New Decameron Eighty-Two: Madeleine Robins

Wake

By Madeleine Robins

One

Even dead, my father took up all the air in the room. I wandered from one parlor to the other, exchanging a few words with people who wanted to make me feel better but knew they could not. Pats on the shoulder; sincere gazes held just a second too long; wringing of hands and shaking of heads. All the wordless ways humans try to handle death. I did not make it any easier for them, wandering through the party the way I did. At least Melissin stayed in one place.

A portrait of my father sat on an easel in the hallway, overseeing the festivities. He would have loved it. I inherited his chin, his brown eyes, his dark, wavy hair. I had not inherited his brilliance in public situations, his ability to put strangers at ease, to draw people to him. The things I wanted to say I knew I could not. I might be the only person there who knew my father's feet of clay up close and personal, but even a bad daughter shows some respect at her father's wake.

Aunt Rose found me. Her nose twitched as if she had been sniffing me out. "Isn't it time you said something, Ivy?"

At no time had anyone, Laurel or Rose or Iris or Lily, told me I'd have to "say something." The aunts had arranged the funeral and the wake while I took a bus to a train to an airport, trying to get back to San Francisco; they had made a point of telling me everything they planned, just as they'd made a point of leaving Melissin out of the arrangements ("the poor thing is distraught. It wouldn't be a kindness to ask her to make decisions").

"Isn't speaking more something Melissin should do?" I said now.

Rose shot a quick look at Melissin, huddled in the red wing chair with the claw-feet, and flanked by Aunt Iris and Aunt Laurel. When my father was alive she had shone almost as bright as he did, beautiful and entertaining and warm. Now she was sunken and drab, and looked like she was under house arrest. "I wouldn't ask if of her. And she's not really family, dear. Now it's very simple: you thank people for coming. You tell them--you say--" she stopped, as if she'd run out of words. "Go," she said at last, and gave me a little shove toward the center of the parlor. Behind me I heard a spoon against a glass, the universal attention-please for a certain kind of gathering.

Everyone looked at me. 

"Thank you for coming," I said. My voice sounded feeble. Aunt Lil, stationed by the sideboard cutting game pie, looked up and smiled at me.

"Thank you for coming," I said again. "It means a lot to me and to Melissin--" I felt the focus of the crowd shift to my stepmother, then back to me. "I know it would have meant the world to my father. Your regard--" I could feel myself running down. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking... "I don't think he could have accomplished the things he did without the support of his friends and community. Thank you."

I started to step back into the crowd, then had a moment of inspiration. "If anyone wants to share a memory of my father, please." I made a shooing motion, as if I could drive people into the center of the room.

After a moment someone stepped forward and began to speak. I didn't listen: I'd outed myself as Hart Western's daughter, and the press of people around me doubled as I drifted toward the other parlor. Everyone wants to get their condolences in while the condoling is good, I thought. 

I'm so sorry.

He'll be greatly missed.

A truly great man.

My father would have loved it. I never met anyone so comfortable in the spotlight, expansive, witty, polite, solicitous by turns.

You must be so sad.

He lived a wonderful life.

Such a great loss to us all.

I'll never forget him.

My feet hurt. I wanted a drink and something to eat. I kept smiling with half my heart and half my face, wondering how long this would go on. In the other parlor the testimonials continued.

You must be so relieved.

My head came up so fast I almost hit the speaker's chin. Who says such a thing at a memorial? Yet this man was looking at me with sympathy. "Hart Western, alive, was an overwhelming presence. I imagine you find it easier to breathe now."

He was tall, skinny, too young to be my father's contemporary. He wore casual clothes, soft, as if they'd been worn to velvet: a blue work shirt, black jeans, a tweed jacket with elbow patches. Elbow patches. His dark hair needed cutting. The very model of a graduate teaching assistant, come to pay his respects to a teacher he didn't much like.

"It's an interesting mix of people." He gestured toward a group of my father's students who stood at the sideboard, blinking like newborn kittens. "The clueless. The thankless--" a nod to the crowd generally. "And the heartless." This time he nodded in the direction of Melissin and my aunts and a group of people who were clustered together beyond the wing chair. I hadn't noticed that before: that so many of the people who had introduced themselves as my father's colleagues had crowded to that side of the party. In a group there was something unsettlingly groomed about them, even my aunts. They wore black the way people do at funerals in movies. Looking at them, I was surprised Aunt Iris hadn't put Melissin in a black crape veil.

"The heartless?" I echoed.

"Certainly." His gaze was fixed on them. He was a head taller than me, olive-complected and dark eyed; I felt his height like a shadowed wall. When he moved the tweed jacket gave off an outdoorsy scent, wood smoke and pine and must. "Do they look like they've got a heart between them?"

I gave it more thought than the question really deserved. "They look brittle."

"An excellent word! Well done." He looked delighted.

"Well, some of them do. Not my aunts or Melissin, but some of the others." That was a lie. Melissin looked so brittle she might snap in a stiff breeze, and my aunts--in a block they were formidable, not fragile but unbending.

"You're retreating on me." He sighed. I thought he was going to turn away, and just then, for whatever reason, I couldn't bear it. I turned toward him and offered my hand, trying for some of my father's social ease. "I'm sorry. I'm Ivy Western. And you are?"

"John Ash." He didn't shake my hand. He took it in his own and turned it, palm up, as if he was going to read my fortune. His fingers were very long and strong, and his fingertips were smooth. It was unnerving; I pulled my hand away.

"How did you know my father?"

John Ash smiled again. "We were colleagues."

"At the college?"

"No." He didn't shake his head, which made the word seem oddly abrupt. His focus was still on the people across the room, the ones he'd characterized as heartless. But all of them had been introduced as my father's colleagues too. Ash didn't look like one of them. "Psychologist or philosopher?"

"Neither." He kept gazing--not staring, gazing--across the room. Then, so suddenly it startled me, he turned his focus back to me. "Have you eaten anything today?"

