Fragile (11 page)

“It was scary, Mom,” Zoe says with a bit of relief in her voice now that the guilt has been lifted away from her. “All the
blood …” Her voice trails off, burnished with the images that have been seared into her. Somehow, Holly thinks, she will have to make amends. Over time, she will have to make it up to them.

“You did the right thing, calling Tom. He tells me he's a very good ambulance driver.”

“You should have seen us.” The excitement of this afternoon has been more of an adventure to Jenny, like the crimes and family disputes she sees on reality TV shows suddenly come to life in her own bedroom. “Weaving in and out of the cars, running red lights. It was like one of those police chases on Most Extreme Videos.” Then, ashamed of her own excitement, she qualifies her description. “We were afraid we wouldn't get you here in time.”

Tom seeks to make his mark in all this, to cement his newfound status within this truncated family of women.

“Jenny was great. So calm. She knew exactly what to do. Applying pressure on the cut, elevating the arm.” He approaches the girl and swings his arm around her, drawing her near. But instead of returning the embrace as Holly has seen her do many times before, her daughter tenses and pulls away, the muscles of her back taut and rigid, banded across the shoulder blades by the tight T-shirt she wears, her body transformed from that of an innocent girl into a collection of parts that will be used by others over the years to come for their pleasure and gratification, nothing more than a collection of parts of me scattered all over this place, in the powder room we'd go to freshen up,
standing before the mirror, rouging our cheeks and lining our eyes, making ourselves up, watchful of the other faces captured in the mirror. Who was seeing whom, that was the fluttery talk in that room, sound of voices bouncing off the tiles, feathery breath above powdered bosoms displayed like fruit the boys could only see, not touch. In the lobby smoking cigarettes, in the balconies hanging above the mezzanine, parts of me in the coffee shop in the corridors that went to the hotel. We ran when they brought us here as children, it was a castle climbing the grand staircase, leaning over the railing, watching the people mill around below. The gentle sound of the little gong struck with a padded mallet, three parts of me, three tones, calmly calling the audience back from intermission.

Elmer in his suspenders looking tall and grand, Tris slim and smiling, dark hair, eyes celluloid blue like a movie screen in the moment before it's lit up with a film. Louise fawning, gaping, her dress full of flowers on her pallid body, breasts already jutting out, you couldn't help but look. Parts of me scattered all over this place, the seats the same seats, plush velveteen, purple cushions swaying back. We rode the number 8 streetcar here by ourselves, on Saturdays just like this one, they'd never let kids do that now, never see them in one piece again. Tris and Elmer cracking peanut shells during the film, stifling a laugh. Louise aloof, above it all with her breasts heaving a sigh and glancing, her eyes disdainful. I could feel you, knew you were there, we were mixed together like the particles of light and dust from the broad beam of the projector dancing narrow at the top and then ever wider, advancing over the gaping pit of the mezzanine
seats, broadening and dancing with dust until it filled the screen together.

They want us to come now for dinner in the grand ballroom above the theater, parts of me scattered here too. Dances they had, summer cotillions, proms in the spring, we never went to one together, never went but I saw you with others, felt you across the room, glancing, saying hello like we knew, we always had someone else between us. Even with Louise gone and off to college, first college girl in the family, her forehead high as her bosom, and now look at her. I never did it—I never let them, always saving myself for Tris, always keeping myself for him.

What if I saw him tonight—too many people, too many years gone by, could it ever be the same? People floating in the room like dust in the light, a mock Spanish village with a dome of high stars, blue evening tending to dusk, surrounding the same dance floor we used to use. They would never think to build such a lovely thing now, never spend the money to create something as lovely as this, and now they want to tear it down, destroy it. Pieces of me, parts of me they will destroy, tearing it down in three days. In three days it will be all gone, parts of me scattered all over the place.

