On the Right Side of a Dream Page 13

  “These furnishings are frightful!” H-Smith exclaimed when we stepped into the back parlor. “Victorian, Art Deco . . .” he waved a hand across the top of a sleek desk that Millie bought just before she got sick. “Modern, Country, French . . . all mixed up together. It’s horrible. Couldn’t she make up her mind?”

  He never called her “my mother” or “Millie” or even “Mrs. Daniels.” It was as if Millie didn’t deserve a name. Just said “she” or “her” with nastiness pouring into those words. I wanted to tell him that he could take that attitude and stuff it up his butt along with the Evian bottle but I bit my tongue, remembering what the attorney had told me: “Mrs. Louis, please try to be patient, it’s not for much longer.”

  Funny thing, though. The way the house was furnished never bothered me much, but then, I don’t know anything about interior decorating and don’t care as long as the room feels good. The parlor was a little eccentric but it was so Millie that you didn’t think about it. I tried to shoo Tonio off the Eastlake chair but he sniffed at me and flopped over. Oh, well. But Louis, who’d been snoozing on the sofa, took one look at H-Smith and took off.

  H-Smith was standing near the mantel looking up at the picture of his mother, the one that Taubert had painted during their love affair in the late thirties. I wondered what he was thinking. Judging from the constipated expression on his face, it wasn’t anything good.

  I think my art teacher would call it a “character study.” And Millie certainly was a character. The fact that Millie was naked was beside the point of the painting. She was reclining on a chaise, her hips draped with a shawl of some kind, her feet bare. The background was half Chinese screen, half window looking out on a vineyard. Millie looked straight at the painter with a serious expression, her dark-blue eyes (the ones she’d passed along to her son) had a straightforward tilt to them; intelligent eyes. She didn’t look like a woman who felt self-conscious about being naked. She didn’t even look seductive. She looked like a woman who had chosen to pose for the portrait and didn’t have the slightest regret about it. Her dark-brown hair flowed around her shoulders. Her hands were expressive but strong-looking and, unlike most of the photographs of her that I’d seen from that time, Millie’s nails weren’t painted. I remembered her telling me that she and her husband, the Count, worked side by side in the vineyards and that she’d loved working with her hands. No red nail polish for her in those days.

  I heard H-Smith say under his breath, “Libertine.”

  I wasn’t familiar with that word but the way that he said it told me what it meant.

  “She was not,” I told him.

  He glared at me.

  “What else would you call a woman who would . . . pose for such a painting?” He stalked out of the room. “My father was right about her . . .”

  He tried to find fault with the dining room but there wasn’t much he could say. It is a beautiful room, grand and gracious like you’d see in the movies. Millie’s English husband gave her the mahogany Chippendale table and matching chairs. They are worth a small fortune by themselves. So, instead, he made a comment about the china pattern she’d chosen.

  “It isn’t real Havilland,” he said with a sniff. “This was made after the War.”

  Oh, who cares? I thought. As long as you can eat Cheerios out of it.

  By the time we got to the Mauve Room, I was ready to give the man an enema. He didn’t like the Oriental rug in the Violet Room. Obviously, “she” had no taste at all. The draperies in the Merlot Suite were too dark, “her” provinciality was showing. The draperies in the Mauve Room were too light. The chandeliers in the hall needed re-wiring, “she” was not one for details and on and on . . .

  I was beginning to think of devious ways that I could hurt this man. I was counting to ten, then twenty, then fifty after most of his snippy comments, just to keep from cursing him out and telling Geoff Black to hell with the whole thing. Then, I unlocked the door to Millie’s room. Inez and I had been keeping it locked so that none of the guests would wander in. I think we felt that it was still Millie’s personal space and it wasn’t right to expose it to other people. The room was pretty much as Millie had left it. I led Hayward-Smith through the sitting room (I didn’t mention that Millie had called it her “boudoir”) and into the bedroom. We’d had her cherry four-poster bed brought up from the basement. Inez and I made up the bed ourselves, blinking back our tears as we smoothed out the soft lavender-colored sheets, the lace-trimmed pillow shams, and the white chenille spread.

  H-Smith didn’t have much to say. He walked around and I watched him, waiting to pounce on him when he said something mean about Millie. But he didn’t.