"No. What?"

"You need to eat something. You're pale."

"I'm always pale."

"Come on." He took my hand again, led me toward the sideboard. 

I pulled back. "Please, no. I'll eat something later. I should be mingling."

Amusement lit his eyes. "Ah. Well, then. Go. But don't forget to breathe."

I walked away.

Aunt Lily was instantly at my side. "Who was that?" Her tone invited me to provide swoony confidences. Of all my aunts, Lily was the one who came closest to the sympathetic, jolly, confiding person an aunt is supposed to be. It didn't come naturally to her, but I gave her points for trying.

"His name is John Ash." I didn't want to talk about him. 

Aunt Lily pursed her lips. She had beautifully curved, full lips that looked like they belonged to an Edwardian pin-up girl, not a woman with an ashy pixie cut and black horn rim glasses. "John Ash."

"He's another of my father's colleagues."

"Did he say so? I wonder where from." Lily took my arm. "You've been standing up since the party began. Sit down and we'll have a cup of tea."

"Tea?" By choice, Aunt Lily never drank anything but coffee or bourbon. Never drunk, never even tipsy. But I'd never seen her drink tea.

I let her steer me toward one of the side chairs against the wall, just behind the piano. The cushion was rock-hard, but it did feel good to be off my feet. 

"Rest a bit, sweetheart. This is harder than you know."

I closed my eyes and leaned back against the rounded, unyielding cushion, listening to the rattle of a china cup and saucer being set down on the table next to me. I heard the rise and fall of voices, like tides across the room. I thought, perhaps if I fall asleep, when I wake up everyone will be gone.

But I couldn't sleep. The chair was far too uncomfortable, and it wasn't safe.

I opened my eyes. Wasn't safe. In my father's parlor, surrounded by his friends and family and students and colleagues. Not safe?

A couple of students wearing chinos and corduroy jackets approached me to say goodbye. I rose to meet them, playing my part.

A great teacher.

Brilliant man.

We were lucky to have him.

Sorry for your loss.

I shook hands with the president of the college, with members of the psych department, administrators, distraught students, our neighbors, a reporter from the Chronicle who had done a piece on my father a few years ago. After a while when the parlors were half-emptied, Melissin got up shakily from the wing chair and went upstairs, Aunt Iris hovering. Only the heartless, as John Ash had called them, remained.

Why didn't those people leave? The party was clearly over, the catered food had been cleared away, even the bartender was idle. He stood with his hands in his pocket, half a bottle of red and a quarter bottle of white open on the table before him, staring into space.

Aunt Rose was in consultation with one of the "heartless" men, both of them looking grim. I hoped she was telling him it was time to go, but instead, at his gesture, the black-clad people began to move in twos and threes into the far parlor. Aunt Rose followed them, closing the pocket doors behind her.

A creak from the stairway made me look up. Aunt Iris was coming downstairs at a clip unbecoming to a woman of her size and dignity, pulling a knitted lace shawl around her shoulders.

"Aunt?" My voice sounded loud in the empty parlor, but--watery. As if it wasn't transmitted by air but some other medium.

Aunt Iris stopped on the fifth step up, startled. "Ivy, my dear. I thought you'd gone up to your room."

"That was Melissin, Aunt. You went with her."

"But you must be exhausted." She came down the last few steps and toward me, hand outstretched. "Come on, sweetheart. Why don't you go upstairs and I'll bring you something to eat. I'll bring you some tea."

At the word exhausted my eyes were gritty and I wanted to slump to the ground where I stood. Lying down sounded terrific.

My aunt's eyes flicked sideways toward the closed door of the far front parlor, reminding me. "Who are those people? "

Iris blinked a couple of times and looked back at the near parlor. "Those people? Sweetheart, that's just a little meeting of the members of your father's Institute. They're talking about what to do now."

"Do now?" So that was where the colleagues came from: members of the monthly drinks-and-discussion group my father had gathered around him, grandly called the Underwood Philos Institute. "They have to meet here? Today?"

"It was convenient. Some of the members came from rather far away."

"I thought the Institute met once a month. Why couldn't they wait until the next meeting?"

"Sweetheart, the Institute was very important to your father, and we need to honor his memory by--" she cast another anxious look toward the pocket door. As if the parlor were a ship that might sail without her

"Maybe I should make an appearance," I suggested. A knot of contrariness was forming inside me. "My father always said I should come for one of their meetings."

"Not this meeting, Ivy. Everyone's in shock from Hart's death. Next time we meet I'll bring you myself. Now, are you hungry? There's still a lot of food in the kitchen, dear. I didn't see you take a bite all afternoon."

"No, I'm fine. Go meet with the colleagues." I'd meant it to be funny but it came out sullen. Aunt Iris watched me with a tuck of concern between her eyes. I put a finger up to smooth it away. "I'm good, really, Iris. Go."

I might have crashed the meeting to annoy my father, but I didn't want to hurt my aunts. I turned back to the parlor I'd come from and took a glass of wine from the bartender's table.

"You could probably start packing up, now," I told him.

The bartender gave a long, gusty sigh and shook himself. He looked around the room. ""Party's over. Guess I should pack up."

I felt snappish enough to say something rude, but I didn't. The bartender, in the caterer's red vest and bow tie, looked about twenty-four. My own age, just trying to get by. I shouldn't to take my irritation out on him.

"Do you need a hand?" Classic reaction-formation, my father would have said. Feel mean, act nice.

For the first time the bartender seemed to really see me. He smiled as he shook his head. "Most of what's here belongs to the house; the table, the glasses, the wine. I just need to bus the stemware into the kitchen and I'm done."

His smile reminded me that I was girl; even in my father's house, at my father's wake, I was attractive enough to consider flirting with. It felt weird. I shrugged and turned to wander into the hallway.

