Stages (40 page)

“I think the quiet would be more appropriate,” she said.

The visiting hours were to be from four to seven that day, and the funeral itself would be held the next morning, at eleven. Her father’s body would be ready late in the afternoon, and Malcolm wanted her to see him first, around three-thirty. Melanie came back to the funeral home at three-thirty precisely. Her father had always made a point of punctuality. He’d always said that he didn’t want to be referred to as “the late Andrew Chisolm.”

To Melanie, her father looked like himself in death, only whiter. The absolute stillness of him was disturbing; there was no illusion of life, you couldn’t be fooled for a second, the way you could by a figure in a wax museum.

“He looks all right, I guess,” Melanie said. She remembered Aunt Edith at her grandmother’s funeral, saying, “That doesn’t look like her at all” and indignantly wiping the excess rouge off the dead woman’s cheeks with her handkerchief.

For the visiting hours, Melanie had put on a gray suit and a cameo that had been her mother’s. Half a dozen bouquets had arrived, and they had been placed around the casket. The flowers didn’t have any scent. Melanie sat down on the edge of a folding chair and looked at her father. His nose could have been carved from bone. His eyelids looked as though someone had pressed his fingers into them.

“If you need anything,” Malcolm said, “I’ll be in the front.”

“Thanks,” said Melanie. “I think I’ll be okay.”

As she sat there, alone, thoughts she had avoided crept up. Her father had always been an overwhelming presence, a tree against the sky, immovable, solid, always
there.
He’d been a benevolent stranger who’d noticed her now and then, and been kind. Had he been different, had he been a real father to her…but, Melanie thought, that’s like asking yourself,
What if I hadn’t been me?

At five after four, the Sousas, husband and wife, arrived. Mrs. Sousa hugged Melanie. She smelled as she always had, like her kitchen. Phil was wearing a tie that looked out of its element, which was the bureau drawer. Right after the Sousas, Avery from the hardware store and Sam from the gas station came in, accompanied by their wives.

“They don’t make ’em like that anymore,” said Sam, with a respectful glance at the body. “That man paid his bills faster than anybody I’ve ever known.”

“He was a gentleman’s gentleman,” Avery agreed.

“He’d tip the attendant a dollar every time he filled up,” Sam said. “How many people think to tip a gas station attendant?”

“Respect,” Mrs. Sousa said. “He had respect for everybody, and people respected him. We won’t see anyone like him around here again.”

“I’m glad to know that people liked him,” Melanie said. She was avoiding looking at the coffin.

“He had class,” said Sam. “Real class. There’s no real class anymore.”

“It’s a crazy world,” said Avery.

“What lovely flowers,” his wife added.

About a half hour after the little group of townspeople had left, two of Melanie’s father’s business associates walked in. They talked about how the three of them used to give the manager Charlie Little “a hell of a time” when they were having lunch at Locke-Ober’s.

“Yes, your father could keep up with the best of them,” the one with the cane said.

Although she had never seen that side of him, Melanie said, “I’m sure he could.”

The two men left, and minutes later a nervous young man with a crew cut and glasses arrived. He introduced himself as the manager of her father’s bank.

“I didn’t know my father had a bank,” Melanie said.

“He started it with a friend of his,” the young man explained. “They wanted to keep busy.”

The young man stayed for ten minutes trying to make polite conversation. Then he looked at his Seiko watch, which he apparently consulted on all matters, and said that he had to leave.

Melanie was alone again then, with the folding chairs, the flowers, and the open casket.

In the subdued light, the flowers looked faded. There was the quality of a still life about them. Melanie wondered how long the flowers had been in a florist’s refrigerator with the other cold flowers, waiting for weddings and deaths.

For some reason Melanie thought of Kathy talking about some ghoulish friend of hers who’d had a friend in high school who’d stuck herself in a vein with the wrist corsage she was supposed to wear to the junior prom. Melanie wished that Kathy was not on the West Coast.

The minutes ticked by. Melanie could hear her watch. She began looking in her pocketbook for something, and then couldn’t remember what it was she’d wanted.

She looked at her father’s heavy hands, placed one on top of the other on his chest.

Suddenly she began to cry. She felt hurt, terribly bitterly hurt, by life.

After a while, she stopped crying. What was the use?

She sat there in her folding chair, feeling small, helpless, and alone. Then she became aware of a presence in the room. She looked up. It was Mike Lange.

“How are you doing, Mel?” he asked.

Melanie rushed up to him. He held her, and she cried on his shoulder, trembling. When she’d calmed down, he sat beside her on one of the folding chairs. “How did you know about this?” Melanie asked.

“I was up visiting my mother,” Mike said. “She saw the notice in the paper.”

“You can’t know what this means to me,” Melanie said. “I felt…alone in the world, completely alone. You know how that feels?”

“Of course I do,” Mike replied. “I’m alone…about as often as I’m ever with somebody.”

“I thought you were with what’s his name—who was at Blake with us.”

“That’s on again, off again. A stable relationship, as gay relationships go.”

“I haven’t seen you in so long. It must be almost a year. You been doing any acting lately?”

“Only with TOSOS, you know, the gay group—that’s where my friends are.”

“That’s where my friends are too,” said Melanie with a sigh. “In some theater somewhere…putting on a play. My friends.
My family.
Theater people are the only friends I’ve got. Isn’t that a remarkable thing?’”

“Willy Loman,” said Mike.
“
Death of a Salesman,
act two.”

Melanie took Mike’s hand and clung to it.

“You’re never that alone,” she said, “if you know where you belong.”

