Lost Art of Mixing (9781101609187) (10 page)

“My name is Isabelle,” the woman said.

“I know,” Louise answered.

The woman cocked her head.

“The tag—in the coat,” Louise said. “Isabelle Parish. That's how I found you.”

Isabelle rummaged inside the coat and found the tag, a small smile moving across her face when she saw the writing. “That must have been Chloe,” she said.

“Your granddaughter?” Louise thought of the young woman she had seen leaving the house.

“No, she's a friend. She says we're roommates,” Isabelle said. “My oldest daughter, Abby, says I'm too old for roommates; she says I should live in one of those homes. I just tell her they are full of lecherous old men.”

Isabelle winked, and ushered Louise into the kitchen and motioned toward a chair at a small table set next to a window. The kitchen was tidy; the walls were a friendly yellow, the cupboards and drawers painted blue. On the refrigerator were magnets from various local stores, photo Christmas cards of family groups, and a handwritten sign:
DON'T FORGET TO EAT DINNER!

Isabelle took a teakettle and filled it with water, setting it carefully on the stove and turning the dial.

“I used to have gas,” she commented. “My daughter says electric is safer.”

“Hmmmm,” Louise said. A few years before Louise's mother had died, Louise had gone to her house and found the gas burner still lit, the kitchen warmed from its flame. Louise had bought her mother an electric stove the next day.

“But it's not the same,” Isabelle continued. “I loved turning on the burner in the morning, that
whoosh
it makes when it lights. It meant the day was starting. Those little things matter. There are only a couple big things left when you get to my age, and you don't mind waiting for those. You know what I mean?”

Louise looked at her, unsure of what to say.

“Ah well,” Isabelle said briskly, as she poured hot water into two cups and rummaged about in the drawer next to the stove, pulling out teabags. “So, tell me about you.”

Louise always hated that question. Generally, as soon as someone heard she was a stay-at-home wife, not even mother, any follow-on conversation ceased entirely, the questioner departing mentally if not physically. After an encounter like that, she would go home and fill the following days with tasks and plans, new cloth napkins, or a throw rug for the back door, until she would almost forget the look of boredom in the person's eyes. Until, of course, the next time someone asked her.

“I'm a pilot,” she heard herself say.

“Good for you,” Isabelle responded, and Louise felt the glow of the older woman's approval, even as she realized she had no right to it.

“Did you always want to do that?” Isabelle leaned forward, curious.

Louise paused. What was she doing? She wasn't someone who lied. She'd never made up stories as a child in order to get out of trouble—she'd never even broken her parents' rules, so certain that her birth had used up every coin of familial currency that she had none left to pay off the consequences of misbehavior. And yet, here she was, telling this trusting old woman a complete fabrication.

“Yes,” she said. “I always wanted to fly.”

Isabelle nodded and set a teacup in front of Louise.

“You know, when I was a child,” Isabelle said as she sat down, “I wanted to be a stunt flyer. You know those women who would stand on top of the crop dusters, with their arms flung out and their hair blowing behind them?”

Louise nodded, fascinated, then worried. This could be a slippery slope; soon, she'd have to talk about airplanes as if she knew anything about them. Her mother would say that's what you get for lying. Maybe she should just tell the truth.

“I had children instead,” Isabelle added.

“How many?” Louise asked. There it was, right in front of her, the path back to normalcy. Talk about children, recipes, and everything would be as it was before.

“Three. Two girls and a boy. Well, they are grown-up now. They have children, they aren't children.” Isabelle's voice mimicked a tone Louise suddenly recognized.

“They come into town every once in a while to make sure I haven't completely lost my mind. Not an unfounded concern, actually.”

The sudden, bald flash of honesty in Isabelle's eyes made Louise drop her gaze to the table. What was it about this woman? Louise thought. Talking with her was like driving at night, not knowing where you were going and then, just for a moment, seeing something you recognized better than yourself. It made her feel off-balance.

She took a sip of her tea and glanced about the kitchen. On the counter, she saw a stack of plates, a collection of wineglasses.

