Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci

by Charlotte Armstrong

  But I can’t have this, Nona thought, in panic. I can’t let her leech onto me. She’s too intrusive. I can’t have it!

  “Oh, we have all kinds in Sans Souci,” Harriet was saying, with bright eyes. “All kinds, believe me. A hermit. An alcoholic, we think. I can tell you whom to avoid. Your refinement … I mean, that’s something that shows, Nona. I know you would have perfect taste … but, may I make a suggestion?”

  “Do you know,” said Nona, “I am very tired, Harriet. I wonder if you’ll excuse me.”

  She saw the brightness in Harriet’s gray eyes begin to dim.

  “I’ve had a long train trip and a long day. You have been so kind …” Nona rose. It was a ruthless thing to do. Nona knew it, and did it, even so.

  “I know I talk too much,” said Harriet cravenly.

  “Oh no, please … I have enjoyed it,” said Nona. “It’s just that I am so tired and my head aches a bit. Please forgive me.”

  “That’s quite all right.” Harriet rose. “Tomorrow …?” she began.

  “Oh, I have so many things to get settled tomorrow,” said Nona prettily.

  The sickening thing was that Harriet not only knew she was being rejected, she was used to it. She was not even surprised. “Some other time,” she said dully. She shrank back upon her own skeleton.

  “Oh yes, thank you.” Nona believed that, in her heart, she was truly sorry for this frantically lonely woman who flattered and gossiped, intruded and wanted to grasp, but must not be let in, because she would be a leech, she would always go too far, she would devour.…

  When Harriet had gone, Nona stood in the shabby lifeless quiet of this apartment. Tomorrow, tomorrow she must try to make it feel like some kind of home. But she must shy away from Harriet Gregory. Loneliness was not as desperate as that, was it? No. Lord help me, prayed Nona. Seventeen widows and I am one.

  The mind jumped away from the emotion. One might learn. Seventeen widows, and all kinds, the mind noted. In cold blood, one could learn a good deal in this place.

  The third part, the imp in her, said, Or do as you please? As you damn please and the hell with them? Who knows you? Who cares? You are free!

  I must sleep, said common sense. I am too tired. After a good night’s sleep, I’ll feel better.

  Ralph, the gardener at Sans Souci, a bowlegged man with a sun-beaten head, a hot eye, a bitter heart, had more than once spat out his bitterness to Morgan Lake. Damn women, taking it easy on the sweat of their dead husbands! Where were the husbands? Tell Ralph that. They’re in their graves, that’s where! Worked hard all their lives. Who got the money? Bunch of useless women. Why should a man kill himself, cut short his life so that some old bag of a woman could floss around and do nothing, eat, enjoy herself? The injustice of it made Ralph sick! Rich, lazy women!

  Morgan Lake, whose smooth façade protected an uncomfortably compassionate heart, could not see the women quite this way himself. It was true that the seventeen widows of Sans Souci were, none of them, poverty-stricken. Had they been, thought Morgan, they would have been scrounging for a living which would have given them something to bite into. But the seventeen widows were not rich, either (with the possible exception of one who was, at least, well off). Had they been really rich they might have had power, for whims or projects, for good or evil. As it was, they were in the middle. They had to be frugal; and they were respectable. It did not leave much scope.

  Sans Souci suited them. The climate was easy, the location was convenient, the dwelling units were adequate, the rent was not exorbitant, the address was respectable. Sans Souci means without worry or care.

  As the building settled for one more night, and the wind went down, the stars steadied, the leaves stilled and breathed and grew in the deserted patio, most of the lights went out in Sans Souci. Some of the widows, asleep, felt neither worry nor care.

  But, in 101, Marie Gardner knelt on the floor with her arms flung out upon her bed and shivered and prayed because she was afraid of she knew not what, nor had she ever known.

  In 207 (the desirable angle apartment) Bettina Goodenough knew she ought to be able to manage better, and lay sighing, adding, subtracting, turning, twisting.…

  In 206, Kitty Forrest lay awake wondering if she had better just go to the doctor and be rid of this notion. But what if he were to say that she had it? The scourge, the ultimate horror, the haunter of women! Better to be haunted than to know?

