The View from Here (3 page)

Soon, the macadam ended and we were on the long straight of the dirt part of the road. Red brown earth, peppered with scrubby trees and cactus, stretched endless on either side.

I pointed. “One of my students asked me once ‘How do you call this in English?'”

Richard turned his head. “You mean cactus?” he asked.

“Yes. That's what I told him, ‘cactus.' But then he said, ‘And what about this and this?'” I made little stabs with my index finger at the windows.

“More cactus,” Richard said flatly.

“They distinguish between them, people who live here.”

Richard's softly freckled face was uncomprehending.

“They don't just call them
all
cactus,” I explained. “ It's like Eskimos, you know, having dozens of words for snow.”

“Aaah,” he replied vaguely.

The car sent up a thin cloud of orange dust. Sealed inside, strangers, a light unease divided us.

Eventually, Richard bridged the chasm with chitchat about his children, Hudson and Howie. Howie was eight and Hudson was some number of months that meant nothing to me. Richard said that he'd been giving Howie tennis lessons this vacation and that the kid was getting along just great.

We saw the tennis court as soon as we passed through the high arched gate that broke the wall surrounding the house. Two teenage girls were standing near the net. One, taller with a rope of blonde hair, was flipping a ball idly up and down, up and down on her racquet. I was conscious of her watching us as we got out of the car.

Up close the great creamy sprawl of the house was too much to take in. I stuck close behind Richard, who ignored the vast, double-fronted door we had parked beneath, and headed instead for the sharp right angle of a corner to the left. Rounding it we were greeted by the perfect blue of an oblong swimming pool, and beyond that, over a wall that dipped with the contours of the cliff, the boundless azure of the glittering Pacific.

Mason was in the pool, swimming. Intent on lengths, he didn't react to our appearance. I followed Richard through some open glass doors where, in a big, airy room that looked onto the patio, Ned Newson grinned his slim grin.

“Hello, Frankie,” he said.

“Hello,” I smiled.

“Good. Now that Frankie's here it's a party,” Mason said, suddenly behind me, wrapped in a towel. He bent and began to pull glasses out from a cupboard under a sideboard, the skin on his back still sheeny with damp. “Go sit out by the pool. Swim.” He gestured with an empty tumbler toward the bright outdoors.

“I'll take you.”

I looked down to see a small girl with light, tousled hair falling almost to her waist. She was all curves, like a peanut.

“This is my daughter Jenny,” Mason said.

“And this is Jessica,” said Jenny. There was another Severance child, thinner, but in other respects matching, standing in the doorway, worrying at the edges of her swimsuit. “We're twins.”

The little girls tugged at my hands leading me back out to the pool. Then they swam while I sat on the mosaic edge, swinging my legs in the water.

“Frankie's a good name,” Jenny said, kicking her feet near my knees.

“Thank you. Ned gave it to me.”

“You're welcome,” Ned said with a bow, appearing beside me.

Jenny arced off, swam to the other side of the pool, and looped back. She was a dolphin.

“We're nine,” she said, “nearly ten. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Damn you,” a woman's voice said from the doorway, though without vehemence. It was Bee Bee in owlish sunglasses and a tangerine ensemble that bared her midriff. “It's bad enough having Patsy down here parading her pert little rear.” Despite the confidence of her appearance her movements were tentative. She stretched herself gingerly onto a white lounge chair. Once she was horizontal she gave the saltrimmed glass she was holding a deft upward toss. “Cheers.”

Mason handed me a drink. “To twenty-two.”

“To tequila,” Ned said.

“To temperatures in the high eighties,” Richard added, with a small, stiff flick of a toast. His words, though, were drowned slightly by Howie's arrival at the pool. He joined Jenny in the water with a shrieking yahoo and a lot of splashing.

Patsy Luke came out onto the deck then, holding Hudson, hands around his chubby chest, at a forearm's length from her body. Both mother and child looked rather detached from the process. She set him on the ground next to Jessica, who was seated near the edge of the pool.

“Watch Huddy for a minute, honey,” she said, “while I get a drink.”

Jessica, water beaded on her narrow shoulders, seemed too slight a child for such a robust responsibility. She watched nervously as the baby creased his dumpling face and began to whine.

Howie yelled, “Put some soda on your finger.”