The hall separated the two parlors, with the staircase running up the right side. There were three floors above. It was a ridiculous amount of space for five people, particularly when one of them--me--was away for most of the year. My father had loved the house, reveled in its Edwardian grandeur, the high ceilings and carved dark wood. The house must be a monster to heat and maintain. I'd find out how much of a monster after the reading of the will. Or Melissin would.

It occurred to me that I should check on my stepmother. I started up the stairs, fighting gravity, suddenly tired again. What a weird day: antsy to exhausted, dutiful to rude. Maybe this is the way one is supposed to feel at a parent's funeral? My mother died when I was too small to remember her. I had no comparison data. I leaned heavily on the bannister and counted the stair treads as I climbed, the way I did when I was a kid.

Something moved in the shadows on the landing.

"Jesus." I lurched backward, almost lost my balance.

John Ash stepped toward me from behind a bookcase.

"I thought you'd gone." Oh, that sounds cordial.

Ash shook his head. "I wanted to see what happened next." He was not apologizing. You'd have thought that lurking in the shadows of a stranger's house was--outside of spy thrillers and serial killer TV-- perfectly normal.

"So what happened?"

Ash sat down on the landing, folding his knees up to slide his feet between the balusters, his knees bent. He rested his chin on his knees and looked at the floor next to him. After a moment I sat down beside him, sliding my feet, then my legs, between the balusters. Even with the rail between me and the drop, I felt a pang of height-sickness.

"Did something happen?" I asked again.

"People said goodbye. Your stepmother was bundled out of the way. One of your father's sisters brought you a cup of tea--did you drink any, by the way?"

I shook my head.

"Good. Then all the people from the Institute went off behind closed doors and shut you out."

I looked at him sharply. It was one thing for me to feel shut out--it was a sensation I knew intimately, distilled essence of being Hart Western's daughter. But to have a stranger use the words made it real. I was used to people telling me I was over-reacting, too sensitive, that I resented Melissin's place in my father's life, or his mentorship of his students.

"I didn't want to intrude," I said. Lame.

John Ash smiled. "Even if that were true, you should want to be there. You should be there. You cannot expect a legacy if you don't claim it."

"Excuse me?" I'd stopped feeling height-sick. "The reading of the will is Tuesd--"

"There are things that cannot be conveyed through the devices of the--the law." What was the word he edited out? "You have a place in that room. They cannot dispute it."

"What if I don't want a place in that room? My father and his damned Institute can--"

"Why do you call him that? My father. Not Father or Dad or Pop or Papa or Daddy--"

"He never wanted me to use those names. He wanted me to call him Hart. Look, can you be a little less oracular and a little more straightforward?

Ash snorted. "I'm sorry. It's a habit that's hard to break."

"I'm not feeling great, I hate parties almost as much as I hate people dropping vague hints. What do you mean, my inheritance?"

I wasn't expecting much, but I hoped I'd have enough money to finish my degree and hold me over until I had a job. I wanted the stuff I considered mine--the books in my old room, my stuff stored in the attic. That was it. I was fond of the big old house the way you are when it's the only home you've known` , but I didn't want the responsibility of it. Melissin should have it, or the aunts.

I did wonder how much it cost to heat. Being a grad student makes those kinds of numbers very real to you.

John Ash was speaking. "I'm sorry? Back up, I didn't hear you," I said.

He started again. "Some inheritances you receive at birth. You get your father's eyes and your mother's mouth. Some inheritances are conveyed through courts and papers. And some inheritances must be earned, even fought for."

Fought for? All I could think of was King Lear. Or East of Eden.

"But I'm sounding oracular again. The thing is, I cannot tell you. You must find it yourself."

"Find what? My inheritance? Right. Where?"

"You might start by joining the meeting downstairs."

"The Institute?" A thought occurred to me. "Why aren't you in there? Aren't you one of my father's colleagues?"

John Ash leaned forward and rested his head against the balusters. "I'm from another branch of the discipline, you might say. A different institute. I would not be welcome. Emphatically not welcome."

"But I would be?"

"You're within your rights to be there. They will be discussing property of yours and whether it should be disposed of--"

"How do you know all this?"

"The customs are not so different on my side of the discipline. Go down." He turned to face me, his unkempt hair shadowing his face. "Go."

"Can you come with me?"

Ash shook his head; all I saw was his hair stirring against the balusters. "I would not be welcome," he said again. "They were not pleased that I was here, those who saw me. I would do more harm than help."

"And you won't tell me what I'm walking into. A state dinner? A black mass?"

"Your sense of humor will be an asset." Ash smiled as if I had proposed a meeting of the Legion of Superheroes. "If anything, I imagine it would be more like a papal election."

I snorted. "And what happens if I ignore them downstairs. I lose my shot at the papacy?"

"Not utterly." He was serious now. "But you make your challenge more difficult."

That settled it. I was not interested in more challenges. "I'll pass. I have a dissertation to finish; that's challenge enough. Whatever my aunts and the colleagues are divvying up, I'm sure I can do without it."

"Don't be glib." His wide, mobile mouth straightened into a line that made him suddenly formidable. "Has it occurred to you to wonder why your aunts don't want you in that room? Why they have tried all afternoon to distract you, keep you from asking questions, encouraged you to doze and withdraw and show yourself to your worst advantage?"

I meant to tell him he didn't know what he was talking about, then I remembered Aunt Lily's insistence that I sit and rest, Rose's pushing me to make a speech, Aunt Iris talking me out of my curiosity about the meeting downstairs.

I rocked back and drew my legs from between the balusters, knocking one of my shoes off. It fell to the hall floor with an echoing thwack that made my stomach flutter.

"You're going." If Ash was pleased he did not show it; the man could play poker with the Devil.

"I suppose so." I got to my feet and kicked off my other shoe. I didn't doubt that Aunt Iris, the oldest and most reserved of the aunts, would be distressed if I showed up shoeless, but I was pretty sure that only a bit of reckless abandon would carry me through disobeying the Aunts' specific orders.

