Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (11 page)

“What’s wrong?”

His fingers were touching her left temple. “You’re getting old, baby,” he said with quiet sympathy.

“A gray hair!” she said, appalled. Her eyes were straining left.

“More than one.” He was separating the strands.

“Ben! Stop kidding.”

“I’m not kidding.” He turned her head and examined the right side, saying, infuriatingly, tsk-tsk-tsk-tsk.

“Clown,” she said, pushing him away. Then, more emphatically: “Beast.” She headed for the powder room outside the kitchen.

“I think it’s kind of sexy, myself,” she heard Ben calling. When he realized how upset she might be, he added, “You can barely see it, babe. Honest.”

She turned on the light and slammed the door. There was one . . . two . . . Her fingers swept through the hair on her left side. Four . . . five . . . My God! And the other side as well. She hurried out of the room, bumping into Ben who was actually laughing, the bastard, saying something about vanity, vanity. “Oh, shut up, smart-ass!” she called over her shoulder. She went upstairs to her own bathroom for the hand-mirror, focusing it on the medicine cabinet. Nothing on top or in the back, thank God; just a thin streak on either side, and like he said, barely noticeable in her light hair.
But there
.

She came out of the bathroom and sat, stunned, on the edge of the bed for a couple of minutes. Ben was calling her downstairs. She waited for him to give up, then went back into the bathroom. She pulled out some of the gray, grimacing terribly, and then tried to cut the rest. She combed her hair, covering whatever gray she had missed.

Before she came downstairs again, she went into Mrs. Allardyce’s sitting room. And for the first time actually sat. In the gold brocade wingchair.

Sunday morning, before breakfast, Ben announced that he was going to Southold for rolls and
The Times
. Marian told him to forget the rolls, she was baking cinnamon bread; all they needed was milk. By the time he reached Mohonkson, he had lost interest in the papers and the fifteen mile drive (in, vaguely,
that
direction, according to the monosyllabic proprietor of the general store). He picked up the milk and drove back to the house. Today, July Sixth, was finally Pool Day.

“You haven’t come across a pair of pruning shears, have you?” he asked Marian in the kitchen. She was wearing her eternal shirt and jeans.

“In the whaddayacallit – the garden house,” she said. “Why?”

“I’ve got to do something about that driveway. Bushes are growing like crazy.”

“Now who’s becoming proprietary?”

“It’s a question of passage,” he corrected her. “Besides, I scratched the car.”

“That’s better than losing it,” she said, and stuck out her tongue.

He made several whipping gestures with appropriate sound effects, lashing her back as she knelt in front of the oven. The smell of cinnamon filled the kitchen.

“Jesus,” he said after a moment, “you’re really at home.”

“Aren’t you?” She rose and brushed her hair back from her temples; the motion was becoming a nervous, self-conscious habit.

“
I
know the idyl’s got to end eventually; that’s the difference,” he said.

She went for his eyes with her nails, kissed him grudgingly, and said, “Gather the tribe, please.”

David came to breakfast with his flippers on and his face-mask, making a fish-mouth at Aunt Elizabeth who assured them all that she was wearing her new bikini, which was
brazen,
under her sleeveless white dress.

“Thank God for those Swiss doctors,” Ben said. “Admit it, that’s what keeps you going.”

“Swiss doctors?” Aunt Elizabeth raised her sunglasses. “You mean those fiends with their monkey glands and placentas?”
She screwed her face and made a gagging sound. “You don’t seriously think that, Benjie.”

“There’s got to be a secret somewhere,” he said, sliding a knife through David’s grapefruit.

“There is,” she said: “Riotous living.” She had survived, she reminded Ben, two husbands, rest their souls – the second four years younger than herself.

“Anybody on deck at the moment?” Ben asked.

She lowered her glasses. “Not with my record, there isn’t.”

Marian was walking across the terrace, carrying the electric percolator, and David, who was still deep underwater, turned to her slowly and opened and closed his pursed lips. “Where’s your bathing suit?” he asked behind the mask.

“Sounds remarkably like a real fish, doesn’t he?” Marian said as she sat down.

“Daddie’s got his on,” David continued. “And Aunt Elizabeth’s got a brazen bikini.”

“So’s your old lady,” Ben said, “a brand new one, as I recall.”
He passed him the grapefruit and tapped the glass of the facemask. David pushed it up to his forehead. “When do I get to see it?” Ben asked her.

“I’ll have it on in time for the first dip,” she said, raising her right hand and adding, “Promise,” when Ben looked at her skeptically. “No cleaning, no potting around the greenhouse; just a long, lovely day in the sun. Okay?”

