Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci

by Charlotte Armstrong

  The Unholy Three were a minority. And furthermore Felice Paull had temporarily abdicated and Ida Milbank scarcely ever counted for much. So Mrs. Fitz, via culture (courtesy of Daisy Robinson), carried the talk away.

  Nona was grateful. She didn’t know what had gotten into her. She rather wished she had kept quiet.

  Agnes Vaughn kept looking Nona Henry up and down.

  There comes a moment when a party is ripe for an ending. The hostess turns a bit too gay as if she says to herself, “O.K., the hell with it!” A guest of honor with any perception understands that she had better catch the moment if she is to preserve and crystallize the legend of a joyful and successful occasion. It was Mrs. Fitz who rose and graciously cut this party’s throat.

  Nona made haste to follow close behind her, so as not to be caught in the necessarily slow (“reluctant”) rhythm of breaking-up-the-party. Therefore it was Mrs. Fitz (and Georgia, of course) and Nona Henry who were bunched in Bettina’s doorway when it opened and began to spew the party out.

  Sunshine gushed out from Bettina’s southern exposure into the gloomy meeting- place of the upstairs corridors. A high blend of chirps and giggles, soprano cries of praise and farewell, the party noises gushed out into the silence. A special silence, tense and busy.

  A man in a white coat silently held open the elevator door. Another man in a white coat angled and maneuvered a narrow stretcher on wheels so as to get it into the cage.

  A figure under a white sheet lay silent upon the stretcher—most terribly silent.

  Beyond this group, a strange, thin, young woman wearing a transparent blouse and lots of beads around her scrawny neck stood silent, beside Tess Rogan, who with her very presence seemed to be holding the lid of silence down.

  The party’s merry tumult bounced and recoiled. Shock ran backward deep into Bettina’s apartment.

  The woman on the stretcher was concentrated upon pure pain. Her ears did not care. Her consciousness took no heed. She had a rendezvous.

  Elna Ames was dying. They were simply taking her away from Sans Souci so that she would die somewhere else.

  Chapter 16

  There was no movement at all for a moment. Then several people moved at once. Tess Rogan caught the elevator door with one hand. The man who had been holding it let go and caught up one end of the stretcher. Now the two men between them tilted the narrow thing enough to get it within the elevator.

  The solution was sudden. Elna Ames, riding at a high angle, disappeared. She seemed to have been whisked from view. The door closed. The lighted window sank away.

  At the same time, Nona was aware of Mrs. Fitz stepping backward, of Georgia’s quick arm going around her.

  And Nona herself stepped forward.

  “Is there anything I can do?” she said to Tess Rogan, speaking low.

  “Come along,” Tess said, “we’ll see.”

  Nona did not look behind her. She had a sense of the party-for-Georgia choked in that doorway, its emerging stream backed up upon itself, in confusion. But she went with Tess Rogan and the strange young woman into Elna Ames’ apartment, which was across the hall from Agnes Vaughn’s and next to Bettina’s. Nearby.

  Nearby. The other side of a wall!

  They went in and Tess closed the door.

  The thin young woman began to speak at once. She had a nasal whine, not loud but dreary. “We didn’t know,” she wailed. “We didn’t know what it was. My aunt didn’t say anything. She never said much. I don’t get away so easy. I mean, I got the kids. So how would I know? I mean, it just happened I came with Jack this time. I guess I must have been a little bit nervous. I said to him … You know, Aunt Elna, she never said much. When she wrote she wasn’t feeling so well, I mean, that was a lot for her to say. But I didn’t have no idea it was cancer. I wish she’d have said … I wish … I mean …” She stopped and sucked in a dry gasp.

  Tess Rogan said, “This is Mrs. Henry. Mrs. Ames’ niece, Nona. Gloria Hudson. That right?”

  “Right,” the young woman murmured. She was beginning to cry. “Maybe that doctor don’t know what he’s doing.” She hit the back of a chair with one hand.

  “Let’s see what’s to be done, here,” Tess said.

