A Temporary Ghost (The Georgia Lee Maxwell Series, Series 2) (8 page)

She was shuddering, her elbows on her knees. She took the tissue I offered and wiped her face. “Don’t tell Mother,” she gasped, when she could speak.

“I have to—”

“No!”
She drew a rasping breath. “You should have left me alone.”

“Why?”

She spread her hands limply. I took her by the shoulders. “Tell me!”

So faintly I had to lean forward to hear she said, “Everything’s wrong. Everything.”

I felt helpless. Should I talk to her, try to make her feel better? Or would I blunder and make it worse? I looked around for Ross and Vivien, but they were nowhere in sight. I put my arm around her shoulders, as much to keep her from running away as to comfort her. She sobbed, “There’s never anything left for me. Since my father died, it was always Mother and Alex, Mother and Alex.”

“But surely—”

“No room for me. Ever.”

I remembered how Vivien had softened when she talked about her son. “But Alex left home years ago, didn’t he?”

“He could’ve gone to the moon, and it wouldn’t have made any difference.” Her eyes were streaming. “They’ll always have their secrets, their bonds. And now—”

She didn’t continue, but she didn’t have to. “And now there’s Ross,” I said.

She looked away. I went on, “It’s the same thing all over again, isn’t it?”

She became oddly still, as if my words had paralyzed her. Then she burst out, “Yes! Yes! How does she do it? How does she get him to love her so much? He’ll do anything for her! Lie for her—”

She broke off. Beneath my arm, her shoulders heaved. And I sat wondering, what does she mean, Ross will lie for Vivien?

RETURN TO MAS ROSE

She wouldn’t tell me. She clammed up completely, shaking her head to my questions. I was in turmoil. Would Blanche really have jumped, I tortured myself by wondering, or had the episode been an exercise in dramatics complicated by my arrival? Gradually, her sobs lessened. When had Ross lied for Vivien? The night Carey was murdered?

Blanche moved away from me and sat with her head in her hands. My body was so stiff I might’ve been carrying her on my back. She straightened and blew her nose. She said, “I have to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“I wasn’t going to jump, if that’s what you thought.”

“Of course that’s what I thought.”

She shook her head. “I wanted to see how it felt to be so close. That’s all.”

“I see.”

“There’s no need to mention it to my mother.”

Sweat was trickling down my brow. I took off my hat and let the wind cool my damp hair. “I don’t believe you,” I said.

“It’s true.
Please.”

“No.”

I could have sworn she looked satisfied. Blanche felt left out and unloved. This episode could have been a twisted way of putting herself in the limelight. The thought infuriated me until I looked at her trembling hands and swollen eyes. The misery was real, whatever it might have driven her to do.

We left the Cité Mort. In the winding streets below we came across Ross and Vivien, and shortly afterward started home. Blanche was now in possession of herself. I’d wait and talk to Vivien in private. When Vivien asked where the guidebook was, Blanche, without a glance at me, said she’d forgotten it in a cafe. I’d never known people so at home with lies.

On the road up the hill to Mas Rose, I saw the motorcyclist. He appeared behind us, reminding me immediately of the engine I’d heard the night before. I stared at him through the back window. He wore a faded denim jacket and jeans, a red handkerchief knotted around his neck, a black helmet with a smoked plastic face guard. None of us mentioned him. Blanche, depleted, was dozing next to me. Ross drove in silence and Vivien sagged against her window. When we turned in at the gate, the cyclist roared past.

I followed Vivien to her room and told her about the episode with Blanche. She listened stony-eyed, standing in the middle of the room, her hands shoved in the pockets of her black slacks. When I finished the story she said, “That’s great. Just great.”

I had imagined several possible reactions. Bald fury wasn’t one of them. She began to pace. “Do you know why we’re here?” she flung at me. “Here in Provence, on a trip I can’t afford? Because of Blanche. Because Carey, that son of a bitch, wouldn’t pay for Blanche to come to Avignon, and Blanche never got over it. And so now she pulls this emotional blackmail—”

Maybe Blanche had been right about telling Vivien. “I don’t think—” I ventured.

She wheeled on me. “You don’t know anything about it! The therapists. The bills for the clinic. All the time she’s claiming I don’t love her, I only love Alex. What does she want most in the world? A trip to Provence. So I do that for her. It isn’t easy, but I work it out. And what do you tell me?
That she’s pulled it all over again!”

