Creatures of Want and Ruin

by Molly Tanzer

  “Nothing’s broken,” he declared, “but you’ll look a fright for a good long while. And I think your windpipe must be bruised, but that’ll fix itself with time, too. Do you have any other injuries?”

  Ellie unbuckled her coveralls and pulled up her shirt to display her bruised side.

  “Hmm.” Lester felt around a bit more, but again was pleased to find no breaks or obvious fractures among her battered ribs. “Rest is what you need,” he said, seemingly satisfied she was in no immediate danger. “What happened? Did you get into a fight?”

  Ellie’s mother peered at her, as if Ellie might confess to something now that her baby brother was in the room.

  “I slipped when the storm got bad last night.”

  Lester reached across the bare kitchen table and patted her hand. “I’m glad you made it home safe. But don’t go out in weather like that again. It’s too risky!”

  Ellie knew what Lester meant, but all the same his remark annoyed her. She had to take these risks—was taking them for his sake. They all did their part, and this was hers. But she repented of these sour thoughts immediately upon seeing her brother’s expression fall. He knew he’d irked her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No, I’m sorry,” he replied, reaching out to squeeze her hand.

  “Sorry for what?” asked their mother, confused.

  “Nothing,” said Ellie. “Never mind.” Then she and Lester collapsed into giggles, as if they were fourteen and seven again, not twenty-five and eighteen.

  They’d always been like that—able to have an entire conversation without using any words at all. Their mother shook her head, baffled, which just made them laugh harder. It was nice, like old times, when the world had weighed less heavily on everyone.

  “Why do I have to ask more than one time what’s going on under my roof?” Ellie’s father loomed in the doorway, filling it with his bulk. Never a small man, Robert West had at least been fighting trim during his army days. His sedentary life had taken its toll, muscle giving way to fat, but he was still imposing.

  “Hello, Pop,” said Ellie, gingerly getting up from the kitchen table. Her mother didn’t even glance their way; her eyes were back on her carrots and potatoes.

  “What happened to you?” he said. His tone was the one that had made Ellie straighten up and fly right as a child—not that he’d had cause to use it much. As a girl, she’d never found much reason to disobey. Nowadays, she was very practiced at it, and lied smoothly.

  “It was a wet night,” she said. “I slipped and fell, got tangled up in my own ropes.”

  Ellie wondered if she kept claiming she’d slipped if she’d start to believe it herself—a falsehood made true by repetition.

  “Is she all right?” This was directed at Lester.

  “She’s pretty banged up, sir, but it’s all bruises. Nothing that won’t heal soon enough,” said Lester.

  Their father nodded, satisfied, and Ellie relaxed a bit. His approval of his son was as rare as it was desired. It was worth the beating to have made her father see how useful and worthwhile Lester was.

  “Saved me a trip to the doctor’s,” she said, in the hopes of keeping the mood going. “I was worried about my ribs.”

  “Good, that’s good,” he said. “But of course, he’ll be doing more than just poking at bruises when he’s in medical school.”

  “I’d hope so, at least,” said Lester.

  “You do?” said their father. “It’ll be demanding physically as well as mentally, you know. I hope you’re up to it, after all everyone’s doing to help you get there.”

  Ellie had never been so furious. While she’d had the same thought a time or two, she also knew what her brother lacked in strength he made up for in determination. The shame of saying such a thing to his face! Ellie was glad she was so sore; the pain kept her from flying at him to spit in his face or do something even worse.

  “The crabs,” said Ellie’s mother, staring at the ingredients for the chowder. “Ellie, where are the crabs?”

  Lester used this distraction to depart from the kitchen, his back horribly straight and chin held proudly aloft. Their father didn’t stop him.

  “The crabs?” he asked.

  “For the chowder.”

  Ellie was shocked to realize she’d failed to check her traps—she’d meant to, but it had slipped her mind. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot.”

  Ellie’s parents stared at her like she’d grown another head. Their astonishment was both flattering and frustrating. While it was unusual for her to forget something like that, they knew she’d had a rough night.

