The Land of Mango Sunsets Read Free Page A

gig?”
    “It’s in May.” We chatted about last year’s event for a few minutes. The waiter delivered our drinks, I sipped a few times and felt my well of steely reserve beginning to evaporate. “I want to chair the decorations committee so badly I can smell peonies and sword fern every single time I think about it.”
    “There, there now, my Petal Puss, whom do we have to bribe?”
    I giggled at his pet name for me. “Agnes Willis, the old stone-faced chair of the gala. Maybe she has a child or a niece who needs an apartment. I have to rent the second floor, you know. And quickly. What if Mr. O’Hara’s family doesn’t come for his things?”
    “If they don’t come in two weeks, we’ll put them in storage and send them a bill. I can take care of that for you. And if you want, I’ll throw a coat of paint on the apartment, too.”
    “Oh, Kevin! You’re such a lamb! What would I do without you?”
    “Well, for starters, you’d have to rent the third floor as well. You’re not eating your potatoes. Do you mind?”
    “Help yourself,” I said, and slid my platter toward him. “Heavenly days, sometimes I feel like a character from a Tennessee Williams play.”
    “Hardly. Agnes Willis, huh? I think she might enjoy tickets to see the Bill Blass collection. Who wouldn’t? Maybe I can help you with Madame Rushmore. Every stone has a fault line, doesn’t it?”
    Later, filled with hamburgers and the hope of a prestigious committee to chair and a wonderful new tenant living upstairs, Kevin and I made our way home through the snow. After I put on my snow boots. And Kevin had smartly brought his.
    We had lingered over lunch as usual and it was getting late in the day. There were already about four inches on the ground at that point, and the snow was still falling as though it never intended to stop. The usual crowds of shoppers and tourists were down to a trickle of humanity, huddled in doorways and in small clusters waiting for a bus, stomping their feet to stay the numbness that only the very young did not feel. Taxis were nonexistent.
    Familiar landmarks appeared different and we were unsure where the street ended and the curb began. No one had begun to shovel and wemoved along with extra care. Nothing was more beautiful in the world than Manhattan hushed in a fresh blanket of pure white snow, even though part of me suspected it was radioactive. And here I was in New York all these years, now reduced to taking in boarders so I could hold on to my home, with two estranged sons in cockeyed relationships, a mother who had gone off the deep end, and an ex-husband who didn’t want me anymore.
    “What’s going through your head, Miriam? You’ve got that look again.”
    “Everything. I’m middle-aged, Kevin. The game’s half over and somehow I never got what I wanted.”
    Kevin stopped, turned to face me, and put his hands on my shoulders. “The past is the past, Miriam. You have to stop all this brooding. Seriously! It’s got to stop! The looming question, my Petal, is what do you want now?”
    I just looked at him and felt my jaw get tight as my volcanic bitterness grew. “I want to be vindicated from the guilt I feel. I want to be satisfied with my lot. All my life I conducted myself as polite society dictated, and look where it got me.”
    Kevin nodded, understanding exactly what I meant. We arrived at the front door.
    “I’m going to run around to Albert’s and buy us some veal chops and I’ll pick up a great bottle of red wine. When I come back, we’re going to make a plan. You set the table and think about this. It’s time for you to break a few rules, Petal, because, you’re right, following them didn’t work worth a tinker’s damn.”
    “Fine. That sounds good.”
    I opened the street door of my town house and picked up the mail from the floor. Then I stacked Kevin’s mail on the hall table and opened the door to my part of the house. There on my coffee table stood Harry, my African gray