She dropped on the bed and pressed her fists against her forehead, her eyes squeezed shut. I said, “You mean she’s ‘pulled it’ before?”

“Slashed her wrists six months ago. Superficial cuts, but it scared everybody to death.”

I needed to sit down, too. I got a rattan chair from the alcove and sank into it.

Vivien sat slumped on the bed. “If only Carey hadn’t made Blanche the issue when he dug his heels in,” she said.

“He used her to hurt you.”

“Oh, sure. He knew I was sleeping with Ross. We were heading for divorce. Why should he pay for Blanche to come to Avignon, even if it was the one thing— the
one thing
— she’d gotten really interested in since Denis died?”

“Her father’s death hit her hard?”

“It hit both of the kids hard. Alex got defiant, rebellious. Blanche withdrew.” She shook her head, some of her anger and animation returning. “I’ve got bills you wouldn’t believe. And she promised me. She
promised
—”

Her anger worried me. “I don’t think you should take it out on Blanche.”

“Right,” she said sarcastically. “And when does Blanche stop taking it out on me?” She went on, in a calmer tone, “I’d better try to get her therapist on the phone. Her therapist thought this adventure would do Blanche a world of good.”

She stood, and so did I. I remembered something. I hadn’t mentioned Blanche’s remark about Ross lying for Vivien. I hadn’t mentioned Ross at all. I didn’t say anything more.

THE BOOK OF BETRAYAL

Cool, fragrant air eddied through my half-open windows as I lay watching the pattern moonlight made on the ceiling. Nothing could seem more peaceful than this clean, bare room, this quiet house. My head pulsed. The emotional pressures within the walls of Mas Rose seemed strong enough to explode them, leaving rubble and empty windows like the ruins at Les Baux.

My encounters with Blanche and Vivien had unnerved me, left me feeling both helpless and responsible. I was obsessively fearful Blanche would try again, was trying again at this very moment, swallowing handfuls of her sleeping pills. I could hardly prevent myself from running down the hall to her room to make sure she was all right.

The hell of it was, I could see Vivien’s side, too. Dealing with Blanche couldn’t have been easy. I wondered if Vivien knew Blanche was in love with Ross, and how she felt about it if she did.

Which brought us back to Ross.
He’ll do anything for her! Lie for her
… What had Blanche meant?

So far, I had suppressed the question of who had killed Carey Howard. The murder was unsolved. Vivien had an alibi. I was being paid to write her memoirs, not delve into the crime, and I was comfortable with that— as long as the facts didn’t get shaky.

I barely knew Blanche. She could be neurotic enough to cast suspicion on her mother because of grudges and traumas left over from childhood.

I wanted to find out the truth, because I didn’t intend to write and put my name on a pack of lies. Moral questions aside, how would it look if Vivien and I produced a self-serving volume that was later discredited? I wouldn’t be played for that kind of fool, so I’d have to probe, in order to protect myself. Now, though, I wished I would fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I stared at the ceiling. Before I got involved, I hadn’t realized how damaged these people would be by the past: Ross’s inability to continue with art, Blanche’s suicidal tendencies, Vivien’s unsettled emotional state, Pedro’s—

What about Pedro? His encounter with Vivien had made her cry. I saw Pedro’s leering face, heard him say he guessed this book would be worth a bundle.

I tossed restlessly and heard a faint whining sound through the night. A motorcycle again. It got louder, passed by, faded out. I turned on my side so I could stare at the wall instead of the ceiling. Eventually I fell into not a dreamless sleep but a troubled doze.

I woke the next morning feeling heavy-headed and woozy. Eager to know if Blanche was all right, I pulled on my robe and got up to see. When I opened my bedroom door, I was met by the strains of Bernart de Ventadorn, an indication of normalcy. I went down the hall to her room.

The volume swelled as I got closer. I tapped, then knocked, then pounded on her door without getting a response, so I pushed it open and looked in. She was sitting up in bed, in a white nightgown, writing madly in
The Book of Betrayal.
“Blanche!” I cried.

She must have heard me, because she glanced up. She looked pale in the light-flooded room. Her mouth formed the word “Hi.”

I pointed to the cassette player on her bedside table, then to my ear, and she obediently turned the volume down to a faint drone. “Hope it didn’t wake you up,” she said.

“No. I stopped by to see how you are.”

She shrugged, her eyes cast down. “I’m fine.”

“I was worried.”

