The Color of Light

Chapter 11

A paper effigy of a large house, and then a car and a bundle of hell money-gifts for ancestors-caught fire and burned in a flash, sending smoke and fine ash fluttering among the dozens of red Chinese lanterns strung like bright laundry above the Bartolinis’ backyard.

“Beautiful,” Jean-Paul said, looking up at the lanterns.

It was nearly sundown by the time Jean-Paul and I arrived to honor the hungry ghosts. We brought the dozen or so white roses that had survived the events of the afternoon, now arranged in a vase, and several green silk-covered boxes of decadent French chocolates, some for the living, some for the dead. A red table and chairs were set in a place of honor for the ghosts who had come to eat among the hundred or so neighbors and friends who filled the yard. We placed a box of chocolates among the offerings heaped atop the red table, and then, like the other invited guests, gave the area a wide berth so that the ghosts could feast undisturbed.

There was a soft presence beside me. “Is that you, Maggie?”

Pa, a Buddhist monk Mom befriended during her work with refugee services, seemed to have floated out of the backyard throng; his long-sleeved white robes all but covered his feet. He put his palms together prayerfully and bowed when I introduced him to Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul acknowledged the greeting with a slight bow of his own, diplomatically not offering his hand.

“I was looking for your mother,” Pa said to me as he tucked his hands into his sleeves. With quiet yet profound concern, he asked, “You brought white flowers?”

“The flowers are for Mrs. Bartolini,” I said. In his circumspect way, he was asking if Mom had died. “Mom couldn’t be here this year.”

“Your mother is well?”

“Very well.” I told him about Mom’s move south and his expression brightened. “I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

With another bow, he excused himself and floated off again.

As we ventured toward the buffet tables, I looked for Beto or his dad in the crowd. Among a noisy clutch near a beer keg, I spotted Kevin’s wife, Lacy, and her younger sister, Dorrie, both of them listing a bit, as if the lawn underfoot was a storm-tossed sea. Kevin was nowhere to be found.

Lacy’s name had suited her perfectly when we were kids. She was quick and bright then, a tiny, wiry, athletic little daredevil who plied her dimples to charm our way out of messes she generally got us into in the first place. Dorrie was as close to being Lacy’s opposite as a sibling could be. Stolid, cranky, slow-moving and annoying. A tattletale. As a grown woman, though she had become quite striking, she did not seem any happier.

Dorrie saw me, whispered something to Lacy, threw back her shoulders, and headed in my direction with an alarming air of purpose. I gripped Jean-Paul’s arm and readied myself. Before I could warn him to be prepared to hear whatever was on Dorrie’s mind, Beto pushed through the mob from behind us bearing a raffia-wrapped bottle of chianti and a stack of plastic cups. Dorrie backed away.

“What kept you? I was about to send out a search party to go find you guys,” Beto said. When I introduced him to Jean-Paul, he offered a cup from his stack in lieu of a handshake. As he filled both our cups, he nodded toward the bouquet. “Are those for Mom?”

“Yes,” I said. “They’re from an old friend of hers.”

“Who’s that?”

“A man named Khanh Duc,” I said. “Remember him?”

Beto frowned, thinking. He said, “Maybe. Let me get my kid to take over refill patrol, and we’ll take the flowers inside to Mom.”

He summoned his teenaged son, Bartolomeo Bartolini III, by calling out across the masses, “Yo, Trips.”

“Yo, Pop.” Trips, a lanky, handsome six-footer, more Bart than Beto, squeezed through the crowd. He draped an arm across his father’s shoulders, leaning on him; he towered over Beto. “What’s up?”

Greetings and introductions taken care of, Beto handed his son the cups and the bottle and took the flowers from me. “I’m going inside with Maggie and Jean-Paul for a minute. I need you to keep an eye on Lacy. If she gets out of hand before Uncle Kevin shows up, I’m going to ask you to drive her and her sister home, okay, son?”

Trips took a quick glance in the direction of Lacy and Dorrie, and nodded. Raising the wine bottle, he asked his father, “Can I have some of this?”

“Of course, my angel.” Beto patted his son’s smooth cheek. “In three years, when you’re legal.”

As Beto led us inside to place the roses in the shrine to his mother I said, “Uncle Kevin? Since when?”

“Kevin is Trips’s godfather.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“Guess you wouldn’t,” he said. “Where were you eighteen years ago?”

I shrugged, “Dallas, I think. I worked at a local TV station there until Casey was three.”

He grinned. “Well, you missed a good party.”