  “Oh no,” said their mother, as if some shocking news had just been delivered. “Whatever will we do?”

  Ellie managed not to sigh; instead, she said, “I can go out now . . .”

  “That’ll put dinner off for hours,” said her father, before slouching out of the room shaking his head, as if he was so disappointed he could no longer be a part of the conversation.

  “Then I’ll go and buy something from the butcher,” said Ellie desperately. “He’ll still be open.”

  “I suppose we’ll have to.” Her mother sighed. “I was counting on you, Ellie . . . Meat’s expensive, and—”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “Ellie!”

  Ellie hadn’t raised her voice to her mother since she was a teenager, but this was too much to endure, not while she was in pain, not after seeing Greene breathe out his last in a boat in the middle of a storm. “Don’t you ‘Ellie’ me,” she said. “How dare you imply I’m careless. I forgot once! People are allowed to forget things every once in a while when they’re busy and—”

  “Will you two hens stop squawking at one another!” bellowed Ellie’s father, and the two women went quiet.

  A knock at the door broke the silence. Ellie considered following her brother and running upstairs, but as neither her father nor her mother moved to answer the summons it fell to her to go and do so.

  Down the way from the Wests lived a fairly well-to-do family called the Hunters. The patriarch, Joseph, was a recent widower, a solemn man whom all spoke well of but few invited over for dinner. He had seven children, but Ellie had a hard time telling all but the very youngest girls apart. The family were all brown-haired, blue-eyed, and rosy-cheeked, but only the two boys went to school as far as Ellie knew.

  Three girls stood there now. They could have been copies of one another save for their height and slight variations in the calico of their dresses. Their similarity to one another was uncanny, and they all shared the same milk-white, almost lustrous skin.

  The middle one, both in height and position within the trio, held a covered dish of some sort, her hands protected by a dishrag. To their credit, none of them reacted to the sight of Ellie’s nose, black eye, or bruised neck.

  “Hello,” croaked Ellie, after an awkward moment. “Can I help you?”

  “Our sister made too much pot roast,” she said. “Father had the idea that we ought to send some over, just to be neighborly. Her pot roast is very good.”

  Ellie stared at the girls. She had many questions for them that good manners prevented her from asking, such as: Had they heard them all fighting? Were the Wests believed to be in need of help? What had inspired this generosity, and why today?

  “Thank you,” she finally said, when her mouth would work again. The girl extended her arms, and Ellie took the dish automatically.

  “I’m sorry, but we can’t accept this.” That was Ellie’s mother, her mouth a thin line of pride and disapproval. Ellie still clutched the dish. Here it was, the answer to their problems. At least, the ones they were having tonight. No need to waste money on food that should go to Lester’s college fund; no need for Ellie to get pinched and snapped at by a grumpier group of crustaceans than even those in her home. Why couldn’t they accept the gesture of neighborly affection? Next time she brought in a haul of snook or a mess of clams they could return the
gesture proudly, for Ellie’s mother was a good cook.

  “You go tell your old man we’re not interested in charity.” Ellie’s father had also joined them at the door. It was practically a party.

  “We beg your pardon, Mr. West,” said the tallest girl, “but he told us not to come back with it. We’re to leave it at your doorstep if you won’t take it. He said you might be offended, but really, she just made so much. Our aunt was supposed to come into town for a big dinner, but she took ill and can’t make it.”

  “Rather than let it go to waste, we brought some over. It doesn’t keep well,” the shortest added.

  “Thank you,” said Ellie firmly. “We’ll enjoy it, and we’ll return the dish full.”

  “We look forward to it,” said the middle girl, the picture of polite, sincere femininity. There was nothing condescending or disrespectful in her manners; nothing that Ellie’s parents could be offended by.

  And, miraculously, they weren’t.

  “Yes, please thank your father for us,” said Ellie’s mother, thawing a bit. “It’s very . . . very neighborly of him to think of us.”

  “We will. Good afternoon,” they said, almost in unison, and Ellie again felt that mild disgust for how alike they were. She quickly pushed it away. They’d done more than they knew for the Wests that day.