  In 205, Elna Ames knew pain, and knew she had it, and thought about death, and night was no different from day.

  The seventeen widows of Sans Souci were somewhat haunted by worry and care. The specter of death haunted them, and the specter of pain. The specter of fear in many guises. And the specter of pride, lest they trouble anyone,—and the specter of loneliness, lest they trouble no one and be forgotten.

  Morgan Lake, the manager of Sans Souci, knew these things and he was not without worry and care. Abed, he was always acutely aware of the fact that after one A.M. all phone calls, in or out, were going to ring their trouble in his ear. He could also imagine trouble that would never get to the telephone, and this was worse. He was worried about Leila Hull, in 203. The owner had said the hell with it, he’d take the risk. But Morgan Lake was taking the risk: it slept with him. While Rose, his wife, breathed deep in the other bed, looking happier than she ever looked by day. Morgan Lake turned over. A phrase came mocking into his head, “No bed of Rose’s.”

  In 208, Nona Henry lay on her back and tried to close her eyes against the oddments of light that moved on this unfamiliar ceiling, and her senses against the alien smell of this linen, and her brain against the incursion of memories. But the scenes of her life were flapping relentlessly through her mind like the pages of a book when a strong thumb riffles their edges.

  Beginning with marriage and the blazing young ideas. The setbacks and squelches that dimmed those down. The great decision, after Millicent was born, when Nona had left off being the Bohemian New Yorker on the fringes of the arts, and Val had “faced the facts” and left off trying to get ahead in the technical side of the legitimate theatre, and put their meager savings daringly (cravenly?) into that motion-picture house in Poughkeepsie. The great move away from the city.

  The house, then. Dodie born. The slow building up to the “better” house, the bank account, security—all steady plugging punctuated by the excitements of the ordinary—and every human step lived a second and a third time in the girls. First words, schools, dates, colleges, up to Millicent’s wedding. Millicent’s baby. Millicent’s death.

  This page flipped over fast and covered the ineradicable woe.

  Dodie’s wedding. Dodie’s baby. (Nona’s first dental plate.) Val’s operation.

  Last year! Now the pages flipped frantically. Val’s operation. The kidding when it was over. The day the doctor’s words were 75 per cent hopeful and his eyes 75 per cent the other way. Ah, that hospital and the long-endured sequence. The kidding shallower every day, the patience deepening.. Patience getting into the bones. Patience that ended in simple waiting for an end.

  Dodie asking something about the bonds, something to do with her husband’s, Si’s, new business and a time element. Dodie’s saying that Dad had said … Nona replying, superstitiously, that she would not speak of bonds or money or any material things when nothing mattered now, nothing, except for Dad to be well again! Superstitiously not putting before her daughter the flat news that Dad would never be well.

  Then the sorrow, what patience waited for … and the relief of patience.

  The speaking about money, too soon, and she numb and not interested. The lawyer, the safe-deposit box, the bonds gone and her son-in-law’s personal note in their place. But, of course, if that had been Dad’s promise … Nona believed them, although vaguely bewildered.…

  She had bumbled about that empty house.

  The loss of it. Almost as much a shock as the loss of Val. The superhighway had reached out suddenly, to obliterate that house, their “bett
er” house, where Val’s hands, Val’s tastes, Val’s mind, had left memorials, and where Val’s routine had lived after him to guide Nona through a day.

  Gone. She had packed her life in a thousand pieces into trunks and boxes.

  Nona, moving into Dodie and Si’s house temporarily. Trying to be cheerful there, and kind and helpful, and not intrusive while she decided what she would do. Not seeing her own old friends, not wishing to see them, two by two.

  The awful night the young parents had left Nona sitting with the baby! She had been rigid with terror on the living-room couch, mumbling the words of a book aloud to make her panic-stricken mind stay on them.

  Nona had found that she no longer felt like a woman over fifty, mature and capable, calm with the experience of the years. She had wanted to run! She had wanted to scream for somebody to come!

  She had been ashamed and frightened, and she had not spoken of the panic to the kids.

