A Patchwork Planet Read online

  But no one would take him up on that (a Kazmerow had no business tossing around the subject of the Gaitlins’ angels), and so he proceeded to Wicky. “And last but not least, our charming hostess. Nazdrowie, Wicky!”

  “To Wicky,” we chimed in, raising our glasses. (All except for J.P., who was busy with a marshmallow.) Even Opal shyly held up her Pepsi can. Wicky said, “Oh, go on. I didn’t do anything much!”

  I saw Dad give Mom a look from under his eyebrows, warning her not to second that.

  If a meal is mainly dessert, it’s hard to know when it’s over. Wicky got up to clear, finally, but she refused all offers of help, and so the rest of us went on sitting around the table. I saw my reserve bottles of wine rapidly disappearing. In fact, I suspected Jeff was getting tipsy. “Pass that bottle on down” he said at one point, in his new, fat-man voice. “Who’s hogging the bottle?” And when it turned out to be finished, he sent me for some of his own private stock from the basement. Or the “cellar,” was what he called it. “Fetch me a cabernet from the cellar, will you, Barn? There’s a good fellow.” His accent was becoming just the teeniest bit British.

  I rose obediently—I was feeling very sober and responsible, maybe on account of Pop-Pop’s speech—and went through the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement. A fully stocked wooden wine rack sat next to the washing machine. I picked out the most expensive-looking cabernet I could find and climbed the stairs with it.

  In the kitchen, Wicky was scraping plates. Her dress was a beige knit, cut narrow as a tube, and she was standing in a way that made her rear end look like two small, tight grapefruits nudging against the fabric. They just called out to be cupped by two hands. They ordered it. I got one of my irresistible urges, and I set the wine bottle on the counter and took a step closer.

  My mother said, “Barnaby.”

  My heart stopped.

  I whirled around and said, “What? I was just getting wine! Jeff asked me to bring up some wine.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think we need it, do you? We’ve all had more than enough,” Mom said.

  “Oh,” Wicky said, turning. “Should I be making coffee?”

  “Let me do it,” Mom told her. “You go out and sit awhile.”

  “Why, thank you. That’s so nice of you!” Wicky said.

  Of course, she had no idea that Mom claimed the coffee tasted more like tea when Wicky made it.

  I grabbed the wine bottle and started to follow Wicky into the dining room, but Mom laid a hand on my arm “Barnaby,” she said again.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. I still wasn’t sure if she’d guessed what I’d had in mind for Wicky’s two grapefruits.

  “I want you to take this back,” Mom said, and from somewhere in her clothing she brought out a folded powder-blue check.

  I said, “Huh?”

  “It’s your money.”

  “What money?”

  She pressed it into my hand. I think it was because it was in the form of a check that I was so slow on the uptake. First I set the wine bottle down on the counter; then I unfolded the check and peered at it for a moment. Pay to the order of Barnaby Gaitlin, Eight thousand seven hundred and no/100 dollars.

  “Why?” I asked her.

  “I’ve decided not to keep it.”

  This didn’t thrill me as much as you might expect. I went on studying the check, hoping it would tell me something further. The space after For had been left blank. If only she had filled it in! I raised my eyes, finally.

  “Why?” I asked her again.

  “Oh …,” she said, and she turned away and reached for the percolator. “It just seemed the right course of action,” she tossed over her shoulder.

  “But you’ve always said I should pay it back.”

  “Oh …”

  “You said that was the right course of action.”

  She noisily ran water into the percolator.

  “You just want me to stay fixed in my accustomed role,” I said. “You would feel more comfortable if I went on being indebted.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” she told me, shutting off the water.

  “Now that I’ve repaid you, you’ve got nothing to hold over me.”

  “That’s absurd. You can never repay me.”

  “Pardon?”

  She wouldn’t answer. She made a big show of measuring out the coffee.

  “I just did repay you,” I said.

  She kept her lips clamped shut.

  “Eighty-seven hundred dollars,” I reminded her. “Every cent. In cold cash.”

  She wheeled on me. She said, “Do you honestly believe money will make up for what I went through? Visiting all our high-class neighbors, throwing myself on their mercy, pleading with them not to press charges?”

