Last Resort (16 page)

“She’s been kinda weepy ever since. Yesterday when we saw the manatee Aunt Dorrie didn’t hardly say anything, she was sorta out of it the whole time. And I guess she isn’t really sleeping much, because last night and the night before, I could hear her walking around outside.”

“Do you think she’d feel better if your mother was here?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I mean Mom is her big sister, and Aunt Dorrie usually kinda depends on her. And Mom’s always on top of things. She’s doesn’t get confused in a crisis the way most people do. Like she puts it, she can see the big picture. That’s why she’s so successful in business and everything.” Barbie sprayed another pane.

“I see. A kind of generalist.”

“Well, yeah. Mom is like a general, in a way. She sorta goes right into a problem and finds out all the details and gets it organized. For instance last night she was asking me all this stuff about Cousin Perry, did he have medical insurance, when had he last been to the doctors, and what exactly did they say. Only I couldn’t tell her anything really. Then she wanted to know about his place, where was it located, how many buildings there were, where Aunt Dorrie and I were staying, and how big was the pool. Like she wanted to visualize our situation in her mind, I guess.”

“I see.” The thought came to Lee that Barbie’s mother, as a high-powered real estate agent, was anticipating the possible mortgage or sale of Jacko’s property to cover his medical bills.

“Only I wasn’t much use with that either. I don’t organize things like Mom does. She got kinda impatient with me, like she does.” Barbie sighed and began rubbing the glass again.

“She often gets impatient with you.” Lee frowned, irritated to hear herself falling into her therapist mode. She had promised herself not to do this with Barbie, who was obviously a dependent personality.

“The thing is, I’m a disappointment to her. I feel bad about that, because so many people have disappointed her already.”

“Is that so?” Lee said skeptically. According to Jacko, Barbie’s mother was a rich woman, a very successful real estate agent, and a powerful force in the local Republican party.

“Well, yeah. For instance Gary, that’s my brother. Mom was keen for him to have a career in politics, but it didn’t work out, because people, you know, voters, sorta didn’t take to him.”

“So what does he do instead?” Lee imagined Barbie’s brother as a masculine equivalent of her: blond, innocent, clumsy, and lost.

“Oh, he’s a big success in Tulsa. Oil leases and banking. He has a head for deals, he’s like Mom that way.”

“I see.” Lee revised her image.

“And Dad disappointed her too. He was such a great guy, everybody loved him. But he didn’t have Mom’s business drive, and he wouldn’t go into politics like she wanted him to. Then about ten years ago he was in this awful car accident, where a guy got killed. And then he went to England on a tour with his sister who lives in Fort Worth and he never came back.” Barbie began to choke up.

“You mean he deserted the family,” Lee said dryly, trying to head off Barbie’s tears.

“Aw, no!” The maneuver worked: Barbie shifted from sorrow to indignation. “Dad would never have done that. See, he had this heart condition, and he just, he just went and passed away somewhere in England.” Barbie’s tone became weepy.

“But your husband’s in politics, isn’t he?” Lee said, to avert a serious rainstorm. “I think Jacko said he was elected to Congress. That must please your mother.”

“Well, yeah. I mean, she was real happy at first. Only now she’s kinda disappointed in him too, because of this woman—”

“I heard about it,” Lee said. “Molly says that’s why you came here, to think things over and decide whether to take your husband back.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“So what have you decided?”

“I—Well, I guess I haven’t yet.”

Lee sighed, exasperated, as she had often been, by the indecisive weakness of straight women with obviously shitty husbands.

“I mean, maybe it wouldn’t be such a good thing for him anyhow. It’s like Mom says, I was supposed to be an asset to his career, but I’ve become a liability. Mom says he still really loves me. But I don’t know if I should believe her.”

“I suppose the question is, do you still love him?”

“I guess—” Barbie’s voice wavered. “I mean, I used to, for sure. I couldn’t believe my luck, that somebody so wonderful would want to marry me. But after Mom backed his campaign and he got into state government, he sorta changed. Things started to happen that I didn’t like.”

“Your husband began having affairs,” Lee put in, to hurry the narrative along.

“No, not then.” Barbie’s voice wobbled. She looked down, trailing her cleaning rag. “At least, if he did, I didn’t know. And he was still real sweet to me, mostly. But he sorta gradually got mean with other people.”

