The Patron Saint of Ugly Page 27

  “I heard Zelda cut her off for marrying a Jew.”

  “What did her husband do? Does anyone know what her husband did?”

  “I have a joke, Yummers. A Jew, a nigger, and a clappy whore walk into a bar . . .”

  I was stunned that this fashionable set included versions of Uncle Dom. And I was even more shocked when they kept trading racist jokes while Black Radisson leaned in with their fresh drinks, his expression fixed. He went back to the bar for the next round and nodded at the bartender, who pulled a bottle from his vest pocket, unscrewed the eyedropper lid, and squirted a dose of something into each drink. I don’t know for certain what the liquid was, but it was yellow and I think, in another culture, might be considered excellent counter-malocchio juice.

  Finally Mom appeared from the kitchen, Cookie, her equal in height, behind her, guiding her in by the shoulders, whispering in her ear, shoving a drink in her hand.

  The women squawked like gulls and flocked to her. “Marina! You look stunning! How we’ve missed you!”

  Cookie drifted to Opal’s station as the women circled Mom. Even in her old clothes and uncoifed hair, Mom was striking. The women scoured her from stem to stern, some baring their teeth while pretending to be cordial. “I can’t believe you’ve kept your figure after having children.” The men stopped yammering and gawked at Mom, particularly Skiff, who crossed his arms and appraised the jewel amid this cluster of lesser stones.

  Grandma had been sipping a martini but slipped off to the bar to knock back a few, leaving the women to interrogate Mom. “What happened at Wellesley? Why didn’t you come to Monaco? So where exactly have you been?” The questions were relentless with no pauses for answers, thankfully, since I don’t know what Mom would have said. I’ve been scrubbing toilets and eating capocollo with Italians.

  “We were so sorry to hear about your son,” a chunky woman said. It looked as if she genuinely meant it.

  “Nicky.” Mom’s head bobbed ever so slightly, as if the God she didn’t believe in were flicking her forehead with a giant finger.

  Uh-oh, I thought. From the looks in Opal’s and Cookie’s eyes, I could tell they were thinking Uh-oh too.

  But Mom shook it off. “Thank you, Bonbon.”

  A woman wielding a cigarette holder said, “Yes, Zelda told us about your son, and about your husband who died in the war.”

  “My husband didn’t die in the war.” Mom’s eyes shot virtual flames at Grandma.

  Grandma fiddled with her pearls and sort of tap-danced across the floor without spilling a drop of martini. “You must have heard me wrong, Taffy. I said he served in the war. Served.”

  At the mention of war the men’s jokes became militaristic, sort of. “Bumpy, remember that little bistro we celebrated in after we liberated Paris? One time a frog, a kike, and a pig-alley whore walked in and found a table of heil-heinies . . .”

  Skiff inched over to Mom, clearly on a prearranged mission, judging from the way he and Grandma traded looks. I wondered what would happen to me if Mom and Skiff married. He would whisk her across the pond and I would be stuck with Grandma taking etiquette lessons.

  Skiff nudged Bonbon and Taffy aside and cupped his hand around Mom’s elbow.

  “Marina.” His voice was tinged with both yearning and spite.

  Mom looked at his hand, and her eyes drifted to his. “Skiffy.”

  They did the kissy-kiss and Mom stared at the silver bracelet on Taffy’s wrist.

  “You look marvelous.” Skiff scrutinized my mother in the same way the women were scrutinizing him. “You broke my heart.”

  Mom looked at him, and then at Grandma, who merely tilted her head in a way that communicated: You did, dear.

  Bonbon started to sidle away, but Taffy held her in place. She recognized theater when she saw it.

  Skiff slid a tendril of Mom’s hair behind her ear. “One day we were canoeing and the next you were gone. Where did you go? Zelda was always a little dodgy on the details.”

  Zelda glared at him as if to say, This wasn’t part of our plan. “What does it matter where she was specifically? If Marina had wanted you to know, she would have told you.”

  “Ouch,” Taffy said.

  “Touché,” said Skiff. “At least tell us about your old man. What did your husband do?”

  The glass in Mom’s hand shook, its contents sloshing close to the brim.

  I looked at Grandma to see if she would again rescue her daughter, but she just stood, another statue among so many.

