A Multitude of Sins (15 page)

“It better not be,” Faith’s mother says from behind the wheel. She has her seat pushed way back to accommodate her stomach.

“Okay. Two more guesses,” Roger says.

“It’s an atom plant where they make electricity,” Faith says, and smiles back at the nieces, who are staring out at the smokestacks, losing interest. “We use it to heat our houses.”

“But we don’t like them,” Esther says. Esther’s been green since before it was chic.

“Why?” Jane says.

“Because they threaten our precious environment, that’s why,” Esther answers.

“What’s ‘our precious environment’?” Jane says insincerely.

“The air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink.” Once Esther taught eighth-grade science, but not in years.

“Don’t you girls learn anything in school?” Roger is flipping pages in his
Skier
. For some mysterious reason, Faith has noticed, Roger is quite tanned.

“Their father could always instruct them,” Esther says. “He’s in education.”

“Guidance,” Roger says. “But touché.”

“What’s touché?” Jane says, wrinkling her nose.

“It’s a term used in fencing,” Faith says. She likes both girls immensely, and would happily punish Roger for speaking to them with sarcasm.

“What’s fencing,” Marjorie asks.

“It’s a town in Michigan where they make fences,” Roger says. “Fencing, Michigan. It’s near Lansing.”

“No it’s not,” Faith says.

“Well then, you tell them,” Roger says. “You know everything. You’re the lawyer.”

“It’s a game you play with swords,” Faith says. “Only no one gets killed. It’s fun.” In every respect, she despises Roger and wishes he’d stayed in Sandusky. But she couldn’t ask the little girls without him. Letting her pay for everything is Roger’s way of saying thanks.

“So. There you are, little girls. You heard it here first,” Roger says in a nice-nasty voice, continuing to read. “All your lives now you’ll remember where you heard fencing explained first and by whom. When you’re at Harvard …”

“You didn’t know,” Jane says.

“That’s wrong. I did know. I absolutely knew,” Roger
says. “I was just having some fun. Christmas is a fun time, don’t you know?”

Faith’s love life has not been going well. She has always wanted children-with-marriage, but neither of these things has quite happened. Either the men she’s liked haven’t liked children, or else the men who loved her and wanted to give her all she longed for haven’t seemed worth it. Practicing law for a movie studio has therefore become very engrossing. Time has gone by. A series of mostly courteous men has entered but then departed—all for one reason or another unworkable: married, frightened, divorced, all three together. “Lucky” is how she has chiefly seen herself. She goes to the gym every day, drives an expensive car, lives alone in Venice Beach in a rental owned by a teenage movie star who is a friend’s brother and who has HIV. A deal.

Late last spring she met a man. A stock market hotsytotsy with a house on Nantucket. Jack. Jack flew to Nantucket from the city in his own plane, had never been married at age roughly forty-six. She came east a few times and flew up with him, met his stern-looking sisters, the pretty, socialite mom. There was a big blue rambling beach house facing the sea, with rose hedges, sandy pathways to secret dunes where you could swim naked—something she especially enjoyed, though the sisters were astounded. The father was there, but was sick and would soon die, so life and plans were generally on hold. Jack did beaucoup business in London. Money was not a problem. Maybe when the father departed they could be married, Jack had almost suggested. But until then, she could travel with him whenever she could get away—scale back a little on the expectation side. He wanted children, could get to California often. It could work.

One night a woman called. Greta, she said her name was. Greta was in love with Jack. She and Jack had had a fight, but he still loved her, she said. It turned out Greta had pictures of Faith and Jack together. Who knew who took them? A little
bird. One was a picture of Faith and Jack exiting Jack’s building on Beekman Place. Another was of Jack helping Faith out of a yellow taxi. One was of Faith, alone, at the Park Avenue Café eating seared swordfish. One was of Jack and Faith kissing in the front seat of an unrecognizable car—also in New York.

Jack liked particular kinds of sex in very particular kinds of ways, Greta said on the phone. She guessed Faith knew all about that by now. But “best not make long-range plans” was somehow the message. Other calls were placed, messages left on her voice mail, prints arrived by FedEx.

