Maybe the Moon (14 page)

“Is this where Janet grew up?” I asked Linda, after Neil had gone off to get us punch.

“I believe so,” she said. “She was third generation, Mary says.”

“And Mary is…?”

“Her mother.”

“Ah.” I tried in vain to picture Janet here, she of the acrylic-look hair and artsy ways, living in this simple house with these simple salt-shaker people, this matched set that couldn’t be broken. Maybe that had been the problem, come to think of it. Maybe Janet couldn’t picture it, either. Even as a kid.

“Her grandfather worked down at Catalina Pottery,” Linda continued. “He was one of Wrigley’s original employees.”

I had no idea who she meant.

“The chewing gum guy. The big millionaire from Chicago. He sort of invented Avalon. Half the people in town worked for him.”

I nodded.

“Neil says he really likes working with you.”

I was rattled for a moment by the abrupt change of subject. “Well,” I said eventually, “I’m flattered.”

“You should be. He doesn’t make friends all that easily.”

This was so out of left field that all I could say was: “Doesn’t he?”

“No.” She offered me a tiny, sisterly smile as if to say: it’s the truth.

I was so flummoxed that I glanced around me in search of distraction, which came in the form of Neil himself, returning with two cups of punch. The stuff was lime green, with vanilla ice cream floating in it. I’d seen nothing like it since junior high school. “Festive,” I deadpanned. Then I hoisted my cup in a silent salute to Neil, which he returned with a flicker of a smile. I just wanted us to be alone again. His ex had already struck me as the sort of woman who could say something incredibly mean in the name of just-us-girls intimacy.

“I met the Gliddens,” Neil said. “They’re nice.”

“Aren’t they?” said Linda.

“They’re coming over, Cady. They really want to meet you.”

“Well…good.”

Even as we spoke, I could see them approaching. I could feel myself wobbling a little too, so I moved my legs apart slightly to gain a steadier stance. Moments later, the ever-attentive Linda spot
ted the Gliddens herself and moved in swiftly to take charge of things. “Mary, Walter…”

The couple greeted her in unison.

“Such a sweet service,” Linda said.

“Wasn’t it? We were just saying that to Bud Larkin—the reverend.” Mrs. Glidden was smiling graciously, but her eyes were swollen from crying. It was touching to see her make such a valiant effort to be social in the midst of her pain.

“I think you’ve met Neil,” said Linda.

“Yes.” Mary nodded. “And this must be…”

“Cadence Roth.” I held up my hand before Linda could usurp the introduction. I didn’t want to risk how she might define me to the Gliddens.

“And what a pleasure this is,” said Walter.

I thanked him.

“It certainly is,” Mary put in.

Looping his arm through hers, Walter drew his wife closer. “You know, Mary here reviewed you.”

Mary looked instantly embarrassed. “Oh, Walter, for Pete’s sake!”

I had no idea what they were talking about, but my guilty heart was lodged firmly in my throat again.

Walter patted his wife’s hand. “Don’t be so modest, Mary. I’m entitled to brag about you.”

Mary gave her husband an affectionately reproving look, then turned back to me. “I used to write a little column here. Just chitchat, really. For our local paper. I thought
Mr. Woods
was delightful, so…I said so in the column.”

“It was a rave review,” Walter declared.

“It wasn’t actually a
review
as such.” Mary addressed me sheepishly, clearly embarrassed by her husband’s hyperbole.

“Must have sold a few tickets, though.”

This time Mary was firmer. “Walter, please. I don’t think they needed my help. It was the top-grossing movie of all time.”

I was beginning to like this lady a lot, so I sent her a faint, private smile, just for the two of us. “Second, I believe.”

“Really? What was first?”

“
Star Wars
.”

“Oh, well. I liked you
much
better.”

I thanked her as earnestly as I knew how.

“Janet was just thrilled to be working with you.”

“That’s so nice.”

“It’s not nice,” she insisted, “it’s the truth.”

“Well, it was mutual,” I said, biting the bullet. “I thought your daughter was a supremely gifted artist.”