  Bonbon, bless her plump heart, tried to throw Mom an oar. She took the shaking glass from Mom’s hand. “How did you meet him? What was he like?” She assumed those were innocuous inquiries.

  I wondered how Mom would describe her choice of spouse: a barely high-school-educated runt who wore paint-splattered work boots and carried a lunch pail.

  I felt like a stranger floating above this superior set, a part of Mom’s secret life that was so disconnected from this one.

  “He was a wonderful man,” Mom said. “And a hard worker.”

  A sob lodged in my throat.

  “But what did he do?” Skiff wore the same expression Uncle Dom would have worn.

  The light in Mom’s eyes dimmed. She tugged at the hair at her temple and I imagined that in her mind she was replaying the movie of her life with that horrible ending.

  This time I genuinely expected Grandma to dive in with some elevated lie, to save herself, if not her daughter, since Mom’s choice of a husband reflected poorly on Grandma. He owned a steel company. He was an oil tycoon. But Grandma just stood there with a strange look on her face. Not embarrassment, which is what I would have expected. More like smug satisfaction. Let’s see how you’re going to get out of this one, dear. As if today’s festivities were staged to show her daughter just how much she would rue the day.

  Mom roused herself a bit. “He sawed the gnawed wood.”

  “What’s that?” Skiff asked.

  “What did she say?” Taffy whispered.

  “He sawed the gnawed wood and inlaid the T-bone floor.”

  I don’t know what stunned me more, that my mother was blurting her nonsense in public or that I actually understood it. Regardless, as I watched her silently backflip into herself, I uncoiled my imaginary rope to lasso around her waist. I genuinely thought I could be Mom’s savior. I could be the savior of Dad’s reputation too if I pranced downstairs in my fancy dress, tidy hairdo, and de-geographied face. I would show everyone how refined we all were, how well Dad had provided for us. So I stood, smoothed down my collar, sucked in my gut, and clomped my shoes on each step as I descended to draw attention away from my caved-in mother and place it squarely on me.

  “My father was a lumber tycoon!” I bellowed. “Our house is on top of a hill; it’s bigger than this one, and it has its own bowling alley and a room just for mink coats.” I don’t know where all that came from, since this was before I even knew about the bowling alley and fur vault in my current chateau.

  “Is that the daughter?” Taffy’s cigarette holder tipped limply toward the floor.

  Bowler eyed my overly powdered face. “That’s Marina’s daughter?”

  I could feel the oily disappointment oozing from their pores.

  “Yes, I am.” I stepped into the Hall of Mirrors.

  All eyes were on me as the guests made their assessments and no doubt determined, even without knowing the secret beneath my war paint, that I was miles below their offspring. Skiff’s eyes pivoted from Mom to me, probably in the same way my father’s did on the day I was born.

  I looked over at Cookie and Opal, bug eyes about to pop out of their heads, Cookie hiding her gloved hand behind her back.

  Grandma and I looked at Mom, who looked at me but didn’t see me. The spark of consciousness in her eyes was gone. I bet Grandma was thinking, Whew.

  Grandma hustled over and yanked me offstage. “Well, now that you’ve all met, it’s time for the unveiling.”

  She depos
ited me beside Mother and went to the giant painting. The guests murmured with anticipation. I was miffed that my grand entrance had fizzled to nothing. I wanted Mom to see my hurt, but she stared so intently into one of the mirrors across the room that I waved my hand in front of her face and whispered, “Mom? Mom?” She didn’t even blink.

  Grandma cleared her throat. “It is such a pleasure to have my family reunited.”

  “Hear, hear!” Skiff clamped his arm around Mom’s waist. I don’t think he cared that she was a shell of herself. She was a beautiful shell who looked smart on his arm.

  “In honor of my daughter’s return I took the liberty of commissioning a painting that will grace the Caudhill walls for generations to come.”

  I slipped my hand into Mom’s ice-cold one to steady my nerves, since I knew that once again all eyes would be on me as they compared my face to, perhaps, a mulberry-stained one.

  Grandma’s eyes actually moistened as she wrapped her hand around the rope. I was moved by her newfound familial pride. “Ladies and gentlemen, behold.”

