Page 12 of Road Trip
She flicked on the light switch, pulled open the flowery chintz curtains, and yanked the window open to let in some fresh air.
Mary Helen’s room was painted a pale pink, and the wall-to-wall carpet was a faded pinky beige.
She started with the closet and began making two piles of clothes; one to discard, the other for donations to the St. Vincent DePaul Thrift Shop, where Mary Helen had been a devoted volunteer since retiring from the drugstore.
Just another chore, she told herself. But when she opened the top dresser drawer she was almost struck down with an unexpected wave of grief as a cloud of Youth-Dew wafted from the neatly folded piles of lingerie.
Lingerie—such an old-fashioned word, but one her mother always used to somehow glamorize her collection of bras, panties, slips, and yes, girdles.
Maeve tossed the granny panties and a dozen packages of unopened pairs of bronze-hued pantyhose into the trash bag without a second thought and ran the palm of her hand across the silken folds of Mary Helen’s slips and nightgowns.
She couldn’t remember the last time she herself had worn a slip, but here was almost a whole drawer full of them, in a pastel rainbow range of lavender, apricot, pink, and powder blue, lace-trimmed, many with tiny satin ribbons and flower appliqués.
As little girls, she and Terri had delighted in playing dress-up in their mother’s slips and nighties. They’d been princesses, movie stars, and brides, using half slips bobby-pinned to their heads as veils.
Nine-year-old Maeve had howled with laughter the time Terri donned a corset complete with garter belt and bullet-cupped bra—surely a relic from their grandmother—and performed her own version of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” video that they’d seen on MTV.
She set aside an apricot satin nightgown with delicate nude lace trim for herself—out of sentiment—and a few slips and nightgowns for Terri—who’d probably wear them out clubbing—then consigned the rest of the lingerie to the pile of donations. Maybe some other little girls would enjoy playing dress-up.
Maeve worked her way through the dresser and was about to attack the closet when she heard the front door open.
“Hello,” her sister called.
“I’m in Mom’s room,” Maeve responded.
“Is there any coffee?”
“In the kitchen.”
Fifteen minutes later,she found Therese in the living room, holding the portrait of Lady Geraldine, which she’d taken down from the wall over the mantel. She was seated on the sofa, examining the back of the painting.
“I see you’ve been busy.” Therese glanced around the room at the cleaned-out bookcases and boxes of knickknacks.
“Week before last, I had Angie Gary come out to give me an idea of what we’ll need to do to get the house ready to sell. You might remember her—she was in my class at St. Mary’s. First thing out of her mouth was that we needed to clear away the clutter.”
Therese reached into a carton and picked out a plaster statue ofpraying hands. “Were you going to consult with me on whether or not I might want to keep any of Mom’s so-called clutter?”
Maeve shook her head. “I might have, if you’d bothered to stop in the whole time Mom was dying in that back bedroom. But you’re welcome to take the praying hands. There are at least a dozen more in the bottom of that box. Take all you want. I don’t give a flying fuck about any of it.”
“Such shocking language, baby sister. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Maeve fixed her sister with a level stare. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
Therese tossed the statue back into the box. “Yeah, I don’t want any of this shit either. Too depressing.”
She pointed at the painting of Lady Geraldine. “What do you want to do with her?”
Maeve felt a prickle of something. Her sister might be an actress, but the forced casualness of the question belied her disinterest.
“We can’t give her away,” Maeve said. “Mom always made us promise we’d never let her out of the family. She swore that portrait was priceless. Of course, that was probably just another Mary Helen Dunagin fable.”
“Maybe,” Therese said, running a finger across the signature on the bottom left corner of the portrait. “Or maybe not.”
The doorbell rang. “That’ll be Uncle Keith,” Maeve said.
“Any clue what’s on his mind?”
“Probably something about the estate. I know Mom made him executor.”
