Bellefleur

by Joyce Carol Oates

  And there were, of course, innumerable other vexing things, more and less mysterious, haunted closets and baths and mirrors and drawers, and even a corner of Aveline’s boudoir, and the dust-coated drum made of Raphael’s skin that sometimes made light tapping sounds as if invisible fingers were drumming on it restlessly, and the lavender silk parasol, badly faded and frayed, said to have belonged to Violet, that rolled of its own accord across the floor, as if angrily kicked—but how seriously were they to be taken? For, after all, as Hiram frequently said, with his bemused skeptical smile, These absurd spirits batten on our credulity. If we stopped believing in them, if, together, unified for once, the entire family stopped believing . . . why, then, they would be powerless!

  Cassandra

  One chilly sunny day in early November Leah acquired another baby—another girl of questionable parentage—for the Bellefleurs.

  It was a long, ambitious day, which began with a visit to the Gromwell property on the far side of Silver Lake. Though Leah had of course seen the property before, and claimed to have made a thorough study of its financial situation (which was quite poor—the quarry had been losing money steadily for the past six years), she insisted on being driven over in the new Rolls-Royce limousine, accompanied by Germaine and Hiram, and a young woman just hired to help with Germaine (her name was Lissa: she had been hired to replace Irene, as Irene had been hired to replace Lettie). It was a gusty day, and despite Hiram’s disapproval (he was always fussing and clucking and disapproving of Leah’s whims, like an aging husband) Leah had bundled her little girl up for winter and taken her along. The child loved rides, she loved to perch atop her mother’s lap and point and chatter and ask questions, which Leah answered patiently. It was very important, Leah believed, for a child to learn as much as possible—to see as much as possible—even at a very early age.

  “And the important thing is, Germaine,” Leah said, as they were driven through the gate, “that we own this. All this. This is a sandstone quarry—I’ll have to ask Bromwell to explain to us, exactly what sandstone is—and it takes in sixty-five acres, all the way to the Sulphur Springs Road, and we own it now. The papers were signed just last Friday and now it’s ours.”

  They were driven about the property, along rutted lanes, for nearly half an hour; at one point Leah insisted upon getting out and climbing halfway down into a pit, poor Hiram, stumbling beneath Germaine’s weight, in tow. “. . . not much to look at,” Hiram said irritably. “You’ll have a hard time explaining this purchase to Mr. T.”

  “Nothing I do calls for an explanation,” Leah said sharply, turning her fur collar up. “I’m not a child.”

  She unlocked the manager’s office and went inside, bringing Germaine with her. The place was not so dirty as she had feared. An old pulltop desk, its pigeonholes crammed with yellowed papers, a tacked-down strip of linoleum tile, an army cot, pillowless, with a soiled blanket tossed over it. . . .

  “Well, Germaine,” she said heartily, “here we are! You wanted this.”

  Germaine did no more than glance at her.

  “The Gromwell Quarry. We have acquired the Gromwell Quarry,” Leah said. “And now—? Well, Germaine, are you pleased? Did I do well?”

  Germaine began to chatter, as if she were a small child, and Leah, not knowing whether to be vexed or amused, waved her away. She ran and leapt and stumbled about the room, greatly excited, while Leah contemplated the situation. It had cost far more than she had anticipated, but the Gromwell Quarry was now theirs; and soon they would acquire another tract of land, adjacent to this; and then another; and another; until the original holdings were united once again. perhaps it would take most of her lifetime, Leah thought, and Germaine herself would have to complete the task. Then again, perhaps it would only take a few years, with her luck. There was no doubt about it, Leah had “luck”; she was possessed by it; she could make no mistakes.

  Germaine had clambered on top of the desk, rowdy and naughty as any little child, and was threatening to jump—and perhaps would have jumped, had Lissa not hurried into the room to grab her.

  “Oh, silly Lissa!” Leah said, laughing. “You behave as if Germaine might hurt herself! But you should know, my girl, that this child is blessed.”

