Mourning Becomes Cassandra (25 page)

Joanie flared up instantly. “That’s just it, Mom, he
bought
the house. I did most of the decorating downstairs, and Phyl did all the plants inside and out, and Cass—Cass—” She was spared having to think up a specific way I had contributed to the house aesthetics by her mother’s nonchalant interruption.

“Yes, Joan, but your brother has always had an eye for beauty.” She continued right over Joanie’s derisive snort. “This house has very good lines—excellent
feng shui
. I love how the
Qi
flows up the curved pathway into the entrance—just the right size entrance, and the window above it giving all that light. Remember your last apartment? That tiny entryway, and the back door straight across from it? Energy could hardly find its way into your place, and what energy did make it in went straight out the back door.”

“So that was my problem,” said Joanie, pokerfaced.

Mrs. Martin bore the many introductions bravely, declaring, “Please, call me Angela,” and giving a slight “hmmm…” when she heard my name, whatever that meant. She gave us each a cool, dry handshake, and we invited her into the kitchen while Joanie took her bags up, a task which took her an inordinately long time, though she came down looking ready for another round. On her reappearance, Phyl considerately slipped her a Pink Veranda.

“And how is it that a nice fellow like you isn’t married?” Angela asked Perry. She had been enthusiastic to discover her Portland connection to him and their mutual interest in the arts, and I think this was a roundabout way of asking Perry if he was gay.

“The same way a nice fellow like Daniel isn’t married,” Joanie interposed.

Perry, sharing half my genes, flushed. “Actually, Angela, I am married—or was. We’re separated now, my wife and I.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Angela replied conventionally. She turned to look at me. “And Joanie told me about your loss. This must be a difficult couple years for your family, one divorce and one death.”

“Almost as bad as two kids who never married,” put in Joanie. I frowned at her. For a girl who had spent the last week complaining about how her Mom riled her, she wasn’t exactly an innocent victim.

“Now, Joanie, you know I’ve never held up marriage as a goal for either of you. You’re a modern woman. We live in a modern world. No one needs pieces of paper or anyone’s blessing to tell them whether they’re in love or not. Look where marriage got your father and me. I’m convinced that if I hadn’t pressured him to marry me, he wouldn’t have felt so trapped. He wouldn’t have run off to Venezuela or wherever, when you both were so little.”

“You’re right, Mom. He probably would have taken off right after you got pregnant with Daniel.”

“Another Pink Veranda, anyone?” broke in Phyl, getting up to mix a second batch.

Angela patted Joanie’s stiff arm. “No, thank you, but I wouldn’t mind a glass of wine with dinner. That curry smells delicious. Do you have any Sauvignon Blanc? A dear friend I’ve been dating is a sommelier, and I’ve become rather particular with my wine pairings.”

Joanie rolled her eyes, and to forestall any comment from her I sprang up saying, “Phyl, I’ll go down cellar for it. You keep working on the drinks.”

The Palace didn’t really have a wine cellar, but we had jokingly designated one corner of the three-car garage thus. Mostly it was Phyl’s territory, and it took me several minutes to figure out her classification methodology: by country, by region, by variety, by year. There were several bottles of Sauvignon Blanc, and not being much of a wine connoisseur myself, I was just regretting having volunteered to choose when the rolling door started going up and Daniel pulled in.

“I’m so glad to see you!” I exclaimed, when he opened his car door.

“You are?” His voice held a mixture of pleasure and wariness.

“Yes, very. Come help me. Your mom is here, and she wants a Sauvignon Blanc with the vegetable curry tonight. Which one would she like best?”

He came over to inspect the bottles, and I peeked sidewise at him. Yes, there was Angela Martin’s straight nose and high cheekbones and easy, self-contained grace. I wondered if she had been blonde as he was. Or if Mr. Martin had found anyone better looking in Venezuela—I’d heard Venezuelan women were as beautiful as they come. No one bragged much about Venezuelan men, however, so I was pretty sure they couldn’t hold a candle to Daniel. He plucked the 2002 bottle from Healdsburg off the rack and handed it to me, catching me in my furtive stare. Of course I turned scarlet and was ticked with myself when I saw the answering gleam in his eye.

“Anything else I can help you with, Cass?”