The Gliddens were far more touched by this monumental lie than I’d expected them to be. Almost instantly, they tightened their grip on each other, like riders on a roller coaster bracing for another heart-stopping dip. Mary’s lower lip began to quiver slightly, but she managed to retain her composure. Her husband staved off the tears by gazing woodenly at the ground. I didn’t record Neil’s response, or Linda’s, for that matter, because I couldn’t bring myself to look at them.

Walter was the one who finally spoke, his voice cracking pitifully. “We’re…awfully proud of her.”

“You should be,” I said.

An excruciating silence followed. I waited for Neil to fill the void, but he just left me there, the sorry bastard, flailing in the quicksand of my own hypocrisy.

Finally, Mary said: “We looked for that film, you know. We couldn’t find it anywhere.”

“What film?”

“Of you. Janet’s film.”

“Oh, really?” I squeaked.

“Isn’t that odd? As much as she talked about it.”

“It is.”

She destroyed it
, I told myself.
Burned the sonofabitch. Tossed it off a cliff. Right after I told her what a loser she was
.

“Did she give you a copy, by any chance?” Walter asked.

“Not really.”

“What a shame,” said Linda.

I shot a quick glance at her to see if she meant this maliciously, but I found her face utterly unreadable. Turning back to the Gliddens, I said: “It wasn’t really finished, you know.”

“Still,” said Walter pleasantly, “you’d think there’d be something.”

“You would.” A clammy trickle of sweat had begun to work its way down the inside of my crepe de chine.

“What did you sing?” asked Mary.

“‘If,’” I told her.

“I don’t believe I know that.”

Linda’s face became animated for the first time that day. “The old David Gates song? You’re kidding? Janet didn’t tell me you were doing that.”

I sincerely hoped that wasn’t all Janet hadn’t told her, like what a roaring bitch I’d been when I quit. I didn’t particularly want Linda for a friend, but I didn’t want her for an enemy, either.

“Why didn’t you tell me she was doing that?” This time Linda was addressing her ex-husband, and he, in turn, was looking awkward beyond belief. I wondered suddenly if the song had once meant something to them. If, perish the thought, it had been
their
song. It was Neil, after all, who’d suggested that number, who’d included it in our repertoire in the first place. It gave me the willies to think that all this time I might have been acting out some sort of postmarital delusion for him.

Walter spoke up before the question could be resolved. “Say, I don’t suppose you’d mind…?”

“Walter…” This was Mary, admonishing her husband with a stern glance, having read his mind. “I’m sure Miss Roth didn’t come prepared to sing today.”

I was struck dumb for a moment.

“You’re right,” said Walter. “We wouldn’t dream of asking you that.”

“We certainly wouldn’t.”

Linda was giving me a plaintive, cow-eyed look that said: Think how much it would mean to them.

Neil was studying his shoes, no help at all.

“The thing is,” I said, “I’m used to working with accompaniment.”

“They’ve got a piano,” Linda burbled. “Neil, you could play.”

At this new development, Walter gazed hopefully at Mary, Neil gazed at me, and I gazed into another dimension, where I was just tall enough to reach out and throttle Linda’s scrawny neck.

“It isn’t as strange as you might think,” Mary informed me, clearly beginning to warm to the idea. “We have a little program planned. Janet’s grandmother is singing a few of her favorite hymns.” She smiled at me sweetly. “Funerals are really for the living, aren’t they?”

Lucky Janet, I thought, to be missing all this.

“Well,” I said finally, “if you don’t mind a few rough edges.”

“Of course not!” The Gliddens spoke in unison, united in their joy.

Linda was positively ecstatic at the prospect of something new to organize. She offered her services to Walter and Mary on the spot, then engaged them in a brief discussion about folding chairs and placement of the piano. Charged with purpose, the three of them scuttled off toward the house, leaving me and Neil alone on the lawn.

“You’re dead meat,” I said.

Neil chuckled.

“I mean it.”

“Well…it’s the least we can do.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“For such a supremely gifted artist.”

I gave him the evilest eye I could muster.

“I think you’re wonderful,” he said.

There must have been thirty people crammed into that tiny living room—including Janet, who now resided on the mantel, I was
told, in a piece of vintage Catalina crockery. My opening act, as promised, was Janet’s grandmother, who did a creditable job with those hymns of hers, despite a brief dental mishap. The audience rewarded her with polite applause and several dutiful pecks on the cheek.