  That is, he didn’t until we got ready to leave.

  “That’s it, Mr. H-Hayward-Smith. I’ll just lock up.”

  “When this hearing is over, I want this room cleared out, from top to bottom, the draperies, the rugs, her . . . her personal effects, and everything else. Sell them, throw them into the dustbin, or into the lake—I don’t give a damn what you do with them. I don’t ever want to see them again.” He spoke with crisp, razor-sharp enunciation and a lot of anger wrapped around his words like a coat of armor. Hard and cold.

  My feet were glued to the floor.

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded. Geoff Black’s warnings about behaving myself flew right out the window.

  “You heard me,” he said in a booming voice.

  “I heard you all right,” I said. “You’re just a little early, buddy. This place ain’t yours yet.”

  “I will succeed.”

  “Yeah, but you might not.”

  “Then I’ll buy you out, Mrs. Louis, and do what I want to do,” he countered. “Name your price. I can make it worth your while.”

  I stared at him. This stuff only happened in movies.

  “Oh, yeah? And if I did sell to you? Say for . . .”

  He butted in with a number that I only heard when the business segment of the evening news was on.

  “Right,” I answered, trying not to act stunned. “What if I did? What would you do with Millie’s place?”

  “Tear it down.”

  I felt sick.

  “I’m sure that you understand that I intend to prevail in this matter. Regardless of what I have to do or what I have to spend. And when I do . . .” he looked around him. His pointy nose had curled on the end and his mouth had turned into a real upside-down smile. His face was so scrunched up that he looked like an albino prune. He looked downright ooglee. “I want this room emptied out. I want every trace of her removed . . . or destroyed. Especially . . . especially that pornographic painting in the rear parlor. And I want you . . .”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Hayward-Smith,” I interrupted him. “In the first place, I am not your employee and I am not your servant. You need to take that condescending bullshit to someone who can appreciate it. I can assure you, I am not that person. And if you ‘prevail,’ as you put it, the first damn thing I’m going to do is walk out the front door. Somebody else can do your dirty work.”

  “I intend to prevail, Mrs. Louis,” he repeated.

  “Yeah, well, that will be what it is,” I told him, moving toward the door. “For all your high-ass knowledge about this antique and that brand of china, you don’t know too much, do you?” I gestured toward the furnishings in Millie’s bedroom. “Just about every piece of furniture and rug, down to the smallest teacup, was chosen by your mother with a lot of thought and care. She traveled all over the world, and she’s got books in the library about these things she’s collected. I don’t know much about Limoges or East Lakes, but your mother did. And she cared for these things with a lot of love and enjoyed sharing them with her guests.” I glared at him. “Enjoyment seems to be a word that you don’t know much about.” Probably because your intestines are in a knot.

  One thing besides the blue eyes that Hayward-Smith inherited from his mother was tenacity. Once Millie Tilson got her teeth into something, whether
it was a piece of furniture that she was bidding on at auction, a book that she was reading or a topic that she was arguing about, she never, ever let go. Obviously, her son was cut from the same corduroy.

  “I will prevail,” he repeated. “And when I do, I will make arrangements to have this room stripped down to the bare walls.” He ran his hand along the soft shell-pink wallpaper with its climbing rose-patterned border. “Strip this wallpaper off as well.” He might have been talking to me when he said that. He might have been talking to himself.

  That’s right. Strip Millie clean out of that house. “Rose” was Millie’s middle name. She’d chosen the wallpaper for that reason.

  I bumped into him—hard—on my way out of the suite, jiggling the keys in my hand as I went. I had had enough of Mr. High-Up Butt today. If it weren’t for the hearing, I would have walked out that door right then and let this jerk change his own hand towels twice a day.

  “What’s that saying, Mr. Hayward-Smith, ‘until the fat lady sings’? Well, she ain’t even warmed up, so you just keep your big drawers loose until she does. And, until she does, this room stays just like it is, down to the last little Post-it note.” The door was open and I pointed toward it. “After you.” Asshole.

  What he said next caught me completely off guard.

  “Yes, it does seem that she never threw anything away.” He glanced at me as he said this and my breath caught in my throat. It was as if the male version of Millie’s face was looking back at me. “Except for me.”

