Watch Your Mouth (25 page)

“So do you,” I said, automatically, and then found a foothold. “Considering.”

She blinked and slipped her sunglasses back on. She shifted her legs up towards her, her limbs moving fluid as tide. She extended a curled hand and I thought for a minute she was going to grasp my shoulder, but she was just taking juice. “Thanks,” she said to her husband, who was lowering himself into the neighboring chair and opening a spy novel. “Frank, I’m going to go off for a minute with him. We have to—”

Frank Zhivago looked up in mid-sip, his eyes pausing on me briefly. I looked familiar. Oh yes, I worked here at the Vast. “Work on costumes,” I said to him, holding up the list, and then frowning and uncrumbling it professionally. “Tonight’s the costume party, you know.”

“I know,” Frank said, and started reading.

“Back in a few minutes,” Mimi said. She stood up and wrapped the towel around her shoulders, not because it was cold but, I guess, because it was indecent. I was guessing at everything. We walked through a gap in the trees to a field which later would be “festooned,” as Mike had put it, with Jap- anese lanterns, the better to make last-minute costumes work. Beyond the field was the beach with sand so white it looked vacuumed. A ways down on the shore was what looked like a tiny tan globe, probably the gut of the fat man, Anderson, while his let’s-hope-daughter waded topless in the foam like a Venus somebody was trying to throw back. It was as good a setting as any.

“It’s so pretty here,” Mimi said. “Everything looks
perfect.

How long have you been working here?” “Not long,” I said.

“It’s nice,” she said, looking around. Out past the exquisite ocean was a thin green line of ink, another island maybe, or the tip of continent we were closest to. “Peaceful. I suppose you’re surprised I’m here.”

“I’m—I’m surprised you’re
anywhere.
You’re
dead,
Mimi.”

“No,” she said simply.

“Yes,” I said. “
Yes
. I
know.
I
see
you. But I can’t believe—” “Your own eyes?”

“—what you put me through,”
I insisted. “What—what hap- pened?”

She shrugged, paused, shrugged again. “I don’t have to tell you, Joseph.”

“But I have to know,” I said. “I’ve been up nights—every night—you won’t believe the things I—you owe me an expla- nation! You owe me—”

“Nothing,”
she said, her face finally clouding over. This at

least was something, something else besides descriptions of the scenery. At least she was angry. “I don’t owe you anything, Jo- seph. Not a
thing.
After what I’ve been through?”

“After what
you’ve
—?”

“Not a
thing
. Why don’t you think about what you owe
me?
” She kicked at the grass and then looked at me firmly. “Think about somebody
else
for a change.”

“Just tell me why you left!”

“You
know
why,” she said. “You don’t have to hear it again.” “I
don’t
know! I’ve been—all this time I’ve been trying to figure it out! No one can tell me but
you,
Mimi, and
now,
when

I’ve found you, you won’t—”

“Because my husband was fucking my daughter, is that what you want to hear?”

“Yes!”
I said, instantly. Exultation and shame slapped me at once, like a flipped coin landing right on its ridge. The world seemed greener, all of it: the grass was brighter and the trees looked better, but the sea had become sickly, the sky all jaun- diced and the Anderson girl, turning around to face the shore, exposed alien breasts, miscolored and wrong in the light.
“Yes.”

“It’s what you
always
wanted to hear,” she said. “You

wouldn’t leave it alone.”

“I didn’t—I never knew if it was true.”

“True?”
she said, sharply. “What did
true
matter to you? What could it matter? You just wanted us to see it! You just wanted—”

“I didn’t
know,
” I said. “Everything was—”

“You just wanted to wreck everything,” she said quietly. “You think I didn’t know? You think you needed to wake me up, late at night in my own house, to show me things I didn’t know? You think, after a couple of months up in the attic, you had
news?
”

“I didn’t
know
. I didn’t—”

“Selfish,”
she snarled at me. “So
selfish.
You think you were the only one in this family? I planned for
years.
” She began to pace the lawn like something, someone caged. “Saving money. Getting everything set. Getting all
ready
. And you had to—”

“I didn’t
know.
I thought I was going crazy.”

“You thought
you
were going crazy? What about—”

“I
knew,
” I said, smiling despite everything, “that
you
were going crazy.”

“I was
planning,
” she said. “You can’t just
disappear
from someone like Ben. The way he—the way he works? He’ll
find

you. I was planning to take everyone with me, my daughter, my

son—
”

“Let’s talk about your son,” I said. “Your—”

“—and then I
couldn’t
. You spoiled everything. All that shouting in the hospital, sneaking around at night—”

“Your son you—
fucked,
” I said. “We can talk about him.”

She looked down. “I
know,
” she said. “It was working on
all of us,
don’t you understand? Stephen and I were being torn apart by him. He brought so many terrible things into our house. He was
teaching
them—Stephen was
learning
all those terrible things. He started in on Cynthia, too—my
daughter,
Joseph, my
daughter
—so, I—I—
what could I do?
”

“I can think of about a million things,” I said, “that you could have done, besides seducing your
son
and faking your own—” “And
you,
” she said, sneering. “Don’t forget about
that. You

and I—”

“It’s
different!
” I said. “It’s—you’re
wrong!
You—you weren’t my
family,
for God’s sake.”

“My point exactly,” she said. “We weren’t
yours
. We
aren’t

yours. You could have left any time, just walked out—” “So could you.”

“No,”
she said. “
No.
You don’t
know,
Joseph. You didn’t
know.

You walk in for a few weeks and think you can open everyone’s eyes. But you don’t know.”