  Nona had been holding her breath against an odor in this room, so bitter and foul that it was almost sickening. She looked around at a battlefield. Ah, poor woman! Poor-old-woman! Fighting the terror and the pain all alone! A widow! Yet how disgusting! Nona thought her chest would crack. She began to feel panicky.

  Tess Rogan moved toward the bed. “Mrs. Henry and I can help you straighten up,” she continued. “You will feel better when everything is neat.”

  “I guess so,” the woman, Gloria, said dully.

  Tess had taken hold of the bed clothing and was pulling it from the mattress. The idea of stripping the bed and laying bare the mattress put a vision of this place, bare and clean, into one’s head.

  Nona stumbled across toward the windows and began to open all of them as wide as she could.

  “You’ll want to go over the important things,” she heard Tess say to the niece. “Her valuables. Her papers.”

  “Yes,” the thin woman said, listlessly.

  Nona was able to breathe now and she could speak, so she said briskly, “Let me help you fold those blankets. We can leave them for the maid to send out.”

  “That’s right,” Tess said. “And I think some of the clothing, too.”

  They were working.

  The thin woman pulled open a top dresser drawer and stared into it. She was sniffling back her tears.

  “Now, that’s better,” Tess said. It wasn’t much better. To have stripped the tousled filthy bed was just a beginning. Tess turned toward the wardrobe closet.

  “How about the kitchen?” said Nona, brightly. She thought she would be nauseated in a moment.

  She went into the kitchen and it was, pitifully, another battleground where weakness had won, disorder was the victor. Dibs and dabs of food had been left to molder. The pitiful half cup of broth, the limp abandoned toast, rejected food without function, had turned to filth. Nona pulled herself up sharply and began to attack the dirt and confusion. She took everything out of the sink, washed it, filled it with clean water and soap powder. Action made her feel better, at once. The odor of soap was comforting.

  She could hear Tess talking calmly. “I’d take all the jewelry, don’t you think so? How about putting it in this box?”

  “Her watch,” the niece said brokenly. “And I guess her pearls. Her locket.” The voice trembled. “Look, these are my aunt and my mother—”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “I can remember when they were—”

  Tess broke in. “I think you’ll want to have these dresses cleaned. Will you give them away?”

  “Oh no. No, no. Can’t give them away. I ought to get over to that home or hospital or whatever it is. See if it’s a decent place.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Tess said. “When is your husband coming?”

  “Jack had some business. I don’t know when he’ll be through. I can’t wait …”

  “You can leave a message for him. There now, the closet looks in order.”

  “That doctor—” The voice choked. “We didn’t know. I could have come down if I’d have known. Taken her up to our house.”

  “Not now,” Tess said gently. “What about those papers? You can go through them later. Wrap them up? Ah, here’s a big envelope.”

  “I can use that,” the niece said, in quite an ordinary voice.

  Nona had the kitchen counter cleared. Air, although relucantly, had begun to creep through the opened windows. She looked into the refrigerator fearfully, but there was very little in it. She called out. “I think the maid could clean out the icebox. There isn’t a lot and it will keep.”

  “Good,” Tess said.

  The thin woman now stood in the dinette, looking over the dish cupboards into the kitchen. Nona said quickly, “Those dishes are clean and
they can drain. Let me just get that tablecloth. That look better?”

  “Yes, it does,” the niece said.

  She turned, disconsolate, numb.

  Nona followed her back into the large room.

  Tess was at the foot of the bed. “Shall we fold it up?” “Let me,” said Nona.

  She saw the thin woman’s face beginning to crumple into lines of guilt and fear and sorrow. “Would you help me?” said Nona. “Please?”

  “Oh, sure.” The woman’s face changed, and she came and together they pushed the bed up on its end and turned it into the closet and closed the doors upon it. Immediately, the room was spacious. Nona became a whirlwind. She began to yank at chairs, turning them slightly, making meaningful groups. She whisked into neatness the objects on the tops of tables. She lined up magazines. She used to call this “slicking” a room. It was a cheap way to get an effect.

  “Much better,” Tess said, admiringly.

  The thin woman was standing helplessly in the middle of the room. On the desk there was a box and a huge envelope fat with contents.

