Warm Wuinter's Garden (18 page)

In her practice of family law, having seen
the rapacious results of failed marriages—blindly hungry adults and
achingly needy children—Nita had often wondered how she and Dilly,
and Peter, and who knew about Lise, could be so needy. It was hard
to understand how parents as kind and loving, forthright and
generous as Neil and Bett could produce such a group of misfits.
Having grown up seven years his junior, it was hard for Nita to
remember how Peter had been as a child, but as an adult he seemed
to be a mass of scars, like someone who had fallen through a plate
glass window. Despite knowing how the DES threats had changed her,
Nita had a hard time understanding how it was possible that one
year in Viet Nam could transcend and transplant twenty-two years of
Bett and Neil’s parenting. As early as Nita could remember things
had never been right for Dilly. Whatever there was, it was never
enough. No amount of love or attention, or subservience, or food
had ever been enough. And Nita herself, did that mockingly gentle
voice of mean-mindedness come solely from the years of threat
brought by the DES, or was it something present long before the
threat of disease and death? She didn’t know. In many ways it was
as hard for her to remember how she was before the DES threat as it
was to remember Peter growing up. When she thought about it, as she
always must when she heard the tiny voice, she wasn’t even sure
that she wanted to know the answer. If the DES truly had changed
her, what did that say for her character?

Nita cut off her own thinking to catch the
tail end of Dilly’s explanation of the tattoo that Bett would get
to insure the proper targeting of the gamma rays.

“How long are you staying?”

“I’m not sure. I have to talk to Bill about
the kids. Maybe a week. Maybe more.”

“Dilly, are you sure? Are you sure being
there that long is going to be a help?”

“Of course. She’s weak. She needs help.”

“Did she say that? Did she tell you that she
wanted you to stay that long?”

“No, Nita, she didn’t. Is that relevant? You
just said that she has a hard time asking for help.”

“Not really, but, you’re right, she does have
a hard time asking. But, I also think that she doesn’t want or need
a lot. Just ask her, or ask Dad.”

“When are you coming?”

“I can’t come until late in the weekend. It’s
a terrible week. I’ll drive down on Saturday night, or day trip on
Sunday. If she wants visitors.”

“Really, Nita, I can’t believe you’re not on
your way, now. After all the nursing she’s given you.”

“Don’t start, Dilly. I’ve got a week’s worth
of work to do tomorrow and Saturday. When I talked to Mom this
morning…”

“What do you mean this morning?
She
called you?”

“Yes, she did.”

“Well, Dad called me.”

“Dilly, don’t. A family’s not a contest.”

“Oh, no? That’s funny coming from you, Nita.
Isn’t that what you do for a living? Turn a family into a contest?
Determine the winners and losers?”

Nita didn’t want to reopen an argument that
Dilly had tried to make ever since law school. Dilly professed to
believe that it was the large numbers of lawyers, most of whom
obviously were unscrupulous, who were responsible for half of
America’s marriages ending in divorce. She didn’t want to do
something that would push a member of her family apart at a time
when it needed to be drawing together. She didn’t want to begin an
argument that might get so heated that she would feel compelled to
draw the weaknesses of Dilly and Dilly’s marriage into the
fight.

“How’s her appetite? What’s she eating?”

“If you were here, you’d know.”

“Dammit, Dilly, back off. I’m not looking for
a fight.”

“I’m not fighting. I’m just stating a fact.
If you want to know more about her, come down to see her.”

“I’m planning to.”

“When it’s convenient.”

“No, Dilly, when it’s possible.”

“Leave it to Dilly. She’s got nothing better
to do.”

“Look, Dilly, I know this has probably scared
the hell out of you. I can understand that. It scares me, too, but
you are really whacked. Maybe I’ll see you Saturday night.”

The phone clicked before Dilly knew what she
wanted to say. After she dropped the receiver back onto its cradle,
Dilly savored how she was always being victimized. People either
took her for granted or they dismissed her. After eating just the
frosting off that feeling and saving the cake for later, Dilly
picked the phone back up and dialed her home. She spent the next
half hour telling her children what they should wear to school in
the morning and telling Bill what all of them should eat over the
weekend.

