The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (37 page)

“And do you think that’s what they broke in for?” Jill asked. “The dolls?”

“What?” Hattie said.

“Oh, there’s no question about it,” Spencer said. “We’ve been over it a hundred times, with each other and with the police. There’s no question that there was someone involved who’d learned the value of the individual dolls.”

“Oh—” Jill said. She put down her cookie, which was slightly stale, she noticed.

“They got Spence’s Confederate rifle, too,” Hattie said, suddenly indignant. “He was very fond of it.”

“Picked up some loose cash, and a bit of silver,” Spencer said. “But nothing much. Just enough to make it look like any old break-in. At least until we could collect our wits.”

“There was stuff all over the place,” Hattie said. “There was even—oh, lord…”

“Oh, now, it doesn’t matter,” Spencer said.

“He had even taken a drawer of my underthings and scattered them around,” Hattie said. “You see, there was simply no need for all that violence.”

“We know,” Spencer said. “That’s what we’re saying.”

“But the worst was the ones he
didn’t
take,” Hattie said to Jill. “Oh, you could hardly believe your eyes—little arms and legs all over the place—their bodies all twisted; sawdust, stuffing pulled out of them, porcelain faces smashed up, eyes just staring at the ceiling, or the floor, or wherever they’d been thrown. Hurled, really,” Hattie said. “They were ours. We found them, we loved them, but now they’re ruined, and I feel sorry that I ever brought them here. It’s as though this was never our house, we just thought it was. All you could think was blood.”

Through the Binghams’ window Jill had looked at the hedge that hid her own house from view. Long shadows fell across the lawn, and a late, ciderlike light sliced through the room, charging a panel of tiny suspended dust particles between herself and the Binghams. Beyond it, Hattie and Spencer were insubstantial, wavering, as though they had just acquired a contagious susceptibility to old age. “I’m sorry about the tea, Jill dear,” Hattie said.

“I notice that Jill keeps her own counsel,” Owen was saying. “I’d give a penny, or more, for Jill’s thoughts on this matter.”

“I’m afraid I—” Jill ransacked the previous few moments for any words she might be able to retrieve. “Well, I’m afraid I really haven’t any thoughts on the matter at all.” She laughed.

That serene lawn. The china, and all that glowing old wood. What a flimsy fortress the Binghams’ house had proved to be. This was what their lives had come down to—the husks of their bodies. The Binghams had valued themselves highly. They had accepted as their due many beautiful things. But the instant the robbery tore away the fragile illusion of their invulnerability, their merit no longer seemed secure, either. And what the world had rendered up to them, it was now clear that the Binghams kept on sufferance. What they had, Jill thought, what they were, could be tossed aside at any moment, just like the oldest of their possessions, their bodies.

“Susan tells me you have some night bloomers,” Lyle was saying. “May I have a tour?”

“Heavens—” Jill said. Only she and Lyle were left at the table. “Thank you, Lyle—no, I’d better make coffee.”

As Jill went through the swinging door into the kitchen, a shadow swelled on the wall, twisted, and broke in two.

“Jill.” Nick spoke at her side. “Are you feeling all right?”

“—All right?” Jill said.

“Poor baby,” Amanda said. “You were looking all green out there.”

Jill looked at Amanda, and at Nick. “I’m fine,” she said.

“You’ll be fine,” Nick said, and patted her rear end. “You know,” he said to Amanda, “she wasn’t sick for one minute with Joshua.”

A hard presence stepped forth within Jill and faced her. Nick was selfish, this presence announced. He was arrogant; he was domineering and reckless; he overestimated his skill in all things, and underestimated the abilities of others; he drove too fast, he thought too little, he expected too much; he was careless, deceitful, and calculating. Jill had not told Amanda, she had not told anyone except Nick, that she was pregnant. “Did you make coffee?” she said.

“We were just going to,” Nick said. “You didn’t look up to it.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

Jill waited until the swinging door had come to rest behind Nick and Amanda, and then she turned out the lights and sat down at the counter. Was she going to be sick, she wondered.

