Evening in Paradise Page 16

  We got to find the mother, I said. I kept thinking about the Casey boy’s face, chalk white, so shook he could hardly talk. He said she was out celebrating. Claire Bellamy hadn’t gone out once, not in a year since they moved in. Casey looked scared and guilty. That’s how he looked, guilty. Where was she? Maybe he had murdered them both and buried their bodies without me seeing, though that wasn’t hardly likely. Maybe they were dead in the attic. I looked in the phone book for the Spanish American Club. No such place. Called the university and got hold of the names of her professors. None of them ever heard of the club either, but were all pretty shook about the baby maybe drowned. They gave me numbers of students and friends of hers, but none of them had heard of any celebration so then I really got to worrying.

  * * *

  Where was his gun? What if he felt cornered and shot into the crowd? You read about that all the time. I figured I better tell Bessie. We left Mabel Strom to keep on calling people from Claire Bellamy’s phone book while we searched the house with a fine-tooth comb. We went through all the drawers and closets but didn’t find the gun. In her room though, right there in the open were these drawings of her. Stark naked. Not a stitch on. Right there for those poor innocent children to see. And some poems talking about a silk breast and other such trash. Just about broke our hearts, so we ripped all the poems and pictures right up. She keeps a clean house, you must say, Bessie said, and that was the truth.

  The helicopter and the bloodhounds came about the same time. Awful racket, clattering and yapping. The Bellamy kids came tearing back from the ditch to watch the helicopter land in their backyard and the dogs sniffing them little red shoes. I told them they should be ashamed, having such a whale of a time, with their baby brother most likely drowned. They got serious for about two minutes, Nathan even cried, and then they took off across the fields after the dogs. There were crowds of people by that time so Bessie and me got busy in the kitchen. Lots of Claire Bellamy’s friends. Mabel must of called every name in Claire’s phone book. Two nuns from a school where she used to teach. About ten students from Rio Grande High came straight from the prom, in formals and tuxedos. Her professors came and her ex-husband came, in what turned out to be a Lotus. All the kids went out to look at the car. He was with a Frenchwoman who spoke French with the nuns. Then still another ex-husband showed up. That could have knocked us over with a feather. He was with his mother, a real battle-axe. Hate to have her snooping in my house. The first ex-husband had just got back from Italy, had never met the second one. But they were real polite, shook hands and one of them said, well, nothing to do but wait. There was plenty they coulda been doing, but I held my tongue. Two mean-looking Mexkins came. Then two nice ladies who knew the first mother-in-law. Then more professors came. They got really upset when bigmouthed Bessie told them it wasn’t just the baby feared drowned, that Claire Bellamy herself may have met foul play.

  The men came in tired from the ditch. Casey came back with the children, fed them, and took them upstairs to bed. The men all ate and then went outside to smoke and pass around a bottle, like at a party. Inside folks were eating and chattering away. Jed came up and asked me what was this darn fool talk about foul play. I told him about the romance and the breakup, how Casey had been lurking in the trees. When Casey came downstairs Jed and Wilt, the deputy, took him in the sewing room for about an hour. When they came out Jed said “You got holt of her yet?” and he and Wilt went back to the woods. Casey came at me, furious. I liked to a died. But he just said “You filthy bitch” and went out the back door.

  * * *

  I went home with Buck, to where he lived, weaving through his exercycle and rowing machine and barbells to his waterbed. Later he said, “Wow, that was good. Was that good for you?” “Yes,” I said, “I have to call home.” The line was still busy. Buck said he was starved. “Aren’t you starved?” Why yes, I was. We went to that truck stop on Lomas, ate steak and eggs and laughed. Pleasant. I was getting to like him. It was almost morning. The Journal truck came; the driver dropped off a stack of papers. Buck went to get a paper and check out the sports page. I was just glancing over the front page when I saw it at the bottom. CORRALES BABY FEARED DROWNED—DITCHES DRAINED. And then right below that it said Joel Bellamy. That was my son.

