“Do we have to meet Mr. Kram?” Evelyn’s arms hung straight at her sides, and she was unafraid.
“I tell you he’s real. I’ll tape a Dun and Bradstreet to his face so you can read his balance sheet while speaking to him.”
Evelyn was tired of listening to him. “I hope you do something. From what I hear, you’re running it into the ground.” Then she walked away, skin crawling at this brush of his wings. She was entirely uncertain if she was widening the distance.
“Paul has offered to lend me his luggage for my trip,” Alice said, standing stocking-footed in the carpet beside neat piles of her travel clothing. “Isn’t that nice?”
“You’ve got your own luggage,” said Evelyn, somewhat shortly.
“Paul says it’s inadequate.”
“He does, does he? Well, Paul loves his luggage in an immoderate way. It’s some kind of English aluminum stuff, like aircraft material. He had a briefcase made out of the same thing, looked like robot luggage or something.”
“It’s very rugged. And, Evelyn, I am going to Alaska.”
“Mother, I don’t think it’s necessary to pack as if this were an expedition. I read the brochure, and it’s all a safe and pleasant illusion. If you don’t want to meet the natives—”
“On National Geographic they tossed people up in the air with a blanket!”
“—you can tough it out with a manicure and a facial.”
“Speaking of which, you look a fright.”
“We’ve been worming cattle.”
“You and Bill?”
“Yes.”
“Is he well?”
“You can’t hurt him with a crowbar.”
“A beautiful man on a horse.”
“What’s that?”
“Bill Champion,” said her mother, “rides well.” Then she moved quickly downstairs to the kitchen.
“Yes, but so did you,” Evelyn called, following behind.
“Long ago, angel, long ago.”
“I bet it’s still there.” She swept toast crumbs from the counter into her palm and slapped her hands together over the sink. “Bill said you were right there, right in the middle of it.”
“That’s very kind, but I don’t quite know how he thinks he knows.”
“Bill knows everything. Said, ‘Alice was a queen.’”
“Oh, my!”
“Mother, your face is red! That’s just the cutest thing!” Evelyn was elated that her mother was sufficiently undefeated by her father’s death to venture a blush. She picked up the swatter and nailed a fly against the window, fearful that as various intrusions began, this house would become like one of the hulks one saw along old roads. “I can’t believe all the health claims on these tea bags.”
Once in the living room, and while the tea steeped, Alice Whitelaw said, “You realize I had nothing to do with your father’s estate planning.”
“Of course I do, Mother. I don’t argue with it anyway. If you aren’t free to plan your own estate, I guess you’re never free.” She recognized her own perverse chipperness. Her hands were in her lap.
“Your father felt very strongly about the sanctity of marriage. He desperately wanted to see yours restored. And he was very fond of Paul.”
“Sanctity?”
“That will do, Evelyn.”
“Reconciling with Paul for the purpose of liberating assets? I don’t know.”
“Only I suppose if the rest of us should fall on hard times. Natalie nearly reduced to groveling as it is.”
Evelyn felt sick. “Mother, aren’t you worried about being with that many strangers? It’s not such an easy time for you, you know. But Alaska—”
“Right now, Evie, it is so very hard to be among familiar things. Of course I dread being with all those unknown faces, but if I can get over that, maybe I can begin to handle the rest of my life. Sometimes people get on these cruises and it’s all widows. And they have a refrigerated compartment for people who die en route.”
“Ugh!”
“Under normal circumstances, Alaska would seem just awful, but I need a change.”
Evelyn had come to the house hoping to talk her mother out of plans that, with Paul’s deluxe luggage, promised to be unstoppable. She found her courage touching, even though she knew the risk was reaclass="underline" a boatload of party animals hoping to meet the Eskimos; whale watchers with expectations aroused by Disney Studios; drifting, affluent boozers with alluring staterooms. She also felt a childish fear that her mother might return indifferent to her previous life and, especially, her own daughters. In fact, should her mother find real consolation, Evelyn would be, for all practical purposes, an orphan. She was ashamed of this thought that wouldn’t go away. Detachment. That’s what her mother wanted; and if her reaction to widowhood was a solitary vacation, shouldn’t she and Natalie simply admire her readiness? And be happy when she didn’t come home in the ship’s refrigerator?
“Mother, I never realized you were interested in Alaska.”
“Well, I haven’t been uninterested in Alaska.”
“But I don’t see any books or any—”
“As I said, it’s not an abiding interest,” Alice said patiently.
“Why not the Caribbean is I guess what I’m trying to say?”
“Can’t you just picture those types?”
“It’s practically winter up there. This doesn’t seem like the time of year to go that far north. Anyway, my thought would be to have some purpose in mind.”
“For what?”
“For the cruise.”
“Darling, I would appreciate it if you addressed me less sharply. I do have a purpose in mind, and that is to collect myself.”
“Which I say could be done more comfortably in the Caribbean.”
“Evelyn, I don’t wish to go to the Caribbean. I don’t wish to be cheek by jowl with the characters who are drawn to beaches and loud clothes, and that music which is just beating on things.”
“And what about people who’re drawn to Alaska, in their plaid shirts and down-filled whatever….” Evelyn was too exercised to go on.
Her mother gazed at her in long affectionate thought. She smiled. “Are you asking if I am hoping to meet someone?”
“I’m not ruling it out.”
“Evelyn, I don’t like it when you girls are devious. And no, that is not why I’m going. I’m very fragile just now, and I need a change. If I should find myself shipboard with excitable, harmless people or ninnies, I would be in frightening distress.”
“I understand.”
“You don’t understand. I have spent forty years under a certain roof.”
“Perfectly aware of the outer world,” said Evelyn, meaning to speak volumes with this suggestion whose impact was not easily seen.
“Perhaps.”
Upstairs, the piles of Alice Whitelaw’s clothing had seemed like the breastworks of a fort.
Evelyn rode up on a crippled bull standing out in a field of frost-killed mule’s ear and mullein, one swollen foot tipped up behind.
They’d left Bill’s house early after a coyote breakfast, which Bill defined as “a piss and a look around.” She remembered that before leaving he’d stood staring at his woodpile in thought, then gone back inside for some vet supplies he put in the saddlebags on his bay gelding. “That motley-face bull’s got foul foot,” she told him, and together they went back to the bull. Bill took down his lariat, moved his cigarette from the corner of his mouth to the front, cracked a kitchen match into flame with a thumbnail, cupped it around the tip, took a deep inhale of smoke and roped the bull. After tightening his loop, he let the lariat hang while Evelyn swung her rope and threw a trapping loop in front of the bull’s back legs. Bill winked through the smoke in approval, wrapped his lariat around the saddle horn and rode off slowly, rope tightening until it pulled the bull forward and his back feet tripped Evelyn’s loop and he was roped. Bill rode forward, looking over his shoulder as the bull slowly toppled onto its side. While his horse kept the rope tight, he half-hitched his lariat on the horn and dismounted; the bull watched his approach with a rolling white eye, slammed its head on the ground and gave up.