“Anyway … if I can show you anything.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon.”
“I mean … like … around the house.”
The woman’s laughter was a total surprise, like a tractor trailer honking on a hairpin curve. “My dear Moira … I came to Christmas parties in this house when I was eight years old.”
“Oh … I see.”
The woman picked up the Polaroid and aimed it toward the minstrels’ gallery. Click. Whir. She looked at Mona again. “I’ve been watching Easley’s sad decline for many, many years.” Shielding herself with a simpering smile, she removed the print and laid it daintily on the window seat. “He hasn’t told you a thing about me, has he?”
“No,” Mona replied calmly. “Actually, he hasn’t.”
“Well … that’s a pity.”
“Is it?”
The flat smile came back. “If nothing else, Moira, it would make your little charade so much easier. That’s all I meant.” She picked up the print and squinted at it. “The light is rather poor, I’m afraid.”
“It’s Mona,” said Mona.
“Mmm?”
“My name is Mona, not Moira.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She looked down at the print again.
“I take it you don’t need me.”
“Whatever for?” said the woman, smiling.
Mona marched out of the room. She didn’t break stride until she had gone the length of the house and accosted Teddy in the sitting room. “Why the fuck did you do that to me?”
Teddy looked up from his Martin Amis novel with a rueful smile. “Isn’t she a delight?”
“You could’ve told me she knows.”
“Well, I … she does, does she?”
“Yes. You didn’t know that?”
“No … well, I might have guessed. She doesn’t miss much. I’m sorry, Mona. People talk about me. I’ve never been able to prevent that, and … some of it’s bound to rub off on you. Has she left yet?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, “and I don’t care.”
“Neither do I.” He shoved his book aside. “I have a bit of that lovely hash left. Shall we take a stroll along the parapet and leave her to stalk the halls in peace?”
“Great idea,” she said.
She followed him upstairs to the water-spotted bedroom that led to the attic stairway. As they climbed, hunching toward a sliver of light, the roof beams of Easley arched above them like the blackened rib cage of some prehistoric beast. Teddy leaned against the parapet door; they were momentarily blinded by the white April sunshine.
Mona looked toward the western hills and drank in the spring-scented breeze. “This is sort of our place, isn’t it?”
Teddy’s eyes twinkled. “It is, rather.” He poked around in the breast pocket of his salt-and-pepper tweed jacket and produced one of his fat hash-and-tobacco joints. Lighting it with his Bic, he took a toke and handed it to her. “I should warn you about my father,” he said.
Eyeing him suspiciously, she took in smoke and held it.
“I don’t mean warn you, really. Just … an explanation.”
She nodded.
“Daddy … uh … has this mental thing.”
She exhaled.
“It’s quite harmless, I assure you. The doctors say he’s retreated from … the usual reality, as it were, and taken refuge in happier times … his happiest time, actually. He lives it over and over again. There’s a clinical term for it.” He took the joint back. “It escapes me at the moment.”
“What was his happiest moment?” she asked.
“Well, apparently, a fortnight he spent with the Walter Annenbergs.”
“The who?’
“Oh … I thought they were household words in California. Walter and Lee Annenberg. He was ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s when Daddy met him. They hit it off straight away, Daddy and Walter … so Mummy and Daddy spent some time at the Annenbergs’ estate in Palm Springs. And Daddy, I’m afraid, never quite got over it.”
“You mean …?”
He nodded. “He thinks he’s still there.”
She smiled at him. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
He shook his head, smiling back.
“He walks around Gloucestershire thinking he’s in Palm Springs?”
He shook his head again. “The Scillies.”
“What?”
“He walks around the Scillies thinking he’s in Palm Springs.”
“Oh.”
He offered her the hash again.
“No, thanks,” she said. “The tobacco makes me dizzy.”
“Most of his major symptoms have subsided, thank God. Mummy’s broken him of the white shoes, the golf togs, that sort of thing.”
“That’s good.”
“I just thought you should know. It can be bloody embarrassing sometimes.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate that.”
He heaved a long sigh, then turned and surveyed the landscape.
“Is that really Wales?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “It’s not, actually. But you can see it from the folly. The most distant ridge is the Black Mountains. You can see the Malverns too.”
She stood a silent vigil with him, then said: “I don’t understand it.”
“What?”
“How you can just … dump all this. Surrender Easley to that lard-assed bitch down there.”
He turned away. “I’m not surrendering Easley.”
“Well, what would you call it?”
“Mona …” He plucked a clump of moss off the parapet. “Easley is just a job. I’m bloody tired of that job. I know what you’re saying, believe me … but I can’t be two people at once.”
All but lost in the scenery, a white van bounced along the one-lane road from Easley-on-Hill. “If I’m not mistaken,” said Teddy, “that’s the caterers.”
“Looks like it,” she said. It made her a little queasy to realize that other people—lots of them—had been mobilized to act upon a split-second decision she had made one rainy night in Seattle.
Teddy heard the uncertainty in her voice. “Are you all right, Mona?”