  Buck dropped me at my van and I raced home, through red blinking lights, yellow blinking lights. I didn’t cry, but my chest made a keening sound like wind. Just outside Corrales, at Dead Man’s Curve, I heard a noise and a rustle and then Joel said, “Hi, Mama!” He climbed over the seat and onto my lap. I skidded to a stop. I sat there, holding him, smelling him. Finally I stopped shaking and drove us the rest of the way home.

  The rest of that night is like a dream, and I don’t mean dreamy. Distorted and out of sync. People coming in and out of focus, out of context. Our land had turned into a vast nightmare parking lot. A policeman waved me to a spot with his flashlight. Betty Boyer was drunk on the back porch. “Welcome to This Is Your Life!”

  First off there was old Jennie Caldwell washing dishes, with Casey drying. He moaned, almost passed out when he saw Joel. Betty and I helped him sit down. He held Joel, rocking him, still moaning. Our house was full of people, strangers. No, they weren’t all strangers. People were running around yelling that the baby had been found, was okay. But after the initial relief and joy a bad reaction seemed to set in. As if everyone had been tricked, and here it was, four in the morning. One of the farmers said that leastways both other times they’d drained the ditches there’d been a body in them. In all fairness, everyone was on edge from exhaustion and worry. Still it did seem the only ones simply glad Joel was safe were Casey and Sister Cecilia and Sister Lourdes. Or who didn’t imply I was to blame for the whole thing. Even my own children felt that way. They had known I shouldn’t be going out anywhere. I don’t want to talk about my ex-husbands, Tony and John, or about my ex-mother-in-law. I ignored their malicious comments. The entire Spanish department was there, even Dr. Duncan, the chairman. He had been suspicious of me ever since that incident on First Street, but that’s another story. I am a very private person. Well at least I had showered at Buck’s and had eaten breakfast. I was refreshed, actually, but even that seemed to annoy people.

  The worst was Mr. Oglesby, from the bank. I had never seen him before. He was the person who called me if I had an overdraft. “Say, Claire, this is Oglesby, up to the bank. Better get some money in here, hon.” What was Mr. Oglesby doing in my kitchen? Two women I hadn’t seen since the baby shower for Keith, nine years before.

  The police finally got everyone to leave. They didn’t leave, though, sat down with me and Casey at the kitchen table. The goat and the pony put their heads in the window. I’ll go feed them, Casey said. You stay right where you are, the policeman told him. It was as if a crime had been committed. Where had Joel been when I left? Were the van doors open? No, I never did say Spanish American. Where had I been from two until four? Buck who? I told them I had called home, about seven times.

  “Now then, little lady,” Jed said, “if you didn’t know there was something mighty wrong down here … how come you kept on trying to call?”

  “Just to say hello,” I said.

  “Hello. You call up your babysitter at three in the morning just to say hello?”

  “Yes.”

  Casey smiled. He looked really happy. I smiled back at him.

  “Judas Priest,” the policeman said. “Come on, Wilt, let’s git out of this loony bin, git us some grub.”

  THE WIVES

  Anytime Laura thought about Decca, she saw her as if in a stage set. She had met Decca when she and Max were still married, many years before Laura married him. The house on High Street, in Albuquerque. Beau had taken her. Through the wide-open door into a kitchen with dirty pots and pans, dishes and cats, open jars, plates of runny fudge, uncapped bottles, cartons of takeout Chinese, through a bedroom, bumping into piles of clothes, shoes, stacks of magazines and newspapers, mesh sweater dryers, tires. Dim
ly lit center stage a bay window with frayed saffron nicotine-stained shades. Decca and Max sat in leather chairs, facing a miniature TV on a stool. The table between them held an enormous ashtray full of cigarette butts, a magazine with a knife and a pile of marijuana, a bottle of rum and Decca’s glass. Max wore a black velour bathrobe, Decca a red silk kimono, her dark hair loose and long. They were stunning to look at. Stunning. Their presence hit you physically, like a blow.

  Decca didn’t speak but Max did. His thick-lashed heavy-lidded stoned dark eyes looked deep into Laura’s. He rasped, “Hey, Beau, what’s happening?” Laura couldn’t remember anything after that. Maybe Beau asked to borrow the car or some money. He was staying with them, on his way to New York. Beau was a saxophone player she had met by chance, walking her baby in his stroller on Elm Street.

