Magnificence A Novel - By Lydia Millet Page 0,56

clothes with suspicion.

“My name is Merced,” said the woman, and smiled. “You must be Angela?”

“Mrs. Stern,” said Angela coldly.

“Of course: Mrs. Stern,” said Merced, not missing a beat.

Angela ignored the outstretched hand but Merced took that in stride too and patted her arm kindly.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Stern,” she said. “We’ll do fine. I’ll take good care of you until Vera comes home again.”

She put down her purse on the counter.

“So what happened?” asked Susan, as Angela wandered out of the room.

“It was an unfortunate situation,” said Merced. “The receptionist was a temp, because the regular girl just went on maternity leave, and then this temp, who I guess, it turns out, is bipolar?—she just all of a sudden walked out on the job. So no one got Vera’s message. And then . . .”

“Something could have happened to her,” said Susan.

“They’re extremely concerned about the error,” said Merced, and nodded earnestly. “Are you the family?”

Susan was explaining when Angela came back in and began to rearrange items nervously on end tables and shelves.

“Excuse me, Susan? May I speak to you privately?” she asked after a minute.

Susan followed her into her bedroom, where she shut the door behind them.

“I don’t know that woman,” said Angela. “She’s a stranger.”

“It won’t be for long,” said Susan. “Probably just a few days.”

“I don’t know her at all. And she doesn’t know me.”

Angela had flipped open a jewelry box on her dresser and waggled her fingers in its miniature compartments until she found a sparkly rhinestone brooch in the shape of a bow.

“It’ll be fine. She’s a professional. Just like Vera. When Vera first came you didn’t know her either, but still you got along fine. Remember? This one’s good too. She knows what she’s doing.”

“But she doesn’t know anything about me,” said Angela.

“Is there anything you’d like me to discuss with her, before I go?” asked Susan.

Angela had opened the pin on the back of the brooch and was picking at her cuticles with the sharp point, agitated. They were already torn into ragged hangnails and soon they would be bleeding.

“I tell you what,” said Susan, reaching out and taking her hand to stop her. She pried the fingers gently off the brooch pin as she spoke. “You try to get along here for the day with just the two of you. All right? Because I have an appointment. I have some men coming to the house to move some heavy furniture for me. So I have to get back to Pasadena now. But if you still don’t feel comfortable with Merced by dinnertime you can call me. And I’ll come back again. Does that sound fair?”

Angela said nothing.

“I want you to relax,” said Susan. “She’ll take good care of you. She really will.”

“She’s low-class,” said Angela, and put out her bottom lip in a sulk. “She looks like a prostitute.”

Infantile, scattered, then distant and poised—but after all it must be par for the course. If Hal had lived, if both of them had lived together into their dotage they might have been like this. They might have ended as ancient children, half-gone, fumbling, and rarely if ever themselves.

“It’s the style,” said Susan. “She’s young. They all dress like that these days.”

As though she and Angela were already the same—old biddies far past sex and fashion.

“Prostitute shoes,” said Angela.

“Look, I like her,” said Susan, thinking that maybe a more personal testimony would help. “She’s nice. Give her a chance. I think she’ll grow on you.”

After a few more minutes of wheedling she was able to steer Angela back into the kitchen and persuade her to accept a glass of iced tea. Quiet in the background, she slipped out the door while the other two were talking—fled down the walk gratefully in her slept-in clothes, her teeth gritty and unbrushed.

•

Construction workers came and moved the large pieces of furniture from the walls marked by the architect. When they had gone, dark, massive old wardrobes stood anchorless in the center of rooms.

It bothered her. The investigation had to be finished quickly or she would grow restless at the disorder. But when she called his office the architect was busy with real work, he said testily. He pawned her off on a junior associate who could come by in his stead.

The associate was a young recent graduate named Leigh, her hair pulled back in a tight platinum-blond ponytail, wearing the same trendy horn-rimmed glasses favored by her colleague. Susan admired her self-possession and wondered if all architects