“Don’t you have anything more practical to wear?” her mother asked, looking askance at the car coat, and the only thing Beatrice could think to say was, “I’ve always liked those bushes. They just need to be pruned.”
“They’re hideous!” Maggie said, and for emphasis kicked at some lower branches with her sneaker. “We’re going to plant wisteria instead. The vines will climb up over the roof and look romantic.”
“It’s a business decision. The bushes have a lot of spiders in them. They make the whole place feel dark.” Mama tested the blade of the hatchet with her fingertip. “No one’s going to want to eat breakfast sitting next to those bushes.”
Beatrice didn’t know what her mother was talking about. She felt both outwitted and outnumbered, but wasn’t ready yet to admit her disadvantage. Meanwhile, Maggie hopped about on the hard ground, waving her arms in the air as she draped the gazebo with prospective vines. “Maybe, if they’re really beautiful, we can increase our rates.”
She jigged some more, her fingers twitching in the happy act of counting money. She glanced coyly at Beatrice. “Maybe we’ll even charge you for a visit.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said their mother. It was unclear whether she meant the rate hike or the new policy regarding family members. In possible consolation she told Beatrice, “I’m going to find you some good work gloves,” and headed off in the direction of the toolshed.
“Charge me?” Beatrice looked at her sister.
“I’m only teeeeeeasing!” Maggie shrieked, and jigged even faster, full of plans. Little seashell soaps! Little tiny bottles of shampoo! And extra towels, folded at the foot of the bed. Foil-wrapped chocolates to be placed on the pillows. Didn’t that sound cozy? She swung gleefully around a gazebo post. There’d be discounts for repeat guests. An added charge during graduation week. But you also had to factor in the 10 percent finder’s fee that went automatically to the agency….
Beatrice tried to focus. She asked, “Are you talking about an inn?”
“A bed-and-breakfast!” corrected Maggie. She then added soberly, “To open an inn, we’d need to get a special license, and those cost a lot of money.”
“We?”
“Me and Mama. We’re business partners. Fifty-fifty.”
“Good grief,” said Beatrice, and wondered how long the two of them had been in cahoots. Probably forever. She imagined coming home again and finding them doing tai chi in their matching pajamas. A terrible joke. And which was more distressing — their merry collusion or the thought of strange people traipsing about her house, putting their feet up on the furniture? She felt, for a moment, an instinctive Victorian horror of one’s family being in trade. She feared that the particular trade of hospitality would sink one even farther. Maybe they should just take in sewing, she thought miserably, picturing her sister’s long, chapped, but clever fingers flying above a seam. But how could she harbor such detestable ideas? When had she become such a nervous little snob? She had aspired to anarchism once, or at least to a Billy Bragg sort of socialism. She’d made a romance out of what she called “regular people” who were experts at living what she called “normal life.” Pickup trucks, domestic beer — delicious! At those punk rock shows on Sunday afternoons, she would lie about where she went to school, ashamed of the grassy quads and classes in French cinema. When asked, she would most often name the very school where Maggie, soon enough, would be walking through the battle-scarred doors. At a certain age, Beatrice had longed to go there herself.
“Look what I found!” their mother called, coming toward them and waving a handsaw. She looked pretty and rosy from the cold and Beatrice felt her heart lurch painfully.
“Are you planning to use my room?” she found herself asking, to her own dismay. This was not at all what she had wanted to say, especially in a voice that sounded high-pitched and sulky. “Using it as part of your business?”
Her mother frowned. “Beatrice, sweetheart. That room is always yours to stay in, whenever you want. You know that.” She held out a pair of crusty gardening gloves.
“Are strangers going to be sleeping there?” The sulky voice persisted. “Don’t you think that’s risky, considering all the valuable things around?”
An opening: her mother nimbly leaped. All those old magazines, she said — they were a serious fire hazard. All those little knickknacks and photos gathering dust on the bookshelves. And what was Beatrice still keeping in her drawers? Certainly nothing she’d ever think of wearing again. In fact, her mother had picked up some empty cartons at the liquor store, and was hoping that over the weekend they could make a trip to the drop-off bin outside the church.
A little box floated beside another item on the list, waiting to be firmly checked.
“That’s archival material, Mama!” The fanzines, the flyers, the packet of ketchup given to her by the drummer from the Volcano Suns. Her first leather jacket. Her first plaid schoolgirl skirt, pleated and saucy. Her first piece of black velvet, held together by safety pins. “You expect me to give away my Sister shirt?”
“You have an apartment,” Maggie said. “You could keep it there.”
“My apartment is minuscule!” Beatrice wailed. “We’re talking about important cultural history here!”
Their mother laughed. “What do you want me to do? Keep your bedroom hermetically sealed? A shrine to your youth?”
“Well, yes.” This was exactly what Beatrice wanted. A shrine. Dim, magical, hushed, undisturbed. Ideally climate controlled, so the vinyl wouldn’t warp. She had never put it into words before, but this was precisely what she was looking for when she came back to the house where she grew up. And, as always, her mother had managed to divine her heart’s desire. She had an uncanny ability to do so, which made her refusal to grant its secret wishes that much more exasperating. How had she known, one summer morning long ago, that Beatrice walked out the back door so purely delighted with herself, feeling like anything at all might occur that day, dressed as she was in torn T-shirt, leopard mini, ripped fishnets, red heels — an outfit ingeniously designed to disguise sluttiness as irony (So Sid and Nancy! she’d thought in the closet) — how had she known her daughter’s happiness? And happened to drive from the post office to the market along the same route that Beatrice was tottering her way to the bus stop? Beatrice heard a car honking from behind (in appreciation, she’d thought) and was discouraged to turn around and find her heat-seeking mother, face aglow, hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. Somehow the episode — of thwarted desire; of surprise and humiliation — was remembered as a little piece of family comedy: an opportunity for Mama to roll her eyes and everyone to laugh about the time Bea left the house looking like an insane prostitute. And Beatrice knew even as she now spoke, even as she sighed, “Yes, actually, that’s what I want,” this very moment was becoming laughable, toothless, the time Beatrice tried to turn her bedroom into a museum.
“It’s not like you’re dead!” said Maggie cheerfully, and began kicking at the yew bushes again.