Friends till the End (7 page)

“You are the world’s worst gossip,” said Maya. “Go on.”

“That professor, Harry Crandall, looked as if he wanted to shove the minister aside and give his own sermon. You know the type. His wife looks like a hippie from the sixties. Really. Long brown hair parted in the middle. I went up to her afterward to make sure her necklace wasn’t a peace sign.”

Bernard sat quietly in the background, drinking coffee and glancing through the newspaper. When Snooky paused for breath he said abruptly, “Who cried?”

“Well—nearly everyone, Bernard.”

“Everyone?”

“Well, Isabel didn’t. Maybe just a little. She’s not that way. Not very emotional.”

Bernard lapsed back into his habitual silence. After a while he stretched, picked up his coffee cup and left the room.

Maya watched him go. “It’s so unlike Bernard,” she whispered. “I’ve never known him to be so interested in people he didn’t even know.”

“Well, frankly, Maya, I’ve never known him to be
interested in people he did know. Me, for instance. I don’t feel he’s interested enough in me.”

“Snooky, you never feel
anyone
is interested enough in you.”

They were still discussing the murder a little while later when Bernard drifted back in.

“There’s no more coffee,” he said.

Maya gave him a reproving glance. “Bernard,” she said, “what are you going here? Shouldn’t you be working on that new book?”

“Yes.”

“What’s this one called?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“What’s it going to be about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sounds like it’s going fine,” said Snooky. “Listen, Maya, I’d still like to invite Isabel over to dinner sometime. Is that okay? Do you think she’ll come?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t she?”

“Oh, I don’t know. We were never very close in college. And then with all this stuff happening to her, I’m not even sure she wants to see me again.”

“I’ve never heard you sound so insecure,” said Maya severely. “Buck up. Go call the woman and ask her.”

Snooky got up and restlessly skimmed his fingers over the bookshelves.

“Look at this. Your wedding album. You’ve never showed it to me.”

“For good reason.”

“Why?” He took it down and opened it. “You had a wonderful wedding. You did it in style. Bridesmaids, a caterer, champagne fountains, the works. And William in a corner, crying as he made out the checks. It was a perfect day.”

“Bernard, stop him,” said Maya. “If he sees those pictures he’ll never let us live it down.”

It was too late.

“Look at this,” said Snooky, gawking. “Geez, I had forgotten. Six bridesmaids all in purple. Six groomsmen in tuxedos. Here’s Bernard in a tux. You look just awful, Bernard. A little jittery, eh?”

“I do not look awful.”

“Terrible. Just terrible. And here’s Maya.” Snooky paused wickedly. “You look beautiful, Maya. Don’t be ashamed. No, really. That gown was worth every penny it cost the family.”

“Drop dead, Snooky.”

“And here’s William, looking like he’s at a funeral. Is that his checkbook he’s clutching to his heart? And there’s Emily, the old bitch, looking sour as ever. And their little brats.” Snooky was not a model uncle. “And here I am, looking like a total jerk. Note that I do not spare myself in my criticisms. I never did look good in a tux.”

“You looked fine. Put that thing away now.”

“Tell me, Snooky,” said Bernard. “What do you think your wedding will be like?”

“Oh, I’m planning to get married in Las Vegas by an Elvis impersonator. They have ministers there who double as Elvis impersonators. That’s just one reason why Las Vegas is the cultural capital of the world.”

“Go call your friend,” Maya said. “You can invite her for dinner tomorrow, if you want.”

“Thanks, My.”

Snooky left the room. Bernard picked up the wedding album. He and Maya leafed silently through the pages.

“Oh my God,” Maya said heavily. “Look at
that.
Bernard, we must have been out of our minds. Why in the world didn’t we elope? Look at your cousin there. God, she looks awful. What kind of pose is that? What were we thinking of?”

“William does look like he’s at a funeral,” said Bernard. “I never noticed that before.”

“Why are your mother’s eyes closed in all the family group shots?”

“Why does Snooky look like he’s in a great deal of pain?”

