Fag Hag (Robert Rodi Essentials) (17 page)

“What’s wrong with her?” She felt something funny start in her face, as if it were swelling up and might burst. Tears sprang from her eyes like quills from a porcupine. This was awful, awful.

“She won’t eat, and she’s incontinent. The vet says her liver’s shutting down. She’s just a very old dog, honey. She—just—” And here Sandy Stathis started bawling. She whose hair had never been less than perfectly coiffed, whose suits were always tailor-made, who always presented to the world a face of such regal composure that no one could imagine her as anything but entirely self-possessed, was now heaving and sobbing with such Saturday-morning-cartoon hysteria that Natalie, despite herself, was moved to pity.

And then Natalie started bawling too.

“What—am—I going—to do—without—my sweet—girl?” Sandy gasped through her sobs.

Natalie gulped some air and tried to compose herself. She promised to come at once.

Because of her grief, she was even less scrupulous than usual in putting herself together. She didn’t even bother checking her closet, but went straight to her laundry hamper and grabbed a ratty sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants in a color that didn’t match. She sniffed them to make sure they were only borderline offensive, then yanked them past her still sleep-heavy limbs.

She was in a taxi on her way to Oak Park before she realized what her mother would say when she saw her. After all, it had been months since she’d been to the salon, weeks since she’d worn any makeup, and God knows how long since she’d worn anything but sweats and a parka. Her mother would surely berate her.

But there were two shocks to be had on that score. First, Sandy herself looked like a bum; she was in her bathrobe, her face red and her eyes swollen from crying. Her hair was all a-jumble, its gray roots showing. Natalie had never seen those roots before.

The second shock was that Sandy took one look at her and said, “Oh, honey, I had no idea you’d lost so much weight!” And Natalie looked down at her body, noticing for the first time that she had. Then she’d realized she’d taken to wearing sweats largely because her finer clothes no longer really fit her.

She felt a momentary thrill of victory. “I guess I have,” she said, examining her waistline as if for the first time. “Thanks for noticing.”

“I didn’t mean it in any congratulatory sense. You look malnourished. Come in and have a muffin while I get my clothes on.”

Mother and daughter entered the house hand in hand. “She’s at the vet’s now. They’ve got her on an I.V. drip just keeping her going till we can get there and say goodbye; then they’ll give her the injection that will euthanize her. Oh, God, this house just won’t be the same w-withou—” She burst into a fresh hail of tears, then willed herself to stop and shook a little fist at herself, as if she might box her own ears if this sloppiness continued. “I couldn’t go alone, and Calvin can’t get away from the bank, and Vera—well, she doesn’t
know
Carmen DeFleur, does she? Thank you for coming, in spite of how much you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Mom,” said Natalie wearily. “I’m really angry, that’s all.”

“Well, thank you for coming anyway. Let me just throw on a skirt and a blouse. I’m a mess. I love that dog like you don’t know.”

“I never realized.”

“Oh,
God,
Natalie.” She turned and hugged her tightly. “I’m more broken up over this than when Max died. What’s wrong with me?”

In the car on the way to the vet, Sandy filled Natalie in on family business. “Well, Vera’s pregnant, I imagine Calvin’s told you. But wait, no—you’re not speaking to him, either, are you? Honey, it’s not his fault. Never mind that—the point is, all of Vera’s friends got pregnant, and she took one look at all the little outfits they were getting at their baby showers and her ideals went right out the window. So apparently she now thinks it’s okay if her baby is killed in a nuclear holocaust as long as it’s wearing a Laura Ashley sailor suit with matching booties. I don’t like Vera much, I have to tell you. She’s done her best to cut me out of their lives.”

Natalie felt a wave of guilt sweep over her; she suddenly realized how achingly lonely her mother must be—and how much more so she would be once Carmen DeFleur was gone.

“The only comfort I’ve had is Darnita, who’s been such a joy. I’ve even had her sister and her sister’s fiancé out to the house, which has raised some eyebrows in the neighborhood. I’ve not mentioned her sister before, have I?” She turned to look at Natalie and ran a stop sign.

“Mom, watch the road!” Natalie barked.

