Rooms(12)

“Minna.” Caroline presses her fingers against her temples. It’s 9:30 a.m. and she’s on her first drink. She won’t be over the hump until her second or third.

“A drooping vulva,” Minna adds. She shakes her head and returns to wrapping up Richard’s collection of clocks. “Who would buy something like that?”

“Your father.”

“What did he think he would do with all of it?” Minna says, making a face. “It’s like a trash heap in here. Like one of those hoarder shows.”

“Your father wasn’t a hoarder,” Caroline says. “He was a collector. Be careful, Minna. Some of those clocks are valuable.”

“Junk,” Minna says, as she nestles a paperweight on top of a folded afghan, in yet another box. The boxes are slowly sprouting all over the house. “And more junk.”

“I’ve talked to Dani Sutherland,” Caroline says, keeping one hand on her temples and taking a sip from a plastic cup with the other. Screwdriver. Two parts vodka, one part orange juice.

Minna gives her mother a blank look.

“You don’t remember Dani Sutherland? Her son, Hank, used to babysit? Oh, well. Dani does realty now. She’s worried about the market. Says it might take two or three years to really get the price we want. We might get lucky, though, with a buyer from the city. I guess we’ll have to see.”

Minna rips off a bit of packing tape with her teeth. “Maybe we shouldn’t sell,” she says. “At least not right away.”

“Of course we’re going to sell.” When Caroline frowns, her face looks like a collapsed pudding.

“It’s not only your decision,” Minna says.

“Yes, it is,” Caroline says. “It’s my house now. I call the shots.”

Minna stares at her. “Trenton was right,” she says. “You really don’t care—about Dad and the house and all of it.”

“Please, Minna. Don’t be so childish. Of course I care. But I’m also broke. And you need the money just as much as I do.” Caroline takes a sip that nearly empties her cup. Now it makes sense: the ugly luggage, all that expensive clothing showing its age, cashmere spotted with holes.

Minna starts assembling another box, wielding the tape aggressively, as if trussing a live animal. “You should have married that guy—what was his name?—the one from the cosmetics family. Henry something.”

“Harry Fairfield,” Caroline says.

“Then you would have been set.”

“He had sweaty palms.” Caroline sighs. “Besides, you can’t fall in love with someone just because he has buckets of money.”

Minna snorts. “Isn’t that why you fell in love with Dad?”

“Minna. No. Of course not.” Caroline’s either shocked or doing a good job of pretending to be.

“He was ten years older,” Minna says.

“He was sophisticated.” Caroline’s voice gets quiet, and for the first time she releases her death grip on her forehead. “I loved your father. I did. He was just . . . ”

“An *?”

That’s the understatement of the century.

“Difficult,” Caroline says, scowling down at her drink. It’s nearly empty: pulp clings to the sides of the cup.

Minna opens the top drawer and makes a noise of disapproval. “Papers. Envelopes. Postcards. No order. No system.” She slams the drawer shut and moves on to the next one, then inhales sharply. “I didn’t know Dad kept a gun.”

“A gun?” Caroline repeats.

Minna lifts up a pistol slowly, holding it with two fingers, as if it’s a dirty sock.

“Don’t point that thing at me, Minna.”

“I’m not pointing it.”

“Put it away, please, before you hurt yourself.”

Minna rolls her eyes and replaces the gun in the drawer. “It’ll take weeks to go through all this stuff.”

Caroline stares at her cup for a minute. Then she looks up. “Do you have any happy memories here?”

“No.” Then, a pause: “Some. I remember you used to let me bowl in the hallway upstairs. Remember that? You set up pins and everything. And when it rained, we watched movies in your bed.”

“The Wizard of Oz was your favorite,” Caroline says. “You were always praying for a tornado.”

“And I remember Trenton learning how to walk. Then he wouldn’t stop following me. Jesus, it drove me crazy.”

Alice stirs; I hope she won’t start sniveling. You should have seen her when Caroline brought Trenton back from the hospital: a patchy red blob with a single tuft of hair growing from the center of his forehead, one of the ugliest babies I’ve ever seen. And the smells! Diapers, spittle, puke. Horrible.

But Alice just went to pieces. I’d catch her when she thought I was distracted, drawn close around his crib, singing nonsense songs and whispering to him as though he could hear.

“Do you remember the Christmas parties we used to have? Your father would sing. And you and Trenton always argued about who got to hang the angel. I remember you played the piano so beautifully . . . ”

“I hated the piano,” Minna says loudly—so loudly Caroline blinks.

“Did you?” she says. “But you were so good. Everyone said you would go to Juilliard.” She tries to shake the last remaining drops of liquid onto her tongue.