Victory Over Japan (10 page)

“Whatever happened to Redmond, that sailor you were going with?” Devoie was saying. “The one that was trying to get on an Olympic team.”

“He went back to his wife. I didn't like him much anyway. He was always reading the labels on wine out loud. It drove me crazy.”

“I wish Armand would have some interesting men with him.”

“He won't have. Armand never has men. I don't think he has a single male friend.”

“What is this?” Anna Hand said. She had picked up a photograph that was facedown on a dresser. She dusted it off on her sleeve. It was a photograph of two men standing together by a rock wall with the Swiss Alps in the background. They had their arms around each other's waists and they were smiling.

“That's Uncle Robert. He's the black sheep. He used to stay here when he had to be in town. That's Switzerland. It's the only place he liked to be.”

“Who's that with him? He looks familiar.”

“That's Stravinsky. They were friends. They used to meet in Vienna to hear music.”

“How wonderful. If this was mine it would be hanging on a wall. Why don't you hang it on the wall?”

“Oh, Aunt Helen wouldn't want to be reminded of him. He disappeared. No one in the family's seen or heard from him in years. Well, never mind our skeletons. Come have the waffles.”

“What was his name? Your uncle's name?”

“His name was Robert. I told you that. Now, please come on. The waffles are getting cold.” Anna replaced the photograph on the dresser, laying it down beside a catalog and a bill for repairing the screens. She opened a dresser drawer. A Scrabble set was there, a half-finished double-crostic, a jar of suppositories, a silver doubloon, a comb. The mysterious drawers of summer houses, she thought, secrets no real house would hoard or remember.

“Come on,” Armand called. “Or I'm throwing your waffles to the birds.”

“I want to get a paper on the way to the airport,” she said, going into the breakfast room. “I want to see if the paper reviewed my book. God only knows who they'll give it to. They gave the last one to a Jesuit. Can you believe it? He said I made unjustified attacks on the Church. Unjustified. Isn't that wonderful?”

Lady Margaret and Devoie came off the highway and down a narrow road between pine trees. The trees looked wet. The earth looked wet. The buzzards circling the trees looked wet. Even the modern road could not make the swamp look like anything but a swamp. On the outskirts of the town small businesses and restaurants began to appear, grimy and tacky, wet and forlorn. Fried Chicken, a sign said. Fried Catfish, said another. Thibodeaux Insures You, Lakefront Rentals, Golden Acres, Lots.

At a corner Cajun women were selling shrimp from a truck. Beside a fruit stand piles of melons rotted in the sun. It was getting hotter. A high wind had chased the clouds away without stirring a single leaf on the ground.

“We'll be able to sunbathe,” Lady Margaret said. “Thank God for that.” They crossed a bridge, turned at a light, entered a driveway, and came to a stop before the house. It was set in the middle of a yard lush with live oaks and catalpa and eucalyptus and pine. A beautiful yard leading down to the largest private beach on the river. The yard was a park, was everything a yard should be.

But there was something wrong with the house. It disturbed the eye. From any angle it disturbed the eye. There was something wrong, something badly wrong, something disproportionate and Procrustean and wrong.

Once the house had been a proud resort hotel. It had been three stories high. Couples came over on the ferry from New Orleans to spend the weekend and dance in the bathhouse and play in the small brown river. That was when the property had been a public beach. During the Depression the city of Mandeville had sold all its public beaches. Lady Margaret's grandfather had bought the place for a song and left it to his children.

As soon as Lady Margaret's mother inherited it she bought out her sisters and went to work to improve the property. She conceived the idea of lowering the house a floor to save on electricity. All one summer she labored with carpenters and a house-moving man. Every day she drove across the old railroad bridge to oversee the modernization project. Then she called in the painters.

The result was a squat green hulk surrounded by porches. It looked like a fat lady seated on a stool with her skirts spread out around her. “Crayfish,” the house seemed to say. “Come and get your crayfish. Crayfish for sale. Fresh crayfish waiting for the pot.”

“Here's the house,” Lady Margaret said. “And there's Armand's car. So he's still here.”

“We should have called. There's no telling what's going on in there.”

“Oh, my God, Devoie. It's a big house. He can't be doing it in every room. Well, I'm going in and put on my suit. I'm white as snow. I haven't been in the sun in days.”

