Lost Art of Mixing (9781101609187) (11 page)

As she approached her car, she saw the broken taillight.

“Just perfect,” she said.

Next to her car was Al's old Cadillac, its sleek blue fins rising up like wings. She stood for a moment, contemplating, then went back in the house and found the keys on Al's hook by the back door.

The Cadillac's trunk was huge; her suitcase swam in its vast interior. The seats inside were tan leather, worn from two generations of Al's family. The book of rituals still sat on the passenger seat; Louise picked it up and pitched it over her shoulder into the back, where it landed with a thump in the foot well. With a small, satisfied smile, she put the key in the ignition, watching the numbers of the speedometer illuminate, glowing like a series of new fires.

Those Mayans, she thought—they were locking up the wrong women.

At the street, Louise turned left and let her foot fall heavy onto the accelerator. The car plunged forward, into the dark.

F
or the past few days, the world had been hammering and cooking and voices bouncing through the house and yard. When Isabelle's son, Rory, had been young and easily overwhelmed by sounds, she used to tell him to think of noise as the air dancing, pounding out beats with invisible feet. Isabelle hadn't danced in years, but her feet still knew what to do; her arms could still sweep out to just the height of the right shoulder and raised left hand of her boyfriend in college, the one whose name she had forgotten long before she started forgetting things, the one before the man who became her ex-husband—who didn't dance, although he had at their wedding, which she tried to tell him made him a dancer but he would have none of it, none of that, even then.

“Mom!” she heard the voice behind her—within it the clamor of childhood, lips turned purple from sun-warmed blackberries, eyebrows scrunched to better focus on a bug in the backyard. Pink shorts. Bird's-nest blond hair. A distaste for walnuts, melted cheese, grapefruit.

“Mom.” Her daughter stood before her. Grown-up, in khaki pants and a soft brown sweater. Isabelle noted with pleasure that her hair was brushed. But then it would be. Abby was a doctor, had been for a while. A pediatrician. So the young man standing next to her might be a patient.

“Mom, you remember Rory,” her daughter said. Rory, Isabelle thought, her son—and happiness flooded through her. No, that wasn't right. This wasn't her Rory; he'd already arrived this morning, and he was older than this boy in any case. This was Abby's Rory. Everybody thought it was so cute, naming their children after relatives; they had no idea the trouble it would cause. Unless, of course, you just gave everybody the same name. She'd seen families like that. One Bob after another, until the whole swimming pool was full of them. Bob. Bob. Bob.

“Yes,” Isabelle said. “Of course.” And she hugged them—Abby's embrace so starched and white that Isabelle checked surreptitiously to make sure Abby wasn't wearing her doctor's coat after all; Rory, tall, with that musky boy smell, holding on longer than she expected, leaving her standing, grateful, her head quiet against his chest.

“You must be Rory.” Isabelle heard Chloe's voice coming toward them.

“Is Lucy coming?” Isabelle asked, turning to Abby.

“No, Mom, she's in Australia, remember?” Abby gazed around the living room. “You've sure added some color,” she said to Chloe.

“We thought it might be fun,” Chloe replied. “Roust out the winter blues, you know?”

Isabelle looked at the orange wall behind her white chair, the big green pillow in its seat. Her cabin on the beach had been almost all white, walls and furniture catching the light that reflected off the water outside until she could hardly detect the difference between inside and out. Nothing to hold on to, even if she had wanted to, which she hadn't at the time. Now that's what she spent all day doing, she thought, the green pillow on the chair as welcome as a homing bacon. Beacon. Homing beacon.

“Has she eaten anything today?” Abby said.

“Isabelle?” Chloe turned to her.

“Why, yes I did,” Isabelle answered. Muffins with blueberries exploding warm in her mouth. Coffee, black in a tall white mug, the contrast of colors sharp and beautiful.

“Do you have things in the car?” Chloe asked Abby, looking out toward the street.

“No, we can't stay—I've got a full day of patients tomorrow. We've got a flight out later tonight. But we wanted to be here for Mom's big day,” Abby said, reaching out to pat Isabelle's shoulder.

