World's End (43 page)

“Did you hear about Peletiah Crane?”

Marguerite Mott, in a huddle with her sister Muriel, balanced a white bone china cup on its saucer and looked up expectantly at her host. It was late in the afternoon, and a small band of the historically curious, eyes glazed after an exhaustive three-hour tour of the house and grounds that left no shingle undefined or nook unplumbed, was gathered for refreshments in the front parlor. Lula, in white apron and cap, had just served tea and a very old but distinctly musty sherry, and set out a platter of stale soda crackers and tinned pâté, and the group, which consisted of two nuns, a legal secretary from Briarcliff, a self-educated auto mechanic and the withered octogenarian treasurer of the Hopewell Junction Historical Society, as well as young Walter Van Brunt, LeClerc and Ginny Outhouse and, not least, the redoubtable Mott sisters, fell upon these humble offerings like wanderers come in off the desert.

Marguerite's question caught the twelfth heir in the middle of a complex architectural dissertation on how the present house had managed to grow up over the generations from the modest parlor in which they now stood. Buoyant, with the energy and animation of a man half his age, Depeyster had driven the octogenarian and the legal secretary up against the Nunns, Clark & Co. rosewood piano in the corner, urging them to appreciate the thickness and solidity of the wall behind it. “Built from native fieldstone and oyster-shell mortar, all the way back in 1650,” he said. “We've painted it, glazed it, repaired the mortar, of course—go ahead, feel it—but that's it, the
original wall put up by Oloffe and Lubbertus Van Wart three hundred and nineteen years ago.” Depeyster had been talking for three hours, and he wasn't about to stop now—not as long as anyone was still standing. “The patroon settled in Croton, at the lower house—you know, the
museum
—and he built this one for his brother, but after Lubbertus passed on he alternated between the two houses. Ironically, the lower house went out of the family just after the Revolution—but that's another story—while this one has been continuously occupied by Van Warts since the day—” he suddenly broke off and turned to Marguerite. “What did you say?”

“Peletiah. Did you hear about Peletiah?”

In that moment, secretary and treasurer were forgotten, and Depeyster felt his heart leap up. “He's dead?” he yelped, barely able to contain himself.

The auto mechanic was watching him; LeClerc and Walter, who'd had their heads together, looked up inquisitively.

“No,” Marguerite whispered, pursing her lips and giving him a quick closer's wink, “not yet.” She let the moment hang over him, huge with significance, and then delivered the clincher: “He's had a stroke.”

He didn't want to seem too anxious—the legal secretary was glancing around her uneasily, afraid to set her cup down, and the old boy from Hopewell Junction looked as if he were about to have a stroke himself—and so he counted to three before he spoke: “Is it… serious?”

Marguerite's smile was tight, the white-frosted lips pressed firmly together, the foundation at the corners of her eyes barely breached. It was a realtor's smile, and it spoke of quiet triumph, of the thorny deal at long last closed. “He can't walk,” she said. “Can't talk or eat. He keeps slipping in and out of it.”

“Yes,” Muriel said, interposing her glazed face between them, “it looks bad.”

Looks bad.
The words stirred him, gladdened him, filled him with vengeful joy. So the old long-nosed land-grubbing pinko bastard was finally slipping over the edge, finally letting go … and now it was the grandson—the pothead—who would take charge of things. It was too perfect. Thirty-five hundred an acre—ha! He'd get it for half that,
a quarter—he'd get it for the price of another fix or trip or whatever it was the kid doped himself up on … yes, and then he'd find himself a horse, a Kentucky Walker like his father used to have, old blood lines, blaze on the forehead; he'd refurbish the stables, lean on the town board to erect one of those horse-crossing signs up the road at the entrance to the place, and then, with his son up in front of him, he'd ride out over the property first thing every morning, sun like fire on the creek, the crush of hickory nuts underfoot, a roast on the table. …

Unfortunately, the grand and triumphal procession of his thoughts suddenly pulled up lame. For there, outside the window, in full Indian drag and shouldering a bundle the size and shape of a buffalo's head, was Joanna. Back. Early. Hauling garbage out of the station wagon in full view of the legal secretary and the wheezing old ass from Hopewell Junction. But what was she doing home already? he thought in rising panic. Wasn't she supposed to be up in Jamestown overseeing the canned succotash drive or some such thing? Suddenly he was moving, nodding his way out of range of the Mott sisters' waxen smiles, shaking off the auto mechanic's query about BTUs and heating costs, trying desperately to head her off.