“Sure.”
“The tobacco, eh?”
“Yeah. I think I could use a nap, actually.”
“Of course.” He gave her a kindly smile. “Get some rest.”
She patted him on the shoulder and climbed into the dark innards of the attic. When she got back to her room, she eased shut the door to the minstrels’ gallery, since she could still hear the ghoulish whirring of that Polaroid in the great hall. Sleep wouldn’t come, however, so she braced herself for conflict and headed down the hallway toward Michael’s room.
He was there, propped up in the window seat with an old Country Life opened against his knees. Wilfred lay on the bed—-stomach down, knee bent—watching him. When she cleared her throat, Michael gazed toward the door. “What’s this?” he asked. “More gruel already?”
She managed to smile. “I thought we could talk.”
“O.K.,” he said blandly.
Wilfred did a somersault on the bed. “And children should leave.” He headed for the door, stopping to give Mona a peck on the cheek.
“You aren’t a child,” she said.
“Twenty minutes,” Wilfred replied.
She crossed the room and sat in the armchair flanking the window seat. “He’s such a doll,” she said.
Michael shrugged. “Looks like it’s mutual.”
“Well … he’s got a big crush on you, I can tell that.”
He blinked at her, then looked out the window. “Is that a problem?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I worry about him … what he’ll do when I go home.”
“What about … his family?”
“There isn’t one. He was living with his father, and his father ran off. He killed a man.”
Mona frowned. “Sounds like Wilfred’s better off.”
“I don’t kn
ow. Is nothing better than something?”
She could feel him getting heavy and moved to avert it. “Works for me,” she smiled.
Remaining sober, he turned away from her. He had changed in lots of little ways, she realized. It was almost as if he had bequeathed his flippancy to Wilfred. He seemed cold and colorless, drained of his irony.
“Any messages?” he asked at last.
“Uh … for who?”
“Barbary Lane. No one’s heard from you for years.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” she said.
“A year and a half, then. How’s that?”
She could see Wilfred on the hillside, a tiny smudge of yellow and brown climbing toward the folly; he looked like a bumblebee from this distance. “I’ve been sorting things out,” she told Michael.
“I know,” he said. “Since nineteen sixty-seven.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Then don’t use that crummy excuse.”
“Mouse …”
“You could have dropped a postcard, for Christ’s sake! You moved and never gave us your new address. Your phone wasn’t listed …”
“I didn’t have one half the time.”
“You could’ve called us, then. Something. What is it. Mona? Are you cutting us off? What the hell is happening? Do you know how much you’re hurling Mrs. Madrigal?”
The last one stung a little. “Look,” she said, “I didn’t wanna check in with you guys until I had my shit together. You knew I wasn’t dead or anything. I just wanted to show up on your doorstep one morning out of the blue … with some incredible piece of news about myself.”
“And this is it?” His eyes narrowed in disbelief.
“What?”
“Marrying … ol’ Tinseltits.”
She felt both mortified and relieved. “No,” she replied quietly. “I didn’t plan on publicizing this.”
“Did you plan on telling me?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Now.” She smiled feebly. “A little too late, huh?”
He looked away, fixing his gaze on the hillside. Wilfred had reached the folly and was now just a fleck of yellow beneath the duncecap roof. “In more ways than one,” said Michael.
“It doesn’t really mean anything,” she said.
“What?”
“This marriage. It’s just an arrangement to satisfy the immigration people, so Teddy can get a green card …”
“… and wag weenie in San Francisco.”
“I didn’t ask about that,” said Mona.
He stared at her, slack-mouthed. “How did this happen? I mean … how long has this been in the works?”
“About three weeks, I guess. Not long.”
“You met here or in Seattle?”
“Neither. The arrangements were made through … a sort of clearinghouse in Seattle.”
“A clearinghouse?” He almost spit out the words. “For what? Mail order brides?”
“Yes,” she replied flatly. “As a matter of fact.”
He gave an ugly little snort. “Does anyone here know about this?”
She flashed on that Fabia woman, snapping her way through the house. “Oh, yes,” she answered. “It appears to be Easley’s worst-kept secret.”
“It figures,” he said. “I’m always the last to know.”
His petulance made her impatient. “You weren’t supposed to know at all, Mouse. You weren’t supposed to be here.”
“When is it happening?”
“Tonight. In the chapel.”
“Swell.”
“It’s just the family. And a few of their friends.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll stay out of the way.”
“I didn’t mean that.” She felt better, just the same; the whole ordeal was embarrassing enough as it was. “It’s not like it really means anything,” she added. “People get married for immigration purposes all the time. It’s just a business proposition.”
“How much?”
“What?”
“How much is he paying you?”
“Oh … five thousand.”
“Not bad.”
“Well,” she acknowledged somewhat proudly, “it’s usually just a thousand or so, but this was a special case, and they thought I could handle it.” She couldn’t help thinking what a feeble boast that was. “The organization gets ten percent, of course. Like an agent. Anyway … it’s a fair price for all concerned.”
