Downtown

by Anne Rivers Siddons

  “Hi, Sarelle,” Brad said, and hugged her, and she gave him a smack on the bottom and said, “Hi, yourself, Mr. Brad. We been waitin’ for you.”

  Brad introduced me and Sarelle smiled and said, “We’re gon’ put Miss Smoky in the yellow room upstairs, the one on the end. You have your old room. You take them things on up and then come down to the sun porch. Your grandmama and Miss Isobel out there. You hurry up, though; she didn’t sleep good last night and it’s past her nap time. she’s all stirred up over this party; you might find her a little grumpy.”

  “Christ, that means she’s loaded for bear,” Brad said, and I followed him through a vast, two-story entrance hall paved in black and white marble, up a circular staircase carpeted in faded, sour-smelling green wool and railed with beautiful wrought iron. The railings were rusted and dim, and I had noticed that the marble tiles were dim and pitted, too. the lower part of the house was in gloom, floor-length drapes drawn against the blinding white noon, but I could see that the drapes were faded too, as well as the upholstery and pillows on the rattan couches and chairs in the downstairs rooms. The house was done in what I thought of as Palm Beach traditional, an impression garnered solely from old movies on television: wicker and rattan, green and pink floral chintzes, white mouldings and woodwork. I knew that it must have been very chic and grand once, but the miasma of forlorn decay was as thick as fog in the high-ceilinged rooms, and age and illness and disuse clung in corners and bobbed at the pierced tin tray ceilings. There was dust everywhere. Whatever Sarelle did did not, apparently, run to housekeeping. Melancholy settled heavily on my shoulders. I wished that we did not have to spend two nights under this beautiful, desolate roof.

  I trudged down a long, dim upstairs hall after Brad, seeing only more faded carpet and closed, carved doors, the line of them broken only by an occasional massive Spanish table holding an old iron lamp, and by a floor vase full of dusty pampas grass. The odor of mold and dust was stronger here. I counted six doors before Brad pushed open the last one on the left. I followed him in, and gasped with pleasure.

  It was a large, airy room, with a white-beamed ceiling and white stucco walls, and butter-yellow shag carpets laid down over gleaming dark hardwood floors. A narrow, tall tester bed with a yellow chintz canopy sat against the wall, piled with pillows in yellow and green and coral, and there was a huge mahogany wardrobe and a dressing table, and a tall chest of drawers. The old wood shone, and the smell of lemon polish blew lightly on the wind from the sea. The wall opposite the bed was a length of French windows and doors, open onto a balcony over-looking a long, parched front lawn and the fabled Spanish tile pool and poolhouse, and beyond that, the gray-blue Atlantic, glittering in the high, hard sun as if a handful of diamond dust had been thrown down on it. The tan beach was empty, and the tall, half-dead palm trees on the lawn rustled and clattered in the wind. The smell of the sea was glorious, and I rushed out onto the balcony and threw my arms wide as if to embrace everything I saw.

  “Sarelle’s fixed it up nice for you,” Brad said behind me. “Polish, and fresh flowers, and a good airing. I’ve always loved this room. It was Mama Hunt’s when I first started coming down here; Papa Hunt had the one just like it at the other end of the hall. She closed them both after he died, though, and moved to the one she has now, in the other wing. It overlooks the courtyard in back. I always thought this was the best room in the house, but she finally admitted that the ocean made her nervous, so she moved to the other one. You should thank your stars for that. She’s a whole wing away from you. I, on the other hand, am just across the hall from her and the lovely and talented Miss Davison. I guess she figures she needs to keep an eye on where we sleep, and she can do it easier to me than to you.”

  “It’s glorious,” I said. “I can’t wait to lie in bed and look at the stars over the ocean. What do you mean, keep an eye on us? Does she think that we’re going to—you know—in her own house?”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Brad said gravely, and I felt a sudden stab. It stood to reason that he had brought other women here, to this house that was his summer home; he was, after all, thirty-one years old. I wondered who, before me, had lain in the tester bed and waited for the old carved door to open and let him in.

  “I would never abuse her hospitality like that,” I said primly.

  “I would never ask you to…abuse her hospitality,” he said, and I caught the laughter in his voice, and grinned unwillingly.