“No!” I snapped, making his mouth curve in amusement. “Oh, but actually, yes. If you don’t mind. Joanie is pretty on edge, and she and your mom have been getting on each other’s nerves. If you could run interference these next few days, it’d be lovely. For Joanie’s sake.”

“I’ll do my best, though I’ve never seen them relate in any other way. Anything for…Joanie.”

Hearing that familiar note in his voice, I bit back an exasperated sigh and headed back inside, trying not to be self-conscious about him right behind me. While Daniel might distract his mother and sister from their favorite pastime of mutual aggravation, I didn’t know who was going to distract him from his.

Mrs. Martin sprang up the instant he came through the door, taking his hands and holding up her cheek for a kiss. “Mom,” he said simply, after he had complied, his eyes flicking over to check on Joanie.

“Darling,” she cooed. “It’s been months. Thank you so much for the flowers you sent for my birthday. I brought them to the gallery to show them off. You remembered how gardenias are my favorite.”

“Actually, Joanie remembered,” Daniel said easily, “But don’t you think I did a nice job signing the card she picked out?”

His mother made a little pouting face and punched him playfully on the arm. “You can’t fool me.” She went on to repeat her praise of his beautiful house, tell him how well he was looking, enumerate some of his most recent accomplishments, and so on, while I made myself busy serving up dinner, getting Joanie to help me. In fairness to him, Daniel did try to shut her up a few times, but she seemed to assume he was just being modest and that, if he wasn’t going to toot his own horn, someone must.

After an hour in Angela Martin’s company, it made a lot more sense to me how Daniel had come by his sense of entitlement where women were concerned, not to mention his bulletproof self-assurance. His mother’s adulation, coupled with his extraordinary good looks, had ruined any chances he may have had to see himself in any but the most glowing lights. He was a man with no need of grace—not from God, not from anyone.

With her daughter, however, Mrs. Martin took the gloves off. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Joanie as well, but somehow mother-daughter love came out as a constant urge to improve the daughter. As if Joanie reflected on her in a way Daniel didn’t. No wonder Joanie had struck out on such a different path in life. “Joanie, why on earth did you cut those layers in your hair? You know your hair is too wavy to begin with, and the layers just make it stick out more.”

“The rest of us would just kill for Joanie’s hair, Mrs. Martin,” spoke up Phyl. She was absolutely the most loyal person I knew, and indignation for Joanie here trumped her natural gentleness.

“Oh, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Martin placatingly. “And do call me Angela. You know mothers and daughters. We just can’t help picking at each other.” She certainly couldn’t, because not ten minutes later she accosted Joanie with, “Honey, did you read those books on atheism I sent you?”

“Cover to cover,” said Joanie expressionlessly. Clearly her love of philosophical discussions did not extend to debates with her mother.

“Very thought-provoking, I found them,” continued Angela blithely. “Especially the parts about how we have evolved to engage in social, ethical behavior without recourse to religion, and the connection between religion and warmongering.”

“Mom, considering how the majority of people at this table are religious, and you’re eating their food, you may want to rein in the atheist proselytizing,” said Daniel dryly.

She gave him a mild
et-tu-Brute
look. “Daniel! Did you read them? I asked Joanie to pass them on.”

“She did. And she was pretty speedy about it, too. But I have to confess, I didn’t care for them either. Ranting ideologues from either side of the fence don’t do it for me.” That put a cork in her, as Joanie remarked to me later.

Perry neatly turned the conversation to Angela’s art gallery and art in general, where we doggedly kept it until the end of the meal. Despite my request, I half-expected Daniel to bolt off to the Lean-To at that point, leaving the rest of us to close ranks around Joanie until Angela chose to retire from the field, but he surprised me by coaxing his mother to sit down at the piano with him. It turned out Joanie wasn’t the only musical Martin. Daniel and his mother knew a number of easy duets, and when there were lyrics, Joanie sang along.

“I didn’t even know he played,” Phyl said to me under her breath, as we cleaned up after dinner.

“It’s kind of too much, isn’t it?” I replied. “The Martins! They sing! They dance! They sit around looking beautiful!”

Perry jabbed me in the ribs. “We McKeans better think of our act. You didn’t tell me about the talent portion of the evening.”

“Dinner was the talent portion of my evening,” I retorted, “Unless someone wants to hear my Snow Goddess monologue. Phyl, you could score big points with Mrs. Martin by telling her about vegan composting.”