No: they hadn't ordered me to stay away precisely, but they had urged it. For my own good, for the sake of the members of the Institute, for the sake of my father's memory.

I looked down; my father's portrait, still on the easel, seemed to watch the closed pocket door to the far parlor. He was everywhere here, in the hall, where his hat still hung on the bent-wood coatrack, in the carpet under my bare feet, which smelled of his pipe. I felt suddenly drunk with his presence, and angry.

The anger took me down the stairs. Each step I felt heavier with fury, until the treads bowed beneath my feet. Just before I reached the hall landing I stopped and took a long, cleansing breath, like in yoga class. From the corner of my eye I caught motion above me. John Ash nodded slowly, encouragingly.

I turned my back on my father's portrait, turned toward the parlor, and put my hand on the recessed brass fitting that would let me slide the door open.

I felt a shock of electricity, then I pushed.

Two

Aunt Iris stood with her back to the door, blocking entry. Her head turned; she was frowning. "Ivy--"

"It's my house too, Aunt. At least until the will is read. I won't bother anyone," I whispered, and stepped to the left, squeezing behind her, leaving Iris to slide the pocket door closed. I didn't expect to disturb the meeting; in this house I had always found it easy to disappear, to go unnoticed. But I was noticed, and the black-clad crowd was disturbed.

An old man, a very old man with skin like vellum and long, straight silver hair pulled back into a thin ponytail, sat in the wing chair nearest the fireplace. He had been speaking when I came in, although I hadn't made out his words.

"Hello, Ivy," he said. His voice was low and syrupy, the voice of someone talking to a dog or a toddler.

"Hello." Everyone in the room, perhaps thirty people, was looking at me. "I don't want to interrupt. Please go on."

The old man considered long enough that I thought he was trying to remember where he'd left off. But no. "We were told you would not be joining us." He looked from me to Aunt Iris.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know about the meeting until just before it started. It seemed rude not to drop in--"

Another voice, a woman's, answered. "You have dropped in, as you say. But tonight we're not talking about anything very interesting. Perhaps another time?" She had a family resemblance to the old man, the same wide mouth and dark eyes, but her hair was rich brown to his silver.

Her tone of patience irritated the hell out of me. "I'm here now. Call it a gesture in memory of my father. He always thought I should take more interest in the Institute. Please go on. You won't even know I'm here."

The woman looked around the room, seeking support that did not come.

"If Hart wished it--" a younger man with shoulders and a profile like a bull, superb in an Armani suit, began. There was a ripple of reaction I couldn't make sense of.

Aunt Laurel said, loudly. "It's what Hart would have wanted."

Iris turned her glare from me to her sister. Laurel smiled.

" Where were we?" The old man looked around the room.

"The question was: where the Institute is to meet now." Another woman's voice, musical and low. She was standing in the bay window that fronted the street, the black of her suit vanishing into the dark velour curtains so that her face was a pale smudge against darkness. For several beats the room was silent. No one wanted to speak first. Maybe it was the fact of my presence. At last the same woman spoke again. "Do we have any options?"

An odd, knotty, twisted man with skin the flat gray-brown of a walnut shell, spoke. "Other than take a function room at the Fairmont?" He said it as if he meant to be funny, but no one laughed.

An impulse born of the silence in the room made me clear my throat. "Why not continue meeting here?"

Everyone turned to look at me. Aunt Iris and Aunt Lily smiled. Aunt Rose pressed her lips together and looked down. Aunt Laurel gave a tiny shake to her head.

The old man who had first spoken to me smiled thinly. "Can you make such an offer, Ivy?" He said my name as if I was a child.

"I'm sorry. I'm afraid I don't know your name."

"You may call me Mr. Dimas."

"And you may call me Ms. Western, Mr. Dimas. Since we don't know each other well enough to be on a first name basis." I felt anger like hot metal flow along my spine. I stood straighter.

"Forgive me, Miss Western." Ms. was too much to hope for, I suppose. "My question still stands. Do you have the authority to make such an offer?"

"I live here. Until the will is read on Tuesday, I'm Schroedinger's beneficiary. After that--even if I have no further say in what happens with the house, I'm sure you can squeeze one or two meetings out of my father's estate while you look for another place."

The knotty dark man coughed. "Excuse me, but what is a Schroedinger's beneficiary?"

Seriously? This was a group of people who met to discuss philosophy and ideas?

The woman by the bay window said "She means that until the will is read, she is in a position where she is the heir, and not the heir, Owen."

At his name, the knotty man turned his head to look at her. "Thank you, Virginia."

Suddenly, for no reason I could see, the atmosphere in the parlor was dark and crackling. The knotty man and the woman looked away from each other, but the people around them reacted as if a fuse-lit bomb had been tossed among them. In this charged silence, when no one met anyone else's eyes--not the guests, not the knotty man, nor the woman Virginia--I stepped behind a clump of the black-clad guests and made for the hassock by the big bookshelf. When I was little it was my favorite seat, the threadbare carpet-upholstery pricking the backs of my knees while I sat there reading with my fingers in my ears. I had convinced myself, at six, that when I sat there I was invisible.

The hassock was unoccupied. I was startled by a sense of relief so strong that tears came to my eyes. I sat down, drew my knees up, and leaned on my elbows in my favorite childhood pose. I did not plug my ears, though the familiar childhood magic had worked. The guests were too busy waiting for a quarrel to remember me.

At last, when the air was almost sparkling with things unspoken, Aunt Laurel stepped forward. She was my father's favorite sister, the beauty. She'd spent so much time at his side, especially before he married Melissin: lushly beautiful, her hair the same color as Lily's, but abundant, pulled up in a soft knot. Laurel was the aunt I was least close to.

She waited until she had pulled all the attention to her. "There's no rush, surely. The reading of the will is on Tuesday: Hart believed very much in the mission of the Institute. He won't have left the Institute homeless or destitute."

