The Evening Star (7 page)

“I’m sure your granny would pay for Teddy’s tuition,” Rosie said. “Teddy’s and yours too. She’d love to see both of you kids in school.”

“I know, but Daddy says he’ll do things, and then he doesn’t do them,” Melanie said. “He always sounds like he means to, but then nothing ever comes in the mail. He doesn’t really love us now—he just thinks we’re a lot of trouble. He’s never even been to see Tommy since Tommy got sent to jail.”

“Out of sight, out of mind,” Rosie said, imagining how nice it would be if Tommy were sitting at the kitchen table with them just then. More than any of Emma’s children, Tommy haunted her—haunted her so profoundly that she rarely allowed even a wistful daydream about him to slip into her consciousness. She couldn’t afford such daydreams—they soon would be followed by many sad, guilty thoughts. Though she faithfully accompanied Aurora to the prison in order to drive her home, she could rarely psych herself up enough to actually go into the bleak visitors’ room and see Tommy. Most of the time she sat in the car, feeling like a sick, cowardly rat. She felt as if she were letting both Tommy and Aurora down. After all, Aurora hated going there, too, and came out destroyed; yet, time after time, month after month, Aurora went in, whereas Rosie only managed to psych herself up that high two or three times a year, though she loved Tommy every bit as much as Aurora did.

“Daddy liked me when I was little,” Melanie said. “He gave me books to read. Now he never sends me books. He never sends me anything. I wish my mom hadn’t died.”

Melanie could only dimly remember her mother, but she did have a memory or two of her mother combing her hair, and she thought she remembered her mother singing songs to her. Mainly, though, she remembered that when her mother was alive she and her brothers had never felt alone—and now they did.

Rosie had to gulp and blow her nose. She turned to the sink and began to wash a dish that was already perfectly clean in order to have a moment in which to master her emotions. Emma Horton, the children’s mother, Aurora’s daughter, had been Rosie’s favorite person, more beloved to her in some ways than her own exceedingly difficult children. Melanie looked almost exactly as Emma had looked when she was a teenager; sometimes the mere sight of Melanie caused sorrow to well up in Rosie, forcing her to gulp and blow her nose and wash perfectly clean dishes, until it subsided.

She knew quite well that she and Aurora had done their best by Emma’s children; she suspected that their best was a good deal better than many other people’s best—and yet she also knew that it hadn’t been enough. Tommy and Teddy were cripples, in their different ways, and Melanie was sad.

Still, sad was different from broken, she reflected. Melanie wasn’t broken. She would soon be having a baby, and a nice little fat baby might make a huge difference in Melanie’s life.

“We better take dinner upstairs,” she said, remembering her duty. “Your granny and the General need to eat on time. It’s when they get too hungry that they have their biggest fights.”

Just as she said it, Aurora walked into the kitchen. Her eyes immediately lit on Melanie’s cigarette.

“Melly, I do wish you’d not smoke,” she said. “It can’t be good for little Andy.”

Melanie gave Rosie a guilty look and stubbed out the cigarette.

“I was nervous,” she said. “Do I really have to name him Andy if he’s a boy?”

“No, dear, of course not, you can name him Plato or Aristotle, if you prefer,” Aurora said, hugging her sad-looking
granddaughter. “It’s just that I’ve always wanted an Andy in my life, and none has ever come my way.”

Actually, Melanie loved the name—she just wished she had thought of it instead of her grandmother. Her grandmother was always taking over—it left very little for the rest of them to do.

“I’ve been dreaming of twins lately,” Rosie commented. “It might be twins. Wouldn’t that be fun, having twins running around the house?”

“Or it might just be a girl,” Melanie said. “If it’s a girl I want to name her after Mom.”

“Oh,” Aurora said. She had been lifting the gumbo off the stove—the thought of Emma coming round again threw her off so much that she almost dropped the pot. Rosie took it just in time.

“Don’t you like that, Granny?” Melanie asked. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“Yes, dear,” Aurora said, but in a very different voice from that she would have hoped to project. The thought that she might soon have a great-granddaughter bearing the name of her daughter jerked at her heart; she was afraid to say more for fear that what would come out would be the voice of an old woman.

