The Sisters Montclair (23 page)

Stella laughed, imagining Alice in her prime doing battle with a couple of prim school teachers.

“Now see,” Alice said in a querulous voice. “You’re laughing just like they did. I didn’t think it was funny.”

“Sorry, Alice.” Stella coughed and put her fist to her mouth. She looked down at her plate. After a moment of quiet chewing, she swallowed and said, “Was he okay?”

“Who?”

“Roddy.”

“Oh, Roddy was fine. He was waiting for me up at the Incline station. When Ann Ricks drove off without him he just took the bus down to the station in St. Elmo and took the train up.”

Alice finished her lunch and pushed the plate away. She wiped the front of her bib with a napkin. “Well, that was very nice,” she said.

“I’m glad you liked it,” Stella said.

“You’re a very good putter-together person.”

“Well, Sawyer keeps the refrigerator pretty well stocked so I don’t have to think too much about it.”

“He’s a very good shopper. And griller. He loves to cook things on his shiny new grill.”

“Lucky for his wife,” Stella said. She was still thinking about Alice doing battle with the school teachers and trying to imagine her as a young mother. Had she been the nurturing type, the kind who played games with her children and helped them with their homework? She couldn’t imagine Alice as a nurturer. There was something aloof and distant about Alice; and her sarcastic tongue would have been sharp in those days, too. She had seen the way Alice’s friends treated her, how afraid they were to call and cancel luncheon appointments, how they seemed to cower in the face of her changing moods. There was no doubt in Stella’s mind that in school Alice had been one of the Mean Girls. The girl, who, with her sullen, bored demeanor and wicked tongue, would have been the leader of all the others. She said, “Did you like to cook when your children were younger?”

Alice gave her a droll look. “I don’t cook,” she said. “I thaw.”

Stella grinned. “I’ve never heard it put that way but I like it.”

“The first time I saw frozen dinners in the supermarket I thought they were the most marvelous creation.”

Still grinning, Stella rose to collect the plates. “Would you like some ice cream?”

“What have we got?”

“You name it, we’ve got it.”

“Okay. Surprise me then.”

Stella fixed a scoop of Banana Split and set it in front of Alice, and then sat back down.
No
, she decided, Alice would have been a detached mother. Perhaps not as detached as Stella’s own mother had been once she married Moody Bates, but Alice would have allowed a series of nurses to raise her children. She would have been busy with board meetings and bridge groups and fund raisers, all the standard activities women in her socio-economic group were expected to participate in. Stella thought, guiltily, of the letter she’d read written by Alice’s mother, the reference to the woman in the kitchen ironing – now what had her name been – Leta? Alice’s children would have been raised by a series of Letas.

“Did you like having children, Alice?”

Alice turned her head and stared, her eyes fixed and colorless. Her skin, in the slanting light from the kitchen window, was crisscrossed with fine wrinkles like old parchment. “What do you mean, did I like it? It wasn’t something I thought about. You just did it because it was expected of you in those days. You got married and you had children. There weren’t a lot of choices back then.”

“No, I suppose not.”

Alice turned back to her ice cream. “Oh, that looks lovely,” she said, dipping her spoon. “What is it?”

“Banana Split.”

“Do you want some?”

“No thanks.”

Alice took a spoonful and stared at the wall, her mouth moving soundlessly. “Do you have children?” she said finally.

“No, Alice.”

“Oh, that’s right.” She jerked her head impatiently, as if she had just remembered their prior conversation. She pointed at the ice cream with her spoon. “What’s that red stuff on the top?”

“Cherries? Don’t banana splits have cherries on top?”

“I guess they do,” Alice said. “Do you have a husband?”

“A boyfriend.”

“Does he make you happy?”

“Well,” Stella said.

“Don’t answer that,” Alice said. “It’s none of my business.”

Outside in the street a truck chugged by. Stella cast about for something to say to change the subject. “Sawyer is a very good shopper,” she repeated lamely.

“He’s a good kid, as Bill used to say.” Alice stuck another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth and chewed slowly, staring at the wall with an expression of rapt attention. “He does a lot of good work for The Salvation Army. He took over his place on the board from me.”