“There’s nothing,” I said, “
nothing
you could tell me that

would make this all make sense. No matter what I didn’t know. There’s nothing you could tell me—”

“And there’s nothing I
will,
” she said. “I’m not here to give

you answers, Joseph. What could you hear, what could I tell

you, that would make sense of this? Of
any
family? I can’t tell you anything. I’m trying to get on with my life.”

“This is
absurd,
” I said. “This is
unbelievable.
”

“It’s
all
unbelievable,” she said. “You could have walked down Byron Circle, Joseph, to
any
house, and knocked on the door and found something ugly you could expose if you wanted to. And I wish you
had. Any
other girl,
any
other family.”

“And found
this
?” I cried. “Incest and a secret escape plan and—
no.
Not like this.
Not like—
”

“There’s
no
family,” she said, “like any other one.”

The Anderson girl skipped over to her father and kissed him full on the mouth. His hands went to her green breasts and I hoped that she was his wife after all. “O.K.,” I said. “O.K.”

“You should have let us be.
Everything
would have been

better.”

“It—it bothered me—
haunted—
”

“You think
I
wasn’t haunted? You think, every day, wander- ing around with Frank, trying to
relax,
trying to
recuperate,
it doesn’t haunt me still? Did you ever,
ever
think of us, Joseph? Think about what
we
wanted, instead of what was bothering
you
? We’re
real people,
Joseph. A
family
even, despite every- thing. This wasn’t some opera put on for your own fascination, some drama to thrill you. Did that ever occur to you?”

“No,” I said. “It
never
occured to me. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t owe you an explanation,” she said. And it was true. I looked down at the perfect lawn, my own feet in Vast uniform sandals, the wet and crumbled list on the ground.
Attempt to make direct amends to the people you have wronged,
the ninth

step began. It was too late to leave the house at Byron Circle, but I could leave this lawn.

“I’m sorry.” Mimi didn’t say anything. The Andersons stopped kissing and lay side-by-side, taking in the sun. “I’m
sorry.
”

“Your apology,” she said finally, “is not accepted.”

“Please.”

“No,” she said. Her voice was firm now, all mom-like and intractable. “There’s no forgiveness here, Joseph, for you or any- body else. I don’t think there can be. I’m trying to lead a better life now than the one I was forced into, but I can’t erase what’s happened. I guess if I can run into you when I’m on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere, someday I’ll run into Ben, and Ste- phen. I’ll run into Cynthia. They’ll all try to apologize, all of them. But it won’t—”

“They won’t apologize,” I said. “They’re
dead
.”

Mimi closed her eyes for a second, and I could see her face collapse within, even as her tan skin stayed taut. Just for a mo- ment, one relieving moment, I saw her crumble before the mask went back on. “He killed them, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Ben—?”

“That
thing
you made,” I said. “What?”

“You
know,
” I said. “You don’t have to hear it again.” “I
don’t
know.”

“The thing in the basement,” I said. “The
golem,
O.K.? The golem
you
made, Mimi, to attack—”

“That was for the
opera,
” she said flatly. I was confusing her. I saw that I had gotten it all wrong again; it was clear as day.

The light everywhere was curdling from green to brown, dark- ening everything. “What are you talking—”

“You didn’t make a golem?” I said slowly. “What? It was a
prop,
Joseph. But what—”

“
You didn’t
—you didn’t try to make one for
real?
”

“I don’t—I might—I don’t know, Joseph, I was very upset towards the end. I thought maybe religion—I thought that char- latan of a rabbi could help me, heaven knows why I thought that—”

“You never—”

“He was always looking down my blouse, but I was
desperate,
I thought maybe I could pull myself through all this with, I don’t know—”

“But you
never—
”

“I don’t know, Joseph,
yes, maybe, maybe
I talked to him about making a golem, but I was
hysterical.
I don’t want to talk about this! I had to work on that thing like everything was normal when I was about to leave, and you,
you
were—”

“You never—”

“I
don’t know! Yes!
I think that night in the basement I screamed about the golem rising up and killing everybody who harmed me, doing whatever magic spell the rabbi taught me, but he was
nothing!
It was
nothing!
You can’t just wear white and walk around a clay body and have everything turn out O.K.! I said to rise up and get revenge but it didn’t work, nobody was
listening!”
By now she was crying, her bathing suit heaving like an exercise class. “God wasn’t
listening
to me, Joseph!”

“
Somebody
was,” I said. “
Somebody
carried out your instruc- tions to the letter.”

“I don’t want to talk about this!”
she screamed.
“I don’t want to
—I’m trying to move beyond—
I don’t want to—”

“Fine,” I said. I tried to turn away from her but couldn’t move. The light was growing darker, darker, brown everywhere as dark as earth, as clear as mud. “Don’t talk about it—”

“What happened to my children? What happened to my babies?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“What happened? Tell me what happened!”
Her hands grabbed my shoulders, both of her hands, both of my shoulders, and I came to life. I felt a cold strength surge inside me and I pushed her to the ground,
hard.
She uttered a rough sound as she fell, the sheer physical surprise of pain. When she reached the lawn I could scarcely see her, so muddy was my vision, but I saw the places on her body where my hands had pushed, two darkening bruises of handprints like my palms had been smeared with something, or created, years ago, out of clay. But then I stopped.
Attempt to make direct amends to the people you have wronged,
the ninth step said,
except when to do so would injure them or others.
I made myself step back from her, my knees stiff, my hands clenched.

“He killed them,” she said, panting. The towel had collapsed around her, a bedsheet, a costume, a body bag. “He killed them, didn’t he?
Tell
me.”

“If
you
don’t owe
me
an explanation,” I said.