Mr. Dimas nodded in a slow, rhythmic way, as if he was watching something, following the bouncing ball. "Thank you, Laurel. But we cannot insert ourselves in a place where we aren't wanted." He looked back at Virginia, who I think had settled on the window seat, out of my line of sight. All I saw was an aura of her coppery hair.

Laurel looked at her sisters, gathering them to her. Lily stepped forward first, her horned rim glasses swinging from a beaded chain. She fell in beside Laurel, and took up the same position, challenging, waiting for Rose and Iris to join them. Iris stepped forward next, pulling the shawl around her shoulders as if she was signaling disapproval. But she came.

The last was Rose. She had taken the chair at my father's desk--O! lese majeste, that anyone but Hart Western should sit at that desk. I'd had a spanking for that infraction twice when I was small, and then I'd found the hassock, where I could hide in plain sight. Rose got up from the chair, regal, drawing all eyes to her, not with beauty but with energy.

"Are we all agreed?" she asked. "Unless Hart's will is very different than we expect it to be, the Institute should plan to continue here."

Someone said, "Hart's wife?"

Iris shook her head. "She'll want what Hart wanted." There was no question.

"What about the girl? Hart's daughter? She--"

"She's here." Aunt Iris said it firmly enough to cut off any likely comments about Hart Western's unsuitable daughter. "Ivy? Do you see any problem with the Institute continuing to meet here?"

The minute I stood up from the hassock I seemed to be visible again. "I was the one who suggested it, Iris. I have no problem for now," I agreed. Cautiously. What had John Ash meant about claiming a legacy? "If it turns out that my father left the house as a home for cats, or an art museum--"

The laughter was polite. I started to sit down, but Aunt Iris held out her hand to me, a clear invitation to join the four of them. I felt queasy at the idea of being at the center of all that attention, cut off from escape. Escape? I waved a hand to acknowledge my aunt, then sat down again. If Iris was dismayed, she didn't show it.

"Then it's settled, at least until the will is read." 

I looked around me to see if the members of the Institute were pleased. For the first time I saw that within the Underwood Philos Institute there were groups, cliques, politics. A force like gravity sorted them: my aunts first, clustered around the desk. Mr. Dimas stepped back and to the right, until he was among his group--it was subtle, but they were his: two women, two men, all in sharp pressed black. Virginia, with a nod of her coppery head, had three men and a girl, a strawberry-blonde imitation of herself, at her back. A square, blocky man with sandy hair and mutton-chop whiskers--really?--sat by the cold fireplace; he crossed his legs and, as if by signal, a cloud of younger people--most looked my age--coalesced around him. One by one the handful who were left drifted into places with the others. The only person who didn't move was the only person who didn't wear black: Ivy Western, safe on her hassock. Me.

"So what now?" I asked. "I thought this was a meeting of the Institute. This was all just to figure out where to hold your meetings?"

Dimas, again, was startled to find me still in the room. "There are administrative matters I think would bore you--"

Over him, her voice like velvet and steel, Virginia drawled. "It's politics, my dear. With your dear father gone, we must choose a new leader for the Institute."

"Then maybe I'll go." I remembered the old saw about academic politics—I had enough of that at work. My father had lived for that sort of thing, the one-upsmanship, the subtle settling of scores. He did it brilliantly. It made me uncomfortable, and that made me aware of how much I lacked his skill and charm with people.

I thought they'd be delighted to see the back of me, but all of them, even Aunt Laurel, protested at once. 

"No, really." I stood up. My head felt very clear, but I moved slowly and felt off balance. "I only wanted to find out about the Institute."

"Did you find out?" Virginia smiled at me. I felt like a chocolate truffle being assessed before it was taken from the box.

"Did I find out what?"

"About the Institute."

Again everyone was looking at me. There was weight to their attention; that was why I felt so heavy and slow. "Enough for tonight."

I'd learned nothing. But I had a strong feeling that I ought to be gone, ought to get away. Escape. Why was I here? "Enough for tonight," I said again, and shrugged and started for the door.

Aunt Laurel watched me. Aunt Rose had the tuck between her brows again; I couldn't tell if it was concern for me or about me. I stopped at the door, leaning heavily against it. "Good night," I said. The door slid open under my hand.

The hallway was cool and empty. The lights had come on--the caterer or bartender must have turned them on--and I watched a torrent of dust motes falling from the landing. I did not want to look up, but I wasn't sure if that was because I thought John Ash would be sitting where I left him, or that he wouldn't.

I swayed on my feet.

A hand on my elbow, supporting me: "Let's get you to a chair."

It was the bartender. He'd got rid of the vest and red bow tie, and his sleeves were rolled up, but I knew him. "Have you eaten anything today?" he asked.

Why was everyone so concerned with how or what I was eating? His hand was strong on my elbow; he half-led me back into the other parlor, toward the same chair I'd occupied earlier. The tea Aunt Lily had brought me hours ago was still in its china cup, dark mahogany liquid with a speckling of dust on the surface.

My stomach revolted. I pushed away from the bartender and stumbled over to the settee. I thumped down awkwardly, feeling drunk.

"Look, I really think you should eat something," the bartender said again. "Or get some sleep. Memorials are hard. I've seen it before. You think you're fine, then--"

"Did they put all the food away?"

"The caterers? I guess so. Want me to look?"

For the first time in hours I knew unequivocally what I wanted. The bartender watched me warily. How far would his goodwill go?

"Do you know Bill's, on Clement?"

He nodded.

"Could I ask you for a lift there? I think what I really need is a cheeseburger."

Three

As we walked out of the house, the bartender stopped. "I'm Mark," he said. "Do you make a habit of hitting strange men up for rides?"

I put out my hand to shake his briefly. "Ivy Western. Not really. But it's been a damned weird day."

He nodded. Did not give condolences; he must have watched my reaction during the party. "I had to park kind of far away."