  Decca. How come aristocratic Englishwomen and upper-class American women all have names like Pookie and Muffin? Have they kept the names their nannies called them? There is a news reporter on NBC called Cokie. No way is Cokie from a nice family in Ohio. She is from a fine old wealthy family. Philadelphia? Virginia? Decca was a B——, one of the best Boston families. She had been a debutante, studied at Wellesley, was partly disinherited when she eloped with Max, who was Jewish. Years later, Laura too had been disinherited when her family heard of her own elopement with Max, but they relented when they realized how wealthy he was.

  Decca called around eleven that night. Laura’s sons were asleep. She left them a note and Decca’s number in case one of them woke up, said she’d be back soon.

  The reason it always seems like a stage set, she told herself, is because Decca never locks her doors and never gets up to answer the doorbell or a knock. So you just go in and find her in situ, stage right, in a dim light. At some point, before she sat down and started drinking, she had lit a piñon fire, candles in niches and kerosene lanterns whose soft lights catch now in her cascading silken hair. She wears an elaborately embroidered green kimono over a still lovely body. Only close up can you see that she is over forty, that drink has made her skin puffy, her eyes red.

  It is a large room in an old adobe house. The fire reflects in the red tile floor. On the white walls are Howard Schleeter paintings, a Diebenkorn, a Franz Kline, some fine old carved Santos. Underwear dangles from a John Chamberlain sculpture. Over the baby’s crib in a corner hangs a real Calder mobile. If you looked you could see fine Santo Domingo and Acoma pots. Old Navajo rugs are hidden beneath stacks of Nations, New Republics, I. F. Stone’s Weeklys, New York Times, Le Monde, Art News, Mad magazines, pizza cartons, Baca’s takeout cartons. The mink-covered bed is piled with clothes, toys, diapers, cats. Empty straw-covered jugs of Bacardi lie on their sides around the room, occasionally spinning when cats bat at them. A row of full jugs stands next to Decca’s chair, another by the bed.

  Decca was the only female alcoholic Laura knew that didn’t hide her liquor. Laura didn’t admit to herself yet that she drank, but she hid her bottles. So her sons wouldn’t pour them out, so she wouldn’t see them, face them.

  If Decca was always set onstage, in that great chair, her hair in the lamplight shining, Laura was particularly good at entrances. She stands, elegant and casual in the doorway, wearing a floor-length Italian suede coat, in profile as she surveys the room. She is in her early thirties, her prettiness deceptively fresh and young.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Decca says.

  “You called me. Three times, actually. Come quick, you said.”

  “I did?” Decca pours some more rum. She feels around under her chair and comes up with another glass, wipes it out with her kimono.

  “I called you?” She pours a big drink for Laura, who sits in a chair on the other side of the table. Laura lights one of Decca’s Delicados, coughs, takes a drink.

  “I know it was you, Decca. Nobody else calls me ‘Bucket Butt’ or ‘Fat-Assed Sap.’”

  “Must have been me.” Decca laughs.

  “You said to come right away. That it was urgent.”

  “How come you took so long, then? Christ, I’m operating in total blackout now. You still on the sauce? Well, yeah, that’s obvious.”

  She pours them both more rum. Each of them drinks. Decca laughs.

  “Well, you learned how to drink, anyway. I remember when you two were first married. I offered you a martini and you said, ‘No thanks. Alcohol gives me vertigo.’”

  “It still does.”

  “Weird how both his wives ended up lushes.”

  “Weirder still we didn’t end up junkies.”

  “I did,” Decca says. “For six months. I got into drinking trying to get off of heroin.”

  “Did using make you closer to him?”

  “No. But it made me not care.” Decca reaches over to an elaborate stereo system, changes the Coltrane tape to Miles Davis. Kind of Blue. “So our Max is in jail. Max won’t handle jail in Mexico.”

  “I know. He likes his pillowcases ironed.”

  “God, you’re a ditz. Is that your assessment of the situation?”

  “Yeah. I mean if he’s like that about pillowcases, imagine how hard everything else will be. Anyway, I came to tell you that Art is taking care of it. He’s sending down money to get him out.”