  “I never asked you to do that,” I said.

  “ ‘Well, Mrs. Gaitlin, we’ll need to think this over,’ ” she said, putting on a pinched and simpering tone of voice. “ ‘We’ll need to give it some thought,’ they told me. That insufferable Jim McLeod: ‘I doubt if you fully comprehend, Mrs. Gaitlin, what a rare and valuable object that ivory happened to be.’ They loved to see me beg! Upstart Margot Gaitlin. It goes to show, they were thinking: you can take the girl out of Canton, but you can’t take Canton out of the … ‘Just look at her son, if you need proof,’ they said. Oh, always you were my son. I suppose I felt that way myself. Jeff was more related to Dad, but you were related to me. You I had to personally apologize for. You think you can repay me for that? You can never repay me. Not with eight thousand, not with eight hundred thousand! Take your money back.”

  “Don’t you wish,” I told her, and I ripped the check in two. Then I made confetti of it, ripping it again and again and letting the little pieces flutter to the floor. My mother just stared—her mouth open, a spoonful of ground coffee suspended between us.

  I had imagined that we’d been shouting, but when I stormed into the dining room I realized none of the others had heard us. They were still lounging around the table, and all Jeff said when he saw me was, “Where’s the wine, bro?”

  “Oops,” I said, and I made a U-turn into the kitchen and retrieved the bottle. It was no affair of mine how much he drank.

  The Pilgrim candles were headless now, their shoulders curly-edged bowls of wax. They looked like torture victims. Wicky rose and blew them out, saying, “Let’s adjourn to the living room, shall we?” By the time Mom brought in the coffee tray, I was on the couch, playing a game of cribbage with Opal. I waved the tray off without looking up, and no one thought anything of it.

  Opal had learned cribbage just the day before, her first evening at my parents’, but already she was good at it. I felt kind of proud of her. “Fifteen-two, a run of three for five, and his nobs for six,” she said smartly. I never remembered to call the jack “his nobs.” I said, “Way to go, Ope,” and she sat back and grinned at me. With her legs tucked under her, you could see that the knees of her black tights were about to develop holes. I found that encouraging, somehow.

  I had this sudden, startling thought: Would Opal get a visit from her angel, somewhere on down the line?

  She was a Gaitlin, after all. Strange to realize that. She did have my last name and at least a few of my genes, even if they weren’t obvious.

  Wicky was rocking J.P. to sleep, humming something tuneless. Jeff was poking the fire. (Another patriarchal activity, I guessed.) Sophia sat next to Gram on the love seat, and Dad occupied the one remaining chair. So when Pop-Pop returned from a trip to the John, he had to nudge me down the couch a ways. “Ah, me,” he said, sinking heavily into the cushions. “How’s the car, Barnaby?”

  “Um …”

  As luck would have it, my mother approached him just then with the tray. “Coffee, Daddy? It’s decaf.”

  “Now, what the hell do I want decaf for? What’s the point of coffee if it don’t have any kick to it?”

  “Think how much better you’ll sleep, though, Daddy.”

  “Ha,” he said, b
ut he helped himself to a cup and stirred in several spoonsful of sugar, while she waited.

  “Jeffrey?” my mother said next, heading toward Dad.

  “Yes, thanks. I will have some.”

  She bent to rest her tray on the lamp table beside him. “Barnaby won’t let me give him back his money,” she told him.

  “Eh?” my father said.

  “His eighty-seven hundred. He won’t take it.”

  I felt Sophia glance over at me, but the others paid no attention. “Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, and a double run for twelve,” Opal announced, while Jeff set aside his poker and took another swig of wine.

  “I tried to give it back to him,” my mother said, “but he tore up the check.”

  “We’ll discuss this some other time, shall we?” my father said pleasantly.

  “I want to get this settled, though.”

  “Another time, I told you.”

  “What other time? We hardly ever lay eyes on him!”

  “Margot,” my father said. “Do you suppose we could make it through one holiday without your tiresome fishwife act?”

