The Sisters Montclair (19 page)

The temperature in the house was dropping, although it still felt pleasant enough to Stella. “Are you cold?” she said to Alice.

“Yes. Do you know how to turn on the gas fireplace?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Roddy left some instructions in a bag on the kitchen desk. Last time the power was out, he turned on the gas fireplace so we would have some heat.”

“Okay,” Stella said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She went into the kitchen and rummaged around for awhile but could find nothing that had to do with the living room fireplace. She checked the big chalkboard that listed the caregivers’ phone numbers and names. Roddy’s cell phone was not listed, of course, but Hadley’s was. Stella hesitated a moment and then picked up her cell and called.

She explained to Hadley why she was calling.

“Oh, just a minute,” Hadley said sweetly. “I’ll get him.” Stella could hear her telling Roddy why she had called. She could hear him in the background shouting, “Is there some reason why she can’t read simple instructions?” There was a fumbling of the phone, a quick shushing sound from Hadley, and then Roddy came on.

“Hi, Mary Anna, how are
you
,” he said with false cheerfulness.

“I’m fine, Rod. Thanks. Just wondering if you could tell me how to turn on the gas fireplace. Your mom is cold.”

“Okay, let’s start with the instructions, shall we?”

“Where are the instructions?”

“Oh. Well, they should be there by the fireplace.”

“Okay. Alice seemed to think they were in the kitchen. That’s where I’ve been looking.”

Stella went into the living room and quickly scanned the mantle but didn’t see anything.

“On the bookcase,” he said. “Look there.”

She found them.

“Okay. Now read them aloud. Let’s start with number one, shall we?” He spoke slowly and loudly as if he was trying to communicate with a mentally-challenged child. The same way he had spoken to Alice.
Douche bag
. Stella felt a quick stab of pity for Alice.

She read the instructions aloud, feeling her face burn with humiliation. Faintly, in the distance, Alice began ringing her bell. Stella read through step 2. Alice’s bell ringing became more frantic.

“I have to go,” Stella said. “Your mother is ringing for me.”

“Oh for….” He was so clearly perturbed that Stella smiled.

“I’ll call you back,” she said, and hung up.

When she got to the bedroom, Alice looked up and said, “Call Roddy. He might know where the instructions are.”

“I already did that, Alice. I was on the phone with him when you started ringing the bell.”

“Oh, you were? You were on the phone with Roddy? Okay, then. I won’t bother you.”

Stella went back into the living room and read through the instructions, the manufacturer’s not his. Then she leaned over and turned on the fireplace. The gas logs lit up cheerfully.

She picked up her cell and punched Hadley’s number. “Hello,” she said. “Hello, Rod?”

“Hello?” he said after a short pause.

“This is Stella.”

“Who?”

“I got it turned on.”

“You got what turned on?”

“The gas logs.”

“You did! All by yourself? Well, good for you!”

She grinned and raised her middle finger. She thought,
That’s right, fucker.

She went back to Alice’s room and told her she’d managed to find the instructions and turn on the gas.

“Without Roddy’s help?”

“That’s right.”

Alice chuckled. “I’ll bet he didn’t like that.”

“I don’t think he did.”

Stella pulled a blanket out of the closet and followed Alice into the living room where the gas logs were flickering cheerfully in the grate. She settled Alice into one of the wingback chairs beside the fire and wrapped her in a blanket. Then she sat down in the other wingback chair.

“I may sleep in my clothes tonight,” Alice said. “To keep warm.”

“Good idea,” Stella said.

They both sat quietly, staring at the flickering flames.

“Roddy has a bicycle,” Alice said finally. “He rides all over the mountain. Once a year he goes up to New York with one of his sons and rides in that big race they have up there.”

“Wow,” Stella said. “That’s impressive.” She could imagine Roddy as a bicyclist. He had the lean, delicate build of a long-distance runner and she could picture him riding through the streets of New York in an aerodynamic skinsuit with a matching helmet.

