The Hurricane Sisters (2 page)

“Drink absinthe and smoke little fat cigarettes that smell like a sewer?” Skipper said and laughed.

“Exactly!” she said.

“Hush! I’m so proud of you,” I said. “I’m going to put this on a little stand on my fireplace mantel where I can see it every day!”

“Proud of whom? For what?”

It was the grating metallic voice of my daughter Liz and her husband, Clayton. They had arrived.

“I’m proud of my lovely granddaughter and you’re thirty minutes late, but who’s counting?”

“Sorry, Maisie, but happy birthday,” Clayton said. “I had a meeting out at Wild Dunes and traffic . . . well, you know, it’s terrible. Anyway, it’s my fault. Do we have a wine list?”

Clayton seated himself at the head of the table and Liz sat on his left, next to Ashley. Tyler handed the wine list to Clayton and put Ashley’s glass of wine in front of her. This left two vacant chairs on the opposite side of the table for my grandson, Ivy, and his mysterious business partner, James, whom we had yet to meet. They were flying in from San Francisco just for me!

“Mother?” Liz said in a low officious voice. “Actually, the reservation was for six o’clock. We’re on time.”

“No, it was not,” I said and wondered why Clayton took the blame if there was no guilt. But the truth about Clayton is that as aggressive as he was in his business, he was nearly completely passive with his family. He hated making waves, especially in public.

“Oh, who cares, Mom?” Ashley said. “What’s the difference?”

Before I could tell Liz emphatically that she was wrong, wrong, wrong, Ivy and James arrived, straight from the skies. They were staying with me that night and heaven only knows after that. Ivy looked like a male model, all smiles and hugs with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers for me. James was quite a bit older than Ivy and appeared to be Chinese. Everyone knows Asians are smarter than Caucasians so it was a relief to know Ivy had chosen his partner with his head. Ivy and James owned a men’s store in San Francisco called Ivy’s. I’ve been told it’s quite chic. And all you had to do was look at them to know it was wildly successful.

“Happy birthday, Maisie!” Ivy said and kissed my cheek.

Before we go any further, you have to know that Ivy is thus called because he is Clayton Bernard Waters IV. That’s the fourth. IV. Hence, Ivy. And he started calling himself that in the third grade, immune to the taunts of the other children. We knew then that he was, well, precocious.

“Oh, aren’t these beautiful? Thank you, sweetheart! And you must be James! How are you, dear?”

“Fine, Miss Maisie! Just fine! Happy birthday!”

James had lovely teeth and his eyeglass frames were very interesting. In fact I’d never seen anything like them. I didn’t ask for the sake of embarrassment. What if he had some sort of vision impairment? The poor dear man.

“And how was your trip?” I asked.

“Exhausting! All that nasty recycled air!” Ivy said. “Hello, Mother. Dad.”

Ivy kissed Liz with a dutiful peck and hugged his father briefly. There were pleasantries exchanged all around.

“Hey, Ashley River,” Ivy said to his sister. “Y’all? Say hello to James!”

Everyone did.

“That’s Miss Waters to you,” Ashley said giggling and stood, hugging him with affection. Then she hugged James, too. “I know I don’t know you, but down here we hug. Um, are you wearing Glass?”

I reached out to no avail to pull down the hem of her dress.

“That’s fine,” James said and hugged her back. “Yep. Just got ’em. They’re a test pair.”

“Ashley!” Liz exclaimed on seeing her daughter’s bottom.

Truly, she was showing too much, well, cheek. Ashley’s face flushed a bright shade of pink.

“Our friend did the colors. There’s a range of them,” Ivy said dramatically. “I think they make everyone look like a Glasshole.”

“
You’re
the Glasshole! I think they’re awesome! Stupid dress,” she said. She readjusted her hem and sat down again.

“Except that they are going to prove very useful for people with disabilities,” James said. “If someone is deaf, they’ll be able to read what someone else is saying to them in real time because it acts like a monitor and has voice recognition software.”

“How long are y’all staying?” I asked, not understanding one word he said.

What was this Glass thing? A new gadget? Gadgets were taking over the world!

“Just until Sunday morning and then we fly to New York for a few days,” Ivy said, taking a seat. “Does anyone think it’s possible to order a drink? I’m so parched! God, I hate flying commercial!”

“Just give the keys to the doorman when you leave,” Clayton said.

