Seventeen Widows of Sans Souci

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Georgia Oliver!

  What was this? What happened?

  Well!

  There was so much to talk about, nobody had a minute to get anything done. The widows nibbled leftovers, and met and parted, and the house boiled along.

  Kelly Shane ran the desk by day, modeling his behavior after the courteous ways of Morgan Lake.

  That Thursday, Winnie Lake had gone back east with Liz Patrick. With fond farewells for Nona Henry. But farewells. The widows, in their feverish state, barely noticed that she had gone.

  Nona Henry recognized both her freedom and her loss.

  Chapter 37

  Dodie and Si were due on Friday, in the late afternoon. Nona was not to go to the airport. About three o’clock, Kelly Shane phoned her. “Mrs. Henry? Mrs. Gray is here.”

  “I’ll be right down,” Nona said.

  She had promised to help Kelly Shane out, if ever he needed her. Where had she got this responsibility?

  Nona walked down the stairs and there in the lobby stood a woman. A woman in a gray suit, with a hat on, and a small train case in her hand.

  “This is Mrs. Henry, Mrs. Gray,” Kelly said. He was doing very well, really. His slight nervousness was apparent to Nona but not, she felt sure, to this new tenant.

  “I’ll take you around to your apartment, Mrs. Gray,” said Nona pleasantly. “We are a bit shorthanded. Our manager is in the hospital, I am sorry to say. I am Nona Henry. I live here myself.” • “I am Victoria Gray,” said the newcomer, unbending just a little.

  “Did you have a pleasant journey?” Nona asked, leading her. Leading her down the north wing, first floor, past Harriet Gregory’s sad door, past Ida Milbank’s lair, to the door across from Sarah Lee Cunneen, of the generous heart.

  “I flew,” explained Mrs. Gray. “Most of my luggage was sent by express. The … er … man at the desk says it has come.”

  “Then it has come,” said Nona reassuringly. “Here we are. III.”

  She unlocked the door and let the new tenant by. III was bearing the full flood of afternoon sun as it was going down the western sky.

  “Very … cheerful,” said Mrs. Gray. She moved quickly. She was tall and thin, and quite smart. She peered around the half-wall, stepped far enough to see into the kitchen and made a small grimace.

  “I rented this, sight unseen,” she said to Nona. “I’m from Chicago. You live here? Please, tell me frankly … how is this place?”

  “Are you a widow, Mrs. Gray?” asked Nona gently.

  “Yes. Why yes, I am. My husband died, five years ago.”

  “This is not the newest building, as you can see,” said Nona. (Mrs. Gray, she estimated, must be in her fifties.) “But it is kept clean. The maids are fairly efficient. It is convenient, especially if you don’t drive a car. The patio is pleasant. What more can I tell you?”

  (I could tell you plenty, Nona thought.)

  She rather liked the looks of this one.

  Victoria Gray wore a slight crease between her brows. “I took it for a month. I can try, I suppose,” said she. “Thank you.”

  Nona said, “There are many women alone in this part of the world.”

  “I can imagine …”

  “There are seventeen widows, here in Sans Souci,” said Nona, smiling.

  Victoria Gray looked at her with blue-green eyes. “I wintered in Florida, last year,” she said. She knew.

  “Well, I hope you will be comfortable here,” said Nona courteously. “Excuse me, now?”

  Seventeen. Was that right?

  Going through the corridors, Nona counted up. Yes.

  Agnes Vaughn. Felice Paull. Ida Milbank. Three.

  Mrs. Fitz, Georgia Oliver, the two Gadabouts. Four.

  Harriet Gregory. Daisy Robinson. And Leila Hull, returned. Three more.

  That’s ten.

  Then, Marie Gardner. (And how is she, in there, poor soul?) Oh yes, Joan Braverman and Kitty Forrest. Three more.

  That’s thirteen.

  Tess, of course. And myself. Two more. Makes fifteen.

  Poor Elna Ames is gone, but Mrs. Victoria Gray is with us.