“What is your cousin doing with that dog? Oh, God, why did we keep this thing? Put it back before it gets me crazy.”

There was a silence. Maya said musingly, “I suppose Snooky will be getting married someday. Hopefully not
someday soon, but still … Bernard, do you have that tuxedo, or did we store it somewhere and lose it?”

“I think it’s in the guest-room closet.”

“Good. Maybe if the moths haven’t eaten it, you can wear it to Snooky’s wedding. How does that sound?”

“I’m not wearing a tuxedo in front of any Elvis impersonator,” Bernard said with feeling.

Ruth Abrams and Heather Crandall were discussing the murder over cups of grain coffee at Heather’s kitchen table. It was a gorgeous spring day; the sun streamed in and the room was light and cheerful. The windows were open and the green and yellow curtains swayed in the breeze. Ruth was wearing an old cotton dress with a faded floral print; her hair was ruffled and untidy. Heather managed to look neat and self-possessed, as always, in an embroidered caftan. Her hair was smoothly plaited into a long brown braid that hung down her back.

“Nobody would want to kill Laura,” Ruth was saying with conviction. “
Nobody!
”

“I agree.”

“It must have been some kind of accident.”

“Absolutely.”

“But what kind?”

“I think,” said Heather, “that it comes from too much meat-eating. Meat promotes aggressive tendencies. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. Vegetarianism is the way of the future.”

Ruth submitted meekly to another cup of the grain coffee. She added skim milk, stirred it and wondered if there was enough coffee and cream left at home for her to have a
real
cup when she got back.

“Meat, caffeine and sugar,” Heather was saying. “The deadly trio.”

“Oh, yes, yes. I tried your brown rice syrup the other day,” Ruth said with forced cheerfulness. “It was very good.”

“Oh, did you like it?”

“Mmmm, yes.”

She omitted to tell her friend that Sam had taken one
bite of the overly sweet cake and had refused to eat any more. Even the cat would not touch it.

Heather’s dog, Mahler, wandered into the room and came hopefully to the table for scraps. Ruth wondered idly if Mahler was also a vegetarian, like the rest of the family. It seemed likely. She could not imagine Heather buying cans of dog food at the market. It was against everything she believed in. Ruth could imagine her friend preparing careful portions of vegetarian fare for Mahler: perhaps stewed carrots, with tofu “meatballs” (Heather’s specialty) and, who knows, maybe lettuce or whole grain crumbs for texture. Poor Mahler. She gave him a surreptitious pat on the head as he stretched out under the table. He would never know the joys of a normal dog’s life.

“Mommy,” said a voice from under the table. Linus was playing there, unseen as usual. “Mommy.”

“Yes, darling?”

“Can I sit on Mahler?”

“No, darling.” Heather put on what she called her “stern face.” She peaked under the table. “You know better than that, Linus. Mahler is a sentient being, like you and me. Do you like it when Charlie sits on you?”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

Apparently satisfied with this line of logic, Linus went back to playing with blocks or whatever he was doing under there. He was such a quiet child, Ruth thought; it was restful to have him about. Not the way her two children had been, certainly; they were grown now, but when they were young it was like having a pair of whirlwinds in the house. And her grandson, Marcia’s son Melvin, was just the same.

“How’s Melvin, by the way?” Heather asked, in her casually intuitive way.

Ruth shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Do you hear from Marcia?” Heather asked gently.

“Not often. Not nearly often enough, frankly. I’m worried about her,” Ruth said. Her anxious face contracted into tight little lines. “Although what’s new about that? I’m always worried about her.”