Stella had seen the various crystal bowls and plaques scattered throughout the house from both The Salvation Army and Big Brothers/Big Sisters, thanking Alice for her tireless efforts on their behalf.

Alice chuckled, her white curls trembling faintly. “At Christmas time, Sawyer likes to stand outside the Walmart at the foot of Signal Mountain ringing the bell.”

“Really?” Stella said. It was comical, the idea of this trust fund scion haranguing the upper-middle class suburbanites for change. Stella decided once and for all that she liked Sawyer.

“That’s really nice of him,” she said.

“He learned it from me,” Alice said. “When the children were little we used to stand outside Goldman’s Department Store ringing the bell at Christmas time. Do you remember Goldman’s? No? Well, it was the fanciest store in town and everybody shopped there. People will act funny when you’re trying to get money out of them. We’d stand out there and I’d see someone I knew trying to duck into a side entrance and I’d send one of the children around to block their way. ‘
Hello, Mrs. Jones
’ they’d say sweetly. ‘
And how are you today?
’”

Stella snorted. “Alice, you were awful!”

“Terrible,” Alice said.

“I wouldn’t want to owe you money.”

“No, you would not.”

“You’re worse than Tony Soprano.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. At least it was for a good cause.”

“Amen to that,” Alice said serenely.

Stella put Alice down for her nap and then she lay down, too. She fell instantly into a restless sleep, and dreamed about her mother. They were in a car going somewhere and Candy was driving; only as they drove down a country road shaded by tall trees, Stella became gradually aware that it wasn’t her mother at all behind the wheel. It was someone else, a person in a hood whose face she couldn’t see. The dream took on an ominous tone at this point and the landscape began to darken. Stella knew she should turn to look at the figure but she was too terrified to move, afraid that she might draw attention to herself. She made herself as small as she could in the corner but she heard a loud whooshing sound outside the window, and turning she saw a great owl flying beside the car, fixing her with its savage, golden eye.

She awoke with a start. She was in the sunroom, lying on the hard, dilapidated sofa. Alice’s furniture looked as if it hadn’t been replaced for forty years; the fabrics faded, seats hard and devoid of any springs or padding. Outside the long windows the sun shone brightly and a line of pale clouds drifted across the deep blue sky.

She lay for a long time watching a pair of starlings build a nest in the top of a tall white oak on Sawyer’s front lawn. The birds flittered about, carrying twigs in their tiny beaks, and Stella watched, amazed at their tireless energy and sense of shared purpose. Who had taught them to work like that? Did they know chicks were coming, were they capable of looking into the future and assessing the needs of their brood, or were they operating solely on instinct?

A sudden childhood memory. She was in the driveway with her little brothers. Her step-dad was cleaning out the garage and he had hauled an old chest freezer to the end of the short driveway to make room for an assortment of tools, bicycles, bins, and metal shelving. He had gone inside to get a cold beer and he’d told her to watch her little brothers, who were racing their skateboards through the scattered debris on the driveway like a couple of demolition derby drivers.

She said quietly, “Yes, sir,” watching him disappear into the shadowy depths of the garage. When he first married her mother, Moody Bates had been a generous, tolerant stepfather. But as the boys were born, and especially since she’d reached puberty, his attitude toward her had changed. He was cold and distant now, and Stella had the feeling that no matter what she did to please him, it would never be enough.

She sat down on a metal stool, listlessly tapping the concrete drive with a yardstick. Far off in the distance, a dog barked incessantly. Stella slumped on the stool, watching the tap-tap-tap of the yardstick, listening to the roar and clatter of her brothers’ skateboards.

Without warning, a pick-up truck pulled to the curb and screeched to a halt, and two guys in cowboy hats jumped out and began to maneuver the freezer toward the bed of the truck. Before she could say anything, the screened door swung open behind her and Moody rushed out shouting, “Hey, what the fuck do you think you’re doing? Get away from there!”

The two men looked at him. He tossed his beer can like a grenade and it bounced against one of the men’s chests and exploded on the ground at his feet. Moody rounded his shoulders and came on, and without a word, the two turned around, jumped back into their truck, and drove off.

