The Mourning After (23 page)

Chloe is gluing the last of the children’s book decorations to the cover.  Lucy draws a caricature of Chloe and uses brown yarn for her hair and a button for her nose.  When she finishes, she holds up her masterpiece and smiles.  “Do you think Ellen will invite us on the show?  I’ve never been to California.”

The front door opens and closes and then opens and closes again.  It is Levon’s mother, and she has charged in and out of the house carrying with her a pile of mail.  The box hadn’t been emptied in weeks, and sympathy cards and bills were stuck together, tightly wound in rubber bands.  Levon, Lucy, and Chloe are cleaning up their mess at the table, while Madeline is poring over the notes and bills.  She is barefoot, clad in silky, black pajamas, and sips from a coffee mug.

“Where are my glasses?” she asks of no one in particular.

Chloe circles around the table and finds them resting next to the sink.  She hands them to her mother, who snaps them on her head with a force that very well might knock the little girl over.  Madeline is studying one of the letters very carefully.  Her hands are grasping the pages, and her face is contorted.  Levon thinks about asking her what’s the matter, though, instead, lines up the rainbow assortment of markers, fitting them into their plastic case.  Lucy is biting her lip and Chloe is singing some Disney song, blind to the tension filling the room.  Levon makes out the AT&T insignia and can’t imagine what’s gotten his mother so shaken up.  Has she forgotten to pay the bill?

Reaching across the table, Madeline Keller lifts the cordless phone from its charger and begins to dial.  She’s holding the invoice upright while her other hand is dialing numbers she is reading from the page.  Levon immediately feels sorry for the poor soul at the other end of the phone line.  Whoever it may be, the wrath of his mother is about to unravel and strike.  His mother, though, abruptly hangs up and reaches for a pen in the kitchen drawer.  She begins to mark up the bill, checking off numbers in manic obsession.  Her eyes are darting back and forth, and her hands seem possessed as they travel compulsively down each page.  Levon and Lucy busy themselves so as not to intrude on the private agitation that has Madeline’s face knotted and flushed.  When she drops the pen and hides her eyes behind her flattened palms, Levon knows whatever is there is going to prove disastrous. Madeline hastily stands up and heads toward the stairs.  The cold air that follows her raises the hair on Levon’s arms as if they are in a salute.

Lucy runs to see the piece of paper that now looks like something a kindergartener has used in a game of battleship.

“What are you doing?” Levon asks, jumping in her way, blocking her.

“Aren’t you the least bit curious to see what’s got her panties in a wad?”

Chloe is spinning around on one of the barstools that faces the island in the middle of the room.  “What’s a wad?” she asks.

“Stop it, Chloe,” Levon barks at her, irritated by both girls in his kitchen. “You’re going to throw up.”  At which point, Lucy has squirmed passed him and grabs the papers.

“Taking someone else’s mail is a felony,” he says.

She hands it to him and says, “I’m not taking it, you are.”

The bill is for his father’s personal cell phone.  Levon recognizes the number across the top.

“Looks like Daddy’s been letting his fingers do the walking…”

Levon studies the bright blue asterisks of his mother’s pen.  There are hundreds of them lining the pages like perilous scientific data.  He doesn’t recognize the number. There it was in scandalous repetition: all hours of the day, all hours of the night, calls from Key West when his father was there on a business trip, lots and lots of hours of talk time.

“Let’s call it,” Lucy says.

Levon shoots her a look that means
not in front of Chloe
.

“Give me the number,” she says, picking up the electrically charged phone.  Then she remembers something and winks at Levon.  “Redial!  Gotta love modern technology.”

“No, no,” Levon yells.  “Hit *67 first.  I don’t want our number to show up.”

“Good one, Sherlock,” she smiles, hitting the keypad with a burst of pride and willfulness. Levon is scared to hear who’s on the other end of the line. He prays silently that Lucy hangs up or says
wrong number
.  Seconds tick and Lucy looks at Levon, not breathing a word.  Then she presses
end
and drops the phone on the countertop.

“What happened?”

“It was voicemail.”

“Did it say who it was?  Was there a name?”

Lucy is unsure of what to say, and it’s that hesitation that sends Levon into a mild panic.  His heart jumpstarts at an alarming, unruly speed.  His hands get sweaty and slam into his pockets.

