The Parallel Apartments (57 page)

“Better just take us home,” she said.

Merlin pulled into the driveway. Charlotte giggled. She hadn't giggled in twenty years, and it felt like she might've torn a muscle.

“Merlin, sweetie, I'll make it up to you,” she said. “Out, Lou.”

She pushed on his shoulder as an excuse to touch him. She planned to start a pillow fight later, as an engine of seduction. The method had been used with great success by a female character in a novel she was reading,
Bosom Riseth, Bosom Falleth,
a romance. Charlotte opened up an exquisite giggle again. An outside observer would not guess she'd buried two loved ones in three days.

Lou would not get out. Charlotte pushed harder, then gently, gently pummeled his rigid shoulders.

“Out, Lou. I want to show you around.”

“I'd better just—”

“Out, or I'll get Merlin to yank on your arm.”

Lou climbed out. Charlotte followed. They stood in the driveway. Lou considered the gravel. Charlotte considered the cable-like tendons in her fiancé's wrist. She barely noticed Merlin backing out of the driveway.

“I need to—” said Lou.

“What? Tinkle? Let's go inside.”

“I need to—”

“There's a lot to discuss, but I don't want to discuss anything right now. It'll all come out. We just need to all settle down first. Livie'll be back fairly soon, with all her composure. She's a composed girl. Now come
on.
”

She took Lou by the wrist. The tendons gave, but just barely, like bass strings. Charlotte pulled him inside as though he were a balloon in a breeze.

“Please excuse the horrible messes everywhere; I just can't keep up with the second law of thermodynamics.”

“Everything looks just neat as a pin.”

“Oh, no, it's all a horror. Anyway. Mère moved us into this very house after I had Livie. That divan behind you there that I'm going to ask you to sit on was the first piece of furniture we got, except for Livie's bassinet. There was a time when there was nothing in this house but we three women, two pieces of ugly furniture, two decks of cards, and beer.”

Charlotte went into the kitchen and opened two bottles of Coors.

“Our neighbors, the Rooneys,” said Charlotte, peeking back into the living room to make sure Lou hadn't gone anywhere, “kept our beer in their
icebox. Wasn't that kind? We'd sit and visit every day. When was your first beer, Lou?”

Charlotte couldn't stop chattering. It had been like this when they were in school. Lou, quiet; she, mouth amok. But, back then, Lou had never been somber like this.

She went back into the living room and handed Lou a beer. She stood before him, examining him for cracks of happiness in the hard ceramic of his features.

Do you have someone special?

“Don't listen to me, I'm just chattering,” said Charlotte.

Who have you been with?

“Isn't Livie just a beauty?”

Have you touched them the same way you touched me?

“Nobody can get between us, now, Lou.”

Mère's dead. Don't be afraid.

“Is your Coors cold enough? The icebox is not that devoted to its job. I could put it in the freezer. Or you don't like Coors? I have Miller, but it's tin-canned.”

“I stopped drinking yesterday,” said Lou, staring down the neck of the bottle, as if looking for a genie. “It had gotten me into some hot water lately.”

“Well, good for you,” she said, taking the bottle, brushing his hand, just barely, in the process. The glittering needles. “Livie'll drink it.”

Lou looked toward the staircase.

“Let me show you around,” she said.

“No, no.”

“Mère didn't own much, but you might remember that TV,” said Charlotte, pointing at an ancient boxed-in screen so convex it looked like half a crystal ball. “Same one she had twenty years ago. It receives Lawrence Welk and the Emergency Broadcast System and snow.”

Lou nodded.

“There are all her
Reader's Digests
and Agatha Christie books. Only Hercule Poirot. For somebody so against the race of men, she loved Hercule Poirot. Read them over and over.”

It occurred to Charlotte for the first time that Mère had loved
three
men—Big Red, Hercule Poirot, and Burt Moppett. Maybe Mère had been all hot
air. The idea made Charlotte even happier than she'd been five minutes ago. Amid two still-warm deaths, Providence hinted at rebirth.

“I'm tired, Charlotte,” said Lou, not moving.

Was that the first time he'd said her name since he got here? The first time in twenty years?
Say it again.

“Let me put you down, then,” she said, feeling the same sunless disappointment that used to chill her when she couldn't find him in the hallways at school. “But just a short one. We need to catch up.”

I need us.

“All right.”

Lou leaned back and rested his head on a blue afghan draped over the back of the divan.

“You couldn't be comfortable. Come with me.”

“I better go get some rest at a motel. I'm all lathered and I'll be in the way here.”

“You'll do no such thing. Come with me.”

Charlotte took Lou's hand and pulled him off the divan. She led him up the stairs and down the hall to three closed doors.

“Bathroom's here,” she said, pointing to the middle door.

She opened the right-hand door. “Livie's room, for now. It was the guest room, but since Burt died she hasn't wanted to stay in their house over on Threepenny Street, so she's been in here for a couple nights.”

She shut the door, then opened the left-hand door. “Here's me. Go lie down.”

She shut the door, went back downstairs and sat on the warm spot where he'd been sitting on the divan, and watched for Livia to come home.

Charlotte woke sharply. It was nearly dark. The cicadas screamed among the leaves. She realized she'd fallen asleep waiting for Livia.

She sat up. Her tendency in such situations was to worry herself into catalepsy, but this time she closed her eyes and forced herself to be cool and circumspect.