“Oh, well, I like to be surprised, myself,” Rosie said. Aurora’s moment of shock had not been lost on her. “I’d take an Andy or an Emma, either one.”

“Of course, so would I,” Aurora said, recovering. “But that’s a very nice thought, Melly—appropriate, too. I think we should adopt it. If a girl emerges, we’ll name her Emma.”

“How’s the General?” Melanie asked, getting up to help carry the dinner.

“Very quarrelsome, as usual,” Aurora said. “Could you carry the gumbo? You’re the youngest and strongest. Rosie and I will hobble along with the rest.”

“Sure, do you have a Pepsi?” Melanie asked, as Rosie began to cut the bread.

6

After dinner, Rosie and Melanie hung around for a while, playing dominoes with the General over the din of CNN. Encouraged by Rosie, the General had become a news junkie too. Following the news with Rosie allowed him to demonstrate his superior knowledge of world affairs—superior not merely to Rosie’s but also to that of a long parade of reporters and analysts who pontificated night after night about things the General felt he understood far better than they did.

“Yes, the war clouds are gathering,” he said, after consuming a nice chunk of walnut cake. “Russia’s going to go for sure, and I think China might go.”

“Go where, Hector?” Aurora said. He was always saying that the war clouds were gathering, a phrase which for some reason irked her.

“China’s a rather populous country,” she added. “Where could it possibly go?”

“Well, civil war could break out,” the General said. He had spoken rather automatically, and now regretted it. He did not in fact think China would go, but then again it might, and what did Aurora know about it, anyway? They had visited
China together, and, except for a few art-historical high spots, Aurora had scarcely noticed the country. In Beijing she had complained because there were too many bicycles and no way to make them stop so she could cross the street; her mood had only improved once they got back to Hong Kong, where she could shop all day.

Aurora had been polishing her rings on a napkin as Rosie and the General exchanged tidbits of speculation about what might happen in the trouble spots of the world. This happened every evening now, so regularly, indeed, monotonously, that she had almost come to regret her decision to install Rosie as the permanent occupant of the guest house in the backyard.

True, her decision had rescued Rosie from the violent Denver Harbor neighborhood where she had survived by dint of tooth and claw for most of her adult life; but the downside meant having her dinner table turned into a political-science seminar run by her maid and her boyfriend.

She was about to deliver herself of a blunt comment notifying them as to what they could do with China, not to mention Lithuania, when the doorbell rang.

“Thank God, it’s my date, just when I need him most,” she said, brightening. “Last chance for walnut cake.”

The General, considering how best to employ his double six, ignored her remark about the date, but hastily whacked himself off another piece of cake. The second he did, Aurora took the plate and headed downstairs.

“I don’t know why I put up with this,” he said, once he felt sure Aurora was out of hearing distance. “It’s your move, Rosie.”

“Granny’s just a big flirt,” Melanie said. “She really loves you best.”

The General chuckled. He was well aware that both Melanie and Rosie gave him a lot of credit for tolerating Aurora’s willful ways.

“If she loves me best, God help the rest of them,” he said. “Play, Rosie. You’re the only person I know who has to use a calculator to play dominoes.”

“Its batteries are about to go, that’s why it’s flickering,” Rosie said. “I skipped third grade, that’s probably why I’m no good at addition.”

Melanie yawned. She thought she might go by Teddy’s for a while. The apartment where he and Jane lived was only a few blocks from her own apartment. Teddy and Jane were always up, studying Sanskrit or some other language.

Aurora had prepared a little snack for Pascal—a pear, a mango, some of the walnut cake, a little Camembert, and a half-bottle of Burgundy. She set it out on a small table in her downstairs study before bothering to go to the door to let Pascal in. Over the years she had found it best to let Pascal settle his nerves for a few minutes before letting him in—otherwise he might jump at her in his eagerness to show affection. He was a mere five four, and when agitated displayed something of the jumpy character of a small French dog.

Pascal Ferney, waiting with increasing discouragement just outside the door, wondered if this would be the night when Aurora wouldn’t let him in at all. With any other woman he would have been ringing the doorbell furiously every few seconds, but he had done that once, in his early days, and Aurora had responded with a fury so violent that ever since he had had to screw up his courage to a high pitch before even ringing the doorbell once. What if he pushed too hard and the doorbell became stuck? What would she do then?

