The Six Granddaughters of Cecil Slaughter (15 page)

Exactly a week after Deidre dropped off the poem, Celie called her. Deidre picked up the phone immediately. Celie reported to Cecilia, “I told her I'd gotten in some long skirts for the fall—chiffon—with hand-painted flowers at the bottom and I immediately thought of her. I said she would love them and asked if I should hold a few.”

Celie continued that Deidre seemed surprised by the talk of skirts, but, after a breath and a pause, replied, “Great. I'll be in tomorrow.”

“I could hear her voice tumble down on the
tomorrow.
I felt guilty about prefacing the call about the poem with trying to sell her some skirts, but, then again, she has taken up so much of my time. However, it did make me feel badly.”

“Yes,” Cecilia said, “but don't worry about trying to sell her something. She's trying to sell something, too—herself.” Cecilia then sighed, “Maybe that's what we all do.”

Celie added, “It was only then I said, ‘Oh, by the way, Cecilia has read your poem. She would like to talk with you about it. She wants to make a date.' I gave her your number. When I did this, I felt somewhat better.”

Cecilia just replied, “Thanks, Celie, I owe you.”

“Owe me?” she answered. “After everything you've done for me? Never, Cecilia. Never.”

It is true Cecilia has done important things for Celie, but they were easy to do because she loves her and beyond this, all of the Slaughter cousins are bound together, be they in positive or negative ways. We are cut from the same cloth, our dyes a bit different—the patterns of our lives unique shapes—but we are part of the same design, the same picture, the same story and therefore—in life or in death—remain very much connected. We inhabit the same frame.
Sadly, sometimes the threads that make up who we are do snarl and snap and no crochet hook or sewing needle can repair the tear to make it appear even superficially right. However, with the murder of Herr M came the complete unraveling of some lives—a permanent, unfixable, rip in the canvas of who we were.

Cecilia thought of Deidre and what she probably was experiencing now—the natural high that comes when someone you believe to be of consequence is actually interested in your work. Again, she hoped Deidre would be satisfied with just the lunch and a few comments, but she was beginning to have real doubts. Also, she worried about herself—if she had enough composure left in her to carry this to a satisfactory conclusion.

Celine had already agreed to accompany her, the gift certificate the perfect payment. Cecilia told her, “As soon as Deidre calls we'll set a date. I'll let you know.”

Buoyantly, Celine replied, “I'm ready! I've informed my boys that I'll be away for part of a day sometime soon on an important mission.” She then quoted Yeats, “Only that which does not explain itself is irresistible.”

Cecilia, perpetually shocked by Celine's knowledge and how she covers it up with cloaks upon cloaks of ditziness, on hearing this, thought, “Maybe she
is
the smartest of all of us. However loose the boundaries of her life, she does seem to keep everyone in their place, which is something I'll never achieve—forever unable to erase, correct, or learn from all that's happened in mine. Or maybe it's that she learned all too well the art of manipulation and deviousness from her father?” She carefully contemplated this. But thinking about Manny Slaughter began to make her sick as she vividly recalled all the far-reaching soul damage he had caused.

Celie told Cecilia, “She showed up at the shop and bought two skirts. When I asked if she'd called you, with a false casualness she replied, ‘No, not yet.'” Celie excitedly added, “It's the first time she didn't try, even subtlety, to interrogate me about you, about the family. So I didn't have to shut down on her. Maybe this plan
will
really work. She seems so filled with hope.”

“The thing with feathers,” Cecilia replied, her voice cracking and sounding like it was falling down a well. And, however many pills she had taken to get through the day, the still quick-minded Celie answered, “Emily Dickinson.” Then they laughed, both remembering the joke—between the three of us—that if you were born a Slaughter, hope was pretty much killed off. Cecilia adding, “Oh, Celie, how both of us and ‘our now forever lost Ceci,' would laugh about hope being something of an oxy
moron
in this family.”

Later that afternoon when the phone rings and Cecilia sees from her caller ID it says “unavailable,” she worries that it could be Herr M trying to get at her in
some
way—again. But his calls have never come up like this—usually “anonymous” or his actual number, so she picks it up. It is Deidre—she must have gone through information. Cecilia's guessing she knows all the phone tricks. Probably if she had not answered, Deidre would have hung up and she would never have known she called, thereby giving Deidre another chance at anonymity.

Cecilia's pleasant; she speaks softly but in an upbeat way and tells Deidre she has read the poem and looks forward to discussing it with her and, “No,” she does not mind
at all that Deidre's written a poem with the same title as one of her recently published ones. “It happens,” she replies with nonchalance, continuing, “Anyway, they are
quite
different.” Then surprising herself she continues, “I like the poem's complexity, the risks it takes, the isolation of the narrator, how it ends.” She compares it to one of Tennyson's, all the while appalled by the words that are falling out of her mouth and she worries that she has completely lost control of her intentions, her language, her honesty. And she does not at the moment understand the
why
of this.

Then, getting some small command of herself, she says, “Let's meet next week at the Arts Club. My treat. Next Tuesday at 1:00 P
.M.
Does that work for you?” Deidre speaks carefully in a way that intends poise but just comes off as mannered nervousness, and answers, “Next Tuesday at 1:00 P
.M.
is perfect. Thank you so much.” Actually, she sounds medicated, a bit robotic. They hang up.

Cecilia imagines Deidre's joy at all of this and the beginnings of her plans of what she will wear. She had been there—laying an outfit on her bed to study and then rejecting it, and the day before the big event, getting her hair done and a professional manicure at some upscale beauty shop—the choosing of a color for her nails becoming a too-large issue. She remembers once landing on Soft Shell Pink and how the next day she met her first publisher. For years she never deviated from that color.