  Wicky stopped humming. There was a pause, and then my mother lifted her tray and proceeded back to the kitchen at a dignified pace. A second later, we heard the tray slamming onto a counter. A faucet started running. Dishes started clattering. Wicky looked over at Jeff, but he minutely shook his head, and so she stayed seated.

  Gram cleared her throat. “Sophia, dear!” she said. “Tell us! What dots your family do for Thanksgiving?”

  Well, at least they didn’t publicly demolish each other, Sophia could have said; but she told Gram, “Oh, nothing very exciting, I’m afraid. Usually, Mother’s two cousins come for dinner, along with one cousin’s husband. And then this year she’s invited my Aunt Grace from Baltimore too.”

  “She’s invited your Aunt Grace?” I asked.

  But I don’t think Sophia heard, because Gram was saying, “Isn’t that lovely! And will they be serving a turkey?”

  “Oh, yes. In fact, it’s kind of like you-all’s arrangement—a potluck—although Mother does assign specific dishes. For instance, Aunt Grace is bringing her chestnut dressing. She fixed it ahead of time, except for the baking, and I helped her onto the train with it, but Lord knows how she’ll manage at the other end of the trip.”

  “You helped her onto the train?” I asked.

  All this was news to me, I can tell you.

  Sophia sent me an absentminded smile. “The cousins are in charge of the vegetables,” she said, “and Cousin Dotty’s husband makes the pies. He’s an excellent cook, although in all other respects he’s considered something of a—”

  There was a crash in the kitchen, followed by the tinkling of glass. Sophia stopped short. The rest of us exchanged glances.

  Gram said, “Yes, dear? Something of a …?”

  “Oh! Something of a … ne’er-do-well, I suppose. But—”

  A metal object clanged so loudly that it gave off an echo, like a gong.

  “Maybe I should go out there,” Wicky said.

  “Stay where you are, why don’t you,” my father told her blandly.

  She sat back, drawing J.P.’s deadweight body closer against her.

  Sophia looked from one of us to the other.

  “Ne’er-do-well!” I said.

  Sophia said, “What?”

  “I haven’t heard that term in ages!”

  “You haven’t heard … ‘ne’er-do-well’?”

  “It’s almost Old English, don’t you think?” I asked the room at large. I had to raise my voice to be heard above the racket from the kitchen. “It’s almost something Robin Hood might have said! In fact, a lot of those bad-guy words are like that: so quaint and antiquey. ‘Ruffian.’ ‘Knave.’ ‘Wastrel.’ ‘Scoundrel.’ Ever noticed?”

  No one had, apparently.

  “ ‘Layabout.’ ‘Rapscallion,’ ” I said. “ ‘Scofflaw.’ ‘Scum of the earth.’ ”

  “ ‘Beast of burden,’ ” Opal offered unexpectedly.

  “Well, that’s a little off the subject … or maybe not, come to think of it. And ‘ill-gotten gains.’ ‘Misspent youth.’ Or, let’s see …”

  “ ‘Besetting sins,’ ” my father said from his armchair.

  “Right! Besetting sins. But it’s not the same for good-guy words, at least not as far as I’ve—”

  The telephone rang. We were all so relieved that every last one of us stirred as if to go answer it, but Mom picked it up in the kitchen. We could hear her intonation, if not her exact words. “Mm? Mm? Hmm-hmm-hmm.”

  Then she appeared in the doorway. “Barnaby,” she said—her voice noncommittal, her face composed, not a hair out of place—“that was that Martine person, and she says to tell you she has the truck but she’ll bring it by in the morning.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Pop-Pop asked, “What truck is that?”

  I said, “Oh, just the, you know, work truck.”

  “Fool kid sold off the Sting Ray,” my father told my grandpa.

  “He did what?”

  “Sold off the Corvette Sting Ray and bought a used Ford pickup.”

  Pop-Pop leaned forward on the couch to peer at me. I could feel his stare, even though I had my back to him. I turned and told him, “I was planning to mention that.”

  “You sold the Sting Ray?”

  He was so amazed, the whites of his eyes showed all around the irises.

  “Well, yes, I did,” I said.

  “Why?”

