The Misfortunes of Others (3 page)

“No waste,” said Snooky, clearing the table in the kitchen and getting down to work.

“No waste?”

“Yes. Whatever the baby doesn’t like, Bernard will play with.”

Dinner, when Snooky finally served it an hour later, consisted of a Creole shrimp and rice dish (“I had this in a tiny little restaurant up in a tree house in the middle of a palm tree grove—good, isn’t it?”), a French bread which he had dug out of the freezer and drizzled with garlic, and a large eggplant which he had cooked, split down the middle and sprinkled with herbs. Maya ate one small portion of the shrimp dish, a few bites of the eggplant, and turned slightly green when offered the garlic bread.

“No garlic, thanks, Snooks. I’m not up to it. I have morning sickness all day long if I eat the wrong stuff.”

Snooky was penitent. “I didn’t think, Maya. I’m so sorry. It won’t happen again. Garlic, how stupid of me.”

Bernard happily consumed three large helpings of the shrimp casserole, most of the garlic bread and at least two-thirds of the eggplant. He said little. Bernard never did say
much, particularly at meals. Snooky passed him what remained of the bread.

“Finish it off, Bernard. Finish what you’ve begun. God, watch him eat, Maya.”

“I don’t like to watch anyone eat these days.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about putting on a lot of excess weight with your pregnancy, Missy. I don’t think you’ll get the chance. Who’s been cooking for you the last couple of months? Not Bernard?”

“Yes, Bernard,” said Bernard.

“Pitiful. What’s it been, Maya? Canned beans every night?”

“You underrate him, Snooky. You’ve always underrated him. Bernard can be quite a good cook, when called upon. He’s made me some delicious meals.”

“Oh, please. What does that mean? Scrambled eggs?”

“I make very good scrambled eggs.”

“Anyone can make very good scrambled eggs, Bernard. It doesn’t require any talent. What else have you served? TV dinners?”

Bernard bristled. “I wouldn’t serve Maya TV dinners. There are a number of things I make that are good. Things I learned how to make when I was living on my own.”

“Name one.”

“Beef Stroganoff.”

Snooky was surprised. “Really? Beef Stroganoff? Is it edible, Maya? Yes? I owe you an apology, Bernard. I didn’t realize you had such hidden talents. I’ve never seen you make beef Stroganoff.”

“I’ve never made it for you,” said Bernard pointedly.

“And—correct me if I’m wrong here, Bernard—I bet you never will. Coffee, Maya?”

“No, Snooks.”

“Bernard?”

“Yes.”

Bernard grunted in satisfaction when Snooky served him coffee and dessert, bananas fried with brown sugar and honey. He settled down to eat, bearlike, a large dark bearded man hunched over the table, humming softly to himself.

Maya picked dispiritedly at her dessert. “I can’t do it, Snooks. It looks delicious, but I can’t eat it. My appetite isn’t what it used to be.”

“You never ate much, Missy. Don’t worry. I know somebody whose appetite appears to be unaffected by the recent turn of events.”

Bernard hummed happily to himself.

Snooky, who also never ate much, pushed his serving and Maya’s across the table at his brother-in-law. “No waste,” he said, and sat back to drink his coffee, watching Bernard with amusement over the edge of his cup.

After dinner Maya took Snooky upstairs to see the nursery.

“It’s not in very good shape yet,” she said on the way up the tortuous flight of stairs. “It’s the extra bedroom on the second floor.”

“The one that always had all the junk in it?”

“That’s right. Bernard cleaned it out. Now we’re trying to decide what color to paint it.”

They passed Bernard’s study, Maya’s study, and the master bedroom. Maya went to a door at the end of the hallway and flung it open. “Here it is. What do you think? Use your imagination.”

Snooky stood in the doorway for a long time, looking around the room. “Well … it’s clean, at least.”

The room was immaculately clean, all the boxes removed, the dust swept away. It was a small room with a slanting
ceiling and a pretty view of the fir trees and sloping lawn at the side of the house.

“It’s not so bad, is it?”

“The wallpaper will have to go.”