  Sixteen.

  Who else? Oh yes, Caroline Buff. One always tended to forget her. She was apart, somehow. Detached? Or attached elsewhere? Anyhow …

  Seventeen.

  Would Joan Braverman get another job?

  Would Ida Milbank be arrested, one of these days?

  Would Leila Hull stay sober?

  Would Marie Gardner survive, in there?

  What would Agnes Vaughn invent to explain Rose Lake?

  Who would move in when Tess and Georgia went away?

  What would become of those two? “We’ll change each other,” Tess had said cheerfully. (Nona was not jealous of Georgia Oliver. Which was odd.)

  What would become of Nona Henry?

  Nona went up to her own rooms to watch for the taxi.

  What would become of Nona Henry?

  There were all those possibilities still. She could sight-see, gad about. She could go in for good works. Or study and read. Or go back where she had been, at least to the place.

  Become?

  Nona was sitting at the window looking down over the patio in a state of waiting, quite relaxed. Her thoughts moved easily. What is the meaning of the word “become”? Doesn’t it signify to have arrived?

  So be here? Be now. Where space crosses time.

  And be this, she thought with an extra pulse of her heart. This, just existence, is the third dimension which defines.

  She experienced that settling, the sense of being tucked in snug to the whole world, with as much right to be there as a mountain or a flea.

  There was something delicious about the mood or the vision, a taste of rest and of peace. Then, like a line from a fourth dimension, piercing sweet, came a stab of something that was restful and also invigorating, peaceful but at the same time thrilling. A touching off of a deep cry from her center. How wonderful! How marvelous! How wonderful!

  It faded, quickly. Nona had not known that she had been stabbed to tears until she felt the moisture drying on her cheek.

  It was gone. She would not think about it or try to remember or recapture. Whatever the vision meant, it had been something given. She did not need to understand.

  After a while, she saw the taxi and went flying down.

  “Dodie! Ah, good to see you, darling! And Si!” Nona embraced her own, knowing, as they did not know, that the eyes of Sans Souci were seeing all.

  She walked them through the patio, arms in theirs.

  “Mother, you look wonderful!” Dodie said. “But what happened to your hand?”

  “Cut it. Stupidly,” said Nona gaily. “It’s fine.”

  “You look just great, Mom,” said Si.

  “Well, I am so doggoned glad to see you!” Nona used Val’s word. She was feeling many pangs of love. She whirled them inside, introduced them, gaily, to Kelly Shane but without stopping took the stairs, let them in to 208.

  “This isn’t bad,” Si said. “Up to your old tricks with flowers, eh?”

  Dodie was hugging her mother, again.

  “Sit down. Sit down. You can stay right here,” said Nona. “All nonsense about a hotel. If you’re here so briefly. I have two beds in there, for you. And I can do nicely on the sofa.”

  “Mother, we wouldn’t think of making you sleep on the sofa.”

  “I shall sleep on the sofa if I please,” said Nona saucily. “What’s so bad about that?” (Even a bathroom floor is possible.) “How is the baby?”

  (Her arms ached for the baby, and God bless the darling baby!)

  So they told her how the baby was.

  When the chatter died a bit, Nona said, “One thing I want to get straightened out, right quick. About those bonds.”

  She could tell that Dodie flinched.

  “Val promised them to you, I know,” said Nona.

  “Yes, he did, Mother.” Stiffly.

  “I know this, too,�
� Nona went on. “It was my fault that I wasn’t told all about it. He knew I’d be stuffy. And I would have been, too. There wasn’t time to talk me around. Well, people get themselves lied to, you know. But I understand, now.”

  Si settled his length in a chair and all of it seemed to sigh. A smile broke on his good-looking young face. “Let me tell you how we’re doing at the store, Mum.”

  “I want to hear.”

  “I want to hear about this place,” interposed Dodie. Her female eye had been checking. “This is kind of … old, isn’t it, Mother?”

  “It suits us,” said Nona. “There are sixteen other widows living here.”

