Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (3 page)

But of course he’d go along with her, just as he had for the past several years. He’d mouthed the words, offered the obligatory protest, and she’d reacted antiphonally. They’d start with the reasonable thousand-dollar-a-month beach cottages and work their way down to the jerry-built lakefront cabins, or the bungalow colonies with their tribes of screaming kids and five-day widows. Queens transplanted. Cots, rickety furniture, dimestore landscapes on the walls, and bare wooden floors that were always damp and gritty with sand. He could just see Marian in a setting like that. But the fantasy persisted.

She was silent, waiting for him to relent, and he could feel a sly, sneaky touch inside the leg of his trousers.

“I suppose,” he said finally, “there are worse ways to spend a Saturday.”

She smiled, but with no hint of triumph. The voice was vaguely repentant. “You’re not mad are you – about the calls? I should’ve waited, I know, but you can be – and I
love
this in you, I really, truly love it – you can be so impossibly negative at times.” She brought her face level with his. “It could be so good for us if it worked out. No worrying about Davey and that damn bike. Or me, for that matter; wondering whether you’ll find me here or splattered on the pavement below, if I have to spend another summer in this bin.”

“I’m not mad.”

“That’s my Benjie.”

He shifted position, a little uncomfortably. “What I am, however, is something close to horny, and unless you want to give all the folks yonder a really hot show – ” He was sliding back up on the couch, freeing himself from Marian who looked quickly in the direction of the open window. The Supervisor was still at her perch, fat breasts pillowed on the sill. Below her the courtyard continued to roar. “Besides,” he said with a small chuckle, “we don’t have a car anymore, remember?” And as he said it, the piano below thundered to an off-key climax, and the name Mayberry Heights came into his mind. And the building half a block away from it on Wood Avenue where he’d parked the Camaro – absolutely, no question – in front of its large lobby window. He remembered very clearly the plastic fern, the lamp, and the chairs inside, all of them chained to the wall.

(2)

The next morning Marian called Aunt Elizabeth and told her they would be away all day Saturday; could Ben take her to the supermarket Friday night instead? Aunt Elizabeth, who was seventy-four, said that Friday was her poker night. Then what about Thursday? Art class, and Wednesday was out – she was going to the theatre. Aunt Elizabeth told Marian not to worry, she could easily wheel her shopping cart the three blocks to the A & P, but Marian, who like Ben assumed that a seventy-four-year-old woman living alone must be helpless, insisted, and so they settled on Friday afternoon when Ben usually got home earlier. Aunt Elizabeth, although she didn’t mention it, would have to cancel her three o’clock appointment at the beauty parlor.

Much of Ben’s reluctance to leave the city for any length of time was based, Marian knew, on Aunt Elizabeth’s supposed dependence on him. She was Ben’s only living relative, his father’s sister; bright, witty and good-natured, he was devoted to her. Although she lived fairly nearby, they saw her infrequently; her schedule always seemed to be booked solid. But at least he was there if she needed him, which, surprisingly, she did that morning – her air conditioner had broken down. But no rush, Friday would be fine. She wished them success with the summer house and said that her bikini and her water-wings were all ready.

“Are you serious, Aunt Elizabeth?” Marian asked her.

“About the bikini? Of course I’m serious.”

“Besides that. I mean, if we were to find something, would you consider spending the summer with us?”

“In the country?”

“As our guest. I’m sure Ben would feel a lot easier about leaving if you came along.”

“Well,” Aunt Elizabeth said, “it’s certainly an idea, isn’t it?”

“Please think about it.”

“I will, Marian. Kiss Davey for me, will you?”

Marian hung up. That, she thought, was inspired.

The temperature climbed all week and the nightly weather reports started adding THIs and discomfort glosses to the evening banter. Wednesday, the children below the windows were playing in shorts and sun dresses, their mothers exposing white arms and thighs. Ben came home sweating and one night, when the building opposite hummed with the sound of air conditioners, suggested they start thinking of one themselves, even though neither of them could stand them. Marian spent an afternoon rearranging drawers and closets, pulling out summer clothes and burying the spring and winter. The heat and noise had suddenly become invigorating.

The prospect of going away for the summer delighted David who asked Ben, Thursday, when he should start packing his snorkeling equipment.

“I’d hold off a while,” Ben said. “And I wouldn’t get my hopes up either. Chances are we won’t find anything, not this  year.”

“That’s not what Mommie says,” David replied.

“Well, Mommie can be a little premature sometimes,” Ben said, glaring across the table at Marian who insisted she hadn’t
said a thing at all.

Ben, if not exactly sanguine, said little more to temper Marian’s enthusiasm. There was even something encouraging in his insistence that they set up several houses to visit in addition to the very reasonable one – plainly beyond them – she seemed so inordinately excited about. Which Marian did promptly, happily and displaying an incredible catholicity of taste.