Ben scooped some scrambled eggs onto his plate. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said.

“How come you’re always
clean
ing?” David asked. “It’s the country, isn’t it?”

Ben nodded with satisfaction. “You tell her, Dave.”

Marian turned to Aunt Elizabeth with an uncomprehending look. “Have I really been making myself that scarce?” she said.

“They’re pulling your leg, dear,” Aunt Elizabeth said, patting her hand. “I think what you’re doing for the house is admirable.”

“Thank you.” She dug a silver serrated spoon into her grapefruit. “Now eat your breakfast, both of you.”

In all probability she would have been there, at the pool with the rest of them, even though she ought to have been making some sense out of that greenhouse, which she’d at least attempt, eventually, or the disarray in the living room (most of the pieces, on closer inspection, were in shocking condition, and none of them where she would have placed them). She would even have put off that huge closetful of china and the cabinets filled with dull crystal – a crime, all of it – slipped into the bikini and shut them up for the day, son as well as father. But when she went into the sitting room for the breakfast tray, she saw that it had finally happened: the tea table had been moved a bit away from the wingchair, the napkin, unfolded, was draped across the tray; the egg had been cracked and (she checked) partially eaten, and so had one small wedge of toast.

If there was relief in Marian’s reaction, there was gratitude as well. The old lady was alive, she actually existed behind the carved door; there was no need to mention her growing concern to Ben, which she would have had to have done soon, and raise again the suspicions the house had so beautifully dispelled.

Marian had brought the tray up at nine and it was a little after ten now; Mrs. Allardyce might have just left the sitting room, she would certainly be awake. Marian looked at the door, aware again of the hum. Today the pattern emerged as a stylized sunburst; yesterday it had been clearly, to Marian, a map of the heavens, with the Big Dipper and all the other constellations. It was the angle, she decided, the degree of light that determined the image; marvelously, as marvelous as anything else in the house. (Where had it come from? It suggested Egypt to her, or one of those elaborately carved Hindu temples.)

As fascinating as it was, what was beyond the door was more important to her right now; she’d see it eventually, she was sure, and meet the elusive Mrs. Allardyce, despite what she’d been told about the previous families. Should she push it? Go up to the door, knock, and try to communicate with her again? It was just curiosity of course, nothing stronger. Perfectly natural: what sort of person had accumulated the treasures that filled the house and that were now, tragically, crumbling from neglect? And what kind of woman was it who could inspire such reverence, whether it was eccentric or not? Marian could still hear their voices, the Allardyces’, a decibel below the hum.

She stood for a long while beside the wingchair, staring at the door; one hand passed idly back and forth over the fabric. The reverence – and she was aware of it in herself every time she approached the room, feeling it intensify whenever she moved nearer the door – the reverence had been infectious; it was based, when she analyzed it, on nothing more than an idea and a house filled with its manifestations.

Somewhere beyond the closed windows she thought she heard David’s voice calling her. She didn’t move, except to bring her hands up to her head and brush the hair back against her temples. It was strange how the room insulated her; David, for the moment, seemed as distant to her as the sound of his voice. The hum was closer, more insistent.

Marian brought her hands down to the tray. Had Mrs. Allardyce noticed? – it was polished, gleaming under the blue Spode; not at all the way Marian had found it. She lifted it, jiggling it deliberately; and pointlessly – the sound would hardly penetrate the thick door. She waited, listening for some recognition beyond the door. And if it didn’t come, it would, whenever the old lady was ready. “Our darling,” she remembered, and when she looked down at the remnants on the tray, she could see her, frail and white and trembling, and “Our darling” became appropriate and touching. She repeated it: our darling.

She moved quietly away from the chair, and as she did she could hear David’s voice again. The windows beyond the table of photographs overlooked the rear of the house and, off to the right, the pool where the calls were coming from. Marian moved past the rows of faces; they were clouding with dust, she noticed, and there was dust on the velvet covering as well. Her collection; she could hardly be expected to take care of it herself, an eighty-five year old woman. David had stopped calling and Marian turned back before she reached the window. She looked over the vast, shadowy emptiness of the room. Did Mrs. Allardyce really prefer it this way? There had been no complaint when she’d opened the drapes and aired the room before. Marian lowered the tray. Something against the bare, long wall to the left possibly – a table with a vase of flowers, just to brighten the room. There were roses growing beside the garage. She’d appreciate that.

But after. First she’d dust each of the picture frames and run a soft brush over the burgundy velvet. It might take her the rest of the morning, but she’d appreciate that as well, the old darling. Ben wouldn’t, and neither would David; but there was a whole summer to fool around in the pool anyway.

