Close Your Eyes

1

Mae Bright woke in her mauve-colored bedroom. For a moment she forgot that she was not alone in her apartment. Mae was a sixty-nine-year-old widow. She was accustomed to leisurely (if lonesome) mornings with the crossword puzzle and a pot of coffee. But as she yawned, she heard noise in the guest bathroom. With a start, she remembered: her daughter, Victoria, was getting a divorce and had moved into Mae’s apartment with her two daughters until “things were sorted.”

Divorce. Mae tasted the word—dead leaves in her mouth. No one in her Catholic family had ever gotten a divorce. As always, Mae thought drily, Victoria was breaking new ground. (She’d also been the first in the family to be arrested—for selling her own prescription Ritalin out of her high school locker.)

Mae sat up and sighed, tucking her white hair behind her ears. She’d recently had it cut into a chin-length bob, like Anna Wintour. It suited her, Mae thought. She donned a pink robe and walked into the kitchen, opening a can of Maxwell House and taking her favorite yellow mug out of the dishwasher.

In the sink was an empty wineglass (not rinsed), and on the counter, an empty wine bottle and a discarded cork. Mae picked up the bottle and peered at the label: Victoria had drunk the 1995 Château Lafite Rothschild. Mae remembered her husband, Preston (may he rest in peace), choosing the wine at a shop in Virginia. It had cost some eight hundred dollars.

“What are you doing?”

Mae was snapped out of her reverie by the loud voice of her daughter. She looked up and there was Victoria, wearing a scarlet peignoir and socks. “Why are you staring at an empty bottle?” said Victoria, raising an eyebrow.

“This was one of your father’s favorites,” said Mae.

“He always had good taste,” said Victoria.

“Victoria …” said Mae.

“Uli is such a jerk,” said Victoria. “Don’t blame me, Mom. I wanted something nice at the end of a horrible day.”

Mae shook her head, trying to stay on track. Victoria often did this—derailed you while you were trying to admonish her. “Victoria,” said Mae. “If you’re going to be here awhile, we’re going to have to …” She swallowed. “Are you going to be here awhile?”

Victoria rummaged in the refrigerator and pulled out a Budweiser. “I’m going back to bed,” she said.

“Is that a beer?” said Mae.

“You know damn well it is,” said Victoria. Mae pointedly checked her watch; it was eight-forty-five in the morning. Victoria took a bottle opener from a kitchen drawer and daintily opened her beer, then poured it in a glass.

“Would you like some melon?” asked Mae.

“Uli wants full custody,” said Victoria. “He says I’m unfit. An unfit mother.”

“Please don’t drink that beer,” said Mae. “I’ll make you an English muffin, honey.”

Victoria took a sip from the glass and set it on the counter. “What gets me is that it’s all about him. He just wants to win. Greece! I’m not letting him bring up my girls in that backward shithole. Did I ever tell you about the toilets in that country? Fuck me.”

A shudder ran through Mae: a wave of revulsion. She composed herself with a deep breath. “You can’t be drinking, Victoria,” she said with as much kindness as she could muster.

“I know, Mom.”

“Just pour it down the drain,” said Mae.

Victoria sighed, wrapping her hands around the glass. “It’s only beer,” she muttered, avoiding her mother’s eyes. She added more loudly, “I can hide it from you if you want me to.”

Mae felt deflated. “Is this a relapse?” she asked.

“My husband is divorcing me,” said Victoria. “I am sad. I had some wine last night, and now I am having one fucking beer. That’s what this is.”

“By the way,” said Mae, hoping that if she changed the subject, the pain in her stomach would go away, “did Sylvia reach you?”

“Sylvia?” said Victoria.

“She called here last night. She sounded sort of strange, come to think of it.”

“She always sounds strange,” said Victoria.

“At least she has that nice young man. What’s his name? Raymond.”

“Are you kidding me?” asked Victoria, picking up the beer and sipping it with measured nonchalance.

“What, dear?” said Mae.

“Is that some sort of pointed comment?” asked Victoria. “Because the last thing I need is my own mother turning against me.”

“No, dear, no,” said Mae.

Victoria snorted, a horrible thing to behold. Then she said, “God, with you and Dad as role models, what chance did I even have?”

“What does that mean?” said Mae. Though she should have been immune to her daughter’s jabs, this one struck unhappily close to Mae’s midnight worries. She had not been a good role model for her daughter. She’d always been a doormat—Victoria had seen her mother walked all over by her husband and life in general. Mae had not protested when Victoria herself treated her mother terribly. But it was not too late! The truth be told—and maybe it was high time to tell the truth, before she was labeled an old bat and everyone could call her opinions dementia—Mae didn’t even like Victoria very much.

Victoria stared into space. She shook her head, her lovely curls reminding Mae of when she’d been a little girl. Victoria had loved those ribboned barrettes. “Maybe if I had told the truth,” said Victoria, “things would have turned out differently for me.”

“Victoria,” said Mae, touching her daughter’s arm.

“What?” said Victoria. The anger was gone from her voice, and she seemed disoriented.

“Honey,” said Mae, but then, as always, words failed her—or she failed with the words. “It was so long ago.”

