Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk(74)

I’m failing with Jason. Looking at him is like looking at a mirror, a haunted-house mirror that reflects everyone as a corpse.

If I don’t take his hand, then I am what he says I am, and he wins. If I do, then I’m only doing it to prove something and the encounter is just about me; he remains hidden behind his curtain of contempt.

But that is his right, I suppose.

And I hate to lose.

I step forward with a smile. “All right, Jason,” I say. “Today is as good a day to die as any. Happy New Year.”

“Holy shit!” he says. “Nancy’s a fucking samurai!”

“Lillian!”

It’s Wendy, who’s caught sight of me and rushed over. “I can’t believe you came!” she says. “I’m so glad you made it!”

Jason cries out and throws up his hands in mock frustration, playing to an imaginary crowd that’s cheering him on. “Saved by the bell, Nancy!” he says.

Wendy glares at him, takes my arm with one hand and my parcels with the other, and steers me away. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s get you over here among people who can appreciate you.”

She leads me along a wall of boarded-up windows to an enormous table of unfinished wood, nicked and paint-stained. She’s speaking but I don’t catch what she says; she’s already begun to fix me a drink when I realize my right hand is still extended, chilled by the lack of what it never touched. I let it fall to my side.

Wendy leans toward me in the festive din of the year’s final hour. “I hope you’ll forgive me for being a bad hostess,” she says. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

“That’s all right,” I say. “It’s a busy scene.”

“I’m sorry about Jason,” she says. “He’s really angry.”

She is wearing a skinny black tie over her usual white top. It looks nice.

“I’m sure he has his reasons,” I say.

“I guess he does.” She pulls out a chair. “Here, have a seat. We can just drape your coat—which is fabulous, by the way—right over the back.”

I sit, and take the cup she hands me. The mink brushes the base of my neck, like a shy pet I’m sheltering.

Wendy sits next to me, opening the bags I brought, withdrawing the potato chips and mazapan that C. J. sold me, brightening when she sees the candy, clutching it with both hands like a thrilled child. “I love these things!” she says. As I’d guessed she would.

Her fingers can’t manage the knots that bind the amaryllis, and all her sharp blades are in the kitchen, but I don’t let her leave, knowing that if she goes back there it’ll be past midnight before I see her again. I pass her the Swiss Army Knife that I keep in my purse—the real thing, a 1961 model, not the upmarket renditions that junior executives affecting rugged resourcefulness have taken lately to carrying—and she uses it with ease and skill.

A few grains of soil have fallen between the pot and its cellophane shroud, but not many. Wendy peels the wrapping away, then looks up with curious eyes.

“Hope you like dirt!” I say.

She laughs. “Is it a bulb?”

“Dutch amaryllis, I’m told. If it turns out to be cannabis instead, I trust you’ll forget who gave it to you.”

“Amaryllis is a lily, right?” she says. “Lilies from Lillian! I can’t wait for it to sprout. It’ll remind us of you every day!”

I think—but do not say—that it puts me in mind of a different Lily, my granddaughter, who’s a far more apropos analogue: a green shoot rather than a brown husk. Instead I just smile.

“Where did you find all this great stuff?” Wendy asks, placing the pot at the table’s center amid empty bottles and abandoned cups, then opening the mazapan. “You must have been running around all afternoon.”

“I made one stop,” I say. “About fifteen minutes ago. At that Filipino grocer and florist on Greenwich, just south of Jackson Square. Do you know it?”

She shakes her head. “I walk by there all the time, but I don’t think I do.”

“The young man who works there, C. J., is a smart cookie and a class act. The bulb was his idea. If it gives you any trouble, he’ll sort things out.”

Wendy is aglow with gratitude, but also scattered, betraying every good host’s concerns: new arrivals to be welcomed, refreshments to be refreshed, oddball guests to be moored with companionable others so she can attend to her duties.

“Don’t let me ensnare you,” I say. “If I keep monopolizing your time I’m afraid I’ll get indicted for unfair trade practices. I fully expected to be a demographic outlier at this shindig by a solid half-century, so there’s no need to fuss over me at others’ expense.”

“But I’m so thrilled you’re here!” says Wendy. “I want to introduce you to everyone, so they can all see how great you are.”

I can tell she means it, but even adjusted for drunkenness, her smile shows melancholy and worry out of proportion to the circumstances of an old woman’s surprise arrival.

I peek at my watch: 11:20. “Well, nuts,” I say. “I am, I fear, unequal to your ambitions. It’s hours past my usual bedtime. I’d settle for an audience with that husband of yours, though. I admired his paintings on the way in and now I’d like to meet him.”