He seemed heroic to her, standing there with his plaid shirt flapping against his thighs and his shoulders rounded for battle, shaking his fist at the retreating truck. Like something out of one of her history books. King Leonidas facing the Persians at Thermopylae. William Wallace exhorting the Scots at the Battle of Sterling Bridge. Wanting to express her appreciation for his courage, she said instead, quite unexpectedly, “I saw them coming. I knew they were going to steal something.” The words just fell out of her mouth.

“Well, then why didn’t you say something?” Moody said, rounding on her. “Why didn’t you yell?”

She wasn’t sure why she had lied. She hadn’t seen them coming. She had wanted to impress him, she had wanted him to notice her, but instead she could see from his pained, disgusted expression that he was not impressed at all.

“If you saw them coming, you should have said something! Now get that shit picked up and start stacking those shelves in the garage in case they come back.”

“Yes sir.” His disdain was like cold water thrown in her face. She kept her expression blank; she wouldn’t cry until later, when she was alone. He didn’t like it when she cried. Her little brothers watched her gravely, and then they, too, began to carry items back into the garage.

Later that night after a few beers, Moody entertained Candy at the dinner table with his tale of saving the freezer. “Those old boys didn’t know what hit them! I lobbed a beer can at one of the sumbitches and he just stood there, staring at me like he was looking at a crazy man, and then I rushed them. They ran like pussies. Didn’t they boys?” he said, grinning at Anthony and nudging George on the shoulder.

“Yes sir,” George said. “Like pussies.”

Candy giggled and looked at Moody in loving admiration. Stella pushed her black-eyed peas around on her plate with a fork, listening to them.

“We showed them a thing or two, didn’t we boys?” Moody said, slapping his sons on their frail backs.

And George, who as the middle child was the peace maker, who always tried to put broken things back together again, whether they were crockery or electronic devices or family bonds, took Moody’s hand and laid it down on top of Stella’s.

“Stella was there, too,” George said. “She helped run off those old boys, too.”

Stella said nothing but smiled at George, not looking at anyone else, not even Moody. Least of all Moody.

As his hand touched hers, she had distinctly and unmistakably, felt him flinch.

After she and Alice finished their afternoon walk, Sawyer called to tell them the cable was back on. He had called the cable company’s headquarters in Knoxville and complained to the CEO that everyone a street over had cable, and there was no reason why Brow Road should not have it, too. He had explained all this to Alice and Stella that morning when he came to fill Alice’s pill box. Whatever he said had obviously worked, because when Stella looked out the kitchen window at lunch time, she saw a cable truck with a guy climbing a pole in front of Sawyer’s house.

Alice’s televisions were high-def with more electronic equipment attached than Stella could possibly understand and she was unable to get the game show channel back on. Alice called Sawyer and he agreed to come over and reset the channels.

He was in a good mood when he arrived.

“Thanks for calling the cable company CEO,” Stella said. “I never would have thought of that.”

“I may have been a bit rough on him. I sent him flowers this afternoon.”

“I never would have thought of that either.”

He sat down and began to fiddle with the television. They were sitting out in the sunroom, Alice and Stella in their worn club chairs and Sawyer in a straight backed wooden chair pushed close to the set.

Behind him Alice said, “See how handy he is? His father was never like that. He couldn’t even change a light bulb.”

“He could, too!” Sawyer said, swiveling his head and giving his mother a reproachful look.

Stella could imagine him as a boy, blonde and sweet-natured, always trying to shore up the family façade. To convince himself that everyone was loyal and light-hearted and loving. Just like George.

Alice laughed at his expression. “I don’t even think Bill knew where the light bulbs were kept,” she said.

“Yes he did! Stop it, Al.” He picked up the remote and began to punch buttons, looking at the blank screen.

Alice giggled. “I don’t know where he gets his height either,” she said to Stella, talking about Sawyer as if he wasn’t even there. She grinned at Stella and then swung her head back to her son. “How tall are you?”

“Seven foot six,” Sawyer said.

Alice giggled.

The blank TV screen bloomed suddenly with images. Sawyer began to scroll through the channels.