  She saw Dodie’s body ripple and flinch. (Whatever do they do with themselves? Dodie would be thinking. How pitiful!)

  Nona realized that, to her, Sans Souci wore a different aspect. To her, it seemed a roaring hive: women alive, women who hoped, women who despaired, women who clung, women who fled, women who were going senile, suffering, dying … and women who were still seeking, yearning, learning … even a few who were being. (Agnes Vaughn, she thought with a little shock, is herself!)

  “What kind of widows?” Dodie asked.

  “All kinds,” said Nona. “Now tell me about the store.”

  Nona took them out to dinner, to a nice place (not Hunt’s). They went late, after all the chattering, and Dodie said she had a bit of a headache, from waiting too long for her meal. Nona, who felt fine, noted how her own routine had been loosened and lost. (Odd? Not at all.) “I’m sorry, dear. I should have hurried.”

  “It’s all right. You look like a million,” sighed Dodie. “You really do. Have you lost weight?”

  “A pound or two,” said Nona. (No need to explain about that long fast in that bathroom. One told the truth and nothing-but-the-truth but, when you came to the whole truth, who could know it and tell it? And there was no use upsetting conventional-minded people.) “Mmmmmm,” said Nona, “I’m hungry now. Shall we have wine with dinner? Why not?”

  “I guess Southern California agrees with you,” said Dodie. “But what are your plans?”

  “Why should I have plans?” said Nona amiably.

  “Well, I …” Dodie’s eye sought Si’s eye. This was odd! “You really want to stay here?” asked Dodie.

  “Oh, for a while,” said Nona. “Until a … valuable friend goes away, at least. Then I do want to go see Dane Mercier and small Milly. I must do that.”

  “Mother …”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “What about Dane’s new wife?”

  “What about her?”

  “You said … I mean, you always said …”

  (How the young long for consistency, thought Nona.)

  The waiter brought the wine.

  “You always said,” resumed Dodie, “that you didn’t think you wanted to meet Milly’s stepmother.”

  “Well, I’m going to meet her,” said Nona, “and see what’s what. Oh, I’ll try to keep my mouth shut, and I may …” Her eyes twinkled. “Or, I may not,” she admitted. “Perhaps I tend to be bossy.”

  “That’s not so,” chided Dodie.

  Nona flicked her a glance. She put her left hand on Dodie’s hand. A caress. For no reason. She lifted her fork over the green and yellow loveliness of lettuce. “Isn’t this delightful?” she said, looking around the restaurant.

  (At the same time she was noting the current fashions of delight. Very dim light. A rotisserie. A piano-bar. She thought, What a pity to blow up such a civilization! In some ways, it is so adorably absurd!)

  “Mother, you said …” Dodie was speaking earnestly. (What a tense young woman she was. Well, of course, being young …)

  “You did say it might be less painful if you didn’t know and didn’t see how some other woman was raising our Milly’s baby.” “Did I say such a silly thing?” Nona speared the lettuce.

  (It was ridiculous! A piece of wide grass, coated with possibly a dozen spices, swimming in oil, plus Roquefort cheese!)

  “How could it ever be better not to see?” said Nona gaily. “Look at this innocent lettuce! How absurd … and how delicious!”

  “Mother …” Dodie said, nervously.

  (Nona thought, Why, she doesn’t know me. She has never known me. Well, I can’t help that now. She’ll have to get to know me as we go.)

  “To you,” said her son-in-law, lifting his wine.

  Nona looked at this young man. She didn’t know him, but the communication was shocking. Of all people, he …! How odd! But how marvelous! Why, you just never could tell who would suddenly understand you. Or what was going to happen, in the next second of time, as long as you were alive!

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1959 by Charlotte Armstrong

  copyright renewed 1987 by Jeremy B. Lewi, Peter A. Lewi, and Jacquelin Lewi Bynagta. The four lines from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot are reproduced with the permission of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, and Faber and Faber Ltd., London.

  ISBN: 978-1-4532-4571-2

  This edition published in 2012 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media

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