We went east, across Van Ness and up to Clay and Gough. Mark's car was a black Saturn, not too beat up but far from brand new. He spent a few apologetic minutes moving stuff--papers, books, a jacket, an empty sports-drink bottle--into the back seat, then waved me in. The car didn't smell like fast food or smoke or any number of unpleasant things, just the musty smell of old car with the windows closed.

"Bill's is Clement at 22nd Ave, right?" He slid into the driver's seat. "Seatbelt." He buckled his and looked at me until I buckled my own. I nodded.

He took us along California, not as fast as going on Geary, but fast enough. By the time we saw Bill's awning, I had made a decision.

"Come in. I'll buy you a hamburger."

He shook his head. "You don't have to."

"I want to. You're the first person today to treat me like a human. That deserves juicy ground beef, maybe even a slice of cheese."

Mark grinned. "If I want bacon I'll cover that myself, I guess."

"I think I could extend my largess to bacon as well. Come on."

Bill's is a narrow space with a counter with red vinyl swivel chairs along one wall, quilted aluminum siding above the grill, black and white tile floors, closely-packed tables, crystal chandeliers, and White House china replicas on the walls. The menu lists all sorts of "celebrity burgers," and they will put pretty much anything you want on a burger; Mark looked over the menu, but I knew what I wanted.

The waitress took our order. "Sautéed mushrooms? Really?" Why, after the day it had been, I found myself teasing a guy I had only met an hour before, I don't know. "I will permit cheese on a burger, lettuce and tomato are fine, but sautéed mushrooms is just...aberrant."

He grinned. He had a nice smile. "Have you ever tried sautéed mushrooms on a burger?" The waitress brought our drinks; Mark drank down half his Coke in one gulp. "They're good. I'm a mushroom fan."

The conversation lagged. Not uncomfortable, but it's one thing being silent with a stranger in a car; sitting across from someone in a diner, it feels wrong. I made an effort. "So how'd you wind up bartending?"

"Putting myself through school." He shrugged as if the cliché embarrassed him. 

"SF State?"

"NHI." I must have looked blank. " I'm in the advanced neuromuscular massage program."

I don't know why that surprised me. If he had said software design or medicine or law I wouldn't have blinked, but massage didn't seem to fit. Away from my father's house and the vest and bowtie of his caterer's uniform, he looked more like a football player than my idea of a masseur: short fair hair in a brushy near-military cut, long-sleeved green T-shirt, jeans, Doc Marten knock-offs. Why did I expect different? For a moment I thought of John Ash, gangly legs dangling over the landing in my father's house, face curtained by his long hair. Maybe he was my idea of a massage student.

"Hello?" Mark looked at me, his head tilted to one side. "Was that a conversation stopper?"

I gave myself a mental shake. "I was trying to figure out what stereotype you don't fit into. Is massage something you always wanted to do?"

He shook his head. "There wasn't something I always wanted to do," he admitted. "But a friend gave me a gift certificate for a massage, and I walked away thinking if I could make other people feel that good, it would be a nice thing."

There are worse reasons to pick a career. 

"What do you do?" I suppose it was only fair for him to ask.

"I'm in a graduate program in music therapy in Iowa." It was his turn to look surprised. "What?"

He grinned again. "I didn't know they had music therapy in Iowa."

I felt like throwing my napkin at him. Fortunately, our burgers arrived before I made a complete adolescent fool of myself, and the next few minutes were spent in a carnivorous frenzy. I was surprised at how hungry I was, even for not having eaten anything at the wake. I found myself eating almost without stopping to breathe. When the burger was half gone I made myself put the other half down, finish chewing, take a sip of my iced tea.

"How are the mushrooms?"

He was eating slower than I; he looked around the arc of bun poised at mouth height. "Sublime."

When I'd caught my breath I picked up my burger again and ate more decorously. 

We finished eating and I paid the check--over Mark's protests--and left and stood out under the awning. It was February in San Francisco, cold by local standards, and the marine layer had seeped in from the ocean and filled the streets with mist and balls of fog that rolled like tumbleweeds down Clement Street.

"I'll give you a ride," Mark said.

"It's okay. I'll take the bus."

"You'll freeze before the bus comes. I'll take you home. It's not out of my way."

"Where do you live?"

The yellow light of the street lamp caught Mark in a grimace of embarrassment. "Daly City." 

Daly City is a straight shot south on 19th Avenue. My father's house would take him several miles out of his way.

"No dice." I held out my hand. "Go home. You've rescued me enough for one evening. Thanks for the company."

He took my hand and gave it a half-handshake, half-squeeze. "Thanks for the burger. Listen," he hesitated, continued. "Can I call you some time?"

That surprised me. I didn't think I'd been particularly scintillating over the burgers. If my father had not been dead I'd have suspected him of putting Mark up to it--he had done things like that.

"You don't have to."

"But if it turns out I'd like to?"

"I don't expect to be here long," I said. "Iowa awaits."

"Guess I'll have to call soon." He smiled. The fog made him look fuzzy, undefined, as if his edges were smearing. Mark put his hand to his forehead in an old-fashioned tip-of-the-hat gesture. "Night, then."

He walked toward his car; the mist closed around him and I turned to find the bus stop.

As a teenager I knew every bus route in the city. Taking the Muni bus had been a small act of rebellion. My father and the Aunts didn't take public transportation. I'd never caught any overt racism or snobbery about it; they just drove, or walked, or were driven. Every time I took Muni or BART, even still, I felt a prickle of satisfaction: the wild, out-of-control daughter on the #2 Clement bus. Aunt Iris once said, mildly, that she wondered if it was safe to ride the buses. Aunt Rose had stepped in to ask her a question before I could get on my adolescent soapbox and lecture about ecological responsibility. Probably just as well.

The bus emerged from the fog, its halogen lights ringed in mist, and pulled to a stop five feet ahead of where I stood. I walked forward, boarded without comment, tagged my Clippercard, and took a seat about half way back. The bus was nearly empty: two elderly Asian women side by side, dozing over parcels; a young arty-looking couple with their heads together alternately kissing and murmuring. I wished I had a book.

