Alison Lurie - Last Resort

“I d’know.” Barbie repeated dully. “She just does somehow.”

We’ll see about that, Lee thought. “Maybe Key West will be an exception,” she said. “Anyhow, if you’re finished with that window, come and have some squash soup.”

9

FOR THE FIRST TIME in a week the sun poured like pale syrup over Key West. Again the island assumed its travel-magazine glamour: pulsating blue sky, ostrich-feather palms, scarlet and salmon-red flowering hibiscus, bronzed and beaming tourists. Under this blue sky, rather slowly and painfully, Molly Hopkins descended her front steps and set out toward the restaurant where she had agreed to lunch. The fine warm weather had eased her arthritis, but she still walked with a limp. She would be a little late, as she often was nowadays.

Probably she should have driven, though it was only six blocks, Molly thought unhappily. Probably she shouldn’t even be here in Key West, trying to manage alone. If she were home in Convers her cleaning lady, Sally Hutchins, would have taken care of everything during the last awful week. Sally, who had been working for Molly for over thirty years, would have come every morning, shopped for groceries, and gone to the drugstore, post office, and library. When Molly wasn’t up to getting out of bed Sally would have brought her lunch, straightened her unwieldy pillows, and refilled the pink velvet-covered hot water bottle.

But there was no one like Sally in Key West: winter season provided so many jobs in the tourist industry for reliable people that anyone who didn’t have one was probably delinquent or incompetent. Like nearly everyone she knew, Molly had a cleaning service. Once a week a posse of strange women, most of whom did not speak English, descended upon her house armed with mops and vacuums, and disappeared an hour later.

When Molly was ill in Key West she was dependent on friends, which embarrassed and depressed her. Two days ago, for instance, she had had to ask Lee Weiss to open a can of black bean soup because her own hands simply could not turn the crank. Maybe it was time to give up Key West and stay home through however many winters remained to her. Long, cold, icy winters, they would be, during which she would be housebound and crippled not only when the weather turned wet, but almost all the time.

Having a chronic illness, Molly thought, was like being invaded. Her grandmother back in Michigan used to tell about the day one of their cows got loose and wandered into the parlor, and the awful time they had getting her out. That was exactly what Molly’s arthritis was like: as if some big old cow had got into her house and wouldn’t go away. It just sat there, taking up space in her life and making everything more difficult, mooing loudly from time to time and making cow pies, and all she could do really was edge around it and put up with it.

When other people first became aware of the cow, they expressed concern and anxiety. They suggested strategies for getting the animal out of Molly’s parlor: remedies and doctors and procedures, some mainstream and some New Age. They related anecdotes of friends who had removed their own cows in one way or another. But after a while they had exhausted their suggestions. Then they usually began to pretend that the cow wasn’t there, and they preferred for Molly to go along with the pretense.

Ahead of her now Molly could see Henry’s Beach House, which was not a beach house but a famous restaurant. Its fame, however, was restricted to a select clientele. Though the place was often featured in expensive magazines, most Key West tourists never saw it. It was on an out-of-the way street of large private homes, and marked with the most discreet of signs. When Howard was alive he and Molly used to eat there two or three times a month, enjoying the excellent seafood and elegant camp decor: sea-green-and-white umbrellas, sea-green china, and linen napkins. The restaurant had also appeared in several of her watercolors, embellished with the Victorian gingerbread icing for which she was so well known.

Molly, somewhat against her own best judgment, was on her way to Sunday lunch with Jacko’s aunt, Myra Mumpson. Though she had dressed carefully for the occasion, in pale-pink flowered silk and a silk-flowered straw hat, she felt uneasy. According to Jacko, his aunt was a terror. It was true that this terror was not visible on the surface: rather, Myra’s outer aspect was conventional, even reassuring. Knowing that she was Dorrie Jackson’s elder sister, Molly had expected a fierce elderly lady. But Myra seemed at least a decade younger than her sister—more from across the room. She was a handsome, healthy-looking woman with expertly cut and rather too bright reddish-brown hair. Her skin was glossily tanned and tight, like expensive leather luggage packed to capacity (one face-lift at least, Molly decided).

“But why should your aunt ask me to lunch?” Molly had inquired when Jacko conveyed the invitation. “We’ve hardly met.”

“Why not? Aunt Myra always wants to know the important people in town wherever she goes—”

“But I’m not—” Molly tried to interject.

“I told her you were a famous artist and a power on the local scene.”

“Jacko, really! You know that’s quite untrue.”

“I talked all my friends up,” he explained. “I don’t want her to think I know only riffraff.”

“Yes, but even so—”

“Maybe she wants something from you,” Jacko suggested. “Aunt Myra always wants something.”

Probably I should have said no, Molly thought. But curiosity, and her wish to get out of the house after days of total confinement, had overcome her suspicions. Anyhow I’ve got nothing Myra Mumpson could want, she thought, limping along the uneven sidewalk under the huge old sapodilla and mango trees. When Howard was alive he was on the Historic Preservation Board, and a lot of other boards having to do with history and literature and education, and people often wanted things from him, but that was years ago.

Four years now. Sometimes it seemed like yesterday: it seemed that at any moment Howard would come in from the garden, holding the Times with its white wings spread, smiling and reading out some item that had caught his attention. At other, darker moments it seemed as if their fifty-four years of marriage had been only a long happy dream—as if Molly were still a lonely, awkward art student, an excess person in any gathering of couples. Because now again she was a lonely awkward excess person. The only difference was that now she had no dreams of a brighter future.

As Molly followed the hostess through the restaurant and out onto the brilliantly sunny deck, she saw that Myra Mumpson had somehow secured a most desirable table, with an uninterrupted view of the shimmering turquoise sea. Perhaps the hostess had been impressed by her clothes: white sharkskin resort wear of the most obviously fashionable sort, and much gold jewelry.

“Lovely to see you,” Myra cried, half rising from under the green-and-white umbrella. Her manner was breezy and slightly gushing, with a touch of brisk down-home charm. “Now why don’t you just sit right here by me, so we won’t have to shout over all that noise.” She gestured at the salty, foam-glazed waves sloshing against the piers below the railing.

Though the restaurant was crowded, something about Myra evidently attracted instant service. Almost at once a slight, handsome young Chinese man in a crisp white shirt and brief denim cutoffs appeared. “My name is Dennis,” he announced, smiling winningly and offering menus the size of tabloid newspapers. “I’ll be your waiter today.”

Myra ordered a bottle of Asti Spumante, insisted that Molly join her, and began on the usual tourist topics: weather, travel, restaurants, and accommodations. She pronounced the Casa Marina, one of the most expensive hotels in town, “surprisingly comfortable.”