She snapped her head back. “I am. I saw that. Don’t yell at me. Anyway, her name is Lawanda, a dear girl. Only just eighteen, but a mother already. Her fiancé is called Quentin, isn’t that funny? He’s twenty-one and unemployed, and he’s not the baby’s father, I don’t know who is. I suspect Lawanda only has a vague idea. Anyway, Quentin lives in the same project. Used to be in a gang, don’t ask me which one, but Lawanda helped him get out of it. But it’s so hard, he can’t find a job.”

She pulled up in front of the animal hospital, parked the car, and turned off the engine. Then she sat and stared into her lap. “Oh God, oh God, I can’t go through with this.”

Natalie got out of the car and went around to the driver’s side; she opened the door and took her mother gently by the arm. “Come on, Mom. We have to. Come on.”

L
ATER
,
BACK AT
the house, Sandy sat in her kitchen, still wearing her coat, while Natalie brewed some hot tea.

“If it’s any help,” she said, bringing the pot to the table and setting it before her mother, “I’ll pay the vet bill. Be happy to.”

She shook her head. “Thank you, dear, that’s a sweet gesture but it’s not necessary. Calvin authorized me to take the money from his trust.”

She felt a little sting of anger. “Very gracious of Mr. Hundred Thou.”

“He loved Carmen DeFleur too, you know.”

They sat for a while and drank their tea in silence. The house did seem suddenly, strangely emptier. Suddenly Sandy looked up, her face seeming so old and careworn that Natalie felt a shiver of mortality just looking at her.

“Darling,” she said, “you must know that in all the years I was your trustee, I never once used a penny of that money for myself. I only used it to pay for your education. Your clothes, your meals, everything else, that came from my own pocket. I did right by you.”

“I’m sure you did, Mom. We don’t have to talk about—”

“Don’t interrupt. Now, my life is essentially over…”

“Mom, for Chri—”

“Shush! But Darnita’s is only beginning. You should see that child respond to the slightest stimulus. She was born to be an elegant young lady. She appreciates the finer things in life. Yet through a horrible accident of nature, she was born into an environment hostile to everything fine. I want to give her an opportunity, Natalie, yet there’s such a severe limit to what I can do. But you—”

“Mom.”

“I can’t sell the house because I have nowhere else to live and my credit is shot.”

“Mom, please.”

“And I can’t sell the Landseer because it’s actually a fake. Don’t
ever
tell Greta Ledbetter.”

“Oh, for God’s sake—”

“Come out next weekend. I’m having a little party for Lawanda and Quentin, and Darnita is helping me. She spent hours going through magazines, looking at table settings and picking out recipes—I’ve been guiding her as much as I can, but I’m letting all the final decisions be hers. She has such innate good taste, Natalie! Please come and see for yourself. It’ll break your heart to watch her.” She reached across the table and clasped her daughter’s hand. “Calvin and Vera won’t be here, so you don’t have to worry about facing them. It’ll just be the five us. Oh, say you’ll come!”

Looking at her mother’s grief-ravaged face, she couldn’t bring herself to refuse.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
, just after eleven, Natalie drove down Wilson Avenue as quietly as she could, and cut her headlights a block from Lloyd and Peter’s house. Their bedroom light was on. She parked across the street and prayed they wouldn’t look out the window.

It was teeth-rattlingly cold in the van. She’d taped plastic sheeting over the empty window, but it couldn’t prevent the heat from getting sucked right on out into the night. And she didn’t dare fool with the gas heater anymore.

She crept to the back of the van, started the tape recorder, and put on the headphones.

“…kind of attitude that has trouble written all over it.” Lloyd’s voice.

“What kind of attitude?” asked Peter. Their voices were pitched very low; they must be in bed together.

“Cocky,” Lloyd said. “You know. Smartass.”

“How reliable does he have to be?”

“To sell guns? Peter!”

A short pause. “Anyone else on the horizon?”

“No; I’ve run out of applicants. Maybe I’ll place an ad. Too bad—I thought I could find someone here in the community. You know how I believe in that.”

A longer pause. Then Peter said, “I appreciate you doing this for me.”

“I know you do. I just wish I knew why it’s so important to you. It’ll still be my store. Whoever I hire will still be selling my guns.”

