Pink was napping in the rocker when Claire stepped out and told him she was leaving. “Isabelle wants to see you,” she said.
Pink rubbed his eyes and tried to focus. The afternoon was turning cool, the sky an empty, gray slate. “What’s your sister want now?”
“She’s sick, Pink. Can’t you find any compassion?”
“I used it all up over the past few years. I’m plumb wore down to the rim.”
“Don’t make her wait,” Claire said. “I’ve got to go.”
Pink heard Claire start her Pacer as he walked to the back bedroom. He dreaded going in, hated the smell of sweat-soaked linen and vomit, the stench of disease. He grabbed a few cigars off the dresser in the spare bedroom—the bedroom he’d occupied since Isabelle had taken sick—then walked down the hall. He opened the door slowly, as if stealth could fool the germs, keep them from leaping into his lungs. He wasn’t certain if she was contagious, no one was. Even the doctors couldn’t accurately diagnose the ailment, her condition changing with the frequency of a storm front. Everything from fibromyalgia to Crohn’s disease, they’d said, but Pink knew they were guessing. Pink believed that doctors were like weathermen; they got paid whether they were right or wrong, so it didn’t matter what they said.
“Hey, Sweet Potato, how are we feeling today?” Pink asked, poking his head through the door.
“I don’t have the energy, Pink. So don’t bring that sweet-talk crap in here.” Isabelle pushed herself up under the blankets, coughing.
“You always loved it when I called you Sweet Potato, Sweet Potato,” he said, stepping into the room, still holding the doorknob behind his back.
“That’s when I was seventeen, Pink. I didn’t have a brain yet.”
“But don’t you remember? I’d say, ‘Are you my little sweet potato?’ and you’d say, ‘I yam, I yam!’ ” Pink could hardly believe how terrible she looked, her eye sockets and parched mouth like deep craters on the surface of some forsaken planet. She seemed paler than putty and painfully swollen. Pink smiled and tried to look past her, envisioning the nest of curls on the top of Claire’s head, the vanilla and citrus freshness of Claire’s skin. “Claire said you wanted to see me.”
“Could you get my book of crossword puzzles?” Isabelle said. “And a cup of hot tea with lemon and honey?”
“Sure, Sweet Potato,” Pink said, about to leave.
“And, Pink,” Isabelle said.
“Yes?”
“You can wipe that stupid grin off your face now,” she said, adjusting the blankets.
“What?”
“Don’t you think I know Claire gives you blowjobs when she comes over to clean? God only knows what twisted thrill she gets from sucking that fat little peter of yours.” Isabelle collapsed back on the pillow, her mouth a square hole in her face. “You can get me that tea now, Sweet Potato. And don’t break the bag.”
Chapter 9
Isabelle ran her hand across the magazine page, over the photo of the white dress, tracing her finger along the lace sleeve. Her own wedding dress hadn’t been that pretty. She and Pink had been married in the church, even though her parents had ordered the minister not to do it. The day before the wedding, Isabelle had been going over the last of the details with the minister—where the photographer would stand, how the bridesmaids would approach the altar—when her parents came into the church. Her father had stayed in the vestibule, his body looking like a shadow caught in the light of the opened doors. Her mother marched down the aisle and demanded that “this nonsense” be stopped immediately.
“Why, Ida?” the minister had said. “Pink and Isabelle love each other.”
Isabelle’s mother had protested to the minister, explaining that Pink and Isabelle were second cousins. “It isn’t right,” she’d told the minister. “They have the same blood flowing through their veins.”
“Second cousins are hardly blood relatives at all,” the minister had told her. “Don’t worry. The Lord will bless this union.”
Isabelle could still see the fire in her mother’s eyes, glaring up at the minister, her hands balled to fists. “You’ll burn in hell eternal if you go through with this,” she said to the minister, then stormed out of the church. Isabelle shrugged at the minister, savoring every second of her mother’s anguish. Her father stood a moment in the doorway. Isabelle could see his head bowed, shaking back and forth, his hat in his hands like an out-of-work salesman. The day Isabelle told her parents she was marrying Pink, her mother had put down her needlepoint and folded her hands in her lap, her eyes flat as mud. “You will not,” she said, and then got up to leave.
“Yes I will,” Isabelle said. “Next month. You’re both invited.”
Her mother walked across the room and slapped Isabelle across the face. Before Isabelle could say anything, she slapped her again and left the room.
“I won’t pay for it,” Isabelle’s father said. “You’ll get nothing from us.”
“Oh, you’ll pay for it, all right,” Isabelle said, rubbing her cheek, smiling. “You’ll pay for everything, the wedding cake, the flowers, the music, and then you’ll walk me down that fucking aisle, kiss me on the cheek, and smile like you’re giving away your most favorite daughter in the whole world. And then you’ll walk up to Pink afterward and congratulate him and say, ‘Welcome to the family, Son.’ ”
Her father huffed and shook his head. “You’re sick, Isabelle,” he said, the flesh beneath his right eye jumping. “There is something very wrong with you.”
As he walked away, she tossed the invitations onto the couch. “And the honeymoon!” she yelled after him. “You’ll pay for that too. Pink wants to go to Niagara-fucking-Falls! Can you believe it? Nobody goes there anymore, for shit’s sake!”
Pink had shown up at the wedding looking like a funeral director. He’d gotten his tux from Clarence—whose uncle owned a mortuary in the next county. “What are you doing?” Isabelle had said, dragging Pink into the ladies’ restroom. “You look like somebody from the Addams Family!” Pink had explained how he’d gotten the tux for free, that Clarence’s uncle had even thrown in the alterations at no cost.
“Where did his uncle get the tux?”
“He’s got lots of them . . . well, most of them are suits. All different colors,” Pink had said. “I think they’re for emergencies.”
“Emergencies?” Isabelle said, shaking her head. “What kind of emergencies do they have at a funeral home?”