Jessica dipped her littlest finger into her Coca-Cola and offered it timidly to Hudson, who clasped her hand and began to suck happily.

“That always shuts him up,” Howie said. Despite his rambunctiousness he was a boy with a resigned look about him.

“Hi,” a new female voice said.

I looked up. It was the taller girl, the blonde, from the tennis court. Her greeting had been directed at Richard. She was staring at him now, fixedly.

“That's Paige,” said Jessica, “our sister. She's fourteen.”

“And she
luurves
Richard,” Jenny added.

I watched as Paige Severance, her eyes hard on Patsy's husband, settled herself in an upright chair, draped an elbow over its slatted back, and crossed her bare legs. If Richard was aware of the shock of sensuality revealed in the faint trace of blue at her wrists and the exposed milky cleft of her elbow, he made no response to it.

Paige was followed by Lesley Newson. She was younger, thirteen, Jenny informed me, and coltish with springy auburn hair. She was like her mother, I thought, glancing at Bee Bee. Their faces were similar, handsome rather than pretty, although Bee Bee's, even then slackened by prone slavishness to the sun, hinted at something that Lesley's didn't. Something almost hard.

If Bee Bee's face had a story to tell, though, I was too green to recognize it, so my attention was not diverted for long from the pleasant scene developing around me. I was rather dazzled by it all. The nonchalant polish of the people. The gentle flurry of staff. Everything glowing with poolshine.

“Mason, don't stare at your daughter's breasts.”

I started at the sound of Sally's voice and flicked my eyes up to the level of her fingernails at my side. They were perfect as seashells.

“Breasts!” Jenny hollered. “Bazooms!”

Paige, flushing, threw a towel at her. “Oh ha-ha.”

The towel hit the pool. Jenny, ducking it, slipped under the water and rose next to Howie. She dunked him, hands neat on top of his gingery head. Howie, clumsily attempting to retaliate, hurled an inflatable sea horse, which splashed Hudson, who began to wail. Paige disappeared into the house.

Mason, apparently oblivious to his wife's remark and the melee it had sparked, lowered himself to sit next to me. His thighs, I noticed, already had a dusting of Mexican tan.

“Are you a swimmer, Frankie?” he asked.

“Not really.”

He looked at me as if my answer required further explanation.

“My parents are Scottish.”

He laughed. Across the pool, Patsy took a quick mouthful of her drink and put her glass down. She reached back and looped her smooth chocolate hair into a ponytail, before standing, diving, and swimming a clean length.

“Patsy's a swimmer,” said Mason, watching her, “and a skier, and a sailor, and a polo player…” We watched Patsy's flip turn and her effortless progress back to the point where she'd started. “
Her
parents are rich.”

Patsy climbed out of the pool and draped a patterned robe around her shoulders. It was the oriental kind with deep square pockets. She pulled a packet of cigarettes out, removed one with her long tapered fingers, and lit it with a silver lighter that I have since learned was recognizable to other people as having come from a famous New York jewelry store.

“Rich ain't a big enough word for what Patsy's parents are,” Ned said as she exhaled, her Venus neck stretching her chin skyward.

“Show your mother your backstroke, Howie!” Richard yelled over our heads.

Howie squinted toward his father, his hair cowlicked from swimming.

“Your backstroke,” shouted Richard, “like I taught you.” He was making loping swimming movements and nodding his head enthusiastically.

Howie stared.

“Yeah, like this, kid.” Ned, rotating his arms, Charlie Chaplinish, walked backward into the pool. He was fully dressed and still holding his glass.

“Never have yellow for an awning. Or a marquee,” Sally said.

We were sitting at a long table under a bougainvillea-covered arbor. I looked out over the pool. There were yellow canvas sun umbrellas shielding two round tables on the far side of it. I thought they looked rather glamorous. Like something from an expensive hotel, or one of those beach clubs you see in films, old films full of immaculately made-up women.

“Pink,” she said. “Pink or red. The light from them is far more flattering.”

She had removed her hat, loosing a vanilla blonde sweep across her forehead. As she turned I saw that there were tiny, feathery lines at the corners of her eyes. She was, perhaps, fifteen years older than me. Her beauty, though, had lost none of its power. She signaled to a maid.

