Apologize, Apologize! - By Elizabeth Kelly Page 0,7
attention. “You should have seen her, Collie. She had long brown hair that hung in waves to her waist, all done up with satin ribbons. She was white as a ghost from being inside all the time, and she wore white lace nightgowns and collected ivory figurines, with a somewhat ironic emphasis on elephants. Her bed was covered in silk and satin. She was crazy as they come.”
“Don’t you dare ridicule Mama!” Ma’s long upper lip disappeared, her lower lip protruded like a boxing glove. “The most wonderful woman that ever lived, and he poisoned her a little bit every day. She warned me. She told me he was adding things to her food. He’s a monster.” The circles under her eyes darkened.
“For heaven’s sake, Anais, according to every medical man short of St. Luke, she died of stomach cancer. You throw around accusations of murder as if they were rice at a wedding. For years you’ve been accusing Tom of adding plant fertilizer to your coffee.” Pop looked over at me and winked as Ma’s escalating fury caused the room to spin. I hung on to the blanket out of habit—I knew where this was going.
“My mother did not have cancer. She was poisoned. He killed her, and he paid off the doctors. And as for Tom, you tell me why does my heart beat so erratically every time he serves me something he’s made? I enjoyed perfect health until he moved in with us, and since then I’ve had one ailment after another.” Her voice lowered to a whisper as she glanced fleetingly toward the door, as if Uncle Tom were poised outside with ear to glass—not an entirely far-fetched idea, by the way—and would up the ammonia content in retaliation if he overheard.
Ma never had a prosaic thought or justified suspicion except in the case of Uncle Tom’s eavesdropping, which fell into the same category as birth, death, and Lawrence Welk. She painted pictures in blood and tears and secret passions, everything intensely fragrant and wildly overgrown.
“Like most aesthetes, she’s a barbarian at heart,” Pop once confided to Bingo and me, the two of us nodding silently, chins bobbing in unison, though at the time we were barely able to write our own names and didn’t have a clue what he meant.
She threw back the covers, the fringe from the chenille bedspread covering my face, and launched herself from the bed as if it were a catapult—Ma always seemed poised for takeoff—her worn cotton nightgown reaching below her knees as she yanked open the top dresser drawer and began rooting strenuously through dozens of mismatched socks.
“Tell you what, Collie, the Lowells and the Buntings are all nuts, every one of them,” Pop said agreeably, settling deeper into the pillows, cozying up to one of his favorite topics, the shortcomings of my mother’s family, gesturing broadly, mellow as honey. “Do you know that the only time your mother and grandfather ever saw eye to eye, they accused your batty old grandma and me of having an affair? They might just as well have accused me of carrying on with an opinionated coat hanger.”
At the time, I had only the vaguest notion of what constituted an affair—if you’d asked me for a definition, I would have said it was something that my father did.
“Ha! You did, and you know perfectly well you did.” Ma banged shut the drawer and spun around to face Pop, who was visibly enjoying her anger. “And you got off easy. My mother paid for her vulnerabilities with her life, while you’re pensioned off courtesy her fortune.”
“Is that why Granddad hates you, Pop, because you did an affair with Grandma?” I’d taken up Ma’s position next to Pop on the bed.
“That’s one of his many phony excuses,” Pop said, examining his nails. “The reality is, Collie, your grandfather hates everyone. In my case, he holds me in particular contempt because I’m poor, I’m Catholic, and I refuse to mind my place. The worst crime you can commit in this life is being broke, and God help you if you don’t dress the part. Always dress well, Collie, it drives the Four Hundred mad.”
Ma laughed, a pealing sort of ringing bell sound I’d come to dread. “Please, Charlie, your personal vanities are nothing more than a symptom of moral vacuity. They are not any sort of challenge to established social order,” Ma said, opening the door to Pop’s elaborately endowed closet, bespoke suits of every color