As she got up to get another beer, Lou came out of Charlotte's room.
His
room.
Our
room. But he went straight into the bathroom without even glancing down the hall. He was fully dressed: tie, jacket, and soft, worn boots.

Charlotte switched on the living-room lamps and sat back down on the divan. She held her breath, listening for any sound from the bathroom.
She quickly jumped up again and turned the lights back out—darkness, somehow, always seemed to sharpen subtle acoustics. Her beer fizzed. She stuck her thumb in the neck to damp the sound. A car went by outside; she cursed its meddling din, which seemed to last a full minute. Then another one. Charlotte growled,
“Damnation,”
pulled her thumb out of the beer bottle, and took a long drink.

Yet another car. But this one did not drive past. It slowed, then turned into the gravel driveway.

“Hello, Mother,” said Livia, coming into the house, her black heels in one hand and her veiled hat in the other. “What are you doing sitting in the living room in the dark?”

“I am a nervous wreck and I am about to explode with both joy and worry.”

“Is L… is my da… is your fiancé here?”

“Oh,” said Charlotte. She had not thought of herself as a fiancée. There were a
lot
of angles she hadn't yet considered.

“I'm just getting my clothes and makeup—I'm going home. To Burt's and my house on Threepenny. I can't stay here. Will you go up and get me a change and my makeup? And my Playtex. It's on the floor.”

“Your daddy's in the bathroom, I'll get him.” Charlotte jumped up. “There's an open beer in the icebox, Livie—Lou wasn't thirsty, so he wanted you to have it.”

“I want you to go up there and get my things, now.”

“Why are you speaking to me in that tone?”

“Please.”

“You sit down.”

Charlotte put her hands on her daughter's shoulders and led her to the divan. Livia shook her mother off.

“Leave me alone.”

“You have an odor… what is that on your dress? Is that throwup? Darling, you
were
sickened at the cemetery. This is all too much for you. I'm so sorry.”

“Get my things.”

“Lou will be out in a moment.”

“Get my things.”

“Now, you sit.”

“No.”

“Sit, dammit.”

Livia sat down on the divan. She dropped her shoes and hat.

Charlotte, trying to remember when she'd last hollered at anyone, let alone her daughter, ran upstairs and tapped on the bathroom door.

“Lou, darling, Livie's here, your daughter, let's visit. Hurry, everyone's getting cranky. It's been a long day.”

The shower went on.

“Lou?”

Charlotte came back downstairs and sat in the brown wicker chair across from Livia.

“He's bathing. He's exhausted. So how are you feeling, darling? We were so worried about you, but I told Lou you'd be fine, that you were simply reacting to another strange twist of fate. Lou cannot wait to sit down with you. He is appalled with himself for missing your childhood.”

Livia said nothing.

“I believe we're going to run over to the First Baptist as soon as we can. How long did you and Burt… oh dear, I don't mean to be so insensitive. I just can't believe a little good luck rode right on in behind the bad. Can you?”

The shower ran.

“Let's try to forgive him. He was a child, and Mère—frankly—was an ogre to him. He was a frightened child. Now he is an adult, ready to return to his family, to be a husband to me, a daddy to you, and maybe even a daddy again. A younger sibling. Darling, I can't stand the sight of you with throw-up on your bosom. Let me get a rag.”

Livia looked at the floor. Charlotte went into the kitchen. She wetted a dish towel, got the opened beer out of the icebox, and returned to the living room. Livia hadn't moved.

“We haven't discussed another child yet, but he appears capable.”

A sudden, profound blush swept over Charlotte. She had never used such provocative language around her daughter. Or anyone. She hoped Livia didn't notice. She didn't look as though she'd heard.

“I want to go home.”

The shower ran.

“Why don't you want to stay and chat with your daddy?”

“I don't know.”

“He's a gentle man, Livie. Now take this dish towel. Dab, don't rub. And drink your beer. Your daddy opened it for you.”

“You never told me anything about him. You never even showed me a picture of him. I thought you'd come to hate him, and now you think he's great.”

“I've told you that Mère wouldn't let me keep anything like that around. I wasn't even allowed to mention his name.”

“All because you
slept
with him?”

“Livie.”

“You had me because of him. Does—did—Mère hate
me
?”

“Of course not. She loved you. And me.”

“Why didn't she make you abort me?”

“That was unthinkable. It wasn't done. It isn't done.”

“I hate her.”

“Don't be ugly.”

“You should hate her, too.”

The water heater, nearly empty, thumped at its pipes.

“Watch your mouth, young lady. She took care of me when I was a thirteen-year-old mother. Most girls my age would have been
sent away.
Do you have any idea what that meant in 1951?”

Livia looked at her shoes and hat.

“This is happening, isn't it,” she said.

“I don't know what in the world you mean,” said Charlotte.

The water went off.

“Mother,” she said, backing toward the front door, “go upstairs and get my things. I can't stay.”

“My child,” said Charlotte, “if you go now, it will crush me.”

Livia ran upstairs to her room.

Charlotte heard her tearing open drawers, clicking the little chrome locks on her suitcase. In the bathroom, the sink water went on; its pipes had always sounded different than those of the shower or toilet. Then it went off.

Both doors opened at once.

Livia carried her suitcase in one hand and a wadded-up bra in the other. Lou was fully dressed. His hair was not wet, he was not shaved, his tie was precisely the same slack Y it had been when Charlotte first saw him.