“Speaking of vegan,” said Phyl, “What on earth are we going to feed her tomorrow? Won’t we have butter in absolutely everything?”

“Everything that doesn’t have chicken broth,” said Perry.

“Or whipping cream,” I added. “We’ll just have to dish out portions of the vegetables before we add all the dairy. Anyhow, given how this evening has gone, don’t you think Angela’s diet is probably the least of our worries?”

With such dismally low expectations, Thanksgiving could only prove a pleasant surprise. Daniel was true to his word, running interference between the other Martins, and turning his considerable charm on his mother, who hardly required this effort to be delighted with him. Seeing that her brother meant to pull his weight, Joanie relaxed, and even managed to overlook a few of her mother’s jabs. And it did help to have all of us there; when Angela insisted on a morning walk to get the blood pumping (“Have you put on a little weight, Joanie, since I last saw you?”), Benny and I came along as the welcome third wheels and managed to defuse a few tense moments. Tense moments such as when Angela asked me, “Do you also work at the church, dear?” in a tone equally suited to questions like,
Did you always want to be a garbage man when you grew up
?

By the time we came back, blood now circulating satisfactorily, things were in full swing in the Palace kitchen. “Well that’s something I never thought I’d see,” said Joanie, when she caught sight of Daniel at the stove sautéing onions and celery and sausage for the stuffing. “Quick, Cass—go check out the window and tell me if you see Jesus coming again.”

“I’ll have you know, Joanie, he chopped the onion, too,” said Perry. He was engaged in loosening the turkey’s skin and slipping pats of herbed butter underneath.

“How come you never get off your butt and help when we cook?” Joanie demanded.

“Perry beat me at cards last night,” answered Daniel laconically, flipping Benny a hunk of sausage which the beast caught in mid-air.

“I’ve beaten you at Scrabble,” I pointed out, and he grinned at me.

“Name your price, Cass. But you’d better be aware that, if I beat you in the future, I’ll name mine.”

Perry had been put in charge of the day, and by dint of keeping everyone busy we managed to get through it with a minimum of tension, although Mrs. Martin and Joanie seemed able to whip it up any time they were in the same room.

“Tell me more about this Roy you’re dating, Joan,” Angela began at one point. We were taking a break from our kitchen labors at this point and playing a few hands of hi-lo at the dining table, while Daniel and Perry parked it in front the television to watch a game. “I was so fond of that Keith, if you insisted on getting married at some point.” Keith had been Joanie’s first fiancé.

Joanie bristled immediately. “Keith and I had unresolvable communication issues, Mom. We bickered a lot, kind of like you and me.”

“Well, who was that next one, then? Paul? Patrick?” her mother persisted, laying down the queen of spades.

“Peter,” Joanie ground out. “The one with the overbearing mother, if you can imagine. And then there was Steve, who was too clingy. Do we really have to talk about this? If you think I’ve run up a list, why don’t you ever quiz Daniel on his love life?”

“Daniel is a particular, restless man, and he’s always had the good sense not to take things too far,” said Angela, casting him a fond look while Joanie pretended to gag. “Like your father. It would have been better if your father and I had never married.”

“So you’ve said,” replied Joanie dryly. “The real truth is that, if you wanted to keep up with Daniel’s love life, you’d have to run a ticker, rather than an annual update.” Either overhearing or sensing that we were talking about him, Daniel came over for another of Phyl’s stuffed mushrooms.

“I was just asking your sister about this new boyfriend Roy she has,” Angela beamed up at him. “She’s being evasive. I don’t even know what he does for a living.”

“Fine, Mom,” replied Joanie, goaded. “I met him at church. He’s a network engineer, okay? That is, when he’s not warmongering and bombing abortion clinics. And before that he worked for World Vision in Cambodia, teaching English.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin, making a little face. “Network engineer—what on earth is that? It sounds terribly dull for a creative girl like you. Are you two very serious?”

Seeing that Joanie had fire in her eyes, Daniel gave me a wink and said, “It’s actually a very nuts-and-bolts, visual-thinking kind of job, Mom. Not very different from your beloved
feng shui
. You’re thinking how to capture the
Qi
and keep it circulating through your home, and they’re thinking the same thing about electronic connections in a company’s network.”