Madeleine and Ramona were picking at their food with sullen faces, like they’d been captive audiences to the story before; Martha was still drawing, staring intently at me, her captive. “What happened to your friend?” I asked.
“God bless him, but for every story of success there’s a corresponding one of failure. Georgie didn’t butter up the right people. He didn’t have the drive to complement his God-given talent, and he just fell by the wayside. He was disfigured in a car crash back in ’36, and now he’s what you might call a never was. I give him odd jobs tending some of my rental property and he does some rubbish hauling for the city–”
I heard a sharp screechy sound, and looked across the table. Ramona had missed stabbing a potato, and her fork had slid off the plate. Emmett said, “Mother, are you feeling well? Is the food to your liking?”
Ramona stared in her lap and said, “Yes, Father”; it looked like Martha was bracing her elbow. Madeleine went back to playing footsie with me; Emmett said, “Mother, you and our certified genius have not been doing a very good job of entertaining our guest. Would you care to participate in the conversation?”
Madeleine dug her toes into my ankle–just as I was about to try to lighten things up with a joke. Ramona Sprague forked herself a small mouthful of food, chewed it daintily and said, “Did you know that Ramona Boulevard was named after me, Mr. Bleichert?”
The woman’s out-of-kilter face congealed around the words; she spoke them with a strange dignity. “No, Mrs. Sprague, I didn’t know that. I thought it was named after the Ramona Pageant.”
“I was named after the pageant,” she said. “When Emmett married me for my father’s money he promised my family that he would use his influence with the City Zoning Board to have a street named after me, since all his money was tied up in real estate and he couldn’t afford to buy me a wedding ring. Father assumed it would be a nice residential street, but all Emmett could manage was a dead-end block in a red light district in Lincoln Heights. Are you familiar with the neighborhood, Mr. Bleichert?” Now the doormat’s voice held an edge of fury.
“I grew up there,” I said.
“Then you know that Mexican prostitutes expose themselves out of windows to attract customers. Well, after Emmett succeeded in getting Rosalinda Street changed to Ramona Boulevard he took me for a little tour there. The prostitutes greeted him by name. Some even had anatomical nicknames for him. It made me very sad and very hurt, but I bided my time and got even. When the girls were small I directed my own little pageants, right outside on our front lawn. I used the neighbor’s children as extras and reenacted episodes out of Mr. Sprague’s past that he would rather forget. That he would–”
The head of the table was slammed; glasses toppled and plates rattled. I stared at my lap to give the family infighters back some of their dignity and saw that Madeleine was gripping her father’s knee so hard that her fingers were blue-white. She grabbed my knee with her free hand–with ten times the strength I thought she’d be capable of. An awful silence stretched, then Ramona Cathcart Sprague said, “Father, I’ll sing for my supper when Mayor Bowron or Councilman Tucker comes to dinner, but not for Madeleine’s male whores. A common policeman. My God, Emmett, how little you think of me.”
I heard chairs scraping the floor, knees bumping the table, then footsteps moving out of the dining room; I saw that my hand was gripping Madeleine’s the same way I curled it into an eight-ounce glove. The brass girl was whispering, “I’m sorry, Bucky. I’m sorry.” Then a cheery voice said, “Mr. Bleichert?” and I looked up because it sounded so happy and sane.
It was Martha McConville Sprague, holding out a piece of paper. I took it with my free hand; Martha smiled and walked away. Madeleine was still muttering apologies when I looked at the picture. It was the two of us, both naked. Madeleine had her legs spread. I was between them, gnawing at her with giant Bucky Bleichert teeth.