They were to take the Long Island Expressway out to Riverhead, the woman on the phone had said, get onto Route 25 and keep going, beyond Mattituck and Cutchogue and the Little Peconic Bay; get off 25 at Orient Road (tricky, she was
told, so watch out for it), and then follow a series of secondary roads, which Marian had copied down carefully, crossing
the island until they reached Shore Road, and look for number Seventeen.

“Which is a hoot,” the woman had said. “There’s no Fifteen or Eighteen or anything; just Seventeen.”

Her name was Roz Allardyce and she had sounded jovial and friendly and very interested.

When Marian showed the directions to Ben, he said, “My God! Are you sure you’ve got this right?”

She said, “I copied down exactly what she told me.”

Ben studied a map of the island and was able to follow the route up to the Little Peconic Bay. “The rest we’ll have to take as it comes,” he said, adding, “Maybe we ought to try some of the other places first.”

“Oh, Ben, no,” Marian pleaded. “We’ll find it, I know we will.”

Marian had told Miss Allardyce to expect them around eleven. To allow for Saturday traffic and the probability that they would get lost somewhere at the end of the island, Ben suggested they leave the apartment before eight.

“Cautious, as always,” Marian said.

“Hell, someone here’s got to be.”

She sat next to him with the map open on her lap and the scrawled directions tucked into her tote bag. Apartment buildings, terraced most of them, rose above the Expressway like palisades. Nothing like a little distance to see it clearly – the sprawling dreariness of the city, the bricked-in anonymity. Was he looking?

“Awake?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Excited?”

He made a whoopee sign, and she hammered the side of his arm. Whether he’d admit it or not, he had accepted the idea, he was more than merely humoring her. And maybe it was the bright shirt, or the weekend, or just the three of them riding together, but already he seemed less tense, less distracted.

In a while the buildings were a gray mass behind them, like something glacial, and there were rows of small houses with trees and neat, billowy shrubs; and then houses with saplings and newly sodded lawns. The sun had come out and the air, heavy with unseasonable humidity when they left the apartment, had become clear. Marian rolled down her window and the air washed over David who was burrowing in the picnic hamper behind them.

“Look at all that beautiful space,” she said, “and the air – just smell it, Davey!”

David pulled out a package of Yankee Doodles. “Are we in the country yet?” he asked.

“Soon.”

“Riverhead,” Ben said. “Where are those directions?”

The directions, surprisingly enough, were accurate. They found Orient Road and then turned off onto a narrower blacktop which soon passed through a neat and quiet cluster of small wooden buildings. A tavern, a general store, a post office, flagless, with the name “Mohonkson” in peeling gilt on the window, W. G. Ross, M.D. Fat trees lined the road.

“Bustling,” Ben said.

Marian said, “It’s heaven!”

Ten minutes later Ben slowed the car. “This has got to be it – Shore Road.”

“Is there a sign?”

“Nope. There’s also nowhere else to go. What do the directions say?”

“Seventeen Shore Road.”

“Thanks.”

They were on a narrow dirt lane, obviously little used. Deep, rich foliage pressed the road on both sides; the trees overhead seemed to lock together. It was all shimmering green, and still, and somewhere beyond there was a sense of space and water.

“Lovely,” Marian said quietly, and Ben stopped the car for a moment and said, “God, yes.” And David, who was peering over the front seat and really smelling the air for the first time, asked, “Is this the country?”

The car bumped slowly over the road for a quarter of a mile or so; still no sign, no break on either side of the road. Marian was leaning forward, trying to see beyond the foliage. And finally she said, “Look,” and pointed to an old stone wall half hidden under thick vines and bushes. The wall disappeared and, about fifty feet away, broke through the shrubbery once again. It was huge, ancient, solid. They followed it, and soon there were two massive pillars flanking a gravel drive perpendicular to the road. Marian leaned over Ben. Barely visible on one of the pillars was a bronze plate with the number 17.

“Magic number,” Marian said. “Turn in.”

Ben inched the car forward a bit and then stepped on the brakes. He was looking down the shaded drive which dipped out of sight a little beyond the pillars.

“Why are you stopping?” Marian asked.

“A little intimidating, don’t you think? For something so reasonable.” Before she could say it, he added, “I know, I know, negative, as usual.”

“Drive,” she said, adding a small-voiced “Please?”

The ad, she admitted to herself, had hardly prepared her for something so formidable; it was the entrance to an estate. She was about to say something about a gatekeeper’s house or a guest cottage, or possibly an apartment above a garage, but Ben had turned slowly into the drive, and she moved closer to the windshield, silent and fascinated, as the car dipped and turned and tunnelled deeper through the woods. Sunlight flashed through the tall trees, and when she closed her eyes for a second she could feel it and almost hear it hitting the car like rain. The drive narrowed even more now, and the foliage was brushing the sides of the car. Ahead, vines buried themselves under the gravel.

David was kneeling in the back seat, watching the road disappear behind them. He had seen a rabbit, and something larger, he insisted, swinging through the trees. Ben saw it too, he said.

