• • •
She was in their son’s room, sitting on his stripped bed and sorting school papers. The room was gradually taking on a bankrupt look. So much had been given away, thrown away, burnt. Posters peeled from the walls left their ghostly shapes. Three quart jars of pennies were gone from the shelf, where the stereo still rested, though the television was gone, donated to the Lawrence House of Correction, along with stacks of adventure comic books. The pennies she had scattered in the woods where they had last walked together. The school papers would be harder for her to discard, though she had no doubt she would do it.
Alfred Bauer waited for her to come out.
She said, “Why don’t you come in?”
It was not easy for him. The room seemed alien to him, no longer a part of the house, a taboo area fraught with sounds and silences of his son that only his wife could detect.
“Sit down,” she said, patting a place on the mattress away from the papers, but he stayed on his feet. “Do you know what I regret?” she said, and he held his breath. “I regret we didn’t donate his organs. Then parts of him would still be functioning. Breathing. Living. His heart could’ve served somebody well.”
He was uncomfortable with her voice, which stretched up into something he did not fully recognize. Her head tilted back. Her face was blank and colorless.
“The body was going to be cut up anyway. Somebody should have approached us. Asked us.”
“Somebody may have,” he offered. “We weren’t in shape to hear.”
“When he was ten, twelve, I could see into his future. I could see the shape of him at forty, at fifty. I never saw him dead.” Her hand brushed over the papers, which included high school examination booklets, grade school drawings, compositions with gold stars. “Do you want to look at any of this before I burn it?”
He shook his head slowly and spoke through dry, awkward lips. “I think we should get away for a while. Florida.”
“Is that what you think? Is that what you think we should do?”
“We need the change.”
“You look old,” she said with the lift of an eye. “All at once you look old. Do I?”
“No,” he said.
“Thank God for that. I wouldn’t want everything taken from me.”
He stooped down, crouched before her, placed his hands on her knees, which were jammed together to hold papers. There was a troubled pause. “At a time like this a man and wife should draw very close.”
“Yes, they should,” she agreed with the sympathetic start of a smile. “But it doesn’t work out that way. And actually our losses are different. Mine is Wally. Yours is Melody.”
“Harriet, please.”
“I idolized you, Alfred.” Her voice had stretched tenuously and was feather-soft, a tickle, and her hand reached out to stroke his bare head, a habit. Her fingers were familiar with every contour. “I loved you more than anything. The others, Eve James, her kind, never mattered. Darling women, but playthings. Melody was different.”
Sunlight paced itself into the room, stopping just short of them. Still hunkered down, he felt a strain in his back from muscles losing their resiliency. He had not worked out in days nor plunged into the pool for his customary laps.
Harriet said, “You led her on in a way that was real. She actually thought you might leave me for her. For a time, you toyed with the idea. Do you deny it?”
“I never would’ve done it.”
“You were so jealous when the cop took her over and so relieved when he dumped her. She loved him like she loved you. She couldn’t help loving people, could she, Alfred? It was how she kept going, poor thing. You knew that, we both did, because Stickney told us. He said she was searching for saviors and saints. Instead she got us. It wasn’t what you’d call an orgy, was it, Alfred, simply an extravagance.”
“Why are we talking about her?”
“You hurt me so.”
His eyes flickered. “You think you didn’t hurt me when you put her and our son together?”
“Wally needed help and you needed hurting. It was really as simple as that.” Her smile was dry, placid, ambiguous. Her hand, which lacked warmth, slipped from his head to his shoulder, and her presence seemed to gather around him, to imprison him. She said, “If you hadn’t fallen in love with her, I’d still have him.”
• • •
Claire Fellows, an early bloom and a fast fade in her youth, was quite unremarkable in her middle years: pale, plain, and quiet. She was dressed in muted colors, which tended to blend her into the background when no one was talking to her. Which was the case now. She stood against lush drapes in a private room of the Andover Inn and watched the other ladies mill and chatter over crystal glasses of white wine. The occasion was the annual meeting of the December Club, dedicated to preserving the town’s more genteel traditions and instilling proper manners in the children of newcomers, most of whom were unaware of the club’s existence. Its first president was Claire Fellows’s maternal grandmother, a fact many members had forgotten.
She did not care for the wine, a rather bland Chablis, but sipped it anyway because it made her appear occupied and not in the least mindful that she was being ignored. Then quite suddenly, with a start, she heard her name uttered from the swirl of sounds and leaned expectantly into the voice, hiding her feelings the instant she saw the face.
“How nice,” she said. “How lovely.”
They kissed, expertly missing each other’s mouth.
Paige Gately’s scent held a cinnamon quality. The tasteful accessories worn with her fitted navy suit matched the silver glint of her hair, every soft curl magically in place.
“We seldom see each other anymore,” Claire moaned.
“I know,” Paige said. “A shame.”
“We must rectify it. My goodness, how the years pass, and you’ve been so busy, so industrious. I know because Ed keeps me in touch. I can’t imagine why you wanted to buy that motel, especially after what happened there, but I suppose you have some marvelous plans for it. You were always so clever. Remember us at Abbot? I was always rather frightened and silly, and you always had a head on your shoulders. You were always one up on me. You used to tease me something terrible, do you remember?”
