[cont.]
Gradually the house was becoming her home. It was so much bigger than where they lived before so most of her mother’s furniture had to stay. Otherwise it would look like they lived in the cement dungeon it was. Some things she had to put away. Her mother had art on every inch of every wall and it frankly felt claustrophobic as well as hazardous with children around it full time now. Almost all the paintings, the glass, the sculpture were crated and housed now in temperature regulated storage. Half of the garage, though, was still filled with boxes of those objects which weren’t quite art: pottery, Mexican metal work, hand woven blankets and quilts, her mother’s collections of jewelry boxes and lace shawls and decades of National Geographic magazines. Stacked so neatly, these possessions didn’t actually look like an inordinately large amount for a life-time of collecting. Her father hadn’t wanted anything, no mementos, no masterpieces. He even left the photographs of them as a family. She suspected that he had already taken everything he wanted some time ago to decorate the apartment her mother wasn’t supposed to know about. But not taking the photos was petulant, she thought. He was punishing her children because she couldn’t be bribed into loving him.
The Diebenkorn painting she kept out. Maggie had suggested that she move it into the living room, over the mantel. It was a handsome piece and Lisa agreed with the placement. Hanging it there so prominently, her children would live with it, allowing its rhythms and cool colors to permeate all their memories of this house. Most of the other artwork she had wanted to sell but was heeding Odessa’s sensible suggestion to wait until the market rebounded.
Lisa and her husband were at the Huntington Gardens quite a few months ago on a Sunday, taking a day off from unpacking. He was such a romantic, kissing her under the arbor of old fashioned pale pink roses, in full sight of a Korean tour group. The women had all giggled in unison and that embarrassed him, but not enough to make him stop. As the two of them wandered past the tall bamboo, they saw her father and Odessa walking together holding hands. It was a bit of a surprise. Not that they were together – she had read about it in one of the gossip columns. Or were they called columns now that they were on the internet? What had surprised her was his gentleness and attentiveness. In a rush of sadness, she realized she had never seen him like that with her mother. She had never seen her parents walking hand in hand looking like they were in love.
The two couples’ paths crossed in the cactus garden. Odessa was on her knees, bent over, examining one of the succulents, and Larry was standing, laughing, telling her to get out of the dirt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her father laughing. She heard Odessa say, “If you don’t look closely, you miss so much.” She stood up when they got closer, motioning them to come look, squatting down beside it again. On the ground next to a plump orange colored succulent were small translucent beads in a neat pile. “Do you know what they are? Are they eggs or seeds?” Odessa asked them. It wasn’t anything Lisa had seen near an echeveria before. No one else knew either. “I don’t even know which key words to use to research it,” she said. “Another one of life’s mysteries.” She looked up and smiled. It was a comfortable smile. Odessa didn’t feel awkward running into them. To their surprise, her father smiled at them too.
“And this one is called Cereus horribarbis. Isn’t that the perfect name? It looks like a horribarbis,” Odessa said.
“That is good,” Lisa admitted. “So many seem to be named after a person, not a characteristic of the plant.”
“Ego infests every field. We all want our sliver of immortality. Speaking of ego, I ran into your architect Trumbell at a party last week. He is engaged to a twenty five year old oil heiress from Russia. Oil heiress. Try saying that five times quickly. She had on quite the ring to show off. It should be a good arrangement for him and help him expand his business. More cement bunkers will fit perfectly into Moscow. I heard he threw a conniption fit when you removed his approved carpeting. Good for you. How are you settling in? I told you that Maggie thought your home looked like a Mayan temple?” Odessa asked.
“It looks a little less that way since I put most of the plants outside on the porches but don’t tell Roger I did that. He actually tells me every time he sees me that I MUST get rid of the plants and rugs because they interfere with any appreciation of his architecture. I don’t want him thinking that if he badgers me, I’ll do what he wants.”
So Lisa and Odessa walked together through the cactus, talking about plants, art and its resale value, art education in the public schools, and uprooted children while the two men strolled behind them talking genially about football teams. Her father was actually agreeing with what her husband said. That had to be a first. Half way through the cactus garden, Lisa found herself bantering with Odessa the way she had with her mother, and just like any conversation with her mother, receiving unsolicited advice.