  He walked past me out into the hall and headed up the back stairs to the Tower Suite. I’d heard Elva Van Roan thumping around up there earlier but she was quiet now. The fax machine beeped a couple of times and then went silent. The only sounds I heard were his large and heavy feet clomping up the narrow steps and the muffled sound of the door closing.

  Except for me.

  I stood in the middle of Millie’s room. Broderick Tilson Hayward-Smith was rich, had degrees from several universities, and had traveled all over the world. His daddy left him a fortune and he was a millionaire himself. He was over sixty years old and still grieving for the mother whom he thought had given him away like a piece of unwanted furniture.

  There are talk shows about this and doctors preach to folks over the radio and how many books have been written on this subject? I’d heard one serrated-tongued counselor tell an unhappy listener, “Get over it!” And another on TV telling a sobbing woman to “grow up.” But getting over it and growing up aren’t as easy as they sound. And if the background story was ever told, those doctors have problems of their own. Hayward-Smith was living proof that some pain takes a long time to heal, if ever, like over sixty years.

  I found the key to lock the door. Then I saw the folder on Millie’s desk and smiled. The story for her creative writing class was in that folder. She’d been really pissed off about getting a “B” on it. “It should have been an A,” she had sniffed indignantly. “All of that feeling, all of that loss, poured into the story and I get a lousy B!”

  All of that loss. I picked up the folder and locked the door behind me. I had only heard part of the story. Millie was still working on it that starry summer night. I’d asked her if the story was fiction. She had looked away, still stroking Asim, and never really answered.

  After this, time just seemed to fly by. My “to-do” lists were getting longer and longer. I had borrowed the idea from Millie, who had lists for everything. But now I had five lists and they each had over ten things on them. My lists had lives of their own. I was working on the “personal stuff” list. It was a Thursday, no classes, and I was finished at the inn for the day, sitting on a stool at the diner. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, the lunch crowd was gone—just a few folks having coffee—and dinner was several hours off.

  This was the longest list: wash hair, call KayRita, order hot sauce, no, that goes on the “diner” list. . . . I was still managing my list when Mountain came in. The cold air came in with him and rustled the pages of my notebook. As I smoothed them down again, I said “hey” to him and kept scribbling. Heard Mary take his order: half a tuna sandwich, applesauce, child’s portion, and Coke. Sighed to myself. That boy was going to waste away to nothing. The last time I’d seen him the collar of his shirt was loose. But there was no talking to Mountain about it. He was still broken up about Lawra and it was going to take time.

  The door opened again and my notebook pages flapped. It was still cold around here and I couldn’t seem to get my ankles warm, no matter what I wore. But if the front door is opening that means the diner is doing well, so I don’t complain. That’s good for Jess. I didn’t even look up but heard whoever it was stomp the snow off their feet and head toward the counter.

  “Ms. Louis?”

  It was Amy Hsu, Mr. High-Up Butt’s executive assistant. Cold weather did not agree with her. She looked like a very chic Popsicle. Her nose was red and from the way she scrunched up her shoulders, I could tell that she was freezing.

  “Amy, you look like you’re about ready to turn into ice. You want a hot chocolate? Some tea?”

  She smiled; a pretty girl but wrapped a little tight, if you asked me, all business all the time. She moved at the speed of light, buzzing here and there. I wondered if the child had any fun. I guess that came from working with Mr. Personality over there in the Tower Suite.

  “Actually, I came over to see if I can get lunch, but hot chocolate sounds terrific,” she said, rubbing her hands together. Her lips were so numb that her words sounded funny.

  “Sit down, girl, take your coat off. I’ll get you a menu and something hot.”

  I swear I wasn’t gone more than thirty seconds. OK, maybe I was gone a whole minute, but no more than that. When I came back, Mountain was draped around that girl like a sausage casing (I know how to do sausage casings now), his smile wider than the Grand Canyon, his eyes a color of blue that I hadn’t seen since he and Lawra Svenson did the Booty Call at Millie Tilson’s funeral cabaret.

  “Juanita, this meal’s on me,” Mountain said, sounding like the last of the big spenders. How much can a small garden salad, cup of tomato soup, and hot chocolate cost? “You never told me that Mr. High-Up Butt, er, Hayward-Smith, had such an exquisite and erudite executive assistant!” He beamed at Amy.