The bus driver turned the wheel with an exaggerated motion and pulled away from the curb. I leaned back in my seat, eyes half closed.

Then I saw something. If my eyes hadn't been slitted I would have missed it, a stirring sweeping motion under a seat across the aisle near the front of the bus. I thought it was a shadow, then I thought it was a rat. The movement stopped, then started, just sporadic enough that I couldn't dismiss it and look away. When I finally decoded what I saw I didn't believe it. I closed my eyes, opened them, saw a long striped tail tucked down under the seat, twitching every now and then.

I closed my eyes one more time.

When I opened them I still saw a tail.

I moved forward on the bus, pretending to read an announcement placard, and looked back at the two elderly Asian women. One of them, I saw now, was not a woman but a gigantic cat, dressed in black slacks and flowered windbreaker, with a scarf tied around her head, flattening her ears. As I watched, the image of the woman I thought I'd seen--an elderly round-faced Asian woman with full, drooping jowls and thinning gray hair--flickered over the cat woman like a double-exposure photo. What the hell?

The cat-woman's companion glared at me. I had been looking too long. I glanced back at the placard--something about meetings to discuss fare increases--then went back to my original seat.

The cat woman dozed. Her companion swiveled around to glare at me. I sat and wondered if I had lost my mind, or if Mark the bartender had slipped something into my iced tea. Had the weirdness of the day simply driven me nuts? Was this delayed mourning? Ahead of me the gray-and-black striped tail flicked I shut my eyes very tight.

If I could make it back to my father's house I could go to bed and sleep whatever this was off. Unless I was psychotic and sleep didn't help. What causes hallucinations?

"Are you all right?"

The question made me jump in my seat. I hadn't realized someone was sitting behind me. His voice was familiar. I opened my eyes, looking at the back of the seat in front of me rather than at the Asian women, then turned, eyes lowered, to see who sat behind me. It was John Ash, concern writ large on his face.

"Ivy, are you all right?"

I said "No," very tightly. "I'm seeing things."

"I thought that might be it. What have you had to eat today?"

"I'm not diabetic, if that's what you're thinking."

"Farthest thing from my mind." Ash slid out of his seat and plunked down next to me. "I think someone is working to make you doubt yourself. Though I have to say hallucinations aren't very subtle. What have you eaten today?"

The tabby-striped tail twitched under the seat ahead of me. "Why does it matter?"

"Just tell me."

I thought. "Breakfast on the plane--a croissant and awful coffee. A burger about an hour ago at Bill's Place, on Clement."

"The working is not food-borne, then. Who was there when you ate?"

"Are you kidding me?" I pulled my gaze away from the hypnotic twitching of the catwoman's tail and looked at John Ash. He did not look like he was kidding. "On the plane? Two hundred strangers, plus the--"

"It wouldn't have been on the plane. At the other place, your friend Bill was there?"

I gave a choke of laughter. "Bill's Place is a diner. I'm not even sure there is a Bill. Mark was there, and the cook and staff, and a couple other tables-full of patrons."

"Mark?"

"The bartender from the memorial."

Ash tucked his chin, muttering to himself for a moment. "He couldn't have worked this. That leaves--where are you going now?"

"Home. Back to my father's place. And while we're on the subject, what are you doing here? How did you find me?" My stomach knotted. "Did you follow me?"

"No. I knew where you were, though. I wanted to tell you not to go back to your father's house tonight."

This wasn't some sort of weird grad-student pickup line, was it? "Where would I go?"

"A friend's. A hotel. But don't go back to that house. It isn't safe. That's why you left."

I didn't know which statement to challenge first. "I left because I wanted a burger," I said, but my heart wasn't in it. "And I've lived in that house all my life. It's big and drafty, but it's safe as...as houses. There's an alarm system that probably sprays neurotoxins at intruders. There's--" I wound down. Hadn't I had flashes of anxiety all through the party, a feeling it wasn't safe? I stared at John Ash, wanting him to go on.

"You wanted a hamburger because you knew you had to get out. And you were right. What you're seeing just now is a working someone has built against you. That you've fought it was well as you have, so far, speaks to your strength, but there's no reason to risk returning to that lions' den."

The bus rumbled across Park Presidio. Ahead of us the cat-woman's tail twitched again. I tried to make sense of what Ash was saying.

"What's working?"

"A working. Look, just say you won't go back there tonight. Go to a friend's. Or go to the Fairmont and charge it to your father. I'll buy you a drink and explain it all to you. He really didn't tell you a damned thing, did he? Bastard."

"If he means my father, I agree he was a bastard. But I'm not getting a hotel room with you."

"Not with me--not that way. Get a drink with me and when you hear what I have to say you can decide the rest of it. Where do you like to drink?"

As if I had a favorite bar. I hardly lived in San Francisco any more. I shrugged.

"All right. We'll get out on Polk. I know a bar with good cider."

"Okay." I sat back--when had I leaned forward?--and read a placard overhead that explained how to get off the bus in an emergency. Ash, having got my promise of a drink, relaxed and told me he'd let me make up my mind whether to go home tonight. Unless he had proof of serial killers or rattlesnakes, I didn't expect to be convinced.

At Arguello, when Clement ended and the bus turned right toward California, the Asian women up front got off the bus. I saw no sign of a tail.

Ash and I got off at Polk Street. It was only a little after 9 pm, and the street was full of people, the homeless among the merry-makers. The bar with good cider turned out to be a specialty pub on the second floor; true to Ash's word they had dozens of kinds of hard cider from all over the place. I would have gone for a glass of wine, but that seemed wrong.

"What's good?"

"Let me choose for you? What sort of wine do you favor?"

I shrugged. "Sauvignon Blanc, maybe?" 

He nodded as if I'd given him just the information he needed. The waitress came and he ordered Clos Normand for himself, Aspall Dry for me. Then sat quiet until she returned with the drinks, and watched as I took my first sip. It was like biting into a fresh, tart apple; I felt the burr of apple peel and bubbles on my tongue, and a slight sweetness to counter it. "Wow."