Paige did, quite well. She said, “No.”
“I was so shy and awkward in class, a miracle I graduated, but things came so easy for you.”
Conversations near them grew louder. Three women to their left, one wearing white-textured stockings, were discussing European vacations in relation to the exchange rate of the dollar. Paige, who had brought with her a full wineglass, took a careful sip. “You forget, Claire, I was there on a scholarship. I didn’t have your money.”
“But for you that wasn’t essential. For me it rather was, don’t you think? I lacked your toughness and drive. Nothing fazed you, I remember that. Not a very good Chablis, is it?”
“I’ve had better.”
“Those days seem so distant now, so idyllic in my mind. Does it bother you, Paige?”
“Does what bother me?”
“Growing older. I’ve often wondered if death is final. I sometimes believe it is. Yet nature seems to argue against it. My flowers vanish in the fall but pop right up again in the spring. So what about us? Do we die or just hide for a while?”
“We die.”
“You speak with such certainty, it’s so like you.” Claire sighed deeply as if her admiration were boundless, their girlhood friendship never in doubt. “Odd,” she said, “you don’t remember teasing me. You were jolly good at it. Others thought you were jealous because I was prettier than you, but I always thought you were prettier.”
Paige smiled. “I’m sure you were right.”
“You always got whatever you went after. Like the highest grades. Every exam you had those little crib sheets up your sleeve. I bet you thought I didn’t know.”
Paige smiled again, her reserve inviolate.
“Remember when you decided yo
u wanted Biff and not Ed. I was so relieved. So grateful to you. Of course it hasn’t been an easy marriage, but no marriage is. And you had your problems with dear Biff, so handsome, wasn’t he?”
“A doll.”
“What did he die of? I was never quite certain.”
“Everything.” Paige tapped the brilliant stem of her glass with a glossy nail and shifted her eyes elsewhere.
“Are you looking for someone to rescue you?”
“Don’t be silly. I was admiring Mrs. Bledsoe’s white stockings.”
“They are nice, but I don’t have the legs for them. You do.” There was a significant pause, a kind of gathering of breath and resolve. “May I make a minor criticism, Paige? I don’t like your perfume.”
“Men seem to.”
“Yes, I know.”
They went silent, each listening to the other’s breathing. Paige’s was steady and calm. Claire’s was not. She sloshed about what little Chablis remained in her glass.
“Are you going to throw that at me?”
Claire’s eyelids fluttered, and her wan face flared with color and heat. “I very much want to. God, how I want to!” She weaved slightly. “But I don’t dare.”
“Of course you don’t. Nothing changes.”
Mrs. Bledsoe, the club’s outgoing president, a perfect rightness about her, strode toward them with eyes full of concern. “Is anything the matter?”
“Everything’s fine,” Paige said, smiling nicely. “Mrs. Fellows is simply having one of her hot flashes.”
• • •
The season’s first snowfall came during the night, the accumulation a couple of inches. In the morning Ralph Roselli in a black overcoat and Florsheim shoes was shoveling the graded walk leading down from Rita O’Dea’s house. A car was parked on the street, engine idling, a solitary face behind the windshield. Roselli had not seen the car before, but instinct told him everything. When he reached the bottom of the walk, he leaned the shovel against the massive post of the mailbox and shuffled over to the car, driver’s side, where the window was halfway lowered. He spoke through the space. “Something you want?”
“Beautiful neighborhood,” the driver said. “One of the loveliest in town. When I was a kid, nothing was here. Just woods.”
“You ain’t a kid anymore.”
“The fellow who developed this area had a little bit of taste, not much, but enough. Not like the guys doing it today.”
“You get all kinds.”
“You don’t live here, do you?”
“I visit.”
“Do I know you?”
“As much as I know you,” Roselli said.
The front door of Rita O’Dea’s house opened, and her great head of black hair could be seen. Her voice echoed down through the crisp blue air. “Who is it, Ralph?”
“The cop.”
“I thought so. Tell him to come up.”
“You hear her?”
“Hard not to.” Sergeant Dawson shoved his door open and thrust a leg out. “You know, I’ve always been more concerned about her than about Alfred Bauer.”
Roselli said, “You got good priorities.”
Inside the house, trailing Roselli, Dawson cast an admiring eye on an opulent variety of furniture and hanging ferns. The room he was ushered into was bright from a wall that was all window, through which the outdoors flowed in as if donated by the town. He avoided stepping on a white animal pelt. He did not want to get it dirty, though Roselli tracked over it without a trace. He heard a thump. Rita O’Dea had just dropped into a cushioned chair. She had on one of her more colorful caftans, beaded and braided. “We know each other, don’t we?” she said. “Just that we’ve never been introduced.”
“I’m Sergeant Dawson.”
“I’m Rita. How about I call you Sonny? Take his coat, Ralph.”
“I’ll keep it on.”
“You want coffee, pastry, or something? The pastry’s from the North End.”
“No thank you.”
Roselli said to her, “You want, I’ll stay. Otherwise I’ll go get snow tires put on your car.”
