Rebecca said, “Oh, thanks,” but then the door slammed open again, letting in Biddy’s contingent, and Rebecca stayed where she was.
Biddy had good news: her book for senior citizens, The Gray Gourmet, had been accepted by a small press. She announced this even before she took her raincoat off, with Troy and Dixon beaming on either side of her. The first to offer congratulations was Barry. “That’s great!” he said. “I’ve got an author for a sister-in-law!” Then Zeb asked what the publication date was. She didn’t know yet, Biddy said. Then everybody looked at Rebecca.
Min Foo said, finally, “Maybe we should break out some champagne.”
Rebecca said, “Oh. I’ll go get it.”
In the kitchen, she took two bottles of champagne from the refrigerator. Then she peeked in the oven to check on the turkey, and she lowered the flame beneath the potatoes, and after that she fell into a little trance at the window. The fog outside was made denser by the foggy panes, which were clouded with steam from the stove. Raindrops marbled the glass.
NoNo walked in and said, “Beck, I wanted to — Oh!”
She was looking at Will’s plant, which had migrated to the kitchen and grown another six inches. “Good heavens, it’s a tree!” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I’m thinking of moving it out to the yard,” Rebecca told her.
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that in November. The first frost would probably kill it.”
“What happens happens, is my philosophy,” Rebecca said.
She expected NoNo to argue, but NoNo was busy going through her purse — a shiny little red-and-black box that matched her red-and-black dress. “I wanted to show you something,” she said, and she pulled out a folded sheet of paper.
Rebecca opened it and found a list, computer-printed.
Dry cleaner
Make dental appointment for Peter
Find someone to clean gutters
Buy my bro. a birthday present
Till the mention of a brother, she had assumed the list was NoNo’s. She looked up questioningly.
“Barry wrote that,” NoNo told her.
“So…”
“He wrote that for me. These are the things that I was supposed to do last week.”
“I see,” Rebecca said.
“Beck. When you and Dad got married, did you ever… Don’t take this the wrong way, but did you ever wonder if he’d married you just so he would have help with us kids?”
Rebecca opened her mouth to answer, but NoNo rushed on. “I’m trying not to think that of Barry, but look at this list! And he’s always saying, ‘Boy, married life is great.’ He says, ‘Things are so much easier now. I don’t know what we did before you came along,’ and while naturally I’m flattered, still it does cross my mind that—”
“Are you saying you don’t think he loves you?” Rebecca asked.
“Well, I know he says he does, but… these lists! And the car pool, and the PTA meetings! Everything falls to me, which of course makes sense in a way because he does work longer hours, but… it’s like he’s saying, ‘Oh, good, now that I have a wife I don’t have to bother with any of that busywork anymore.’ It’s like I’m so useful.”
“But, sweetie,” Rebecca said, “isn’t he useful, too? Before, you were all alone in the world. I remember once I asked you why you never took a vacation, and you said if you had a man in your life, someone to travel with, you said—”
“Beck, you know how I get these pictures sometimes,” NoNo said. “Pictures behind my eyelids about the future. Well, the morning after my wedding, I was starting to wake up but my eyes weren’t open yet and I got the most distinct, most detailed, most realistic picture. I saw myself walking up Charles Street, that part where it splits for the monument. I was wheeling a baby carriage and I was wearing a maid’s uniform. Gray dress, white apron, white shoes, those white, nurse kind of stockings that always make women’s legs look fat—”
Rebecca laughed.
“I’m glad you find it amusing,” NoNo said bitterly.
“Maybe the point was the baby carriage. Did you think of that?”
“The point,” NoNo said, “was that I was wearing servant clothes.”
“Well, maybe the picture was wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time! After all, you predicted Min Foo would have a girl, didn’t you? And then something else, what was it, some other mistake—”
Too late, she realized that she was thinking of what Patch had said: that NoNo couldn’t be very clairvoyant if she’d chosen to marry Barry.
“At any rate,” she said, “doesn’t it seem to you, really, that all of us love people at least partly for their usefulness?”
“No, it does not,” NoNo said. “I would never do such a thing! Never! I fell in love with Barry because he was so gallant and romantic, and he had that kind of eyebrows I like that crinkle up all perplexed.”
“Well, I don’t mean—”
“Forget it,” NoNo told her. “I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned it. So! Shall I take these bottles out? Will two be enough, do you think?”
“Oh. Maybe not,” Rebecca said, and she went over to the refrigerator. “What I meant was—” she said, but when she turned around, a third bottle in her hand, she found that NoNo had already left the room with the first two. Her purse remained on the table, with the list beside it. Rebecca picked up the list and studied it again.
“Min Foo says to remind you she’s having club soda,” Biddy said, walking in. “Shall I pour it? Is there any in the fridge?”
“Yes, there should be,” Rebecca told her absently.
“What’s that you’re reading?”
“Oh, nothing.”
Biddy peered over her shoulder. “Barry’s list,” she said.
“You’ve seen it?”
“Everybody’s seen it. But it was tactless of her to trouble you with that, just now.”
“Tactless? Why?”
“Oh, no reason,” Biddy said hastily. “Never mind me; I’m just babbling.”
“I don’t know why people in this family are so unhappy,” Rebecca told her. “Look at Min Foo! I’m worried to death she’s going to get another divorce.”
Biddy merely shook her head and removed the ice bin from the freezer.
“Last week,” Rebecca said, “she told me this long-winded tale about something unforgivable that Hakim was supposed to have done. You’d think he’d committed ax murder! And all it was, was they were driving someplace together and Hakim took the wrong road and insisted on staying on it.”
“He didn’t like the inefficiency of a U-turn,” Biddy said. “That’s what she said he called it: the inefficiency.”
“Oh, she told you this, too?”
“He wanted to keep on the way they were headed and just sort of meander in the right direction at some point in the future.”
“But that’s the way men are,” Rebecca said. “It’s nothing to get divorced about.”
“I said the same thing, exactly.” Biddy dropped ice cubes into a glass. “I said, ‘Min Foo, you two should go for some help. Ask Patch for the name of her marriage counselor,’ I told her.”
“Patch has a marriage counselor?”
“I thought you knew.”
“All these problems!” Rebecca said. “Thank goodness for you and Troy, at least.”
Biddy stiffened. “Just because Troy is gay doesn’t mean we don’t quarrel like other couples,” she told Rebecca.
“How reassuring to hear that,” Rebecca said.