“My loss.”

Beto placed the vase in the entry niche shrine next to the golden Buddha, making space among the offerings to his mother that were already there: a plate of fresh fruit, a circlet of pearls, burning incense, pictures of her grandchildren, and a rosary. After a moment of silence, Beto reached behind the Buddha, took out a prayer card and a St. Mark’s medal and handed them to me.

“Father John left these for you,” he said. “He offered rosaries for Mom and Mark at mass this morning.”

“Is he here?”

“Been and gone. He came over early, said a blessing, ate some food and took off. He tires out pretty fast now.”

I suddenly felt like crying. Too much day, adrenaline let-down, too many shadows from the past rattling around. Jean-Paul noticed, wrapped an arm around me and kissed my forehead. I took a deep breath, composed myself and smiled at him. He was still carrying chocolates.

“These are for you,” Jean-Paul said, handing the remaining silk-covered boxes to Beto.

“Holy cow,” Beto said when he saw the label. “Wow. I’ve only heard about this stuff. Primo. I saw they’re opening a shop in the City.”

“Yes, next week,” Jean-Paul said. “I’ll see that you get an invitation to the opening, if you wish.”

“I’d love to go, yes, thank you,” he said. With an elbow he nudged me. “Looks like Ghirardelli has some competition in San Francisco now.”

“I think they’ll survive,” I said.

Bart shuffled in, walking like his feet hurt. Without his usual verve, he said, “There’s my girl. How are ya, Maggie?”

I kissed Bart’s proffered cheek and introduced him to Jean-Paul. He noticed the roses and asked, “Did your dad bring those over? I didn’t see him come in.”

I exchanged glances with Beto, who said, “He’s on his way, Papa.”

“Good, good,” Bart said. “Every year he brings white roses for my Tina.”

“Papa,” Beto said, “this time, an old friend of Mom’s sent the flowers.”

“Yeah?” His head seemed heavy. “Who’s that?”

Beto turned to me. “What was the name?”

“Khanh Duc,” I said, looking for a flicker of recognition from Bart. “He used to spend a lot of time with Dad in the yard. Maybe you met him?”

But Bart didn’t seem to hear. His eyes were glassy, his skin an alarming shade of gray. Probably exhausted by party preparations, I thought, and the noisy mass of people underfoot. Beto took him by the elbow and turned him toward the living room.

“Let’s go sit down, Papa. Take a load off.” Bart did not protest. Over his shoulder, Beto said to us, “Go eat, for God’s sake. Papa’s been cooking for two days. So have Zaida and her mom and Auntie Quynh.”

Bart, his back to us as he shuffled out, raised a hand and waved. “Try my ravioli aragosta. But hurry up before it’s all gone.”

Jean-Paul and I stood for a moment in the quiet of the entry hall, sipping the very good chianti. Looking at me over the top of his plastic glass, he said, “Your father is expected?”

“The spirits of the dead are here, remember?”

“However…”

“Bart’s having some memory issues,” I said. “He seems to think Mom is dead. And Dad isn’t.”

“I see, yes. A man of a certain age, n’est-ce pas?”

“Oui.” I took his arm. “Let’s eat. The food will be an Italian-Mexican-Vietnamese fusion, and the head chef recommends the lobster pasta.”

The partiers outside seemed to have grown noisier during the short time we were in the house with Beto; the Bartolinis were as generous with drink as they were with food. I heard Lacy’s high-pitched laugh above the din as we headed toward the buffet tables.

The side gate opened and Kevin blasted through like a sudden squall. He nodded curt greetings to various people but kept moving on a straight trajectory toward his wife. When he reached Lacy, he took her by the upper arms, nearly lifting her off her feet. I heard him say, “What were you thinking?” as he fast-walked her toward the gate with Dorrie following in their wake. When he passed us, there was the merest hesitation when he noticed me. I thought he wanted to say something, but he just shook his head and kept going.

A general tittering followed their exit, but it soon died away. Apparently, that scene, or some version of it, had played a few times before.

Gracie Nussbaum sidled up next to me. All she said about the drama was “Oh, my.” And that just about summed it up.

Jean-Paul and I filled plates at the long buffet table and ate standing up, talking to old friends and neighbors. Jean-Paul, always charming and self-effacing, seemed to be having a good time. Certainly he was more relaxed, I thought, than he had been at the more formal museum party the night before. He went back to the table for seconds of Beto’s mother-in-law’s little carne asada tacos and the ravioli aragosta tossed in garlic and olive oil. Then he mediated the ongoing but good-natured little competition between Beto’s wife, Zaida, and his Aunt Quynh over the former’s ceviche and the latter’s Vietnamese-style shrimp rolls. Jean-Paul engaged the cooks in a conversation about the ingredients while he sampled both dishes. Both women preened for him. Charm the man had, as well as a good appetite and, apparently, an iron stomach.

