The Humanity Project (19 page)

“Wait wait, there’s more. If you promise not to send me there, I won’t, like, run away.”

“What are you talking about, run away?” Unwisely, Art let his glance stray to Beata, who was busy unfastening the waistband of her skirt. “You can’t do that, it’s dumb.”

“See, I can handle stuff. I really can. You would be surprised.” She sounded pleased with herself. “Look, I gotta go now.”

“Linnea, honey? Just come on back. You don’t have to go anywhere.” He was sure that kids threatened to run away all the time. But he was just as sure that some of them actually did it.

“What are you doing? You sound weird.”

Beata stepped out of her skirt. Her underpants were pink cotton, and the dark fan of her pubic hair showed through. “Nothing,” Art said.

“It’s really OK if you don’t want me to live with you. I would totally, totally understand. But I’m not going back to my mom’s. I mean, hello! Not an option.”

“I do want you here.” And he did. Some instinct he didn’t know he had, descending on him in a wave, or maybe he just didn’t want to fail at one more thing. “We can figure everything out.”

“Um, I need a new phone?”

“New phone. Done.” Beata was walking down the hall in her underwear, stopping to look into the different rooms. “Linnea?” The phone was muffled while she spoke with someone she seemed annoyed with.

She came back on the line. “OK, but could we go to the sushi place for dinner? Please? I’ll be home by then. I gotta go. Bye.”

Beata was waiting for him in his bed. She’d gotten underneath the covers and pulled them up modestly to her neck. “She’s all right,” Art said. “She’s coming home.”

“But not right away?”

“No, not right away.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, drew the covers down, and kissed the skin just below her throat. She smelled of some dark and complicated fragrance, like the scent of tea leaves. He said, “I think I need to just lie down for a minute, if that’s OK. Come down from one hill before I climb the next one.”

“I am, what, the Tour de France?” But she moved over in the bed and he lay back and fit himself next to her. “You were really, really worried. A good daddy.”

“I don’t know about that. I haven’t been, like you said, paying enough attention to her.”

“Right this minute? I think I am the one needing your attention.”

He let his hands stray over Beata’s body. The covers were in his way, but he still found things that he liked. “You’re sort of, what? ‘Not someone expected.’ ”

“Thank you. You too. Not such a sack of sadness as you look.”

He wasn’t? He considered this new possibility, this new, unsad self. A little while later, but not before talking became entirely impossible, Art stopped and raised himself up to look down on her. The ink lines of her eyebrows arched, regarding him. “Hey,” he said. “You have to tell me, this isn’t happening because—” He had meant to say “because you felt sorry for me,” but that would have been entirely too pathetic.

“Because you wanted it to. Yes. Now, I can teach you some Polish, if you like. The words for this, and for this.”

I
f only their father was still alive, or if only he had gone about his dying differently. Every unhappy phone conversation between Leslie Hart and her sister, Deirdre, always came around to that wish, bumped up against it, and stalled out. Certainly their father had done everything he considered right and necessary. There was a will, there was money in trust for each sister. There were the formidable investments, in stocks, bonds, Treasuries, currencies, commodity futures, real estate, and other funds so complex and fine-tuned that they were in perpetual vigilant motion, turning fractions of pennies into larger fractions, and eventually into measurable wealth. And this largest portion of the estate was under their mother’s direct control, which their father might have reconsidered in time, if he had been given more time, since she seemed determined to throw it all away with both hands.

Leslie hadn’t seen any of it coming. No one had. Oh, she could scream. She wasn’t a bad, greedy person. She wanted people to be happy, to have enough to eat, and good dental care, and their educational opportunities. But even if you gathered up all the money in the world and sprinkled it over everyone on earth, it wouldn’t make any big difference. What was giving away her father’s money meant to accomplish? It would be gobbled up like flakes of fish food.

Her mother certainly seemed to be enjoying herself. And while it was a relief that she’d pulled herself out of her period of decline, there was something alarming and unnatural about her new enthusiasm. Honestly? Leslie and Deirdre had grown used to their mother’s fretful ill health, had accepted the prospect of a long (or short) period of semi-invalid life. It sounded cold, but you readied yourself, you made adjustments for all the sad, necessary, and messy parts of life’s final act. And you knew how you were supposed to feel about all that: the ways in which you would grieve, the ways in which you had grieved.

But you didn’t know how you were meant to regard your seventy-nine-year-old mother’s setting herself up as some kind of public philanthropist, even if the seventy-nine-year-old was perfectly happy about it, and that made you feel like a bad person when you really were not.

“Mom,” Leslie had asked on her last visit, “why don’t you just make some charitable contributions, like you always have? Why do you have to go to all this trouble?” By trouble, Leslie supposed she meant, trouble for everyone else involved.

