Part 27 (1/2)
”Fine.” Meredith looked up, but her mother's face was hidden behind a cupboard door.
”He's quite a character,” Meredith said.
”Ozzie? Oh, yes. Extremely strange. But not in a bad way, I hope.”
”No, not in a bad way.”
Silence. Meredith carried on sweeping but kept her eyes on the cupboard door that hid her mother's upper half. Slowly, apprehensively, the silk hump of her mother's turban appeared, then the brooch, followed by a tuft of hair, a furrowed forehead and, finally, a pair of startled eyes. For a moment Meredith and her mother stared at each other like this, each waiting for the other to speak.
Meredith broke the silence. ”You lied.”
”No, I didn't.” Irma stepped off the stool she'd been balancing on and faced her daughter. She looked at Meredith but did not move toward her.
”Why didn't you tell me about Ozzie?” Meredith's voice skipped up an octave and then managed to steady itself again.
”You didn't ask.”
”How could I have known to ask?”
”What exactly was I supposed to tell you?” Irma refastened the tie on her Madame b.u.t.terfly dressing gown.
”Uh, for starters, maybe the fact that he's my father.”
”But he's not.”
”Oh, Mother...”
”No, really, he's not. He's a friend of your father's. And he took care of you-I only mean financially took care of you-when you were little. He helped us out all along. I honestly don't know what I would have done without him.”
”So Ozzie's not my father?”
”I'm afraid not.”
”Who is, then?”
”I told you the story, darling. He was a director. I met him in Los Angeles. We had a romp in the pool house and he drowned in his pool the next day.”
”Did he have a moustache?”
”He did. How did you know?”
Meredith shrugged. She remembered the picture. The man with the grin so big it looked like he was going to take a bite of the camera lens. ”Lucky guess.”
Irma resumed wiping down the stove, but Meredith wasn't finished with her. ”Why didn't you tell me about the money, then? And why would Ozzie take care of me like that?”
”Let me tell you, young lady, when you were a baby I was in no position to look gift horses in the mouth. And besides, the money was none of your business.”
Meredith considered the outlandish possibility that for once, her mother was right. When she was a child it had been none of her business where her school tuition or living allowance came from. She'd never thought to ask and consequently her mother had never mentioned it. She'd been a kid after all, and what was her mother supposed to say? Your father was married to someone else and unfortunately he drowned in his own swimming pool a few hours after your conception, but don't worry, sweetie, because his ex-business partner is determined to take care of you out of his own mysterious sense of guilt and responsibility?
Meredith took a step toward her mother and held out her hand. Irma seemed afraid to move. She hugged herself and pushed her hands under her armpits to try to stop them shaking.
”Mum, don't worry.” Meredith put her arms around her mother. She was shocked at how breakable the old woman felt. ”I'm not mad,” she said. For once, she felt it was true.
”You're not?”
”No.”
With this, Irma relaxed slightly. Her breath slowed. She seemed to gain weight in Meredith's arms.
”I want you to tell me the whole story.”
”Right. The story. The story.”
Irma produced two small gla.s.ses in the shape of tulip blossoms and handed one of them to Meredith. She poured a bit of sticky yellow fluid into each.
”Where do you want me to start, then?”
”At the beginning.”
Florence came back to Meredith in flashes. Not recollections so much as relived moments-complete with smells, sounds and the aching texture of immediate physical experience. There was the smell of his breath and the taste of his mouth-savory as gin-soaked olives. His second toe, a hammertoe, half-broken and doubled over on itself. She'd lain end to end with him and taken that toe in her hand and tried to smooth it out with her fingers but it wouldn't stay flat. No matter how she rubbed it, the toe snapped back to its crooked self. He said it was good luck-the toe. She couldn't believe it. Her luck, that is.