“Goodness, Pascal, just in time,” Aurora said, opening the door and giving him a hug in one smooth motion. Hugging him immediately was also likely to reduce the likelihood of his jumping at her. Looking over his head, she noticed that, as usual, he had left the lights of his small crumpled Peugeot blazing brightly.

“Am I late or early?” Pascal asked. “I lose all sense of time when I visit you.”

“You’re more or less on schedule, but once again you’ve left your lights on,” Aurora said. “I do hope they aren’t stuck. I wish you would remember to turn them off, Pascal. The
rest of humanity remembers to turn their lights off, and I’m sure you could, too, if you concentrate. My reputation will suffer, if it hasn’t already, if my lovers insist on coming over here and leaving every light blazing.”

“Oh,
merde!
” Pascal said—it irked him that once again he had forgotten to turn off his lights. He raced across the lawn, whacked them off, and slammed the car door violently. Then he raced back across the lawn and arrived again at Aurora’s side. Encouraged by the fact that she had moved him, at least conversationally, into the category of lover, he tried to resume their hug, but with no success. Aurora merely caught his arm and ushered him inside.

“I lose all sense of time when I visit you,” Pascal repeated. He was a little breathless from his double dash across the lawn.

“I lose all sense of everything when I visit you,” he added. “Everything becomes—topsy-turkey, is that correct?”

“Topsy-turvy,” Aurora corrected, amused. For all his faults, Pascal had a twinkle, and some resilience; slapped down a million times, he would still come twinkling back, and she had never been able to entirely resist men who managed to twinkle, General Scott, on the other hand, had yet to twinkle his first twinkle—or, at least, his first in her company. She had upbraided him for this inability many times, but to no avail.

Aurora kept a firm grip on Pascal’s arm until she had him firmly installed in the study—if left to roam unchecked, Pascal was apt to dart upstairs for a minute in a misguided attempt to be sociable. Once there he was apt to burst out with niceties which were more or less the moral equivalent of “Vive la France!” His sudden appearances startled both Hector and Rosie, neither of whom ever knew what to say. Once, in a moment of embarrassment, Rosie asked him to join them in a domino game, an invitation that ruined everyone’s evening. Pascal had chattered so that neither the General nor Rosie nor her calculator could add accurately, causing the General to lose his temper and stomp off to bed. That, of course, had been back in the days when he could stomp.

“What do they do up there?” Pascal asked, glancing hastily upstairs as Aurora marched him along.

“Oh, don’t mind them, you know how serious they are,” Aurora said. “They’re sorting out the fate of Lithuania, or perhaps Lebanon.”

“They should talk to me then,” Pascal said. “I was once in Vilnius for three years.”

“I don’t want to hear the word Lithuania out of you tonight, Pascal,” Aurora informed him. “If I hear it again you’re out on your ear. Sit yourself down and eat this food. I’d like to hear some gossip about Madame Mitterrand, if you have any, and if you don’t, then how about some gossip about Catherine Deneuve?”

“Madame Mitterrand is very serious,” Pascal said cautiously. He had a sense that this was one of those times when he had better be careful. He had better try to say what Aurora wanted to hear, and yet he had no idea what that might be.

“I don’t know if Catherine Deneuve is so serious,” he added.

“You
are
from France, after all, Pascal,” Aurora said. “What makes you think I care whether they’re serious or not? Who are they sleeping with? Who is anybody sleeping with? Here I sit, dying for a little gossip, and you won’t give me any. I guess it’s not as easy to be a lewd old woman as I’d always hoped it would be.”

Pascal was so startled that he almost dropped his pear. Aurora had a reckless look in her eye. She wanted to talk about movie stars or presidents’ wives sleeping with people. She had even suggested that she wouldn’t mind being a lewd old woman. Could she be doing what Americans called “coming on”?

Watching her closely, Pascal decided that that was exactly what was happening—why had he been surprised? His lifelong assumption, borne out many times, was that all women wanted him: Aurora had just taken longer than most to let him know it. He took a sip of wine and grasped her hand. He expected that this first sally might be rebuffed, but it wasn’t. Aurora let him keep holding her hand.