The Paper Palace(103)

“I meant, you are being disgusting.” I laugh.

“Don’t be such a prude.”

“I don’t want to talk about Dixon’s sex life. He must be almost eighty.”

From across the lawn, Dixon waves to us. Mum waves back. “He’s still a very attractive man. He could have any woman he wants.”

“Any woman over sixty-five.”

“Don’t be so sure. He’s always been very sexual.”

“And now I’m stuck with an image of Andrea with a penis in her mouth.”

“At least it means she’s not talking. Can you be an angel and get me a vodka? Rocks, no soda.” She sits down in an Adirondack chair. “And if you happen to see any peanuts. Oh, thank God,” she says as she sees Pamela approaching. Pamela is wearing a long lavender caftan and chunky amber beads. “Pamela, sit.” She pats an empty chair next to her. “Save me from these people.”

Pamela laughs at Mum in her lovely, good-natured way. She thinks my mother is wonderful, for reasons I cannot fathom. But then, Pamela is the kind of person who always sees the best in everyone. Even Conrad.

The summer after Conrad moved in with us, Pamela took me and Anna into town for fried clams. “Now then, you two,” she said when we’d settled into a booth, “I want all the news. Is Leo behaving himself? He can be a bit of a scoundrel, that one. But what a lovely man. Your mother seems exactly herself, as always.”

“I think they’re okay,” I said.

“And Conrad? It must be a bit of an adjustment having a brother.”

“Stepbrother,” I said.

“Do you want the truth or the lie?” Anna said.

“I’ll leave that up to you. Clam strips or whole bellies?”

In the end, we decided on the truth.

We told her how awful he was. How he was always creeping around. Stood at the icebox drinking milk straight from the carton so neither of us could ever have cereal for breakfast. The gross pubescent beard that he refused to shave.

“He uses up all the hot water every morning,” Anna said. “Jerking off in the shower. It’s disgusting. I mean . . .”—she put her finger down her throat, pretending to gag—“imagine what he’s thinking about.”

I was sure Pamela would be horrified. Instead, she told Anna she sympathized—the situation sounded positively beastly. Was it possible, though, that Anna might be blaming Conrad for her having been sent away to boarding school, Conrad’s taking over her bedroom? “Because,” Pamela said, “however repugnant his behavior, that is not his fault. In fact, it’s the last thing on earth he wanted. All he wanted was for his mother to love him. So, if you can, try to remember that he is suffering. Be kinder. Both of you.” She bit into a clam belly, squirting juice all over the table. “You have the most beautiful eyes, Anna. I’m always meaning to tell you. That pale gray. If you see our waitress, I need hot sauce.”



* * *



—

Dixon is manning two kettle-shaped Webers, dressed, as always, in white duck pants and a blue linen shirt, barefoot and tan, tongs in one hand, a martini in the other, not a splatter of grease on him. His gray hair, still damp from the beach, is pushed back slick over his head. Three roughed-up surfboards are leaning against the side of the house, his wet suit flopped over a wooden sawhorse, drying. He’s the only man I know who stills swims straight out into the sea at high tide without hesitation. Mum is right—he is a handsome man, even now. A Downhill Racer, a Hubbell. He waves Jack over, gives him a firm handshake and hands him a spatula.

Peter is at the bar. I watch him pour two inches of gin and a small splash of tonic water into a glass. Only then does he add three sad little cubes of ice. They float around like turds on the sea. Brits love to drink, but they make tepid, vacuous cocktails. I come up behind him, put my arms around his waist.

“Who that?” he says.

“Ha-ha.”

He turns around and kisses the tip of my nose.

“My mother is requesting vodka. One ice chip.”

“Roger that. You?”

“I’m going inside to find where Andrea has hidden the decent wine.”

“I’ll whistle three times if I see her coming.”

I let myself in the kitchen door. I have always loved the Dixons’ kitchen—the poppy-red floorboards, the worn breadboard counter, the musky smell of Band-Aids and cumin and glasses of ginger ale. Every time I’m in this kitchen I have an urge to pull a stool up to the counter and eat a bowl of cornflakes with milk and heaps of white sugar. I open a cupboard above the sink, grab a wineglass. High up on a shelf is a yellowing Cuisinart base that probably hasn’t been used since 1995. Beside it, an old Salton yogurt maker gathers dust. Seeing it makes me think of curdled milk, sanctimony, and other people’s parents having sex.

There’s a just-opened bottle of decent Sancerre in the fridge. I fill my glass and wander into Dixon’s study. Beyond the windowpane Peter brings my mother a can of Spanish peanuts. He has stolen the vodka bottle from the bar and hands it to her. She takes it without a flinch, glugs. Hands it back. He laughs, sits down on the arm of her Adirondack chair. Lights a cigarette. Whispers something in her ear that makes her swat him. But she is laughing, too. No one else can make my mother relax into her old self the way Peter does. He has some perfect combination of kindness, mean-spirited wit, and I-don’t-give-a-fuck that makes her happy. In a way, Peter saved her all those years ago, after Leo disappeared, after her baby died, after she found my journal. Peter woke her up from a daze, turned the lights back on in our old apartment. Made all of us feel it was safe to be happy again.