That was the past. I imagined the future: the graffiti figures that had already disappeared in the downstairs hallway, whited out by a paint roller. Then I thought about the hospital in Belize, to which for all intents and purposes that paint roller could travel like a comet, to whiten the drywall that had at long last been installed in the corridors of the new hospital. Zalla would be standing there, her starched white nurse’s uniform contrasting with her dark skin, and in a blink my mother would be dead, quite unexpectedly—gone from her white-sheeted bed to the darkness, as Zalla paused in her busy day to remember us, a nice American family.
The Women of This World
The dinner was going to be good. Dale had pureed leeks and salsify to add to the pumpkin in the food processor—a tablespoon or so of sweet vermouth might give it a little zing—and as baby-girl pink streaked through the gray-blue sky over the field, she dropped a CD into the player and listened matter-of-factly to Lou Reed singing matter-of-factly, “I’m just a gift to the women of this world.”
By now her husband, Nelson, would be on his way back from Logan, bringing his stepfather, Jerome, and Jerome’s girlfriend, Brenda—who had taken the shuttle from New York, after much debate about plane versus train versus driving—for the annual (did three years in a row make something annual?) pre-Thanksgiving dinner. They could have come on Thanksgiving, but Didi, Jerome’s ex (and Nelson’s mother), was coming that day, and there was no love lost between them. Brenda didn’t like big gatherings, anyway. Brenda was much younger than Jerome. She used to nap half the afternoon—because she was shy, Jerome said—but lately her occupation had become glamorous and she had quit teaching gym at the middle school to work as a personal trainer, and suddenly she was communicative, energized, radiant—if that wasn’t a cliche for women in love.
Dale turned on the food processor and felt relieved as the ingredients liquified. It wasn’t that the food processor hadn’t always worked—when she placed the blade in the bottom correctly, that is—but that she feared it wouldn’t work. She always ran through a scenario in which she’d have to scoop everything out and dump it in the old Waring blender that had come with the rented house in Maine and that didn’t always work. With blenders so cheap, she amazed herself by not simply buying a new one.
Nelson was forever indebted to Jerome for appearing on the scene when he was five years old, and staying until he was sixteen. Jerome had seen to it that Nelson was spared going to Groton, and had taught him to play every known sport—at least every ordinary sport. But would Nelson have wanted to learn, say, archery?
Nelson wanted to learn everything, though he didn’t want to do everything. He was happy to have quit teaching and wanted to do very little. He liked to know about things, though. That way, he could talk about them. Her cruel nickname for him was No-Firsthand-Knowledge Nelson. It got tedious sometimes: people writing down the names of books from which Nelson had gotten his often esoteric information. People calling after the party was over, having looked up some strange assertion of Nelson’s in their kid’s
Jerome and Brenda would be twenty or thirty minutes away, assuming the plane landed on time, which you could never assume if you knew anything about Logan. Still: Dale could manage a quick shower, if not a bath, and she should probably change into a dress because it seemed a little oblivious to have people over when you were wearing sweats, even if you did have a cashmere sweater pulled over them. Maybe a bra under the sweater. A pair of corduroys, instead of the supercomfortable sweats. And shoes . . . definitely some sort of shoes.
Nelson called from the cell phone. “Need anything?” he said. She could hear Terry Gross’s well-modulated, entirely reasonable voice on the radio. Only Nelson and Terry and her guest were talking in the car: the passengers were silent, in case Dale had forgotten some necessary ingredient. Yes, pink peppercorns. Try finding them on 95 North. And, of course, they weren’t really peppercorns; they were only called peppercorns because they looked like black peppercorns. Or: purple oregano. An entirely different flavor from green.
“Not a thing,” she said. She had changed into black corduroy pants and a white shirt. Keeping it clean would preoccupy her, give her some way to stay a little detached from everyone. She was shy, too. Though she wore bad-girl black boots.
“Brenda wants to see the Wedding Cake House. I thought we’d swing by. Would that mess up your timing?”
“I didn’t cook anything,” Dale said.
Silence, then. Unkind of her, to set his mind scrambling for alternatives.
“Kidding,” she said.
She had toured the Wedding Cake House soon after they moved to the area. It was in Kennebunkport, a huge yellow-and-white creation, with Gothic spires like pointed phalluses. Legend had it that it had been built by a sea captain for his bride, to remind her of their wedding night when he left for sea.
“We’ll be back around four.”
Someone else was talking to Terry Gross in a deep, earnest voice.
“See you soon,” Nelson said. “Hon?” he said.
“Bye,” Dale said. She picked up two bottles of red wine from the wine rack near the phone. A little too close to the heat grate, so no wine was kept on the last four shelves. Not a problem in summer, but a minor inconvenience come cold weather. She remembered that Brenda had been delighted with a Fume Blanc she’d served last time, and bought the same bottle for her again. Jerome, of course, because of his years in Paris, would have the Saint- Emilion. Nelson had taken to sipping Jameson’s lately. Still, she’d chilled several bottles of white, because he was unpredictable. On the top rack lay the bottle of Opus One an appreciative student from the photography workshop she’d taught had given her. Two nights later, she planned to serve it to the doctor who had diagnosed both her hypoglycemia and her Meniere’s disease, which meant, ironically, that she could no longer drink. If she did, she’d risk more attacks of the sickening vertigo that had plagued her and gone misdiagnosed for years, leaving her sweaty and trembling and so weak she’d often have to stay in bed the day after the attack. “Like taking acid and getting swept up in a tidal wave,” she had said to the otolaryngologist. The woman had looked at her with surprise, as if she’d been gathering strawberries and suddenly come upon a watermelon. “Quite a vivid description,” the doctor had said. “My husband is a writer. He sometimes stops me dead in my tracks the same way.”
“Is he Brian McCambry?” Dale had asked.
