“She’s a weeper,” Rivera said. “A high-maintenance weeper. I need at least a day to recover before I deal with her.”
“Okay,” said Angie, gritting her teeth against the ringing of the telephone. “But it might not be Meg. Maybe it’s Miss Maddie. Maybe it’s Caroline. Maybe it’s DeeDee, in which case you can have the pleasure of ratting out Tony. That will put you in a better mood.”
For a moment she thought Rivera had gone to sleep, which was actually possible; she had known Rivera to nap while a jackhammer took apart the pavement directly below her window.
“Fuck it.” Rivera picked up the phone and barked a hello. Angie hoped, in that moment, that it wasn’t Weepy Meg.
Rivera’s scowl cleared. She listened, her eyebrows drawn together in a sharp V.
“Okay,” she said, and hung up. “John is on his way over.”
Angie inhaled a mouthful of wine. When she had stopped coughing she wiped the tears from her eyes. “What?”
“You heard. He said, ‘Tell Angie I’m on my way over.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ ” Rivera got up from the couch and shook her head so that her hair flew around her face in a short curtain of inky black satin with a beveled edge.
“Why,” Angie said slowly, “would you do such a thing?”
Rivera rounded her eyes and blinked provocatively. “Because, chicklet, it’s what’s best.”
The phone began to ring again. Angie leaned over and picked it up, her eyes fixed on Rivera.
“Hello.”
“Angie?”
“Caroline.” She tilted the phone for Rivera, who came over to listen.
“I just got back from the lake a little bit ago. I made pasta primavera and I’ve got way too much. Would y’all like to come share it with me?”
Angie was thinking about how best to inoculate herself against the trouble ahead, whether she should say,
John is on his way over here and I’ll send him on to you for supper,
or
Did you know John was back, I saw him on the train talking to your sisters,
or
Why don’t you bring that pasta over here?
Any of those statements might have put a stop to the gathering storm, but before she could open her mouth, Rivera took the phone out of her hand.
“Caroline. I haven’t eaten. I’ll be there in ten.” Then she hung up, and in a single, graceful motion she turned and hugged Angie.
“You did too eat. You’ve been cooking all day.”
“When have I ever turned down a free meal?” Rivera picked up the car keys from the table. “Besides, I’ll be in the way here. Talk to John. Get it done, get it over with, once and for all. One way or the other.”
Angie drew back, alarmed. “What in the hell does
that
mean?”
“Don’t play dumb, Angie.”
The screen door slammed behind Rivera, and Angie went to see if there was any more wine.
The rain had started to come down hard again when John Grant parked Kai’s Mini in front of Ivy House. It was a warm rain and the air was sweet with it, and he had no idea, suddenly, why he had come here or what he wanted to accomplish. A half hour ago it had seemed the logical thing to do: he would apologize for being rude, settle whatever question Angie had about Miss Zula, and then calmly, rationally, he would make it clear to her that the past was past, and he was content to leave it that way. Surely once he opened his mouth the right words would materialize.
Then Angie was standing in the open door under the eaves, her arms wrapped around herself. She leaned against the door frame, her shape outlined by the light behind her.
John drew in a deep breath, unfolded himself from a car that seemed, from the inside at least, no bigger than a bread box, and sprinted across the street and the lawn, up the walkway, the paving stones slick underfoot. He stopped on the lowest porch step and forced himself to move forward slowly, deliberately.
She was looking at him with an expression he could hardly read: severe, unblinking, but curious, too. Certainly not angry or unhappy. At that moment it struck him, quite unexpectedly, that Angie was rarely unhappy; she could be angry better than anybody he knew, but nobody could accuse her of being morose, or even moody.
She said, “Come in out of the rain, John.”
He went up the steps and onto the porch, where he stood dripping onto the floor. The house smelled of coffee and a meal cooked not long ago, meat and beans and spices. His stomach rumbled loudly enough for them both to hear it.
“Sorry.”
Her arms were still crossed. She turned and went into the well-lit kitchen, pausing on the door swell. “Rivera’s been cooking.
Chuletas,
and
arroz con habichuelas
.” Then she plucked a folded towel from a laundry basket and tossed it to him.
Tony might be in Savannah, but Rivera was here, which meant they weren’t alone in the house, and that was a good thing. A very good thing. Any moment Rivera might come down the stairs and sit down across from him. They would argue about movies or books or Ogilvie, and that would help him focus. Because he had come here to talk about business, after all. John fixed his mind on that idea and then he sat down to eat.
The table was cluttered with books and piles of paper and folders, some of them spilling photographs or newspaper clippings. Angie’s mess, because Angie worked best like this, scattering everything around her and then standing back to see what patterns jumped out. It had irritated him and intrigued him too; sometimes, watching her work, John had the odd idea that he had been born without some particular kind of seeing that Angie—that many people—took for granted.
She moved Rivera’s dirty bowl out of the way and put a clean one in front of him. For a few minutes they said nothing more to each other than strangers sitting at a restaurant counter:
please
and
would you like
and
thanks
. Then John was overwhelmed for a while by Rivera’s cuisine of choice, which demanded his absolute attention. He drank the beer Angie put in front of him and accepted another thankfully.
