They ate on the screened-in porch overlooking the Eden. Salmon grilled on the barbeque, mango salsa, a salad with goat cheese and dried cranberries, washed down with cool glasses of white wine.
Mimi caught them up-to-date on her infamous father.
“They just bought something of his for MOMA,” said Mimi.
Jay didn’t say anything, but he was impressed and a little weirded out, as if somehow he should know this.
Then Mimi told them what she knew of Marc Soto’s marriage to her mother, which had lasted less than four years. She had been two when he moved out and didn’t connect up with him again until she was eleven and became curious about this man whose name cropped up now and then in the Sunday Times.
“And you read the New York Times when you were a eleven?” Jay asked.
“Not cover to cover,” she said without missing a beat. “Just the parts about my father.” She was very smooth.
“Mom and I were squabbling a lot in those days,” she said. “Marc became my go-to downtown connection. Not ‘go-to’ in the sense that he would actually solve things.”
She laughed and glanced at Jay. She looked tired to him, a little nervous, as if she was hungry for acceptance. Big-city girl to waif in a New York minute.
“I mean it was easy to tell he wasn’t good for much but painting pictures,” she said. “That and finding rich patrons to pick up his bar tab.”
“He had the beginning of a drinking problem way back when,” said Lou.
“Well, he’s been working on it,” said Mimi. She screwed up her nose. “Not that he’s a drunk. I mean he’s real disciplined when he’s painting. But…” She shrugged and sipped her wine. Put down her glass. She’d barely drunk any. Barely touched her food.
The conversation stalled in the cooling night air. Jay watched her-couldn’t take his eyes off her. Such an exotic creature. She was looking out at the lawn as if it were an exhibit. He followed her gaze to the lively shadows. A breeze rustled the leaves.
“I don’t know why I do that,” she said.
“Do what?” he asked.
“Bad-mouth Marc like that.”
“Maybe you thought it was what we’d want to hear?” said Lou.
A bullfrog croaked down by the river.
“It’s really hard to imagine him ever living here,” said Mimi.
Lou laughed. “That’s what he used to say.”
Mimi stared at her, her head cocked to one side. “Didn’t it bother you?”
“Do I look bothered?” said Lou.
Mimi shook her head. “No, you look like the least-bothered person I ever met. So how did you and Marc end up in Ladybank?”
Lou leaned back in her chair. “We met in Toronto when I was a med student. Marc was… well, he was dazzling. Hotshot artist-you just knew he was going to make it. It was fun.” She dragged her finger slowly around the edge of her plate like a phonograph needle looking for music. She smiled. “But it got old pretty quickly,” she said. “The openings, the hangers-on. I never took a course in small talk.”
“I’m majoring in it,” said Mimi, and everyone laughed. She looked pleased. But Jay saw something else in her eyes. She’s a little intimidated, he thought, though the idea surprised him.
“You must be so tired,” said Jo. She didn’t miss much.
“Thanks,” said Mimi. “I am. But this is really good-really helping.” She looked at Jay. “You’re so lucky.”
“I know, the two best mothers in the world.”
“My mother and I eat together about once a month,” she said. “She is a walking appointment book.”
“There you go again,” said Jay.
“Hell,” said Mimi. “Now I’m bad-mouthing my mom. What’s with that?” She looked down, picked up a piece of mango in her fingers, then put it back on her plate. “She’s pretty great. Really. I mean she puts up with me.”
“Must be a saint,” said Jay, grinning.
Mimi made as if to throw her napkin at him. Then she turned to Lou. “Marc is so downtown, so SoHo. I just can’t believe he ever lived here. Like, hello?”
Lou laughed. “You’re right. A recipe for disaster. I wanted a family. I wanted my own medical practice. And so when Marc was set up with a gallery and all, we decided on a trial period here in Ladybank. He could paint anywhere, right? That was the plan. I got a yearlong job as a temp for a doctor at the clinic who was going on maternity leave.”
“And you caught the bug,” said Jo.
Lou smiled and sipped her wine.
“Did he, like, hate it?” asked Mimi.
Lou considered the question. “Actually, you’ve nailed it,” she said. “He like-hated it. He missed the city, but he had that boyish enthusiasm about things.”
“Still does. Well, sort of.”
“He taught some night classes at the college, enjoyed being a big fish in a little pond. He took up kayaking. We both did. Then he found the old place on the snye, and he was just as happy as a clam. For a while. Which is when I made a very serious mistake.”
“Uh-oh,” said Mimi, glancing at Jo.
Jo laughed. “Not me! I was the mistake she made later.”
“It was me,” said Jay. “Right?”
Lou nodded and smiled across the table. “You bet. The best mistake I ever made,” she said. Then she raised her glass to Jo. “Sorry, darling,” she added.
Jo chortled, not at all offended. It was getting dark and she went for candles. The others waited for her to return, each of them lost in thought.