Then Walter took the floor.

“And now it’s a great honor for me to introduce a special guest, a person our Janet was working with when—uh—this year. Some of you know this young lady starred in
Mr. Woods
, the—uh—second, I believe, most popular movie of all time,
and
went on to star in Janet’s most recent movie…film; excuse me.” He displayed a tepid smile. “Janet preferred the term ‘film.’
Anyway
, before I mess this up…Cadence Ross.”

He made an ineffectual flourish toward the ancestral upright, where Neil and I were both seated—him on the stool; me, rather precariously, on top. Feeling oddly like a saloon girl, I explained to the audience that I had sung this song in Janet’s brilliant but sadly unfinished film, that it had always been a personal favorite of mine, that I hoped it would mean something special to each and every one of them.

I was surprised by how well it worked. I was in decent voice—thanks to all that fresh air, no doubt—and Neil played with a tenderness that seemed perfectly tailored for the occasion. It was easily our best performance, far better than anything we’d ever done for that stupid video. Something just clicked that had never clicked before. And the music seemed uncannily appropriate. Especially the soaring part at the end that sounds like an ascent into heaven.

As that last wistful note lingered in the balmy air, I closed my eyes and let my head drop humbly to my chest. There was a moment of total silence before the audience could convert its raw-edged emotion into thunderous and sustained applause. I basked in it at my leisure, soaking it up like sunshine after too many weeks of rain. When I finally opened my eyes again, Neil was beaming up at me, every bit as stunned as I was.

“We killed ’em” was the way he put it later, when we were down on the beach at an open-air café.

“Fuckin’ A,” I said. “Miss Ross can sing.” I’d had a few margaritas by then.

“We should do funerals more often.”

“We should do
something
more often.”

“Hey.”

“Oh, c’mon. We’re washed up, Neil. Aren’t we?”

To my horror, he didn’t even bother to deny it. He just shrugged and twitched a little and shook the ice in his glass.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Things could change,” he said. “The whole economy’s lousy.”

“Yeah, right. Want another one?”

He looked down at his empty glass. “Well…”

“Waitron!” I made an elaborate semaphore signal across the deck at the girl who’d been serving us, then turned back to Neil. “I owe you at least a round or two.”

“What for?”

“The journal, remember?”

“That was a present.”

“You said I could buy you a drink sometime.”

He smiled. “That was a figure of speech.”

“Well, I, for one, plan to get shitfaced.” I polished off the tangy remains of my margarita and plonked the glass down. “That’s another figure of speech.”

He chuckled, studying me for a moment, then looked up as the waitress arrived.

“The gentleman would like another gin and tonic,” I informed her grandly. “And I’ll have my usual.”

“Coming right up,” said the waitress.

“I think that should be my last,” Neil said after she’d gone.

“Why?”

“I have to drive, remember?”

I snorted. “You couldn’t kill anybody with that dinky thing if you tried.”

“Just the same.”

“You wanna hear my theory?”

“About what?”

“Us,” I said. “The business.”

“OK.” He wove those long mahogany fingers through each other and laid them on the table in front of me.

I could never have said it without the booze, but I did say it: “I think the problem is me.”

“Oh, shit.”

“No, hear me out…”

“Look, Cady, we did a record number of gigs after you came on with us.”

I told him I was aware of that.

“Then, why would…?”

“Just listen, OK?”

“I’m listening.”

“I think the clients liked me at first because…it was a novelty, and everybody wanted to see what it was like. But the novelty has worn off now, and they’re just left with sort of, you know, a creepy aftertaste.”

“For Christ’s sake.”

He looked so annoyed that I winced a little. “It’s just a theory,” I said.

“Were you
conscious
back there?”

“Back where?”

“The Gliddens’ house. Those people adored you, Cady. You let them look into your soul, and they worshiped you for it.”

As much as I enjoyed hearing this, I felt compelled to remind him that it
had
been, after all, a funeral, that the audience had been emotionally primed for the moment.

He wouldn’t buy it. “They weren’t primed for the old lady. They barely clapped for her at all.”