  Another baby-sitting night, and worse. Her trembling. Her sudden sweating relief when she had heard the car come in. But this would not do! It was impossible! Could not be endured, or risked—or admitted, either. Where would she go, then?

  Little apartment? Mother available for baby-sitting, nearby in the small city? Nona had begun to feel the imp within herself, something rising up that wanted to smash. She found herself, one day, wanting to drop one of Dodie’s ruby goblets. She was afraid that her will would not hold. She might do something crazy!

  She’d had to avoid doing things for the darling baby, Nan, whom she adored. Because her hands would shake, and she would feel danger, projected out of herself, and if she were to hurt the baby she would have to die.

  Just before Thanksgiving Nona had gone to bed for three days; perhaps she needed a complete rest. On the fourth day, she had known what a nuisance and a burden she was being in her daughter’s house. And this was not to be borne! This could not be!

  So she’d wept, and while weeping, remembered, and crept out of bed to rummage through papers for a picture postal card that had freakishly survived. A friend had written on it: Enjoying trip so much. California is delightful! See you soon.

  Had written airmail, to the address under the picture.

  Received, airmail, the answer with rates and tentative reservation.

  Mailed her check, looked up the trains, told the children, on Thanksgiving night.

  Dodie had looked startled (and for a flash, thanksgiving?) and then she had wept from the surprise of it.

  “Oh, cheer up, Dodie,” Nona had said. “I can afford it, honey.”

  She had a widow’s allowance of two hundred fifty dollars a month, pending settlement of Val’s estate. She was not an executrix. She had that twelve hundred in her own savings account. “Can’t I, Silas?” she had said, somewhat saucily.

  Her son-in-law had felt the tiny dagger in the tone. “Of course, Mother.” Young, male, stern, proud. “Maybe it’s not a bad idea for you to go,” he had said quietly.

  “It’s a good idea,” Nona had said. “I’ll skip the winter—fancy that! There’s no reason not to go. Really, I think I need the chance to pull myself together.”

  They had been kind and helpful.

  Now, here she was (and the imp with her) and she was not pulled together yet. Dodie had written on her postal card: Dear Mother. Welcome to California. We miss you already. Especially the baby. Please have fun. Much love, Dodie and Si.

  How much love, thought Nona, have I, that I could have gone to pieces so?

  It was my loss, she explained to herself quickly. Val, and the house too, and all the habits of our life together—everything swept away, too fast.

  Yes, Val had been her keel and her steadiness. She just didn’t know, yet, how to get along without him. But she would learn.

  Nona began to doze. In the back of her life, the front of the book, a page stirred. Once upon a time she had gotten along without Val. Nona O’Connor had been a girl. Someone, in herself. Long ago.

  Chapter 4

  Mr. Avery Patrick’s day was out of sync, beginning as it did just before noon and ending long after midnight. In what was the morning to him, he cautiously left Apartment 102 and crossed to tap on the door of 103. Rose Lake got up from her luncheon table to open the door to him.

  103, the manager’s apartment, was like all the rest as one entered, but then it ranged narrowly far along the south side of the east wing. Rose Lake often pointed out how the extension of the lobby indented their space and made Winnie’s bedroom so pitifully small. When she complained of this, Morgan Lake only said patiently that they were lucky to have two bedrooms. Rose never complained to Avery Patrick.

  Avery Patrick was Morgan Lake’s first cousin, and his employer and the secret owner of Sans Souci. He lived—if what he did there could be called living—in 102, a one-room apartment just off the lobby, whose windows faced—if facing was the word for the perpetually drawn blinds—the patio. He slept there. He kept no food there. He kept liquor. He did not use the stove. He used the ice cubes. Mindy Shane, the housekeeper, took care to do his room herself and she also took his laundry home. All this suited Avery. If he had very little private life, what he did have was absolutely private.

  He never spoke to the widows. He went across the lobby in a fast nervous scuttle, and they had learned; they did not greet him any more. They did not know and he had forbidden Morgan Lake, on pain of dismissal, to let them know that he was their landlord.

  Avery Patrick was a man of fifty-one, divorced long since, with one child, a daughter who lived in Pennsylvania with her mother. He was the kind of man who had to drive a Cadillac and did so.