  He left me to take his bag to his room in the other wing, and I went into the bathroom across the hall to freshen up. It was as dim and musty as a cave, with a floor of tiny black and white tiles and a huge, bulbous, claw-footed bathtub, and outsized wash basin and toilet. Nothing here had been modernized, and the full-length mirror on the back of the door was wavery and speckled. My own image shimmered in it, flesh glowing whitely, like a drowned woman at the bottom of a pool. The air in the room was still and hot, and the overhead light was dim, but there was a pile of thick, fresh white towels laid out on the counter, and Sarelle or someone had put a small bouquet of zinnias on the dressing table. I peered at my image in the mirror, leaning close, and thought of the night, scarcely eight months ago, when I had stood peering into another mirror, in the Church’s Home for Girls, feeling almost exactly as I did now: expectant, a little frightened, more than a little lost.

  “What a long way you’ve come,” I whispered to the girl in the mirror, and she swam to the surface and grimaced back at me. I washed my face and hands and brushed my hair and straightened Teddy’s madras wrap skirt and blouse and ran lightly and in dread down the stairs where Brad waited to take me to his grandmother.

  The two old women waited for us on a narrow, glassed-in porch that ran alongside the house, facing the courtyard on one end and the lawn and sea on the other. They sat on opposite ends of a flowered rattan sofa, both so bent and small that their feet scarcely touched the floor. I thought of children sitting gingerly on grown-up furniture. A glass and rattan table before them held a pitcher of what looked to be orange juice and a tray of glasses, and Sarelle was just uncovering a plate of tiny sandwiches skewered with frilled toothpicks. From the litter of frilly toothpicks on the tabletop, I judged that the two old ladies had not been able to wait for us. Two empty glasses sat there, too.

  I had no trouble telling which of the ladies was Brad’s grandmother. Teddy had been right; the smaller of the two looked precisely as his father might look in thirty years or so, wearing one of the ghastly, frowsy Beatles wigs that sold briskly at novelty stores. She was bent almost double, and propped up with pillows and bolsters, and she sat with chin on liver-spotted bosom, eyes closed and mouth agape.

  I had the idiot thought that she had died, but Sarelle smiled and made pantomimed snoring motions, and the other old lady giggled and whispered, “She’s asleep again. She’s fallen asleep three times since we got up this morning.”

  She was vastly fat, and short, with thin white hair cut in a Dutch bob through which her pink scalp showed, and had a big, powdered face in the middle of which all her little features sat. I thought of Humpty Dumpty, or a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. But so old, so frail—how could this desiccated dumpling of a woman be an effective companion to the other? And then I understood the shabby state of the house and grounds: Sarelle, hired to be a housekeeper, was instead a nurse and attendant to not one but two very elderly women. I sent Sarelle a smile of what I hoped she would recognize as sympathy and understanding. Her answering smile was polite and bland.

  “I am not asleep. You’re a hopeless fool, Isobel,” said the other old woman, in a midge’s whine, and her eyes opened, and I thought of a malicious old bird of prey. They were filmed with cataracts and pouched in crepey, wrinkled flesh, but wicked living coals burned in their depths.

  “I probably am,” the hapless Isobel simpered, and speared another sandwich. “Hey, Braddy. Let us meet this pretty girl.”

  Brad kissed his grandmother and whispered s
omething in her ear, and she cackled, witchlike, and peered at me. I smiled as prettily as I knew how, feeling every inch of rebellious breast and hip as if they were naked and jiggling. This ruined, elegant house called for height and slouching slenderness, and cool composure. But then, Marylou Hunt had those things in abundance, and she was not welcome here.

  Sarelle vanished into the dark house and Brad sat on a hassock drawn up to his grandmother’s side. I sat on a facing sofa, so overstuffed that my own feet barely brushed the floor, and smiled and smiled. Miss Isobel Davison kept up a barrage of birdlike chatter, and ate and drank steadily, and the glitter in her eyes told me that there was more than orange juice in the pitcher, but Mama Hunt did not say another word. She simply sat on her sofa on the stifling hot sun porch, her bird’s legs agape so far that one averted one’s eyes from her lap, and drank Mimosas and stared at me. For perhaps thirty minutes, while Brad talked lazily of home and the coming party and Miss Isobel giggled and I smiled, she said nothing at all.

