulcan nerve pinch.”

Tommy lifted his vodka and drank, projecting an aura of distrust.

“That was his geek period,” said Steven, and elbowed his son in the ribs.

“All in the distant past now,” said Casey, and grinned.

“He’s got a job in Portland cement!” said Susan.

“Ground granulated blast-furnace slag,” corrected Tommy.

“So, Tommy,” said Casey brightly. “Let’s catch up then, shall we? Come tell me all about that slag.”

She inclined her head toward a nearby table, and Tommy shuffled off after her with some reluctance.

“Hey, name’s Jim,” said Jim, and held out his hand to Steven.

“Sorry, how rude of me,” said Susan, and finished the round of introductions.

When Susan paid attention next Steven was saying to Dewanne, “So what are you, one of her teacher friends?”

“Just a neighbor,” said Dewanne. “From the old neighborhood. And what do you do, honey?”

“I run my own business. In programming.”

“Oh
my
,” said Dewanne.

She would leave the two of them alone, thought Susan, and Dewanne might win him over. Dewanne graciously liked everyone, even sleazebags.

But really, for the cousins, forget the guest list and the food selection; she should have cut straight to the chase and ordered up some working girls.

“You ready for a refill?” asked Jim.

“I’ll come with you.”

Better this way—better to leave her relatives with people who could stand them.

She and Jim slipped away for ten minutes, snuck into the room with the ducks and locked the door behind them. But then, in the yellow-green glow from the stained-glass lamps, in the drowsy aftermath of the pot, she drifted. She woke up later in the quiet and realized it, alarmed. She had fallen asleep. She sat up with a jolt. Damn it, she’d missed her own party.

The house was still beyond the door, the clock on the wall read 2:48. She had not meant to vanish. How inconsiderate, how wrong. Also, she’d screwed up the cousin thing. She felt panicky.

She got up and pulled her clothes on in a rush, the dress, the heels. The music was turned off, she thought, or she’d be hearing it. Her guests must all have left, gone to their homes. Some must have asked where she was, some must have felt ignored or irritated—but anyway she had to know, if there were any still here she had to go out there, play the hostess, take care of them.

She left Jim sleeping on his side, mouth agape on the pillow, opened the door and stepped out into the silent hall. A few lights were still on, here and there, but overall it was dim and on the edges of her vision she had an impression of orange and black shades in the rooms, great caves looming off to the sides, beer bottles on the tables, wineglasses on the windowsills. Ashtrays, empty food bowls on surfaces—how many guests had there been, after all? Thirty, she thought, thirty guests at the most, but now it looked like more, it looked like forty or fifty.

She passed the ballroom and saw the doors. They all stood open still and the drapes rushed out in rills when the breeze came up. It was a chill breeze now, in the small hours. She would close the doors, she thought, and went into the room. In the dimness she stepped across a trail of crackers, crumbling to powder underfoot, and walked toward the pool, visible through the line of doors with its wavering aqua light. She started to shut the doors and then thought she saw something outside, a movement in the back garden beyond the corner of the pool enclosure. For no good reason she thought of burglars, then chided herself for paranoia.

But someone was still here, she thought. Someone remained.

She went through the doors, planning what to say if it was Steve or Tommy—how to appear gracious and pretend she hadn’t retreated into a back room to get laid and then, stoned as a twelve-year-old on his first high, abandoned them. As though, somehow, she was controlled and prim. This was how she wished to appear in their eyes: someone who was responsible, grateful, and unduly burdened. Someone straight as a pin and fully deserving of their charity.

Give it up, she told herself, moving onto the patio.

Alternatively she could confess her guilt, make a clean breast of her character flaws and throw herself on their mercy. She went around the pool and opened the gate on the far side, heard it creak behind her and stepped out onto the path that led between the koi ponds and the willows. There were footlights along the pathways and she was glad of them. She stopped on the flagstones and listened. She thought she heard a whisper; she didn’t want to interrupt anything. But then—she stopped again, holding her breath—maybe it wasn’t intimate, maybe it was just talk.

Further along the path the bushes were closer beside her, there was less room to move, and the sound of her heels on the uneven stones seemed louder. She peered through the dark. There was a bench in the trees, back there, with footlights around it—a small paved area, one of the round wrought-iron tables, and she went toward it cautiously. There were shapes under the trees, near the bench—a wheelchair, facing her, more or less, and sitting in it a girl with long hair, her face down. For a second she thought it was Casey, before she knew it wasn’t.