He was too late.

The parlor door eased open and there she was, in fringed buckskin and plastic beads, her skin darkened to the color of mountain burgundy. “Oh,” she faltered, glancing around the room in confusion and finally settling on her husband, “I saw all the cars … but it just—it's open house, then—is that it?”

Silence gripped the room like fear.

The nuns looked bewildered, the secretary appalled; Ginny Outhouse smiled tentatively. It was Lula, coming forward with the tray of pâté and crackers, who broke the spell. “Want some canopies, Mizz Van Wart?” she said. “You must be half-starved after that drive.”

“Thank you, Lula, no,” Joanna said, dropping the bundle to the floor with a clatter, “I had some—some dried meat on the way down.”

By now, Depeyster had moved forward stiffly to greet her. Muriel had begun to gush small talk (“How
are
you dear, so good to see you again, you're looking fit, still rescuing the Indians I see”), and the murmur of conversation had resumed among the others.

Depeyster was mortified. LeClerc and Ginny were old friends—they knew of Joanna's growing eccentricity, and it was nothing. Or almost nothing. And Walter was his protegé, no problem there. But these others, the Mott sisters and these strangers—what must they think? And then it came to him. He'd take them aside, one by one, that's what he'd do, and explain that his wife's getup was part of the spirit of the open house, touching base with the aboriginal inhabitants of the Valley in a spontaneous bit of historical improvisation and all that—cute, wasn't it?

Trie thought calmed him, and he was turning to the shorter of the nuns with an anecdote on his lips, when the door flew open and Mardi, the wayward daughter, burst into the room. “Hello, hello, everyone!” she shouted, “isn't it a fantastic day?” She was wearing an imitation leopard-skin bikini that showed more of her than her father cared to know about, and her skin was nearly as red as her mother's with overexposure to the sun. She went straight for the sherry decanter, downed a glass, made a sour face, then downed another.

It was too much, it was impossible.

Depeyster turned away from the horror of the scene, fumbling for a pinch of cellar dust to sprinkle over his tea, the mechanic at his elbow, nuns agape, the legal secretary gathering up her things to go. “Oh, hi, LeClerc,” he heard his daughter say in a voice as false and unctuous as an insurance salesman's. “Must be a bear to heat this place,” the mechanic opined.

Next thing he knew, Mardi was leading Walter out of the room—“Come on,” she purred, “I want to show you something upstairs”—the nuns were thanking him for a lovely afternoon, Joanna had thrown open her satchel in the middle of the Turkish rug and was offering Indian pottery for sale, and LeClerc and Ginny were talking about dinner. “How about that Italian place in Somers?” Ginny said. “Or the Chinese in Yorktown?”

And then he was standing at the front door, numbly shaking hands with the mechanic, who'd laid out five dollars apiece for a pair of unglazed Indian ashtrays that looked like a failed kindergarten project (what were they supposed to be, anyway—fish?). “Mind if I take a look at the plumbing on my way out?” The mechanic—he was a young man, bald as an egg—gave him a warm, almost saintly look.
“I'd really like to see what you did with the pipes and those three-foot walls.”

“Or that steak and lobster joint in Amawalk? What do you think, Dipe?” LeClerc said, pulling him away from the mechanic.

What did he think? The Mott sisters were covering their retreat with a desperate barrage of clichés and insincerities, the old boy from Hopewell Junction announced in a clarion voice that he was going to need help getting to the bathroom, and the legal secretary left without a word. Dazed, defeated, traumatized, he couldn't say what he thought. The day was in ruins.

For Walter, on the other hand, the day had just begun.

He'd been sitting there with LeClerc Outhouse, uncomfortable in his seersucker suit and throat-constricting tie, his lower legs aching from the rigors of the estate tour, discussing, without candor and with little conviction, the moral imperative of the U.S. presence in Indo-china and the crying need to bomb the gooks into submission with everything we had. And now, here he was, following Mardi's compelling backside up the stairs and into the dark, enticing, black-lit refuge of her room. She was talking trivialities, chattering—Did he know that Hector had joined the marines? Or that Herbert Pompey landed a gig with the
La Mancha
road company? Or that Joey's band broke up? She wasn't seeing Joey any more, did he know that?

