'Leave the fish out,' Deirdre ordered. 'That's dinner. And one of those lemons, Hy.'
'The girls were very responsible,' Cree told her. 'I can personally attest.'
'This old lady wants Aunt Cree to hunt for the ghost of a dog,' Zoe said.
Another minute of chaos and Deirdre paused to look her daughters up and down. 'You know, girls, it's awfully crowded in here. I think Cree and I have this under control. Why don't you go get started on your homework and let us catch up. I'll call you when it's time to set the table.' She turned back to the cupboard to stack cans of cat food.
The twins left, carrying the cats. Cree folded the shopping bags as Deirdre put on an apron and began washing vegetables. The music began again upstairs, this time the insistent, battering beat of Zoe's rap. Cree leaned against the counter, watching her sister's face in the mirror over the sink as they conversed. Deirdre was thirty-six, two years younger and, even in the thick-soled jogging shoes she always put on after work, three inches shorter than Cree. Now she was dressed in her teaching clothes, a white blouse and a practical floral skirt with a faint handprint of chalk dust on one thigh, a silk scarf at her throat, looking very much the middle school teacher at the end of a long day. Cree knew from experience that people seeing them side by side would recognize them as sisters but wouldn't be able to say which was older. Deirdre had prettier, more delicate features, made dramatic by darker hair and brows, but her face showed deeper lines of both worry and laughter, the paradoxical marks of teaching and motherhood. When they'd been in their teens, Cree had often felt largish and plain by comparison. Later, she'd discovered that men could fall just as hard for a fuller-bodied woman, and that had evened things out.
'Monday, huh,' Cree inquired.
'It certainly is that.' Deirdre put the greens in the salad spinner, set it aside, and began scrubbing some carrots. 'What's this about a dog?'
'It's complex. I was just asking the girls for advice. Joyce said you called – anything urgent? I left a message.'
Deirdre glanced at the blinking red light on the answering machine she hadn't had time to check. 'Not urgent. Just that Mom called this morning. She likes to call up for heart-to-heart chats when I'm running around trying to get ready for school.'
'Uh-oh. What was on her mind?' When their mother called Deirdre, it often had to do with Cree, and vice versa.
'She told me the doctor said she has congested coronary arteries.'
'Well, we suspected as much.'
'Yeah. So she's supposed to go in for an angioplasty – where they blow up this little balloon in your artery? She says her friend Marie Haskell had one last year, and it was no big thing.'
'But you're worried?'
Deirdre turned her back to the sink, leaning against it with her arms crossed. 'Well, yeah. You know.'
'Was she?'
'She plays it down. But I'd say, yes. Can't blame her.' Deirdre frowned, then brightened. 'And then she talked about you.'
'I figured.'
'She told me her new heart doctor is a total dreamboat and is your age and recently divorced.' A tight grin. She turned back to the sink but kept her eyes on Cree's in the mirror. 'She thought maybe next time she went to see him, you could come with her – ostensibly to help her, you know, decide on treatment or whatever, did I think that was a good idea? I figured you deserved fair warning.'
Cree laughed and gripped her head in exasperation. 'So what was your verdict? Good idea?'
'Uh-uh. No comment. I'm staying completely out of it.' Deirdre applied herself to the carrots.
It was all lighthearted, supposedly. Mother's concern for her widowed daughter's singleness, childlessness, strange profession, and bouts of existential anguish. Mike had died nine years ago, and Cree still wore her wedding ring. No, she hadn't gotten over it, didn't have a clue how to let go of the sweetness they'd had, and given what had happened when he'd died there was no way to explain to Mom the confusions that came with meeting other men. She was married forever to a dead man and devoted to a metaphysical quest, like some kind of nun in a strange religion with herself as its only adherent. You could laugh all you wanted at people's concern and matchmaking reflexes and the rest, but you still couldn't deny the pang of truth that came with it.
Deirdre had been watching Cree in the mirror again and must have seen her expression change. 'Sorry,' she began, 'I didn't mean to – '
'No, it's all right. I'll call her. Thanks for the heads up.'
They let it settle for a moment. Deirdre finished the carrots and set Cree up to slice them as she went to work on the fish. The girls were laughing together upstairs.
'Stay for dinner?' Deirdre's light tone sounded a little forced. 'Don will be home soon – '
'I don't know…'
'Cree – '
'Really, Dee, it only hurts when I laugh. Just a little stitch, right here.'
Cree grimaced and put her hand on her heart. Pushing it all one level deeper in an effort to let Deirdre off the hook. 'Okay?'
'Okay,' Deirdre said, smiling again. 'But it would still be nice if you stayed for dinner.'
When the salad was washed, the rice on to boil, and the fish ready for the oven, Deirdre poured them each a glass of chardonnay. They sat on the tall kitchen stools, relaxing. Deirdre looked as though she deserved a moment to let her shoulders down.
'So when's Mom supposed to go in for the angioplasty?' Cree asked.
'Three weeks.'
'Good – I'll be back by then.' At Deirdre's questioning look, Cree explained. 'I'm going to New Orleans, flying out later this week. Just got a fat retainer for a preliminary investigation, probably only take four or five days. I'm looking forward to it – I've always wanted to go there.'
'You know Don and I went once,' Deirdre said. 'Back before the girls were born. Our wild youth – we thought it would be fun to go for Mardi Gras.'
'Right, I remember. How was it?'
'Hmm. Strange, actually.' Deirdre's pretty forehead drew into a small frown.
'How so?'
'It was really… well, wild. We went down there to party, but this was more than we'd bargained for. It's like the whole city goes crazy. Everybody's in costume. Everybody's wearing a mask. It's got a lot of morbid overtones, and it's very… pagan. And it's amazingly uninhibited – I mean, literally, people screwing in the streets and on the balconies. Seriously, in full view!'
'That's the whole point of masks – license. If your identity's hidden, nobody can hold you accountable for your behavior – you can act the way you'd really like to.' Cree swigged her wine and chuckled. 'I didn't know you had such a prudish streak, Dee!'
'No, really, Cree. We found it a little, I don't know… sinister. The city has this doubleness. Don started calling it 'the city of masks.' I don't mean just the parades. The whole town puts on a show, a welcoming facade, but it has another face: poverty, resentment, crime, corruption. Race issues. Nothing is quite what it seems. Even the woman who ran our b-and-b – charming, matronly Southern hostess, we got to know her pretty well, even went out for drinks with her? We were there for three days before I came into the bathroom and saw her with her wig off, shaving her chest. She was a man!'
'So?'
Dee snorted. 'So nothing. Except that he took the opportunity to make a pass at me! And I'm standing there, still trying to put it together, and I just blurt the first thing that comes to my mind? I tell him, 'No, thanks so much, but I'm not a lesbian!''
They both laughed, and then the phone rang.
Deirdre answered it, listened. 'Sure, just a moment.' She went to the hallway and called, 'Hy – telephone!' She covered the mouthpiece with one hand and whispered to Cree, 'Boyfriend!' She listened until Hyacinth picked up. Sober again, she told Cree, 'I don't mean to rain on your parade. It's a fascinating place. You just have to, you know. .. watch yourself, that's all.'
