Final Option

lover. His secretary calls my secretary. They pull out our calendars and agree that the Kidney Foundation Benefit is doable on the fifteenth, but I’ll be in Brussels on the nineteenth when Stephen is entertaining the Azor lipid chemists and their wives. I often learn of these engagements from the typewritten schedule Cheryl, my secretary, leaves on my desk every morning. While these evenings often end in bed, Cheryl continues to worry about the lack of romance in my life. Recently she has taken to preceding Stephen’s name on my appointment sheet with a small red heart.
    Stephen stretched his long legs out on the battered sofa and helped himself to a joint from a small box of rose-colored marble that, along with a book on botany that belonged to Claudia, collected dust on the coffee table.
    “This is your last one,” he announced, wetting it absently and lighting a match. He passed it to me, but I shook my head.
    “I’m working on this,” I said, indicating my tumbler of scotch.
    “You must be the only person who has to get drunk before she goes home to see her mother.”
    “That,” I replied, “is because there is only one Astrid Millholland. It’ll just take me two minutes to put on some makeup.”
    “You don’t need makeup,” Stephen said, pulling me into his lap. The electricity we generate always catches me by surprise. I don’t know from what deep well it springs. But my lack of understanding doesn’t temper my appreciation. As the last button of my silk blouse yielded, I had the fleeting hope that Claudia was at the hospital and not on her way home. But by then the bulk of my inhibitions had been dissolved in scotch—the rest battered away by the bizarre stresses of Bart Hexter’s death—so I didn’t even suggest that we adjourn to the bedroom.
     
    Like the Hexter children, I, too, grew up in a house set well beyond the view of casual passersby. A high stone wall forms the perimeter of the property, and a second barrier of evergreens must be passed before the house, red brick and Georgian, comes into view. My parents’ house is an architect’s triumph, large, graceful, and filled with beautiful things. In the years since I left it, I have gained the distance to appreciate my mother’s eye, her energy, and the skill it takes to acquire the perfect piece—the right painting, a unique item of furniture. From the vantage of an independent life I can understand the accomplishment of creating a setting of such beauty. But my perception is always clouded by the memory of angry words, alcoholic scenes, and furious denials.
    My father met us at the door, an ever-present gin and tonic in his hand. He pecked my cheek and took Stephen’s hand. Stephen, I knew, tolerated my mother but felt real affection for Dad. Mother, on the other hand, tolerated Stephen only because I had managed to demonstrate to her that I was capable, in her eyes at least, of doing much worse. After all, I’d married a man: named Russell Dubrinski, forcing her to stand shoulder to shoulder in a receiving line with an immigrant tailor and his wife.
    We followed Dad into the library where he mixed us drinks. I pounced on a platter of cheese and crackers while Stephen and my father flipped through the channels from baseball to hockey to basketball and back again.
    “You know that cheese is full of fat,” said my mother archly from the door.
    “Then why do you serve it?” I countered. I couldn’t remember a time when we had been able to speak without sparring.
    My mother is a beautiful woman, occupied fully in the job of being Astrid Millholland. She gives tirelessly of herself to philanthropic causes, makes dressing well into an art, and tends the mirror with frightening discipline. After twenty-nine years of marriage she still weighs, to the pound, what she did on her wedding day. Her skin is fine and flawless. Her wide eyes sparkle. Her signature mane of chestnut hair, swept back from her forehead, is still glossy, thick, and infinitely more stylish than mine.
    “I know we’re just family, but you might have taken the time to put on a little bit of makeup,” admonished Mother. “I can’t believe you let Stephen see you like that.”
    “Can we please go into dinner?” I asked, turning toward my father. “I haven’t eaten all day.”
    These family evenings are prone to strange turns, especially since my little sister, Beth, departed for boarding school. It’s as if my mother, the polished veteran of a