Mad Girls In Love (33 page)

Clancy Jane spent the weekend in her daughter's apartment thinking about love, trying to understand it. She had been a widow for five years when she and Byron met. This wouldn't have happened if she hadn't come home for Bitsy and Claude's wedding and found out about her mother having leukemia. She hadn't had romance on her mind then. Byron was Miss Gussie's doctor, and he was married. But then one day he'd stopped by to see his patient, and Clancy had invited him to sit in the kitchen for a cup of tea. He'd wanted to hear all about her so-called wild life in California and New Mexico, so she told him a few things.

She could tell he was fascinated, so she kept on talking. While Miss Gussie slept, helped along by morphine tablets, they drank green tea in the kitchen, their knees touching beneath the old white enamel table. He leaned over, took her face in his hands, and kissed her, a really good kiss. She slid her hands up and down his spine. Still kissing, they stood up and lurched backward to the counter. Her elbow knocked into the cookie jar. It was shaped like a pig and Miss Gussie used to say it might stop them from snacking. The pig didn't break but Byron pulled her away from the counter and pressed her against the refrigerator, dislodging all the colorful magnets. Then he shucked down his trousers, and lifted her up into his arms.

Sex with Byron had been metaphysical, two people occupying the same exact space at the same time. Still joined, they had danced across the room, colliding with the counter. Clancy Jane's head had banged against the knotty-pine cabinet, and she remembered crying out, not from pain but from pleasure.

If I could have one wish,
she thought as she sat on her daughter's beat-up sofa,
I'd want Violet to find a great love—one that stays alive, without inflicting
damage or swallowing her whole. Maybe it will be this polite boy. Maybe it will last forever.
She reached for the phone. Byron answered on the fifth ring.

“I'm coming home,” she said. “Keep the porch light on.”

 

A TAPED MESSAGE TO ROSALYN CARTER

After the Falks moved into their house, they continued to fight over the decor. Byron wanted his La-Z-Boy recliner, Clancy Jane wanted sisal mats and tasseled pillows. When she set up a shrine to Buddha, Byron was annoyed by the incense. He couldn't breathe, couldn't find a place to relax. He was a man, he kept saying, not a monk.

Clancy Jane turned her back on his complaints and found refuge in her kitchen, baking bread and mixing daiquiris. The room was one wash of cream—marble counters, tile floor, white matchstick blinds. The appliances blended into the cabinetry and walls, which were painted Linen Napkin. The old harvest table stood in front of the windows, but there was no place to sit—she'd left the chairs behind at Dixie Avenue. It was a problem, but she believed that the universe would offer her a solution.

One evening, they decided to drive down to Crystal Falls to see a movie, but before they left the house, they began to argue. Clancy Jane was dying to see
Looking for Mr. Goodbar,
but Byron said he wasn't in the mood for anything heavy, and he begged her to see
Star Wars.
So they just stayed home. Byron went into the living room, piled the cushions onto the floor, and switched on the television. Clancy Jane hung out in the kitchen, making a pitcher of daiquiris and listening to her new Carly Simon album. She carried her drink over to the harvest table, then she got an idea. She found a saw and sawed off the table's legs. Then she stepped back to admire her handiwork and realized she'd made a mistake.

When Byron found out, his face contorted, the veins stood out on his neck. “Clancy Jane, what did you DO?”

“I'm just decorating,” she said in a small voice.

“No, you're destroying. I can't live this way. I'm getting out of here.” Byron left the kitchen and ran upstairs. She thought he was pouting until he came down with a suitcase in each hand and headed out the door. As she ran after him, her shoes kicked up loose gravel, and a dozen cats trailed behind her. She prayed that Byron wouldn't turn on them, call her the Pie-Eyed Piper or something. But she didn't have the heart to chase the animals away.

“Byron, wait,” she called. “
Wait!
What did I
do
?”

“I loved that table,” he said over his shoulder. “It was the first thing we bought together. How could you chop off its legs?”

“I didn't chop off yours.”

He cursed and strode past her blue Karmann Ghia to his white MG. As he sped down the driveway, his taillights didn't blink a single time.

