The Uninvited (8 page)

She sat across a kitchen island from Jay while he started grinding up coriander seeds with a mortar and pestle. By turning, she could look out the front windows, which she did regularly.

“This is going to be worse than my interview at NYU.”

“Take it easy,” said Jay. “They’ll like you.”

So she stopped looking over her shoulder, but after a moment she sagged on the maple countertop and rested her head in her arms.

“Why don’t you take a shower?” he said.

“Do I smell that bad?”

“Uh-huh.”

She retrieved some clothes from the car, and he showed her to the guest room, where there was an en suite bathroom. She emerged fifteen minutes later in a sparkly silver halter top and a denim skirt and resumed her seat across the counter. Jay was rubbing a lemon against a zester. The smell made her feel cleaner still.

“How are we going to handle this?” she asked.

“How about I tell them you’re my muse?”

“Ha-ha.”

Then Jay got some salad things out of the fridge and put her to work.

Finally, a boxy, black SUV pulled up beside the Mini, and a slim woman in her mid-forties got out, gathered some groceries from the back, and came inside, singing “Hello” from the front door.

Joanne McAllister was wiry, probably a runner, Mimi guessed. She was wearing a dark gray pinstriped suit over an oxblood-colored blouse. Her chestnut-colored hair was shoulder length, her eyes bright and inquisitive, her smile puckish.

“Jo,” she said. “I’d shake your hand, but—”

“Let me help,” said Mimi, taking a bag of groceries from her. “I’m Mimi.”

“Thank you,” said Jo. She dumped the salmon in the sink and leaned on the counter facing them. “Well,” she said, “you two got everything under control?”

Jay glanced at Mimi and they shared a look. “We’re okay,” he said.

For a moment Jo held Mimi’s eye, then she smiled as if to say,
Something is going on here, but I guess you’ll tell me when you’re good and ready.
Then she turned back to the sink and washed her hands to get the fish smell off them. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, “until I am out of these clothes, I will not truly be able to get into a festive spirit.”

“Yeah, like we’re so festive,” said Jay.

When Jo had gone, Mimi asked, “What does she do?”

“She runs the town,” he said.

“She’s the mayor?”

“No. She hates the mayor. She’s an administrator. She says her job is to follow the mayor around with a trash bag, cleaning up after him.”

Jo joined them in the kitchen in mauve sweats, and soon everyone was busy.

Then Lou arrived in a vintage green Mustang, though when she emerged, she looked to Mimi like the last person who would ever tool around in a sports car. She was big. She wore a sharply pressed pale-blue button-down shirt with the tails out, pressed blue jeans, and Birkenstocks. Her one concession to femininity was a pair of dangly earrings. The giveaway was the stethoscope around her neck and the little black bag.
A house call,
thought Mimi.
And who knows, a doctor might be needed.

Lou didn’t seem like Marc’s type, Mimi thought, apart from the fact that she was a doctor and he was always attracted to money. But when she met Lou up close, she saw a face as perfectly round as some doyenne from a Renaissance painting, with creamy-colored skin, chocolate-brown eyes, thick eyelashes, and a smile worthy of La Gioconda herself.

Lou took Mimi’s hand warmly and looked so frankly into her eyes that Mimi felt nervous as a kitten for a moment. Then, strangely, she felt all her nervousness fall away. She was afraid, suddenly, that she might cry again. Did the Canadian border guards mysteriously strip you of your chutzpah once you crossed over?

“I have the oddest feeling about you,” said Dr. Lou, standing back appraisingly. There was nothing discourteous in the comment. Her voice was friendly, but it was alarming nonetheless.

The three housemates stood around the kitchen island staring at Mimi in silence for a good few heartbeats. Her eyes darted from one to the other of them but always came back to Lou. She seemed just like a doctor coaxing a reluctant patient to elucidate her symptoms, explain more fully about the ailment that had brought her here.

“I hope that doesn’t sound rude,” said Lou.

“No, it’s okay,” said Mimi. Then she swallowed hard and asked, “What do you see, Doc?”

And Lou looked closer still. “It’s your eyes,” she said. Then she smiled. “And maybe something about your license plate?”

“What’s this all about?” asked Jo, but nobody paid her any attention.

Mimi clutched at her skirt, a little frantically. “Did you … did you know about me?”

Lou shook her head very slowly. Then she reached out and gently smoothed a wet fringe of hair back from Mimi’s forehead. “No, honey, I didn’t know about you. But I’d know those eyes anywhere.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HEY ATE ON THE SCREENED-IN PORCH
overlooking the Eden. Salmon grilled on the barbeque, mango salsa, a salad with goat cheese and dried cranberries, washed down with cool glasses of white wine.

Mimi caught them up-to-date on her infamous father.

“They just bought something of his for MOMA,” said Mimi.

Jay didn’t say anything, but he was impressed and a little weirded out, as if somehow he should know this.

Then Mimi told them what she knew of Marc Soto’s marriage to her mother, which had lasted less than four years. She had been two when he moved out and didn’t connect up with him again until she was eleven and became curious about this man whose name cropped up now and then in the Sunday
Times.

“And you read the
New York Times
when you were a eleven?” Jay asked.

“Not cover to cover,” she said without missing a beat. “Just the parts about my father.” She was very smooth.

“Mom and I were squabbling a lot in those days,” she said. “Marc became my go-to downtown connection. Not ‘go-to’ in the sense that he would actually solve things.”

She laughed and glanced at Jay. She looked tired to him, a little nervous, as if she was hungry for acceptance. Big-city girl to waif in a New York minute.