Apparently Ivy was staying in Liz and Clayton’s pied-à-terre in Manhattan. But what did Ivy mean, that he was used to private planes now? Had he won the lottery? Was James treating him to the high life? I have heard that some of these Asian families are extremely wealthy. Ivy began to drain the water glass at his place when our waiter reappeared. What was his name? Tony? No, Tyler! Tippecanoe and Tyler Too. Yes, I know that’s from way before my time but Lord, the games I had to play with my memory to make it work.

“Campari and soda with orange, please,” Ivy said.

“Just Pellegrino for me, thanks,” James said. “I’m going to wash my hands. Where’s the men’s room?” James removed his eyeglasses and handed them to Ivy. “Show Ashley how they work.”

“Good thing I’m on the way out,” I said, and everyone ignored me.

“You can follow me, sir,” our waiter, Tyler Too, said. “And I’ll get those drinks out for y’all right away. Did you choose the wine, sir?”

“No, I need a few minutes,” Clayton said without looking up.

As usual, Clayton was reading the wine list too slowly. I was convinced that this annoying habit of his was what drove Liz to vodka.

James walked away with Tippecanoe.

Then the first bomb of the night was launched across the bow.

“Is he just your
business
partner, son?” Clayton said quietly, without making eye contact.

“No, he isn’t. He’s my life partner.” Ivy put on the glasses. “Okay,” he said to Ashley, “I bob my head, and see that pink light?”

“Yeah,” Ashley said.

“Okay, Glass? Take a picture!”

There was a little click and somehow the eyeglasses took a picture.

“I can upload it to my iPad or e-mail it or whatever. I think it’s stupid,” Ivy said.

“Unless you need them,” Ashley said. “I guess?”

There was an awkward but brief silence while Liz continued to process Ivy’s response in regard to his relationship with James.

“Oh my God!” Liz said, gasping.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She completely disregarded my question and began to bluster until her hair was becoming as disheveled as her face was flushed. We were a family of blushers and blusterers.

“What
is
it, Mom?” Ashley asked.

“Well, how
old
is he, for one thing?” Liz said. She was now completely red in the face and neck.

“Fortyish,” Ivy said.

“Kept man,” Clayton mumbled, half chuckling.

“Hardly,” Ivy said. “I put in my sixty hours a week. At a minimum. Besides, half the business is mine.”

“I hope you have that in writing,” the ever-cautious Clayton said.

“Of course I do. Mother, what’s wrong?”

“He’s a . . . well, he’s
Asian
!” Liz said.

I wondered what the problem was. Skipper looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.

“So what?” Ashley said. “He’s gorgeous!”

“Hands off, but thank you,” Ivy said and laughed. “Yes, he’s from
the
Chen family of Hong Kong and he’s the most wonderful, thoughtful, and generous person I have ever met. Doesn’t that count?”

“You couldn’t find a nice white Episcopalian man?” Liz said. “Why are you so complicated? Do you expect us to throw you a wedding now?”

“Um, nooooo,” Ivy said.

“Get a grip, sister,” I said to Liz, thinking, You don’t have that many friends. “It’s 2012.”

“Um, Maisie, actually it’s 2013,” Ivy said in a whisper.

“It is?” I nearly fainted. “Wait! Yes, of course it is! Hold the phone! Does that make me eighty-one?”

“No, you’re still eighty, Mother,” Liz said, rolling her eyes.

I ignored her.

“She’s right, Maisie,” Skipper said. “I just did the math.”

“How do you like that? I just gained a year! This is the best birthday I’ve ever had! Well, so far.”

“So you’re out there in California just having a gay time with James who wears Glass?” Liz said.

“Oh, please,” Ashley said. “Here we go. Maybe we should be glad he doesn’t care we’re
not
Asian.”

Although we had decades of confirmation, Liz had yet to reconcile with the facts, always hoping against hope that Ivy would meet a nice girl with Herculean powers of persuasion.

Ivy turned to Liz. “Mother, you
do
know that five percent of the entire population is gay and almost thirty percent of the population around San Francisco is gay? Including Asians.”

“Of the entire population of the United States? That’s crazy. I don’t buy that for one minute,” Clayton said.

It was rare for Clayton to be so insistent.

“Neither do I!” Liz said and fumbled for her purse.

“What are you doing?” Ashley said.

“I’m going to ask Siri!” Liz said.

“Who’s Siri?” I said.