Then Jo was back, and in the new flickering light, the story continued.
“Marc started spending more and more time upriver,” said Lou. She chuckled, as if “upriver” was a euphemism. It was funny, thought Jay. This story was for Mimi, and yet it was news to him as well. He’d never really asked about his father. His mother was smiling at him as if she had just realized the same thing. “The fatter I got with child, the less time he was around. It was as if my growing body was pushing him out the door. I’m not stupid. I could see what was happening. But you know something? I didn’t really care.”
“No?” said Mimi.
“No. I think I already knew by then that Marc was a biological necessity, little more. Cute and entertaining but, well…” She smiled again at Jay. “It was clear to me,” she said, “that whoever the child I was carrying turned out to be, it would probably not end up with Marc’s last name.”
Jay looked at Mimi. “You don’t have his name, either.”
“I used to,” she said. “But when I was ten, Mom got it legally changed to hers.”
“He didn’t care?”
“He didn’t dare! He’d have been crazy to take her on! Anyway, he never spent a dime on support. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t think my mom would have accepted his money.”
“But he’s part of your life?” asked Jay. “Now, I mean?”
“Yeah. Well, sort of. It’s not exactly a typical father-daughter relationship.”
She looked down. How strange it would be, thought Jay, to feel as if you always had to distance yourself from someone. But stranger still, that the someone Mimi was distancing herself from was his father, too. Someone he didn’t even know.
“He was never a part of my life,” said Jay.
“Well, don’t be too sad,” said Mimi.
“I’m not really sad.”
“Wistful?” asked Jo.
“I guess.”
Jay looked at Mimi. “It’s weird-I don’t even know what he looks like.”
Mimi has been slouching, tired, fading. Suddenly she sat bolt upright. “I can fix that,” she said. “I’ve got footage of him on my camcorder.”
And so Mimi went out to the car for her camcorder. And when she came in, everyone was clearing the table, but they stopped as she opened the JVC.
“Nice unit,” said Jay.
“Lots of memory,” she said, and found the documentary she had made. “ A Murder of Good-Byes, ” said her recorded voice.
Mimi scrolled to the restaurant scene.
“Well, I never,” said Lou. “Even the glorious Marc Soto is getting old.”
Jay stared at the screen. Jack Nicholson came to mind, but it was probably just the dark glasses and the what-me-worry grin. He glanced at Mimi; she seemed to be waiting for him to say something. But what could he say? He took the camera from her and looked at the stranger who was not a stranger and saw in him… what?
“You’ve got his forehead,” said Lou.
“That’s what I thought,” said Mimi. “And his long tapered fingers, too. See?”
Jay saw fingers wrapped around a wineglass.
“I’ve got way more hair,” said Jay.
“He’s pretty self-conscious about hair loss. He had this jet-black rug for a long time.”
“He was going prematurely bald when he was in his twenties,” said Lou.
“Well, he’s now pretty much bald,” said Mimi. “I’m not sure how mature he is.”
“I’ll make coffee,” said Jo. “Or should I break out the Scotch?”
Apparently, she was only kidding. She drifted back to cleaning up.
Jay just stared at the moving image before him, as if in a spell. “This is so freaking weird,” he said.
His mother slipped her arm around his waist. “You okay?”
“Sure,” he said, his eyes never leaving the screen. He rewound the bit and watched it again. Lou joined Jo at the counter and started loading the dishwasher. It seemed to Jay as if they had tacitly agreed to give him some space-some privacy.
He looked at Mimi. “Chill,” he said.
She shrugged. “I think I’m nervous because I want you to like him. And I’m trying to figure out why.”
Jay reached out and touched her arm. It was maybe the nicest thing she’d said all evening. But her eyes wouldn’t hold his gaze. This was hard for her, too, he realized. As if her life was somehow under scrutiny. He examined the camera. “Very cool,” he said.
Mimi looked relieved. She showed him the features of the HDD. She showed him the rest of the film, too.
“Who is that?”
“Jamila. Hot, huh? Well, stand in line,” said Mimi. She fast-forwarded.
“This is my mother,” she said. She tilted her chin up and did an impression of her mother raising an eyebrow. Jay laughed.
The women came over to look and said how intelligent Grier Shapiro looked and what a beautiful color her pashmina was, and Lou marveled that anyone could walk with such style in high heels. “I never mastered that,” she said. Then they went back to cleaning up and Mimi joined them, but Jay didn’t. He’d made dinner, and anyway he was distracted. He sat on a stool at the kitchen island, playing with the camera. “Hey,” he said. “Here’s the house at the snye.”
Mimi was carrying stuff in from the porch. “What?”
He held up the camera for her to see. She put down the plates and bowls and took the camera from him. She frowned.
“I don’t remember shooting the house,” she said. The camera zoomed in on the upper gable. Someone was standing in the window, looking out at the garden.
It was Mimi.