Trips came by offering wine refills. “Uncle Kevin asked me to tell you he’ll catch up with you later.”

“Too bad he couldn’t stay,” I said.

“Lacy needed to go home,” Trips said, doing a pretty good imitation of a drunk slurring his words. I tried not to laugh. He leaned in and said, “If you ever want to talk to Lacy, you need to catch her pretty early in the day. Otherwise-” He waved the bottle, and walked off to serve other guests.

Just as Jean-Paul headed toward the dessert table, I heard someone call my name. When I turned to see who it was, I nearly bowled over Lacy’s sister, Dorrie.

“Dorrie!” I grabbed her by the shoulder to steady her. “So sorry.”

“So, you remember my name?” She seemed surprised.

“Of course I do. I thought you left with your sister.”

She laughed, but there was nothing happy in the sound. “Kevin extracted Lacy. I wasn’t about to get into a car with the two of them, not when you’re in town and she’s had a few.”

“When I’m in town? What’s that have to do-”

She held up her hand to forestall the question. “Maggie, you don’t know what it’s like for her. All through high school, she had the biggest crush on Kevin, but he was with you and wouldn’t even look at her. Now, every time one of your shows comes on TV, it just stirs up all those old feelings again because everyone in town, including Kevin, watches you. Then for a couple of days afterward, that’s all anybody talks about. Whether they agree with what you said on the show or not, it’s all Maggie, Maggie, Maggie everywhere Lacy goes, especially if she’s with Kevin. For a woman like Lacy, the attention you get around here is painful.”

“What do you mean, a woman like Lacy?” I asked.

“Well, hell, think about it,” Dorrie said, as if I missed the obvious. “Lacy always thought she should be both the soprano and the conductor in her own opera, if you know what I mean. But she peaked in high school. Head cheerleader, then has-been. And look at what you’ve accomplished.”

“Jesus, Dorrie, there are eight or nine Nobelists in Berkeley. For Lacy to compare herself to me, a face on TV, that’s just-”

“Normal,” she said firmly. “It’s bad enough for her when Kevin sees you on the tube, but when she heard that you’re in town and he’s hanging out at your house, well, she just can’t handle it.”

“Hardly hanging out,” I said. “He came over once, on police business.”

“That isn’t the way Lacy heard it.”

“Heard it from whom?”

“That damn Mrs. Loper. I think she gets off on stirring things up between people.”

I nodded; it was true.

Jean-Paul edged his way back to me, trying to keep slippery homemade flan from sliding off his slick plastic plate. He offered me his spoon. “Try this.”

I did; it was wonderful. “Jean-Paul, this is an old friend, Dorrie Riley.”

“Dorrie Riley Ross,” she said, glowing a bit as she offered her hand to Jean-Paul. Dorrie wasn’t unattractive, and I have to admit that when Jean-Paul turned his attention toward her, just being polite, I slipped a few inches closer to him, making it clear that he was not available. And did not admire myself for doing so.

I said, “Please reassure Lacy that she has no reason to concern herself with me.”

“But she does, you know,” Dorrie said, giving my hand a quick squeeze. “She does.”

Dorrie moved off into the crowd. I saw her speak to Beto before she slipped out the side gate.

There were dark circles under Jean-Paul’s eyes. I said, “Had enough fun for one day?”

“Enough for several.” He patted his flat belly. “And more than enough to eat.”

It was time to say our good-byes. We found Beto tidying the buffet table.

“Thank you,” I said, walking into his hug.

“So happy you came,” he said. He offered his hand to Jean-Paul. “Hope you can join us again next year.”

When I asked where we could find his father, he said, “He knocked himself out getting things ready; you saw how he was. Sometimes when he’s tired, he gets, I don’t know, combative. So, I put him to bed to keep him from getting into trouble.”

“Tell him we had a wonderful time.”

Beto was grinning when he asked, “Did your dad have a good time, too?”

“I’m sure he did,” I said.

We left by the side gate.

“So?” Jean-Paul wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close as we walked down the driveway past the garage. “See any ghosts tonight?”

“Many.” My eyes trailed to the vase of white roses dumped atop a very full trash barrel. “Many.”