“Are you having a party?” Louise asked, motioning toward the counter.

“Oh.” Isabelle smiled, a bit embarrassed. “Chloe wants to throw me a celebration. She calls it a ritual. I keep calling it last rites, but she doesn't think that's funny.”

“A ritual?”

“Yes, she keeps talking about honoring elders. That new friend of hers is all about traditions and rituals and things.

“Oh, dear,” Isabelle added, glancing at Louise's expression, concerned. “Is your tea cold?”

“Chloe has a boyfriend?”

Isabelle looked confused for a moment. But then she shook her head, clearing it, and continued brightly.

“Well, he's not actually her boyfriend yet. Something seems to be getting in the way, but I'm sure they'll work it out. They're right for each other. She was worried about the age difference at first, but I told her a few years didn't matter. Trust and love are more important, don't you agree?”

“Yes,” said Louise grimly. “I certainly do.”

•   •   •

LOUISE DROVE HOME
in the darkening evening, hands tight on the steering wheel. She could almost hear her mother's voice in her ear, the low, harsh tone she would take on when discussing one of Louise's father's conquests. When Louise was thirteen and her father had finally left them for a woman half his age, Louise's mother had raged for days.

“Men just want the breeders,” her mother said, her eyes sharp, but Louise, flush with the assurance of adolescence, had looked at her mother and seen only a woman who thought she could hold a husband with a cocktail of guilt and bitters. Louise would do it differently, she knew, as she felt the first surges of hormones circulating through her bloodstream.

At first it had been exhilarating—she had gone to parties, let herself be pushed up against fake-wood paneling by boys whose jeans-clad crotches moved against her with all the grace of a barn door banging in the wind. She figured out early on what they all wanted—and how to hold it just beyond their reach. She remembered hearing about Freudian theories of envy in high school and actually laughing out loud in class, which earned her a sharp look from the teacher. But really, whom were they kidding? What held more power? The thing that roamed or the home it searched for?

She knew it every time she felt the quick, appraising eyes of men on the street scanning her—up, down—checking the size and weight of her breasts, the width of her hips. Even the ones who didn't seem conscious of their actions still did it—flick, flick—as automatic as blinking.

She had rejected the concept of motherhood and made sure she married a man who agreed with her. She had protected her body from the swelling of pregnancy, the ripping of childbirth. She would visit her friends who had children, their matronly torsos stretched and flabby, and she would return to her home and check her body in the mirror, confirming that her curves were the same as when she first married.

And yet it hadn't done her any good in the end, had it? She'd even seen it coming, really. Al had said he didn't want children, and that had seemed true enough in the first years, when her body was enough for both of them. But after a while, she'd started to notice how Al's eyes would go all soft when he saw a baby, or the way he would smile when there was some story about Little League on the news. She'd figured it was some temporary hormonal malfunction of his, soon to be overtaken by a longing for a little red sports car, but it was obvious that she had underestimated. And now he'd found his own little family-maker.

Louise knew what her mother would say, if she were still alive to say it.

“We're all on the same cattle truck,” she would declare to Louise. “No point in thinking you're any different.”

And apparently, she wasn't. Even for Al.

A song came on the radio, some teenager singing about love and life and how it would never get her down. Louise turned the knob off with a snap.

•   •   •

LIGHTS FLASHED BEHIND HER;
she heard a quick blurt of a police siren.

It was just getting better and better.

She pulled over, mentally scrolling back through the last few minutes. Had she missed a stop sign? Driven through a school zone too fast? She would fight the school-zone issue; classes had been out for hours. But she smoothed her expression as the young, well-built police officer approached her window.

“What did I do?” she asked, smiling, curious.

“Did you know your taillight is out?” he asked.

Louise looked at him; his eyes held only the simple, official question, his gaze traveling no farther south than her face, and in that moment, she understood what her options were.

Pitiful it was, then.

“Oh, really?” she said, pulling her eyebrows together in concern. “I'm so sorry; I didn't know.”