  Finally she put down her glass and said to me, “What kind of a name is Smoky?”

  “It’s a nickname,” I said. “I got it when I was a little girl. My real name is Maureen.”

  “O’Malley, or some such,” she said.

  “O’Donnell.”

  “From where?”

  “Savannah,” I said, waiting. I did not wait long.

  “Ah,” she said. “Your folks are on the docks, then.” It was not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re aiming to marry my grandson, am I right?”

  Brad started to speak, but I overrode him.

  “No,” I said. “I absolutely am not aiming to marry your grandson.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re not. All of them are. Every one of them he brings down here takes one look at this house and sets their cap for him. It’s going to be his, you know. They all know that. Don’t try to tell me you’re any different. Except for being shanty Irish, I mean. The others have been a little better bred.”

  “That’s enough, Mama Hunt,” Brad said, making as if to rise.

  “I won’t try to tell you anything, Mrs. Hunt,” I said, anger making my voice shake. “Except that I love Atlanta and I love my job and I wouldn’t trade either one for a million houses like yours.”

  “And what is your job, missy?” she said.

  “I write stories about Negroes for an Atlanta magazine,” I said.

  She stared at me for a long moment, and then began to shake all over silently. A terrible wheezing sound came from her lips. I thought she was having some sort of attack, but then I realized that she was laughing.

  “I’ll bet Marylou absolutely despises you, doesn’t she?” she wheezed.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Well, I like you,” she said, and poked Brad in the ribs. “I like her,” she said. “I think she’ll do just fine. You sleeping with her, Brad?”

  I thought that he colored under his tan, but his blue eyes were mild and amused.

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “She won’t have me.”

  “Well, let’s let your mother think you are. I’m sure she already thinks that. It’s all she understands. Meanwhile, Smoky, or whatever your name is, don’t you be so prissy with this boy. I can name you a dozen girls prettier than you who’d be glad to—”

  “Okay, Mama Hunt,” Brad said, getting to his feet. “You’re snockered and you’re out of bounds. We’re on our way to lunch with Mother and Dad at the beach club, but we’ll be back to change before we go to dinner. If you’re still up we’ll look in on you. You ought to get a good night’s sleep, though. Big doings tomorrow.”

  “I hate these damned parties,” the old lady said. “Marylou only gives them to show off. You bring this girl back to have a drink with us before supper, you hear?”

  “I will,” Brad said, and I took the withered, dry old hands and said, “It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Hunt.”

  “You know you’re lying,” she said. “I’m a mean little old thing, and I can be meaner still. You ask that trashy daughter-in-law of mine how mean I can be.”

  She cut her eyes at Brad and he rolled his and held out his hand and I took it, and we started back upstairs to change into our bathing suits.

  I had gotten to the door of the sun porch when she shrilled at me, “You’ve got a good bosom, girl, and a good, wide bottom. You Irish are good breeders. I’ll bet there are five more like you at home. You could fill Brad’s house up with little Irish brats. Marylou would love that.”

  “Actually, there are six more of us at home,” I said, my cheeks burning. I had never been one of those who thought viper-tongued old ladies were cute. “But you’re right about the breeding. We Irish pop ’em out like champagne corks.”

  Behind us, like an evil benediction, I heard her terrible old laugh.

  “I guess there’s no use asking you what you thought about all that,” Brad said wryly. “I’m sorry. It was awful.”

  We were walking hand in hand down the beach, just at the surf line. When we had started out the air and water were almost alike, so still and thick and warm that it was like wading in warm blood, but we had not gone far over the scorching sand before a strong little wind had sprung up, and everything changed. The air cooled and the gentle surf creaming in around our ankles was charged with bubbles, and the sun that poured down over our bare heads and shoulders mellowed. His hair burned on his head like a gilt helmet, and drops of sweat glistened on his shoulders. I could not see his eyes for the sheltering dark glasses. I could read the amusement and consternation in his voice, though.

  “I thought Tennessee Williams did it better,” I said, and he laughed.