Out in the garden Owen was wandering among the high, pale blossoms. Shapes and lines were etched shockingly against the brilliant night, and even from where she sat, Jill could see the tense flare of petals, blades of grass arching with the weight of gathering condensation, and the creases of Owen’s face, arranged, as always, into folds that might prefigure either bliss or grief. Owen bent down over a flower, his large padded backside catching the moonlight, and straightened up again as Amanda appeared on the terrace. Her arms were crossed against her chest, although the air was warm and still. She closed her eyes and tilted her face back. Her nails, her hair, and her thin gold bracelets shone. “Hello,” Owen said, and the small sound was right next to Jill’s ear.

Amanda opened her eyes. “Hello,” she said. She and Owen smiled at one another tentatively, sadly, and then Amanda returned inside.

Alone again, Owen made a circuit of the garden. Really, Jill thought, she ought to feel pity for him. In all the time she had known him—except for that one instant upstairs tonight—even in the face of Kitsy’s corrosive deficiencies, her inept, gnawing flirtations, his demeanor had never altered.

Owen stopped in the far corner of the yard, at Joshua’s swing set. He pulled the swing back and released it, pausing to watch as it rocked back and forth, before he moved on. Jill turned on the light and made coffee.

When she returned to the living room, it seemed to Jill that something must have happened in her absence. Nick was again stationed at the window, gazing darkly out in the direction of the Binghams’, Lyle was perched, none too steadily, on the piano bench, and Owen leaned against the open French doors, but attention seemed to be directed toward the center of the room, where Bud, speaking loudly, strode back and forth between the armchairs in which Susan and Amanda were seated, while Kitsy hovered at the periphery, as though she were unable to approach more closely. Bud’s voice was poisonously reasonable, and although he addressed himself ostensibly to Susan, who watched him like a browbeaten jury, he looked steadily at Amanda, who sat, eyes closed and head back, swinging her foot.

“I’m just trying,” Bud said, “to clarify what you were saying earlier, Susan, about product-liability law. That is—correct me if I’m wrong—but wasn’t your point that we need those laws if we’re to have any
viable
protection of the consumer, and yet, at the same time, you say, those laws are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by unscrupulous people. Wasn’t that your point?”

“I really—” Susan said.

“And all I’m saying,” Bud said, “is that I’m in total agreement with you: it is no longer possible to rely on laws or institutions, because we now have a certain sort of individual who twists laws or institutions, and undermines them by using them for his or her own purposes. The rest of us can hardly be blamed if we’re suspicious. Or are forced to behave cynically ourselves.”

Amanda sighed.

“You laugh, my darling,” Bud said. “But I’m serious.”

“But are we saying—are we talking about something?” Susan said.

“Yes,” Bud said, as Amanda said, “No.”

“I’m a bit lost here, myself, Bud,” Lyle said, turning around at the piano. “Could you define your terms?”

“You’re a
deliberate
son of a bitch, aren’t you, Lyle,” Bud said pleasantly. “I’m simply speaking generally. About the misapplication of principles.”

“But, Bud,” Susan said. “It’s hardly a
principle’s
fault if someone—”

“How true,” Owen said. “Now let us—”

“No, Lyle,” Kitsy said, claiming a central position on the arm of Susan’s chair. “I think that what Bud is talking about is a climate, a climate in which people invoke principles in order to pursue their own selfish—”

“Why not let Bud persecute his own wife, Kitsy?” Nick said.

“That’s right,” Bud said. “Why not let me persecute my own wife. I think I was doing a damned good job of it.”

Amanda smiled, but Kitsy flinched as though she’d been slapped. “Do whatever you want to your own wife. I really don’t give a shit.”

“Would anybody like to tell me what this is about?” Jill said.

“Nothing,” Nick and Amanda said in unison.

