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Papa was taking his time about leaving this Tuesday morning. He sat at the kitchen table expounding on life and all its complexities, while Vera and my aunt consumed pancakes as if they would never eat again. Soberly my mother was preparing the canapés and other treats for teatime.
“They were the best of times; they were the worst of times,” began my papa, who loved to say that phrase over and over again. It seemed to grate on my mother’s nerves as much as it did on mine. He made it an awesomely fearsome thing to even think beyond tomorrow.
On and on he went, making his time to be young seem so much better than any time I was likely to know. Life had been perfect when Papa was a boy; back then people had been nicer; houses had been constructed to last forever and not fall apart as they did nowadays. Dogs, too, had been better when he was a boy, really reliable, sure to bring back every hurled stick. Even the weather was better, not so hot in the summers, nor so cold in the winters, unless there was a blizzard. No blizzard now had a chance of equalling the freezing ferocity of the blizzards Papa had to trudge home from school in.
“Twenty miles,” he boasted, “through the wind and snow, through the sleet and rain, through the hail and ice, nothing kept me home—even when I had pneumonia. When I was in high school on the football team and broke my leg, that didn’t keep me from walking to school every day. I was hardy, determined to be well educated, to be the best there was.”
Momma slammed down a dish so hard it cracked. “Damian, stop exaggerating.” Her voice was harsh, impatient. “Can’t you see what false notions you plant in your daughter’s mind?”
“What other kind of notions have either one of you ever planted?” asked Aunt Ellsbeth sourly. “If Audrina grows up to be normal it will be a miracle.”
“Amen to that,” contributed Vera. She grinned at me and then stuck out her tongue. Papa didn’t notice, he was too busy shouting at my aunt.
“Normal? What is normal? In my opinion normal is only ordinary, mediocre. Life belongs to the rare exceptional individual who dares to be different.”
“Damian, will you please stop expounding on your ideas to a child too young to understand that you are not an authority on anything except how to run your mouth all day long.”
“Silence!” bellowed Papa. “I won’t have my wife ridiculing me in front of my only child. Lucky, apologize immediately!”
Why was Aunt Ellsbeth smirking? It was my secret belief that my aunt loved to hear my parents argue. Vera made some gagging noise and then, with a great deal of difficulty, rose to her feet and limped toward the front hall. Soon she’d be boarding the school bus I’d sell my soul to ride on like every other child who wasn’t as special as I was. Instead, I had to stay home, lonely for playmates, with the kind of adults who filled my head with hodgepodge notions and then stirred them up with a witch’s stick of contradictions. No wonder I didn’t know who I was, or which day of the week, month or even year it was. I didn’t have any best or worst times. I lived, it seemed to me, in a theater, with the exception being the actors on stage were my family members and I, too, had a role to play—only I didn’t know what it was.
All of a sudden, for no reason at all
, I was looking around the kitchen and remembering a large orange cat who used to sleep near the old cast-iron stove.
“I wish Tweedle Dee would come home,” I said wistfully. “I’m even lonelier since my cat went away.”
Papa jolted. Momma stared at me. “Why, Tweedle Dee has been gone for a long, long time, Audrina.” Her voice sounded strained, worried.
“Oh, yes,” I said quickly, “I know that, but I want him to come home. Papa, you didn’t take him to the city pound, did you? You wouldn’t put my cat to sleep, would you—just because he makes you sneeze?”
He threw me a worried look, then forced a smile. “No, Audrina, I do the best I can to cater to all your needs, and if that cat had wanted to stay and make me sneeze myself to death, I would have suffered on in silence for your sake.”
“Suffered, but not in silence,” muttered my aunt.
I watched my parents embrace and kiss before Papa headed for the garage. “Have a good time at your tea party,” he called back to Momma, “though I wish to heaven you’d let Mercy Marie stay dead. What we need is someone to live in that empty cottage we own; then you’d have a nice neighbor-woman to invite to your teas.”
“Damian,” called Momma sweetly, “you go out and have your fun, don’t you? Since we’re held captives here, at least let Ellie and me have ours.”
He grunted and said no more, and soon I was at the front windows watching him drive away. His hand lifted in a salute before he drove out of sight. I didn’t want him to go. I hated Tuesday teatime.
Teatime was supposed to begin at four, but since Vera had started playing hooky to escape her last class in order to reach home by four, teatime had been moved up to three o’clock.
Wearing my best clothes, I sat ready and waiting for the ritual to begin. I was required to be there as part of my social education, and if Vera was incapacitated enough to stay home legitimately, then she was invited to the parties, too. I often thought Vera broke her bones just so she could stay home and hear what went on in our best front salon.
My tension built as I waited for Momma and my aunt to show up. First came Momma, dressed in her prettiest afternoon gown—a soft flowing wool crepe of a pretty coral color, with piping of violet to match her eye color. She wore a pearl choker and earrings with real diamonds and pearls to match the choker. It was heirloom Whitefern jewelry she’d told me many times would be mine one day. Her magnificent hair was swept up high, but a few loose curls dangled down to take away the severity and make her look elegant.
Next came my aunt in her best outfit, a dark navy-blue suit with a tailored white blouse. As always, she wore her dark glossy hair in a figure-eight knot low on the back of her neck. Tiny diamond studs were in her ears, and on her little finger she wore a ruby class ring. She looked very schoolmarmish.
“Ellie, will you let Mercy Marie in?” said Momma sweetly. Tuesday was the only day my mother was allowed to call her sister by her nickname. Only Papa could call my aunt Ellie any time he chose.
“Oh, dear, you are late,” said Aunt Ellsbeth, getting up to lift the piano lid and take from underneath the heavy silver frame that enclosed the photograph of a fat woman with a very sweet face. “Really, Mercy Marie, we expected you to arrive on time. You’ve always had the annoying habit of arriving late. To make an impression, I suppose. But dear, you’d make an impression even if you arrived early.” Momma giggled as my aunt sat down and primly folded her hands in her lap. “The piano isn’t too hard for you, dear, is it? But it is sturdy enough … I hope.” Again Momma giggled, making me squirm uneasily, for I knew the worst was yet to come. “Yes, Mercy Marie, we do understand why you’re always tardy. Running away from those passionate savages must be very exhausting. But you really should know it’s been rumored about that you were cooked in a pot by a cannibal chief and eaten for dinner. Lucietta and I are delighted to see that was only a malicious rumor.”
Carefully she crossed her legs and stared at that portrait on the piano, placed just where music sheets were usually stacked. It was part of Momma’s role to get up and light the candles in the crystal candelabra while the fire snapped and crackled, and the gaslamps flickered and made the crystal prisms on the chandeliers catch colors and dart crazily about the room.
“Ellsbeth, my dear, my darling,” said my mother for the dead woman who had to participate, even if her ghost was often rebellious, “is that the only suit you own? You wore it last week and the week before, and your hair, good God, why don’t you change that hairstyle? It makes you look sixty.”
Always Momma’s voice was sickeningly sweet when she spoke for Aunt Mercy Marie.
