Songs without Words by Robbi McCoy Page B

had timed their visits to coincide, the house dynamic for these two July weeks was much as it had been after Neil had left home. This morning Alice was cooking breakfast for her children even before they were out of bed, so they had no chance but to graciously accept. Her thick steel gray hair was clipped back from her face with one pink and one blue clip. The older she got, the more wiry and contrary her hair became.
    “You remember Peggy Drummond, of course,” Alice said, putting a plate of two sunny-side up eggs in front of Harper at the dining room table.
    Danny already had his and was sopping up egg yolk with his toast. He sat across the table, hunched over his plate, his wire-framed glasses riding the tip of his nose. A bright yellow drip of yolk clung to his new goatee.
    “Peggy?” Harper said. “Yes, of course.”
    “Her father died earlier this year.”Alice put a piece of buttered toast on Harper’s plate.
    “Oh, no! I hadn’t heard that. Poor Peggy.”
    “I didn’t think you’d heard. I know you haven’t kept in touch with her.”
    “That’s so sad. I didn’t even know he was sick. I loved Mr. Drummond. He was so funny and kind.”
    “Peggy was here for the funeral. It was the first time I’d seen her in such a long time. Unlike you, Harper, she doesn’t come back for visits. Understandable, I suppose. She brought her partner along. Her mother was not at all happy about that. She thought it was inconsiderate, an act of defiance or hostility. She thought it was disrespectful.”
    Harper cut the whites off of her eggs mechanically, leaving the yolk intact, saving it. “Oh?” she asked, glancing across the table at Danny, who had cleaned his plate and was now opening a newspaper. “That seems unreasonable.”
    “Yes,” Alice said, “absolutely unreasonable. The poor woman lost her father. Why wouldn’t she want to have her partner at her side at a time like that? Kate has never been able to reconcile herself to Peggy’s lifestyle. She basically just pretends it doesn’t exist. She’s in complete denial. It’s such a shame. I mean, she’s all alone now in that big house. She’s estranged from her only child, narrow-minded old biddy.”
    Alice wiped her hands on a dishtowel, then smiled approvingly at her children. “I know I would be overjoyed to welcome my daughter’s lesbian lover into my family if I were in Kate’s shoes.”
    Harper and Danny looked at each other across the table, their expressions communicating shared bewilderment. Alice sighed deeply and went into the kitchen. It wasn’t at all unusual for her to make that sort of bizarre comment. She seemed to be perpetually trying to prove that she was open-minded and progressive when it came to gays and lesbians, as if someone were accusing her of being otherwise. But no one was. Harper had known for a long time that her parents supported gay rights as if they had a personal stake in those issues, and she was proud of them for that, especially her mother, because of her religious affiliation.
    “Sometimes I think she wishes she had a gay child,” Harper remarked to her brother.
    He shrugged, saying, “Our parents are refreshingly liberal.”
    She reached across the table with a napkin and wiped the egg yolk out of his beard. “As are their children. Eliot and I just took part in our third peace rally since the war started.”
    “On your home turf?”
    “San Francisco. It was fun and a little different because this time there were so many gay men there. There were as many rainbow flags being waved as there were ‘End the War Now’ signs.”
    “Are you sure you didn’t get swept up in the pride parade?” Danny grinned, widening his already wide, thin mouth.
    “Yes, I’m sure. Because I went to that last month.”
    “Did Eliot go with you to that too?”
    “No. I went with my friend Roxie. She left the kids home with her husband, and we had a great day in the City. The pride parade in San Francisco is a pretty good