Legacies, p.11
Legacies, page 11
If my family existed in both worlds, and Delmar Musslewhite existed in both worlds, then it was safe to assume that the horrible fiancé Lon existed in both worlds as well.
I had to struggle to remember his last name. My Real Cousin Ruby had only told it to me once.
But then I remembered: Lon Goudy. Pronounced Goo-dee. I had said to her in shock, You aren’t planning to take his name, are you? You wouldn’t want to be known as Ruby Goudy.
I’ve already thought of that, she answered. It doesn’t bother me.
That lovely memory conjured Lon’s last name for me, and I was able to type it into the search engine I had at home.
In return, I got several L. Goudys, one London Goudy, one Lonna Goudy, and a Lon Goudy, complete with address, e-mail address, phone number and website.
Of course, I clicked on the website link.
It took me to a loud, gaudy home page for a man whose business was, so far as I could tell, being the best Lon Goudy he could be. His site was psychedelic. The flashing colors and lights crashed my computer twice before I figured out how to bypass the lovely light show that made up the first page.
Then I was inside a tie-dye extravaganza of Lon. Lon’s baby pictures (presented in a swirl of blue and yellow), Lon’s high school drama pictures (complete with a soundtrack [scratchy and out of tune] of Lon singing “There’s No Business Like Show Business), some grownup pictures of Lon laughing with a bunch of friends, ending with a life-sized portrait of the man himself, complete with jaunty smile and handlebar mustache.
It was the Lon of my dreams. Well, not of my dreams. Of my Real Cousin Ruby’s dreams.
I sighed, went back to my first search page, and printed up the current information on Lon Goudy.
Then I went to see him.
* * *
His house was nicer than I imagined. It was a two-story Victorian with a well kempt yard and a new car in the driveway. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the new car was courtesy of Goudy Wholesale Autos—We Have the Right Kind of Junk in the Trunk, a slogan worthy of my Real Cousin Ruby’s Lon—although the big Shop at Goudy’s sign in the front window was a big clue.
I wasn’t sure what to do once I pulled up outside the house. I couldn’t very well introduce myself to this man either, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him.
So I sat in my late-model minivan (clean on the outside and filled with kid-trash on the inside) and watched until Lon came out of the house.
It didn’t take long. He was carrying a briefcase and a travel mug. His hair was shorter than it was in the dream world, and the handlebar mustache from the website had morphed into one of those bushy 1970s behemoths that threatened to eat the man’s entire face.
This Lon had eyes just as beady, although he didn’t hunch as he walked like the dream Lon did. This Lon also wore nicer clothes. He got in his car and drove off, leaving me sitting there, trying to figure out what to do.
I didn’t want to follow him. I wasn’t sure what I would gain from it, any more than what I would gain from talking to him.
Then the side door opened, and a too-thin woman ushered two children outside. She had her hands on their shoulders, propelling them forward as they struggled with heavy backpacks.
The small family crawled into the other car, the one I hadn’t seen until now since Lon’s car had blocked it. The car’s reverse lights came on, illuminating the My Daughter is an Honor Student at King Elementary and the My Son is in the Top of His Class at Lincoln Middle bumper stickers. This car also had a Shop at Goudy’s sign in the right backseat window.
My breath caught. Could this Lon Goudy be married? Married to someone who looked vaguely like my Real Cousin Ruby?
Now I wanted to know the thin woman’s name. But I wasn’t going to get it by following her on her carpooling expedition.
Instead, I went home, logged on again, and searched for Lon Goudy’s biographical information. Not just the stuff from his gaudy website, but the profiles a local businessman should attract.
What I found were the puff pieces that any business put out, as well as a few articles in the neighborhood paper. It took several searches before I found the family information.
Lon Goudy had married his high school sweetheart, an intense dark-eyed girl named Constance Gutterman, planning to support her brilliance by working at car dealerships while she finished college. He did that. But as she was finishing up her economics degree (and just before she received a fully funded offer to study at the University of Chicago’s famous school of economics), the wholesale car business he worked for went up for sale. He bought it, she went to work in the bookkeeping department. They became rich (“Not rich,” he lied in one article. “We’re comfortable. And if we can do it, so can anyone else. We’ll help with that first step—establishing credit. So come on down to Goudy’s, and we’ll get you into the car of your dreams at a dream price.”) and then they became parents.
The real world Lon Goudy was an upstanding citizen, the kind of person I’d like my so-called cousin Ruby to know. I wouldn’t even mind if my Real Cousin Ruby wanted to marry him, not that she could because he was in this world and she was in the dream world.
He seemed about as different from my Real Cousin Ruby’s Lon as…well…my supposed cousin Ruby seemed from my Real Cousin Ruby.
Which made me nervous.
How different were the rest of us in our dream lives?
* * *
Some questions are best left unanswered. I think I knew that even then. I didn’t want to think about that lovely penthouse apartment with the high-end toys that existed in my dreams. Nor did I want to think about that dinner party with the celebrities or the fact that it always seemed I lived within walking distance of the coffee shop.