The officer's expression softened slightly. “Yeah—don't worry about it. My mom's the same way; she never knows what's going on with her car. I'll let you go this time; just promise me you'll get it fixed.”

Louise nodded, contrite, and the man went back to his cruiser and drove off, passing her car with a cheery wave. She hated him.

•   •   •

FOR DAYS,
Louise staked out Isabelle's house, watching as the level of activity rose. She watched Chloe walking in with bags of groceries; she heard sounds of hammering and saw an extraordinarily tall young man, probably a grandson, carrying a huge chair and paint cans around to the backyard. It was tempting to become curious about the details, but she maintained her vigilance, waiting for what she knew she would see.

And then one day she arrived to see the house empty, but with that resonating feeling of a place recently, fully occupied. Louise, unsure of what to do, unwilling to wait, set off about the neighborhood. As she turned the second corner, she saw an odd parade—a group of ten or so, surrounding something that looked rather like a throne held aloft in the air. She caught up with them, and saw an older woman she recognized as Isabelle, held in the arms of the chair. Below her was Al—and next to him was Chloe, laughing, her face animated with happiness.

“There.” Louise heard her mother's voice in her head. “What did I tell you?”

•   •   •

LOUISE HAD WALKED FOR HOURS
, her mind whirling, cold and angry. Dinnertime came and went. Finally, her mind slowed enough that her feet headed for home. No one was there.

She unlocked the kitchen door. The key stuck, and she yanked it out with a quick, practiced jerk. She stepped inside and rested against the closed door of her empty house.

So, that was it. The great American swap meet had come to her own life—just like her mother had said it would. She'd given her best years to a man who'd leave her for a child. To make a child.

“Louise, you are an idiot,” she said, and flicked on the switch for the light fixture that hung in the center of the room. The bulb gave a quick pop, and went out.

Shaking her head in disbelief, she turned on the recessed ceiling lights over the kitchen counters and opened the cabinet next to her, reaching up to the top shelf where they kept the lightbulbs. There was one box left; as she pulled it down, it collapsed gently beneath her fingers. She stood, looking at the thin white box in her hand, its four openings serenely, pristinely empty.

“Son of a bitch,” she said.

•   •   •

SHE DRAGGED A CHAIR
across the kitchen to the counter and clambered up, stabilizing herself with a hand on the cabinets. She reached up for the first bulb in the string of recessed fixtures and gave it two quick, firm twists. On the third turn, the heat from the bulb met her fingers and she jerked back, the bulb falling through her hands, cracking on the tile floor in loud, spectacular pieces.

She looked down, shocked. The house seemed to shimmer in the aftermath of the noise. The edges of the broken bulb winked up at her, bright and sparkling, seductive as diamonds. Slowly, Louise smiled.

The next bulb landed hard, the crash loud and spectacular. Then another. When they were all gone, she climbed down, the pieces crackling under the soles of her walking shoes. She went through the living room, the study, the bathroom, emptying every lamp, every fixture. If a room had carpeting, she brought the bulbs back to the kitchen, the pieces crashing into each other on the French ceramic tiles she had spent three months choosing.

When she was done and the house was thoroughly dark, she went to the bedroom, feeling her way through the closet to her suitcase, which she laid open on the bed. She ran her hands over the clothes on the hangers, her fingers recognizing the items for her—the black cocktail dress for anniversaries, the no-wrinkle khakis, the cashmere cardigans which she knew without seeing would be pastels or navy blue. She opened the drawers of her dresser, the smell of her perfume rising up toward her from silk slips, camisoles. She wanted none of it. She felt for the bottom drawer, pulled out two pairs of gardening jeans. Her old college sweatshirt. Her father's smoking jacket that she had found in the trash after he left.

She walked downstairs, the suitcase light in her hand. In the kitchen she stopped, felt for the pad and pen near the telephone and wrote a note—two words. Then she folded the paper and wrote Al's name on the outside. She left it on the table, picked up her suitcase, and closed the door behind her.