  I couldn’t bear to watch, so I squeezed my eyes shut and listened to fabric swishing to the floor, the gasping awe of the crowd, the feet shuffling forward to better admire the vision.

  “How beautiful. How stunning. It’s Marina all over again,” they said. I wondered how much license Grandma had given the artist.

  Finally I peeled open my eyes, expecting to see a gentrified version of myself, but the figure staring back at me was Nicky.

  The crowd mused: “Is that her son? That must be her son. How beautiful. And tragic.”

  “Nicky?” Mom’s hand warmed in my grip. “Is that my Nicky?” Her fingers slipped from mine as she inched toward the painting. Skiff let his hand fall from her waist to watch the heartbreaking reunion.

  It was a stunning painting, Padre, not with my brother holding a stupid plumed hat or wearing knickers but fashioned after his last school picture, when he wore his La Strega duds and held a chess castle in his hand. The flawless porcelain skin, the rosebud lips that had earned him slugs from the Four Stooges earned him respect here.

  “Well,” Skiff said. “That is Marina’s child, for sure.” I don’t think I imagined the relief in his voice as he predicted what their own progeny would look like.

  “Isn’t he exquisite?” Bonbon said.

  “Yes. He is,” Taffy conceded.

  My brother was the savior who would elevate my family. It would never be me.

  Skiff went to congratulate Grandma on the painting. Mom crept forward and craned her neck to take in the full impact of her son painted monumentally out of scale with the delicately boned prince he actually was. The guests warbled amongst themselves.

  “He was her only son, you know.”

  “He would have been the first male Caudhill-Adams-Rutledge heir.”

  “Yes. What a horrible, horrible loss.”

  I was stunned by the sentiment bubbling beneath their words. The presumed superiority of the male offspring was alive and well, as was the preference for beauty over, well, me. How easily they would have chosen to slip me into the front seat of the station wagon that day and tuck my brother safely between his sheets.

  “What did you say?” Mom still faced my brother, so we all assumed she was communing with her dead son.

  In one movement she spun to face the crowd, the sentient spark again ignited. “I said, what did you say?”

  “We said he’s a beautiful boy,” Bonbon valiantly answered.

  “He certainly got all of your looks,” said Chompers.

  The wrong thing to say, as it turned out.

  “Where’s Garnet?” Mom desperately scanned faces, bypassing mine three times before she understood what Grandma had done to my real face, which was the antithesis of everything lovely in that room.

  “What did you do to her?” Mom looked from me to Grandma. “What the hell did you do to her?”

  “It’s, it’s, it’s just a dress, dear. Nothing fancy,” Grandma sputtered, eyes frantic.

  Mom raced to me and grabbed me by the wrist. “This isn’t my daughter,” she said, seething, to Grandma, to everyone. “This isn’t my daughter!”

  Mom pulled me across the hall and whisked me upstairs with the force of a hypercharged mother protecting her young, if that’s what she was doing.

  I could hear Taffy asking, “That’s not her daughter? Then who is she?”

  My feet stumbled as Mom led me to my bathroom. I expected her to order me to raise my arms so she could pull the offending costume over my head, but she turned on the hot water, grabbed a washcloth, and soaked it. She held the steaming thing to my face and scrubbed and rubbed until most of that opaque foundation and powder and rouge was off, mulberry continents resurfacing. When she was finished, everything was smeared, my ponytail was lopsided, and errant strands were springing every which way. There were beige streaks on my Battenberg collar, dripping down my dress.

  I expected her to say, Now go change, but instead she once again yanked me from where I stood, this time taking me out of the bathroom and into the hall. I resisted but couldn’t match her strength. She whooshed me back downstairs, hurried me across that cool marble, and stood me under Fanny Brice’s chandelier.

  It was horrible, all those gasps and cringes from the wait staff and guests. From Cookie.

  “This is my daughter.” Mom gripped my chin and twisted my face toward the guests so they could all get a good look. I tried to wrench free but Mom held me tight as she yelled at the spectators, and Grandma, “Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she!”

  There was no sound for two whole minutes as the stares pierced my skin like a million blowgun darts. Then someone started whimpering. I scanned the crowd to find out who; perhaps it was Bonbon, or Cookie, or even Skiff (who was hurtling toward the door as fast as he could). But it was me blubbing like a three-year-old.