64

Kathy hadn’t been able to get David out of her mind. When they’d parted that morning, in the parking lot of the Mercedes dealership, he’d said he was going to call, but he hadn’t yet, and it had been a month. Something was going on with him, she just knew it. But what could
she
do? Even if there was something she could do, why should she bother doing it—for old times’ sake? This was L.A.; you could be stupid out here, but not sentimental, and Kathy didn’t think of herself as either, not at this stage in her life.

She was beginning her day by looking at a new listing in Brentwood. In the office, the word on the owner of the property was that he was “eccentric.” Since his retirement Mr. Hankinson supposedly had been passing his time starting conversations with coeds in cafeterias in and around the UCLA campus. He was trying to keep active, evidently, as a dirty old man. He wanted to sell his house so he could move to Boulder, Colorado, and strike up some conversations there. Given Mr. Hankinson’s enthusiasms, Kathy was just as glad that he was going to be out all day. She had the keys and could wander about the house undisturbed.

Arriving at the address on her clipboard, Kathy slid out of her Mercedes and walked up to the front door. The house was a Colonial in the movie colony sense of the word: a Dutch door in the front and a lanai in the back. So. What did this place have in the way of selling points? Walking through the rooms, Kathy made checkmarks and notes on the standard form she had attached to her clipboard—kitchen, twenty by fifteen; dishwasher,
yes;
self-cleaning oven,
yes;
microwave,
yes;
frost-free refrigerator,
yes.
To that summary of the kitchen she added, “Custom-designed storage, Portuguese tiles on counters, Mexican tile floor,
truly a serious cook’s workspace!

Noting the mirrored wet bar in the living room and the working fireplace with the Victorian marble mantel, Kathy moved on to the study.
Bookshelves galore,
she wrote. There weren’t any books in them, though, she noticed. What were these, old
National Geographics?
Nope. They were girly magazines, that’s what they were. Tsk-tsking to herself, Kathy glanced at a couple of them.
Playboy. Penthouse. Hustler.
Going back to 1971, some of them. How could women allow themselves to be so…
what the?
Kathy stared at the centerfold.
Oh, my God,
she thought. But it was true.
It was her.
This was the face in the photos that David had pulled out of his wallet.
Becky.
Same face, same name,
same person.
The other pictures of her only confirmed it. And the text that accompanied them, talking about how she liked to take long walks in the evening.

Looking around—not that there was anyone at home to catch her (Kathy felt guilty about tearing recipes out of
McCall’s
in the dentist’s office)—she slipped the magazine into her pocketbook. She’d try to think what to do about this later. Meanwhile, she moved along quickly to the bedroom wing. Each bedroom had a full bath, good. And the master was supposed to have his-and-hers dressing rooms.

As she entered the master bedroom, Kathy noted the French doors that opened to the swimming pool. Although she was half distracted by what she’d just discovered, the copy still came to her automatically, and she jotted it down, “Fabulously sunstruck master bedroom with elegant French doors to terrace and pool.”

Then Kathy happened to notice, on the satin-covered, king-size, canopied bed, a pair of men’s blue boxer shorts, approximately size forty. And on the carpet were two Argyle socks, one a little distance from the other. There was a trail of clothing in fact, leading from the bed to what was obviously the bathroom door.

Uh-oh,
Kathy thought.

She hardly dared to look, but she did. In the mirrored doors of the closets she saw all she needed to see. The bathroom door was slightly ajar, and just inside it was a hand holding a penis.

Oh, shit,
thought Kathy.

65

Only in New England, stamping grounds of Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” and his wife Faith, could anyone have a lawyer named Mr. Justice, but that was the name of Melanie’s father’s lawyer. He had asked if she could meet with him at his office on a Monday morning, to discuss her father’s estate. It was now two weeks after the funeral, and Melanie was only too glad to be getting these matters taken care of, so she could go back to New York.

Mr. Justice’s office was full of law books and prints of classic cars (better than ambulances). Mr. Justice was a truly mild-mannered man, plump and smiling, and he offered Melanie a cup of tea, which she accepted just so she could sit there making genteel little clinking noises with her cup and saucer and pretend that she still was a part of the world of Marion and Mr. Justice and all the stuffy comforts and securities that they represented.

“Your father left things in
perfect
order,” Mr. Justice began.

“I’m not surprised,” Melanie said.

“The house, for example, he had in both your names—with the right of survivorship. That means that the house goes directly to you—with no inheritance taxes.”

“That’s good,” Melanie said. “I’d hate to have to start paying taxes. I never pay taxes. What I do is collect unemployment.”

“Well, you’ll have to pay some tax in the future, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Justice, looking down at the sheaf of papers on his desk. “On your income, if not on the estate.”

“What income?”

“From the stocks, the securities—not the municipals, of course—and the bank too. Most of the stocks and securities come directly to you too. Your father was holding them in trusteeship for you, technically. Really, I’ve never seen probate quite so soundly defeated as in this instance.”

“Will I be able to pay my rent in the city out of this ‘income’?”

“How much is your rent, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Three-fifty a month. It just went up twenty dollars.”

“Melanie, did your father ever discuss financial matters with you?”

“No, never. He told me if I ever needed money, to let him know. There’ve been times when I have needed it, but I always got by without having to go to him.”

“Well, then I imagine you’ll be a little surprised to learn that your father left a rather substantial estate. The current market value of the common stocks alone—they’re mostly blue chips—is over seven million dollars.”

The tea went in Melanie’s lap.

66

“Nice view, huh,” Johnny said.

“I love the beach,” Rebecca said. “All my life I’ve wanted a place on the beach, and now I’ve got one.”