  “That was lucky, I suppose,” said Ellie’s mother, after the door was closed and shut.

  To Ellie’s relief, her father now seemed resigned rather than angry. “It won’t be your home cooking.”

  “No, but I’m sure it’ll be delightful.”

  Ellie’s father frowned. “Even if it is delightful, I’ll be sure to impress upon Hunter that we’re not in need of charity when I return his dish, though.”

  Crisis averted, Ellie left them to it. She went upstairs to check on her brother and maybe get in a bit of time with the Vanity Fair she’d borrowed from Rocky, which he’d said had a top-notch poem in it by Helene Johnson.

  She found Lester sitting at his desk, his books open in front of him, but it was clear he wasn’t studying.

  “Don’t,” he said when she came in. Not for the first time did she marvel at the tidiness, the precise organization of his bedroom. A future doctor’s bedroom, she thought to herself.

  “Don’t what?” She sat on his bed, making creases in the smooth comforter.

  “Defend him.”

  “When have I ever?” Ellie was genuinely offended by the idea that she might.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t want you to tell me not to pay attention to him, or never mind what he says.”

  “I’m not our mother. I was ready to sock him.”

  “Well, good. Because I can’t not pay attention to him, and I do mind what he says. I’ve been working so hard—I’ll be ahead, if I get to go to school, and—”

  “When.”

  “It doesn’t feel like when.” Lester shook his shock of dark curls. Their father said his hair made him look like a girl, but Lester wouldn’t cut it, much to Ellie’s joy. He was a bit vain of his lustrous mane, and he should be, as even sisterly affection would not allow Ellie to describe him with sincerity as handsome or robust. One day a girl would notice that hair, Ellie was sure, and then the whip-smart boy beneath.

  “You can believe me that it’s when,” she said, even though she didn’t believe it herself.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry. It’s just hard sometimes.” His voice got a bit tighter in his throat. “I hate it here.”

  “Move then—in with Gabe and me, I mean.”

  “I can’t.”

  He scooted his chair back from his desk and came to sit beside Ellie. She leaned her head on his narrow shoulder.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why.”

  Ellie thought of all the excuses he’d made since Ellie had accepted Gabriel’s hand—that getting him back and forth across the Great South Bay to work with the veterinarian would be a huge hassle, that the damp of an unfinished house would get into his books, that he couldn’t leave their mother and still take her money, that he would “be in the way,” a phrase he said with a blush, making it immediately obvious what he was thinking about.

  “Well, it’ll only be until the semester starts,” she assured him. “Not too much longer for us to stick it out. We’ll drop you off at college and you won’t have to see Pop again until you’re Dr. Lester West—and not even then, if you don’t want to. I’ll come have Christmas with you in the city.”

  “I don’t know why you insist on staying here when you have a much nicer place to go,” said Lester.

  “You know why,” she said, imitating his voice. They giggled like they were kids again.

  “Ellie. Lester,” their mother called. “Time for dinner.”

  Ellie suppressed a sigh as she and Lester stood. There was always something she needed to do, somewhere she needed to be.

  Maybe after dinner she’d find some time for her poetry.

  3

  “Where should we put this, ma’am?”

  Fin was asked this question by one of the movers as he and another man shifted a lavishly carved mahogany armoire as she passed through the foyer of the house on Ocean Avenue that she and her husband and several of their friends had rented for the season. It was a fine house, with large windows that let in light and the warm summer breeze, many big white rooms, and a large cool green lawn that ended in a private dock; they would be able to do the sort of entertaining they wanted to here.

  Or at least the sort of entertaining her husband Jimmy and their friends—Lily and Duke Freemont, Edgar Bishop, and Bobbie Brennings—wanted to do. Fin never really felt at ease at parties, and definitely not the sort they’d be having here, without even the pretense of a meaningful impulse like a charitable fund-raiser behind them.

