The Unfortunates (37 page)
Particular to this homecoming, the cupboards and refrigerator are restocked per CeCe’s regular lists, but also per the new nutritionist’s guidelines, who, to CeCe’s displeasure, believes in nothing so much as dinosaur kale. The newspaper and magazine subscriptions are renewed. Her social diary and Rolodex have been put out on her desk along with the laptop she’d requested—“Someone will know the one I should get”—and a list of tutors in computer basics for her to consider. Esme had refused the task of interviewing and selecting a tutor as beyond the bounds of her duties. CeCe admitted she was right. Outside, the veranda awning is on order to be replaced, having been damaged in the same winter storm that broke the upstairs window. CeCe’s hundred feet of beach have been re-sanded with three hundred tons of white sand, and this year with “an assortment of shells and corals for baby Douglas to find, like you asked.” Esme sighs. “I put a copy of the shells invoice on your desk because it’s too much. But house accountant”—Esme, having passionately loathed Mr. Pitt from the start, will not call him by his name—“has paid it.”
CeCe’s bed, her effects, and the rest of the furniture at Oak Park, are a half hour behind them on the road. The movers are tasked with restoring the larger pieces to their proper locations at Booth Hill in such a fashion as not to disturb CeCe’s first day back home, having run a drill with Esme the week before. CeCe’s everyday wardrobe, the five closets, has been laundered by Madame Relais in Manhattan and returned to the house by padded truck; the weekly standing order of flowers is reinstated. She doesn’t like to pilfer her garden, nor can she or Esme arrange flora as well as good-natured Beth, whom they’ve never met but only spoken to on the phone, whose work they admire.
“I thought I couldn’t get the flowers in time,” Esme says. “The first order comes today. We had the boathouse cleaned. We didn’t do anything with the boat. You want the boat painted?”
The road gathers into an expressway. Bleak, but to be moving fast, the air sweeping through the car, is invigorating. Esme clutches her list.
“Have it painted. Now why,” CeCe demands, the wind against her cheek, “was the veranda awning damaged? Was it not rolled for winter?”
“One foot out all season. How I didn’t notice, I don’t know.”
“We were distracted. Grounds isn’t your job. Have you already ordered the fabric? I might want a change. What’s your opinion of a wider stripe? And I’m thinking of rearranging the furniture in the living room. Tighter in, more friendly.”
“The rugs. You’ll be able to see the impressions from the chairs.”
“You can’t fix that?”
“It’s a lot of years in one spot. I’ll try. Can we do schedule? Tomorrow I’m making lunch for you and George and Iris? Shrimp salad? How is pineapple upside-down cake?”
Dread at George’s name. She’d finally called, asked Iris when they were free for lunch in the most congenial tone she could muster. “The queen is back,” she couldn’t resist saying, as Iris hung up. That she was George’s queen had not entered her mind until she’d read it in Esme’s press clippings. To discover if she will be able to love and dislike her son at the same time—a heavy mission to hang on shrimp salad. Is an upside-down pineapple cake what one wants to contemplate at the conclusion of such an assessment? An assessment not of George, but her own capacity. If she can’t, she’s not sure what will become of them, or how they will go on.
“No cake. Fruit. Or, I could go to their house instead. A gesture. They don’t always have to come to me. I’m worried, though. I might not be able to hold myself back.”
“That won’t be a problem.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see. They’re having a hard time.”
CeCe leans forward and puts her hands on the leather and mahogany of the open partition and shouts against the wind. “What do you think, Javier?”
“No way I’m getting involved in this conversation.”
“You never get involved in any conversation. You’re no fun, Javi.”
“This is not my place of fun.”
“The man never gives an inch,” she says to Esme.
“No,” Esme says.
Her iron gates. Javier punches the code. The gates swing back. They take so long to open. They drive up the hill, to the white house and the green lawn. The bright sea, rolling in below.