“I’m safe with Sonny. He’s an officer of the law.”
Roselli left. She gestured, and Dawson dropped into a chair near her, his coat open. He could see himself in the gigantic window, where he was part of the snowscape, a stain in the glass. She smiled.
“You here for a reason?”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
“That’s as good a reason as any,” she said. “I always meant to send you a thank-you note, but I never got around to it. I’m talking about Melody, time you could’ve busted her. ’Course if I was you, a man, I’d have given her a break too.”
“That was a mistake,” he said quietly.
“I wouldn’t brood about it. She was one of those girls too beautiful for the world. Actually, you look at me close, that was my problem. Difference is I put on weight. Protection. Now, all these years gone, it don’t matter.”
Dawson was silent.
She said, “A man can’t stand that, you know. A woman being too beautiful. Like an insult to him. Same thing if she’s got too much of a brain.”
He stayed silent.
She said, with a feast of feeling, “ ’Course I had extra protection. A brother. That’s better than a husband. Better than a knife. Did you know my brother?”
“I never had the pleasure. Naturally I heard of him.”
“You’d have liked him. He was a man’s man.”
Dawson again glanced at himself in the glare of the window. He made out a white cat picking its way carefully through the wet and gradually becoming one with the snow, a trick he decided only nature could perform so delicately.
“I feel we can talk, Sonny. Do you mind me calling you Sonny? I can call you Sergeant, you really want me to.”
“Sonny’s good.”
“I like to talk.”
“I like to listen,” he said.
“Sign of a smart man. I knew I was reading you right. I’m going to tell you something you might’ve had your doubts about. I wanted the Silver Bell run straight. Dumb of me to let Bauer do different.”
Dawson stared at her skeptically. “I don’t know you well, but I can’t picture you doing something you don’t want to do.”
She laughed, swishing back her mass of hair. “Maybe I’m a romantic. In the back of my mind I knew he didn’t want to put girls in there just for business reasons. He wanted an excuse to keep Melody near him. Pardon my language, Sonny, but he had a bigger hard-on for her than you did. Dangerous business if you’re married to a woman like Harriet. You know Harriet?”
Dawson gave a faint nod. “I’ve met her.”
“I was a kid, Sonny, my brother took me to operas. I didn’t want to go, he made me. He didn’t want me to be a dumbbell. He took me to a play once, Greek thing. Medea. You know who she was?”
Dawson gave no sign he knew or did not know.
“Harriet could play the part.” She shifted in her chair, sinking back, the white of her legs appearing through the slits of her caftan in smooth rich slices, like cake. “The only woman I’ve had to handle with kid gloves.”
Dawson felt a coldness, as if the outdoors were truly coming in. “What’s the message?”
“Time will tell.”
The coldness crept deep. “You lied to me. You weren’t being a romantic. You’ve got a brain like your brother’s. You make things happen.”
“Sometimes,” she said softly, “I just let things happen.”
“You want it all.”
“I always did. It’s how I got fat, Tony used to tell me.”
He shivered. “What I don’t understand is why you’ve told me these things.”
“Goes back to what I was telling you. I came here to live clean, quiet, be respectable. I’m joining the December Club. Mrs. Gately don’t know it yet, she’s sponsoring me. I got to make a note of that, remind myself to tell her.” She heaved out a smile while shifting again in h
er chair. Her legs were as white as milk. “You see, Sonny, sad to say, I belong in this town now more than you do. I got the bigger investment.”
“Terms of money only.”
“What else counts?” she said, and there was a long silence from him, an odd expression on his face. “You tired, Sonny? You angry about anything? You shouldn’t be. I’m a fair woman takes care of her friends. One of these days I’m going to need somebody new to look after me. Poor Ralph, you know, isn’t going to live forever.” She patted herself under the left breast. “Bad ticker.”
“Then he shouldn’t be shoveling.”
“Someone has to do it.”
“Who is he, or what is he?”
“He was my brother’s bodyguard.”
“Some bodyguard.”
“He had no choice. Sometimes you don’t.” Her face all of a sudden went hard, as if she kept a deep accounting of wrongs perpetrated against her. Then, matter-of-factly, she said, “Hit came from high above, like God did it.”
“You offering me a job?”
“No,” she said, “but it’s something for us to think about.”
“I don’t shovel.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t have to.”
He pulled himself to his feet, his legs tired where least expected, in the back of the calves, as if he had been running. His jaw felt heavy.
“I’m scared to death to get on jetliners. Maybe you could do that for me. Run errands. You carry a piece. I could use that too. Play your cards right, you could become invaluable.”
“I don’t like your humor, Mrs. O’Dea. I don’t much like you either.”
“I grow on people,” she said, watching him close his coat and move toward the glass wall as if he could step through it. “If you’re leaving, that’s the wrong way. Makes you look like you’re coming in.” Her smile, large and indulgent, swelled up at him in the glass. “Something I meant to ask you. Last August I guess it was, maybe September, Melody wanted to know if I’d teach her to cook. Said it was for you. Next time I saw her she said she didn’t want to learn anymore. How do you figure that?”
Love Nest Page 21