“Oh? In what way?”

“Well. Like for instance there was this company, Tumbleweed Investment Consultants, that Bob was sorta involved in, that went bust.” Barbie got down and began to drag the stepladder to the next window. “It was his partners who were really running the firm, but after the news came out nobody could find them. So then people who had put money in the company started coming to our house. Bob wasn’t home, but they said they would wait for him. It was August and real hot out, so I let them in and gave them lemonade. They started to tell me about it, how the Tumbleweed officials seemed so nice, and swore to them it was a sure thing.”

Barbie stopped spraying the glass and sat down on the top step of Lee’s ladder. “They were such sad people,” she said. “One guy worked in the post office and had a retarded child, and there was this old lady schoolteacher who’d mortgaged her house to buy Tumbleweed stock. I figured Bob would want to do something for them, so I let them wait in the sitting room till he got home.”

“I see. And what happened then?”

“It was real bad. There were about ten or twelve of them by that time, all over the sitting room and the den. Bob was smiley and polite, but I could tell he was real upset and angry. He kind of shooed them out of the house. He said afterward they were just taking me in, they were all frauds and whiners. They put up their money, he said, they took their chances. They could have bought a CD or something, but they wanted big fast profits, wasn’t that right? So I said I guess so. Then Bob said, ‘Do you think any of those guys would help us out if we were broke?’ And I had to admit probably they wouldn’t. Because that’s how people are, mostly.

“Even after that I thought maybe we could do something, at least for a couple of them that were in real trouble. But Mom said it wasn’t possible. She explained that Bob had to be really careful, because if he repaid anybody the others would want money too, that was only fair, and if we paid them all we would go bankrupt. Besides it would look terrible in the newspapers, as if Bob was admitting he was responsible for what happened to Tumbleweed, even though he hadn’t known anything about it. Then people would vote him out of office, or maybe he’d get impeached, and all the important things he wanted to do for the state would go down the drain. Mom said, if anybody else came around I should just pretend I wasn’t home. If I couldn’t do it for Bob, she said, I should do it for Oklahoma.”

“And did you take her advice?”

“Yeah.” Barbie shrugged sadly. “But it was awful, you know. People kept on calling and coming to the house for weeks, it seemed like. The phone never stopped, and they would ring the bell and knock on the front door and shake the gate to the backyard. Sometimes they would climb over the wall and go round the house, looking through all the windows. I stayed away as much as I could, but I had to go home sometime. I started keeping the drapes closed, so the house was dark all day.

“But one time it got quiet, and I thought they had all gone, so I pulled back the white brocade curtains in the sitting room, and there was a man’s face right there a couple inches from mine, with his nose flattened out against the glass. He looked like some kinda monster. I screamed, and he screamed back at me through the window. I shut the curtain again, so I couldn’t see him, and then I just sorta sat there for I don’t know how long. I was freaked out.” Barbie sighed and fell silent.

“Lee? You home?” The front door thudded back, and Jacko came in, his yellow rubber poncho dripping with rain.

“I’m in here. How’re you doing?”

“Great,” Jacko said, with an ambiguous intonation.

“You look kind of wet. Would you like some coffee, to warm up?”

“Nah, I can’t stay, Mumsie’s still in the truck. Only I wanted to tell you the latest. Aunt Myra is coming.”

“Really? When?”

“Tomorrow. When she gets an idea, Myra doesn’t waste any time. Only what I’d like to know is, what the hell does she want here?”

Instead of answering, Lee, with a gesture of her head, indicated Barbie, who was now crouched behind the ladder, washing the lower panes of one of the windows.

“Well. Cousin Barbie.” Jacko gave her a weary glance. “I get it,” he said suddenly and even less pleasantly. “You little creep. You told your mom I was sick, didn’t you?”

“I—Ah—” his cousin bleated, retreating further behind the stepladder.

“I should’ve known.” Jacko laughed shortly. “That’s why Myra sent you to Key West, isn’t it, so you could spy on me.”

“I didn’t—I wasn’t—” Barbie mumbled.

“Aw, shit. Well, she’s not going to like it here, that’s for sure,” Jacko told Lee. “So why is she coming? And she’s staying four nights at the Casa Marina; that’s not cheap.”