The next morning, CeCe decides that instead of driving around to Somner’s Rest, she’ll walk the path. But first, to business. At her desk, she opens the laptop, an alien slice of aluminum. Esme has unpacked it and charged it for her. CeCe considers the tumbling, three-dimensional letters in the middle of the screen, pulsing the word
welcome
. She closes the laptop and opens a drawer. She takes out a piece of stationery and makes some notes. She straightens her back and flips through her Rolodex. She calls Nan for leads on a new personal assistant, not liking the previous one enough to rehire. Still under the premise of looking for an assistant, she calls a few locals—Dana Barnes and Ellie Baker and the Rahvs—who she knows will gossip around town that they’ve had a chat with Cecilia Somner, same as she ever was. She ignores Dana’s and Ellie’s exclamations at hearing from her, ignores their inquiries as to how she’s been. She schedules a meeting for Annie Mason and the foundation’s staff to come to the house with presentations of all she’s only nominally kept up with in the last year, and to expect to stay the day. She does not tell Esme that when she awoke she looked for the French doors and the bed crank and Round Lake and did not understand what was happening. But her calm was restored by breakfast: a poached egg and a croissant with orange marmalade in the sunroom off the veranda. A bright spring wind blurred the vermilion peonies and the lilac bushes and ragged the sea at high tide. After breakfast, she walked through the garden and along the beach, then visited each room to turn the small treasures of the house over in her hands, as she had the day before.
Esme brings a pot of bergamot tea to CeCe’s desk. On the tray is a card with the number of the home-care nurse who is to check on her several times a week.
“Call,” Esme says, and leaves her.
CeCe sticks the card in the back of the Rolodex. Instead, she schedules a house call with her lawyer and another with the woman from Ortez to come to do her hair and her nails. Ortez puts her on hold for two entire Billie Holiday numbers, disagreeably followed at a much higher volume by the opening to Bach’s Prelude in C Major. She must find an assistant, posthaste. She’s avoiding the only call that matters. It’s time to see George. Yes, she’ll walk the path and surprise them with how strong she is. Does she hope to see gladness spread across their faces, or to demonstrate she’s well despite the outrage of their neglect? Both. It can’t be more than a quarter mile. Shorter than around the lake. She finds Esme in the hall.
“Now? It’s too early.”
“I’m not getting anything done.”
“You want me to call?”
“No. I want them to see. Don’t look at me that way. Allow my mischief. Earrings.”
“I’ll get the box.”
She listens to Esme trudge upstairs and down—Esme, who had the night before made one of CeCe’s favorite meals, pecan-crusted trout in brown butter, with watercress. She’d eaten in the kitchen, asking Esme questions about how she’d handled difficulties with her own children, Esme answering opaquely as she liked.
CeCe chooses a pair of emerald studs that once matched her eyes. Soon enough they’re on the path, Esme accompanying her for the uneven ground, the birds jabbering in the trees. They come out the other side. The house is as she remembered, a stack of rectangles ostentatious in its austerity. Iris is standing a hundred yards away under the ash, talking to a man in coveralls, kneeling at the base of the tree.
“Hello! Iris, hello!” CeCe calls, once she’s passed the covered pool. Iris spins around. For once, her clothes aren’t tight—jeans and a long, blue T-shirt, her hair in a ponytail, a look of surprise overtaking her fine features. The dog gallops over to CeCe, his maroon tongue flopping out. He’s raced back to Iris by the time CeCe is upon them.
“CeCe! Esme, oh, hi, Esme. I wasn’t—did you walk here? I wasn’t expecting you until one.” They embrace awkwardly. There’s some change in Iris. Gaunter under the eyes. Her face more lined, though also more flushed. Yes, CeCe remembers how quickly it begins to happen at that age, the wear of the years arriving all at once. And something—a weary alarm. Iris’s eyes flick up to the bedroom window. She’s trying to hide where she looks, but the dog lifts his muzzle in the direction of the window and begins to bark.
“Am I interrupting? Should I turn around and go home? I can. As you can see.”
“No, no, I’m so sorry. CeCe! That’s wonderful!” This time Iris’s hug is real, and unbalancing. “It’s just, I haven’t had a chance to clean the house. But that’s not important. You’re here. And you walked! I can’t believe it!”
“Hello to you too, dog.” CeCe pats the top of 3D’s head. He wags in a circle. “Look! He thinks he likes me. He’s forgotten. Maybe he and I will start anew.”
“The situation is—” the man under the tree begins, rising heavily off his knees, his hand on the bark.
“I’m sorry, CeCe. It seems to be an emergency.”
“I don’t mind. Finish up. Esme, I’ll call you if I need.”
“Okay.” Esme frowns and heads back across the lawn.
“The roots are strangling the septic,” the man continues. “It’s a mess down there. I wish you had me out a couple of years ago. You’ve got five, maybe six crushed pipes. First we replace the pipes, then we Vaporoot. Cauterize the offending roots, save the tree. We can do Monday.”
“How dreadful,” CeCe says.
“If it doesn’t work?”
