The Peacock Emporium(29)
There had been no question of her going into a home. The house had been hers. She might not have been born there, she was fond of saying, but she could see no reason why she shouldn’t die there. Even though the land was now farmed by tenants, and there was no longer much in the way of livestock, she liked to look out of her window and remember the past. It was a great consolation to her. Besides, Vivi occasionally mused, in a rare mutinous thought, why would she want to move anywhere else when she had a built-in cook-cleaner-chauffeur permanently at her disposal? Not even a five-star hotel would provide that.
The children, having grown up with Granny down the corridor and who, like their father, largely left their mother to deal with her, treated the old lady with a mixture of benevolence and irreverent humor, most of which, thankfully, she could not hear. Vivi scolded them for mocking her favorite phrases, or for their veiled references to the fact that she smelled not of Parma violets but of something rather more pungent and organic, but she had loved them too, for putting the old lady in perspective on the dispiriting days when Rosemary’s demands made her seem impossible.
Even her carefree, even-tempered son had to admit that Rosemary was not the easiest old lady. Irascible and opinionated, with a firm belief in tradition and an oft-spoken disappointment in her family’s failure to live up to it, she still apparently considered Vivi to be a kind of working guest in the house, even after some thirty years of marriage.
And, frail and forgetful as she was, she had not gone quietly down that good corridor. Rosemary’s already heightened emotions at the building of the annex had subsequently wavered between a stubborn resentfulness that she was being “pushed out” to a secret pride in her renewed independence. Vivi had carefully decorated the new rooms in a combination of French cherry stripes and toile de Jouy (the one thing Vivi had always been good at, Rosemary had been forced to acknowledge, was fabrics), and they were untainted by young people’s incomprehensible music, and endless streams of their monosyllabic friends, dogs, racket, and muddy boots.
This didn’t stop her making surreptitious and repeated references that she had been “cast out” or “shoved off,” occasionally in front of her remaining friends. Her own grandmother, she said pointedly, at least once a week, had taken over the good parlor as her living quarters, and children were allowed to go and pay court to her and occasionally read to her.
“I’ve got The Clubber’s Guide to Ibiza here,” said Ben, cheerfully. “That and Basic Tractor Maintenance.”
“We could dig out The Joy of Sex.” Lucy giggled. “Remember Mum and Dad used to hide that in their wardrobe?”
“Who’s hiding in the wardrobe?” said Rosemary crossly.
“Lucy!” exclaimed Vivi, blushing. She had bought it on her thirtieth birthday, in a last-ditch attempt to be something of a siren, back when they had been “trying” for Ben. Her husband had been rather shocked, then put off by the illustrations. “No wonder he’s grown all that facial hair,” he’d said dismissively. “I’d want to disguise myself after that little lot.”
Vivi did her best not to mind. She reminded herself constantly of all the good things she had: a beautiful home, wonderful children, a loving husband, so she endured Rosemary’s barbs and capricious demands, and left him in the dark as to their true extent. He didn’t like family discord: it made him retreat into his shell like a snail, where he would lurk, slightly crossly, until everyone else had “sorted themselves out.” It was why he didn’t like this business with Suzanna and the others. “Well, I think you should sit down and explain it to her,” Vivi had ventured, on more than one occasion.
“I’ve told you, I don’t want all that business stirred up again,” he would respond abruptly. “I don’t have to explain myself to anyone. Especially not to someone who’s just been given a bloody house to live in. She’s just going to have to learn to live with it.”
* * *
—
Suzanna stood on the front step of her parent’s home, as Neil took the bottle of wine and the flowers from the back of the car.
“You got carnations,” she said, grimacing.
“And?”
“They’re awful. Such mean-looking flowers.”
“In case it had escaped your notice, Suze, we’re not exactly in a position to be buying rare orchids. Your mum’ll be happy with whatever we give her.”
Suzanna knew it was true, but it didn’t stop her feeling ill-tempered. She had felt like this ever since they had pulled into the drive and she had seen the mustard-colored sprawling farmhouse, the huge oak door of her childhood. She could hardly remember a time when this house had been a comfort to her. She knew it must have, sometime before the differences between her and her siblings had become pronounced, before she could see them reflected in her father’s complicated gaze, and her mother’s overblown efforts to pretend they were invisible. Before they had been written, legally, into her family’s future. Her stomach lurched, and she glanced at the car. “Let’s go home,” she whispered, as Neil stepped up beside her.
“What?”
From inside came the distant sound of manic yapping.
“Let’s go—let’s just go now.”
Neil raised his eyes to heaven, his arms dropping exasperatedly by his sides. “Oh, for God’s s—”