Her mother had been distracted by one of the horrible cats, who had managed to climb halfway up the living room drapes and get stuck there like a burr. “That’s Mr. Darcy. He keeps doing that. I’m going to have some play structures built for them. The kind where they can hide and climb and pretend they’re in a jungle.” Her mother rose from the couch and tugged at the drape, which slid off its rod and landed on the floor in a heap of fabric and snarling cat. “Oh don’t worry, he’ll get himself loose. I’m sorry, I forgot what you were asking.”

Her mother was smiling a bright, unfocused smile that didn’t fool Leslie for a minute. She was pleased with herself. The pile of drapery thrashed and convulsed and Mr. Darcy ran away down the hall, his orange tail standing up as stiff as a bottle brush.

“Mom, why do you need a foundation?” Foundation, Leslie didn’t even like the word. It made you think of makeup, underwear. “Why does it have to cost so much money?”

“Oh, Tweety Bird, I know you’re unhappy about all this. But the Foundation doesn’t mean I love you one bit less.”

Leslie’s mouth tried to bite down on a word but couldn’t find one. Her mother was always doing things like this, coming at her with strange assumptions or accusations. The kind of thing that made Leslie want to double-check her own driver’s license, reassure herself she was still who she thought she was, a grown woman, not an anxious, piping child. What did money have to do with love, anyway?

“I just meant, it sounds like so much work.” Although that was not at all what Leslie meant, and she was angry, first at herself and then at her mother for putting her in this false position. “What if you change your mind, get tired of it?” She meant, get too old and addled to sign her own checks. These things happened.

“I’ll have plenty of help.” Her mother smiled and nodded as if to an audience of solicitous attendants, although there was no one in the house but themselves and the wrathful cats. “That’s been one of the benefits. I have met so many nice people. Don’t you ever feel the need to get beyond your usual routines, open yourself up to other possibilities?”

No, Leslie could have said, but didn’t. Could have said, her mother’s new and helpful acquaintances might turn out to be professional grifters. But her mother still had the power to reduce her to silence while she continued on, blithe and oblivious.

Growing up, both Leslie and her sister had their shifting sympathies and alliances with each of their parents. Their father had been what people called “difficult”: moody, often silent, preoccupied with serious man-business. Their mother had pecked away at him for all the years of their marriage, wanting his attention, coaxing and complaining and making tearful accusations. They’d felt sorry for her, they knew she was unhappy, but it was exhausting to live with. And when the beam of their mother’s restless discontent had turned to focus on her daughters, there had been nowhere to hide. Why did they not keep their hair out of their eyes? Why did they put that gunk on their faces, waste time on trashy television and worse music? Lie around eating snack food that was making their waistlines so sloppy, not to mention their behinds? Why had they not developed some discernible talents or interests, either athletic or artistic or intellectual? Why were they turning out so ordinary, when so much care and resources had been invested in them?

Then, after a time, their mother would give up, lose interest in them, return to her grievances with their father. And their father would do something wounding and unforgivable, like fail to come home for the birthday dinner prepared for him. Then their mother would appear at their bedroom doors late at night, weeping and saying that she couldn’t stand it, she’d leave tomorrow except where would she go, she would have nothing, he’d see to that, she’d end up all alone in some tiny little apartment. Of course they felt bad for her, and indignant, and were frosty toward their father until he noticed and made amends, and then it began all over again.

So that, while their father had been often enough at fault, and sometimes seemed confused to find himself equipped with two daughters who required so much in the way of upkeep and acknowledgment, he was at least consistent. He could be a restful, oblivious presence, and more than once when their mother’s anxious tides ran high, one or the other sister might seek him out in his basement domain, where he crafted small rocket engines or produced ornamented and scrolled woodwork with the thrilling, dangerous saws they were forbidden to approach. “Don’t even pretend to touch these,” he’d thunder at them, making them wonder what was so awful about pretending, and they would promise never ever to do so.

They would spend a silent hour or two, watching him like a naturalist observing wildlife from a blind, until he forgot they were there, and went about his work, the muscles of his arms and back and neck moving with perfect economy and ease, in perfect contentment. In this way Leslie gained a piece of knowledge that would serve her well in her own marriage: Men were often happiest when left alone.

How could they blame their mother for taking her turn now, for whatever mixture of pleasure and spite came from having her way with his money? Hadn’t she earned it, put up with enough? Cared for him during his difficult illness?

But Leslie had been expecting her own portion of the estate all this time. Not in a greedy, impatient, unseemly way where you actually hoped people would die—except of course they had to eventually. But the inheritance was something that was due to her, a deferred payment for whatever had been wounding or neglectful in her growing-up years. Her father’s gift emerging from his long silence, his final pronouncement, and when you looked at it that way she guessed money really did have a lot to do with love.

Now she was back in town for the Foundation’s first official board meeting. She’d been surprised and skeptical when her mother had recruited her, and her mother had been vague about her reasons, beyond saying that she thought Leslie would enjoy it. As if she was talking about a ski vacation! Someone had put her mother up to it. Most likely the mealymouthed nurse. What was supposed to be so great about her? Her mother didn’t need a nurse anymore, she was fine.