“You go in. I'm changing in the beach house. I'll wait for you down there.” Devoie started down the path to the river. Lady Margaret pulled her bag out of the back seat and walked up the steps and onto the porch.

The swing was lying on the floor with a wineglass beside it. A hat was sitting on the arm of the swing. An outrageous hat with long yellow streamers. I know that hat, Lady Margaret thought. I've seen that hat somewhere. She picked it up. The streamers fell across her arms. They made goosebumps on her arms. She laid the hat back down on the swing and walked over to the door and took hold of the handle. Through the glass panels she could see a woman coming down the hall carrying a cup of coffee. Lady Margaret opened the door and stepped into the hall. “I'm Margaret Sarpie,” she said. “I'm Armand's cousin. I own this house.”

“Well, it's a very nice house. I'm Anna Hand, from Washington. We came over last night. Your cousin's been trying to get me fat.” She smiled a wonderful smile at Lady Margaret, standing very still with the cup in her hands. Steam was rising from the cup. It was only a few feet away.

“What did you say? What did you say your name was?”

“Anna Hand. I'm a visitor. Only at the moment I'm trying to catch a plane. Is something wrong? Are you all right?”

“I didn't know anyone was going to be here. Is Armand around? I mean, where is he?” She didn't hear me, Lady Margaret thought. She didn't hear my name.

“He's gone to get chain for the swing. Tell me your name again. I'm getting so bad about names. I think I must be going deaf. Heather, is that it? Was it Heather?”

“I don't know,” Lady Margaret said. “I don't know what to say.”

“I'm sorry about your swing. Armand was singing spirituals. He was singing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.' Then the swing fell. It's a wonder we weren't killed. You should have seen our faces. Oh, God, it really was very funny.” She was laughing. “Anyway, I am sorry about the swing.”

“Oh, the swing is nothing. The swing doesn't matter.” Lady Margaret was stepping back, moving away from the cup of coffee. But the woman was following her. Lady Margaret would step back. Each time the woman followed. She will throw it on me now, Lady Margaret thought. She will throw it in my face. It will all be over, two thousand years of history, two thousand years of law. “What was he singing?” she said. “What was Armand singing?”

“ ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.' You know, that old spiritual. Coming for to carry me home. Then the swing broke. It scared us to death. Well, I wish he'd get back. I'm frantic about catching this plane. There won't be another one until late tonight.” She laid the cup of coffee down on the hall table.

She knows, Lady Margaret thought, I think she knows. This is some joke of Armand's. Maybe it isn't even true. Maybe it's just a joke he's playing on me.

Armand came hurrying up the stairs, carrying a package of swing chain. “Oh, hello, Lady Margaret. I thought that was your car. Did you see who was here? Did you introduce yourself? This is Anna Hand, the writer. This famous lady spent the night in your house, sitting at your table, sleeping in your bed.”

“Drinking your wine,” the woman said. “Breaking your swing. Armand, we really need to be leaving. I'm getting worried about the time. I have to go by the hotel.”

“The traffic's heavy on the bridge,” Lady Margaret said. “You had better go on and leave if you're in a hurry.” Armand disappeared down the hall for their bags and left the women alone again. “I'm sorry I don't have time to thank you properly for letting me visit,” the woman said. “I seem to be spending my life lately apologizing for not having time to be polite.”

“I know about your work,” Lady Margaret said. “I've read about it.”

“Well, now you know me instead. And I know you. The world is really quite astonishing, all the people you can meet. Don't you find it so?”

“I don't know,” Lady Margaret said. “I don't think I do. Not really. Well, maybe I do. I don't know if I do or not.” Armand reappeared. He was hurrying now. Lady Margaret walked them outside and stood watching as Armand's Triumph disappeared into the trees.

A moon was in the sky, a frazzled, gibbous moon, a bad moon, a bad luck moon. Lady Margaret watched a cloud go past the moon. The world is full of danger, she thought. Anything can happen to anyone at any time. Anything at all. She turned toward the beach. Devoie was coming up the path with a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. “Who was that with Armand?” she said. “I saw him spiriting her away. Was it someone married? Someone we know?”

