by Lisa Tuttle
Ellen watched her aunt drop the whole canister into the garbage can.
‘Aunt May, is money a problem? I mean, if you’re staying here because you can’t afford – ’
‘Bless you, no.’ May sat down at the table beside her niece. ‘I have some investments and enough money in the bank for my own needs. And this house is my own, too. I bought it when Victor retired, but he didn’t stay long enough to help me enjoy it.’
In a sudden rush of sympathy, Ellen leaned over and would have taken her frail aunt in her arms, but May fluttered her hand in a go-away motion, and Ellen drew back.
‘With Victor dead, some of the joy went out of fixing it up. Which is why it still looks much the same old wreck it was when I bought it. This property was a real steal because nobody wanted the house. Nobody but me and Victor.’ May cocked her head suddenly and smiled. ‘And maybe you? What would you say if I left this house to you when I die?’
‘Aunt May, please don’t – ’
‘Nonsense. Who better? Unless you can’t stand the sight of it, but I’m telling you the property is worth something, at least. If the house is too far gone with bugs and rot you can pull it down and put up something you and Danny like better.’
‘It’s very generous of you, Aunt May. I just don’t like to hear you talk about dying.’
‘No? It doesn’t bother me. But if it disturbs you, then we’ll say no more about it. Shall I show you your room?’
Leading the way slowly up the stairs, leaning heavily on the banister and pausing often in her climb, May explained, ‘I don’t go upstairs anymore. I moved my bedroom downstairs because the climb was too much trouble.’
The second floor smelled strongly of sea-damp and mold.
‘This room has a nice view of the sea,’ May said. ‘I thought you might like it.’ She paused in the doorway, gesturing to Ellen to follow. ‘There are clean linens in the hall closet.’
Ellen looked into the room. It was sparely furnished with bed, dressing table, and straight-backed chair. The walls were an institutional green and without decoration. The mattress was bare, and there were no curtains at the French doors.
‘Don’t go out on the balcony – I’m afraid parts of it have quite rotted away,’ May cautioned.
‘I noticed,’ Ellen said.
‘Well, some parts go first, you know. I’ll leave you alone now, dear. I’m feeling a bit tired myself. Why don’t we both just nap until dinner time?’
Ellen looked at her aunt and felt her heart twist with sorrow at the weariness on that pale, wrinkled face. The small exertion of climbing upstairs had told on her. Her arms trembled slightly, and she looked grey with weariness.
Ellen hugged her. ‘Oh, Aunt May,’ she said softly. ‘I’m going to be a help to you, I promise. You just take it easy. I’ll look after you.’
May pulled away from her niece’s arms, nodding. ‘Yes, dear, it’s very nice to have you here. We welcome you.’ She turned and walked away down the hall.
Alone, Ellen suddenly realised her own exhaustion. She sank down on the bare mattress and surveyed her bleak little room, her mind a jumble of problems old and new.
She had never known her Aunt May well enough to become close to her – this sudden visit was a move born of desperation. Wanting to get away from her husband for a while, wanting to punish him for a recently discovered infidelity, she had cast about for a place she could escape to – a place she could afford, and a place where Danny would not be able to find her. Aunt May’s lonely house on the coast had seemed the best possibility for a week’s hiding. She had expected peace, boredom, regret – but she had never expected to find a dying woman. It was a whole new problem that almost cast her problems with Danny into insignificance.
Suddenly she felt very lonely. She wished Danny were with her, to comfort her. She wished she had not sworn to herself not to call him for at least a week.
But she would call her father, she decided. Should she warn him against telling Danny? She wasn’t sure – she hated letting her parents know her marriage was in trouble. Still, if Danny tried to find her by calling them, they would know something was wrong.
She’d call her father tonight. Definitely. He’d come out here to see his sister – he’d take charge, get her to a hospital, find a doctor with a miracle cure. She was certain of it.