After she had hung up, Dilly went looking for
her father. She found him sitting in the wicker rocker on the dark
porch. Pushing through the screen door she didn’t know whether she
wanted to sit at his feet and cry or tell him to get out of the
damp before he gave himself arthritis.

* * *

Before going to bed, Nita stood naked in
front of the full length mirror secured to her bedroom door and
looked at her breasts. Later, as she lay in bed unable to sleep,
she tried to drown out the smug little voice that had been
nattering all day. She thought that if she could just rid herself
of that venal judge that she might do what she had not been able to
do for a very long time. Cry.

* * *

Peter Koster drew the woven wire Chinese
skimmer across the simmering water. Silvery cloves of garlic swam
before the metal mesh like fish in a seine. He dumped his catch
into a sauce pan of cold water. As he waited for the garlic to cool
enough that the peels could be slipped easily from the cloves, he
looked around the kitchen to the multiple sources of noise.

Ron, the dishwasher, or Ron the Dishwasher,
as everyone called him in honor of his dedication—a slow dim-witted
but OCD-focused, overweight and ugly man in his early thirties—was
banging the edges of pots against the stainless steel counter as he
directed his high pressure rinsing nozzle into the pots’
acid-darkened interiors. Peter wondered if Ron the Dishwasher were
discovering that love was as hard to find in the gay world as it
had been in the heterosexual one that he just recently, and quite
publicly, had decided to abandon. The alcoholic salad man, Harold,
was laying down a frantic Buddy Rich beat as he used two ten-inch
chef knives to chop up a heads of iceberg and romaine lettuce.
Despite dozens of admonitions to cut the greens to a certain size,
the consistency of Harold’s salads was determined by a music only
he could hear. Peter hoped that the Harold’s solo would end before
everything was turned into the kind of limp shreds that were to be
found on the fast food chains’ most expensive hamburgers, but he
grew resigned as Harold segued from a four-four beat into
nine-eight time. Although it was hard to tell with all the other
noises interfering, Peter thought that he was probably hearing the
percussion line from an old Cab Calloway tune.

Raoul was busy baiting Ron the Dishwasher by
wiping supposed spots from the bowls and blades and tines of the
silverware he was sorting. Angry from seeing Raoul re-polishing his
work and hurt from knowing that the maitre d’ belittled his
decision to enter into the gay world, Ron the Dishwasher banged his
pots louder. Imperiously ignoring his late-blooming compadre’s
tympanically manifested anguish, Raoul continued to toss clean
flatware into the appropriate drawers of the steel work table. Each
toss made the discordant clang of a warped cymbal. None of Raoul’s
noises harmonized with any of Harold’s rhythms nor with Ron the
Dishwasher’s near demonic lonesome banging.

To his right, but behind Peter, the
three-drawered pressure cooker hissed like an enraged cat as it
steamed the potatoes that would be served with the night’s special
of baccala with the garlic infused mayonnaise, aioli. Peter let the
noise surround and then infiltrate into him as he began to use his
thumb and middle finger to slip the soggy paper skins from the
blanched garlic cloves. When the garlic was all peeled, he would
puree it before adding it to his own olive oil and lemon
mayonnaise. The insane band of discordant noises distorted but did
not silence Peter’s own thoughts.

His mother had said that he was not to worry.
She was fine and was going to be fine. With a chicken you pushed
the breast meat down toward the back bone. A ridge of white, wet,
pebbly skin-covered bone would rise up. It was hard to think of
controlled cutting on a human being. Her voice had been very soft.
It hadn’t sounded like a whisper, but more like the muffled sound
heard through the line when someone covered the phone with a palm.
She had sounded calm and, he thought, sure. With a black spot in a
potato or a brown one in an apple, you carved a small cone. If the
rot went deeper you wielded the knife in a circle to ream out a
deeper cone. How did they save the skin? With a salmon you held the
knife at a very acute angle and pulled the skin toward you. You
held the knife steady and moved the fish. With a ham you did the
opposite. You held the skin steady and then moved the knife in
short slashes to free skin from flesh.