  ON THE WAY back to Bellefleur Manor they stopped at Della’s house, since Leah had not seen her mother for some time, and both she and Hiram felt an obligation to look in upon poor Jonathan Hecht (who was, unfortunately, asleep or in a kind of coma during their visit, so that he hadn’t any awareness of Leah and Hiram peeking in at him: how ill and jaundiced he looked, and how shrunken his eyes had become!—it’s remarkable, Leah whispered to Hiram, that he has lived so long); and she was curious, too, about Garnet Hecht’s baby girl. “But what a strange name, Cassandra,” Leah said, poking a finger at the baby, which the baby promptly seized, gurgling and smiling happily, if rather cross-sightedly, “however did poor Garnet hit upon that?”

  “The name was my choice,” Della said.

  “But wasn’t it some barbarian princess or someone,” Leah laughed, keeping her voice low so that Garnet (who was in and out of the little nursery, flushed, muttering to herself, all in a flurry over Leah’s and Hiram’s unannounced visit), “someone who was mute, or was she murdered—or both? Or did she foretell the future, and no one would listen, and she was murdered anyway?”

  “The odd bits and pieces of things you remember from La Tour,” Della said contemptuously. “It might have been better, as I thought all along, for you to have stayed home. Since you did end up someone’s wife, after all. And what good has that expensive education done you?”

  “Now, Della,” Hiram said quickly, “you didn’t pay for it. It didn’t come out of your allowance.”

  “And you’ve never let me forget it, have you! You and Noel,” Della said, waving rather rudely at her brother.

  So the visit began awkwardly, and Leah was forced to make cheerful conversation, speaking of anything that flew into her head. Despite her mother’s sour mood, and the faint stench that wafted across the width of the house from Jonathan Hecht’s sickroom, and Garnet’s annoying fluttery manner (the silly creature was too distracted to do anything more than mumble Thank you, Mrs. Bellefleur when Leah handed her a gift for the baby, she set it down on a cabinet without opening it, a darling crocheted sweater Germaine had outgrown so quickly it was good as new), and despite the chill she’d had out at the quarry, Leah was in excellent spirits. Cassandra was a beautiful if somewhat undersized baby (and were her eyes crossed, or was Leah imagining it?), and there was nothing so delightful as leaning over the crib of an infant once again. . . . Those dark curls! That damp little smile! Delightful too was the way Germaine was talking to the baby, cooing and burbling in baby language.

  “Cassandra is a handsome baby,” Leah said, “and she seems to be very healthy, Garnet, aren’t you pleased . . . ? She was a few weeks premature, wasn’t she?”

  “I don’t know, I really don’t remember,” Garnet said, blushing painfully. “I . . . I wasn’t well. . . . Afterward, for a while, I had a fever. . . . My memory of that time isn’t very good.”

  “It was an ordeal, a baby so premature,” Della said. “Of course you had a difficult time. But you’re fine now, and so is Cassandra.”

  “Do you think so, Mrs. Pym?” Garnet said uncertainly.

  “Oh, of course,” Leah said, taking both her hands. (Such tiny, limp, cold-fish sort of hands! It was no wonder, Leah thought, the girl couldn’t find a husband.) “You’ve always been rather thin, you know, I don’t think you look much different than before, and your hair is lovely, if maybe you did something with it up here, on your forehead, otherwise it tends to fall in your eyes . . . and your eyes are lovely, Garnet, you shouldn’t hide them . . . you shouldn’t always be looking down. But you feel well? You’ve recovered?”

  “I . . . I think so, Mrs. Bellefleur,” Garnet said slowly.

  And then she was off again, imagining she heard the teakettle. She put Leah
in mind of nothing so much as a startled rabbit. “Why in Christ’s name is she always running,” Leah whispered to Della. “It must make you nervous, you always claimed I made you nervous. . . .”

  “Garnet is a good girl,” Della said stiffly. “She has suffered.”

  “Oh—suffered! We’ve all suffered,” Leah said. She checked to see that Germaine was not hurting Cassandra—she was leaning over the crib trying to “kiss” her—and went to a nearby mirror to remove her hat. “. . . but I’ve been negligent, you know, I seem to have forgotten all about Garnet,” she said, “and the poor thing obviously needs help. Since the father of the baby is nowhere to be found. . . . She would make some man an excellent wife, don’t you think? We should have married her off before this. What a pity! And what a surprise! Sweet little Garnet Hecht, getting herself pregnant like that, and so skinny she didn’t even show until the seventh month . . . isn’t she sly, really. . . . Of course it was just one time, I’m sure: some farmboy who took advantage of her: or maybe someone from the village. Has she told you, yet, who it was? Or is she still hysterical about the subject? . . . As if we were going to interrogate her!”