“I mean it was easy to tell he wasn’t good for much but painting pictures,” she said. “That and finding rich patrons to pick up his bar tab.”

“He had the beginning of a drinking problem way back when,” said Lou.

“Well, he’s been working on it,” said Mimi. She screwed up her nose. “Not that he’s a drunk. I mean he’s real disciplined when he’s painting. But…” She shrugged and sipped her wine. Put down her glass. She’d barely drunk any. Barely touched her food.

The conversation stalled in the cooling night air. Jay watched her—couldn’t take his eyes off her. Such an exotic creature. She was looking out at the lawn as if it were an exhibit. He followed her gaze to the lively shadows. A breeze rustled the leaves.

“I don’t know why I do that,” she said.

“Do what?” he asked.

“Bad-mouth Marc like that.”

“Maybe you thought it was what we’d want to hear?” said Lou.

A bullfrog croaked down by the river.

“It’s really hard to imagine him ever living here,” said Mimi.

Lou laughed. “That’s what he used to say.”

Mimi stared at her, her head cocked to one side. “Didn’t it bother you?”

“Do I look bothered?” said Lou.

Mimi shook her head. “No, you look like the least-bothered person I ever met. So how did you and Marc end up in Ladybank?”

Lou leaned back in her chair. “We met in Toronto when I was a med student. Marc was … well, he was dazzling. Hotshot artist—you just knew he was going to make it. It was fun.” She dragged her finger slowly around the edge of her plate like a phonograph needle looking for music. She smiled. “But it got old pretty quickly,” she said. “The openings, the hangers-on. I never took a course in small talk.”

“I’m majoring in it,” said Mimi, and everyone laughed. She looked pleased. But Jay saw something else in her eyes.
She’s a little intimidated,
he thought, though the idea surprised him.

“You must be so tired,” said Jo. She didn’t miss much.

“Thanks,” said Mimi. “I am. But this is really good—­really helping.” She looked at Jay. “You’re so lucky.”

“I know, the two best mothers in the world.”

“My mother and I eat together about once a month,” she said. “She is a walking appointment book.”

“There you go again,” said Jay.

“Hell,” said Mimi. “Now I’m bad-mouthing my mom. What’s with that?” She looked down, picked up a piece of mango in her fingers, then put it back on her plate. “She’s pretty great. Really. I mean she puts up with me.”

“Must be a saint,” said Jay, grinning.

Mimi made as if to throw her napkin at him. Then she turned to Lou. “Marc is so downtown, so SoHo. I just can’t believe he ever lived here. Like, hello?”

Lou laughed. “You’re right. A recipe for disaster. I wanted a family. I wanted my own medical practice. And so when Marc was set up with a gallery and all, we decided on a trial period here in Ladybank. He could paint anywhere, right? That was the plan. I got a yearlong job as a temp for a doctor at the clinic who was going on maternity leave.”

“And you caught the bug,” said Jo.

Lou smiled and sipped her wine.

“Did he, like, hate it?” asked Mimi.

Lou considered the question. “Actually, you’ve nailed it,” she said. “He like-hated it. He missed the city, but he had that boyish enthusiasm about things.”

“Still does. Well, sort of.”

“He taught some night classes at the college, enjoyed being a big fish in a little pond. He took up kayaking. We both did. Then he found the old place on the snye, and he was just as happy as a clam. For a while. Which is when I made a very serious mistake.”

“Uh-oh,” said Mimi, glancing at Jo.

Jo laughed. “Not me! I was the mistake she made later.”

“It was me,” said Jay. “Right?”

Lou nodded and smiled across the table. “You bet. The best mistake I ever made,” she said. Then she raised her glass to Jo. “Sorry, darling,” she added.

Jo chortled, not at all offended. It was getting dark and she went for candles. The others waited for her to return, each of them lost in thought.

Then Jo was back, and in the new flickering light, the story continued.

“Marc started spending more and more time upriver,” said Lou. She chuckled, as if “upriver” was a euphemism. It was funny, thought Jay. This story was for Mimi, and yet it was news to him as well. He’d never really asked about his father. His mother was smiling at him as if she had just realized the same thing. “The fatter I got with child, the less time he was around. It was as if my growing body was pushing him out the door. I’m not stupid. I could see what was happening. But you know something? I didn’t really care.”

“No?” said Mimi.

“No. I think I already knew by then that Marc was a biological necessity, little more. Cute and entertaining but, well…” She smiled again at Jay. “It was clear to me,” she said, “that whoever the child I was carrying turned out to be, it would probably not end up with Marc’s last name.”

Jay looked at Mimi. “You don’t have his name, either.”

“I used to,” she said. “But when I was ten, Mom got it legally changed to hers.”

“He didn’t care?”

“He didn’t dare! He’d have been crazy to take her on! Anyway, he never spent a dime on support. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t think my mom would have accepted his money.”

“But he’s part of your life?” asked Jay. “Now, I mean?”

“Yeah. Well, sort of. It’s not exactly a typical father-daughter relationship.”

She looked down. How strange it would be, thought Jay, to feel as if you always had to distance yourself from someone. But stranger still, that the someone Mimi was distancing herself from was his father, too. Someone he didn’t even know.

“He was never a part of my life,” said Jay.

“Well, don’t be too sad,” said Mimi.

“I’m not really sad.”

“Wistful?” asked Jo.

“I guess.”

Jay looked at Mimi. “It’s weird—I don’t even know what he looks like.”

Mimi has been slouching, tired, fading. Suddenly she sat bolt upright. “I can fix that,” she said. “I’ve got footage of him on my camcorder.”