“He called me that too. And that’s bullshit about him not caring. Remember, you were the one he was talking about when he had the stroke.”
My sister closed her eyes. “Oh God, Sally,” she said. “You actually believed that. I made it up. Didn’t you know?”
“Were you lying then or are you lying now?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I wanted to strangle her. I could have at least slapped her face, right in the restaurant in front of all those people. But I didn’t. Because the truth was, my sister was right. It didn’t matter. I’d wanted her to say she was sorry, I had wanted to forgive her. It was clear to me now that this would never happen.
I said: “You know, if he had tried to do it to you, I would have told Ma.”
My sister was silent.
“When he did it to me, I could stand it. For you I would have told.”
“I don’t believe you.” Marty stubbed out her cigarette and lit another.
“You’re my sister.”
She looked away. It was the old story: Yes, I’m your sister but I’ll never be you, thank God.
I said, “I give up. I guess it’s just impossible for you to understand.”
We sat in silence for a while before our untouched plates. Finally my sister asked, “So, you going to the lingerie shower?”
“What lingerie shower?” It was by the greatest effort that I kept my tone as casual as hers.
“The one Mimi Sung’s giving for Grace.”
“Grace?”
“You know, Xiao Lu’s Grace. I met her, you know. Ma invited her and Aunty Winnie to tea.”
“Wasn’t Nai-nai’s cousin named Grace?”
“It’s just one of those Chinese names, like Pearl or Ruby. We’re lucky they wanted us to be so assimilated.”
“I didn’t get an invitation so I guess I’m not going.”
“They called people. I bet you’re not picking up your phone again. Anyway, you have to go out and buy a piece of lingerie, size six, she likes red and pink. She looks like the type to wear sexy underwear. You know, like the magazines say, prim and proper on the outside and a whore underneath. I think we should get her a Merry Widow with a hole cut out in the crotch. Can you imagine Xiao Lu’s face?”
“I have a theory about this shower,” I said. “I think it’s just a cover.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think Grace is the one who is going to wear the lingerie.”
It wasn’t that funny, but we both started to giggle until we were out of control, until we were laughing so hard I thought our hearts might break.
I thought, She’s not the only liar in the family. I had lied too. Both of us had lied all our lives, by omission and creation, about what our father was to us.
26
When I got back from Chinatown there was a message on my machine from Mel telling me to call him right away. His voice was higher pitched than I remembered, the tone a little distant. This time it was he, not his mother, who picked up. “How are you?” he asked.
“Oh, just dandy.”
“I deserved that,” he said. “I’m sorry I haven’t called. I have some bad news. It’s Douglas. He’s dead. He killed himself.”
“How?” I asked.
“They think he drank himself to death.”
“What?”
“He was renting this cabin in the Poconos and when his lease ran out the manager went to see why he hadn’t checked out. At first they couldn’t figure out what happened, and then when they did the autopsy they found a lethal dose of alcohol in his blood.”
I was thinking that finding a dead person must change you forever.
“Are you okay, Sal?”
“Yes. I’m surprised he didn’t use a gun, that’s all. Since he really meant it.”
“His dad said they found an old bear rifle in the cabin, but it hadn’t been fired.”
“So God is capable of mercy.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Sal, the funeral’s Monday. I think I’m going.”
“I’m sorry. I know you guys were friends.”
“Are you interested in coming?”
“I didn’t know him that well.”
“I realize that. I’m asking for me, honey. For moral support.”
“This is kind of sick, isn’t it? Trying to con me into attending a funeral when you don’t even bother calling to say hi?”
“Lillith is going to be there.”
I didn’t say anything.
“If you take the train up I’ll drive you back to the city.”
“All right,” I said.
Greenwich was the first stop, an hour from New York. Since it was off-peak I got a triple seat to myself in the back of the car—I could tell that it used to be a smoking one because it was never possible to completely get the smell out of the upholstery. I thought of Uncle Richard and all our illicit cigarettes together. I’d sent him a postcard of the Statue of Liberty doing a jig, telling him that I had a feeling my fortunes were going to change. It’s not coincidence that fortune means both luck and money, he’d informed me once.
There was a girl several seats ahead of me, sprawled out with her socked feet up on the seat. She was intently reading a Penguin paperback, making notes in it with a fat pen. She looked smart, serious, unstoppable. Her shoulder-length dark hair needed washing, and she had on a Yale sweatshirt. When the conductor came by she handed him her ticket without looking up. I couldn’t remember ever in my life feeling as confident as she looked.
The other people in my car were a family, a mother and three kids—two young daughters and a baby whose sex was indeterminate because it was bald and wearing a yellow blanket. The two little girls, in party dresses with sashes and patent leather Mary Janes, kept getting out of their seats and running up and down the aisle. “How much longer?” “Where are we now?” they kept asking, and their mother said to me apologetically, “We usually drive.”
They got off at my station, leaning out over the platform as the train slowed down, so that I automatically reached over and took the smaller one by the shoulders. She ignored me and began screaming: “There he is! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” As we got off, I heard the older one whisper to her mother, “Mommy, what’s the matter with that lady?”
By the time the cab dropped me off in front of the church I had regained my composure. Standing at the back of the chapel, I spotted Mel in a pew toward the back. When I slid in beside him he smiled, took my hand, and gave it a squeeze. He was wearing a pale gray linen suit—I hadn’t known he owned a suit—and the sapphire stud in his ear. The white cuffs of his shirt looked so soft and spotless I wanted to stroke them. Unlike me, he seemed perfectly at home in church. His parents were strict Roman Catholics. He’d told me once that he still felt guilty using condoms.
I didn’t recognize the woman on his other side until she leaned and mouthed “Hi” and I realized with a shock that it was Lillith. She had gained at least twenty-five pounds, had her hair up in a tortoiseshell clip, and was wearing gold shell earrings, all of which gave her an almost matronly look. But her wrists and ankles and those tiny feet in their navy pumps were just as breakably delicate as I’d remembered.
My main feeling about the service was that it had little to do with the Douglas I had known. The old Episcopal chapel, chilly enough to make you shiver although it was over eighty degrees outside, the friends and relatives with their long faces that seemed designed for mourning, the dark burnished coffin with brass handles like furniture, covered with sprays of white lilies, like Easter. Subdued, conservative, in the best of taste—everything Douglas would have loathed. I tried to remember if my father’s coffin had had flowers. Somehow I thought so, but I, who had such an eye for detail, couldn’t conjure the scene up in my mind.
The minister kept calling Douglas “this young man,” which made me wonder if the guy had even known him. “Let not this young man’s sufferings have been in vain.” I thought about that night in the hallway when Douglas had dragged me into the phone booth, the smell and feel of him, which was not so different from other boys after all. Then I remembered my last session with Valeric, when I’d told her about Fran and my irrational disappointment that it was not me she had fallen in love with. My shrink had said very gently: “Sally, there is caring and attention in this world that is not sexual.”