She says, “Who’s Olivia?”

For those who think reality television is entertaining, try spending Thanksgiving at the Keller house.  Tonight’s episode is commercial free—minus the scripted sensationalism provided by overzealous producers looking for a ratings boost.  Lucy calls it a bad sitcom.  Levon is sure her family won’t ever accept an invitation to their house again.  She assures him that “all families are dysfunctional.”  It sounds reasonable, though it doesn’t do much to cheer him up.  Replaying the night’s events in his head, he is embarrassed and disgusted beyond words, and for him, that’s saying a lot.

Levon was shocked when his mom invited the Bells over in the first place.  Her distaste for Lucy is obvious, and they haven’t been in entertaining mode lately.  When there was no mention of the holiday, he assumed they were going to coast right through it, and then Sid and Lyd arrive at their doorstep from Westchester with a frozen Butterball turkey cradled in their arms.  This sends Mom into a fit of nervous agitation.  What better distraction than to invite innocent bystanders to a tense, family gathering?

The Bells can’t resist, and in light of Lucy’s most recent discovery, she can’t wait to see the drama unfold.  The afternoon has all the elements of great TV: mystery, murder, immoral behavior, and with the inclusion of the Bells, a captivated studio audience.

They are sitting around the table, talking and passing food around, when Dad asks Mom if she wants stuffing or mushroom orzo.  Madeline, without skipping a beat, replies, “Neither, I want a divorce.”

Diet coke comes shooting out of Lucy’s nose.  Her parents, who are seated at the other end of the table with her brother Ricky, have no clue what has happened and have been cheerily talking among themselves while the clicking of their forks becomes louder and louder. Sid plays with his food until he can’t bear it any longer, and, rising from his seat, he heads for the bar in the living room.  Lyd snorts, “Madeline, it’s about time you got your sense of humor back.  That’s a good one.”  She cocks her head, lifting her wine glass to her pink lips, and gulps the red liquid.  Chloe is busy feeding George turkey under the table. The comment flies way over her head, smacking Craig Keller square in the face, right above the deep, cranberry stain that covers his jaw.  It’s either real cranberry or the blemish left by the slap of Madeline’s remark.  Clearly, no one is more blown away than Levon’s father.  Lucy gives Levon one of her pitiful, gloating stares, although to her, this is better than any episode of
Gossip Girl
, and she is hooked.  His father excuses himself from the table and asks Madeline to follow.  No, actually, he demands she follows.  When they get to the living room, all hell breaks loose. 

The thought occurs to Levon that he might have been able to prevent this from happening.  He knows who Olivia is; he knows what his mother found on his father’s phone bill.  He could’ve warned his dad or even balled him out for his betrayal.  But Levon was tired of cleaning up everyone’s messes.

Their voices carry though to the dining room; accusations are hurled.

“Are you sleeping with her?” Mom asks.

Expletives—words Levon didn’t know his mother knew—bounce off the walls and echo across the table.  The overhead chandelier shakes, crystals clacking a tune none of them had ever heard.  Mr. Bell is hiding his face in his hands.  Mrs. Bell shifted nervously in her seat, afraid to look up and make eye contact with anyone.  They all sit around the table motionless and mute, and then Lucy persuades Chloe to join her on a dog walk.

Lyd goes to find Sid, though everyone at the table knows it’s an excuse to pop a pill.

Mr. Bell asked, “Levon, is everything okay?”

Ricky, who obviously has his sister’s witty sense of humor, replies, “We ain’t in Kansas anymore.”

Mr. Bell stands up, folds the linen napkin on the table and, by the look in his eyes, demands that his wife and son do the same.

“And miss all this?” Ricky jokes, before both of his parents shoot him a glaring look.

The door closes behind them, and there is Levon, sitting alone on Thanksgiving, at a table of half-empty glasses and half-eaten turkey and stuffing. The smell of sweet potatoes and his favorite gravy fill the air, though he is too focused on his lost family to realize that he had lost something else: his appetite. 