“Like a gorilla?” David asked, excited.

“More like a wild goose,” he said, looking pointedly at Marian who heard neither of them.

There was another turn, and the growth was even thicker, the shade deeper. A dead branch had fallen halfway across the gravel; Ben steered left, pushing into the low shrubbery. There was a rustling sound, and then a small, quick slap. Ben cried out, “Jesus!” and pulled his arm off the windowsill. The car swerved right, back onto the gravel.

Marian threw her arm against the dashboard. “What happened?”

“Goddamn twig hit me.” He was rubbing his elbow against his thigh, steering with one hand. “Roll up your window.” He looked at David through the rearview mirror. “You all right, Dave?”

“Saw another one,” David said, “real close this time.” He shot at it through the rear window.

The drive widened at that point, and brightened. The bushes drew back from the road, and the trees grew thinner, some of them leafless and dead. Straight ahead, abruptly, the woods ended.

“All clear,” Marian said. She looked at his elbow which he was holding close to his side. “We’d have to do something
about those bushes,” she said, and waited for the look. It came.

The woods rose in back of them, solidly, rimming the great stretch of open field they were now driving through. Coarse high grass, with some thickets and isolated, dead trees; it was hot and silent and heavy with the smell of weeds baking. The road, more dirt than gravel now, turned to the right, and the house that suddenly burst on them, way in the distance, with the huge shimmering bay beyond it, made Marian gasp and cry, “
My God
!
” And when David leaned forward and said, incredulously, “That our house?” she said, “Ssshhh!” so emphatically that Ben looked at her and said, “No, Dave. That is not our house. Nohow.”

A great, rambling mass of gables and dormers and rounded bays, the house was set on the highest point of land, between the water and the rising sweep of open land bleached yellow-green by the sun. It covered the hill, climbing from a broad paved drive shaded by elms and maples. Wide steps led to the central part of the house which was fronted by a long portico and flanked by two great wings, their gables peaking above the trees. Gray and massive, with the look of generations about it, it made Marian think of buttresses and spires. And like a cathedral there was something that ordered its complexity, a spine running the vast length of the house. Where was it?

The car had stopped and Ben was saying something to her. She felt his hand on her arm with a slight start, and when she finally pulled herself away from the house, she saw that he was nodding at something outside the car.

“There it is,” he said.

She looked to her right. Set back from the road was a small cottage, shuttered and overgrown with vines. Weeds grew high, buzzing with insects and covering the path to the small rickety porch.

The house had stunned her and it was a moment before she could ask, “There’s what?”

“Our unique summer place,” she heard Ben say, “the reasonable one.” She was looking back at the house. One of the wings was rounded, with French doors – she could count five – opening out onto a terrace. And somewhere in the rear, in partial view, was a solarium or greenhouse. “Incredible,” she said, “just incredible. Isn’t it – ?”

But he had opened the door and was climbing out of the car, saying, “Well, we’ve come this far. . . .”

David pushed the front seat forward and followed him.

“Where are you going?” she called out the window.

“Snoop.” He passed in front of the car. David was fighting his way through the weeds, slashing the air and making machete sounds. Ben opened the door for her and swept his hand toward the cottage. “Just what we’ve always wanted, right? A little vine-choked cottage. Care to look?”

She did, quickly, without leaving the car. “This can’t be it,” she said, looking at him for confirmation.

“Who says? It’s a cinch that isn’t.” He looked at the main house.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” she said. Her voice was low and reverent.

“Not on dry land, I haven’t.” He pushed the door shut, leaned in and tried to kiss her cheek. “Hey, baby . . .” He turned her face away from the house, toward him. “Let’s not think too big, hunh? Not this year anyway.”

She smiled, a little guiltily. He moved away from her and stepped into the weeds, calling, “Dave? Where’d you go?”

“Ben?” she called out. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” He slapped something on his wrist. “It’ll save them a pitch.”

He climbed up to the porch, bounced a few times for her benefit, and then grabbed for support. The door, when he was through clowning, was locked, and so were the shutters, tight. Marian watched him disappear around the side of the house.

He was probably right, she realized: it was the cottage. And yet, hadn’t the ad said something about a large family? She pulled the torn page out of her tote bag, and, yes, that was exactly what it said – “Suitable for large family.” The cottage was small, three or four rooms at most. Besides, who’d attempt to rent a wreck like that? She folded the paper and slipped it back into her bag. “It’s the house,” she said aloud. “That incredible house.” She settled back in the seat and stared ahead, reassured. Her eyes rode along the curves and angles of the house – there was a small shaded porch outside one of the upper rooms – and rested on a huge rounded bay under the west gable. It rose a floor above the rest of the house, isolated, jutting above the water and the opposite shore which was a thin pastel line. And that was it, wasn’t it? – the spine, the focal point. The whole thrust of the house was toward that gable and those blank windows. The closer she looked at those windows, the lovelier and more irresistible the house became. “It’s the house,” she repeated.

“What’s the house?”