Isabelle looked at Rory; he caught her glance and Isabelle winked. His eyes opened wide in delight.

•   •   •

ISABELLE STOOD IN THE KITCHEN
. There were people in the living room; several voices overlapping in their excitement, smashing about on each other like waves. Abby was propped against the refrigerator, talking about something, a car she had when she was in college. Yellow. Small.

“Mom, you remember . . .”

Why, Isabelle wondered, did people say that only when they knew you didn't? Implied inside the words, the concept of volition—you could, if you wanted to. As if wanting had anything to do with it.

A picture popped into Isabelle's mind—Abby's father, holding the back of Abby's bicycle, its training wheels newly removed. “You can do it,” he had said, to which she replied with a panicked “No, I can't.” He had let go and given her a shove, and Abby, just to prove him wrong, fell loudly to the pavement. For years she had a scar on her knee.

Isabelle walked to the stove, lifting the empty teakettle.

“Let me do that, Mom.” Abby took the kettle from her, flicking on the faucet with her elbow. The water poured in, splashing against the inside. While the kettle filled, Abby picked up a sponge and began wiping down the surface of the stove, then the counters nearby.

“So,” she said, in time with her sweeping hands, “did you make an appointment with the real estate agent I found for the cabin?”

Isabelle watched her daughter, the speed of her movements. She was like a cartoon character whizzing about, circumnavigating the globe with each swish of her sponge, touching everything.

“No,” Isabelle said. “Not yet.”

“Mom, it's important.” Abby's doctor voice; the kettle landing on the burner.

“I will.”

“When?”

From the time Abby was born, it seemed, she always wanted to know when something was going to happen. When Santa Claus would arrive—not just tonight or tomorrow morning, but what hour exactly. When she would begin school. When she would start getting her period. Rory had called her the Portable Planner; even in college, he used to say there was no need for him to carry a calendar when he could just call his big sister and she would tell him where he was supposed to be and when. Which, of course, drove Abby crazy.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“When? Give me a date.”

In just a moment, Isabelle thought, Abby would say she was going to count to three. One. Two. Three.

The teakettle whistled.

“What kind of tea do you want, Mom?” Abby was standing by the cupboard, one hand on the door.

“Tea?” Isabelle looked at Abby.

•   •   •

CHLOE WAS CALLING EVERYONE
into the living room. Isabelle sat in her white chair and watched them come—Abby and the Rorys. Tom from the cooking class. The tall boy, Finnegan, who should be Chloe's boyfriend but wasn't yet, and Al, who had started all this ritual fuss with Chloe, although Isabelle couldn't really say how that had happened.

Isabelle was used to surprises these days, to playing hide-and-seek with the world. She didn't even need to count before words and ideas, faces and memories would scatter off into corners where she couldn't find them. Sometimes they came back; other times they were simply gone. Isabelle liked to think that perhaps some of them had found each other, had struck up friendships and gone out for coffee, or were hidden behind the couch making love. It was better than thinking they were never coming back.

“A couple months ago,” Chloe addressed the group, “I started thinking a lot about rituals, thanks to Al here. With Isabelle's birthday coming up, I wanted to do one that would honor this wonderful woman I live with. Al discovered a great ritual, but I want him to explain it.”

Al stood up, visibly pleased to be called upon. “Well. The Newar people of Kathmandu believe that the older a person gets, the nearer they are to the gods. The ritual we're going to do today is to help Isabelle get a little bit closer.”

Isabelle wasn't quite sure how to take that; it sounded a bit as if they planned to knock her off.

Her son Rory leaned over. “Don't worry, Mom,” he said with a smile, “I'll protect you.”

Al looked embarrassed. “I wish I could read you the description,” he said, “but I left the book in my car. And my car's at home because my wife broke the taillight on her car and I left her mine in case . . .” He gazed around the room as if hoping its walls might stop his words.

Lillian stepped forward from her position in the kitchen doorway.