“I’d just feel better if it was an employee, and not you.” The sound of shifting sheets suggested they were snuggling. “I can’t believe everyone you’ve interviewed has been such a loser.”

“In my view, they are. I hold people to a very high standard, you know that. The person who works for me has to want the job for the right reasons. I sometimes wonder if that person even exists.”

In the van, Natalie rubbed her hands together and muttered, “I sometimes wonder if
you
really exist.” She readjusted the headphones, trying to cover her frigid ears.

“But
why
does he have to believe the same things as you?”

“Because it’s my store; because it’s my statement. I don’t want someone in there who’s going to subvert it.”

“You must be disappointed in people a lot. It surprises me you ever meet anyone who fills the bill for you.”

A long silence now—so long Natalie thought the headphones had gone dead. She took them off, banged them against the floor of the van, then put them back on in time to hear Lloyd say, “Disappointed? Yeah, I guess so. But it happens all the time. In fact, I look at it almost as a series of terrible epiphanies—of sudden realizations that people aren’t capable of becoming what I want them to be. I always thought, if I just explain my ideological views rationally, I’ll get a rational hearing and, probably, a rational agreement; but ‘reason’ is a dirty word to some people. And even people who claim to be rational aren’t always. Like, I’ve met deeply religious people who call themselves rationalists.

“It’s not just a matter of ideology, either,” he continued. “It’s everything. For instance, I never used to think there were people in the world who can’t be moved by art. But they exist. They can experience art—they can sit through, say, all four movements of a Beethoven symphony, they can stare as long as you ask them to at a painting by Goya, they can watch a play by O’Neill, listen to a poem by Yeats—and it means absolutely nothing to them, they come away completely unaffected. Even if they say they’ve enjoyed it, they look at you strangely if you ask whether it’s going to have any effect on their lives—as if the idea of being changed by art had never occurred to them. I’d always thought it was just a matter of getting people to art, just a matter of breaking down the barriers, but it’s not. And I kept wondering about that, and wondering, and wondering—you know, why? Why is that? And later, when I saw that just about anything and everything is called ‘art’ these days—you know, macramé, boxing, French cooking—I wondered about that, too.

“And you know what I decided was the reason? We, as a civilization, are losing our ability to think in abstract terms. I love technology, you know that, I love what it’s given us, but sometimes I have doubts, and you’re the only one I’ve confessed this to; but I wonder if technology, in allowing us to increase the pace of our lives beyond anything we could’ve imagined a hundred and fifty years ago, and by giving us an endless stream of pop distractions in the form of television, computers, instant cures, processed foods—whether it’s really robbed us of the time, and even the need, to think in the abstract. It’s possible to go through your entire life without considering a moral issue, or an ideological or philosophical one, and never feel the lack—you know people like that. Your friend Natalie, for one.”

Natalie’s heart galumphed at the mention of her name. Then a flash of anger seared through her body like an electrical charge. She wished she could release that anger through her eyes, like a character in a Brian DePalma movie; she would have liked to set Lloyd’s house on fire just by looking at it. And what made her angriest of all was that he was absolutely dead-on in his assessment of her.

“But when I met you,” he continued, “that was what struck me about you. You could consider things in the abstract—not just argue them from the knee-jerk position that every label has a platform and if you’re ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ or ‘religious,’ then
this
is what you think and not
this
—your thinking was your own. You adapted to it. I don’t think I could have loved you otherwise. Even if we disagree, it’s not important to me as long as we’re both thinkers. I suppose that makes me some kind of elitist; I believe only men and women who think in abstract terms, at least part of the time, are truly civilized.”

They began what Natalie knew by now to be the sounds of their lovemaking. She listened for a few moments more; then the cold gripped her in earnest, and it seemed like a cold beyond the realm of mere temperature. She removed the headphones, switched off the tape recorder, went back to the driver’s seat, and drove quietly away.

She looked in the rearview mirror and saw the light in the bedroom window go out. Then she looked at her own reflection and saw that she was wearing a wild, bestial, baleful look; it was a look of desperate hatred—the look of a loser who’s already been forgotten by the victor.