When asked, Jack conceded there was a problem. But he would solve it,
tout de suite
(though she needed to understand he was preoccupied with his father’s approaching death). Jack was a tall, smooth-faced, handsome man with a shock of lustrous, mahogany-colored hair. Like a clothing model. He smiled and everyone felt better. He’d gone to public high school, Harvard, played squash, rowed, debated, looked good in a brown suit and oldish shoes. He was trustworthy. It still seemed workable.

But Greta called more times. She sent pictures of herself and Jack together. Recent pictures, since Faith had come on board. It was harder than he’d imagined to get untangled, Jack admitted. Faith would need to be patient. Greta was, after all, someone he’d once “cared about very much.” Might’ve even married. Didn’t wish to hurt. She had problems, yes. But he wouldn’t just throw her over. He wasn’t that kind of man, something she, Faith, would be glad about in the long run. Meanwhile, there was the sick patriarch. And his mother. And the sisters. That had been plenty.

Snow Mountain Highlands is a smaller ski resort, but nice. Family, not flash. Faith’s mother found it as a “Holiday Getaway” in the
Erie Weekly
. The package includes a condo, weekend lift tickets, and coupons for three days of Swedish smorgasbord in the Bavarian-style lodge. The deal, however, is for two people only. The rest have to pay. Faith will sleep
with her mother in the “Master Suite.” Roger can share the twin with the girls.

Two years ago, when sister Daisy began to take an interest in Vince, the biker, Roger simply “receded.” Her and Roger’s sex life had long ago lost its effervescence, Daisy confided. They had started off well enough as a model couple in a suburb of Sandusky, but eventually—after some years and two kids—happiness ended and Daisy had been won over by Vince, who liked amphetamines and more importantly sold them. Vince’s arrival was when sex had gotten really good, Daisy said. Faith believes Daisy envied her movie connections and movie lifestyle and the Jaguar convertible, and basically threw her own life away (at least until rehab) as a way of simulating Faith’s, only with a biker. Eventually Daisy left home and gained forty-five pounds on a body that was already voluptuous, if short. Last summer, at the beach at Middle Bass, Daisy in a rage actually punched Faith in the chest when she suggested that Daisy might lose some weight, ditch Vince and consider coming home to her family. Not a diplomatic suggestion, she later decided. “I’m not like you,” Daisy screamed, right out on the sandy beach. “I fuck for pleasure. Not for business.” Then she waddled into the tepid surf of Lake Erie, wearing a pink one-piece that boasted a frilly skirtlet. By then, Roger had the girls, courtesy of a court order.

In the condo now, Esther has been watching her soaps, but has stopped to play double solitaire and have a glass of wine by the big picture window that looks down toward the crowded ski slope and the ice rink. Roger is actually there on the bunny slope with Jane and Marjorie, though it’s impossible to distinguish them. Red suits. Yellow suits. Lots of dads with kids. All of it soundless.

Faith has had a sauna and is now thinking about phoning Jack, wherever Jack is. Nantucket. New York. London. She has no particular message to leave. Later she plans to do the Nordic Trail under moonlight. Just to be a full participant, to
set a good example. For this she has brought LA purchases: loden knickers, a green-and-brown-and-red sweater knitted in the Himalayas, socks from Norway. No way does she plan to get cold.

Esther plays cards at high speed with two decks, her short fat fingers flipping cards and snapping them down as if she hates the game and wants it to be over. Her eyes are intent. She has put on a cream-colored neck brace because the tension of driving has aggravated an old work-related injury. And she is now wearing a big Hawaii-print orange muumuu. How long, Faith wonders, has she been wearing these tents? Twenty years, at least. Since Faith’s own father—Esther’s husband—kicked the bucket.

“Maybe I’ll go to Europe,” Esther says, flicking cards ferociously. “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Faith is at the window, observing the expert slope. Smooth, wide pastures of snow, framed by copses of beautiful spruces. Several skiers are zigzagging their way down, doing their best to appear stylish. Years ago, she came here with her high-school boyfriend, Eddie, a.k.a. “Fast Eddie,” which in some respects he was. Neither of them liked to ski, nor did they get out of bed to try. Now, skiing reminds her of golf—a golf course made of snow.

“Maybe I’ll take the girls out of school and treat us all to Venice,” Esther goes on. “I’m sure Roger would be relieved.”