But right now she was suddenly, paralyzingly tired. She stretched out on the bare mattress. She would get the sheets and make it up properly later, but right now she would just close her eyes, just close her eyes and rest for a moment . . .
It was dark when Ellen woke, and she was hungry.
She sat on the edge of the bed, feeling stiff and disoriented. The room was chilly and smelled of mildew. She wondered how long she had slept.
Nothing happened when she hit the light switch on the wall. So she groped her way out of the room and along the dark passage toward the dimly perceived stairs. The steps creaked loudly beneath her feet. She could see a light at the bottom of the stairs, from the kitchen.
‘Aunt May?’
The kitchen was empty, the light a fluorescent tube above the stove. Ellen had the feeling that she was not alone. Someone was watching. Yet when she turned, there was nothing behind her but the undisturbed darkness of the hall.
She listened for a moment to the creakings and moanings of the old house, and to the muffled sounds of sea and wind from outside. No human sound in all of that, yet the feeling persisted that if she listened hard enough, she would catch a voice . . .
She could make out another dim light from the other end of the hall, behind the stairs, and she walked toward it. Her shoes clacked loudly on the bare wooden floor of the back hall.
It was a nightlight that had attracted her attention, and near it she saw that a door stood ajar. She reached out and pushed it farther open. She heard May’s voice, and she stepped into the room.
‘I can’t feel my legs at all,’ May said. ‘No pain in them, no feeling at all. But they still work for me, somehow. I was afraid that once the feeling went they’d be useless to me. But it’s not like that at all. But you knew that; you told me it would be like this.’ She coughed, and there was the sound in the dark room of a bed creaking. ‘Come here, there’s room.’
‘Aunt May?’
Silence – Ellen could not even hear her aunt breathing. Finally May said, ‘Ellen? Is that you?’
‘Yes, of course. Who did you think it was?’
‘What? Oh, I expect I was dreaming.’ The bed creaked again.
‘What was that you were saying about your legs?’
More creaking sounds. ‘Hmmm? What’s that, dear?’ The voice of a sleeper struggling to stay awake.
‘Never mind,’ Ellen said. ‘I didn’t realize you’d gone to bed. I’ll talk to you in the morning. Good night.’
‘Good night, dear.’
Ellen backed out of the dark, stifling bedroom, feeling confused.
Aunt May must have been talking in her sleep. Or perhaps, sick and confused, she was hallucinating. But it made no sense to think – as Ellen, despite herself, was thinking – that Aunt May had been awake and had mistaken Ellen for someone else, someone she expected a visit from, someone else in the house.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs, not far above her head, sent Ellen running forward. But the stairs were dark and empty, and straining her eyes toward the top, Ellen could see nothing. The sound must have been just another product of this dying house, she thought.
Frowning, unsatisfied with her own explanation, Ellen went back into the kitchen. She found the pantry well stocked with canned goods and made herself some soup. It was while she was eating it that she heard the footsteps again – this time seemingly from the room above her head.
Ellen stared up at the ceiling. If someone was really walking around up there, he was making no attempt to be cautious. B
ut she couldn’t believe that the sound was anything but footsteps: someone was upstairs.
Ellen set her spoon down, feeling cold. The weighty creaking continued.
Suddenly the sounds overhead stopped. The silence was unnerving, giving Ellen a vision of a man crouched down, his head pressed against the floor as he listened for some response from her.
Ellen stood up, rewarding her listener with the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. She went to the cabinet on the wall beside the telephone – and there, on a shelf with the phone book, Band-Aids, and light bulbs was a flashlight, just as in her father’s house.
The flashlight worked, and the steady beam of light cheered her. Remembering the darkness of her room, Ellen also took a light bulb before closing the cabinet and starting upstairs.
Opening each door as she came to it, Ellen found a series of unfurnished rooms, bathrooms, and closets. She heard no more footsteps and found no sign of anyone or anything that could have made them. Gradually the tension drained out of her, and she returned to her own room after taking some sheets from the linen closet.
