Swags and falls of green silk almost cover the windows. Daytime, they turn the sunlight into soft green shade. The sofas and chairs are overstuffed, upholstered into flowering bushes, shaggy with long fringe along the bottom. The fireplace could be a campfire. The whole lobby, it’s the island in miniature. Indoors. An Eden.
Just for the record, this is the landscape where Grace Wilmot feels most at home. Even more than her own home. Her house.
Your house.
Halfway across the lobby, Misty’s edging between sofas and little tables, and Grace looks up.
She says, “Misty, come sit by the fire.” She looks back into her open book and says, “How is your headache?”
Misty doesn’t have a headache.
Open in Grace’s lap is her diary, the red leather cover of it, and she peers at the pages and says, “What is today’s date?”
Misty tells her.
The fireplace is burned down to a bed of orange coals under the grate. Grace’s feet hang down in brown buckle shoes, her toes pointed, not reaching the floor. Her head of long white curls hangs forward over the book in her lap. Next to her chair, a floor lamp shines down, and the light bounces bright off the silver edge of the magnifying glass she holds over each page.
Misty says, “Mother Wilmot, we need to talk.”
And Grace turns back a couple pages and says, “Oh dear. My mistake. You won’t have that terrible headache until the day after tomorrow.”
And Misty leans into her face and says, “How dare you set my child up to have her heart broken?”
Grace looks up from her book, her face loose and hanging with surprise. Her chin is tucked down so hard her neck is squashed into folds from ear to ear. Her superficial musculo-aponeurotic system. Her submental fat. The wrinkled platysmal bands around her neck.
Misty says, “Where do you get off telling Tabbi that I’m going to be a famous artist?” She looks around, and they’re still alone, and Misty says, “I’m a waitress, and I’m keeping a roof over our heads, and that’s good enough. I don’t want you filling my kid with expectations that I can’t fulfill.” The last of her breath tight in her chest, Misty says, “Do you see how this will make me look?”
And a smooth, wide smile flows across Grace’s mouth, and she says, “But Misty, the truth is you will be famous.”
Grace’s smile, it’s a curtain parting. An opening night. It’s Grace unveiling herself.
And Misty says, “I won’t.” She says, “I can’t.” She’s just a regular person who’s going to live and die ignored, obscure. Ordinary. That’s not such a tragedy.
Grace shuts her eyes. Still smiling, she says, “Oh, you’ll be so famous the moment—”
And Misty says, “Stop. Just stop.” Misty cuts her off, saying, “It’s so easy for you to build up other people’s hope. Don’t you see how you’re ruining them?” Misty says, “I’m a darn good waitress. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not the ruling class anymore. We’re not the top of the heap.”
Peter, your mother’s problem is she’s never lived in a trailer. Never stood in a grocery line with food stamps. She doesn’t know how to be poor, and she’s not willing to learn.
Misty says, there’s worse things they can do than raise Tabbi to fit into this economy, to be able to find a job in the world she’ll inherit. There’s nothing wrong with waiting tables. Cleaning rooms.
And Grace lays a strip of lacy ribbon to mark her place in the diary. She looks up and says, “Then why do you drink?”
“Because I like wine,” Misty says.
Grace says, “You drink and run around with men because you’re afraid.”
By men she must mean Angel Delaporte. The man with the leather pants who’s renting the Wilmot house. Angel Delaporte with his graphology and his flask of good gin.
And Grace says, “I know exactly how you feel.” She folds her hands on the diary in her lap and says, “You drink because you want to express yourself and you’re afraid.”
“No,” Misty says. She rolls her head to one shoulder and looks at Grace sideways. Misty says, “No, you do not know how I feel.”
The fire next to them, it pops and sends a spiral of sparks up the chimney. The smell of smoke drifts out past the fireplace mantel. Their campfire.
“Yesterday,” Grace says, reading from the diary, “you started saving money so you could move back to your hometown. You’re saving it in an envelope, and you tuck the envelope under the edge of the carpet, near the window in your room.”
Grace looks up, her eyebrows lifted, the corrugator muscle pleating the spotted skin across her forehead.
And Misty says, “You’ve been spying on me?”
And Grace smiles. She taps her magnifying glass against the open page and says, “It’s in your diary.”
Misty tells her, “That’s your diary.” She says, “You can’t write someone else’s diary.”
Just so you know, the witch is spying on Misty and writing everything down in her evil red leather record book.
And Grace smiles. She says, “I’m not writing it. I’m reading it.” She turns the page and looks through her magnifying glass and says, “Oh, tomorrow looks exciting. It says you’ll most likely meet a nice policeman.”
Just for the record, tomorrow Misty is getting the lock on her door changed. Pronto.
Misty says, “Stop. One more time, just stop.” Misty says, “The issue here is Tabbi, and the sooner she learns to live a regular life with a normal everyday job and a steady, secure, ordinary future, the happier she’ll be.”
“Like doing office work?” Grace says. “Grooming dogs? A nice weekly paycheck? Is that why you drink?”
Your mother.
Just for the record, she deserved this:
You deserve this:
And Misty says, “No, Grace.” She says, “I drink because I married a silly, lazy, unrealistic dreamer who was raised to think he’d marry a famous artist someday and couldn’t deal with his disappointment.” Misty says, “You, Grace, you fucked up your own child, and I’m not letting you fuck up mine.”
Leaning in so close she can see the face powder in Grace’s wrinkles, her rhytides, and the red spidery lines where Grace’s lipstick bleeds into the wrinkles around her mouth, Misty says, “Just stop lying to her or I swear I’ll pack my bags and take Tabbi off the island tomorrow.”
And Grace looks past Misty, looking at something behind her.
Not looking at Misty, Grace sighs. She says, “Oh, Misty. It’s too late for that .”
Misty turns and behind her is Paulette, the desk clerk, standing there in her white blouse and dark pleated skirt, and Paulette says, “Excuse me, Mrs. Wilmot?”
Together—both Grace and Misty—they say, Yes?
And Paulette says, “I don’t want to interupt you.” She says, “I just need to put another log on the fire.”
And Grace shuts the book in her lap and says, “Paulette, we need you to settle a disagreement for us.” Lifting her frontalis muscle to raise just one eyebrow, Grace says, “Don’t you wish Misty would hurry up and paint her masterpiece?”
The weather today is partly angry, leading to resignation and ultimatums.
And Misty turns to leave. She turns a little and stops.
The waves outside hiss and burst.
“Thank you, Paulette,” Misty says, “but it’s time everybody on the island just accepted the fact that I’m going to die a big fat nobody.”
July 12
IN CASE YOU’RE CURIOUS, your friend from art school with the long blond hair, the boy who tore his earlobe in half trying to give Misty his earring, well, he’s bald now. His name’s Will Tupper, and he runs the ferryboat. He’s your-aged and his earlobe still hangs in two points. Scar-tissued.
On the ferry this evening coming back to the island, Misty is standing on deck. The cold wind is putting years on her face, stretching and drying her skin. The flat dead skin of her stratum corneum. She’s just drinking a beer in a brown paper bag when this big dog noses up next to her. The dog’s sniffing and whining. His tail’s tucked, and his throat is working up and down inside his furry neck as he swallows something over and over.