“Maybe she’s worried about her sister,” Lee suggested. Or her nephew, she added silently, giving Jacko a glance. In his shiny wet poncho, his curls diamond-dusted with rain, he looked as beautiful and fit as ever, but angrier than Lee had ever seen him.

“Not her,” Jacko said. “The only person Myra ever worries about is herself. If she’s coming to Key West, she wants something. Myra always wants something. The trouble is, you never figure out what until it’s too late.” He shrugged. “Well, I better get back to the house.”

“Why don’t you and your mother stay for lunch?” Lee said. “I have some curried squash soup in the fridge, and lots of cold chicken.”

Jacko shook his head. “You’re a pal, but no thanks. Mumsie is wiped out, and we’re both soaked. I’ll phone you later.”

As the door shut behind him, Lee turned toward Barbie, who was still crouched in a heap by the window, clutching a bottle of Windex and a wad of paper towels. She did not look like a pretty young woman now: her appearance was rather that of an abused homeless person. Lee considered expressing disapproval of Jacko’s attitude, then rejected this. Maybe Barbie had been sent to spy on him; how should she know?

“So what do you think your mother wants in Key West?” she asked instead, trying to make her tone sympathetic.

“I d’know.” Barbie rose to her feet slowly. “Only I guess she’ll get it, whatever it is. Mom always gets what she wants.”

“Really?” Lee asked skeptically. “How does she do that?”

“I d’know.” Barbie repeated dully. “She just does somehow.”

We’ll see about that, Lee thought. “Maybe Key West will be an exception,” she said. “Anyhow, if you’re finished with that window, come and have some squash soup.”

F
OR THE FIRST TIME
in a week the sun poured like pale syrup over Key West. Again the island assumed its travel-magazine glamour: pulsating blue sky, ostrich-feather palms, scarlet and salmon-red flowering hibiscus, bronzed and beaming tourists. Under this blue sky, rather slowly and painfully, Molly Hopkins descended her front steps and set out toward the restaurant where she had agreed to lunch. The fine warm weather had eased her arthritis, but she still walked with a limp. She would be a little late, as she often was nowadays.

Probably she should have driven, though it was only six blocks, Molly thought unhappily. Probably she shouldn’t even be here in Key West, trying to manage alone. If she were home in Convers her cleaning lady, Sally Hutchins, would have taken care of everything during the last awful week. Sally, who had been working for Molly for over thirty years, would have come every morning, shopped for groceries, and gone to the drugstore, post office, and library. When Molly wasn’t up to getting out of bed Sally would have brought her lunch, straightened her unwieldy pillows, and refilled the pink velvet-covered hot water bottle.

But there was no one like Sally in Key West: winter season provided so many jobs in the tourist industry for reliable people that anyone who didn’t have one was probably delinquent or incompetent. Like nearly everyone she knew, Molly had a cleaning service. Once a week a posse of strange women, most of whom did not speak English, descended upon her house armed with mops and vacuums, and disappeared an hour later.

When Molly was ill in Key West she was dependent on friends, which embarrassed and depressed her. Two days ago, for instance, she had had to ask Lee Weiss to open a can of black bean soup because her own hands simply could not turn the crank. Maybe it was time to give up Key West and stay home through however many winters remained to her. Long, cold, icy winters, they would be, during which she would be housebound and crippled not only when the weather turned wet, but almost all the time.

Having a chronic illness, Molly thought, was like being invaded. Her grandmother back in Michigan used to tell about the day one of their cows got loose and wandered into the parlor, and the awful time they had getting her out. That was exactly what Molly’s arthritis was like: as if some big old cow had got into her house and wouldn’t go away. It just sat there, taking up space in her life and making everything more difficult, mooing loudly from time to time and making cow pies, and all she could do really was edge around it and put up with it.

When other people first became aware of the cow, they expressed concern and anxiety. They suggested strategies for getting the animal out of Molly’s parlor: remedies and doctors and procedures, some mainstream and some New Age. They related anecdotes of friends who had removed their own cows in one way or another. But after a while they had exhausted their suggestions. Then they usually began to pretend that the cow wasn’t there, and they preferred for Molly to go along with the pretense.