The Ruins of California (15 page)

“I had ginseng tea once,” I blurted, still hopelessly out of sync, “and couldn’t sleep that night. Whitman and I can stay up as late as we want at Dad’s.”

“Well, why not?” Marguerite chuckled and made a few slurping sounds with her mouth. “It’s fun to stay up late, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Your father was always a night owl. Me, too. N.C. was the only one who liked the morning. As far as I’m concerned, I could do entirely without it.”

I’d stayed over at Marguerite’s—and endured the nighttime tolling of the grandfather clock—when Lisa was visiting from Newport. We carried our small suitcases into Aunt Ann’s old room and quickly scattered our things everywhere, then tried on each other’s bras. We pretended that we were spies for a while, Nancy Drew or the Girls from U.N.C.L.E., and went outdoors to hide by the brick barbecue that nobody used, or in the pool house, which really had a wicked smell. We looked for secret notes—sometimes Whitman left them around. We tried to find secret panels and hidden money in the library. And we liked to raid the pantry, off the kitchen, where Marguerite kept ancient fruitcakes and all kinds of sweets and boxes of expensive chocolates. At night Marguerite made us root beer floats, and we watched the ten o’clock news with George Putnam in my father’s old bedroom—and later the beginnings of the Carson show. Then we’d say good night to Marguerite, and the rest of the night was a blur. Lisa and I closed the door to Aunt Ann’s room and stayed up, talking about boys at school, swapping stories about our friends, analyzing family members, and musing about Whitman’s love life. As in, did he have one?

When we woke in the morning, around nine or ten, Marguerite’s bedroom door was still closed. It would stay closed until around ten-thirty or eleven, when it opened a crack. That meant my grandmother was taking breakfast in her room—black coffee, half
a grapefruit, a bowl of cereal on a tray—and would see visitors. We’d peek around the door, and there she’d be, looking shockingly pale against huge pillows on her pink canopy bed, like an uncooked turkey. Her thin white hair was messy and vaguely Medusa-ish or, once, pressed down by a strange hairnet that didn’t match the color of her hair. She wore a satin bed jacket over the top of her sheer nightgown—Lisa and I could see peeps of Marguerite’s nipples and protruding belly. But all that was too horrible to focus on. Her gray-blue eyes were the main thing, and they shone with outrage in the morning, as though she were barely able to contain an urge to kill something.

“Inez.” Marguerite turned around in the kitchen and was staring at me with a look of disbelief.
“Inez.”

“What?”

“I was asking about where you’d like to sit. Since we’re having a
proper tea
, I thought we’d take it in the living room. Shall we?”

She carried a large silver tray out of the kitchen. Numbly, I followed her. It felt like a long distance, like crossing the desert to Aqaba. Halfway to the living room, I realized that I was meant to bring a tray with me, too, and not just follow my grandmother like a mindless gosling. So as Marguerite wobbled her way across the obstacle course of Oriental and Native American carpets, each of varying thicknesses which her pencil-thin legs must have memorized, I doubled back to the kitchen, slid another silver tray off the counter, and hurried to find that Marguerite was already setting up on a tiered table next to the piano.

“Can you manage?” she asked. “Can you? Good girl. Fine. Yes, just rest it there.”

She immediately left the room, heading to the kitchen once more for cookies and cakes, and I watched her—
what a lot of work this
all was
—vaguely wondering if I was supposed to follow again, and help.

Exhausted, I collapsed into a striped chair instead.

In the low light of the wall sconces, N.C.’s face looked down at me from a portrait. He seemed flat and unreal. In the background of the painting, there was a tiny rendering of Lawton Dam that was done in great detail, whereas my grandfather looked about as out of focus as a face on Mount Rushmore. He’d built a lot of dams in California—and, according to Whitman, destroyed forests and wildlife and exploited untold hordes of Mexican laborers. I had no idea why Lawton was special. Marguerite might have told me once, during one of her long monologues about N.C. and how brilliant and perfect he was and how he rescued her from a sad childhood and brought her west and made a fortune as an engineer. But aside from passing references to dams, N.C.’s career was a mystery to me, the way everybody’s career was something of a mystery to me—and a very dull mystery, too. Anyway, engineering feats weren’t really what the Ruins talked about when they talked about N.C. In the twelve years since his death, he’d been reduced to just three attributes: He loved the horse races. He loved to sail. And he loved reading about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, sometimes in other languages. The dams that he built were just his job, and in California, as everybody knows, it only matters what you do on weekends.

