The Vagabonds (33 page)

He sports a white goatee and rimless glasses and shaved head; he stares at Claire frankly, assessingly. “I’ve heard
so
much about you.”

“And I about
you.
”

“None of it good, I expect.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” says Joanna.

“It’s because what she told me was
bad,
” says Claire, “that I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

He laughs and steps aside. “Welcome to Wellfleet, Joanna’s kid sister. What are you drinking?”

“Whatever you pour me.”

“All
right
!”

“You two are flirting,” Joanna complains. “Isn’t it too soon to flirt?”

The view is spectacular: marsh grass, low dunes, a sunset beginning out over the bay. Ten or twelve people are drinking Campari and soda or gin and tonic or glasses of wine and there is a bartender in a white coat; everyone is talking about winter and how long it’s been since they were last together on Columbus Day, which was when they closed the house, and how this year the cold weather simply wouldn’t quit. “‘The winter of our discontent,’” says Neil. “I heard about your mother”—he touches Joanna on the arm—“and wanted to tell you how sorry I am.”

“That’s sweet of you.”

“No, I mean it,” says their host.

Mary Patterson is formal, clipped; she says I’m glad you’re here, enjoy the view,
that’s
crab dip and
that’s
guacamole. Then she turns back to a group by the window and does not talk to the sisters again. Paul Barclay and his wife, Eileen, have just returned from Boston and a visit to the hospital; their son was in a car crash and has broken both his legs. “We’ve got to thank our lucky stars,” Eileen says, “he’s alive.” Her eyes well up, spill over. “Our Johnny will be
fine
!”

The party is not a success. Claire drinks too much and laughs too much and has a gaiety about her that seems almost entirely false. By seven o’clock she has her arm around Ike Phillipson, a man Joanna despises, who has had three marriages and can’t keep his hands to himself. He can’t keep his opinions to himself, either, which is worse, because he admires Cheney and Bush and says if we had ten Donald Rumsfelds the world would be a better place, and safer for democracy; and everyone around the world will be grateful to us soon. I don’t agree, Joanna says, the world may well be terrified but it won’t be grateful. Those fucking French, he says. I bet you like those fucking frogs, Joanna, right? you admire them with their taste for fashion and their blow-dry foreign minister and Old World hypocrisy and how they treat their own
A
-rabs like dirt and suck up to Hussein. Pardon my French, he says.

It’s pronounced Arabs, not
A
-rabs, says Claire, but she says this smilingly, and Ike refuses to stop. They’re playing to the camera, he says, they’re playing for contracts and oil. When this war is over we’ll stick it to the French. And Baby Doc still lives there, doesn’t he, in a villa by the water, and they folded in the Second World War in about ten minutes, didn’t they, and were
happy
to collaborate; I
hate
the frogs, he says, I’ve drunk my last glass of frog wine . . .

Joanna taps her watch. “Our daughters are waiting, remember?”

“I remember, yes,” says Claire. “But this is so much
fun
!”

“You’re the life of the party,” Neil tells her.

“This house is
perfectly
placed. It’s got”—she mouths—“feng shui.”

“Where did you hide her, Joanna; why did you let her stay away?”

“It wasn’t
my
choice,” she protests.

“That’s true.” Claire laughs. “I’m this poky Midwesterner, right? This stick in the Ann Arbor mud, and I’ve been playing hard to get.” She makes a circling gesture with her index finger and jams it on a piece of driftwood sculpture, hard. Then she licks and sucks her finger: “This
stick
in the Michigan mud. . . .”

When they finally leave in the lantern-lit dark Ike follows them outside. “How long are you staying?”

“Till Monday.”

“Can I see you tomorrow? What are you doing for dinner?”

“She’s eating with me,” says Joanna. “We’re eating French food together. Those
pommes frites
you call Freedom Fries. Good night.”

And then she starts the car and spins her wheels and hopes she’s spraying his Docksiders and blazer, but Ike is halfway up the flagstone path and smiling, hopeful, waving at Claire, who leans out the window and blows him a kiss. Then she settles back in and arranges her skirt and closes the window again. “What an asshole,” she says to Joanna. “What a total complete fucking asshole.”

“He wasn’t after
my
telephone number . . .”

“But Neil is cute,” Claire says.

That night they eat grilled tuna and watercress salad and squash. Joanna brings out the family silver, with the fish forks and the fish knives and the salad forks—with the initial E on one side and, on the other, D—and sets the table with care. When did you learn to cook like this, her sister asks, and she says I only tolerate, these days, things that swim or fly. And ever since Mad Cow Disease, I’ve given up on red meat.

Li-li and Becky and Hannah go,
Right,
and Li-li says there’s this party over at Stacey’s house, if we totally promise to be back by midnight can we go? It pleases her to be the elder, the driver, and she seems to enjoy playing guide. And promise not to drink, Joanna says, and her daughter says, I promise, we’ll only do coke, mom, and crack, and maybe some ecstasy too for a chaser. They laugh. The cousins leave. While they are cleaning up the kitchen Claire talks about the summer; she dreads the prospect of living in Ann Arbor once the girls go off to Interlaken, and has Joanna heard of it? that music camp up north? It’s good for them, they love it there, but she doesn’t have any notion, not the slightest idea what to do. She’s thinking she could volunteer at Operation Rescue, or maybe work for Food Gatherers or sign up for the summer school; there must be a course she could take. Why don’t you stay with me, Joanna asks, why don’t you come back here for July; there’s room enough, lord knows, and I could use the company and it would be fun.

Claire stares at her. “You mean that?”

“Yes.”

“How was David?”

“Fine, he’s fine.”

“As a houseguest, I mean. As someone to live with?”

“We’re
sisters,
” says Joanna. “It’s time we try to be sisters again.”

“Really?”

“Really and truly,” she says. “As long as you promise me not to see Ike.”

“I promise,” Claire says, smiling. “Cross my heart.”

Joanna gathers up the tablecloth and shakes it out on the porch. The nighttime air is mild, May’s harbinger, and she wonders if she’ll change her mind or regret the invitation and tells herself that
someone
has to supervise her sister and keep Claire out of trouble. She nearly laughs out loud at this—the thought that
she’s
the responsible one, the one with both feet on the ground—and finds herself doing a dance step and strutting down the porch stairs to the rowboat where the tulips and the marigolds and dusty miller thrive. She drapes herself in the white tablecloth and does a cheerleader’s twirl. Then she thinks about how long ago she used to do that particular twirl and thinks about their mother, how Alice would have wanted this and would be gratified.

Car headlights rake the bay and music drifts down from the Connolly place: a fiddle, a guitar. The streets of Wellfleet are dark. There’s time and chance and change. She and Claire will spend the summer together, and maybe David will return or they’ll meet again in Saratoga Springs and help him with the house. They will choose what matters, room by room, and will not argue about it and will sell or give away what no one needs to keep. There is, Joanna tells herself, a kind of body-knowledge that can outlast change, and chance, and time; Mungo Park appears, slides past her, and climbs with feline dignity back up the steps to the porch.