“I know that.”

The wallpaper, inherited from the previous tenant, was a loud splashy floral design in metallic hues of silver, orange and green.

“I’ve never understood what people will put on their walls,” said Snooky. “I wouldn’t wrap a gift in that paper. And what about the floor, Missy?”

The floor was covered with peeling silver-toned linoleum tiles.

“Bernard’s going to pry up the tiles and refinish the floor. There’s a nice hardwood floor underneath that, if you can believe it. Oak, like the rest of the house.”

“And the curtains?”

“Well, of course we’re going to replace the curtains,” Maya said crossly. The curtains in question were a faded chintz which managed to clash with both the wallpaper and the floor. “You’re not being very appreciative, Snooks.”

“I’m sorry, My. It’s a beautiful room. Look at that view. It’s just that it’s going to need a lot of work.”

“We know that. Bernard’s going to do it himself.”

“Bernard?”

“That’s right.”

“Bernard, in his spare time, when he’s not waiting on you or writing his books, is going to strip the wallpaper, paint the room, take up the tiles, refinish the hardwood floor, buy fabric and make nice new curtains?”

“That’s right.”

Snooky crossed his arms. “It’s too bad that the human gestational period is only nine months, Missy. You’re going to need a lot more time than that before this baby arrives.”

Snooky moved his stuff, what little of it there was, into the third-floor bedroom under the eaves which was always his when he came to visit. The bedroom was hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, poorly insulated and completely primitive, but it had a beautiful view of the surrounding countryside, a wooden four-poster bed and a dormer window with a comfortable window seat, all of which helped (in Snooky’s mind) to make up for the inconvenience. True to his word, he danced attendance on his sister, cooking her meals, making her little snacks to tempt her appetite, doing the shopping for the household and running errands. Maya relaxed gratefully into this pattern. Bernard, as Snooky had pointed out, was, despite the best will in the world, not a good servant; he did not enjoy doing the shopping and was not a gifted cook. After a few days of pro forma protests, Bernard also relaxed into letting Snooky run the household. He steamed off the wallpaper in the nursery—a long and laborious task—and then began to spend more time in his study, wrestling with his latest book, the story of a wayward lobster who gets lost during the annual migration.

“A tragedy, really,” said Snooky when he heard the plot line. “A tragic tale. Not unlike Hamlet.”

Bernard glanced at him sullenly.

“What made you decide to switch to arthropods?”

“Nothing.”

Bernard’s books were for children ages three to seven, and were mostly concerned with kindly sheep and dashing, daredevil rats.

“There must have been something,” Snooky pointed out reasonably. “Some precipitating cause.”

“I read about the lobster migration. It sounded interesting.”

“We went out for seafood one night,” Maya told her
brother later. “Bernard saw the lobsters in the tank and felt sorry for them.”

“He’s a good man, Maya. Strange, but good. What’s the lobster’s name?”

“I don’t know if it has a name. Bernard hasn’t been able to concentrate on his work, because of the baby and everything. And I haven’t been in the best of moods. It affects his work when I’m not feeling well.”

“Oh, come on. As far as I can tell, the tides affect Bernard’s work. I’ve never seen him work well. He’s always complaining about something or other.”

Maya was complacent about this. “That’s true. That’s the way he is. It’s not easy, what he does, you know, Snooks.”

“It’s easier than working for a living.”

“How would you know?”

“I wouldn’t. The observer’s point of view, that’s all. And how about your work, Maya? What are you doing these days?”

Maya looked grumpy. “I’m supposed to be doing an article on Exocoetidae.”

“On what?”

“Exocoetidae. Flying fish, you moron. You took science in college, didn’t you? You did go to college, right? Didn’t William and I pay for that?”

“In more ways than one.” Snooky’s college career had been less than illustrious. His older brother William, who had graduated summa cum laude, president of the senior class and valedictorian, had watched in disbelief as Snooky edged his way nervously through his college years, doing poorly in some classes and brilliantly in others, a seemingly random pattern of success and failure. He had graduated with no fanfare, no awards, no speeches to give and a set determination never to attend an institution of higher learning again.