“He’s a character,” Alice said, shaking her head. She had the blanket pulled up to her chin so that only her face was visible. “He comes sometimes and takes me to lunch at the Sonic. And before we go he always says
Al, do you have your credit card?
” She chuckled, staring at the flames. “Last Christmas he took me out to dinner at the Mountain Grille. The whole family was there, a long table of Whittingtons. And when the bill came he leaned over and said,
Al, do you have your credit card?
And I said,
Oh, am I giving this dinner?
”

Alice chuckled again but Stella couldn’t think of anything to say to this, so she kept quiet. It seemed wrong to her that a man with his own money would expect his mother to pay for everything but maybe that was just the way these trust fund families operated. Alice certainly didn’t seem bothered by it; she seemed to find it amusing.

“This is what we used to do when I was a girl and the power went out,” Alice said, staring at the flames. “When we lived up on Signal. We’d go next door to grandmother and grandfather’s house and sit in front of a roaring fire and roast popcorn. Grandfather would tell his tall tales and we’d all listen, pretending to believe everything that he said.”

“Why did you move to Lookout Mountain? Why didn’t you stay on Signal? It’s pretty nice up there.” Stella had always heard that Lookout Mountain was a snooty place, closed and unwelcoming to strangers.

“I moved to Lookout because Bill Whittington was from here! There were lots of Whittingtons on Lookout. Oh, I felt like an interloper at first. But my grandmother had been a Jordan; she was from Lookout, so that made it easier. And over time I got used to it.”

“Did you live with your husband’s family?”

Alice looked at her in horror. “Oh no,” she said. “That would never have worked. Bill was an only son. He had two sisters but he was the only boy. He was his mother’s special child. Mrs. Whittington wouldn’t have liked having me in her house.”

Stella had seen a photograph of Mrs. Whittington. Dour and horse-faced like her son, they looked so much alike Stella had known instantly who the old woman was. In the photograph she was wearing a pearl choker and a padded suit and her white hair was swept back from her face in a severe style. A terrifying woman. Although, Alice, no doubt had given as good as she got. Stella smiled, thinking of this.

“We lived in an apartment on the side of the mountain when we were first married,” Alice said. “It was a big old house divided up into four apartments and there were three other young couples, all friends of Bill’s living there. So we had a gay old time.”

Stella stared at one of the photographs of Bill Whittington on the bookcase, trying to imagine him as a young man intent on having a good time, trying to imagine Alice as a blushing bride. It would help if there were photographs of Alice as a young woman in the room, but there were none. Stella had checked. The few photos of her were of an indulgent grandmother, gazing down at a crowd of blond-haired grandchildren. Most of the silver-framed photographs were of a dapper Bill Whittington posed in front of a train, standing beside an ivy-covered wall, carving a Thanksgiving turkey on a silver tray. In all the photographs, he was dressed in a suit and tie.

Alice laughed suddenly and said, “My grandfather. Now he was a character! When I was a girl, he took Dob and me with him on a business trip to Chicago.” She was already off on another tangent, which happened frequently; her memories seemed to come in strands that rolled in and out of her consciousness like balls of yarn. Follow this strand and it might lead here; but then another ball rolled into view and took her off on a completely different path. Sometimes she would be talking about one person and Stella would realize that she had already heard the story, and Alice had confused the characters. People melded in her mind, characters formed out of bits and pieces of other characters, stories became intertwined. And then, oddly, there were flashes of clarity, scenes remembered down to the most minute and telling detail.

“On the way up to Chicago, Grandfather told Dob not to drink any RC Cola, so the first thing Dob did was to buy two RC Cola’s and then drink them in quick succession. He proceeded to throw up in the street and grandfather said,
You drank RC Cola didn’t you?
And Dob said,
Yes, sir, I did.
And grandfather said,
Boy, you are as stubborn as a mule. You are just like your grandmother.
” Alice made a wry face, remembering.

“Well, that night grandfather took us to see a show.
Now children
, he said.
You must close your eyes when I tell you to and you mustn’t peek.
He was going to see that famous lady who danced behind the fans and took her clothes off on stage.”

Stella was quiet for a moment, considering this. “Gypsy Rose Lee?” she said, blinking. “He was taking you to see
Gypsy Rose Lee
?”