“Thank you, Christina,” she said softly as her plate was cleared.

I looked at Christina. I had heard her speaking Spanish to the other staff, but I was sure she wasn't local.

“Christina is our own housekeeper,” Sally said, following my gaze. “She came down ahead of us to open the house and organize extra help. I depend on her.”

I nodded, feeling a little awkward. As if this were the sort of thing I ought to have realized for myself.

At four o'clock we were still sitting at the table, apart from the children who milled at the edges. Coffee things were brought. Howie made a darting grab at a dish of butter cookies and managed to net several. He pushed them, all at once, messily into his mouth, spraying crumbs and unleashing a wail of complaints from the girls.

At the other end of the table, his mother, Patsy, was oblivious. She was sharing some joke with Mason, her laughter mixing throatily with his. Sally, looking toward the sound, said crisply, “Christina, take that child and have some dry clothes put on him.”

So Howie was led off, suddenly meek, goosebumpy in his nylon swimsuit.

“How long will you stay?” I asked a bit too loudly. Sally's flash of brusqueness had unnerved me.

It was Mason who answered. “Who knows,” he said, smiling down the table and spreading his hands.

“We're refugees from the icy East Coast,” Patsy added before turning to Bee Bee. “Were you at that party at the McFees's last week? Lizzie Calder kept her mink on all through dinner.”

Bee Bee laughed. “I happen to know how Lizzie Calder came by that mink,” she said, “but that's another story.”

“We got out of school before spring break even started,” Jessica announced, rerouting the conversation from the adult turn it had taken. “And we probably won't even go back before the beginning of next semester. We'll probably miss that too.” She looked happy about this possibility, but suddenly a little taken aback by the boldness of her little speech. Everyone was looking at her.

“Yes, we must all show our gratitude to the demanding wife,” Bee Bee said. “Here's to a much underappreciated species.”

Jessica, as lost as I was, just stared at her. Mason must have noticed our confusion. “The owner's wife isn't keen on Mexico,” he explained to me, Jessica having lost interest. “She'd like something similar to this”—he swept his arm, taking in the rambling spread of the house horseshoed around us—“a little closer to Palm Springs.” There was general laughter. “They're friends. I said I'd take a look.”

Mason was an architect. When he had told me that earlier, Ned had commented, “That's like saying Mr. Kellogg makes cornflakes.”

“Actually,” Mason went on, “the house is for sale. I think the idea was that I might decide I couldn't live without it. That's why I invited these idlers—they're backup potential purchasers.”

“How do you like that?” Ned complained. “Dragged around by our wallets.”

“Some of us can't be away for too long, though,” Richard said seriously, unintentionally dampening the mood.

“For Christ's sake, Richard,” Patsy snapped, “don't start raining on the parade yet.” There was genuine irritation in her voice, but her husband's unresponsive shrug seemed to dull it.

“Whaddya gonna do?” she sighed, playing to the crowd. “I married a t-crosser.”

Ned slung a loose arm along the back of Bee Bee's chair. “Well, they won't shake
us
off too easy, will they, kid?”

Bee Bee picked up her drink, tapped it against her coffee cup, and drained it. “Nope,” she said. “Better people have tried.”

“Call yourself a host?” Ned scolded Mason then. “My wife's glass is empty.”

Smiling, Mason stood as Sally turned to me.

“I'll have a room made up,” she said. “I don't think anyone is going to be driving you home.”

In the morning, waking in the very quiet of that great, slumbering house, I felt strange. But it was early. The stripes of sunlight that had begun to creep through the slats of the shutters lacked force; it was still cool enough for two layers of bedding. I gave mine a tug, straightening the heavy cotton spread, and reached to switch the ceiling fan setting to low. Under the lullaby rhythm of its gentle
thuk-thuk
, I went back to sleep.

Richard and Mason were drinking coffee under the bougainvillea when I emerged. Mason stood and pulled a chair out for me. There was a round of the sorts of mildly awkward greetings and enquiries about sleep that always elicit the same responses, and then we sat for a moment in silence. My arrival had interrupted their conversation. Richard handed me the coffeepot and I poured some, though I didn't really want it, into a fat, patterned cup. Then, with an apologetic nod in my direction, he briefly spoke to Mason again about something businesslike before turning back and commenting courteously on the view.