  “No one is going to interrogate her,” Della said.

  “Certainly no one is going to interrogate her,” Leah said, removing the last of her hatpins. “Her tragic little love affair is her own business entirely. And it isn’t as if she were a Bellefleur. . . . Of course she’s a cousin of mine, a distant cousin . . . she is, isn’t she? . . . But then everyone is related to everyone else around here, and it means very little. I wish she would trust me, though. She never looks me in the eye, she never seems to be listening, exactly. It’s always been like that between us and I can’t imagine why.”

  Leah was amused to see in the mirror, as she turned, her mother and Hiram exchanging an enigmatic glance.

  “She is a very brave young woman,” Della said, folding her hands in her apron in a gesture that maddened Leah, it was so falsely meek, so hypocritically subservient. “I doubt that you’re capable of comprehending all that Garnet has gone through.”

  “My pregnancy with Germaine was far worse,” Leah said. “Ten months—more than ten months! And her baby was born early—”

  “It is a very sweet baby,” Hiram said, clearing his throat. “Now don’t you hurt it, Germaine. You don’t want to play so rough—”

  “Germaine, stop that, come over here,” Leah said. “You’re not a little baby any longer and you can’t climb into that crib—why, you’d crush the poor thing! She isn’t an it, Uncle Hiram, she’s a she. You ought to know better,” she said, nudging him in the ribs.

  “Yes, yes, of course, a she, the baby is . . . the baby is a she,” Hiram said, folding his arms behind his back. He moved a few feet away, to stare gloomily into Della’s meager fire, where damp birch logs were burning with an acrid eye-stinging stench. He was a ruddy-faced portly man, handsome in profile, with waxed mustaches that gave off a synthetic odor, and one somewhat clouded eye. Always fastidiously dressed, with his gold watch chain across his vest, and his gold-and-ivory cuff links, he looked as incongruous in Della’s shabby parlor as Leah. It amused Leah to see how uneasy Della and Hiram—sister and brother—were in each other’s company. The curse of the Bellefleurs, she thought, was either to be uncommonly close (though that was a rarity these days) or estranged for life.

  The silence between them grew embarrassing, so Leah chattered: about the Gromwell Quarry, about their plans for buying Chautauqua Fruits to join with Valley Products, about the mining operations at Contracoeur . . .

  “Contracoeur!” Della said. “I didn’t realize we owned land there.”

  “We’ve owned mineral rights there since 1873,” Leah said.

  “But what sort of mineral rights?”

  “What do you mean, Mamma, what sort—?” Leah laughed. “Mineral rights are mineral rights. It’s a highly complicated operation, however, and we need mining engineers, in fact Gideon is meeting with someone in Port Oriskany right now. He’s been working very hard on this, hasn’t he, Uncle Hiram? He’s been trying very hard.”

  “Is he alone?” Della asked.

  “No, Ewan is with him. And Jasper. It’s remarkable how quickly Jasper is learning,” Leah said, fumbling in her purse. “I wish Bromwell would take an interest in such things. . . . But of course he’s still quite young, there’s still time, I don’t intend to push any of my children into anything. Don’t you think that’s wise, Mamma?”

  Leah may have meant this ironically—for certainly Della had wanted to push her years ago, at least away from the Bellefleurs—but the moment passed. Della said softly, “And how is Gideon, Leah?”