“So,” she said, “Al and Chloe have a little adventure planned for later, but some of you have traveled a long way to get here, so we thought we'd reverse tradition and celebrate first by eating. There are plates and food on the sideboard. Go make yourselves at home and then find a seat at the table.”

Isabelle looked about. She could smell the food. For the past several mornings, Chloe and Lillian had cooked in Isabelle's kitchen before they went to the restaurant. Isabelle had sat in a chair at the table, chopping orange scepters of carrots, buttering pans, whatever they handed her to do. She had watched the two women, their words and motions weaving into one another. They had said it was Isabelle's job to entertain them, and she told them stories from her childhood, of summers at the cabin with her parents and brothers, August unrolling in front of her, sun-splashed and endless. Stories of her children when they were small, their round little bodies barely containing their personalities, which bloomed and glittered and melted into her. Of her life after they all left—children and husband going off in search of new and exciting lives—and she had circled back to the cabin to find her own.

It had surprised her, how quickly the memories surfaced in the warmth of the kitchen, how clear and comforting they were. She hoped at times that the celebration, as Chloe called it, would simply be a succession of mornings in the kitchen.

•   •   •

GRANDSON RORY CAME TOWARD
Isabelle's place at the table, bearing two plates of food.

“Mom said you'd like this,” he said, setting one at her place.

Isabelle looked down at a small mound of undressed green lettuce, a slice of chicken with the sauce carefully removed. She had seen the sideboard, overflowing with the dishes Lillian and Chloe had created over the last three days—chicken in orange-and-garlic sauce, arugula with little rounds of goat cheese marinated in olive oil and lemon zest. Fresh focaccia sprinkled with large, white grains of salt. For dessert, her favorite, warm banana-and-chocolate bread pudding with crème anglaise. How could anyone, faced with those options, manage to come up with such a boring plate of food? It was impressive, almost.

Rory's plate, in contrast, was stacked like a farmhand's, with generous portions from every dish covering the round white surface.

“Want mine?” he asked, looking at her expression.

She nodded.

He laughed in response. “Okay, but if we get caught, I'm going to say you took it.”

“You can just say I didn't know what I was doing.”

They surreptitiously swapped plates and Rory took hers to the kitchen, from which he exited a few moments later, empty-handed, and got back in line.

While she waited for the others to come to the table, Isabelle took a bite of the bread pudding. It melted across her tongue. Then she tried the goat cheese on a thin slice of toasted bread, and the chicken, citrus bouncing off the garlic. Backward meal, she thought with pleasure.

Rory returned, settling down next to her.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.” They ate in companionable silence.

“Rory,” Isabelle said after a moment, “I am sorry I didn't know who you were before.”

“I grow really fast,” he said easily. Letting her off the hook. She could almost feel it pull out, the luxury of wide, open water to swim into, away.

“Ah . . .” She yanked her thoughts back. This was her grandson. Rory.

His gaze met hers. “What's it like?” he asked.

“This?” She pointed to her head.

“Yeah.”

Funny you should ask, her mother used to say. But it was true, because nobody ever really did. They did the not-asking thing—saying how bad their own memories were getting, how they couldn't remember a word or their Social Security number—looking, really, for a comparison that would help them feel better, or an assurance that they wouldn't soon have to take care of an old lady with no mind. But nobody ever really asked. Not even the doctors. Sometimes it seemed as if the only real conversation she had these days was with the disease itself, and that one never seemed to cease.

“It's kind of like an attic,” she said to Rory. “It has all your stuff but somebody else keeps throwing empty boxes and blankets on top of it, so you can't always find what you're looking for.”

Rory nodded. He had one of those closets, Isabelle could tell. Like her Rory's, when he was younger. Full to the brim.

“Is it scary?” Wanting to know.

“Yes.”

She shouldn't have said it, maybe; he was still a teenager and he didn't need the world surrounding him quite that closely. Abby wouldn't appreciate it. But the word sat in the air, and in the clarity of its honesty she felt like herself for the first time in a long time. Hello you, she thought. There you are.