She repeated, “I’m fine.”

She was pulling back from me, whether from embarrassment or a belief I’d let her down by talking with Vivien. To keep the conversation alive, I said, “What are you writing?”

I thought she wasn’t going to answer. She drew her knees up in a self-protective gesture. But she said, with an embarrassed smile, “This dumb thing. It’s terrible.”

I was gratified. She’d given me an opening. “What is it?”

“Sort of a play. A dialogue in blank verse. It’s really stupid.”

“A dialogue between who?”

“Eleanor of Aquitaine and Bernart de Ventadorn.”

I remembered Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor in the movie
The Lion in Winter.
I said, “Eleanor of Aquitaine? She was married to—”

“Henry the Second of England. She was the mother of Richard the Lion-Hearted.”

“And she knew Bernart?”

Blanche came alive. “Oh, yes! They were lovers!”

Enthusiasm gave Blanche’s harried face a delicate appeal, a wrenching suggestion of how she might have looked if she’d been happier. “Really?” I said.

“Nobody knows for absolute sure. But he wrote wonderful love poems to her.”

“What’s the dialogue about?”

She leaned toward me confidentially, her customary diffidence forgotten. “It’s a debate at one of the Courts of Love, where all aspects of love were discussed. It’s called,
The Book of Betrayal.”

“I thought it was about love.”

“It’s about whether betrayal is a necessary part of love.”

I had never thought betrayal was a part of love at all. “What’s your conclusion?”

“I haven’t reached one. I’m still classifying the varieties of betrayal.”

“The varieties?”

She ticked them off on her fingers. “Betrayal by withdrawal, and betrayal by intrusion; betrayal by breaking a vow, and betrayal by refusing to make one; betrayal by revelation; betrayal by appropriation; betrayal by laughter; betrayal by—”

“Good grief, Blanche!”

“I want ten kinds, so I can have ten divisions to the dialogue.”

“Have you got them?”

“Not quite. There are two more. Betrayal by silence, and betrayal by ignoring the consequences.”

I was dumbfounded. So Blanche spent her days in medieval hairsplitting about the nature of betrayal. Not only that, but it was the only thing I’d ever seen her chipper and happy about. “I’d like to read the dialogue sometime,” I said.

She looked horrified. “Oh, no! It’s awful.”

“I’ll bet it isn’t. It sounds— very original.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Well, let me know if you change your mind.” Although she was hugging the notebook to her chest as if afraid I’d snatch it from her, she seemed pleased. I hated to change the subject, but I had to. “About yesterday,” I said.

Her face closed. She looked away.

“I have to know what you meant when you said—”

“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything.”

“When you said Ross had lied for Vivien.”

Her shoulders sagged as if something heavy had been placed on them. When she spoke, her words were slow and careful. “I only meant like— if the newspapers would call, he’d lie and say she wasn’t home. To protect her.”

“Nothing more than that?”

“No.”

Faintly, from the cassette player, the love songs played on. “All right then,” I said.

There was a betrayal angle here. I didn’t know what it was, but Blanche did. In time, I thought she would tell me. I went back to my room to get dressed.

WOMAN IN A STRAW HAT

It was Sunday. Vivien and I had agreed to take Sundays off before our impromptu holiday at Les Baux. The time dragged. Blanche stayed in her room, presumably composing blank verse about the varieties of betrayal. Troubadour music, restored to its accustomed volume, resounded through the house. Pedro took the car and went off on some errand. The sun was bright, and toward noon Vivien and Ross emerged in bathing suits, Vivien’s red bikini displaying a body a woman half her age would be happy to have. They spread a blanket, oiled themselves, and drank Bloody Marys while basking. I was invited to join them but refused. The scene was too cozy for a threesome. I had an inkling of the excluded feeling that tortured Blanche.

Headachy and increasingly out of sorts, I decided to take a walk. I got my straw hat and trudged off, waving with feigned cheerfulness at the sunbathers. I wanted to be back in Paris, standing on my tiny wrought iron balcony with its potted red geraniums, breathing the automobile fumes that wafted along the Rue Delacôte, listening to the horns and rude shouts of drivers filling the air when the street was blocked for five seconds. I wanted to see Twinkie dozing on her own windowsill with her paws tucked under her chest. I wanted to go to the office and discuss the relative merits of eggplant versus carrot blusher with Kitty, and kibitz with Jack. In short, I wished I’d never gotten into this.