Maya smiled. “You were awful. You used to skip classes
and come to visit me instead. William would call your room at school and you were never there. Remember the answering machine you rigged up for him?”

“With the message that said, ‘I’m not here, William, I’m out cutting classes and sleeping around’?”

“You are an awful brother to him. You both know exactly how to drive each other over the edge.”

“That’s a fraternal privilege, Maya. Something you wouldn’t know about, would you? We’ve both spared you over the years.”

“Bernard doesn’t think I’ve been spared. He thinks both of you are good for nothing, and I’m caught in the middle.”

“Well, maybe he’s right. You were born in the middle, and you’re sort of stuck there now.”

“I guess so.”

“So you’re doing an article on flying fish? How fascinating.”

“It would be if I could finish it. So far I’ve written, ‘The flying fish, family Exocoetidae, live chiefly in tropical waters and possess long pectoral fins which resemble wings.’ That’s it.”

“A short article, but a good article.”

“I’m going to lose my job,” Maya said fretfully. “Lose my job, lose my health, lose my sanity. Lose my mind.”

“I think,” said Snooky wisely, “that it’s time for some celery.”

They went downstairs to the kitchen, which was filled with shifting diamonds of sunlight from the old-fashioned leaded glass windows which lined the walls. Snooky made his sister a cup of herbal tea and gave her a plate of celery stuffed with cream cheese and sprinkled with paprika. “Here you go.”

“Before you arrived, Snooks, I used to eat my celery plain.”

“Unbelievable. And you, pregnant. This is my point about Bernard not taking care of you properly.”

“Poor Bernard.” Maya stirred her tea. “I told him to go out to the paint store and choose a color for the nursery on his own. I couldn’t handle it, I told him. It’s his responsibility.”

“It’s not exactly what I’d call a crushing one. Since you don’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl, avoid the obvious. White, for instance, is always good. Yellow. Peach. Violet.”

“I think he’s been looking in the fuchsia family.”

“Has Bernard ever been noted for his color sense?”

Maya shrugged. Snooky, gazing at her, was filled with wonder and pity. There were dark smudges under her eyes, and her fine white skin looked sallow, creased with exhaustion. “For somebody who’s creating life, Missy, you look pretty awful.”

“I know. What time is it? Ten
A.M
.? Is it late enough for me to go back to bed yet?”

“It’s always late enough to go back to bed, no matter how early it is.”

“Thank God.”

Bernard came into the kitchen, a gallon of paint clanking against his legs. He looked grim.

“Sweetheart,” Maya greeted him. “Any luck at the paint store?”

Bernard hefted the paint can onto the table. “Number four thirty-one,” he said. “Otherwise known as Balboa Mist.”

“Balboa Mist?”

“A very pale green.”

Maya tapped her teacup doubtfully. “Oh, I don’t know, Bernard. Pale green? That’s not at all what I saw for that room.”

Bernard sat down at the table. “Perhaps those of us who saw something could share that knowledge with me
before
I go to the store.”

“Pale green? Well, I guess you can try it. Will they take it back?”

“I doubt it very much.”

“Well …”

“I’m going upstairs to paint the room.” Bernard heaved himself to his feet. “If anyone calls for me, I’m busy.”

“All right, sweetheart. We’ll be up in a little while to see how it’s going.”

Bernard looked over at his brother-in-law. “I don’t suppose you’d like to help me out with the painting?”

“Of course I would, Bernard. I’d be delighted to run the house for you and paint the nursery for you and buy all the baby clothes for you. Can it wait until after my mid-morning nap?”

Bernard took the paint can and left the room. They could hear him treading heavily up the stairs, the paint can clanging by his side.

Maya put her head in her hand. “Balboa Mist. It’s going to look awful.”

“Don’t worry yourself, Missy. It’s not your concern. Bernard will take it back to the store if it’s no good. Maybe he should just go for primary colors, blue or red. You haven’t told me, by the way. Do you want a boy or a girl? Do you have a preference?”