The coffee shop, which existed in both worlds, in the most upscale neighborhood in the city—a gentrified area of downtown where Hollywood celebrities, the very rich, and New York theater people bought second (or third [or fifteenth]) condos. My husband and I had priced the area (for our retirement, he said; as a daydream, I always said) and realized that even if we saved every dime of our salaries, invested wisely, sold our home, and didn’t pay for the kids’ college educations, we’d still need a miracle to afford a place there.
I couldn’t imagine that the prices were that much different in Dreamland.
But, as I said, I didn’t investigate this. Instead, the next time I fell asleep, I directed my dreaming self to Delmar Musslewhite’s house.
Because I wanted to spy on him in the dream world, just like I had spied on the Lon Goudy who lived in the real world.
In my dream, I didn’t drive to Delmar’s house. I was already there, sitting in a brand-new Mercedes SUV, clearly oblivious to the rising gas prices. A takeout coffee sat in a cupholder beside the driver’s seat, along with a Prada purse that matched my shoes and an older carryall bag from Saint Laurent’s signature store in Paris.
In my right hand, I held opera glasses with an impressive zoom function. Laying next to my left was the most complicated phone/Blackberry/electronic thingie I had ever seen.
It took me a few minutes of getting my bearings in that upscale car before I remembered to look out the window.
All of the houses on this block looked the same. They were 1970s split levels with a view of the river. The houses were well maintained, but the kind of maintained that had clearly been done by the owner, not a service.
A few of the houses had bicycles lying on the front lawn. A few of the houses had lawn decorations, the kind an older couple might have put out a generation ago, thinking them attractive.
Delmar Musslewhite’s house had kids’ toys and lawn decorations. It also needed a new front door (this one had a foot-sized dent near the bottom) and a paint job to get rid of the 1970s browns with forest green trim.
The light told me the time of day. Morning again—and relatively early, judging by the cars still in driveways all over the block.
Shadows moved inside the house. Clearly people were in there. Twice the front door opened, and twice it closed almost immediately, as if whoever was trying to leave couldn’t quite accomplish it.
Finally the door banged open and a parade of children trooped out. The first three were clearly stair-stepped eight, nine or ten year-olds, all white blonds and somewhat pudgy. Only their clothes revealed their gender, and then only because I had a daughter the same age and I recognized some of the styles.
Two more children followed. These two were younger, dark-haired, and clutching each other’s hands as if they had been ordered to do so. All five children carried the ubiquitous backpacks. The two younger children looked like they might topple over backwards as they picked their way down the stairs.
The first three waited in the yard. The other two caught up, and then the group headed toward the end of the block, where a school bus sign stood.
A teenage girl came out of the open door. She bounced down the stairs, her red curly hair tied back with a jaunty bow. She yelled at someone inside, her voice muffled by my extra-thick sound-proofed window.
A boy who was probably just a little older followed. He had her features, only his skin was darker and his hair coal black. He whacked her shoulder playfully when he reached her side, and she grinned at him, then ran down the block to join the other children.
Finally, a young woman came to the door. She wore a short skirt, midriff top revealing her bellybutton ring, and had her blond hair pulled up into the kind of ponytail that Madonna had worn back in her Material Girl days. The woman also wore leg warmers and platform shoes, completing the 1980s look.
She held a gargantuan purse at her side. She started to pull the door closed, when a doughy hand caught it.
The Material Girl rolled her eyes and shook her head, then clunked down the stairs. Her movements revealed her age—she still had to be in high school, and as she left, she had to be talking to a parent.
She sauntered to the bus stop and stayed a good five feet away from the troop of kids. She pulled a compact out of her huge purse, and held it open so that she could see in the mirror.
Movement caught my eye. Another woman stood in the doorway. Only this one was clearly middle aged. Fat and sloppy in a robe that had seen too many washings, she held a cup of coffee in one hand and the edge of the door in the other.
She was looking over her shoulder, talking to someone. Her hair, which hadn’t been combed yet, was an ugly mix of yellow dye and black roots.
Then a man grabbed her and pulled her against him. He kissed her as she held her cup of coffee to the side so she wouldn’t spill it on him. His right hand cupped her fleshy buttock, and she slapped it away, laughing as she did so.
She went inside. He left the house, wearing a mechanic’s uniform, and carrying a lunch pail.
My breath caught as I watched him.
Delmar Musslewhite.
Laughing as he walked to a battered truck parked at the side of the road.
Delmar. With a fat, bottle-blond, and too many children.
A fat, bottle blond whose only resemblance to my supposed cousin Ruby was her sloppiness, her fatness, her children, and her bad dye job.
I set the opera glasses on the seat beside me, my hand shaking.
I leaned my head against the leather seat, watching the children laughing with each other at the bus stop. They seemed happy. The whole family seemed happy.
Just like my supposed cousin Ruby’s family in the real world.
I shook my head. This couldn’t be.
Was attraction something as simple as extra pounds of flesh and a bad dye job? Or was it more complicated than that?
Had my subconscious mixed up dreams and reality to present me with this narrative? Or was this somehow true, just like the real world was somehow true?
I willed myself awake, then lay in the darkness staring at the ceiling. Usually, my husband’s regular breathing beside me soothed me. But nothing could soothe me right now.