“It wasn't anything like that. It was someone from out of town. She had to catch a plane. They were in a hurry.”

“Well, who was it then? What was her name?”

“I don't know. I don't remember.”

“Are you all right? You look funny.”

“Yes, I'm all right. I'm perfectly all right.”

“Are we going to sunbathe then? Are you coming down?”

“In a minute. As soon as I change.”

“I want to go to the Station and eat lunch in a while.”

“Fine. Whatever you want to do.” Devoie shook her head and started back down to the beach. Lady Margaret walked up the stairs and across the porch and into the house. It was quiet in the hall, musty and dark and cool. Light was coming in the open door, cutting the hall into diagonal halves. Half of it is light, Lady Margaret thought. And half is dark, like Homer's patch. Does the dark cover the light? Or the light invade the dark? Maybe both things are true. Yes, that's it. Everything is true. Or nothing. Maybe nothing really happens. Maybe I just make it all up.

The cup of coffee was still on the table. Lady Margaret lifted it from its saucer and held it out in front of her, raising it like a chalice. Then, very slowly, as if in a pantomine, she lowered it to her lips and drank, slowly at first, in tiny sips, then in larger sips.
I looked over Jordan and what did I see, coming for to carry me home. A band of angels coming after me
. She shivered. It was cold in the hall. The air conditioner was running full blast.
They must have used up twenty dollars' worth of electricity
. Lady Margaret set the cup back down on the table.
Well, to hell with it
, she decided.
I didn't do anything wrong. I just wrote what I thought
. She pushed the thermostat up to eighty-five, slammed out of the house and started down the flagstone path to the beach, her sandals slapping against the stones, her hands curled into fists and pushing against the pockets of her shorts. She walked by a garter snake curled up in the roots of a tree, past a pair of grasshoppers mating on a leaf, beneath a mourning dove and the nest of a sleeping owl.
What difference does it make? She won't even see it until she gets on the plane and if Armand tells anyone about it I'll tell Momma never to let him have the house again. To hell with it. To hell with all of them. Swing low, sweet chariot. I'm going to quit thinking about it. I'm going to put it out of my mind and get to work on my tan. Oh, God, what a Sunday
.

Oh, your love washes on me like waiting for the paint to dry. Oh, your love washes on me like the muffler falling off. Coming for to carry me home. Hello, little old dried up white lady, what you want Homer Davis to play for you?

Shut up. I can't. Try. I'm trying.

THE only reason Lanier and I went to the coast to begin with was to lose weight. We didn't know we were going to have a ménage à trois with Sandor. We didn't even know Sandor was coming down there.

Lanier and I are best friends. We've been going on diets together since we were thirteen years old. We dieted together through high school and Ole Miss and when we went to Jackson to be secretaries to the legislature. That's what we do now. Lanier's secretary to Senator Huddleston from Bovina and I'm secretary to Senator Ladd from Aberdeen. It's good work but you're sitting down all day. The fat settles. I'm not giving in to that. “It's natural,” my mother says. “You're too hard on yourself, Diane. Let nature have some say.”

“Not on my hips,” I tell her. “I'll die before I'll get fat. I'll jump off a bridge. You forget, Mother, I'm not married yet.”

“Whose fault is that?” she says. “Certainly not the young men you've left crying in the living room. The rings you've returned. Not to mention Fanny Claiborne's son.” It's true. I've broken three engagements. Something just comes over me. Suddenly I look at them and they look so pitiful, the way their hands start to look like paws.

Meanwhile the problem is to keep my body going uphill. I'm twenty-nine this August. I've got to watch it. Well, I've got Lanier. And she's got me or she would have given in long ago. She'd be the size of a house if I didn't keep after her.

This trip to the coast was a Major Diet. We'd been at it five days, taking Escatrol, reading poetry out loud to keep ourselves in a spiritual frame of mind, exercising morning, night and noon. I was down to 126 and Lanier was down to 129 when Mother called and asked us to pick up Sandor in Pensacola. “Try to keep him from drinking,” she said. “Aunt Treena and Uncle Lamar are worried sick about him drinking. And be on time, Diane. There's nothing worse than getting off a plane and no one's there. Are you listening? Diane, are you listening to me?”