“Sure,” he replied. “It’s a double ring ceremony.”
She didn’t get it.
He tweaked one of his nipples.
“Oh.” She laughed uneasily, then tried to counter with her own joke; it might be the only way out of this mess. “Yeah,” she said. “I told him to hell with Immigration—he’ll never make it through the metal detector.”
He remained sullen.
She studied his face, then got up and went to the dresser and began arranging his breakfast dishes on the tray. “I’m going back to Seattle in two days,” she said. “I’ve had a nice little vacation … made some money. And everyone’s better off. I don’t need this guilt trip. Mouse.”
“That’s your doing,” he said, “Not mine.”
She slammed down the marmalade jar. “When the fuck did you get to be such a little prig?”
He didn’t answer right away. “You don’t know what I am,” he said quietly. “You haven’t stopped running long enough to find out.”
“Mouse …”
“What do you want from me, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you telling me this now? What do you want me to say? Congratulations on a lucrative but meaningless marriage?”
She picked up the tray and headed for the door. “I wanted your blessing, I guess. I have no idea why. I have no idea why I’m even talking to you.”
“If you ever made a real commitment …”
“Oh, fuck you, Mouse! just … fuck you. I don’t need this. Since when did you get to be an expert on commitment. You and Jon and your half-assed little … whatever you call that relationship …”
He scorched her with a long, silent glance. “I’ll give him your best,” he said.
She drew herself up and tried to remain calm. “I’m my own person,” she said.
“Fine,” he replied. “Go for it.”
She looked at him a moment longer and stormed out, marching back to her room with the tray. She threw herself on the bed but avoided a crying jag by rising again and hurling a paperweight at the suit of armor next to the window.
Hearing the noise, Teddy came running. “Good Lord,” he murmured. “Are you all right?”
She glared at the pile of metal on the floor. “I hate that fucking militarist drag.”
He nodded. “I didn’t much fancy it myself.”
She slumped into a chair.
“Is it … jitters?” he asked.
“We have to talk,” she replied.
Undoing the Damage
IT WAS ROUGHLY SEVEN-THIRTY WHEN MARY ANN CLIMBED out of the camera truck at the foot of the Barbary Lane stairway. Without stopping to admire the daffodils sprouting between the garbage cans, she went directly to Simon’s apartment and knocked on the door. When he opened it, he was wearing Michael’s green robe.
“Yes?”
“I want to start over,” she said.
“Meaning?”
“I want your forgiveness.”
He gave her a thin smile. “Wail a bit, won’t you? I haven’t forgiven myself yet.”
“For what?”
“Oh … damning the torpedoes.”
“What?”
“I knew what you were doing,” he said. “I suspected. I could have said no … and I didn’t.”
“That wasn’t all I was doing. Simon.”
“Don’t,” he said. “It isn’t necessary. There’s no point in getting muddled over motives.”
“No … I want you to be clear on this.” She glanced nervou
sly over her shoulder, wondering about Mrs. Madrigal. “Do you mind if I come in?”
He hesitated.
“Please,” she whispered. “Just for a little while?”
He nodded and stepped out of her way. She went in and took a seat on the end of the sofa. Simon remained standing, pacing solemnly with his arms folded. The damage she had done was evident in his eyes.
“I was going to tell you,” she said.
He made a little muttering noise.
“I would never have done this with someone who didn’t matter to me.”
He stopped pacing and looked at her.
“Can’t you take it as a compliment?” she asked.
“I could,” he replied, “but I haven’t yet.”
“Well … think about it. It’s not like this was a one-night stand or something. I put some thought into it, you know.”
He seemed amused by that. “Does Brian know?”
“No, of course not!”
“Well, this is laid-back California. It seemed perfectly reasonable to assume …”
“Is that what you think of me, Simon?”
He shrugged.
“Well … O.K., forget about me. But Brian would never do that.”
“Comforting,” said Simon.
“He doesn’t know anything.” She decided to throw herself on his mercy. “He doesn’t even know he’s sterile. The hell of it is … he’s the one who wants the baby. It’s no big deal with me. He doesn’t have a job now, and he thinks the baby would be something he could …”
“Wait. Stop.”
“Yeah?”
“How do you know he’s sterile, if he doesn’t know it?”
“I just do,” she said.
He nodded. “Very well. Proceed.”
“Well … that’s it. I wanted to give him a baby … so I came up with this dumb idea.”
“And artificial insemination didn’t occur to you?”
She nodded. “Connie suggested it. I hated the idea. It isn’t … personal enough.” It sounded so stupid that she smiled apologetically. “I thought I could do it without hurting anybody. I didn’t. I fucked up.”
He looked directly at her. “Then last night …?” He waved away the thought.
“What? Last night what?”
“Were you really …?”
“Into it?” she asked, finishing his question.
“Yes.”
“Simon … couldn’t you tell?” She caught his hand. “Don’t go back to England thinking I’m a monster. I’ve had such a wonderful time with you.”