Her fingertips were dipped in that shade of tender innocence the night of Herr M's attack. Now, she just paints them herself with the non-color “clear” as if that will help give her life more clarity—all of this she knows far beyond silly, somersaulting down into a pit of stupidity. “These
days,” she thinks, “I have no need to shrivel from Herr M's reproaches of me—I do this very well to myself.”

On the day of Cecilia's truly lucky lunch to meet the person who would publish her first book, she took too many tranquilizers and Mylanta Extra-Strength tablets. Her insides were in total distress. She popped them into her mouth the way she now pops Life Savers when she gets too nervous, as if they can really save her life.

She arrived at the Arts Club far too early, getting sick twice in its large, beautiful, well-appointed bathroom filled with tissues of all kinds and sweetly scented sachets that kept the air smelling like a garden, clean of all bad odors.

She then sat down on the deep-green, velvet settee framed by a rich, dark—almost black—wood, trying to collect herself, and attempted to focus on the wallpaper which looked like silk, with thick stripes in various hues of green, eventually moving to the green velvet bench in front of the dressing table with a satin ecru skirt on it.

The large square mirror that hung above it, bordered in the same dark wood, allowed her to look at herself and realize she had worn too much makeup—that she was wearing the “clown look”—too much blusher to try to make her blanched skin look healthier. All her blood seemed to be draining out of her body as she grew cold, then colder, as a panic was about to overtake her.

Because her meeting also had been at 1:00 P
.M.,
at 12:59 she climbed the austere staircase that had been designed by the architect Mies van der Rohe and brought over from the club's old building to this new space. She had a compulsive need to be precise. Still does.

As she did this, she thought about all the artists and the
wannabes who had climbed these stairs and she wondered how many of them had reached their destination—and how hard her own heart hurt for something
good
to happen.
Which it did,
that day.

Today, as she climbs these stairs, she thinks of the mess—the awful mess—that her life has become and the irony of it. “That some woman seems to be living only to spend time with me—to
be
me.” Also, she feels a rage expanding inside her toward Deidre, as she tells herself, “I need to get this unwelcomed woman out of my life. There have been
enough intruders.
Maybe Celie was right. This
was
a bad idea.”

Cecilia and Celine meet early, according to plan, so that they will be seated when Deidre appears. Celine has really outdone herself in terms of what she is wearing—she is impossible to miss in a tight, shocking pink sweater with large, red beads attached to it. Actually, she looks like a whore; an old whore; an old, high-priced whore. Especially when she carefully places her state-of-the-art cell phone next to her as if it were another piece of silverware.

When Cecilia sees the maitre d' escorting Deidre into the dining room, she also sees that Deidre's face is ashen with large spots of color standing out on her cheeks and thinks, “She is wearing the clown look.” It is now clear Deidre has seen both Cecilia
and Celine
and she looks as if she has become dizzy, because she is holding on to the backs of some of the chairs at other tables as she approaches. Both Cecilia and Celine greet her with large smiles. Neither stands up, but they both hold out their hands for her to shake, which she does. Deidre's is wet and thick and all Cecilia wants to do is wash her hand of Deidre's sweat.

She pulls out a Wash'n Dri from her left pants pocket
and opens it beneath her napkin and wipes her palm. She does not think Deidre has noticed this and wonders why she even cares if she has. Maybe it is because of all the talk that has been swirling about her, Deidre being a substantial participant in this. These days it seems she does not know how to get clean of anything and
now
she is becoming even more locked into her anger toward Deidre—which she is realizing is in large part a displacement over what she is feeling toward Herr M.

Celine, however, is doing an outstanding job of distracting Deidre, as she sits there like a boil—a body about to burst—too forced into her clothes. With her cosmetically thickened lips, she gushes to Cecilia that she and Deidre are “old friends.” “We've been to lunch—such fun!” she goes on. Celine clearly is earning her gift certificate.

Deidre carefully places herself in the empty chair next to Cecilia. She looks bewildered and definitely off balance and Cecilia is getting a little worried that she might faint, so she quickly says, “I told Celine I was having lunch with you, and she really wanted to come, too.” But it is clear Deidre is beginning to feel this is a setup, for a hardness is starting to form at the corners of her mouth.

Cecilia wants to be nice to her, to give her something she can take away from this encounter that is positive so she will be satisfied for at least a while, but she is beginning to feel stuck, almost frozen, and her ability to talk is shrinking to mute.

Celine, true to form, is now showing them her new gold bracelet. “From Morris,” she says with a wink to Cecilia, which even
I
feel is a little much, while Cecilia pretends to enjoy our cousin's jester-antics. Deidre says, “Your husband has terrific taste,” which is met with a pause from
both of them. Celine, even more aglow and pleased with herself, replies, “Well, actually Morris—” when Cecilia interrupts with, “Perhaps we should look at the menu. It's getting late.” With this Cecilia sees a fury begin to swell Deidre's face. When it is her turn to order Deidre stammers out, “The salmon.”

Cecilia thinks of the salmon forever swimming upstream to spawn and die and then being delivered to Deidre's plate and feels a triple misery—for herself, the salmon, and Deidre—which she knows Deidre would never believe. However, she also wants to scream at her, “Whatever gossip you've heard about me and repeated, you've idealized my life to the point, it seems, of
wanting
my life, which, if you believe
anything
of what you've heard, makes you
truly crazy.”

Celine is now telling them about the rings and necklace she is wearing. She really
does
talk too much about herself and it is even getting on
my
nerves, no matter that I have been physically removed from Celine's presence for some amount of time and thought I had built up a far larger reserve of patience. The way she keeps her eye on her cell phone, checking and rechecking if it lights up is completely annoying. “The club's rule is you have to turn the ringer off,” she chortles to them.