Clancy Jane waited for him to call. She spent hours on the back porch, staring down the long, twisty driveway, hoping she'd glimpse his car. When the cats rubbed against her legs, she poured cream into chipped Pyrex bowls and scooped out stinky cans of Friskies tuna and egg.

The cats were all she had left in the world—they were much more amusing than her human child, and considerably more attentive. Her kitties vied for places on her bed, chased each other through the house at daylight, slept on the dwarf dining room table, and left paw prints on the hood of her car. She gave them weird names—the little half Siamese was called the Prince of Wails, another was dubbed the Prince of Poop, because he was always in the litter box. According to Clancy Jane, her old Persian, Pitty Pat, was the ambassador for the other cats. In another life, Pitty must have been a demigod. Every morning at daylight, the other cats would gather in the downstairs hall then they would send the ambassador upstairs to Clancy Jane's bedroom, where he meowed until she got up. As she padded down the steps, Pitty Pat called to the others. They lined up by the kitchen door, tails crooked, waiting for Clancy Jane to open it. When Pitty trotted down the steps, into the grass, the others followed in his wake.

As Clancy Jane told this story—it was during a late-night long-distance call to Violet—she knew how crazy she sounded, and she began to worry. Cats didn't have ambassadors; they didn't manipulate human beings that way. Perhaps there was no such thing as reincarnation. What if she had emptied her life for no reason? She suspected that she might have slipped into a mild sort of insanity, the middle-age crazies—didn't it run in her family?

Now that Byron was gone, she understood the problem. He didn't hate her cats, he was jealous of them. Well, she
had
put them first. And while she demanded antiseptic conditions at the café, at home, if grapes spilled to the floor, she'd squat down and eat them. If one of the cats had diarrhea, and developed mats on its hind end, Clancy Jane would set the animal on the kitchen counter and press warm paper towels to its behind. Then she would patiently pick off the bulk of the offensive matter and finally trim the area with manicure scissors. “That's
so
gross,” Byron used to say. “We prepare food on this counter.” “
I
prepare the food, not you,” Clancy Jane had told him without looking up from the cat's anus. “Anyway, it's not unsanitary. I worm my cats on a regular basis.”

Once she was alone in the house, it did seem yucky, and she was prepared to admit it to Byron but she didn't hear a peep from him. Another week passed, and she began playing her old albums. She knew she was in trouble when she listened to “The Pusher” and counted how many times Steppenwolf said goddamn. In the bathroom cabinet, she found Byron's toothbrush and a half-used bottle of Lavoris, and sank to the tile floor. She actually missed him. The bastard had abandoned her, and here she was, crying over his damn toothbrush.

She didn't have the energy to work at the café, so she left everything in Zach's hands. One morning he called to go over the menu, and they began debating over the soup du jour. When she started to blather on about Byron, Zach cut her off by suggesting that she sell him her half of the Green Parrot. “Take the money and move back to Taos,” he elaborated. “You've never been happy in Crystal Falls.”

“Was it that apparent?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, and her heart sank. What was the point in staying? To watch Zach and his pretty harpist fall deeper in love? To hear people make fun of her cats?

“If you want the café,” she told Zach, “ it's yours.”

When Zach told me the news, I drove straight over to Clancy Jane's house, my old blue Mustang bumping over the waves in the gravel road. I pulled around to the back and hurried up the porch steps. The door was open, so I stepped inside. As I moved through the stripped-down rooms, I could see my reflection in the wood floors.

I found my aunt in the living room, sitting zazen in front of the empty fireplace. Near the V of her crossed legs, incense burned in a brass cup. She was wearing a white kimono and her hair streamed down one shoulder. Her eyes were closed, palms balanced on her thighs.

I was afraid to say anything, lest I interrupt some weird Buddhist ritual, but it could have been witchcraft, for all I knew. Clancy Jane opened her eyes. Her face looked smaller and shrunken in. “Have a seat,” she said.

Where? I wondered and glanced around the room. Sunlight rippled though the bare windows, moving on the floor. So I knelt beside her. “I just heard about you and Byron.” The air smelled chalky, spicy, and it tickled my nose.