“That’s the one,” Alice said. “Well, anyway, the time came when he told us to close our eyes, and of course neither one of us did. We stared through our fingers and saw the whole show. And as we were leaving grandfather said,
Now, don’t tell your grandmother.
Of course, the first thing Dob does when we get home is to tell grandmother.”

Stella laughed. She put her head in her hands and wiped her eyes. “Oh my God, I can’t believe your grandfather took you to see a stripper.”

“She wasn’t a stripper,” Alice said staunchly. “She was a fan dancer.”

“I can’t believe you saw the real Gypsy Rose Lee in Chicago.”

“Well, we did.”

“What did your grandmother say?”

“She said, Mr. Montclair have you lost your ever-loving mind? They were very formal in those days.
Mr.
Montclair this, and
Mrs.
Montclair that.”

“I’ll bet she made him suffer. I’ll bet she fed him cold suppers for a week.”

Alice looked at her blankly. “Grandmother had a cook,” she said mildly. “She wouldn’t have known the first thing about fixing supper. She didn’t even like to set foot in the kitchen. I guess I get that from her.”

“Still she must have found some way to punish him.”

“Things were different in those days. Wives were obedient to their husband’s wishes.”

They were both quiet, staring into the fire, each lost in her own thoughts. After awhile Alice stirred and said, “Mother couldn’t cook either. I remember when I was a girl she took cooking classes down in Riverview with a group of other women. Thursday night was the cook’s night off, so one Thursday night mother comes in and says,
Children, you’re in for a special treat. I’m going to cook dinner for you tonight.
She was so excited that even my father kept quiet, although we were all nervous sitting at the dining room table and listening to my mother bang around in the kitchen. So finally she calls to me and I go in to help her.
Get that big can of pears down for me
, she says, pointing to the top shelf of the pantry. I get it down and open it for her and she points to five plates that she’s got lined up on the counter with lettuce leaves lying on them.
Take a half of a pear and put it on the lettuce with the scooped side up
, she tells me. So I do what she says and when I’m finished she takes a jar of mayonnaise out of the icebox and puts a spoonful on each of the pears. Then she sprinkles them with nutmeg and holds them up and says,
There! Supper!

I helped her carry the plates out and set them on the table and no one said anything, we just ate those pears and went to bed hungry that night.”

Stella grinned. “Well, that was the right thing to do, I guess.”

“Of course it was.”

“You’ve had a very interesting life, Alice.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“There’s not many people alive today who can say they once saw Gypsy Rose Lee perform.”

Alice looked at her. “Who?” she said.

The girl was talking again but Alice had no idea what she was saying. Her face was turned toward the fire so Alice couldn’t read her lips. Her black hair, obviously dyed, had begun to grow out and the roots were showing a pale blonde so that, from a distance, she looked like she had a bald patch on top. With her head tilted toward the fire, her scalp looked pale and fragile, like the crown of an egg.

She worried about the girl, worried that she was too thin, that she seemed bowed down by some secret tragedy. Alice knew all about secret tragedies, how they could crush you over the years.
What was it the girl had said?
She was an orphan. Hard enough to get through this life as it was; Alice could not imagine doing it without family. She could not have borne what she had to bear without Adeline. As contentious and prickly as Adeline had been as a girl, there had been two of them and they had closed ranks and presented a united front when it came time to face what they’d had to face. Mother and father and grandmother and grandfather, too.

She was getting close to something here. Some memory she’d long ago put away. Alice could feel it slithering around in her bowels.

The girl looked up at her, still talking, and smiled, and Alice smiled back. The cat had been at work again along her arms; Alice could see fresh wounds along the tender skin above the girl’s wrists. Why didn’t she get rid of the contentious animal? Why keep something that was so intent on causing pain?

With any luck the girl would make a family of her own. A clan, a bulwark against the tragedies of life. That was what she had done; putting the past behind her, accepting what had to be accepted and immersing herself in all the mundane details of family life until everything else got crowded out. Finding a purpose where before there had been only chaos and pain.