They were in her room now, and she turned to look at him as she delivered this last line. The walls were painted black, the shades drawn. Behind her, a poster of Jimi Hendrix, his face contorted with the ecstasy of feedback, glowed wickedly under the black light. Walter gave her a cynical smile and eased himself down on the bed.

Actually, he didn't know that Hector had joined the marines or that Herbert was going on the road—he hadn't set foot in the Elbow since he left the hospital. And as for Joey, the only emotion that might have stirred in him had he heard that the band hadn't merely broken up but burst open and fallen to pieces in unidentifiable fragments would have been joy. Mardi had hurt him. Cut him to the quick. Touched him where Meursault could never have been touched. And he was all the better for it. Stronger. Harder and more dispassionate than ever, cut adrift from his anchors—from Jessica, from Tom, from
Mardi and Hesh and Lola—the lone wolf, the lonesome cowboy, the single champion and seeker after the truth. Love? It was shit.

No. He hadn't seen Mardi, Tom, Jessica—any of them. He'd been seeing Miss Egthuysen, though. Twenty-seven years old, slit skirts, lips like butterflies. And he'd been seeing Depeyster. A lot. Learning the business, learning history. He'd moved out of the clapboard bungalow in Kitchawank Colony and taken his own place—a vine-covered guesthouse behind the big old place overlooking the creek in Van Wartville. And the Norton was gone too. He drove an MGA now, sleek, throaty and fast.

Mardi pulled the door closed. Her hair was in her face, the flat flawless plane of her belly showed a bruise of sunburn, a gold chain clasped her ankle. She crossed the floor to drop the needle on a record, and the room opened up with a cataract of drums and a thin manic drone of guitar. Walter was still smiling when she turned to him again. “What did you want to show me?” he said.

She padded back across the room, a paradigm of flesh—Walter thought about his ancestors and how inflamed the mere sight of an ankle would get them—and held out a tightly closed fist. “This,” she said, uncurling her fingers to reveal a fat yellow joint. She waited half a beat, then unfastened her halter and wriggled out of the leopard-skin panties. “And this,” she whispered.

Well, yes, here were a Van Wart and a Van Brunt fornicating in historic surroundings, but it had taken them centuries to arrive at so democratic a juncture. At one time, such a thing would have been unthinkable. Unspeakable. As absurd as the coupling of lions and toads or pigs and fishes. In the early days, when Jeremias Van Brunt was chafing under the terms of his indenture, when the patroon's authority went uncontested and those that worked his land were little higher on the social scale than Russian serfs, the closest a Van Brunt had come to a Van Wart was the pogamoggan incident, in which the aforementioned Jeremias had threatened to open up the side of the
Jongheer's
head for him.

At that time, the incident seemed a serious challenge to manorial prerogatives—almost an insurrectionary act—but over the years, all that had been forgotten. Or at least covered over with a shovel or two of dirt, like a corpse hastily buried. Absorbed in looking after his burgeoning family and staving off the anarchic forces of nature that threatened at any moment to overwhelm the farm and thrust him back into the desperate penury he'd known after the death of his parents, Jeremias barely gave a passing thought to his landlord. In fact, the only time he called to mind the man who held sway over him and by whose sufferance he earned his daily bread and raised the roof over his head was in November of each year, when the annual quitrent was due.

For weeks in advance of the date he would storm and rage and fulminate about the inequity of it all, and the old contumacious fire-breathing spirit arose like a phoenix from the ashes of his contentment. “I'll move!” he'd shout. “Rather than pay that parasitic fat-assed son of a bitch a single penny I'll pack up every last stick of furniture, every last cup and saucer and plate, and go back to Schobbejacken.” And every year Neeltje and the children would plead and beg and remonstrate with him, and on the fifteenth, when Ter Dingas Bosyn wheeled up in the patroon's wagon, Jeremias would lock himself in the back room with a bottle of rum and let his wife count out the coins, the pots of butter, the pecks of wheat and the four fat pullets the patroon demanded as his yearly due. When he emerged the following day, red-eyed and subdued, he'd limp wordlessly out into the yard to repair the barn door or put a new wall in the henhouse where the porcupines had chewed their way through it.