It was just very hard to think of neat cuts
in human flesh. Nothing he saw in Viet Nam resembled neat clean
cuts. Half-frozen beef or veal could be cut with mathematical
precision. Stir-fried beef with broccoli or veal scaloppini.
Perfect matchsticks could be cut from a baked ham or roast turkey
for a chef’s salad. Eight days was a long time to be in a hospital,
although not as long as he had been in. That was a lot of white
light, white uniforms, white sheets, and white shoes. She hadn’t
said anything at all about the hospital. Peter wondered if there
were any other place besides hospitals and jails where people went
for long periods but didn’t take cameras. Certainly, not war. Lots
of cameras in war. Mostly in the mind. Startling sharp
photographs.

She had not wanted him to come right away.
She said that she wanted to be better and a little more
comfortable. He was glad that it was put off. With a chicken you
pushed down on the meat then drew the knife first along the
ridge-bone of the breast and then tight against the ribcage in two
or three long slashing strokes. Voila, one blanc devolaille.

It was hard to imagine the surgery. A
starting. A stopping. A thin line actually going someplace. Very
hard to imagine. Humans didn’t cut. They exploded into red puddings
or great gouges of red meat with jagged edges of hospital white
bone protruding. But, maybe, if exploded in Arabs’ sand, the
liquids would be quickly absorbed. Sponged up by the land rather
than slowly simmered to a noxious sauce by heat trapped under dense
jungle green.

Peter pushed the old pictures away. Visions
of Gaby began to filter into the spaces left open when the memories
of war left. Even with all the kitchen noise cascading through his
brain, there was lots of room left. It was like tide water rilling
in between the rocks along the shore. Covering, moving, shaping,
but only slowly eroding. After less than a minute, as he did a
hundred times a day, bent, blanched, slightly balding Peter Koster
pushed away the thoughts of Gaby, the wife who left his side but
stayed in his head. When he focused on the ivory-colored amulets of
garlic, Gaby did ebb out, but within a minute his mother and the
cutting flowed back in. Why couldn’t his brain be full enough from
just the clanging of his help? He wondered what unwanted thoughts
fought with the noise in his helpers’ heads. What war was going on
in Ron the Dishwasher’s confused head? Why did a brain so abhor a
vacuum? Why did it hate silence?

Spread. Mashing the garlic to join a
colloidal suspension of egg yolk, lemon, and olive oil would make a
wonderful sauce to be spread on steamed potatoes and poached
baccala. Salt cod and potatoes with aioli, served with a
vinaigrette-marinated toss of tomato chunks, cucumber, green
peppers and Portugese olives. What a spread. To go home in just
nine more hours to fall asleep under the king-sized Haitian cotton
spread. To go home ten years before, before that colorful coverlet
even had been bought, to the sleeping form of Gaby. To touch her
knee caps through the sheet and watch the ridgelines of her legs
spread. Her knees would rise and open in the moon-glow gloom as if
a primordial mountain range were forming under the sheets. In the
corner of the walk-in, in the corner of a damp cardboard box, from
one tomato to the next, from one peach to the next, from one
strawberry to the next, whitish gray filaments of mold would spread
into a carpet of rot. Each hour the mold would become a larger,
more defined entity. Each hour the individual fruit would devolve
more into a non-individuated mass of dying flesh. Her cancer had
spread. Cancer. War. Spread. A large ranch with a few trees and
fewer people, just open space and closed emptiness. Away from here.
Away from the claustrophobia of too many people on too little land
surrounded by too much water. Away from all the noise. Away from
all the spreading. Of aioli and Gaby’s lost love limbs and the mold
of unsold vegetables and bad dreams and bad sales and bad cells.
And loneliness and its fast spreading, deeply penetrating
complement, hopelessness.

Peter finished peeling the garlic. He dumped
the shiny cloves into the scratched plastic container of the food
processor. He kept adding the high whir of the processor to the
dissymphony of kitchen noises long past the point where the cloves
had been transformed into a smooth ivory spread.

* * *

When Lise heard her father’s words come over
the phone she had accepted them as information, studied them for
hidden content, and monitored her reaction to their meaning.
Although shocked, she had not cried. She had to wonder at her
ability to keep scientist and daughter separate. Should she be
proud of not crying?