“We’re talking about a climate, Jill”—Kitsy’s face was clenched with anger—“of selfishness, of turning things to our own advantage. Of taking things that belong to other people or pretending not to notice if someone else does. These are things—”

“‘Things,’” Susan said. “Does anything feel dizzy?”

“—and these are things we’re all involved in,” Kitsy said. “All of us. Collusion. Because take the thing we’ve all been thinking about all evening—the Binghams. My point is, for instance, that we’re all involved with the Binghams.”

“The Binghams!” Nick turned from the window with a laugh of surprise. “We’re all involved with the
Binghams
?”

“Heaven knows what you’re involved with,” Kitsy said. “I wouldn’t know.” She looked at Amanda. “But one thing I do know, Nicholas, is that every one of us understands exactly who broke into the Binghams’ house, and not one of us is willing to say or to do anything about it because of what some people call—”

“The plot thickens—” Lyle pounded on the piano.
“We know who broke into the Binghams’.”

“And just who is it,” Amanda said, “that we all know to have broken into the Binghams’, Kitsy?”

“‘Who’?” Kitsy said. “Dwayne, obviously.”

“Who’s Dwayne?” Lyle said, lifting his palms comically.

“Dwayne!” Susan said gaily to Lyle, as everyone else looked at Amanda. “The brother of that girl who works here, isn’t that right?”

“What on earth gives you the idea that it was Dwayne?” Amanda said, recovering. But Jill had to sit down. Of course it was Dwayne, she thought. Kitsy was right. She’d only pretended to herself because of Amanda that she didn’t know. But now—“Would you mind telling me
how
we all know it was Dwayne?” Amanda said.

“‘
How,
’” Kitsy said. “What do you mean, ‘how’? Who else could it be? He knows the house, he’s worked there. He always needs money—everyone knows what a drug addict will do for money. It had to be Dwayne. But we’re trying to protect a whole group of people, even though we know perfectly well—”

“‘
Group
of people’—” Amanda said. She stopped and stared at Kitsy.

“I am now going to play chopsticks,” Lyle announced.

“Shut up, Lyle,” Susan said gently and with unexpected lucidity.

“—Listen to yourself, Kitsy,” Amanda said. “Just listen to what you’re saying—”

“And you,” Kitsy said. “Listen to what
you’re
saying. You’re saying that such people shouldn’t even have the dignity of being held accountable for their own failure to adjust to society. But that’s pa—”

“Do you think it was Dwayne who stole Bunny Wheeler’s Majolica vases?” Amanda said. “Do you think it was Dwayne who stole that Soutine from the Art Institute?”

“—that’s
patronizing.
It’s not fair to
them.
Other immigrant groups have made something of themselves. Other immigrant groups haven’t depended on us for help. Even if they’ve come from tragic situations, even if they’ve lost everything—” Kitsy gestured toward Susan. “Like the Jews—”

“Well, now,” Lyle said. “Let’s not—”

“Look at the Jews,” Kitsy said. “Look at the Asians—
they’ve
suffered,
they’ve
been persecuted,
they’ve
been slaughtered. But
their
children play the violin. They get into Harvard. They carry out the garbage. Other immigrant groups—”

“Just one small point,” Owen said, “is, immigrants are people who
decide
to go somewhere. People who pack a suitcase, buy a ticket—”

“Oh, I know it sounds ridiculous when I put it like that,” Kitsy said.

“It certainly does, Kitsy,” Bud said. “Amanda—”

“I know how it sounds,
thank
you, Bud,” Kitsy said furiously, but as she turned to Owen, Jill saw, her expression was shockingly piteous. “And that’s what I used to think, too. You know, that they’d been slaves and so on, so they couldn’t be expected et cetera, et cetera—”

“But that’s not even my—” Owen said.

“And, Owen, darling”—Kitsy sprang toward him, gesticulating with her glass—“the terrible thing is that you’re so good and kind yourself that you don’t see the terrible things that happen to people, the terrible things that people do to one another—” As she leaned against him, tears spilled from her closed eyes.