  The basement garage of Sans Souci was entered by a drive that pitched violently down from the street at the middle of the end of the east wing, and Avery’s long car could barely scrape over the sharp lip at the top and barely keep traction when it came to the equally sharp reverse angle at the bottom. But Avery put up with this. It was as if he went to ground, he burrowed here.

  Avery Patrick was a member of the vulturelike fringe of the motion-picture industry, one of those with a thousand schemes for making money out of other people’s talents. He was “around” by day. His home burrow was nobody’s affair. In fact, he feared that were the inhabitants of Beverly Hills or Bel Air to discover where he holed up when he disappeared, he’d be “dead.”

  He lived in Sans Souci because this cost him almost nothing. He had inherited the building and he held on to it. But he wasted little attention on it, and as little cash-money as possible.

  Morgan Lake was supposed to manage it. Morgan Lake had a bum ticker and there were kinds of jobs he could not wisely attempt. So Avery Patrick had installed him here—from kindness and from the obligation of the blood, the way Avery saw it—and Avery didn’t give a damn what Morgan did so long as Avery wasn’t bothered too much. Morgan Lake was his buffer.

  Rose Lake took Avery to the dinette table and poured him some coffee.

  To her husband, Rose complained endlessly about having to live in this awful place, about Winnie’s having to grow up in this miserable atmosphere, no kind of home for a young girl! Rose hated Sans Souci. She affected to be involved with its management no more than was absolutely inescapable. She despised all the widows, as if they were to blame for having been left alone, for having grown older, for being what they were. She reproached Morgan for not taking her and Winnie out of here, as if Morgan were to blame for his damaged heart and his limitations.

  Yet to Avery Patrick, Rose sweetly deferred. She was even just a bit flirtatious. Avery, however, was a wise and nervous bird. He had been entangled, in his day, and needed no more of that. He well knew how to keep a distance.

  Winnie Lake was home for lunch today, something unusual.

  Avery Patrick, it seemed, had stopped in to ask Morgan when he was going to rent 109. “How about that little idea?”

  At once, Morgan Lake felt miserably unsure of himself. He simply could not trust his little ideas. They came to him. Th
ey kept coming. But he had lost his confidence long ago, soon after he married Rose.

  “You ought to get rid of Agnes Vaughn,” said Rose, but without force.

  Avery Patrick didn’t even take note of her remark. “How about this shuffle?” he pressed Morgan. “Frankly, I forget. What was it, again?”

  Morgan did not like himself, at the moment. He did not like the sensation of moving people about as if they were pawns. If there was any power in his little idea he didn’t want the power. He hated the very thought of “handling” people. (Which he did for his living.)

  “If Ida Milbank defaults again, on the first of December,” he explained more coldly than he felt, “that will mean I can talk turkey to her relatives. They know. I’ve already talked to the son. And she’s been buying …”

  “So foolish …” Rose said.

  Poor Ida Milbank, foolish? thought Morgan Lake. But she was just a pack rat, really. She was addicted to gadgets. Her rooms were full of them, yet she could not resist the sight of another household device. It was like a disease with her. But it was all she had.

  “If she can’t stop buying,” Morgan said, “the son told me that they’ll have to move her into a less expensive apartment. Now, if she goes into 109, that will stop Agnes Vaughn.” Well, there it was. His little idea. The manipulation of personalities.

  “I hope you know what you’re talking about,” said Avery Patrick sullenly. He was a manipulator in his own field but he hated hearing about the widows.

  “The point is this,” said Morgan. “Agnes Vaughn could put the frost on 109. She’s got it into her … imagination,” he used the substitute for “head” wryly, “that Rhoda Gorman suicided. It’s not true, but Agnes Vaughn would rather it were, so …” He made a helpless gesture. “Now, if we rent 109 to some stranger, Mrs. Vaughn will make life miserable for whoever it is. We’ll have superstitions. It will be haunted or unlucky. Agnes Vaughn will have fun—but she won’t do that to Ida Milbank.”

  “But then,” objected Avery Patrick, “we’ll have to paint III.”