I didn’t want to believe this was all about looks and nothing else.
* * *
“Do you know someone named Lon Goudy?” I asked my so-called cousin Ruby the next day. It was eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning, and she still wore her purple sateen pajamas with a matching pair of mules. The mules had a purple puff over the arch, and they left a trail of thin feathers wherever she walked.
“Lon Goudy?” she said and frowned. My so-called cousin Ruby always managed a world-class frown. Her entire face bent toward her nose, making her look like a child about to pull a tantrum. “Sounds familiar.”
She poured me a cup of her extra strong coffee and handed me a lemon bar, even though I didn’t ask for it. Her kitchen smelled of fresh baked bread and a slab of beef just starting to brown in the giant roaster she had on the surprisingly clean counter.
“Lon Goudy,” she repeated. Then she smiled. “Yeah. I know him. Delmar and I bought our first car from him way back when we couldn’t afford nothing.”
Anything, I wanted to correct her, knowing that my Real Cousin Ruby would never make that mistake. But I didn’t speak up. I’d learned long ago that correcting my so-called cousin Ruby led to a fight.
“Did you like him?” I asked.
“Like a car salesman?” she asked. “Are you kidding?”
I felt a slight shock. Who knew that my so-called cousin Ruby had standards? I certainly wouldn’t have guessed it, not from the parade of men she slept with before she met Delmar.
“He’s not just a salesman,” I said. “He owns the business. I hear it made him rich.”
“I bet it did.” She sat next to me, her manicured fingers picking at the lemon bar on her plate. “Fifteen percent interest would make anyone rich.”
“Is that what you paid?” I asked, shocked.
“When you don’t have credit and you have to drive to work, you pay exorbitant rates for a car and you’re grateful for it,” she said.
“I thought he advertises that his cars are cheaper than a regular car dealer’s,” I said.
“They are. He makes all his money on the financing. And the payments are exactly what you’d pay at some reputable dealer’s. I certainly couldn’t’ve gotten a car loan back in those days from a normal financing company. Neither could Delmar. Much as I hated paying the rates, it was Goudy’s that got me back on my feet. Because I got credit through him, I was able to buy the house, and once I had the house, I could rent my business. It all worked out.”
It was my turn to frown. Lon Goudy, car dealer, had had an impact on her life. I wondered if that meant Delmar Musslewhite, car mechanic, had had an impact on my Real Cousin Ruby’s life.
“That bother you?” my so-called cousin Ruby asked.
I blinked. She’d caught the frown and figured another reason for it.
I shook my head. “I guess I had no idea you were in that kind of financial trouble.”
“It’s not what you discuss with the Perfects,” she said.
It took me a moment to understand what she had said. “Us?”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “All of you are so educated. Pam’s in like every magazine being interviewed, and I even saw Debbie on the Discovery Channel one night. And then there’s you with those kids. Did they even spit up when they were babies? They were always so damn clean.”
I stared at her. I’d had no idea she was jealous of me. Or of my siblings. “You call us the Perfects?”
She shrugged. “Nothing bad ever happens to you people.”
“Of course it does,” I said. “Bad things happen to everyone.”
She gave me a crooked smile, then got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. I hadn’t even noticed her drinking the first one.
“You said you needed help with something,” she said.
I took a sip of the coffee, then tried not to grimace. The burned bean taste was what coffee from my childhood tasted like, before Americans knew any better.
“Pictures,” I said. “Do you have family reunion photos from when we were kids? None of us can find any.”
“What do you want pictures for?” she asked.
“My kids have never seen us when we were kids,” I said, making up the first thing I could think of.
She grunted in acknowledgement, then stood. I stood too, but she waved me down. “I know where they are. I have a box.”
She waddled out of the kitchen. I took a bite from the lemon bar. It was good, which wasn’t a surprise. My so-called cousin Ruby had always been a good baker.
I picked up my coffee cup and wandered toward the hall. There dozens of school pictures hung—every child with the current photo, plus the marriage photos of the older two, and a baby photo for the first grandchild.
I heard Ruby return before I saw her, breathing hard and stepping heavily on the scuffed wood floor. She balanced a large box on her large hip and swept the dishes aside. I grabbed a few so that they wouldn’t fall off the table. She set the box down where they had been.
“Heavier than I thought,” she huffed.
I smiled politely. The scent of mildew mixed with the browning beef. She opened the box and grabbed handfuls of black-and-whites, some with scalloped edges, all with dates along the white space.
“They’re not in order,” she said.
We searched. She pulled out the reunion photos, starting with the photos from the 1980s. I found the 1960s pictures beneath them and stared at them in surprise.
My Real Cousin Ruby, thinner than I had been, slightly hunched, her bright, brilliant eyes gazing directly at the camera, stood with me, arm in arm, as if we were best buddies.
How did my Real Cousin Ruby get into the real world?
“Remember that?” my so-called cousin Ruby said. “Those three years we went to Kent, everyone thought we were sisters.”
Kent was a private school that my father had finagled us into. My siblings all went to it, and I did too. I had thought my Real Cousin Ruby went, and my so-called cousin Ruby hadn’t gone at all. I thought she was too stupid to go.