  Amityville was a tourist destination in the summer, especially for the rowdier element within “the smart set.” Lily had even boasted to one of their acquaintances back in Philadelphia that they’d be “free of those tiresome benefit luncheons and charity balls” for an entire season. Fin had overheard Lily say this at the grand gala Fin had organized on behalf of Philadelphia’s needy mothers; it did not do much to increase her confidence that she’d be spending a pleasant summer on Long Island. For her part, Fin loved organizing and attending fund-raising events; it gave her a sense of purpose—a feeling that she was part of something larger than herself, and doing some good in the world. Dressing up for no reason just to drink to excess with “the beautiful and the damned” seemed like a good way to end up in a similar situation.

  “Ma’am?”

  Oh, right. Fin was supposed to be telling the movers where to put that armoire. The trouble was, she didn’t know, and she was the only one around right now. The others had gone out; Fin didn’t know to where. She hadn’t been listening while they settled on their plans; she’d been reading more of To the Lighthouse, which she had shifted to the top of her to-be-read pile when they decided on Amityville as their destination instead of the Catskills. Edgar had asked if it was a travel guide to the area. No one had laughed when she’d said she certainly hoped not.

  “That ought to be put in Mr. Bishop’s room,” said Fin with authority. If it turned out she was wrong, she could claim she’d told the movers no such thing, and who would ever know what the truth really was?

  “Yes ma’am,” one of the men replied, and they went deeper into the house with it.

  Fin left the entryway to avoid the risk of being asked further questions. Fortunately for her, getting lost was easy to do. The house was so large, and all the rooms were so white and had come furnished with such unrecognizable furniture, that she quickly had no idea where she was. In the whitest, largest, most unfamiliar of the rooms she plucked a cigarette from a cigarette box and lit it on a cut-crystal table lighter; then she wandered outside while inhaling a few healthy lungfuls of the soothing smoke.

  Too restless for her book, Fin thought to go to the simple gazebo that slouched
at the edge of the property like a poor relation in a family photograph. Cooled by the water, shaded by trees, and out of earshot of the house save for the dinner bell, it was the only place on the property Fin really liked.

  As she traversed the lawn, she mused on how it was really too bad that Jimmy’s uncle had died—not only for the usual reasons, but for the unexpected damage it had caused to her marriage. Fin and Jimmy might have been content if not happy together had the fool not gotten drunk as a lord at his own birthday party and choked on his cake. It had been a real surprise to hear he’d made Jimmy his heir, and while at first the news had been exciting and the possibilities seemingly limitless, Fin had quickly realized the changes to her and Jimmy’s lives were not destined to be good ones.

  It had dismayed Fin to discover that her husband’s interest in practicing law had been financial, not humanitarian. He only looked the part of the strong-jawed, broad-shouldered public defender destined one day to become district attorney. The estate had not even been settled before his ambition had turned to idleness and his interests had shifted from helping others to helping himself. He left his job in order to apply himself to a different occupation: being wealthy. And it did occupy him, whether he was buying new clothes he didn’t need or new furniture to clutter up their home, finding new entertainments to pass his newly unoccupied hours, and making new friends at the new parties they attended.

  It was at one such party, back in Philadelphia, where Fin encountered her old school friend Bobbie Brennings, née Jordan. Bobbie was in a bit of a pickle, as it turned out—Philadelphia’s elite had all but given her the cut direct for having the most outrageously public affair with a famous tennis player, and no one had talked to her the entire night. High society always loved a scandal, but not an ugly one—and this one had gotten ugly. Not only had Mr. Brennings turned to drink, the tennis player’s wife had been pregnant with their second child when the news broke.

  A former suffragette and member of the American Birth Control League, Fin had been torn between wanting to support a sister in her struggle to free herself from the twin chains of marriage and social expectation . . . and feeling it was hard cheese on Mr. Brennings and the tennis star’s wife. But in the end she had let Bobbie take her aside, for she had been lonely in the crush, and listened to what her childhood friend had to say. She hadn’t wholly believed Bobbie’s version of events, given that they required dismissing a few highly creditable reports on her behavior as slander, but what could Fin do but humor her old school chum?