The Cave Dwellers, Christina McDowell [ap literature book list .TXT] 📗

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Meredith slams the screen door. She stands in the foyer next to a full-length mirror, its mahogany frame found in a sunken ship off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard when she was a little girl. Meredith inhales her mother’s federal town house, its ingrained smell of cool wood and charcoal, age and human odor, the whiff of clammy blouses worn too many times. The musky residual pheromones are redolent of status and memory, a kind of territorial marking that Meredith doesn’t want to let go of. But the house is an asset and it must be sold.

The living room is rife with exposed brick, double fireplaces, a glass Tiffany lamp, and black-and-white photographs of her grandparents, two with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. Presidential inaugural ball invitations and old framed Christmas cards, sketches of their farm in Middleburg and Meredith’s horse named Shoo. She’s missing that dim light, the feeling of being cocooned by her parents; it hits her all at once, that dreadful pull again, the longing for her mother. Meredith’s father died from lung cancer over a decade ago, but it was always Elizabeth (Bunny), the matriarch, who kept the family nucleus strong.

Meredith wills her body into the kitchen, sits at the old wooden breakfast booth by the bay window, and lights a cigarette. She opens her mother’s laptop in front of her, the one she never used, googles the name of a psychic hotline, then dials from her cell phone.

A raspy voice answers, “Knight psychic hotline, can I have your name, please?”

Meredith hangs up. Throws her head in her hands. Pops up just to take a long drag and stare at the brick wall in front of her. She squints, cocks her head sideways. What is that? Some kind of black object is stuck to the brick, but that can’t be. Meredith cranes her head forward, takes another drag; smoke pours out of her lips, possessed now, when she sees the object move. It’s a black butterfly. Its wings slowly descend as though waking from a dream to reveal two red stripes on its body, before it pushes them up again as if its wings are trying to seduce her. Meredith stubs her cigarette out on the crystal ashtray, tiptoes closer to make sure she’s seeing it correctly, a butterfly, how did you get in here? As if breaking from a spell, Meredith tiptoes back to the computer and googles “black butterfly red stripe spiritual meaning”: A black butterfly is considered a symbol of misfortune and death. It is also associated with power, mystery, fear, and evil.

Meredith slams the computer shut. Stop it, Meredith, stop it, stop it. The butterfly jets off, looking for a way out.

Meredith takes the ashtray over to the sink, remembers there’s no garbage disposal. She opens the cabinet below. A mouse lies sideways, still, its gaping mouth staring up at her.

“Oh, Christ!”

Just as she begins to reach for a paper towel, the doorbell rings. Meredith jumps again. “Goddamn it!”

“Yoo-hoo!” It’s Phyllis Van Buren arriving to help clean out the house. Phyllis walks toward the kitchen in her Burberry trench with its faint odor of mothballs and Chanel Number Five, carrying two coffees from Booeymonger, the famous Georgetown deli next door.

“You scared the bejesus out of me. There’s a dead mouse under the sink. I can’t do it, I can’t, I can’t…” Meredith trails off, her lower lip quivering. She lowers herself to the floor of the kitchen, sits with her back against a closed cabinet door. Lifeless.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Phyllis sets the coffee cups down next to the computer, violently rips a paper towel from its roll, then kneels, grabs the mouse, and dumps it into the trash bin. “There. It’s done.”

“It’s still in the trash bin.”

“For Christ’s sake, Meredith, your mother lived a very long and wonderful life! You need to celebrate her, not wallow in this.”

WASPs are not ones to wallow.

“Her legacy lives on in you, and in Bunny, she is her namesake!” Phyllis says, trying to cheer her up.

“What does a legacy even mean, Phyllis?”

Phyllis extends her hand. “Get up off that dirty floor, will you?” Meredith takes her hand and stands.

“I’m serious. What does it mean? This country is eroding, Phyllis, as we know it, our children don’t care about capitalism and they’re preaching in our streets, Black Lives Matter! Down with the one percent and big corporations! Gun control! And I agree with some of what they say, but they don’t even know what the fuck they are talking about. Remember how fearful our parents were—our grandparents were—of communism?”

“Is this about the Banks murders, honey?” Phyllis is trying to follow, be a supportive friend.

Meredith snatches her coffee, walks into the living room, and sits on the rose-colored sofa, matted and soft from the derrieres of presidents and royalty striking deals and declaring war. “I am saying that if a legacy does not remain upheld with dignity and respect, it will become nameless.”

“Well, isn’t that obvious, dear? And what a legacy you carry.” Phyllis smiles, puts her hand on Meredith’s shoulder. “It’ll be all right, dear.”

“We’re losing money, Phyllis,” Meredith tells her, hesitant at first, but she can’t keep it in anymore; her secret is imploding, which she knows is a liability. So she must tell only one person whom she can trust. And it is only because Phyllis has spent the last thirty years of her life protecting and preserving the legacy of the Manhattan Project, considered to be an American victory in spite of killing about eighty thousand people, that Meredith feels confident Phyllis will understand.

“What do you mean?” Phyllis asks as if this is simply not possible.

“We’re being sued.”

“By whom?” She’s still not convinced.

“Hundreds of… people in rural states.” Meredith lights another cigarette.

“But this sort of thing happens all the time, darling. Look, this is capitalism and people just want a piece of the pie.”

“No, Phyllis, it will blow