“Don’t act hastily,” Odessa suggested. “Your inclination will be to make the place yours as quickly as possible, but don’t discard anything yet. Your mother had wonderful taste and even if something isn’t to your taste, you’ll be surprised at how valuable it is to someone else.”
Lisa laughed, “And why do you think I’d discard things?” She actually had considered calling Salvation Army to pick up a few of the rugs and all the odd end tables her mother bought as plant stands.
“Because you’d rather be spending your time attending to your teaching and family, not having to deal with all your mother’s stuff. I know it’s hard, just too many memories all rushing in. Have you cleared the walls? Good. Let somebody else go through them, inventory and assess it all, and then crate them properly. There’s no reason for you to become an expert in art handling and valuation on top of everything else. Make this ordeal manageable. I’ll send you some names of reputable people to do that for you. When you get ready to cull, I do know some reliable people for reselling the antiques and collectables. I warn you they’ll probably push you to sell everything but I’d recommend saving the best pieces and much of the artwork for your children. If they don’t want them when they’re older, you can always sell the objects then. Your mother had exquisite taste. Everything beautiful ultimately appreciates in value. It’s an unwritten rule in life: ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.’”
“My mother was fond of that Keats quote too.”
“I know. We talked about it once when she was waiting to see Dennis. You know, if you’re too busy to attend to all of this, hire Maggie. She seems quiet but she stands her ground. She’ll make sure everything is done archivally and will research the value of everything you’ve got to make sure you get a fair price.”
Her father, without any encouragement, offered, “Please let me make your life a bit easier and pay for it. You’ve got a lot on your plate.” He even gave both her and her husband a hug before they parted. He seemed genuinely happy to have run into them. Being with Odessa had changed him. True to his word, he hired Maggie to attend to the art. Having her deal with it had made life easier. At some point they’d sell most of it. If Odessa’s calculation of resale value was even close, their two children could go to college anywhere they wanted and live comfortably. Her mother had extremely smart taste. And selling the summer house and the jewelry her mother had collected would make her husband’s and her own retirement very comfortable. Even departed, her mother would take care of them.
Lisa, startled from this reverie by her children tromping through the kitchen noisily trying to ferret out some snacks from the refrigerator, hopped up. “No snacks this close to dinner time,” she told them, just as her mother had told her. “Help me pick out the vegetables for tonight.”
Coarsely chopping the vegetables the two children selected and getting the wok hot enough, she heard them arguing about whether they should set the table with forks or chop sticks and looked up to make sure they weren’t using the chop sticks as miniature swords. No, as she peered over the heavy soapstone sculpture at the end of the counter, they were studiously arranging the napkins and glasses. Those threats about cutting off access to the video games had in fact worked.
Her mother would be so proud to see how much they remembered of her lessons about setting a table properly. Lisa watched them return the forks to the drawer under the stone sculpture, watched them stroke its “head.” She knew the sculpture was supposed to be a walrus but it took a large leap of faith to see one in the folding patterns. She had told her mother it looked like waves with whiskers. Her children, though, instantly saw the walrus and were surprised that she could not. “Look, Mom, at the flapper things here and here,” her son told her. “And this is the spine,” her daughter stood on tiptoes to trace the curve with one finger, an exact copy of Gramma’s gestures, stirring up the scent of decades of hand lotions saturating the stone. “Your grandmother showed you that,” she teased them. “You didn’t see it all by yourselves.” No, they insisted, we showed Gramma. She could imagine her mother pretending to be surprised at their revelations, telling them how smart and observant they were, smiling that wide, warm smile of hers. Teaching both of them how to make cookies in this kitchen, how to flip pancakes, how to make the perfect hot cocoa with a little splash of vanilla extract. Her mother’s death was a real loss in all of their lives.
Odessa was right. Some of these things from her mother needed to remain in place. The walrus would stay right there at the end of the counter for them to stroke in remembrance for as long as they lived here.
Return on Friday for the next chapters of Just Like Suicide.