Scanning the vast room, I cannot see his face, any face that means anything to me, all sallow and drawn, all withered and covered with splotches, so I am not the only one who has aged. What would he look like? All of us worse for wear, even this beautiful old building is, but better off than most of us. It still has a grandeur, that grandeur they used to build into things. Can
it really be fifty years since the proms, the cotillions, the Saturday nickel movie shows, smoke wafting up in the lobby. There's Margaret, yes Margaret Borden, her family ran the five and dime on Jefferson just down the way.

“Margaret Borden, is that you?”

“No, not Borden any more.” Smiling, eyes lifting up to see who I might be. “My name is Lentz, has been now for forty-seven years. Why, Amelia Geist, dear Lord, I remember you. How have you been? It's so good to see you. My word, Burt, it's Amelia Geist, come and say hello.”

He offers his hand, shaking mine and then he takes it up to his mouth and kisses it. Burt Lentz, a grade or two higher than us, maybe Louise's age.

“Yes, of course,” he says. “I remember the Geists. How could I forget, Louise was in my class.

“Yes,” Margaret says, jealous of not so much me as the memory of Louise. Thank God she won't be here. “Yes, I remember Louise.”

“She was a stunner,” he says. “A beauty. All the boys wanted to date her. So haughty though, and aloof. She was unattainable. My God, Louise Geist, whatever happened to her? Last I heard, she was off to college. Going to be an English professor someday, or a writer.” I want to tell them the memory of her is better than the truth, want to bring her down a peg finally, bring her down in the eyes of others. But no, it wouldn't be right. Let them think what they will. That memory, that piece of her should still live at least in this building, this grand building.

“She's doing very well. Married and living in the beautiful hills outside of Bremerton, a writer.”

“We always thought she would be a writer.”

“Yes,” I say, lying. I cannot bear to see this piece of her rent asunder. “Yes, she has been married,” not true, “married these many years and living happily, writing for magazines and journals.”

“How about you, Amelia? So good to see you. This place is still so wonderful.” Margaret smiling now that the subject has moved on from Louise. “We came all the way from Florida for this. Wouldn't miss it for the world—such wonderful memories. What a shame they have to tear it down.”

Burt hooks his arm in Margaret's and leads us to a table, playing the role of the stern, practical man. “Yes,” he says, “but it's all for the better. This real estate is too valuable to have it taken up by an old theater nobody uses any more and an old folks home. They can put an office building here and generate a whole future revenue stream of rents. Now this place is generating nothing in terms of income or taxes for the city.”

I want to tell him how wrong he is. There are vacant buildings three blocks from here, why can't they tear those down instead? But no, hold your lip Amelia, always holding your lip, always keeping things nice for others, deferring, letting them go about their business, their lives. Margaret wants to tell me about her life. She asked but never bothered to listen to mine.

“Seven grandchildren,” she says, bragging, a magical number. “We have them down to see us each year, as long as they keep coming. Retired in Ninety-three, fourteen years ago. Burt
sold the business, and we moved where it's warm.” She sees that my hands are empty except for the signet ring Karl left me, not a thing on my left hand. She places her hand on the linen tablecloth where I can't help but see it, showing me what her life has been like, her hands fat like two loaves of bread burnished with spots, showing me the sun her skin has endured, showing me the ring embedded in the fat of her fourth finger, buried in flesh together with this man. Where are you Tris, where have you been? I've been frantic here.”

“What do you mean?” he says, resting the portfolio on top of the suitcase with the roller wheels, setting his things down, glad to be home. “I've been working. I was in Wichita, at a convention.”

“I called several times and you didn't answer the phone.” She lays the paint brush on the rim of the can and bats a loose strand of hair away from her eyes. “I've been trying to reach you. I didn't have any idea when you were getting back, and we have the contractors coming over today to tear out the deck. As a matter of fact, they're here now.”

She looks thinner than when he left; the whole house looks more sparse. Things have changed. Laura has been, as she put it, frantic, charging around the house getting rid of things, decluttering, neutralizing, preparing the house to put it on the market. Tris isn't quite sure what the rush is, why all of a sudden there is such a pressing need to sell this place he has grown comfortable in over twenty-seven years, but it must have something to do with the surge of manic energy that has overtaken
her in the past six months. It's as if there is a new, strange woman in the house living with him, a thinner, harder, colder version of the woman he used to know, bent on survival at all costs. Bound and determined to get out of this place and move on, whether he decides to join her or not.

