is out of the question.
“See, Tal,” she resumes after a couple of minutes, “you think the world is made up of simple moral rules. You think there are just two kinds of people in the world, people who obey the rules and people who break them. You think you’re so different from Uncle Oliver, but you’re just like him. In some good ways, sure, but in some of the worst ways, too. You look down your nose at people you think are your moral inferiors. People like your brother. People like me.”
Now I remember why Kimmer and I never socialize with Sally: you have to fight through ten minutes of her verbal abuse before you can have anything resembling a normal conversation. So I grit my teeth and keep silent, reminding myself that she is not a well woman.
Besides, what she says about me is probably right.
“So, anyway, that’s why I didn’t tell you before. About McDermott, I mean. I sort of pretended I didn’t remember, but that wasn’t true. I knew who McDermott was the minute I saw him. I probably should have said something, but I knew I would have to tell you why I was in the house that night, and I didn’t want to see that disapproving look.” She turns toward me long enough to glare, and I ponder the way belief in right and wrong can interfere with the project of human communication. “See, Tal, that’s why we always had to sneak around, because people like you and Uncle Oliver…”
She stops. A shudder runs through her. Another sob? No, a memory, a recollection she prefers to hold at bay.
“It’s ancient history,” I murmur, trying to divert her. If Sally is seeking an apology, she is out of luck, for I cannot pretend there was nothing wrong with what she and Addison did.
Sally knows what I am thinking. “Even Mariah’s not as bad as you are, Tal. You know what? When Mariah is in D.C., she always calls me up. We have some good times…”
“She told me you’ve been helping her go through the Judge’s papers.”
Sally snickers. “Is that what she told you? Well, yeah, we do that sometimes, but that’s not what I mean. I mean we have good times. We talk. She listens to me, Tal. We go to the clubs. You know. Your sister likes to get down sometimes. Not like you. And she isn’t judging me all the time like you are. She takes people just the way they are. So that’s why I didn’t tell you, Talcott. Because of the way you are. Because it involves Addison, too. I mean, me and Addison. You’re just like your father,” she repeats. I am playing catch-up, stuck on the image of my sister in a club-the kind of club that Sally likes- getting down. You would not think, to look at Mariah, that she was the partying type; sole black member of the yacht club is more her style. My cousin, on the other hand, is a party and a half all by herself.
“You could never understand about Addison,” Sally continues, her voice excited and angry and full of life’s broken promises. “You could never understand what we had. Okay, it was wrong. But it was special” -as though I have disputed her. “We were lovers, Tal. It wasn’t just sex, it was love. Now, is that crude enough for you?”
She is up on her elbow, eyes aglow with belligerence. Her mood is swinging, all right, and she is saying anything that comes to mind.
“I’m not judging you, Sally,” I lie carefully, my tone as neutral as I can make it. “I just want to know what you remember about McDermott.”
“You are judging me.”
“I’m just glad it’s over,” I assure her. But I marvel at how a civilized world can make a virtue of having no judgment, teach it to kids, preach it from the pulpit.
“You know something, Tal? You’re a fake. Misha. Mikhail. A fake.” A harsher laugh. “My dad gave you that nickname, in case you forgot, and you still treat his daughter like trash.” My cousin flops back onto the bed, her braids settling around her head like an ebon halo. The tirade seems to be over.
The room-service waiter wisely chooses that moment to arrive. When Sally makes no effort to get up from the bed, I sign the bill in the corridor, blocking the waiter’s view of the room, and roll the cart in myself.
We eat in silence for a few minutes: mushroom soup and a club sandwich for me, shrimp cocktail and filet mignon for Sally. Having shared a healthy repast with my in-laws just an hour ago, I should not be eating again so soon, but I tend to find the self all too easy to indulge, which perhaps explains my burgeoning waistline. In short, I eat too much; when I am nervous or stressed, my will to resist is weaker still. I am, unfortunately, like Mark Twain, who once said that he ate more on some occasions than others, but never less. Sally and I sit facing each other on the two beds with the table between us. She eats fast and without any finesse, simply fulfilling a bodily desire. The food seems to revive her, or maybe the drug, if there is one, has worn off; whatever the reason, when she next opens her mouth, she is her old flirty self.
“I’m sorry I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, Tal, but men don’t buy me dinner very often any more, so I figured, what the hell, make the most of it.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Of course, sometimes a man expects something in return.”
“All I expect is to hear about Mr. McDermott.” Giving her my best stone face.
“Sure that’s all you want?” Coy, as if the intimacy of sharing a secret dinner with a man in a hotel room has given her permission to misbehave. “Most men have other things in mind.”
“I’m not most men.”
“Come on, Tal, don’t you ever relax and have fun?”
“Only on Tuesdays and alternate Saturdays.”
This, at least, brings a genuine smile. “Okay, Tal,” she says. “Let’s be friends.”
“Okay.”
“Look, I’m sorry for what I said before.” Although she does not sound very sorry. She curls her solid legs underneath her. “I just can’t seem to help myself tonight. I guess that’s my flaw, I always say what I’m thinking. At least, when I’m with a man.”
“That’s not necessarily a flaw.” Not liking, however, her use of the word with.
“Well, no, not if the man I’m with happens to like what I’m thinking.” A pause as she contemplates a punch line. “And if he doesn’t? To hell with him.”
Again she laughs, a light, trilling sound: there is nothing hateful in her words. Sally does not dislike men, even though she has not been well treated by them. She is amused by them. By us. It occurs to me that Sally, when she is not being melancholy, can probably be a lot of fun. I begin to see why Addison, and so many other men, have found my plump cousin attractive. Last year, I saw an exhibit at the university museum of some of those drawings that used to be popular early in the twentieth century, the ones that look like smiling dogs until you invert them, when they turn into angry cats, or change from a beautiful woman to an unhappy sultan, and so on. “Ambiguous Figures,” the exhibit was called. Sally is like one of those ambiguous figures: at first glance she seems wild, overweight, hopeless, pill-popping, pathetic; catch her from another angle and she is bold, bright, sexy, scathingly witty. I am catching her, at this moment, from that second angle, which means that I need, quickly, to bring some discipline to our conversation.
“About McDermott-”
“Yes, sir!” She snaps off a mock salute. “At your service, sir!”
And then she tells me the story.
We have finished dessert -the fruit cup for me, tiramisu for Sally. I have rolled the room-service cart back into the hallway. Sally is lounging on the bed, weight on her elbow, one toe touching the carpet. I am at the desk once more, my hands folded in my lap, as I wait for her to begin.
“I was at the house on Shepard Street, like I said. I don’t know if you remember or not, but in those days, Dad and Mom and I lived down in Southeast. He used to work for that little private library. You remember.”
Indeed I do: Were you aware, Judge Garland, that the library where your brother worked was a known Communist front? And, inevitably: No, Senator, I was not aware. My brother and I did not have much to do with each other. Then the switch to maudlin mode: That must have been a source of some pain, Judge. My father at his coldest, yet his most disarming: I loved my brother, Senator, but our differences were pretty strong. Communism is a terrible, terrible thing-at least as bad as racism. Maybe worse in some ways. I could not be a part of his world. He could not be a part of mine. I suppose I wasn’t the best brother in the world, and if I hurt my brother, I’m very