  “There now,” Tess said. “Now, you needn’t be ashamed.” The niece sighed. She went toward the desk and bent and put her hands upon the bundles she proposed to take with her. She said, “I’m scared. I can’t go—to that place—I mean, would you go with me?”

  “I’ll go with you,” Tess said, easily.

  The thin woman remained bent. “My aunt is dying,” she said. “Yes,” said Tess.

  “We didn’t know. We didn’t know what it was. My aunt didn’t say anything …”

  She was going to go around, again, that dreary way. There came a sharp tap at the door. The door opened. Nona turned.

  It was not another of the widows. It was a man. “Gloria?”

  “Oh, Jack, she’s bad,” the thin woman said to him. “She’s got cancer. She’s going to die. The doctor’s put her in a nursing home. It’ll cost, but there isn’t anything else we can do.” She went to him and lay against his chest and sobbed.

  The man was in his thirties, a hairy man with a craggy nose. He looked rather suspiciously at Tess and Nona. “What’s this? You breaking up her apartment?”

  Gloria turned her face upon his chest. “No, just straightening up. No. I can’t do that. I can’t take it away from her.”

  “She’s never coming back, is she?” the man said gravely.

  “But just the same, I can’t take it away …”

  Tess Rogan said, “These are the things your wife thinks ought to be kept somewhere safe.”

  “Yeah?” The man moved his jaw as if he shifted a cud. “Well …” He stood his wife upon her own feet, rather gently. “If you done all you got to do here, what now? We better go to this nursing home? Is that it?”

  “We’ve got to go.”

  “O.K.” He looked hard at Tess and then shot a hard glance Nona’s way. He marched into the kitchen, looked around, went to the window, pulled it down and locked it. He did the same with the dinette window, and the two windows in the big room. He looked sharply all around. He picked up the box and the fat envelope. “This all?”

  “That’s it.” Gloria was using her compact, not because she was vain but because she wished to look decent. She put it away in her purse and tried to smile. Her red-rimmed eyes fastened hungrily upon Tess Rogan. “Thanks a lot.”

  Her husband opened the door and stood, ushering the ladies out. Gloria went first, then Tess and then Nona. The husband said, “Got her key?”

  “Yes.”

  So he closed the door and firmed it with a strong decisive hand. “That’s that, I guess. Let’s go.”

  Gloria was the stronger for his strength. Now she did smile. “Thanks again,” she murmured to Tess. Then she said to Nona, vaguely, “And you, too.”

  The man did not thank either of them. He gave them a cold stare. Tess made a nodding motion of dismissal. The couple started around the bend of the hall toward the top of the stairs, he with his hand under her thin elbow and she, herself again, tense and sad, but supported.

  Oh, God, this place was full of widows! Who were not supported!

  Sans Souci was deathly still.

  But Nona found, in herself, an unexpected reaction. Now that they had been put out of that tragic place, now that they were locked out, she had energy left over. Why, she could have scrubbed …!

  Agnes Vaughn’s door burst outward. Agnes was still in her party dress. “What was it?” she asked abruptly.

  “It’s cancer,” Tess Rogan answered, quietly, promptly. “Mrs. Ames is dying.”

  Agnes stared half a moment. “I’m not surprised,” she said flatly. Then her door wagged closed in their faces.

  Tess and Nona began to walk around the corner and down the north wing. Bettina Goodenough’s door did not so much as tremble. Mrs. Braverman and Mrs. Forrest were at work. Their doors were still. No life appeared in this corridor until, down at the end, there stood Georgia Oliver leaning out of 211.

  “Ah, the poor thing! Where have they taken her?”

  Tess did not answer, so Nona found herself answering. “To some nursing home.”

  “Much the best,” said Georgia. “They’ll take care of her. Was she in pain?”

  Again, Tess did not speak. Nona said, “I’m afraid so. It’s cancer. She is dying.”

  “Ah, you mustn’t …” Georgia chided. “You can never be sure. You must never lose hope. I’m sure she’s in good hands, now.” Georgia moved a step or two nearer them. “It was distressing. I’m sorry Mrs. Fitz had to see …”

  “How is Mrs. Fitz?” asked Nona mechanically.