“Siri is this teeny tiny woman from California who lives inside Mother’s phone,” Ivy said, laughing. “She’s like the great and terrible Oz.”

“Another know-it-all,” I said. “Just what the world needs. Siri and Glass.”

“Watch,” Ivy said. “They’re going to send me back to conversion camp.”

“Horrible. Anyway, you’re too old for camp,” Ashley said in a somber voice.

I remembered that painful summer when Liz and Clayton sent young, flamboyant Ivy singing all the songs from
West Side Story
off to some camp that promised to send him home quiet and straight, begging to become a steady and reliable CPA or something. Years of therapy followed. That camp had become a taboo subject and we did not speak of it. So occasionally Ivy saw fit to sort of stick it to Liz and Clayton and who could blame him? Stick away, baby!

I watched while Liz and Clayton fooled around with their phones until some very weird female voice verified Ivy’s claim and then they sat back absolutely deflated as though another space-age gadget had just sucked every last ounce of air out of them.

“Astonishing! Who knew?” Liz said dryly, shaking her head. “Maybe I’ll have a Stoli with a twist, Clayton. By the time you finish reading that wine list, it’ll be Christmas.”

“Did you say,
please, dear, order a drink for me
?” Clayton said, sighing, and he slipped his phone back into the pocket of his jacket. He looked at Ivy. “I’m impressed. You could go to work for the Bureau of Vital Statistics.”

“Truly,” Ivy said.

“Please, Clayton,
please
order a Stoli with a twist for me?” Liz said.

Clayton raised his eyes and scanned the room looking for our waiter, gaining his attention with a nod. The vodka was ordered without one iota of concern for replenishing the drinks of the rest of the table. I have never ordered a third martini in my whole life, but someone could’ve asked. It was, after all, my eightieth birthday. And I wasn’t driving.

James returned to the table, Clayton finally chose the wine, Liz drank her first cocktail, then another, and finally we all ordered dinner. The mood had shifted. Liz kept biting her lower lip and staring at James, then quickly averting her eyes, causing him to squirm. She knew it was the height of all bad manners to make your guests feel uncomfortable. She made me want to reach out and give the inside of her arm a good pinch. Then Ivy noticed James squirming like a little worm, figured out why, and became irritable. Clayton was chatting like a magpie with Ivy about Ashley’s continued financial dependency, which irritated Ivy.

“She’s still out on the island living in our beach house with her friend for the mere price of the utilities,” Clayton said for everyone at our table to hear, including Ashley. “She could still live at home. Then her mother wouldn’t be so lonely.”

“I’m in the room, Dad,” Ashley said.

“Hush, dear! The whole restaurant can hear you!” I said.

“Well, it’s harder for kids today, Dad,” Ivy said.

Clayton harrumphed. Ivy looked at his father with a very stern expression. I could see his annoyance boiling up to the surface.

“I guess it
is
hard if you take a job for eight dollars an hour,” Clayton added.

“Ten,” Ashley said and no one seemed to care.

“My housekeeper makes twenty dollars an hour scrubbing our toilets,” Liz said.

Ashley was now completely mortified and struggled to maintain her conversation with Skipper about his llamas, one in particular he named Maisie as a birthday gift to me. It was just so wrong that Clayton and Liz denied their only daughter so much. They should at least give her some respect, especially in front of James, whom they didn’t even know.

“Yeah, boy,” Skipper said. “Maisie the llama is almost as pretty as your grandmother, as llamas go, that is. She has beautiful eyes and she can bat those lashes of hers like a movie star.”

“Don’t llamas spit?” Ivy said.

“Sometimes. But a llama is a great gift for the woman who has everything,” Ashley said.

“She’s darling,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“I’d love to see a picture,” Ivy said.

“She could be a calendar girl,” I said.

Now Ivy laughed and repeated to James what I’d said and James laughed too. Lighten mood—check.

“I wonder if she’s ever going to get a
real
job,” Liz said.

“I
do
have a real job,” Ashley said and looked to James. “Don’t you love our family?”

James was now thoroughly uncomfortable. Ivy’s good humor faded right in front of me. Boy, these two were awfully moody.

“Mother? What is the
matter
with y’all? You and Dad are just determined to peck everyone to death, aren’t you? Like a bunch of chickens!” Ivy said. “Ashley’s your
daughter
!
And
she’s a fabulous painter. Why don’t you and Dad climb off her back for five minutes?”