Faith has spotted Roger and the girls on the bunny slope. Blue, green and yellow suits, respectively. He is pointing, giving detailed instructions to his daughters about ski etiquette. Just like any dad. She thinks she sees him laughing. It is hard to think of Roger as an average parent.

“They’re too young for Venice,” Faith says, putting her small, good-looking nose near the surprisingly warm windowpane. From outside, she hears the rasp of a snow shovel and muffled voices.

“Maybe I’ll take
you
to Europe, then,” Esther says. “Maybe when Daisy clears rehab we can all three take in Europe. I always planned for that.”

Faith likes her mother. Her mother is no fool, yet still seeks ways to be generous. But Faith cannot complete a picture that includes herself, her enlarged mother and Daisy on the Champs-Elysées or the Grand Canal. “That’s a nice idea,” she says. She is standing beside her mother’s chair, looking down at the top of her head, hearing her breathe. Her mother’s head is small. Its hair is dark gray and short and sparse, and not especially clean. She has affected a very wide part straight down the middle. Her mother looks like the fat lady in the circus, but wearing a neck brace.

“I was reading what it takes to live to a hundred,” Esther says, neatening the cards on the glass table top in front of her belly. Faith has begun thinking of Jack and what a peculiar species of creep he is. Jack Matthews still wears the Lobb cap-toe shoes he had made for him in college. Ugly, pretentious English shoes. “You have to be physically active,” her mother continues. “And you have to be an optimist, which I am. You have to stay interested in things, which I more or less do. And you have to handle loss well.”

With all her concentration Faith tries not to wonder how she ranks on this scale. “Do you want to be a hundred?”

“Oh, yes,” her mother says. “
You
just can’t imagine it, that’s all. You’re too young. And beautiful. And talented.” No irony. Irony is not her mother’s specialty.

Outside, one of the men shoveling snow can be heard to say, “Hi, we’re the Weather Channel.” He’s speaking to someone watching them through another window from yet another condo.

“Colder’n a well-digger’s dick, you bet,” a second man’s voice says. “That’s today’s forecast.”

“Dicks, dicks, and more dicks,” her mother says pleasantly. “That’s it, isn’t it? The male appliance. The whole mystery.”

“So I’m told,” Faith says, and thinks about Fast Eddie.

“They were all women, though,” her mother says.

“Who?”

“All the people who lived to be a hundred. You could do
all the other things right. But you still needed to be a woman to survive.”

“Good for us,” Faith says.

“Right. The lucky few.”

This will be the girls’ first Christmas without a tree or their mother. Though Faith has attempted to improvise around this by arranging presents at the base of the large, plastic rubber-tree plant stationed against one of the empty white walls of the small living room. The tree was already here. She has brought with her a few Christmas balls, a gold star and a string of lights that promise to blink. “Christmas in Manila” could be a possible theme.

Outside, the day is growing dim. Faith’s mother is napping. Following his ski lesson, Roger has gone down to The Warming Shed for a mulled wine. The girls are seated on the couch side by side, wearing their Lanz of Salzburg flannel nighties with matching smiling monkey-face slippers. Green and yellow again, but with printed white snowflakes. They have taken their baths together, with Faith to supervise, then insisted on putting on their nighties early for their nap. They seem perfect angels and perfectly wasted on their parents. Faith has decided to pay their college tuitions. Even to Harvard.

“We know how to ski now,” Jane says primly. They’re watching Faith trim the plastic rubber-tree plant. First the blinking lights, though there’s no plug-in close enough, then the six balls (one for each family member). Last will come the gold star. Faith understands she is trying for too much. Though why not try for too much. It’s Christmas. “Marjorie wants to go to the Olympics,” Jane adds.

Jane has watched the Olympics on TV, but Marjorie was too young. It is Jane’s power position. Marjorie looks at her sister without expression, as if no one can observe her staring.

“I’m sure she’ll win a medal,” Faith says, on her knees,
fiddling with the fragile strand of tiny peaked bulbs she already knows will not light up. “Would you two like to help me?” She smiles at both of them.

“No,” Jane says.

“No,” Marjorie says immediately after.

“I don’t blame you,” Faith says.

“Is Mommy coming here?” Marjorie blinks, then crosses her tiny, pale ankles. She is sleepy and could possibly cry.

“No, sweet,” Faith says. “This Christmas Mommy is doing
herself
a favor. So she can’t do one for us.”