  “She is kind of like a Tennessee Williams gargoyle, isn’t she? I forget just how terrible she can be sometimes.”

  But I could tell he did not really think she was terrible. People possessed of monstrous relatives often succeed in telling themselves they are merely quaint and eccentric.

  “The whole thing is Tennessee Williams,” I said. “That beautiful old wreck of a house, and the heat, and the booze, and the strange old companion, and the enigmatic servant—what about Sarelle, anyway? Who helps her out? What kind of life does she have down here?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, sounding faintly surprised. “She’s been with Mama Hunt a long time. She has a house in Atlanta, in Vine City, I think, but she comes down here when Mama Hunt does, and lives in. That’s most of the year. I guess nobody helps her out now, from the looks of the house. There used to be a couple that cooked and drove for Mama Hunt, and a gardener who came in from the island, but the couple left and Mama Hunt got mad and fired the gardener, and she won’t let Mother and Daddy hire anybody else. Says they’re trying to bleed her dry of her money. She has enough to last several lifetimes, of course, but try telling her that—”

  “I can’t imagine what sort of life a middle-aged Negro woman from Atlanta would have on Sea Island,” I said. “Especially if she’s left her own family behind. Who could her friends be down here? Where could she go on her days off? Not, I’m sure, the beach club or the tennis court.”

  “I guess I’ve never thought about it,” Brad said.

  “I guess not,” I said, feeling contentious and holy. The sheer decadence and waste of the big, decaying house and the spoiled old women in it; the oiled and bejeweled bodies I fancied were waiting for us at the beach club, lying in the sun; the whole sybaritic island, all conspired to make me cross. It was too soon after Pumphouse Hill, too soon after Andre.

  “I’ll try to talk Grandma into hiring some extra help, and ask Sarelle what she needs,” Brad said. “You’re right, it can’t be much of a life. Meanwhile, try to enjoy it as much as you can. It would please me if it pleased you. Let’s get wet, shall we?”

  “Let’s,” I said, feeling like a spoiled child myself, and followed him into the surf.

  It was wonderful, cool and dark green in its depths, sun-hot and dancing on the surface. We went all the
way under the small waves and rode them into the beach, and ducked each other, and shouted and laughed and tumbled like puppies at the water line. When finally we came out, shaking the salt water from our bodies, I was sodden and seal-haired and red-eyed and breathless, and realized that I had neither comb nor cover-up with me. Far down the beach I could see people in deck chairs on the sand outside the beach club, and sitting under umbrellas on the terrace and around the pool, and crowding around a line of small beached sailboats, red sails luffing slightly in the freshening wind. All the people seemed, from this distance, tanned and beautiful and gotten up in smart sun hats and cover-ups.

  “I’ve got to go back,” I said. “I look like a drowned rat, and I don’t even have a jacket.”

  “You don’t need one,” he said. “We’ll eat outside on the terrace. I think you look sexy as hell, dripping like that. Here.”

  And he dashed up to the lawn of one of the big houses and twisted a hibiscus blossom from a bush, and brought it to me, and thrust it behind my ear.

  “Now you look like Sheena, Queen of the Jungle,” he said, giving me a hug. His wet body felt warm against mine. And so it was with salt-stiffened hair and Teddy’s bathing suit clinging wetly to my body and a sun-pinked nose and a red hibiscus behind one ear that I went to meet Marylou Hunt on her own turf.

  We sat late at dinner that night. There is only one long sitting in the Cloister’s graceful old dining room, and guests keep the same table throughout their stay. The one at which we sat was, Marylou Hunt said, the one the Hunt family had had for many years. It overlooked a dramatically lit little walled garden, but commanded a premier view of the room, too. From it, Marylou could both see and be seen.

  Looking back, I remember it as a pleasant evening, even an exhilarating one, though at the start of it, I could not have said why. It should have been excruciating; I was in a virtual holy of holies from which my entire family had once been barred, and all of Marylou’s exquisite little sharp knives were out. They had been since we sat down at the terrace table with her for lunch, at the beach club. I was outclassed on every side the entire day, and knew it, and she knew it, and Brad did too, probably, though he never indicated by so much as a raised eyebrow that he did.