  I said, “I needed the money.”

  “The money, son: you could have borrowed money from me! I’d have been glad to lend you money!”

  “Well, see … the whole point was, not to be in debt anymore. Not to owe anybody.”

  Pop-Pop’s jaw went slack.

  “But, Barnaby,” he said finally. “That was the only year the Corvette had a split rear window.”

  “Oh, damn that split rear window!” I said. Then I said, “Sorry.” I looked around at the others. They all wore the same accusing expression—even Opal. (Or maybe I was imagining things.) “I mean,” I said, “I do know what a big deal it was, Pop-Pop—”

  “Shoot,” Jeff said suddenly. “It broke my heart when Pop-Pop gave the Corvette to you.”

  “It did?” I asked.

  “I would have killed for that car!”

  “You would?”

  I sat there a minute absorbing this, chewing the inside of my cheek. Dad, meanwhile, took over the conversation. “Of course, when I was Barnaby’s age,” he said, “I went out and worked if I needed money, but nowadays, it seems—”

  “With all due respect, Dad,” I told him, “you were never my age.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Times are different, Dad, okay? What I’ve experienced, you haven’t. And vice versa, no doubt. So you can’t compare us, is what I’m saying.” I turned back to my grandpa. “I’m sorry, Pop-Pop,” I told him. “Giving me that car was the best thing anyone’s ever done for me, and don’t think I don’t know that. But I’m trying really hard to grow up now, don’t you see? And I had to sell the car to get there. I hope you understand.”

  I could hear the rustle of Mom’s apron as she wrapped her hands in it. Then Pop-Pop said, “Why, sure, son. It was yours to do what you liked with.”

  After that we had a fairly normal evening, but that was just because all of us were exhausted.

  Sophia and I had driven over in the Saab, and we’d both assumed that I would go back to her house for the night, since the roommate was out of town. But on Jeff’s front walk I said, “Why don’t you drive, and that way you can drop me off at my place.” Then I felt the need to invent too many excuses. “I have to get to work so early tomorrow, and Martine won’t know where to pick me up, and besides, Opal mentioned something about breakfast____”

  Sophia just said, “All right,” and we set off toward her car. I got the impression she was glad, even. Probably she could use a night alone hers
elf.

  Earlier it had been raining, and now the air had a damp, chilly feel. The car windows misted over before we’d gone a block. I grew extremely conscious of how closed in we were. Our breaths were too loud, and the tinny sound of Sophia’s cake platter, sliding across the back seat at each turn, made our silence more noticeable.

  Finally she said, “You didn’t tell me your mother offered to give you back that money.”

  “How could I? It just now happened,” I said.

  “I don’t see why you refused it.”

  I stared at her. I said, “What: you too?”

  “It’s eighty-seven hundred dollars, after all. Think what we could do with that.”

  “Well, lots. Obviously. But that’s beside the point. I didn’t want to worry about that money anymore.”

  “So you’d rather I worry about money.”

  “You? How do you figure that?”

  “Well, I’m the one who couldn’t buy a new outfit for Thanksgiving because my money’s in the flour bin.”

  “So? Get it out of the flour bin. You said yourself you’ve been in touch with your aunt again.”

  “Oh, I knew you’d hold that against me!” she cried, swinging the car onto Northern Parkway.

  I said, “Huh? Hold what against you?”

  “She’s my aunt, Barnaby. I don’t have so many relatives that I can afford to discard a perfectly good aunt.”

  “Well, sure. I realize that,” I told her.

  “And it made me feel just awful, being on the outs with her. So I called her on the phone one day last week. I meant to tell you about it; honestly I did, but somehow it slipped my mind. I asked her how she was, and she said she had a cold. Well, what could I do? Hang up on a sick old woman? I went by to see her at lunch hour. I brought her some soup and some nose drops. I couldn’t just let her fend for herself!”

  “Of course you couldn’t,” I said.

  Did she think I didn’t know how these family messes operated? The most unforgivable things got … oh, not forgiven. Never forgiven. But swept beneath the rug, at least; brushed temporarily to one side; buried in a shallow grave. I knew all about it.