He smiled and nodded and waved at the waitress. He ordered something I hadn't seen on the menu, then sent her away. "Something to nibble on while we talk." He took a long draught of his cider, put the glass down, and looked at me, all business. No half glances or under-the-curtain-of-hair smiles. "What do you know about your family's history?"

"Not so much. My father and my aunts grew up in Sonoma somewhere; couldn't get to the city fast enough. Their parents died when they were young and Iris sort of finished raising them. My father met my mother, they had me, she died." I spread my hands. "That's all I got."

The waitress returned with a plate of sausage, pickles, olives, and slivers of waxy sharp cheese. I wasn't hungry but it smelled amazing.

Ash picked up a green olive, rolled it between his fingers, put it into his mouth, and licked the brine from his thumb. "They never told you that your father--" he got a tiny crook of a smile. "Your father married above himself? Your 

mother was a very important woman, and after she died your father sat on that power, the money and position that went with it. In trust for you, he said. Her natural heir."

"That's the legacy you were talking about before. Something my father was holding for me?"

I felt a second of warmth for the mother I barely recalled, that something of hers, something of her, was supposed to pass down to me.

"That might have been his intention when you were an infant, but any time since your leafing he might have told you. Should have told you."

"Since my leaving?" The warmth dissipated. Ash was talking in circles again.

"Leafing. It's...reaching adulthood. Your father kept your legacy from you, and your aunts appear to wish to do the same thing. I cannot say why--none of them would be able to step into it."

The waitress brought another round. I hadn't realized I'd finished my first glass. Slow down, Ivy.

"If they can't use whatever it is--could you be more mysterious?--then why would they hold on to it?"

"I believe that they, and some of the guests who were in that meeting today, hope to keep the title unclaimed, either to way to keep the power themselves. If one among them is able to do so, and to wield that power, it would start a conflict with another group--your mother's family, in fact."

"There's going to be a kind of Capulet and Montague fight if my aunts get their way?"

"More like the Trojans and the Greeks and great devastation."

"Seriously? Physical fighting?" I tried to imagine my aunts manning the barricades; it was too comic to be frightening. "What the hell is worth that kind of conflict?"

"The--" he hesitated as if he was looking for the words. "The province of Mhes."

"The province of mess? What are you talking about?" Either every word John Ash said was crazy, or I was.

"It's the area in which we live, a sort of shadow division of California, I suppose you could call it. All those who were at the meeting in your father's house today are its subjects, and your father--"

"And me, and everyone. Only we don't know about it because it's a secret. I get it." I felt under my chair for my handbag, thinking it was time to leave.

"No, you don't get it. You aren't its subject. If your father--"

"My father was the governor of an invisible kingdom?" The cider buzzed in my ears; I felt lightheaded.

John Ash's smile was grim. "He wasn't the governor. That is where the difficulty began. It happens sometimes that the males of our race get notions above themselves and attempt a station not permitted to them." As he went on something was happening to the way Ash spoke, a formality and a lilt, as if he'd picked up an accent as he talked.

"If my father wasn't a governor or duke or Grand Panjandrum, how can I be one?"

"It's not called any of those things. What is important to understand is that this--stewardship is perhaps the best word--descends through the female line. Males have not the gifts that suit them to the task. It's why they tend to meddle in politics. And psychology."

He was talking around something. But after the day, and two ciders, and hallucinating on the bus and everything else, I couldn't focus enough to figure it out. I was sure he wouldn't tell me if I asked directly, but I asked anyway.

"What aren't you telling me?"

I saw the same smile he'd shown me hours ago at the memorial when he was pleased with something I'd said. "Clever. You see why--"

"I do not see a damned thing. You crash my father's memorial, drop a dozen incomprehensible hints, follow me around on a Muni bus, and tell me a Graustarkian story about lost kingdoms. Wouldn't this work better as an email scam from the widow of a Nigerian prince?"

"You're shouting,."

"What?" But when I looked up everyone in the restaurant was eying our table, even the waitress had stopped stacking pint glasses onto her tray and frankly stared at me.

"I'm sorry." I shrugged apologetically at the other patrons. One by one people turned back to their food and their cider and their conversations. "I'm sorry," I said again. "It's been a very strange day."

"I know it has." Ash sounded sympathetic. "And what I'm telling you is not going to make it less strange."

****************************************

"Do you want the one with the mushrooms or the one without?" he asks.

Maya looks at him to see him holding out two thick American hamburgers. "With," she says, reaching for it. The cat jumps down from the table and begins to purr around their feet. Maya breaks off part of the burger and puts it on the floor. It disappears into the cat instantly, and he begins to mew for more. 

"You're spoiling him," he says.

"I don't care," Maya says. "The woman on the bus was a cat, did you notice?"

"Yes, wasn't that amazing," he says. "I'm not at all sure about that John Ash constantly being gnomic and mysterious though. If he's just explain clearly it could save a lot of trouble."

"I wonder why they all had names of plants. I wonder what happened to her mother. I'm glad I'm not a lost princess, it never seems to solve anything."

He laughs. "What would you expect it to solve?"

She glares at him. "I'd expect it to be more fun than it seems to be, that's all."

"Well, good that you're not one, than," he says. "But I'll definitely be looking for the rest of Wake when it comes out."

Maya has finished her hamburger, and goes to wash her hands. When she comes back she sees that he is feeding the cat a piece of his own hamburger. He gets up abruptly and goes to the bathroom. In his absence she tries to open his book, and maybe read a little more, but she can't even open the covers, it feels like a solid block. It was never like that before. She puts it down quickly as he comes back.

"What shall we read next?" she asks.

He picks the next book off the pile. "A special treat. Another story from Marissa Lingen, whose excellent goat story we enjoyed. This one is called Waltercolors of Elfland."

"Great title," she says.

And they read.