It must be the college girl, she thought—still shocked, in the background of her recognition, that her own daughter was
not
a college girl, apparently would never be. It wasn’t Nancy, because Nancy’s hair was shorter. It had to be the younger girl, the one who had multiple sclerosis.

She was about to say something to her, was wracking her brain for the name, but then she blinked, her eyes nearly aching from the strain. She could make out another figure, on its knees, its head in the young woman’s lap. A man, must be. Because of the footlights she could see lower but not higher up—see the man’s bent legs, the vertical planes of the soles of his shoes, even their patterning, with the orange light from the sodium lamp shining onto the grooved rubber surface. She moved around to try to make him out, so the wheelchair was more in profile. But his head was down and she could not see his face. Indistinct sounds of choking. Was it sex? No: the man was crying, or sniveling at least, and the girl was speaking in low, consoling tones. They were drunk, or at least the man was drunk—the man was well on his way to wasted. The girl might not be drunk at all, as Susan recalled, she probably didn’t drink—her way of speaking had stutters and pauses, had slushy consonants—it was common with her disease, Casey had said. But the man slurred when he spoke, slurred and mumbled, and with him it was all drunkenness.

On a spying impulse she crept closer, screened from them by trees.

“It’ll be OK,” said the girl, and stroked the man’s head, comforting. Who was he? Not enough light. She couldn’t tell.

“One night you pet one,” he slurred, “and the next night you come in and you have to kill it.”

“You could change jobs,” said the girl, in her soft, halting way. “If it’s too hard.”

“There’s no one else to take it,” said the man, and raised his head. He was sobering up now, or had stopped sniveling, anyway. There was a branch in front of him and she couldn’t see his features. “Someone has to do it.”

“I’m sure they do . . .”

“There’s weeks when, though, I feel it’s all on me, like the whole thing is on
me
. You know?”

Susan hit her anklebone on something hard, winced and looked down. It was a round river rock at the edge of a pool—mounds of rocks, dry reeds white in the nighttime, the black water. The still, black pools: she felt such an affinity for them. Who knew what he was talking about, some kind of mass euthanasia of unwanted pets? And yet the information was being dispensed as though he was a hero: he was a noble caretaker, he was a suffering martyr in his euthanizing. Repulsive.

Beneath her the pool was peaceful, black and smooth. So tranquil was the pool: look at the pools, pretend the pool alone was real, its dark relief, simplicity. She would creep backward, if she could do it silently and without tripping—back away from the conversation. After all, if these two were still here, there could be other guests lingering. She might still be able to redeem herself, as a hostess. She should sweep the rooms and make sure. She started her retreat.

Quiet.

“You’re so pretty,” said the man more loudly, in a different tone. His words still ran together, but now he was projecting.

“Shh,” said the girl.

“Come on. Lemme—”

“No.”

“Your eyes are nice.”

“We’ll get you some water,” said the girl.

He was trying to force himself on her, pushing his face up to hers. Jesus, she thought, a guy who used dead dogs as foreplay.

It was a new one on her.

There was the sound of it, the flesh sound of arms or chests, of soft fronts blundering.

“Stand up,” said the girl firmly. “It’s alcohol. That’s all.”

A long moment and then the man stood up droopily.

“We’ll go inside,” said the girl. “We’ll get you some water.”

She reached for her handrims and Susan stepped back into a nook, back behind a bush—the rhododendron, thick and waxy. In a minute they went past her, the girl ahead in the chair, the man slowly following. She recognized him from behind: Addison.

Where was Nancy? Asleep, maybe. Sleeping girlfriend in a wheelchair, dying dogs. That was the strategy. He was golden.

When they had disappeared she stepped up to the pool again and stared down into it.

•

There were others, she discovered, but they were fast asleep. Casey was lying on one length of the L-shaped couch in the cat room, a blanket pulled over her up to the chin, and Nancy was asleep on the other length. Sal was there too, asleep nearby but still in his chair—snoring, his head back to expose the jut of his Adam’s apple. An annoying tinny beat issued forth from his Walkman earphones. She didn’t see Addison or the girl.

She walked across to Sal and stood there looming over him for a second, deliberating. After a moment she reached for the dull silver cassette player lying on his lap. She lifted it delicately, turned it sideways to study the row of buttons, and gently pushed the one marked
STOP
.