“It’s magnificent!” Kurt exclaimed. He was the kind of guy who would resist class distinctions on ideological grounds, yet instinctively think more highly of their family for bearing talismans of noble birth. Avery didn’t entirely buy into the notion of American aristocracy herself, whereas her sister aggressively rejected elitism as offensive. But Esteban had been right, back when the Stackhouses first moved in: all the Mandibles felt special, if only, in Florence’s case, special for refusing to feel special. Like the larger tussle over American “exceptionalism,” the family’s tensions over are-we-or-aren’t-we-special could now be put to rest. All the sumptuous fine craftsmanship in Bountiful House in Mount Vernon—the carved oak paneling, the curling banisters, the storied oriental carpets, the grand piano, the bone china for fifty—was officially reduced to an incomplete set of silverware and a sofa bandaged with duct tape. That should have been a little saddening, even to Karl Marx.
“If you want to head back to Carroll Gardens tomorrow morning and see what’s left to salvage,” Kurt volunteered, “I’ll give you a hand. Unless it’s still an inferno, scavengers will be all over that place within the day, and they’ll strip it clean.”
“You’re at least covered by insurance?” Esteban said.
Dad rubbed his neck. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Mom said.
“Our payments are up to date,” Dad said. “But I saw on the news last week that Titan Corp. has gone under. It’s a legal morass. I don’t know where that leaves us, but settling a claim could be messy.”
“You’d have a good case, if you haven’t been formally notified of cancellation,” Lowell said. “But Titan’s gone into Chapter Seven—total liquidation—and the line of creditors will be out the door. Even if you do get a settlement, it could be years before you see the money.”
“And it won’t be pegged to inflation,” Willing said from the stairwell. “In which case, a check for the contents of all three floors will buy you a cheap suit.”
“You’re just a one-note wonder, aren’t you?” Lowell told his nephew sourly.
“Why didn’t you tell me our insurance company was bankrupt?” Mom exclaimed.
“I was going to look into it.” Dad had that look of trying to control himself in front of other people, as if with no one else around he’d be screeching. “After I tried to give Luella a bath without drowning both of us, after I cut Luella’s nails if only to keep her from clawing my eyes out, and after I cleaned up the shards of the platter from Tuscany that we thought was on a shelf she couldn’t reach. Speak of the devil, someone had better go find her.”
Avery slipped off, checking the basement first, because she didn’t want her family’s few remaining possessions ravaged by a five-foot-ten enfant terrible. In her PhysHead practice, she’d treated patients with dementia. They’d been universally sweet and submissive, if perhaps lost or disconcerted, on occasion very insistent, but never, like Luella, reputedly, violent or destructive. So Avery had been skeptical of her parents’ accounts. Now that her own clothes were in danger of being shredded, it seemed prudent to take their version of events at face value.
She located her stepgran in the upstairs bathroom, where Luella was spurting shampoo in great decorative swirls around the tub, walls, and floor. Taking the bottle away from her was like wresting a tennis ball from the jaws of a rottweiler. Avery had found her parents’ practice of keeping their charge on a leash a ghastly violation of an adult’s civil liberties. Yet the nylon strap was invaluable for tugging the woman downstairs.
“The adventurer returns,” Avery announced, trying to sound jolly, then handing her youngest the nearly empty bottle. “Bing, honey? Unscrew the top, and see if you can scoop up any of the shampoo Luella accidentally spilled.” Rescuing shampoo was a perfect job for her thirteen-year-old. He couldn’t eat it.
“God, what’s that smell?” Goog said, glowering on the sidelines. Not fleshy, but with rounded corners—nose snub, shoulders sloped—he was blunt in every sense.
“I think she needs changing,” Avery whispered to her mother.
“I have no doubt,” Mom said. “But my house just burned down. Why are you telling me that?”
“Maybe Nollie should do the honors,” Dad said, accepting an ersatz screwdriver from his sister without saying thank you. “It’s her stepmother, too.”
“I don’t know how,” Nollie said flatly.
“I didn’t know how to fasten a square of old bedspread on a flailing grown woman two years ago, either,” Dad said. “You’ve always been a quick study. Everyone says so.”
“Oh, I’ll do it,” Florence said. “We have to remember, Luella’s not to blame. In a few years, one of us might need the same—”
“I’ve done it hundreds of times!” Dad cut her off. “Your aunt could do it once!”
Then the powwowing over where everyone would sleep. Kurt abdicated the sofa to the family patriarch and volunteered to doze in the armchair. Willing offered his room to his grandparents, suggesting Goog take Savannah’s mattress in the basement. When Mom wondered why on earth her granddaughter would be out all night, Avery pretended she hadn’t heard the question.
“And doesn’t our own Mrs. Rochester belong in an attic?” Dad proposed. He was seething so at his sister that you’d think it was Nollie who’d burned his house down.
“I’ll stay with Nollie,” Willing intervened. The suggestion was politic—Nollie wouldn’t permit anyone but Willing in her sanctum—but still left up in the air where on earth they’d bed down “Mrs. Rochester,” since Luella was the card no one cared to get stuck with in this game of Old Maid. Avery, for one, didn’t want their incontinent ward in the basement with a passion bordering on hysteria. After only a couple of hours with that harridan in the house, she now better appreciated the cravenness with which she’d always elected to do laundry in East Flatbush—anything but look after Luella so that her parents could enjoy a night off. Even now, guilt over having ducked geriatric babysitting was overwhelmed by a resolve to keep ducking it.
Yet as matters turned out, all the horse-trading over pallets and pillows was pointless.
The doorbell rang. The house was crowded, but with people who knew and, after a fashion (though it could be hard to tell), loved each other, the ground floor teemed with the energy of a big party. So when Avery went to answer the door, she proclaimed over the hubbub, “Are there any more relatives out in the cold we might have forgotten?” She said this gaily. That was the word, gaily.
She recognized the family through the peephole as neighbors from a couple of streets over—the Wellingtons, or Warburtons, something with a W. The woman (Tara? Tilly?) had participated in Avery’s last hand-me-down exchange, and had seemed grateful for Bing’s jeans (which, alas, he had outgrown on the lateral axis).
“Hello!” Tara/Tilly cried on the stoop, clasping her three-year-old to her breast. “We need help! It’s an emergency, please!”
Never rains but it pours. Having lobbied with unseemly fervor to keep Luella from bedding down in the basement, Avery welcomed an opportunity to act generous, and opened the door.
“My little girl,” the mother went on, bouncing the child. “She’s awfully sick. We have to get her to the hospital. We can’t find a taxi, and the ER at Kings County won’t send ambulances to this neighborhood because they’re getting hijacked. We’re so sorry to interrupt your evening, but I know you have a car…”