At some point or another, Marguerite had attached a poignant little story to most of the objects in the room. She had walked me around and rather laboriously explained the provenance of every piece of furniture, every porcelain figurine. It was a pretty dreary mélange of stuff. There were cumbersome chairs, sconces dripping with cut crystal, and ornate decorative objects—combined to
create a kind of somber clutter that seemed at great odds with the simple California sunlight and mild climate outside the heavy curtains. In the corners, curio cabinets were filled with small porcelain shoes, Battersea boxes, carved bottles, and netsukes from Japan. In front of the fireplace was a large paper fan—why?—and above the mantel a haunting portrait of a very young girl, a New England ancestor with a sour expression and a determined little grip on the arm of an Empire chair. Marguerite had lots of sour-faced New England ancestors but not many family heirlooms—her father had gambled and lost everything well before the Depression. Yet somehow she’d wound up with a portrait of her great-aunt, Nettie Snow. I didn’t seem to know much about Nettie, however, except that she was dead.

I leaned over a nearby table and opened a candy dish. There were always surprises in these covered dishes—gum, soft mints, Marlboro cigarettes that I sometimes took into the powder room and pretended to smoke—but inside this one was a piece of paper. Unfolding it, I saw Whitman’s printing:
RONALD REAGAN FOR PRESIDENT,
it said. I giggled.

“What’s that?” Marguerite asked imperiously while setting down the cookie tray.

I folded the note and stuck it in my palm. (My father, who had begun to teach me his card tricks, would have described this move as “palming it.”) Marguerite took an endless amount of time getting situated and finally sank into a mushy love seat by the fireplace.

“It’s a note from Whitman,” I said, squeezing my fist tighter.

“It is?” She didn’t sound surprised. “About what? Whitman was just here—last week or two.”

“Nothing,” I whispered. “It’s just a silly note. He’s being funny.”

“Is he? What does he say?”

I felt my pulse quicken—the note seemed sacrilegious to me. God only knew what Marguerite might do. “It’s just a joke,” I said. “That’s all. Nothing. He left it for me.”

She stared at my hand. Her eyes were intense, like a sharp stick poking me. “Whitman is rather devilish, isn’t he? He’s going to give Paul a run for his money. Ha!”

I scooted the note into my fingers and then, in one quick gesture, slipped it into a front pocket of my jeans.

Marguerite looked over at the tiered table. “Let’s start with tea,” she said, her voice becoming instructional. “Black for me. A little sugar.” I reached for a cup and saucer with one hand, then picked up the teapot. The previous Easter I’d spilled a demitasse of coffee all over my dress and had gotten an unforgettable stare of displeasure.

“I hear he’s been coming to your house a good deal—has even stayed the night,” Marguerite continued, watching the pot as the tea poured out. “He never stays overnight here. I hope Whitman’s not a great burden to Mrs. Garcia in any case. I do hope not. Is he, Inez?”

I shook my head.

“Perhaps if I installed a slide for the swimming pool, my grandchildren would visit more.”

I stirred a small spoonful of sugar into her cup and handed it to her.

“You forgot my napkin,” she said. “That’s it. Good girl. Now serve yourself and sit down. The only thing that interests Whitman these days is surfing. Am I right? He has that wonderful red surfing car—”

“Van.”

“Oh, yes, it’s a
van.
And all those special racks and boards and wetsuits. He came by last week and showed me the whole thing. Plunged into the pool wearing his complete getup. He looked so dashing! So tall—and those nice Ruin shoulders. I must say, Whitman might wind up being better-looking than Paul. Don’t you think? Have you seen him in that black wetsuit? Oh, of course you have. Men look so terrific encased in black, don’t they? Nothing like seeing a man in white tie.”

White tie. What was she talking about? It was, no doubt, another bygone detail from Marguerite’s dying world. I sat down with my trembling cup of tea.

“How are your mother and grandmother?”

“Okay.”

“Connie’s still at tennis?”

I nodded, took another sip.

“And you say she’s awfully good? She’s gotten so sporty. Ready for the sandwiches? Excellent. Me, too.”