  Cookie dashed up and pried Mom’s hand from my face. “Leave her be!” It was the first time I ever heard her voice raised.

  Mom looked at her hand still in a claw, makeup smears on her arms, her sweater. She looked at me, really looked at me, and understood.

  “Garnet,” she whispered, but I cowered behind Cookie, the only person I could trust.

  “I . . . I . . .” Mom looked for someone, something to pin her actions on. “It’s this place, this goddamn place! We’ve got to leave, tonight, and go back home.”

  Grandma clipped up beside us. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, dear.”

  “What?” Mom asked.

  “Your house went into foreclosure months ago. It’s been sold, contents and all.” Grandma no longer cared what polite society thought about this if it would keep her daughter under her barred roof.

  Mom shook her head. “But you were supposed to take care of all that.”

  Grandma didn’t have to answer. We all understood that she had done just that.

  Mom looked at me and I read the apology in her eyes, not just for past omissions, but for what she was about to do. Inside her left iris, a minuscule version of her waved goodbye. She looked past me into one of those mirrors and padded to it, pretended to smooth down her ponytail, but she was looking into the glass, perhaps into our old life on the hill, the squat house, the lost fam-i-ly, maybe even into a version of herself trapped on the other side squinting into the mirror too. I heard it, the crack that sounded from inside her skull. Her hands balled into fists and she pounded her thighs, gently at first, then harder.

  “Mom, stop it.” I pictured the bruises that would bloom on her willowy legs.

  Mom didn’t hear me, or maybe she did, because she stopped pummeling herself and started pounding the mirror, the mirror, the mirror.

  “Oh my God,” Bonbon said. “Somebody do something.”

  Nobody stepped forward as Mom punched the glass, chanting, “No-no-no-no-no.” Now using her fists, harder and harder, until the glass shattered, fragmenting her view, so she moved to the next mirror, pounding and shattering, cut
s on her hands as she moved to the next and the next, until someone, Cookie, I think, screamed, “Someone do something!”

  Grandma didn’t come to her rescue. Neither did Black Radisson or Cedrick. Muddy appeared from who-knows-where. He wrapped his arms around Mom while cooing, “Shh. Shh. It’s all right now, missy.”

  Mom struggled against him, but he held on tight. “It’s okay now. I’ve got you.”

  Mom sank in his arms. He scooped her up and carried her upstairs as she bawled what was incomprehensible to everyone except me: “I put the kill keys in his hand.”

  “That’s all right, dearie.”

  “And they weighed so little.”

  “So very little.” Muddy ferried Mom to the east wing, to the sleigh bed, where she climbed back into herself for good.

  The guests stood there goggle-eyed, as if this were the stunning coda at the end of the performance. Finally they collected their opera glasses and programs, crunched over all that shattered glass, and peeled out in their fancy cars to their fancy homes and telephones to call in their reviews so that impolite society would be informed of the madness.

  Grandma called Dr. Trogdon and while we waited for him I sat on the stairs as Cookie and Opal swept up the shards of glass and taped cardboard over the broken mirrors, both women working in silence.

  When Dr. Trogdon arrived I followed him to Mom’s bedside; his pill vials rattled around in his case as he removed a syringe of brown liquid, which he injected into Mom’s arm. Grandma stood over him with a look that was neither distressed nor fretful; it was pure content.

  A decade after that party I sat in the whippet room examining the contents of Grandma Iris’s safety-deposit box that had been delivered to me by the fiduciary of her estate. Amid the codicils, stock certificates, and many car titles were, I discovered, two clues that helped decode Grandpa Postscript. The first was a Charlottesville Daily Progress society column, which I’ll include as exhibit C.

  Confidence Man Leaps to His Death

  On V-E Day, while the rest of America and her Allies celebrated the fall of the Third Reich, thirtynine-year-old Donald Flyman (aka Reginald White) leaped to his death from a second-story window in the home of his wife, socialite Iris Caudhill-Adams-Rutledge, of the Mayflower Caudhills. It is unclear if suicide was his intent or if, according to a member of the housekeeping staff, he was attempting to flee after it was discovered that he had embezzled $400,000 from his wife’s estate and was planning to leave the country with an unnamed woman.