Vega cried angrily. “Just my girls. They’re sweet to me, you know, they bring me things—” and abruptly, as if she was ashamed, she broke off. “I’d like you for a friend, Beth,” she said. “I really would. I liked you right away. I’ve never been much good at making friends with women, and for some reason I get the feeling that you’re the same way. It makes me feel closer to you. Am I right?” She paused, waiting for an answer.
Beth was alarmed by her behavior, afraid to aggravate her, and yet she felt it served her as warning not to get too close to Vega. The older woman was lovely, quick and charming. But Charlie was right—she was strange. Beth had a premonition of that wild fury with the world that displayed itself against the Lesbian and against Vega’s family turning on herself someday. But she couldn’t delay answering. You offer your friendship gladly, without deliberation, or you don’t offer it at all.
“I’d like to be friends with you, Vega,” she said, but it sounded hollow to her.
To Vega it sounded beautiful. “I’m glad,” she said, and Beth felt that the mood had passed. Vega put a hand on her arm and left it there until they reached her house.
“Come in for a cocktail,” she said. She was telling Beth, not asking her, and Beth was unable to refuse. “There’s just one thing,” Vega cautioned as they walked up the driveway to the small bungalow. “Mother can’t drink anything. But anything. Really. It would kill her. She’s an absolute wreck. You’ll love her, of course, but she is a mess. I sometimes think she just keeps on living to remind me of the powers of alcohol.”
Beth blanched slightly at this, but Vega laughed at her own remarks. “Anyway, Mother drank like a fish for twenty-three years and suddenly she went all to hell inside. Liver, bladder, God knows what-all. The doctor tried to explain it to me, but all I know is she aches all over and she has to make forty trips to the bathroom every day.”
The little crudity brought Beth up short. It was so homely, so out of place on Vega’s patrician lips. But Vega was full of contradictions; they were, perhaps, her only consistency.
As they paused, they were approached abruptly by a slight shadow of a man in worn corduroys and a jaunty deer-hunting cap. His arms were full of cats and his eyes full of mischief. What cats couldn’t find room in his arms sat on his shoulders.
“Gramp!” Vega exclaimed. “You scared me to death.” She relieved him of two cats, the ones that were having the most trouble hanging on. “This is Beth Ayers,” she told him. “Beth—my grandfather.”
“How do you do, Mr.—?” Beth began clumsily, holding out a hand to him.
“Gramp. Just call me Gramp.” He ignored her hand. Even with two of the cats transferred to Vega’s arms he was still too loaded to let go and pursue the normal courtesies. “My best friends,” he grinned, nodding at the soft animals.
“Your only friends,” Vega amended. “The only ones he trusts, anyway,” she told Beth. “We were just going in for a cocktail, Gramp. I was telling Beth about Mother.”
“What about her?” His eyes snapped with good-humored suspicion.
“Just what a mess she is.”
“Well, forewarned is forearmed,” he said to Beth. “She’s really quite harmless.”
“Except for her tongue,” Vega said softly.
The three of them headed for the front door again. “Fortunately she’s much nicer than she looks,” Gramp explained. “She likes to laze around in nothing but an old beat-up bathrobe. Saves pulling down her pants all the time. You see, she has to take a—”
“I know, I know, Vega told me,” Beth said quickly. Why did they take such a delight in exposing all the ugly comical little family weaknesses to her? Did it make them easier to bear? Or were they punishing themselves for something? Beth stopped where she was.
“What’s the matter?” Vega and Gramp asked with one voice, pausing and looking back at her.
“Vega, your mother doesn’t want any visitors,” Beth said. “She’s sick.”
“Sure she’s sick. We’re all sick. It’s part of the family charm,” Gramp said. “Come on in and join the fun.”
“You’ll see what I’m going to look like in another ten or twelve years, according to Mother,” Vega said.
“The last thing she’d want is visitors,” Beth tried once more, but Vega shushed her with a laugh.
“Bull,” Gramp commented. “Hester’s sick and proud of it. She likes to show it off. She gave up appearances years ago. Actually takes pride in being a wreck. She’s delightful. You’ll love her. Even the cats enjoy her company.”
And Beth, reluctant, bashful, but overwhelmed with curiosity to see what Vega would “look like in ten years,” followed them in.
“Don’t mention liquor,” Vega hissed just before she pushed the front door open. “Remember.”
Beth’s first impression was that the house was stiflingly hot; and the second, that it was jam-packed with rickety furniture. Vega flitted around the room lighting lamps and dissipating the gloom, and Beth suddenly became aware of an old woman sitting in a corner who appeared to be broken into several pieces. She wore a gray, once-pink dressing gown; she had been listening to a speaking record until she heard Vega and Beth enter. Vega kissed her head briefly in salutation.
“Mother, this is Beth Ayers,” Vega said “I told you about her. Mother’s blind as a bat,” she said cheerfully to Beth, who advanced to take the old lady’s outstretched hand. “I forgot to tell you that.”
“But not much else, hey?” her mother said, holding out a hand. “How do you do, my dear?”
Beth murmured something to her, grasping her hand gingerly. And then Vega said, with a wink at Beth, “Let’s all have a Coke. Mother, you game?”
“Are you kidding?” Mrs. Purvis said. “It’ll have to be Seven-Up, though. Gramp busted the plumber one with the last Coke. There’s still fizz all over the john.” And she cackled with pleasure. Gramp, unperturbed, was arranging himself in a harem of cats on the couch. Beth stared at Mrs. Purvis, repelled and fascinated and amused.
Vega in ten years? Utterly incredible! Never.
“What the hell did you do that for, Gramp?” Vega called from the kitchen. “The plumber hurt one of the cats?”
“No, they disagreed about the plunger,” her mother answered, cutting Gramp off. “Gramp said the head was German rubber and the plumber said they don’t make rubber in Germany. So Gramp pickled him in fizz.”
“He deserved it. He was wrong,” Gramp said mildly.
Beth smiled uneasily at them all, slipping out of her coat and feeling the sweat already trickling down her front. God, it must be a hundred degrees in here, she thought. How does Vega stand it?
Vega came out of the kitchen, apparently standing it very well, with some glasses on a tray and a bottle of Seven-Up. She poured it for her mother and handed Beth a glass with two inches of whiskey and an ice cube in the bottom. Gramp got the same and settled