For three days Meredith and Joe stayed in his suite at the Savoy. Outside, the city felt as if it were baking in a brick oven. Inside, their room was cool and clean. Every few hours they sent down for room service, ordering anything on the menu, no matter how ridiculous or oddly matched-cherry cheesecake with the j.a.panese businessman's breakfast, pink champagne and lasagna, oysters with mint sauce and apple cider, Tuscan bread soup followed by a whole lobster, cracked and dressed. Nothing seemed too silly or decadent. What they didn't eat they left on trays in the hall. What they didn't drink they spilled on each other.
At one point he leapt up on the bed, kneeled over her and began filming with the Super 8 camera he'd brought along to record the wedding. At first Meredith covered her face with a pillow, but after some gentle coaxing she found herself vamping for the lens like the star of a French blue movie. She pouted her lips and lifted her b.u.m in the air, waggling a pair of lacy knickers. What had gotten into her?
On the bedside table was a small bottle of Jack Daniel's stripped from the now nearly empty minibar the night before. She picked it up and began running its hard cold surface over her abdomen, encouraging every mammalian hair on her body to rise. Joe began crawling toward her, across the bed. She took a slug of whisky and pa.s.sed the bottle back to him, but he waved it away, encouraging her to keep playing. She felt a little silly, but aroused all the same, so she began to experiment: taking the neck of the bottle in her mouth and moving her lips over it suggestively, taking a too-large swig and letting it run out the side of her mouth, dipping her fingers in and rubbing the bourbon on her nipples-the astringent liquid buzzing on her flesh. Feeling sly and s.e.xy, Meredith inclined the bottle between her legs. She slipped a finger into her panties. (Yes, panties, that was the word for them. She was now a woman who could say the word panties without cracking up.) She teased and taunted, fingering the lace and sliding the neck of the bottle nearer to the spot. Joe lowered his head slightly and opened his mouth, but before he could say a word, she raised her eyebrows and-uh-oh-poured whisky between her legs.
The pain! Before she knew it she was up and running around the room, clutching her crotch and howling like a woman on fire (which, in a sense, she was). Joe flew into action, and before she knew it he was on top of her again, pinning her to the bed like a wriggling insect specimen and pressing a cold, wet facecloth to her crotch.
”You okay?”
He said this very seriously. So seriously she wanted to cry, before she noticed her cheeks were already streaked with salt.
”Mmm.” She nodded, trying to imitate his seriousness in the hope of drawing out the moment of rescue. It was so nice to be taken care of. She pressed her face into the crook of his shoulder and started to laugh-a slow, rocking laugh so much like a sob that he comforted her for a moment by stroking the hair at the nape of her neck before he realized his mistake.
He could be a bit serious-it was his one flaw. She loved him for it.
The day of the wrap party Meredith booked a ticket back to Toronto. She didn't fly for a week, which gave her plenty of time to tie up loose ends in London, mainly in the form of actually getting to know her mother for the first time. Their relations.h.i.+p, which had never been particularly comfortable, now appeared to be on the verge of reaching an uneasy truce. At moments, they seemed almost related.
They went to the movies and saw a play-a bad translation of an even worse French farce-and Meredith cooked a proper dinner of roast lamb and potatoes.
She was feeling unusually flush (Ozzie had sent her a big fat check for her work on Avalon-enough to tide her over for the next few months at least), so she took her mother out for lunch.
They never mentioned the story Irma had told Meredith the afternoon she came home from Florence, but it sat between them like an armrest-providing a comfortable distance as well as a point of contact. For the first time, their shared history became their emotional buffer.
Before the wrap party, Irma's date arrived for a drink. He was an old man, the sort you'd call a ”chap.” He turned up on the front stoop wearing a corduroy day suit with a bright yellow ascot. Meredith stuck out her hand, which he took and kissed in a dry, unprovocative way. He introduced himself as Jeffrey. There was something familiar about his face.
”Irma has told me ever so much about you,” he said.
Meredith gave a skeptical smile. ”Oh, sure.”