Candles Burning

Sixty-three

MAMA came home with a new pair of tits. Her jawline was ten years tighter. Her eyes had acquired a slight and sexy tilt, like Barbara Eden’s, while the shadows under them had disappeared. The suggestion of Barbara Eden was entirely deliberate; Mama was rigged out in billowing gauzy harem pants and a form-fitting short jacket that was meant to serve up her décolletage like a tray of meringues, and did.

She sashayed into Merrymeeting still wearing her sunglasses, so she could casually whip them off. She had to check the effect in the mirror in the foyer and on anyone who might be standing there looking. Everyone was, given she had timed her arrival for the cocktail hour, when the guests gathered to knock back a few drinks before supper.

Several of them were regulars who knew Mama. They knew that she was different but only a few of the women could have said how. Fewer of the guests were new; Mama had the greatest effect on them. One of the younger men even made a low whistle—very low and very short and ending in an odd, smothered yelp, as his wife stomped down on the toe of his sandaled foot.

Colonel Beddoes, bringing in Mama’s suitcases, missed the byplay. He passed the luggage off to me to take up to Mama’s room, freeing himself to put an arm around Mama’s waist and nuzzle her ear.

Miz Verlow went through a little routine of being so attentive to one guest that she didn’t notice Mama until she turned around at the kerfuffle of commotion and saw Mama getting her ear sucked by Colonel Beddoes. Mama had to swat him down mockingly, to keep her dignity in front of Miz Verlow.

Mama went out again with Colonel Beddoes after supper and it was late when she returned but I was still awake. When I heard her, I went to her room and knocked.

She had left the door ajar, which meant that I should come right in. She looked at me in her mirror, where she was sponging off her makeup.

“My feet are killin’ me,” she said. “Show me your hands.”

I held them up so they were visible in the mirror. Then I picked up a bottle of her hand lotion and helped myself. My nails were fine but my skin was dry.

“That’s expensive,” she said, “don’t waste it.”

She had a cigarette burning up in an ashtray on the vanity and a glass of bourbon breathing pleasant airs. I picked up the cigarette and took a drag.

“Buy your own,” she snapped.

I took a sip out of her glass of bourbon too.

“Calley!”

I dropped onto her bed, kicked off my sandals and flopped back.

Mama stopped to suck on the cigarette and knock back some bourbon. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

I didn’t say anything. She finished with her face, tied the sash of her negligee, took her cigarette and bourbon and went off to the bathroom for a quarter hour. I used the time to open her pocketbook and help myself to a twenty and then I turned down her bed for her.

Mama came back, glass empty, cigarette stub no doubt flushed down the toilet.

She handed me the glass and arranged herself on the bed. As I opened the jar of foot cream, she gave a great melodramatic sigh.

“It was hell,” she said. “You cannot imagine.”

I held her feet in my lap. Her new tits poked up the bodice of her negligee proudly. Her eyelids bore very thin but still visible red scars, and other scars were exposed behind her ears, where she had tied back her hair to do her face.

I worked the foot cream into her feet methodically.

“But,” Mama said, reaching for the pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the night table, “it was worth every damn cent and every damn miserable moment.”

She went into some detail about the miserable moments, which were more miserable for her than anyone else who ever experienced them. When I was finished with her feet, she was still talking. I closed the jar.

She paused to take a hit on her cigarette.

“Good night, Mama,” I said, leaving her with her mouth open, words ready to spill out and no one to hear them.

I closed the bedroom door gently.

IT was Miz Verlow’s custom to sort the mail when it arrived, usually right after breakfast. Then she would give it to me to distribute. As a rule, her guests received very little mail; they were short-term residents, after all.

In the years that we had been living at Merrymeeting, Mama had received only communications from Adele Starret, an occasional postcard or note from some guest with whom she had struck up an acquaintanceship or, even more rarely, a billet-doux from a boyfriend. It was more common for me to receive mail, for I shared the interests of so many of our longtime guests. Not only notes and postcards arrived with my name on them, but books and records and tapes, and even the occasional feather, dried flower, or packet of seeds.

The day after Mama returned, Miz Verlow handed me a letter for her. She handed me that envelope with a curtness with which I was now familiar. Miz Verlow ignored me most of the time, since my last visit to the attic, but sometimes it was obvious that she was extremely displeased with me. I made an early decision to ignore any reaction from her, and stuck to it.

The envelope was lovely thick stock, with a Paris, France, postmark on it and no return address on it.

Mama was drinking coffee and doing her nails on the verandah. Once upon a time, she never would have done her nails in public or even semi-public. Miz Verlow frowned in Mama’s direction when she handed me the letter. She said nothing but I could see that she was steamed at Mama about doing her manicure on the verandah.

I took the envelope to Mama, who looked right through me, and waved one hand in the air to dry her nails as she studied the envelope.

“Paris, France,” she said loudly, in case any other guests were in earshot. “Well, I caint imagine.”

Mama wrinkled her nose. She didn’t want to ruin her nails. “Open it for me, Calley.”

I sat on the edge of the railing and slit the envelope open with my oyster knife. A single, folded sheet of the same heavyweight stock filled the envelope tightly. When I shook the folded sheet flat, a photograph dropped free. I caught it with my free hand. It was a black-and-white snapshot of a handsome young man on a sailboat, one hand on the rigging.

Ford. I knew him at once. Grown up, or nearly so, but still Ford.

With the snapshot in one hand, I read the letter aloud:

Tears ran down Mama’s taut face. I handed her the snapshot. She took it with trembling fingers. Wiping her eyes frantically, like a child, with the back of one hand, she stared at the picture of Ford.

“Ford,” she whispered, “my baby.”

Her eyes closed and she kissed the snapshot.

I let the envelope fall to the floor of the verandah. As silently as I could, I slipped away.

The young man in the photograph was of the age that Ford would be now. It was a shiny new snapshot. My first impression that the young man was, in fact, Ford seemed convincing evidence in itself of the authenticity of the photograph.

All that rummaging that I had done to find Ford had been a waste of time.

He had not mentioned me.

Of course, Mama would be more important to him.

I was curious to meet him again, grown up and all, but now there was no particular urgency. Mama would have what she thought was her due, Ford, and access to the fortune that she thought should have been hers. She might very well not marry Tom Beddoes, if Ford took against it.

Understandably, Mama was caught up in the realization of her dreams and desires. So much all at once—not since Daddy died, had so much come her way.

I felt as if a knot had been slipped. Maybe the last knot. What a marvel. Unanswered questions blown away like a dandelion head on a puff of breath.

I had a million dollars, plus one, in a safe place. Not the linen closet. That had been the most temporary of arrangements. Leaving was going to be easier than I had thought.