Time stands still and Levon, foggy, can not say how long he sits there or how long his mother screams and curses at his father before he begins to defend himself.  She finally quiets down, and he can hear his father, in between sobs, trying to explain how long it’s been since she paid him any attention, how long it’s been since they’ve talked to each other.  “And God damn it,” he shouts, “I lost David too, and I worry about Chloe every time I take a breath.  You’ve turned your back on us, crawling into your hole to shrivel and die.  I need you.  I need my wife.”

Levon has always thought cheaters are pricks of the lowest form. So how come what his dad is saying rings true?  Is that why he turned a blind eye to what he saw in his office?  It had been so long since he has seen his parents kiss, touch, or smile at each other.  It had been well before the accident.  How can he blame his father for needing what his mother doesn’t give?

Levon plays with his food, a novelty. He can’t recall a time when he hasn’t shoveled the feast of Thanksgiving into his mouth.  Tonight’s delicacies are too tough to swallow. His mother has a full glass of wine by her plate, and he takes a swig as Lucy and Chloe come scrambling through the front door.  Lucy sends Chloe upstairs, instructing her to take a bath, and she finds Levon in the dining room polishing off the glass of wine.  It is too sweet for his liking, though he can’t lie and say it doesn’t diffuse the nerves that have him wound up.

“Now we’re talking,” Lucy smiles, as she collects the partially full wine glasses and pours them into her own.  She raises her goblet before asking, “What are we toasting to?” Levon draws a blank.  There really isn’t anything he is grateful or happy about that he can think of, so he shrugs his shoulders, and they clink glasses. Lucy finally says, “To not being on the other end of your mother’s rant.”

He says, “I’ll drink to that.”

“Do you believe him?” she asks.

His father is repeating over and over how nothing happened and he just needed somebody to talk to, while Mom is sniffling and saying stuff like, “Emotional affairs are far more destructive than physical ones.”  Levon can imagine Madeline reading from her library of self-help books, never imagining the day would finally arrive that she’d be quoting psycho-babble out loud.  For what it’s worth, he believes his father.

Levon began thinking about physical versus emotional, and how boundaries often blur—mostly because Lucy looks so drop-dead gorgeous. She leans up against him, and says, simply, “Are you all right?”  His worlds are crashing down on him, and he shivers inside.  Then, she asks—with this sweet, breathy voice that implies she’s not judging him or his crazy, psychotic family—“Is there anything I can do to help?” 

The idea of crossing over to the physical with her is more than tempting. She is inches from Levon’s face.  All he has to do is come up with some clever line and she will lean closer, find his lips, and they will be joined in a way that surpasses the metaphysical.  It takes all his strength to stop his hands from brushing the wisps of her blonde hair off her face.  They keep falling in front of her eyes, brushing her cheeks, and he yearns to touch them.  The wine has made him giddy and daring.

Instead, they clear the table in silence, dropping scraps of food for George, who nuzzles his nose against the burgundy tablecloth, his eyes begging for more.  Every time they come near each other, he feels himself being pulled toward her, and Levon is convinced she feels it too.  On TV, the good guys always end up getting the girl—even if they are chubby and a little nerdy.  Is it time to stop watching so much television?

Hours later, Levon and Lucy say goodbye, and Levon caps off the night with a final gulp of wine.  His mother’s pill case is on the island in the kitchen, and he wonders how many Klonopins she downed before climbing into bed, shuttering herself off from the world.  The kitchen is a mess.  Daphne would be there in the morning, and it’s anyone’s guess how she might peel the film of deceit from their floors and walls.

A light tapping at the door startles Levon.  With Chloe asleep, his father out back clearing his head, and his grandparents’ snores filtering the hallway, he hopes it is Lucy.

“Hi, Levon.”

It’s Rebecca.

Levon’s hand finds his chest because he wants to make sure his heart is beating.  For the first time, seeing her does not take his breath away.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

Levon simply smiles and invites her in.

Rebecca has her hair pulled back from her face and the golden color has returned to her cheeks. 

“Remember Thanksgiving last year?”

Levon smiles and leads her into the family room where they sit on the same chairs as the occasion she plucks from memory.  “Yeah,” said Levon, “that was a fun night.”  They were all gathered together while Rebecca’s nine-year-old brother, Aaron, performed magic tricks.  It was a pretty boring performance until he made Grandpa Sid’s toupee disappear.  They laughed so hard Levon’s belly ached for hours and, for once, it had nothing to do with desserts.