David had let out one final, noisy “
Maaa!
”, spinning with the effort, when Ben, at the opposite end of the pool, called, “Okay, Dave, cool it.”

“She said she’d come swimming,” David said. The facemask was hanging loose around his neck and he was holding his flippers. The concrete perimeter of the pool, cracked and irregular in many places, was hot and bumpy under his feet.

“If she comes, she comes,” Ben said. “You know your mother.” He was drawing the long poolnet, its webbing minimally effective, over the surface of the water at the deep end of the pool. The house, huge and bright with sunlight, was about two hundred yards distant, sprawling above the sweep of lawn. There was no sign of Marian, which didn’t surprise him.

Aunt Elizabeth was sitting under the faded beach umbrella across the pool where Ben had set up the table, chaise longue and chairs they had found in the garage. A rubber whale was growing in her hands as she blew into the nozzle.

“How’s your wind holding out?” Ben called to her.

She pinched the nozzle which whistled as she took it from her mouth. “Not what it used to be,” she managed to say between gasps.

“You smoke too much,” Ben said. She had a cigarette each morning with her second cup of coffee, and another with her six o’clock martini (half vodka, half vermouth), using an elegant ivory holder.

“I know,” she called back. “I drink too much and I’m a lecherous old lady. I’ll never make eighty.”

She examined the whale, which was still loose and sickly, drew a deep breath, and sputtered life into the nozzle. David was behind her, pulling on his flippers. He stood up quietly, raised the facemask, and began to move toward her, his arms outspread like some creature from beneath the sea. When he was directly in back of her, he laid a slimy hand on her shoulder, heavily, like he’d seen the Mummy do on television, and made a scary sound which caused Aunt Elizabeth to shriek and let the whale fart its way out of her hands.

“
David!
” she cried, bringing her hands to her bosom. The whale, flat and lifeless, had come to rest beside the edge of the pool. When she caught her breath, she shook her head and said sadly, “All my effort, all that precious wind.” David lumbered after the whale with stiff gestures and the same menacing face.

The water was still a not very appetizing brown, with patches of blue where the paint had not worn off the bottom and sides of the pool. The filter had given out again, and Ben had used the net to skim off most of the dead leaves and bits of grass and debris he had found floating. The pool had been filled, according to the instructions, just before the Rolfes had seen the house for the first time. Filled, Ben assumed, with no attempt to clean out the year’s accumulated waste, some of which he could still make out in the pool’s dim bottom. “It figures,” he had decided, remembering the Allardyces, which he did – deliberately – infrequently.

David was close to the edge at the low end. “Now can I go in?” he said impatiently.

“In a minute,” Ben replied, working the net.

“If you put chlorine in,” David suggested, “it kills all the germs.”

“Who’s worried about germs?” Ben said, plunging in the net. “It’s that lousy sea serpent I’m after.”

David examined the water more carefully. “
Really?
” he said.

“Really.”

Aunt Elizabeth nodded when David looked to her for confirmation. She was making another attempt at the whale.

Ben looked toward the house once more. It was too far to be sure, but he thought he saw a window being raised and Marian’s figure, briefly, way at the west end. Marian or not, she had obviously found something to occupy herself somewhere in the house. To hell with her. He flipped the net onto the grass bordering the concrete rim of the pool, and said, “Okay, chief, get your tube on.” There was another one, a small yellow tire all blown up, at Aunt Elizabeth’s feet. David pulled it around his waist.

“What about the sea serpent?” he asked, a little dubiously.

“Must be out to lunch,” Ben said. “Stay down at the low end.”

David readjusted his facemask, called a muffled “Lookit me!” to Aunt Elizabeth and then ran clumsily toward the pool. He jumped into the ankle-deep water as Aunt Elizabeth called “Bravo!” and kicked his way farther out, slapping the water with his green flippers.

“Come on in!” he called to her, and she waved in reply, breaking off suddenly and shouting, “Watch out, Davey!”

Ben was running along the edge, toward the middle of the pool. David saw him leap, grab his knees, and cannonball in, hitting David with the spray. David squealed delightedly, and when Ben began to swim toward him, making threatening sounds, he squealed louder and pulled his feet in the opposite direction.

“Faster, Dave, faster!” Aunt Elizabeth was calling.

Ben grabbed a flipper, tripping David whose face hit the water. When he surfaced, Ben was swimming away, making
triumphant sea serpent sounds. David dragged himself toward
Aunt Elizabeth at the low end, saying, “Close call, close call.”