  “She is lying down. Robert is with her. That helps.” Georgia brightened and her mouth spread in her gentle smile. “I can go reassure her, now. It’s so much better to know.” Georgia tilted her head, still smiling. “We must take good care of Mrs. Fitz,” she said and went within.

  Nona touched her own doorknob. The unlocked door swung and she and Tess went in.

  Without discussion, each went to wash. First Tess. Then Nona, who had a compulsion to clean her face, to scrub her hands and arms to the elbow.

  Nona said, “Let’s have hot tea.” (To clean the throat of the taste of fear and loathing.)

  They sat down at the dinette table, beside the window. The patio below was darkening now. A little sunlight still fell on the flowers the far side of the fountain. Sans Souci was the same and yet it was not the same. The enemy had been here, had raided the ranks. There was a mortuary sign behind those trees.

  Nona thought of the quiet woman at the bridge table—”such a stick” the Gadabouts had called her. She cried out compulsively, “What a horrible way to come to the end! How pitiful! How disgusting!”

  “Yes it is,” said Tess Rogan.

  Downstairs Morgan Lake already felt the pall that would settle upon the building. He understood it very well. He hated the loathsome enemy as much as any. It was he who had called his own Dr. Huffman, and failing to find him, a Doctor O’Gara, when the niece had phoned down to him in such panic and dismay. It was he who had connected the doctor with the nursing home and he who had relayed the grim order for an ambulance. It was he who had felt for that strange, frightened young person, walking into such trouble as this. And he had racked his mind for the name of a woman, some woman to stand by her. The house was full of women. He would not send Rose. He knew about the party. He felt that it would be better not to stir up that wasp nest. In fact, he had rather hoped that Elna Ames would be mercifully away before the widows at the party found out what was happening. He’d thought of Mrs. Rogan, for he knew who had been invited and who not, to Georgia Oliver’s shower. So he had called her up, in Mrs. Henry’s apartment, and Tess Rogan had simply said, “I’ll go right away.”

  He did not know yet that the party had broken up at the exact wrong moment. He sat on his stool in the empty lobby and gusts of pity and horror were blowing through his heart.

  The widows of Sans Souci did, each, what she had to do to be abl
e to endure. Daisy Robinson was reading a book fast and furiously.

  The Unholy Three sat in Agnes’ apartment and ripped over the party, and all done or said there, with concentrated living human venom. Agnes Vaughn was not crazy about that Nona Henry.

  Harriet Gregory kept taking pills. An aspirin. A tranquilizer. A stimulant. Anything that might, yet, do the trick and make her feel well. She huddled in her chair, smoking one cigarette after another in a state of miserable panic, waiting for her own sensations to improve.

  Sarah Lee Cunneen and Bettina Goodenough were cleaning up after the party. Bettina was being pettish about everything. She didn’t think Georgia had been properly appreciative. It would be a long day before Bettina gave such a party again. Trouble and expense, and, really, for what? Bettina was going to think of Number One. Who else would? She did not repeat her favorite slogan, “Life’s too short.” She believed it, too well, in this moment.

  Sarah Lee agreed to everything without argument, indeed almost without attention. Her hands moved slowly, polishing glasses. Sarah Lee could not get out of her head a sense of having failed, of having somehow missed something very important.

  Nona said to Tess over the teacups, “Do you know Agnes Vaughn?” She was feeling better, as if to have looked the enemy in the face was to have done something.

  “I’ve heard of her.” Tess turned the cup of cooling tea. She seemed to be admiring it.

  “I fixed her wagon,” said Nona with satisfaction. “Did you know she’s been calling you a liar? About your trip?”

  “Has she?” Tess was mildly interested.

  “Well, I fixed that.” Nona found herself biting into the middle of a smile. “What a crew, really!” she said. “What a crew at that gathering! That Felice Paull! That Agnes Vaughn! She hasn’t a scruple to her name. She’s still trying to talk up this Mrs. Quinn, this murderess. I think she’s going to cast me in the role. She’s the liar!”

  “She may be a liar,” said Tess thoughtfully. “She’s no lie-ee, though.”