  Decca groans. “Christ, it’s all coming back to me. Guess how the money is getting there? With Camille! Beau was on the plane with her to Mexico City. He called me from the airport. That’s why I called you. Max is going to marry Camille!”

  “Oh, dear.”

  Decca pours them both more rum.

  “Oh, dear? You’re so ladylike it makes me sick. You’ll probably send them crystal. You’re smoking two cigarettes.”

  “You sent us crystal. Baccarat glasses.”

  “I did? Must have been a joke. Anyway, Camille told Max they’re going to Acapulco for their honeymoon. Just like you did.”

  “Acapulco?” Laura stands up, takes off her coat and throws it on the bed. Two cats jump off. Laura is wearing black silk pajamas and slippers. She is weaving, either from emotion or so much rum. She sits.

  “Acapulco?” She says this sadly.

  “I knew that would get you. Probably to the same suite at the Mirador. The scent of bougainvillea and hibiscus wafting into their room.”

  “Those flowers don’t smell. Nardos would be wafting.” Laura holds her head in her hands, thinking.

  “Stripes. Stripes from the sun through the wooden shutters.”

  Decca laughs, opens a new jug of rum and pours.

  “No, Mirador is too quiet and old for Camille. He’ll take her to some jive beach motel with a bar in the swimming pool, the stools underwater, umbrellas in the coconut drink. They’ll drive around town in a pink Jeep with fringe on it. Admit it, Laura. This pisses you off. A dumb file clerk. Tawdry little tart!”

  “Come on, Decca. She’s not so bad. She’s young. The same age as each of us were when we married him. She’s not exactly dumb.”

  This fool is genuinely kind, Decca thought. She must have been so kind to him.

  “Camille is dumb. God, but so were you. I knew you loved him, though, and would give him sons. They are beautiful, Laura.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  I am dumb, Laura thought, and Decca is brilliant. He must have missed Decca a lot.

  “I wanted a baby so badly,” Decca says. “We tried for years. Years. And fought over it, because I was so obsessed, each of us blaming the other. I could have killed that OB/GYN Rita when she had his baby.”

  “You know she researched all over town and picked him. She didn’t want a lover, just a baby. Sappho. What a name, no?”

  “Weird. Weirder is years after we’re divorced and I’m forty years old, I get pregnant. One night, one damn night, no maybe ten blooming minutes in mosquito-infested San Blas I fuck an Australian plumber. Bingo.”

  “Is that why you named your baby Melbourne? Poor kid. Why not Perth? Perth is pretty.” Unsteadily, Laura gets up and goes to look at the child. She
smiles and covers him.

  “He’s so big. Wonderful ginger hair. How is he doing?”

  “He’s great. He’s a pretty damn great kid. Starting to talk.”

  Decca stands, stumbles slightly as she crosses the room to check on the child and then goes to the bathroom. Laura finishes her drink, starts to stand and go home.

  “I’ll be going now,” she says to Decca when she comes back.

  “Sit down. Have another drink.” She pours. They are drinking from ludicrously small teacups considering how often they are refilled.

  “You don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of this situation. Now, I’m fine, set for life. I got a huge divorce settlement plus I have family money. What about any inheritance for your children? This woman will wipe him out. You were a fool not to get child support. Blithering fool.”

  “Yeah. I thought I could support us. I had never had a job before. His habit was eight hundred dollars a day and he was always wrecking cars. So I just got money for their college funds. You want to know the honest truth? I didn’t think he could possibly live much longer.”

  Decca laughs, slapping her knee. “I knew you didn’t! What’s her name, she didn’t want any child support either. Old lawyer Trebb called me after your divorce came through. He wanted to know why it was that all three of us women had gigantic life insurance policies from Max.”

  Decca sighs, lights up a fat joint that had been lying on the table. It sputters and crackles; little flames make three big holes in her lovely kimono. One right in the middle of the Italy-shaped rum stain. She beats on them, coughing, until the fires are out, passes the joint to Laura. When Laura inhales, she too creates a little shower of sparks that burn holes in her silk top.