Out of the corner of a tearing eye John watched Angie, who was playing with her food, drawing on her placemat with the tip of her knife. She looked less tired than she had that Saturday morning she had come to the house for breakfast, almost exactly a week ago.
First son of the local gentry sets up an ideal life for himself and discovers perfection is overrated. Or maybe you haven’t got to that last part yet?
A week in the New York City archives up to his eyebrows in the most demanding, arcane, interesting material he could find, and still John had never been able to get rid of Angie’s voice and the things she said to him over his own breakfast table. Now, when they were alone, she seemed content with small talk, because she said, “Where are Rob and Kai this weekend?”
“They found a house. It’s empty and they talked the real estate agent into letting them camp out there tonight.”
“So they’ll be moving.”
He nodded. “Pretty quick, looks like.”
“Just in time.”
She was looking at him. He raised his head slowly and met her gaze. “Caroline asked you to videotape the wedding.”
“Harriet did. She said you had been dead-set against the idea but finally gave in. I expect that was the fallout from my indiscreet morning visit.”
That was pretty close to the truth, though John neither wanted to admit it or to fill her in on the details. There was no better way to convince the Rose girls that he had no interest in Angie than to invite her to his wedding, and at the same time to give in on the video question. It had been a tactical decision on his part and it had worked well enough to put a crimp in Patty-Cake’s plans to launch a major Angie-based offensive. The look of satisfaction on Patty-Cake’s face was a relief and an irritation at the same time, even a week later.
Angie said, “Caroline and I don’t talk about you, if you’re worried we sit around comparing notes.”
He studied the bowl of his spoon and the hard crescent of reflected light in its rim. There was nothing he could say that would make this situation right, no explanation, no rationalization that would fix things, and maybe it was good that he had come here tonight, if only because he might not have faced that fact if he hadn’t. On the other hand, he was having trouble reading Angie’s expression—nothing new there, he had made a career, it seemed, out of misreading her—and he was suddenly too weary to try. He said, “I thought you wanted to talk about Miss Zula.”
Angie’s eyes fluttered closed, and then opened. “I did. I do. But not now. It’s been a really long day.”
John felt a shiver of irritation slide up his spine. “We keep dancing around the things we need to talk about. Why is that?”
She leaned back and folded her arms, narrowed her eyes at him. “Okay,” she said, “if you insist, I’ll lay it out. You’re getting married in a week. To Caroline Rose, who is a far better match for you than I ever was or could be. I wish you both every happiness, and a perfect life.”
Now when she looked at him, full on, unapologetic, wanting something—but what?—there was a tic at the corner of her mouth. It took everything in John not to reach out and still it with his finger.
He said, “Maybe perfection is overrated after all.”
She stood up so suddenly that the chair tipped over and crashed to the floor, and there she was, in a temper. He was asking himself what he meant by pushing her so far, what he meant to accomplish, what he really wanted, when the doorbell rang in a long shrill.
Angie threw up her hands. She said, “Of course.” And: “Maybe you should just go.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong,” John said.
Not yet,
he thought. “I see no need to hide as though I were.”
“Hello?” A man’s voice bellowed from the front of the house, loud enough to rouse the neighborhood. “Hello? I know you’re in there, Russo. Got-dammit. Come on out here and face me like a man.”
“Christ,” John said. “That’s Tab. Maybe we should both take off.”
“Tab Darling? Harriet’s Tab?” Angie’s eyes were bright with curiosity or maybe it was simply relief that the conversation neither of them wanted had come to such an abrupt end. John might feel the same way, if it weren’t Tab Darling pounding on the door. The glass was rattling in the windowpanes with the force of it.
“That’s him,” he said. “He’s been drinking. Let me handle him, okay?”
Angie’s was curious about Harriet’s infamous husband (
it would be best if he would just
die) and ready for just about anything. She waited for John to open the door.
Tab stood there with one arm resting on the door frame, the other fist raised to pound. He was a good-looking guy, or had been before his muscles had gone to beer, of which he reeked. On top of that, he was dripping wet but didn’t seem to realize it.
“Tab,” John said, “what is it?”
Tab blinked at him in the bleary, irritable way of the very drunk. “Is Harriet here? I know she is, she must be. Where’s my wife?”
“She isn’t here,” Angie said.
Tab pushed past John and came to a stop in front of Angie. The fumes that came off him were enough to make her light-headed. He scowled at her.
“I suppose that wop you work with ain’t here, either.”
“You suppose right,” Angie said.
Tab’s whole face screwed up in frustration. “Girl, don’t you know better than to come between a dog and a fire hydrant?”
Angie said, “Which one are you?” and John winced.
Tab was too drunk to follow the question, but not drunk enough to give up. He said, “The whole got-damned town is being overrun by got-damned wops.”
His head wobbled a little as he leaned in close enough for Angie to count the oddly boyish freckles on his nose.
“Patty-Cake’s got a hair up her ass with your name on it.” He burped softly. “Says you’re trying to take John here away from Caroline. Is that true?”
“No,” Angie said. “I’ve got no hold on him.” She made sure not to look in John’s direction.