“The tree’s got to go. Everybody looks sad when I say that. Also sad is right now you got no bathroom. Here, cards for Callahead and Handy Can. They’re both okay. You’ll want to book it for the week, in case.”
“Monday!” CeCe says. “You need to fix this right away.”
“Thank you, it’s okay,” Iris says. “Can I—can I call you later about pricing?”
“Sure thing. Have a nice day.” The man gets into his van.
“Wasn’t he the comedian,” CeCe says, meaning to make Iris laugh, because Iris looks as if she’s about to cry. “You should stay with me until it’s fixed.”
“Come in. George is asleep.”
Inside, it takes CeCe a moment to understand what she sees. Despite the glass wall, it’s dim: the vegetation on the other side has crept closer than she remembers, creating the unpleasant effect of being sealed in a giant terrarium. Below her, the fetid grotto is choked with leaves.
“Goodness, dear, turn on a lamp!”
“Yes.” What a strange, drowsy way her daughter-in-law moves from one light switch to another. Something has changed. Something is wrong. The room is brightened.
“Have a seat. Let me wake George.” Iris goes upstairs.
With the lights on, CeCe notices a copious streak of bird shit down the outside of the glass. She hears the door at the top of the stairs open and Iris murmuring. CeCe tries hard to see what she is seeing. A house missing half its furniture. There’s dust and dog hair rolling in the corners of the room. Paw prints and footprints the color of gristle layer the kitchen floor. She peers into the mudroom. In a neat row, some ten heaping recycling bags sit uncollected. Back in the living room, she sees little rips of paper, scribbled notes, scattered on the floor. Clothes are piled on the far end of the sectional on which she sits, and an empty laundry basket is tipped on its side beneath. The dark, faint smell of the crushed pipes is unmistakable. A white rectangle on the wall marks where a picture must have been. No, a television—below is a console stacked with DVDs. She wanders to the kitchen area.
Area
, for the impractical democracy of these types of houses does not allow for separate kitchens. It seems altered, barren of appliances. All that’s on the counter is a can of air freshener and a bag of dog food. She opens the refrigerator. Milk, sandwich bread, a door full of condiments, and the makings of what must be today’s lunch for her—a bunch of arugula and a tomato and a wax-paper bundle with an expensive price tag that reads
Alaskan King Salmon
. She gingerly opens a cardboard box. A glistening, dense chocolate torte. Nothing else. She hears George’s voice. Her son, his voice. She has missed him? This faint sound—she hears it more with her body than with her ears. She is his mother. Clearer is Iris’s voice, rising in a hushed, desperate pitch: “But you
can’t
use the bathroom.” And, lower, but not low enough: “Don’t make her wait. You should be the one waiting for her. Please get dressed.”
“You know what, dears?” CeCe calls up the stairs. “You know what, George? I shouldn’t have crept up on you like this. How about a rain check? I’ll let myself out.”
She’ll make it back by herself. It will be fine.
Iris pads fast down the stairs. She overtakes CeCe at the front door, a crooked, unconvincing smile on her face. “I’m so sorry. Can I walk you? I’ll walk with you.”
Together, they cross the lawn. The path is dense and cool, with bright velvet moss and twigs under their feet. As it climbs the gentle hill, the sun shafts through the leaves. Soon they can hear the lapping of the tide going out.
As they step onto the lawn, CeCe takes Iris’s hand. “We’ll make it right. Do you understand?”
Iris lowers her eyes and shakes her head. Then she nods, but does not speak. CeCe leaves her at the edge of the path. When she turns, Iris is still there, nodding at the ground.
It’s a strange kind of justice. Or a strange kind of injustice. Or, stranger still, justice and injustice have nothing at all to do with how the following week CeCe restores their finances. As if all the last months Iris has been inside a dream. It’s seems as easy for CeCe as paying the hairdresser. The hairdresser is holding a white envelope and kissing CeCe goodbye when Iris arrives at the house. The accountant waits in the dining room.
“Iris,” CeCe says, “you sit beside Mr. Pitt so you can read together, dear.”
CeCe sits on his other side. Mr. Pitt gently takes the stack of battered, rubber-banded folders Iris is clutching to her chest. The folders in which she’s tried to hold everything straight, keep both her and George’s sanity ordered, keep chaos shut inside. Like trying to keep a folder full of dirty water. Mr. Pitt spreads the papers on the table. Bill by bill, she explains. At CeCe’s insistence, she eats a dry piece of shortbread from a gold-banded tea plate painted with songbirds.