  “How is Gideon? Why, he’s perfectly fine as always, he never changes,” Leah said, shaking a cigarillo out of a package. It was the first time she had smoked one of these things in her mother’s presence, and it rather pleased her—pleased and excited her—that Della was staring in undisguised alarm. But Leah chose to take no notice of her mother, and went on chattering in a bright amiable voice about the mining engineering firm in Port Oriskany, and the alterations she was planning in the house, and the renovations in the garden. “Of course we must move along slowly. There’s the expense, for one thing, and Grandmother Elvira is naturally upset, and it is disorienting. But you’ll be pleased to learn, Mamma, that I’ve had most of those ugly old statues hauled away. And wasn’t it peculiar, Uncle Hiram, how parts of statues were found back in the woods—arms and legs and even heads—dragged back in the woods, or down to the lake, evidently by wild animals! The children kept finding parts for weeks, the younger children were always being frightened. . . .”

  “Gideon’s well, you say? And he’s in Port Oriskany right now?” Della asked.

  “Mamma, I just now told you,” Leah laughed, picking a bit of tobacco off her tongue. “My husband is in superb health as always, and asks to be remembered to you. He’s been working very hard lately. . . .”

  “I see,” Della said. She glanced over her shoulder, toward the doorway; but Garnet was not yet in sight. “Occasionally we hear rumors. In Bushkill’s Ferry.”

  “Yes,” Leah said, “Bushkill’s Ferry always did hear rumors about Bellefleur.”

  “But as long as Gideon is well, and working hard . . .”

  “Of course he’s well,” Leah said irritably.

  “. . . and then rumors have to be discounted,” Della said, “especially when they show evidence of envy or spite.”

  “Did you hear about Yolande? Was that one of the things people were gossiping about?”

  “One of the things, yes.”

  “Ewan and Lily have about given up on her,” Leah said with a sigh. “It’s obvious that she has run away and wants to stay away. . . . There was a fire in one of the barns, did you know? And she ran away that night. According to Lily all she took was a change of clothing and some jewelry and twenty dollars in cash, and—and this is touching, Mamma—a lock of Germaine’s hair. She actually crept into the nursery and cut off a curl, just a tiny one. . . . Poor Yolande, I can’t imagine why she ran away, why she hates her family so, can you? There was a fire in one of the barns, one of the unused barns, but I don’t imagine Yolande had anything to do with it. The children are so secretive, though. It’s very strange. Bromwell hadn’t anything to do with it, of course, but I think Christabel did; but she won’t talk about it. Imagine—a child Christabel’s age, having secrets from her own mother!”

  “Does that surprise you, Leah, really?” Della asked with a dry little twist of a smile.

  “Oh, Mamma,” Leah said, walking away.

  She wandered into the sitting room, where the heavy velvet drapes were kept drawn; she felt quite agitated suddenly. There was something she wanted but she didn’t know what it was. Something she wanted badly, and would have. But how would she acquire it? . . . She found herself staring at the old horsehair sofa with its scalloped back. And the matching chair in which her young cousin Gideon had sat. Staring at her. Staring
at her and at Love, perched vigilantly on her shoulder. A wave of nostalgia swept over Leah and she felt, for a moment, close to tears.

  O Love . . .

  In the shantylike office building at the quarry she had been half-dreaming on her feet, but she couldn’t recall the nature of her dream. How odd it was, how very odd, and unlike her. . . . As her body lost all interest in sexual feeling her mind labored to take it up, frequently out of a sense of obscure obligation, as a distracted Catholic might run his rosary beads through his fingers, and even move his lips in blank prayers, while his mind was empty. So Leah imagined illicit lovers in that smelly little building, lying on that inadequate cot, gasping and clutching at each other. O Love. How I love you. . . . And then Germaine had nearly toppled to the floor, and Leah had awakened from her trance.

  She woke from her trance now and put all thoughts of Gideon and that beautiful spider Love out of her mind (for hadn’t Love been killed long ago, reduced to black glutinous pulp no larger than her fist?), and strode back into the parlor where Garnet, her hands trembling, was about to serve tea. Seeing Leah she stepped backward, her thin foolish face stretched in a hopeful smile. “Mrs. Bellefleur . . . ?” she said, blinking. “Would you care for some . . .”

  Leah bent over the cradle, and picked up Cassandra with such care, the baby hardly gurgled. A thick red-brown coil of hair had come loose on the back of her neck. “I think I’d like to bring Cassandra back with me to the manor,” Leah said. “She’d have better care, you know. There would be more children to keep her company.”