French Braid(27)

Clarence was older than his wife—gray-haired and mustached, with an ascot blossoming from the open collar of his shirt. Outside of English movies, Mercy had never seen an ascot. The sight gave her confidence. In a flash, she was able to place these people: newly settled in a house designed to be imposing, wearing clothes they’d bought expressly to live up to what they thought it required of them. “Your house is beautiful,” she told him, and this time her voice was firmer and she was smiling warmly.

After that it was easy. The Shepards settled on either side of her and she pulled paintings from her portfolio—a sunporch, a breakfast nook, and what she called a “music room.” (It wasn’t a music room; it was Alice and Kevin’s living room, but she instinctively altered her vocabulary to suit the circumstances.) With each one, as the picture’s focal point sorted itself out from the surrounding blur, Evelyn said “Ah!” but Clarence remained silent. “So this one,” Evelyn said of the so-called music room, “with the photograph on the end table; I’m guessing that’s a picture of the house’s original owner, am I right?”

She was referring to a photograph propped next to a conch shell: Kevin’s father or uncle or something in a visored Army cap, glaring belligerently out of a silver frame with infinitesimal silver beads around the edges. Mercy said, “Yes, an ancestor on the husband’s side,” and flipped to the next painting: her and Robin’s bedroom. A rectangle of bed, a slash of floorboards, and then part of a rocking chair with a nightgown draped over one arm, every wrinkle and stitch painstakingly defined.

“The essence of that house is a nightgown?” Clarence asked.

“Hush, Clarence,” Evelyn told him.

“And here we have my granddaughter’s nursery,” Mercy said. (“Nursery!” She liked that.) The sketchiest of vertical lines suggested the slats of Robby’s crib, but the braided rug it stood on was so detailed that the rosebud print of Mercy’s old sundress showed clearly in one of the strands.

“I just think that’s so unusual,” Evelyn said on a long sigh of a breath.

Clarence said, “Have you ever tried painting the whole scene in detail, instead of just one part?”

“Well, of course!” Mercy told him. “Anyone can do that. But I am aiming for something a little more meaningful. I want to zero in on the single feature that reveals a house’s soul.”

He looked worried. He said, “What if you decide that the house’s soul is a bathroom or something?”

She laughed. “I can assure you that’s unlikely,” she told him. Although actually, one of the paintings she hadn’t yet shown him depicted the green tongue-and-groove partition enclosing the little “maid’s toilet” in Robin’s basement workshop. She shut her portfolio with a snapping sound and gave Clarence another smile. “In any case,” she said, “you can always say you don’t want it after you see what I’ve done. You’ll have absolute veto power.”

Evelyn sat up straighter and clasped her hands and gazed expectantly at Clarence.

“Ah,” he said. “And…may I ask how much you charge?”

She had contemplated raising her price from one hundred to two as soon as she saw that grand piano, but she could tell now that he didn’t think much of her work. Meekly, she said, “A hundred dollars.”

He sent a look toward Evelyn. “Well,” he said. “All right.”

“Yes!” his wife said on another outward breath.

“Pending approval of how it turns out, of course,” he told Mercy.

“Of course,” she said.



* * *



—

On the first of November, a Sunday, Mercy phoned David. She chose late afternoon, figuring that was when he was most likely to be in his dorm; but even so, the boy who answered the phone took a long time tracking him down. “Garrett?” she heard him shouting, and then, farther off, “Hey, Garrett! Where you gone to, man?”

She was using the phone in the kitchen, and now she sat down at the table while she waited. It was a good sign, she thought, that the boy had called David “man.” It implied that they were friends. She looked across the room at Robin, intending to tell him this, but he was standing with his back to her in front of the open fridge, as if his only reason for being there was to get himself a snack. Perversely, she changed her mind and said nothing.

The connection was one of those where other conversations on other lines somehow threaded themselves into this one. She heard a tiny laugh, a faint “What?” So many happy, carefree lives going on elsewhere.

David said, “Hello?”

“Hi, hon!”

“Hi, Mom.”

“How’re you doing?”

“Doing fine,” he said. “Is everything okay?”

“Well, except we never hear from you.”

“Aw, I’m sorry. I’m just really busy,” he said.

“Are they giving you much work?”

“Yeah, they’re giving me a lot, but so far I’m keeping up.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“How’s everybody there?”

“We’re fine! You want to speak to Dad?”

“Sure.”

“Robin?” she said. She held out the receiver, and Robin turned away from the fridge with a show of surprise. “Your son,” she told him.