That was my cue to serve. Everything was a cue—and it was exhausting trying to catch all of them. “Take one of the clean, small plates,” Marguerite commanded from her pillowy throne. “That’s it. Those are dessert plates. How do you like them? They’re Limoges, from France. Isn’t that a lovely pattern? It’s a very old one. That’s it. I’ll take one chicken salad and one cucumber sandwich. No, no. Not the cookies.
Not yet.
Do you ever take tea at home? Oh, that’s right. You said you weren’t allowed. Mrs. Garcia must have some nice china. Mexican patterns—or Peruvian?”

I shook my head vaguely, still not entirely sure what a pattern was. Abuelita had a few things from Peru, but they were never used. Sometimes, on a really busy weekend, we used paper plates for all the meals. We used paper napkins, too, not even the good kind.

“May I have a bit more, please?” Marguerite held out her cup and saucer to me. “Your mother has a boyfriend, Paul reports.”

I nodded and focused on pouring more tea and handing back Marguerite’s cup without spilling anything and getting the knife eyes. I put four sandwiches on my plate and took a bite of one before sitting down.

“Rod Weeger,” I said.

“Rod what? Never mind, finish chewing. And he’s nice?
Finish chewing, Inez.
I can see traces of your sandwich in your mouth.”

I nodded and swallowed, but it seemed to take a long time. “He’s a PE teacher at my school, and—”

Marguerite turned her head away and looked at the tiered table of sandwiches again.

“Can I get you more?” I asked.

“Please. If you could. One of each. And how does school go?” Marguerite didn’t want to hear too much about Coach Weeger.

“Fine.”

“Straight A’s?”

“Close.”

“Your father always got straight A’s.”

“My mother, too.”

“Did she? She’s so pretty I guess it’s easy to forget how smart she is.”

Marguerite made more slurping sounds with her lips that I gathered she couldn’t hear. She rested the cup and saucer on the table and picked up a sandwich. “Your father went to cotillion when he was thirteen. Do you know what that is?”

I shook my head.

“
Cotillion.
I think you’d like it. You learn to dance and things like that—the waltz, the fox-trot. Things you’ll need to know when you
make your debut. And later on, in college, and forever. Invaluable. The Arroyo puts together a very nice coming-out party.”

“Coming out of what?”

Marguerite chuckled. “Inez, you’re so amusing.”

I stood up. A box of chocolate miniatures from Jurgenson’s had found its way to the tiered table as well. I was just about to reach for some cookies and cake, and maybe a piece of chocolate, when I caught myself.

“Would you care for some chocolates or cookies, Marguerite?”

“Lovely. Very lovely. A small assortment,” she responded. “And do you know which ones are the coconut crèmes? You know, there’s a code. Each kind of chocolate has a different swirl on the top. The circle is a raspberry crème. The triangle swirl is a coconut. Yes. Good girl. I’ll have one of those. A cookie, too.”

I walked to the love seat and handed her the plate.

“They use the old ballroom at the Arroyo for their cotillion—it’s very nice,” she said.

Back at the box of chocolates again, I picked one with a little wave on the top. “What’s this?” I asked, not wanting to discuss learning to dance or anything at that club of Marguerite’s.

“Bring it closer,” she said. “Oh, that’s a very yummy one! Chocolate crème!”

I held the small chocolate crème between my fingers and studied all its sides.

“Try it!” Marguerite blurted out. She watched me excitedly as I popped it into my mouth, seeming to hang on every chew that I made. “Can you believe how creamy?” she said with a slurpy voice. “Like velvet.”

She picked a cigarette from a white marble urn. After she lit it up, pursing her lips together and sucking like her life depended on it,
I could smell the menthol. It was such a sharp smell it almost made me flinch. She blew out a giant gust of smoke that seemed much bigger than her body. She looked at my jeans and then down at my feet.

“Well, I say. Those are interesting shoes.”

“Earth Shoes.”

“What are they called?”

“
Earth Shoes.
It’s a new thing. The heel is lower than the toe.” I tipped up my shoe to show the heavy rubber sole and the way it was slanted. “It’s supposed to be a more healthy way to walk. Supposed to be good for you. Natural.”

“Really.”

“It’s supposed to be like walking in the sand. The heel goes lower.”

“Amazing. And your top looks authentic. Straight from Mexico. You and Whitman are really full of new trends. Some of them, of course, I really don’t care for. The miniskirts are awful, to my eyes, and the— But, say,
how do you like Justine Polk?
She came down to go to the races at Santa Anita with your father a few weeks ago. You can’t imagine the flowing robes that girl had on, and the biggest fur coat I’ve ever seen.”