Magnificence: A Novel Part 13

She was hoping it was Casey, and she took the wide stairs quickly, lightly, two at a time. But when she pressed the b.u.t.ton to talk to the driver he said, "I got a Angela here. Angela Stern."

She almost said Oh no right then. But instead she sighed, buzzed open the gate and went out front to meet them.

"Does she know where you are?" she asked Angela, as soon as she stepped from the taxi.

It could mean Merced's job, she was thinking.

"She fell asleep," Angela said.

"We have to call. She'll be worried sick by now."

Angela walked slowly, peering down through the dark at her footing as the taxi's headlights swept back. She was wearing a long winter coat, a coat she'd never have a use for in L.A., over a sheer lacy nightgown.

"So what went wrong?" asked Susan, a hand on her arm to steer. As they drew near the house again the motion sensors were triggered and the outside lights flicked on.

"It wasn't safe. It was unsafe," said Angela, and shook her head.

"Unsafe."

"What if she stepped on you," said Angela. "Those shoes-those shoes would be like daggers. They could stab me."

"Uh-huh," said Susan.

It took her a moment to register the words. And then she found Angela was standing there stricken. Her face looked white.

"I'm so sorry," she said, exactly as a person might who wasn't insane at all. "I shouldn't have said that."

"Don't worry. It's all right," said Susan.

Inside she sat Angela down in the kitchen, gave her a gla.s.s of water and called the apartment, where Merced picked up the phone right away.

"She'll stay with me," Susan told her, resigned. "She'll stay till Vera gets back. So have them call me as soon as that happens. Would you?"

She looked over at Angela, who was sitting very straight on her kitchen chair under a fish and holding her water gla.s.s carefully, with two hands. She put her to bed in North American Birds.

When the children returned, Angela was still there. They showed up at the big house one evening around dusk, while Susan and Jim and Angela were eating Thai on the patio beside the pool-though Angela was not eating. After the food arrived she'd decided she distrusted food of any "ethnicity" and had requested instead a Tom Collins.

Casey was brown from the sun and T. wore faded jeans. The three-legged dog loped along beside them.

"Oh, dears, dears!" called Angela joyfully. "How was the Mexican wedding?"

Susan rose as they approached the table, rose and put down her napkin.

"Good," said T., and rested a hand lightly on Casey's shoulder. "It was good."

7.

She wanted to show she was happy about the wedding news. And for the most part she was, or she would be when she a.s.similated the information-she felt a kind of rising antic.i.p.ation on Casey's behalf-but there was also petty confusion. Her pride was injured as much as her feelings. She would have been grateful for anything-the most nominal warning, the most casual tip of a hat.

"I didn't tell you because I didn't know," said Casey.

They'd gone to get a bottle of white wine from the kitchen. Susan didn't keep champagne in the house, so it would have to serve.

"But Angela did," she said, rummaging in a drawer for a corkscrew and trying to contain the seed of resentment. No whining; keep it pure and simple, be remembered well.

"Oh yeah?" asked Casey. Give her credit: it sounded like real surprise.

"She told me you were on your honeymoon," said Susan.

"Huh. Not exactly," said Casey. "In the first place, I only went along for the ride. At the last minute. I wasn't planning to. It was Baja-the Sea of Cortez. A whale stranding."

"A whale stranding?" asked Susan, looking up from the wine.

"A ma.s.s stranding. There were over twenty of them. Beaked whales, which is a kind that dives deep, I guess? They look like dolphins to me, they have those kind of long noses. Anyway the biologists inspected some of the dead ones and said they had these hemorrhages around the ears. They think navy sonar caused them. You know, the navy does this sonar in the ocean? It's for detecting diesel submarines, or something. So anyway the whale guys think the sound waves hurt whale brains. They get confused or they're in pain and it disorients them and then they beach themselves. They lie there baking in the sun and dying. It's one of the worst things I've seen. You wouldn't believe the smell."

"So what did you do?" asked Susan.

"We helped get some of them back in the water. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. Answer: I sat on my crippled a.s.s behind a folding table and handed out bottled water to the volunteers. Tame s.h.i.+t like that."

"But it's good," said Susan softly. "I'm glad you did."

"T.'s idea, he got on some kind of emergency phone tree for marine mammal rescue. He's on a bunch of lists now. Your basic Good Samaritan s.h.i.+t. Some of it's just giving out money. Like with the foundation. He just paid a bunch of poachers in Africa to stop shooting rhinos. They sell the horns to make into, like, fake Chinese aphrodisiacs. Now they're getting a salary for guarding the rhinos instead of killing them. Who knew?"

"That sounds like a great idea," said Susan drily.

"But with the whales I kinda got into it," said Casey. "It was a life-or-death thing. It had-I don't know. It wasn't nothing."

"You take the wine, OK? I'll take the gla.s.ses," said Susan, and handed down the bottle. She put five goblets on a tray and they started out of the kitchen, toward the patio. "So where did, you know, the getting-married part come in?"

"Spur-of-the-moment," said Casey behind her. "That was his idea too."

"You going to have a reception? At least a big party?"

"f.u.c.k if I know," said Casey happily. "Haven't thought about it. He's moving in, though. He likes my place better than his."

"I like it better too."