As Tris walks across the kitchen floor to empty his pockets of keys, wallet, cell phone, pen, and loose change, he hears a funny echo. The precise clump of his shoes on the wood is louder, more pronounced than he recalls. And then he realizes that it is because all the knick-knacks that used to be on the counter and breakfast table are gone. The framed photographs of the children and grandchildren have disappeared, the heavy glass candlesticks, the vase that once held fresh-cut flowers from the garden, the basket that contained a stack of paper napkins, the wooden bowl for fresh fruit, the drift of three-day-old newspapers and last week's magazines and unpaid bills: all gone. Even the small metal box where he flings the loose change from his pockets when he arrives home is gone. Decluttered. He is left holding a fistful of quarters, nickels, and dimes, with nowhere to put them except back in his pocket.

She probably cashed in all those old coins for bills—probably twenty or thirty dollars worth sitting there, accumulating—and threw away the box. That's what this is all about, when he gets right down to it: Cashing in. For nearly forty-three years this woman has been relying on him to feed her, clothe her, support her children, but now that time is nearly finished, and she is busy declaring her freedom from him. Wiping away all the accumulated clutter that his hard work bought. His useful
life as breadwinner, sole supporter, will be over in a few short weeks. The equity in this house built up over the years, another kind of accumulation, will soon become her chief source of income, and his status has been downgraded accordingly.

“Why are you painting the kitchen brown?” The place has smelled like wet paint for weeks. First the guest bedrooms where the kids used to sleep, then the downstairs bath and the living room, now this. All the wallpaper gone. All the bright cheerful colors that made the house feel like an Italian villa: gone. And in their place gallons of white or beige paint, ugly no-colors that make the house feel empty and bare, like another hotel room he is visiting.

“It's not brown, it's taupe.”

“Oh, taupe.” He opens an empty drawer to the left of the sink where a tangled jumble of extension cords, measuring tape, glue sticks, hammers, pliers, screw drivers, batteries, and nonfunctional flashlights used to live, fishes the coins out of his pocket and drops them in. “Never heard of it.”

“Cindy says we have to neutralize as much as possible to get the maximum value out of the house.” She takes another swipe at the wall with her paint brush, keeping her back to him while she talks. “Neutralize and declutter. People don't want to see a house that looks like the current owners are living there. They want everything to be immaculate, to look like they could move right in without a trace of the former owners. People want to be able to flip the house in a year or two. They don't plan on staying in one place forever like we did.”

This comes as a form of accusation: They could have made more money if he had been clever enough to sell their house and move to a new place every few years. Ever since her pal Cindy got her real estate license in the spring, Laura has been dispensing Cindy's found wisdom about housing prices in the Bay Area and whether or not the overheated market is a bubble that's about to burst. Tris feels as if he is listening to a tape recording of Cindy after she's had two or three Margueritas, all these newfound and strongly held opinions coming out of Laura's mouth about chemicals in the food she eats, zoning ordinances, and who should be elected to the local school board.

“Well, the current owner would like something for dinner. I'm starving. They never feed you on these flights anymore. They actually had the gall to walk up and down the aisle offering a box with a stale sandwich and a bag of pretzels for five dollars.”

Laura twists her head around to see if he is serious about eating, then returns to her painting. Her iron red hair drapes the crew-neck collar of her t-shirt, but even her hair, which Tris has prized as his wife's most resonant feature, seems somehow drained of color, more filaments of silver in it than ever before.

“It's too early for dinner,” she says, her wrist avidly spreading taupe across the wall. “I had no idea when you would get here. Or even
if
you would get here.” The way she says this implies that he has forfeited any chance of dinner tonight. “I haven't even started thinking about dinner yet.”