Rafael Yglesias - Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil

“Love it,” I said softly and gently touched her arm.

She peered at me through woozy eyes, confused for a moment. I smiled at her comfortingly. She shook her head as if to clear it, stepped back and attempted a perky smile that came out slightly crooked. “Let’s do it.” She left the drink she was making for a guest on the bar, took her own, and walked us into a formal dining room.

“When did you move here?” I asked.

Mary Catharine explained what I already knew, about Stick’s move from Flashworks in Massachusetts to Minotaur in Westchester. The furniture looked coordinated, as if bought in a single spree, probably by a decorator. She confirmed my assumption while we climbed to the second floor. “I threw out everything five years ago and started fresh,” she said.

That would have been around the time of the death of their second born, Michael. The rooms were tasteful but impersonal, color drained from the objects, beige or black furniture, white drapes, a few books, and abstract paintings that appeared to have been selected to fit the wall space and not intrude on the eye. There were no personal things until we reached the master bedroom. On the right side of the bed, near the wall, was a long built-in dresser for her clothes, its surface covered by photos in silver frames. A similar dresser on the other side of the room for Stick was free of objects. “My family,” she explained, when I bent over to inspect the people in the pictures. I asked after each of them. She interrupted twice to say, “This has gotta be boring,” but was easily encouraged to continue.

“They remind me of my father’s family,” I said about the faded pictures of her grandparents and their siblings when they were young: dressed up in their Sunday best, the ladies in big hats, men standing stiff, eyes wary, mouths shut tight. Mary Catharine told me their stories, especially proud of one great-aunt, the family black sheep. Great-Aunt Gina had walked out on her husband and three sons to live out west with a strange woman. Their ultimate fate was unknown. “Mama never admitted she was a lesbian. She’d say they were radicals. She said this woman turned Aunt Gina into an anarchist, a bomb-throwing anarchist. I asked her what this other woman did. You know, like how they met and stuff. Who were they throwing bombs at? I expected to hear something about Sacco and Vanzetti. Mama said, ‘She was the local librarian.’” Mary Catharine flopped onto the king-size bed and laughed. Her eyes watered. She took a gulp of her drink. The glass was nearly empty. “You know those wild librarians. Always throwing bombs and corrupting the local mothers. Finally, one day, when I was all grown up, she was visiting me … I think.” She took another gulp. “Yeah, that’s right. Mama was a guest in my own house. I said to her, ‘Mama, Aunt Gina was a dyke.’ You know what? She slapped me. I couldn’t believe it. I was a mother myself. She slapped me like I was a kid. I expected—” she belched loudly. She didn’t excuse herself; indeed, she didn’t seem aware of her eruption. She sipped the last of her drink and continued. “I was waiting for her to bring out a bar of soap.”

“Your mother used to wash your mouth out with soap?”

“Oh, yeah. All the Italian mothers did. Especially if you cursed Jesus. You’d get half a bar of soap for that. Enough to do the laundry for a week. I was a bad girl. I was a lot of trouble.” She tried her drink again; only ice was left.

“Who’s this?” I lifted a small framed photograph of a ten-year-old boy in a blue blazer, a white shirt, and a red tie. There were others, with an older Michael, that I could have chosen, but they weren’t solo portraits.

Mary Catharine smiled at the picture and gestured for it with her free hand. I brought it over, sitting next to her on the bed. She looked wistful. “My son, Michael. When he was little.”

“Is he married?” I asked.

She shook her head. “He’s dead,” she said without a quaver.

“I’m sorry. When did that happen?”

“Stupid,” she said quietly to herself.

“Excuse me?”

“Nineteen eighty-six. In Aspen. He died skiing …” She tried once again to drink from her glass. She frowned at its emptiness: there was nothing left to wash out her mouth. “Avalanche,” she said.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“Stick never brings it up. I tell him. It’s embarrassing for people to just, you know …” She waved at the photo.

“Put their foot in their mouths?”

“Well, that’s the thing. It’s not their fault, they don’t know. Everybody asks those kind of, you know, chitchat questions—’How many children do you have?’” She laughed bitterly. “What do you say? I had two. Now I’m down to one. Half of one. Halley used to be my best girl, but you know what happens once they have hormones.” She belched again. This time she noticed. “Jesus. I’m sorry. It’s those burgers, they give me gas. I tell Stick, you know, bring these things up ahead of time, so people don’t feel they hurt your feelings. But you know what? I hate that too. Everybody walking on egg shells. Nothing works.” She nodded at the window. “All those men and their … what do you call them? Wives!” She laughed. “That’s right, wives. They … I don’t know. They never talk about anything. You know? Hours and hours and hours, chitchat, this and that, but later you think, what did anybody say? I swear to God, I don’t know the first thing about these people. In my old neighborhood, you knew everything. Or a lot anyway. We didn’t know about lesbians though,” she said and laughed. She stood up with a groan.

I rose, moving ahead of her to be in front of the dresser. Michael’s school picture hovered between us. Very quietly, but insistently, I asked, “Why was it stupid?”

“What?” She looked up at me, eyes unfocused.

I nodded at the boy in the blazer. “You said it was stupid. You mean, how he died?”

She nodded and swallowed hard. “He’d been warned. He knew it was dangerous. You weren’t supposed to ski that trail, that slope … I don’t know what you call it. I don’t ski. I never did. It’s Stick’s thing.” She returned the photo to the dresser. She ran a finger across the top of the frame and backed off, squinting at the window. “He knew he wasn’t supposed to.”

I waited for her to add more. She continued to squint out the window. There was another belch. She suppressed this one; only her shoulders heaved, the sound muffled. “We’d better go back to the party,” she said.

As we moved to the door, I commented, “It was something Stick had done? Skiing in an avalanche zone?”

She nodded, hardly interested in my inquiry and not at all concerned about the intimacy. “Stupid,” she commented and then asked brightly, “You want another drink?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Smart cookie,” she commented.

“Did Michael always try to keep up with his father?” I asked as we descended the stairs.

“Of course. They both do. But Halley’s a girl, so it’s different. It was hard on Stick. He was really close to Mikey. Mikey was his little twin.” We reached the bottom of the stairs and silently walked through the living room, the dining room and onto the glassed-in porch. When she arrived at the bar, she turned to me with a triumphant smile, “Good shrink stuff, huh?”

“Good shrink stuff?” I repeated quizzically.

She laughed at me. “Gin and tonic?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“You see, I’m a good host. I give my guests everything they want,” she commented, turning her back on me and reaching into the ice bucket.

“No, you didn’t,” I said.

She paused, a hand full of cubes. For a moment, I wasn’t sure she was going to acknowledge my comment. She dropped the ice, leaned on the bar, and twisted to look at me. “What did you say?”