Marcia was her 23-year-old daughter, and she was an
enigma and a mystery to her parents. At the ripe age of sixteen she had dropped out of high school and set off, as she put it, to “find her true self.” Apparently her true self was living somewhere in California, because that was where she went, with a battered suitcase and a head full of empty dreams. She drifted up and down the coast, getting odd jobs, writing back enthusiastic letters about her lifestyle and the “fantastically interesting” people she was meeting. One of those fantastically interesting people was Melvin’s father, whom Marcia met while she was working in a temporary position at a pizza joint. She stayed only a few weeks, then moved on—that was her rule, never too long in any one place—and a short while later found she was pregnant. Marcia was delighted. She hadn’t planned it, of course; she never planned anything; but she took it in her stride. Ruth and Sam were somewhat less delighted. To this day, the only thing they knew about Melvin’s father was that he had been young, around Marcia’s age, and that, according to their daughter, he made “awfully good pizza.”

“Hardly sterling qualifications,” Ruth would say miserably. “Hardly Harvard Law School, for goodness sakes. We had hoped for—for something a little
better
for our daughter.”

“It’s karmic,” Heather would reply. She was of a different generation than Ruth’s daughter, but sometimes she talked the same way. “It’s karmic, Ruth. You have to accept it. Marcia’s your daughter, not your toy. You have to accept her as she is.”

This was difficult for Ruth to do because she desperately wanted Marcia to be different. She wanted her to be well-educated and successful and married to a man who was the same. Instead, all she had were letters postmarked from California which detailed Marcia’s wanderings up and down the coastline from small town to small town, and which included details of her jobs at a Dairy Queen in Espolito (“
really
interesting—great people, and Melvin ate like a pig”), or a little health food restaurant on the beach near San Diego (“
heavenly
epanadas, honestly, the best I’ve ever tasted”).

“It’s not
fair
,” Ruth would wail. “It’s not fair! Where
did she come from? She could have dropped in from another galaxy for all I know about her. Honestly, she just doesn’t fit into the
family.
”

The
family,
in Ruth’s world view, consisted of Ruth, Sam, and their son Jonathan. Jonathan was twenty-eight years old and, in Heather’s opinion, a stuck-up prig. He had been a pale shifty child with a nervous face who had grown up into a pale shifty young man with a nervous face. His intellectual prowess had not counted for much while he was growing up, and he had become used to the cries of Nerd and Cauliflower Brain, but it had come in surprisingly handy later when he found himself enrolled for a doctorate in mathematics at Princeton. Jonathan was the Abramses’ idea of what their child should be. He taught math at Princeton and had the uncomfortable habit of staring at you palely when you asked him a question about his work.

“Believe me,” he would say scornfully, “you couldn’t
possibly
understand.”

Ruth and Sam were very proud of him. He came home occasionally for visits and sat around the dinner table thinking Large Thoughts about his work. Heather had watched Jonathan grow up, and she had always privately considered him a difficult child. He was spoiled by his parents and led to believe that the intellect was everything; that as long as you were smart, you didn’t have to be a good or kind or interesting person as well. Secretly she cherished a fondness for Marcia, the outcast, the rebel. Marcia who, when Melvin was born, imperturbably slung him on her back and carted him along on the road with her.

“My daughter,” Ruth would confide in a nervous whisper, “is a—a
hobo.
”

“Marcia is a lesson for you, Ruthie. Dealing with her is meant to teach you something.”

Ruth didn’t know what that could be, except perhaps the true meaning of the word “frustration.”

“Maybe,” she would say politely. “Maybe.”

Inside she felt resentful. Heather didn’t know what she was talking about, with all this talk of karma and lessons. Heather had Little Harry and Charlie and Linus, three
perfect children, none of whom had ever given her a day’s worry in her life.

Aloud she said, “Sam can’t figure Marcia out.”

“It’s a lesson,” Heather responded sagely.

Occasionally Marcia would show up on her parents’ doorstep and expect to be fed and housed for as long as she wanted. Of course they always took her in and gave her her old bedroom back and made up the guest room for Melvin. Ruth was always secretly delighted to see her. She
was
their daughter, after all! And they were always happy to spend time with their grandson, who was now five years old and a tiny demolition machine. Melvin’s infrequent visits were trying times for the cat, which spent its time trying to elude Melvin’s grasping hands and slink away out of sight behind the furniture. Melvin also had a habit of biting people, which Marcia did not seem to consider a negative quality in her child.