“Right,” said Victoria. She nodded as if convincing herself of something. “Right, right,” she said.

And furthermore, thought Mae. It had been her mother’s favorite expression; it meant: end of conversation.

Sunny, Victoria’s twelve-year-old daughter, came into the kitchen. She was tall and painfully thin. Mae had begun to wonder if Sunny had an eating disorder, like the ballet dancers Mae had seen in a PBS documentary. Sunny wore a green tracksuit, her earbuds firmly in place. She looked like a skinny gym teacher. Without speaking to anyone, she filled a glass with water from the tap.

“Good morning, Sunny,” said Mae loudly.

“She won’t answer you,” said Victoria, crossing her arms over her chest.

But Sunny took the earbuds from her ears and met her grandmother’s gaze. “Good morning, Nana,” she said.

“Would you like some eggs, dear?” asked Mae. “Some melon?”

Sunny picked up the empty beer bottle her mother had left on the kitchen counter, then set it down. “You promised,” she said to Victoria.

“It’s just one beer,” said Victoria.

“Sunny?” said Mae. “Honeydew?”

“I’m not hungry,” said Sunny, leaving the kitchen. A moment later, Mae heard the front door open and then shut.

After dressing, Mae sat in her room, looking out the window. Unbearable. The word came into her mind unbidden, but it was the right word. Mae simply couldn’t bear the thought of Victoria going back to rehab. Uli would have ample evidence to take the girls to Greece for good; Mae would drain her bank account to pay for another six weeks of massages and meetings; and for what? Mae didn’t believe that Victoria would ever get better, not anymore. That naïveté had been worn down to nothing.

Mae looked down at the park. It was a balmy day already, and people wore shorts and sleeveless shirts. Mae could see a couple sitting on a bench, deep in conversation. A woman pushed one of those expensive strollers, stepping lightly, a cell phone pressed to her ear. Mae squinted but did not see Sunny among the joggers.

They told you, in those depressing rooms, as you sat in a circle of metal chairs, they told you to hold fast to the person your loved one had been, before the booze. Before the booze? Mae could scarcely remember. Victoria hadn’t had a chance to be much of anyone before the booze. When she was four years old, she’d taken sips from all the glasses left on tables after a cocktail party, done a little dance in the middle of the living room, and passed out. How they’d laughed that night. “Look out, skid row,” a guest had joked.

Let go and let God, they said in that basement on Seventy-second Street, sipping tea from Styrofoam cups. She and Preston had attended the Al-Anon meetings for almost a year until one night he had stopped outside and said, “I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.” He had kissed Mae on the forehead, saying, “You keep going, sweetheart, but I’m done.”

Mae had almost gone inside by herself but, in the end, had taken his hand. They’d eaten at Sardi’s, she remembered, then had gone home and made love—tenderly, sadly. Victoria was in worse shape than ever that spring. Mae searched her bags every day after school, ransacked her room, but found nothing. It took Mae until midsummer to realize that Victoria’s shampoo bottle was filled with whiskey, right there in the bathroom.

Mae had forgotten to buy new shampoo, had borrowed Victoria’s Pert Plus one morning. With hot water running down her back, Mae had upended the bottle and watched, mystified, as amber liquid ran through her fingers. She smelled it but could scarcely believe her own nose.

She only drank it to go to sleep, Victoria confessed tearfully. She had nightmares, Victoria said. Southern Comfort! In a bottle of Pert Plus!

Unbearable. It was unbearable to give up on your baby.

Maybe this was all Mae’s fault. Surely. Surely it was all Mae’s fault. She had never given Victoria a moral center. She had loved her too much, or too little. She should have had another baby, a sibling for Victoria. Maybe she should have sat by Victoria’s bed all night to calm her nightmares. Maybe Victoria drank to fill a void. Maybe it was the money. Maybe she drank to forget.

Mae stood and took her Bible from the shelf. It had been a gift from her mother on Mae’s first communion. The Bible was bound in white leather. As always, Mae opened it to the passage that made her feel sick, Proverbs 19:5. It was like poking a sore tooth—she couldn’t help herself. Sometimes she felt cleansed after forcing herself to stare at the words. There they were—small black letters. They were unyielding, simple, true:

A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will not go free.

Mae hadn’t been to confession in months, maybe a year. She wasn’t sure she even believed the Catholic doctrine anymore. But her father had once told her that was what faith was—going to church even if you weren’t sure. Following orders. Maybe she should tell the priest about Victoria, just lay it all out from the beginning: what had happened and what Victoria had confessed and what Mae had forced the girls to do. Mae could let it go and let God decide on her punishment once and for all.

Let go and let God.

She wished she had decided to confess when Father Gregory was in charge, before he retired to Palm Beach. Mae had known Father Gregory since she was a young bride, and he was a comforting presence, a kind old man. The new priest, Father Richard, was a bit too attractive for his own good, too eager to please. In all honesty, Mae wasn’t sure he was up to the job of absolving this big a mistake. It had been a mistake, after all! Just a terrible, brutal mistake.

Mae closed the Bible firmly and put it back on the shelf.