"He does things," said Casey. "You know. I miss how walking on sand used to feel. I was telling him that, after the whale thing was over. We were on our way out of town, we'd driven down to the sh.o.r.e to look at it one more time. So he picked me up and carried me down to the waterline and put me down and he got down there with me. And then we kind of crab-walked. We walked on our elbows. There were waves, you know, and I can't go fast on my elbows, I'm not built in the shoulders like Sal or someone. Anyway, I'm not going to say it was some romantic s.h.i.+t, because actually it ended up sucking. I mean after three minutes I was soaking and s.h.i.+vering, I had these scratches on my knees from dragging them, because there were pebbles in the sand too, s.h.i.+t, there were probably syringes, what the h.e.l.l would I know. And then the finer sand, for like days after that, was killing me. It got way down in my G.o.dd.a.m.n ears and I couldn't get it out of there. I was afraid it would do some damage, if you want to know the truth. To the ear drums or whatever. Then I'd be crippled and deaf. So finally I had to go to a Mexican doctor, on our way back up here, in some s.h.i.+tty border town crossing into Arizona where the doctors make most of their salaries selling Ritalin prescriptions to American turistas. For snorting, not for the hyperactive kids. I had to go to one of those guys and get my ear ca.n.a.ls irrigated. It was actually disgusting."

They pa.s.sed through the French doors, saw the other three talking and laughing at the poolside table.

"The guy tried to sell me a scrip for Ritalin just as an extra bonus. After he squirted six gallons of warm water into my ears."

"Sounds like T. showed you a really good time," said Susan.

"His heart was in the right place, though," said Casey.

As they drew near the table Jim glanced up, smiling. T. was smoothing a lock of his mother's hair behind her ear.

Family, thought Susan. She was surprised.

"Don't look now," said Jim, a couple of days later. They were on the tennis court, whose clay surface was far too cracked for serious players. Luckily they were not serious. They had two old wooden racquets from a closet in the rec room and a bag of dull gray b.a.l.l.s with hardly any bounce.

"Don't look where now," said Susan, walking up to the net.

"Outside the gate there's a guy with a camera, taking snapshots of us," said Jim, and bent down to pocket a ball.

She turned to look.

"Well s.h.i.+t. What did I just say," said Jim, shaking his head. But he didn't seem upset.

"Who is it? The cousins?"

Jim shook his head. "Doubt it. They have no incentive to doc.u.ment us."

"But then-who would?"

"I think maybe my wife," said Jim. "Apologies."

Susan had been reaching down for her water bottle, at the end of the net, but stopped and glanced up.

"Your wife?"

"Someone who's working for her, anyway. They're gathering ammunition."

"Ammunition?"

"For the divorce."

She lifted the bottle to her lips and gazed at him steadily as she drank.

"I had no idea," she said, after she wiped drops off her lips.

"It doesn't matter," he said.

"Can't she-you mean for alimony, or something?"

"Ha. No. There was a prenup. She's wealthy, her family made me sign it. Evidence of infidelity means I won't get anything."

"Oh," said Susan. They stood opposite each other, wooden racquets in hand, with only the net between them. The top of the net was cracked, like the court, its white hem barely holding together across the top of the sagging green mesh.

"Sorry for the invasion of privacy," he said, and gazed down at his shoes. They were Converse; Hal had owned a pair.

"I don't care," she said. "But are you-I mean we could call the cops or something, couldn't we? That's actually my property there, where he's standing. I think he might be trespa.s.sing."

Jim shook his head and shrugged. "I always knew it would happen. She's been waiting me out. Waiting for me to do this. For years. So now she's free to get rid of me. Even before, any settlement would have been minuscule. Fine with me. But she likes to win completely. She didn't want me to see a penny."

"So why did you-I mean, why did you stay? If you weren't in it for the money . . ."

"Why do you think," said Jim. "Let's. .h.i.t the ball, OK?"

He backed up.

"You love her," said Susan, nearly under her breath. "You love her even though she doesn't love you."

He stood and tossed a ball, waiting for her to move into position.

"I can't help it," he said finally, as she walked to the service line.

The ball came early, while she was still turning toward him to receive. It bounced and hit the fence.

Vera was not coming back; a sick relative needed her in New Jersey. Angela was upset by the news and sequestered herself in her bedroom.

"She won't eat anything but candy," reported Casey over the telephone. "She refuses to have anyone else come and stay. Except for T. or me, but we can't go there every night. She drinks water from her bathroom tap, out of the toothbrush cup. She eats these little bags of red licorice. She had them left over from giving out to the kids at Halloween and she took them in there with her and now she won't eat anything else. If you try to give her real food she lets it sit there and rot."

"Maybe," ventured Susan, "maybe it's time to consider-?"

"Not happening. We're not putting her in an inst.i.tution. First of all, she would hate it. And T. doesn't like the idea much either."

"I don't know what to tell you," said Susan. "Taking care of her is kind of a full-time occupation."

She was looking out the window at the backyard, where the guys who serviced the koi ponds were dipping tubes into the water to test it.

"Yeah. Yeah," said Casey distractedly. "No. It is. Plus T. wants to go to Borneo."

"Borneo?"

"Saving-the-rainforest deal."

"Huh. He's h.e.l.l-bent for leather on the nature stuff, isn't he."

"What can I say. He's always been a workaholic."

After they hung up Susan wandered out the back door, over to where a technician stood beside a pond with a small bridge arching above it. He was young, freckled and sported a crew cut. Once she might have seen him as a prospect.

"You don't happen to know anyone who could tear up a piece of concrete for me, do you?" she asked. "Who has a jackhammer or something?"

"I could find out for you," he said. "Sure. How big of a job is it?"

"It's pretty small," she said.

"So what's in it for me?"