  Both Mary and I forgot our manners and stared for a moment. “Exquisite”? “Erudite”? Mountain?

  “Sheriff Peters was telling me about the diner’s history,” Amy said. “It’s so romantic. How you took over the cooking, and you and Jess fell in love.”

  Who was this woman?

  I swear to God, Amy, Miss Sophisticated-Midwestern-meatloaf-wouldn’t-touch-my-lips Hsu beamed back at that man as if he was the Apollo of Montana.

  “Just call me ‘Frank.’ ” Mountain said in a voice I have never heard him use. And no one, not even his mother, calls him “Frank.” “I’m so glad that, of all places, you decided to walk in here.”

  Mary and I exchanged glances. Like there are that many choices in Paper Moon?

  “Oh, well, yes, I guess it’s a good story,” I managed to stammer as I dropped off the hot chocolate. Neither of them was paying any attention to me at all. “Amy, your soup and salad will be out in a minute,” I said to no one in particular.

  “Thank you,” Amy said. Her eyes never left Mountain.

  “Juanita, I think I’ll just escort Miss Hsu over here to my table,” Mountain said as if he was talking about a reserved table at the Ritz-Carlton. “Oh, and could I put in another order?”

  When I gave the slip to Jess, he whistled.

  “Good God! When did a family of four come in?”

  I chuckled.

  “Not a family of four, just Mountain’s appetite back from a short leave of absence.”

  “The boy finally realized he was starving to death?” Jess pulled out a Texas-sized hamburger patty.

  “The boy’s in love again,” I said.

  Jess rolled his eyes.

  “I’m
in love, too, but if I ate like that I’d get too fat for those weird sexual positions that you like.” The hamburger hit the grill with a sizzle.

  “You are a silly man,” I told him.

  “Just trying to keep you satisfied while you’re back. It’s hard being in love with a rolling stone.”

  “Oh, please. Where’s that salad?” I ladled out the tomato soup. While I got Amy’s order ready, Jess sang.

  Juanita is a rolling stone,

  Wherever she lays her hat is her home . . .

  “You’d better pay attention to that hamburger because you won’t make much of a living on the Temptations Reunion Tour.”

  By the time I got back to Amy and Mountain, they were ready to order the wedding invitations. I have heard of love at first sight but this is the first time I have seen it with my own eyes.

  “I hear that you’re having a ‘Soul Food Night,’ Juanita,” Mountain said to me while keeping his eyes glued to Amy as she sipped her soup with ladylike delicacy. “Grits, sweet potato pies, macaroni and cheese, corn pudding . . .” Mountain’s face lit up. Just mentioning several starchy foods together gives him a high. “Ribs, fried catfish . . .”

  “In three weeks,” I told him, wiping my hands on my apron. “No grits, Mountain. I only do them for breakfast mostly.”

  But Mountain had already moved on.

  “That’s too long to wait. Miss Hsu, may I take you to dinner next Saturday? Say, seven o’clock?” Amy looked like Cinderella who’d just found out that the glass slipper fit her tootsies. “I think you’ll enjoy the meal . . . and are you free tomorrow night, too?”

  I didn’t stay for her reply, I could guess what it was anyway. Yes, she would marry him; yes, she would have several ten-pound babies with him and, by the way, yes, she’d be happy to go to dinner with him tomorrow night. I glanced outside: snowing again, wind blowing, probably thirty degrees. Yep, it was definitely the season for love.

  When I came back into the kitchen, Jess was prepping for dinner and Mary was helping. I was just in the way so I picked up my lists then realized that there was something that I was supposed to do. The problem was, I couldn’t remember what that was. I didn’t have this problem in my old one-dimensional life in Columbus. Of course, I didn’t have as much to remember then, either. Now, I needed lists and a calendar to keep up with everything that I was responsible for. So, I had started forgetting things. I would get up and go into the kitchen, forgetting what I was going in there to get. I started leafing through papers, then forget what I was looking for. Of course, I could just be getting old. Scary. So, now I sat at the far end of the counter, shifting through my lists looking for . . . ah! Looking for . . . mail, office supplies list, recipe for corn pudding, hospitality class syllabus, and letter from attorney.