After installing the light bulb and finding that it worked, Ellen closed the door and turned to make up the bed. Something on the pillow drew her attention: examining it more closely, she saw that it seemed to be a small pile of sawdust. Looking up the wall, she saw that a strip of wooden molding was riddled with tiny holes, leaking the dust. She wrinkled her nose in distaste: termites. She shook the pillow vigorously and stuffed it into a case, resolving to call her father first thing in the morning. May could not go on living in a place like this.
Sun streaming through the uncurtained window woke her early. She drifted toward consciousness to the cries of seagulls and the all-pervasive smell of the sea.
She got up, shivering from the dampness which seemed to have crept into her bones, and dressed quickly. She found her aunt in the kitchen, sitting at the table sipping a cup of tea.
‘There’s hot water on the stove,’ May said by way of greeting.
Ellen poured herself a cup of tea and joined her aunt at the table.
‘I’ve ordered some groceries,’ May said. ‘They should be here soon, and we can have toast and eggs for breakfast.’
Ellen looked at her aunt and saw that a dying woman shared the room with her. In the face of that solemn, unarguable fact, she could think of nothing to say. So they sat in silence broken only by the sipping of tea, until the doorbell rang.
‘Would you let him in dear?’ May asked.
‘Shall I pay him?’
‘Oh, no, he doesn’t ask for that. Just let him in.’
Wondering, Ellen opened the door on a strongly built young man holding a brown paper grocery bag in his arms. She put out her arms rather hesitantly to receive it, but he ignored her and walked into the house. He set the bag down in the kitchen and began to unload it. Ellen stood in the doorway watching, noticing that he knew where everything went.
He said nothing to May, who seemed scarcely aware of his presence, but when everything had been put away, he sat down at the table in Ellen’s place. He tilted his head on one side and eyed her. ‘You must be the niece,’ he said.
Ellen said nothing. She didn’t like the way he looked at her. His dark, nearly black eyes seemed to be without pupils – hard eyes, without depths. And he ran those eyes up and down her body, judging her. He smiled now at her silence and turned to May. ‘A quiet one,’ he said.
May stood up, holding her empty cup.
‘Let me,’ Ellen said quickly, stepping forward. May handed her the cup and sat down again, still without acknowledging the young man’s presence. ‘Would you like some breakfast?’ Ellen asked.
May shook her head. ‘You eat what you like, dear. I don’t feel much like eating . . . there doesn’t seem to be much point.’
‘Oh, Aunt May, you really should have something.’
‘A piece of toast, then.’
‘I’d like some eggs,’ said the stranger. He stretched lazily in his chair. ‘I haven’t had my breakfast yet.’
Ellen looked at May, wanting some clue. Was this presumptuous stranger her friend? A hired man? She didn’t want to be rude to him if May didn’t wish it. But May was looking into the middle distance, indifferent.
Ellen looked at the man. ‘Are you waiting to be paid for the groceries?’
The stranger smiled, a hard smile that revealed a set of even teeth. ‘I bring food to your aunt as a favour. So she won’t have to go to the trouble of getting it for herself, in her condition.’
Ellen stared at him a moment longer, waiting in vain for a sign from her aunt, and then turned her back on them and went to the stove. She wondered why this man was helping her aunt – was she really not paying him? He didn’t strike her as the sort for disinterested favours.
‘Now that I’m here,’ Ellen said, getting eggs and butter out of the refrigerator, ‘you don’t have to worry about my aunt. I can run errands for her.’
‘I’ll have two fried eggs,’ he said. ‘I like the yolks runny.’
Ellen glared at him, but realised he wasn’t likely to leave just because she refused to cook his eggs – he’d probably cook them himself. And he had bought the food.
But – her small revenge – she overcooked the eggs and gave him the slightly scorched piece of toast.
When she sat down she looked at him challengingly. ‘I’m Ellen Morrow,’ she said.
