"The pie doesn't know your name," said Quentin. "That was me you were hearing. But we'll settle for the pie for now."
"Quentin," said Mom reprovingly. "You're not such a newlywed anymore that we should have to put up with your innuendos."
"Innuendo?" said Quentin. "Why, whatever do you mean, Mother dear?"
After the pie, as Mom cleaned up in the kitchen and Dad signed on to America Online to send after-Christmas e-mail to his brothers, Quentin gave Madeleine a chance to back out of her invitation.
"But I don't want to back out. I'd already decided it was time for you to meet them. I would have told you privately but then the conversation just went that way and—you don't mind, do you?"
"Not at all. In fact I'm relieved. That you trust me enough to take me home."
"It wasn't a matter of trusting you, Tin, my pet, my poo. I know you can handle it. They just have a way of getting under my skin. With you to hold on to as an island of sanity, I think I can get through a day with my family. Just a day, mind you."
"And then a night at the Holiday Inn?"
"Well, of course we have to stay overnight, but you know what I mean. Twenty-four hours and then we go, no matter how my family pleads with you to stay, do you understand me? Because even if I'm wearing a plastic smile on my face and saying, 'Oh, yes, Quentin, let's do stay,' trust me, I do not want to stay, I want you to get me out of there before we reach the witching hour."
"Which is?"
"If we arrive at noon, then by the next noon we must be gone or I will turn into a puddle of mucus on the floor."
"That's an attractive image. If I kiss it, does it turn back into a princess?"
"No, it just turns into a cold." She kissed him. "Your kiss has already turned me into a princess."
6. She Loves You, Yeah
The limo met them at La Guardia in the late afternoon on New Year's Day and they started out on the drive up the Hudson. "Shame we won't be able to see the river," Quentin said. "It'll be dark before we get over the Triborough."
"You can't see the river anyway," said Madeleine. "Not the way you can from the bluffs. The great houses were all built to be seen from the water. That was the highway then, the steamboats up the Hudson."
"The house is that old?"
"A fireplace in every room. The kitchen is an add-on. The bathrooms are carved out of hallways and stuck under stairs. All afterthoughts."
"They built these huge gorgeous mansions and then went outside to the privy?"
"Don't be silly," said Madeleine. "They had fine porcelain chamberpots. Which were emptied by the servants."
"Let me guess about the toilet paper."
"Every room had a water basin and towels. What do you think they were for?"
"Oh, for the good old days," said Quentin.
"I suppose your people all had flush toilets from the fifteenth century."
"No. But they dug their own latrines and built privies and used the Sears catalogue. Nobody handled anybody else's sewage."
"The idea of money was different then," said Madeleine. "If there was a filthy job, other people did it, and you paid them."
"My people believed in independence. You did for yourself, beholden to no one."
"The snobbery of the poor."
"The helplessness of the rich."
"Only you're the one with money."
"What, your family's broke?"
"We have what we need, I guess. Nothing on your scale."
"My money's an accident, Mad. It fell on me while I was doing what I cared about. I was lucky to be in a company run by a marketing madman. And once I had money, I couldn't stop it from growing."
"That's what I love most about you, Tin. You have no ambition whatsoever."
"One ambition. To make a future with you."
She smiled at him.
He pulled the Beatles Anthology CD out of his carry-on bag and put it in the player in the limo. "I haven't had a chance to listen to this since you gave it to me."
"I thought you might want something from your childhood."
"It's not like I remember them. I was three years old when they did the Sullivan show."
"It's all ancient history to me."
"You're not that much younger than I am." On the marriage license she had put 1965 as her year of birth.
"I lived on another planet then," she said. "We didn't even have a radio in our house."
"Chamberpots, no radio."
"I did love to crank the Victrola."
"Seriously?"
"No. I suppose there was a radio somewhere, but it's not as if anyone would dream of letting me choose the station. We didn't get out much."
"Why not? Didn't you go to school?"
"Tutors. Family tradition."
"Were they trying to isolate you?"
"I think perhaps so," said Madeleine. "Grandmother ruled with an iron fist. She never liked me."
"Grandmother? Will I meet her?"
"I don't know. She ought to be in a rest home, with tubes sticking out of her."
Quentin had never heard such venom from her.
"Alzheimer's?" he asked.
"Advanced bitchiness," she answered.
"Give me a little preparation. Who is it I should try hardest not to offend?"
"Tin, don't you get it? I don't care who you offend. I've been free of their control for years now. I'm bringing you here to show them that there are good people in this world and I found one of them and if they don't like you, screw 'em."
Quentin digested this for a while, listening to the music, then looking at the booklet that came with the CD. "It's funny how all their early stuff sounds so much like Elvis. Only not as good."
"What?" She looked baffled.
"The Beatles."
"Oh, sorry, I wasn't listening."
"Listen to it now. That's Paul singing, only listen to what he's doing to his voice. Distorting it like crazy. They don't even sound like the Beatles."
"He can't hold his pitch very well, can he."
"That's what I mean. It's like they haven't found their own sound yet. Not one of these cuts before their first studio singles even sounds like the Beatles. It's like they walked into the studio as a club band that did Elvis and Ink Spots imitations, and came out as the Beatles."
"I thought you said you were only three when the Beatles came along."
"Yeah, well, when I was old enough to listen to music, what was there? England Dan and John Ford Coley. 'I Put My Blue Jeans On.' 'She's Gone.' And who can forget Fleetwood Mac?"
"I guess they must be forgotten because I never heard of any of those groups. 'I Put My Blue Jeans On' sounds like a commercial."
"It was a song, by this squiggy little guy from England I think. And they did make it into an ad jingle. Or maybe it started that way, what do I know? And 'The Year of the Cat.' Man it was bad. Lizzy and I went back and listened to the old stuff. My parents were Elvis nuts but they also liked the Beatles. It was in their closet."
"Well, if the Beatles were Elvis clones at first, that's understandable."
"The recorded stuff wasn't. What did you listen to?"
"I told you, nothing."
"Had to be disco. Let's see, you'd've been fifteen in 1980. Oh, I know. Michael Jackson! 'Billy Jean'! 'We Are the World.' Or maybe Springsteen."
"What is this, a test? A final exam or something?" She looked really annoyed.
"Look, I'm just talking about music, that's all."
"Well I don't know any of it! And there's no reason that I should, so stop it!"
She looked furious and frightened as she turned to look out the window into the deepening night. Lights and signs whipped by on the freeway.