“Did he tell you, or did Violet?”

“No. Zach.”

“I'm sorry, honey. I should've told you myself.” Clancy Jane lifted one hand and waved it through the incense, stirring up gray ribbons. Her wrist looked small as a child's.

“But what happened? Zach didn't seem to know.”

“Go see for yourself.” Clancy Jane pointed toward French doors. “It's in the kitchen.”

As I approached the French doors, I saw the old harvest table. Damask pillows were scattered around—nice fabric, too, beige backed in creamy velvet, with fat gold tassels. It looked like something from a James Bond movie,
You Only Live Twice.

“As you can see, I altered it somewhat,” called Clancy Jane. “But it doesn't look so bad, does it?”

“Why don't you come back to town with me and stay a few days?”

“I couldn't. It wouldn't feel right,” Clancy Jane said. “Dorothy's filled the house with junk. I need space.” She extended one thin arm, gesturing at the stark room.

When Clancy Jane and Byron had moved out of 214 Dixie, Dorothy had moved in with a vengeance. Magnets had returned to the refrigerator, holding postcards, memos, snapshots of Jennifer; I had arranged Aunt Clancy's brass cricket boxes on a shelf and fanned magazines on the coffee table—just the way I had learned from the Ha'vard School of Design. “I know it's jumbled at our house,” I said, “but couldn't you stand it for one night?”

“No.” Clancy Jane lowered her head, and her hair swung forward, hiding her face. “I've got all these cats to feed.”

“We'll bring them along. It'll be like old times.”

“That's not possible.”

“Surely there's something I can do. Have you eaten? Do you need groceries? Tell me what to do.”

“You can stop making a fuss.”

“But I'm worried.”

“I'm fine. Really I am.” Her thin hand shot out to tousle my hair and remind me who was the grown-up and who was the child. “I don't need groceries. I just need to get my shit together.”

When I left I drove straight over to Byron's medical office and demanded to see him
this instant
! The receptionist started to protest, but I dashed past her through the side door, into the hall. His rooms were cool and smelled faintly of Phisohex. A redheaded nurse cast a nervous glance in my direction. The receptionist came running up behind me. “Miss? I'm afraid you'll have to—”

“I'll be in his office,” I told her over my shoulder. “Tell Byron that his niece is here.”

The receptionist shrank back and I walked straight into Byron's office. It had been decorated by his first wife, and it was a masculine room, filled with books and brown leather. A lamp burned on his desk. Pictures of his three daughters were scattered on the bookshelves, but I couldn't find a single photograph of Aunt Clancy. What had he done with them?

Byron hurried into the room, his face flushed. “Is something wrong? What's happened?”

I immediately launched an attack. “How could you just leave Aunt Clancy? What's the matter with you?”

“Me?” Byron walked around his desk and sat down in the tufted chair. “Did she tell you about the table?”

“I saw it. It's not too bad.”

“Not if you're a Munchkin.”

“Byron, it's replaceable. Buy another one.”

“It's a little late for that.”

“Why, aren't you coming back?”

“Did she ask you to talk to me?” He leaned forward.

“No, she'd be furious. But I saw her today, and she looked awful. She's pale and thin. I don't think she's eaten in days.”

He gave me a stony look.

Then I understood. “It's that nurse in the hall, isn't it?”

“No, no,” he said emphatically. “It's the mangled table. It's no chairs, no social life, no red meat, and too many cats.”

“She
loves
you, Byron.”

“I love her, too.”

“Then call her. Tell her you're coming home. You just admitted that you love her—”

“I can't live with her.”

“What about the redhead? Is she next?”

“I already told you why I left.” His voice was studiedly calm, he might have been speaking to a hypochondriac, someone who would not listen to reason. “And it had nothing to do with another woman. I was a faithful husband to Clancy. But I'm touched that you want to help her. It shows that you're growing into a fine woman, Bitsy.”

“What did you do with Aunt Clancy's pictures?” I asked.

“Are they gone?” He turned back to the bookcase, his chair squeaking. He leaned forward, poking around his books. “No, I don't see them anywhere. But I'm glad you noticed. I didn't even know they were missing.”