The Bride of Catastrophe (51 page)

“To marriage!” Ma said, and we drank. I wondered if she remembered at all how she'd felt the day she was married, how fragile and full of hope.

“To family,” said Sylvie, with dreamy pleasure, gazing into Jesse's eyes as if he were a crystal ball. The phone rang and she went into the kitchen to pick it up.

“To the criminal justice system,” I said, and Ma laughed. Laughter was her saving strength.

“A husband in prison is worth two in the bush,” she said. She wiped the smile right off though when Sylvie came back to say it was Larry on the phone. “You can tell him I'm not here,” she said, with a grand hauteur.

“Ma,” Sylvie said.

“All right,” Ma said, “don't tell him anything. I'll just hang it up.” As she strode over to it, Sylvie put a hand out.

“Don't, Ma, he didn't mean any harm.” And Ma looked for a second as if she'd been struck.

“I'm not going to let him,” she said. “No, my father can reject me and your father can reject me and Dolly can reject me, but that is enough and I'm
not
going to take it from him too.”

“Ma,” Sylvie lowered her voice and clamped her hand over the receiver. “Ma, he stood you up, that's all. He didn't abandon you.”

“There comes a time,” my mother said magnificently.

Sylvie turned abruptly away from her. “She can't talk now, Larry,” she said. “She'll call you tomorrow, okay?” Then she thanked him—he must have congratulated her on the wedding, and then she said, yes, she'd love it if he dropped by the trailer sometime, it could get really lonely when you were home all alone with a baby. She was saying, “Don't worry, I'll take care of you,” and Ma's face receded into darkness as if she had glimpsed something over Sylvie's shoulder that had plunged her back into the world of fear and headache, the world she'd once thought my father would free her from, and then hoped he'd take with him when he left.

That world, where we all used to live with her—in which the man you loved so tenderly might secretly be a torturer—descended from a long line, a nation, even, of torturers, so your children may have torturer's genes. Ma's intuition told her there was a danger out there, that there was a pernicious thread to be pulled out of even the simplest, happy scene. But just as the worst of this registered on her face, a flashbulb went off.

“Gotcha!” Teddy said, and turned the camera on each of us in turn. “Like paparazzi!” he crowed. “Get together there, who knows when you'll all be together again?” he asked. “Maybe a funeral. Maybe Pop's funeral.”

Ma laughed enormously. “Next week, let's hope,” she said. And she'd loved my father once, so intensely, it seemed love was a magic power—a power to heal him, make him the whole strong man of her dreams.

“Back to Nubestos tomorrow,” Sylvie said. “God, it's dusty work. But you can't argue with all that money, under the table.”

“You'll get hurt,” I said, and I saw a quick smile flick over her face at my innocence—yes, indeed, how protected I had been, that I saw some chance that she might not get hurt.

“That's what they say, the experts,” she said, with an ironic little laugh, a new laugh for her. What could we know or guess of the world she lived in? But it was her own world, and real.

“Maybe you could go to school at night,” I tried. Where was she ever going to learn about the gun hanging over the mantelpiece and how it goes off in the end?

“Maybe,” she said, without interest. “You know,” she said then, “things are great with me, Beatrice. Jesse's so healthy and strong. I love my little trailer. I love my husband, and I'll finish this Nubestos thing and then get another job—it's not a problem. Fourteen months, that'll go by in no time, and then we'll be together, we'll go from there.”

Leave me alone
, she was saying. She was proud of her abilities—who'd have guessed, a year ago, that she could do so many things: mother a child, fix the plumbing, grow her garden, and go straight to the commissioner to get permission for the wedding she'd used to insist she'd never have? This was her life, and if its possibilities were shrunken, her future smaller—small as a trailer or a linen closet—there was nothing I could do. I felt that I was waving to her from a ship—that we'd grow more and more distant now until we couldn't see each other at all, until no one would guess anymore that we were sisters.

The champagne popped, the camera flashed, there were cries of excitement, mock fear, more hugging, and Ma waltzed little Jesse around the room. His bright eyes took in everything as they whirled; he was the centrifugal force around which something of our family might hold firm. Even in the worst of Ma's madness, Sylvie and I had known her love, and out of it, we'd begun to weave our own lives. I ought, in return, to “save” her, but I couldn't, though I might possibly keep my own balance if I stopped trying to carry them all on my great, manly shoulders.

And this thought, like most of my thoughts, led me back to Stetson. When you love someone, you think of them so intently, you might as well be praying. Dolly's fury kept Ma always in her mind, her infirmity would make sure Pop was never completely abandoned. Stetson—or Josip, the real part of Stetson—might be thinking of me now.

Which made me feel it was urgent, essential, that I speak to him right away. I had to tell him I loved him, in case he didn't know, in case he was lonely, uncertain, or sad. All the books I'd read in my life were boiling together into a great speech in which I'd tell him that it would be a crime against our own lives not to take the chance on each other, that I wouldn't give him up until I'd had a full tour of his life and knew what he murmured in his sleep and had gotten deeper under his skin than any needle could ever go. I thought how he'd looked in my eyes, how he stood with his arms just wide enough for me to walk into them … and how it seemed that when I did, I'd be walking back into the old house on that day we'd picked blackberries, with the jam bubbling in the pot and Ma blowing a wisp of hair out of her face, leaning back and laughing, as if every day from then on would be just that way.

I shut my eyes and made myself think of Lee and how I'd harmed her, trying to live out some notion of love from my dreams. Not again—at least not yet. The future was in my pocket, in the form of a key to the Oxford Branch Library. Like Sylvie's backyard farm, my work might give body to my parents' dream—so they'd have left a real legacy after all.

And that's it, that's all there ever is—the strands of the people you love, the way they weave through you. I thought of Stetson's spontaneous pirouette, Philippa's: “Beatrice, it's a beginning.” This was my substance, my wealth. And whatever I'd learn tomorrow; I had that too.

Acknowledgments

Frances Coady has been a brilliant reader, kind friend, and staunch ally. Without her uncanny insight, this book would not be.

 

Jennifer Carlson's generosity of time, interest, and enthusiasm have been wonderful things for me. I'd like to thank Reagan Arthur for her excellent taste, among other great qualities. Blessings on my friends who are ceaselessly supportive, especially Margaret Carroll and Tom Lindsay who read draft after draft; and on my husband Roger and daughter Marisa, who have been so patient and forbearing. For the unfailing grace and love of my own parents, sisters, and brothers, I am very, very grateful. And particularly I'd like to thank my mother for teaching me when to laugh: always.

Also by Heidi Jon Schmidt

Darling?

The Rose Thieves

THE BRIDE OF CATASTROPHE.
Copyright © 2003 by Heidi Jon Schmidt. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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First Edition: October 2003

eISBN 9781466886100

First eBook edition: October 2014