Her sister, Deirdre, said it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to do a background check. “I mean, who is she anyway? Mom’s never careful enough, she’s always taking in strays.”

“Funny,” Leslie said, but even though she’d told her sister about the cats, she didn’t get it. “I think she’s some holier-than-thou type. You know, never says two words about herself, just goes around ministering to lepers.”

“Lepers? Isn’t that contagious?”

“It’s a joke. Never mind.” Her sister had a cast-iron resistance to humor. Also, Deirdre was older than she was by five years, and Leslie suspected that her hearing wasn’t what it used to be. “I guess you can do that kind of thing on the Internet. Look for criminal records. But I think she’s just a goop, she likes making other people look bad.”

“She sounds awful,” Deirdre said, in her too-loud, deaf-lady voice. “Daddy would have made sure she knew the limits.”

Leslie said he certainly would have, but there was no force left behind her indignation after so many repetitions. She couldn’t help thinking that maybe the nurse was the kind of daughter her mother had wanted all along, someone to fret and fuss over her and listen to her complaints.

Everyone, meaning Leslie’s husband, Roger, and Deirdre, and Deirdre’s husband, agreed that Leslie should serve on the Foundation’s board, for the same reasons she had been chosen to attend the initial meeting. She was family, she lived nearer than Deirdre, and she had, at least in everyone else’s view, fewer obligations now that her youngest was on his way to college. As if she no longer had her job as a mother, and needed a new one. She was not to worry about the actual business of the board; they would all consult among themselves on what should be done as issues came along. What if their mother decided to liquidate everything, give it all away to some guru or con man? Con woman? Wouldn’t it be best to keep an eye on things? Yes, it would be the best thing, she agreed, although you could get tired of other people deciding things for and about you.

Her flight from San Diego had been delayed, and then she’d had to wait a long time to get her rental car, and traffic on the bridge was backed up for no reason at all except to pile on the bad luck. This first meeting was to take place at her mother’s house, and Leslie had planned on arriving at least an hour beforehand to freshen up and attempt to take her mother in hand, impress on her the importance of sound judgment and caution.

Instead the driveway was already filled with cars, and Leslie had to park at the bottom of the hill and walk with care up the steep slope in her pumps. When she stepped inside, there were people standing around with drinks and little plates of food, like a cocktail reception. Her mother stood up from her chair to be embraced. “Tweety Bird! Why didn’t you call, I was getting so worried.” Then, looking her over, “What’s the matter with your hair?”

Leslie extracted herself from her mother’s hugs and hand-patting and excused herself to use one of the upstairs bathrooms. A smell of cat rolled toward her from the far end of the hallway, but the bathroom itself was clean and cat-free. The upstairs cats must have all been confined to one or another bedroom for the occasion. Hopefully not the one she was meant to sleep in during her visit.

Her mother was right about her hair; it looked like a badly fitting hat. Her skin was as parched as a dried apricot. There was nothing about her that said Tweety Bird.

The board members, ten of them in all, were still where she’d left them, trying to balance their drinks and plates of shrimp and melon and stuffed endive. Her mother had decided to start things off as a sort of party, although no one seemed sure if they were supposed to be having fun or not. Leslie recognized some of them, the nurse, of course, in another of her long cotton dresses that looked like she’d made it in high school home ec class. The lawyer whose name she’d forgotten. Her mother was having an animated conversation with a man in a white turban, oh great. It would be just like her mother to think they needed a few turbans around the place.

The plane had made Leslie’s feet swell, and her pumps felt as rigid as horseshoes. But she took care to keep her shoulders back and her chin up as she made her way across the room. This was her house, after all, and she wasn’t going to slink in sideways. From one corner, Marietta Draper, whose parents had been such good friends of Leslie’s parents, waved. Leslie was relieved to see her. Marietta was at least a normal person who knew that you dressed up for occasions like this. And here were the Keoghs (also waving), who were such reliable fixtures of any local civic endeavor. Leslie began to feel more hopeful.

Leslie’s mother clapped her hands together. “Could I get everybody to move into the dining room? We’re all set up for you there. Thank you so much.”

The group began to migrate across the hall. Leslie made her way to the other side of the room to intercept her mother. She was giving instructions to a caterer, or so Leslie thought him to be, a teenager wearing the usual badly fitting white shirt, tie, and black pants. “. . . then if you could run down to the bank for me? Everything’s all filled out. And have the garage check the tires and the oil and I don’t know, whatever else they like to check.”

The boy said something Leslie didn’t catch, picked up his tray of plates, and carried it off to the kitchen. “Who’s that?” Leslie asked her mother.

“One of my helpers.” Her mother had gotten herself up in a yellow summer suit with pearls at her neck. She wasn’t wearing her glasses and she kept turning her face this way and that with an all-purpose smile.