He hesitated, then drawled, ‘You can call me Peter.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ she said sarcastically. He smiled his unpleasant smile again, and Ellen felt him watching her eat. As soon as she could she excused herself, telling her aunt she was going to call her father.
That drew the first response of the morning from May. She put out a hand, drawing it back just shy of touching Ellen. ‘Please don’t. There’s nothing he can do for me and I don’t want him charging down here for no good reason.’
‘But, Aunt May, you’re his only sister – I have to tell him, and of course he’ll want to do something for you.’
‘The only thing he can do for me now is to leave me alone.’
Unhappily, Ellen thought that her aunt was right – still, her father must be told. In order to be able to speak freely, she left the kitchen and went back to her aunt’s bedroom where she felt certain there would be an extension.
There was, and she dialled her parents’ number. The ringing went on and on. She gave up, finally, and phoned her father’s office. The secretary told her he’d gone fishing, and would be unreachable for at least two days. She promised to give him a message if he called, or when he returned.
So it had to wait. Ellen walked back towards the kitchen, her crêpe-soled shoes making almost no sound on the floor.
She heard her aunt’s voice, ‘You didn’t come to me last night. I waited and waited. Why didn’t you come?’
Ellen froze.
‘You said you would stay with me,’ May continued. Her voice had a whining note that made Ellen uncomfortable. ‘You promised you would stay and look after me.’
‘The girl was in the house,’ Peter said. ‘I didn’t know if I should.’
‘What does she matter? She doesn’t matter. Not while I’m here, she doesn’t. This is still my house and I . . . I belong to you, don’t I? Don’t I, dearest?’
Then there was a silence. As quietly as she could, Ellen hurried away and left the house.
The sea air, damp and warm though it was, was a relief after the smoldering closeness of the house. But Ellen, taking in deep breaths, still felt sick.
They were lovers, her dying aunt and that awful young man.
That muscular, hard-eyed, insolent stranger was sleeping with her frail, elderly aunt. The idea shocked and revolted her, but she had no doubt of it – the brief conversation, her aunt’s voice, could not have been more plain.
&nbs
p; Ellen ran down the sandy, weedy incline toward the narrow beach, wanting to lose her knowledge. She didn’t know how she could face her aunt now, how she could stay in a house where –
She heard Danny’s voice, tired, contemptuous, yet still caring, ‘You’re so naïve about sex, Ellen. You think everything’s black and white. You’re such a child.’
Ellen started to cry, thinking of Danny, wishing she had not run away from him. What would he say to her about this? That her aunt had a right to pleasure, too, and age was just another prejudice.
But what about him? Ellen wondered. What about Peter – what did he get out of it? He was using her aunt in some way, she was certain of it. Perhaps he was stealing from her – she thought of all the empty rooms upstairs and wondered.
She found a piece of Kleenex in a pocket of her jeans and wiped away the tears. So much was explained by this, she thought. Now she knew why her aunt was so desperate not to leave this rotting hulk of a house, why she didn’t want her brother to come.
‘Hello, Ellen Morrow.’
She raised her head, startled, and found him standing directly in her path, smiling his hard smile. She briefly met, then glanced away from, his dark, ungiving eyes.
‘You’re not very friendly,’ he said. ‘You left us so quickly. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you.’
She glared at him and tried to walk away, but he fell into step with her. ‘You shouldn’t be so unfriendly,’ he said. ‘You should try to get to know me.’
She stopped walking and faced him. ‘Why? I don’t know who you are or what you’re doing in my aunt’s house.’
‘I think you have some idea. I look after your aunt. She was all alone out here before I came, with no family or friends. She was completely unprotected. You may find it shocking, but she’s grateful to me now. She wouldn’t approve of you trying to send me away.’
‘I’m here now,’ Ellen said. ‘I’m a part of her family. And her brother will come . . . she won’t be left alone, at the mercy of strangers.’
