Emily glanced at her, then away again. “Who can?” she asked.
Gertrude looked at her sharply. “I would have thought you’d be quite able to.”
Emily put her cup down in the saucer with a clatter. “Dear Jesus God! What kind of impression do I make!” Her voice shook with a violence Gertrude had never seen in her before.
“You’ve always seemed to me completely self-sufficient,” she said rather hesitantly. “I’ve envied you for it.”
Emily gave a long shudder. “Well,” she said finally, “perhaps if I can seem it for long enough I’ll end up by becoming it—self-sufficient, I mean.” Then, changing the subject, she said, “Anyhow for heaven’s sake don’t worry about whether or not you’re bad for Kaarlo. You’re here, and aside from the sanatorium, it’s the best place for you to be, and you love Kaarlo and he loves you and that should be all that matters. Surely there aren’t many people who are entirely good for each other. I may not be any good at all for Courtney.”
“Or vice versa,” Gertrude said.
Emily shook her head. “At this point I’m inclined to feel that I’m far worse for Courtney than he could possibly be for me.” She kept her voice level and casual. “I don’t know what I’d have done this winter if I hadn’t had Kaarlo to talk to. I always feel better after I’ve talked to Kaarlo even if we don’t say anything at all.” She began to clear up the tea things. “I saw you had a rabbit out in the kitchen. Kaarlo’ll be tired when he comes down from the mountain. Want me to start it for you?”
“If you want to,” Gertrude said. “It would be nice for him to have dinner waiting for a change. You see what I meant when I said I was bad for him. I suppose I could do some of the cooking.”
“Clément told you not to, didn’t he?”
“Sure, that’s my alibi, but I don’t think a little would hurt, and I don’t raise a finger. I always loathed cooking. Thank God I never had to do much of it.”
Connie looked up and said in her clear, high voice, “My mother likes to cook,” and both women suddenly realized that they had forgotten all about her sitting there so quietly in the chair.
“Children never understand anything anyway,” Gert muttered, and then out loud, “Did you like looking at the post cards?”
“I always like looking at them,” Connie said, “particularly the ones from Kaarlo’s cousins in Finland. I don’t think you’re bad for Kaarlo.”
“I’m relieved to hear it,” Gertrude said, and looked helplessly at Emily.
“Come on, Emily Conrad,” Emily said briskly. “Help mother fix this rabbit for Gertrude and Kaarlo, and then you and I will go home and fix some tea for daddy. Its gets pretty cold in that little office of his and a nice hot cup of tea in the middle of the afternoon warms him up.”
After Emily and Connie had left, Gertrude continued to lie restlessly on the couch. She could not read and she could not relax and after a while she got up and turned on all the lights in the big room, in the bedroom, in the kitchen. Emily had the rabbit simmering on the stove and its odor, Gertrude knew, was far more delectable than if she herself had tried to prepare it. She opened the cupboard Kaarlo had built under the sink and got down on her knees to look behind the pots and pans and soaps to a dark bottle she had hidden there. She did not reach for it. She simply knelt and looked at it, then shut the cupboard door and crawled on her hands and knees out of the kitchen as though she did not have the strength to get to her feet. She crawled to the fireplace, then sat back on her heels on the hearth, looking into the fire. She wore narrow plaid trousers and a warm white woolen shirt, but she shivered as she sat there, though her cheeks were burning.
—Damn Emily, she thought, suddenly furiously angry with her for preparing the rabbit.
—And of course she did it for Kaarlo, not for me. She wouldn’t give a damn for me if it weren’t for Kaarlo. She’s had a crush on him ever since she took those skiing lessons from him. Why did he have to bring her here to see me? I wish to hell he’d just let the relationship stay professional. Then it would have been over long ago. He wouldn’t have brought her here to meet me if he hadn’t liked her especially.
She stared into the fire incredulously.—Am I jealous of Emily? she asked herself. I don’t honestly think there’s anything between her and Kaarlo, that there ever has been or ever will be. If she seems different lately it’s not Kaarlo. It’s the kids being home for the holidays that makes her seem happy.
She got up and walked back to the couch, but she did not sit down.
—We’ve had boredom and a dull sort of unhappiness as a bond holding us together and now all of a sudden it’s not there any more. That’s what’s been bothering me. She’s not bored and she’s not unhappy. Not in the same way. What the hell’s happened?
—I can’t stand it, she thought. When will Kaarlo be home?
She walked back to the kitchen, her mind carefully blank, as though if she did not know what she was doing it would be better.
—I’ve been being so damned good! she said out loud, and got down on her knees before the cupboard again. This time she reached in and pulled out the bottle.
Virginia and Mimi headed home after their long day’s skiing. They moved slowly over the snow, their desire for speed satiated, their cheeks windburned, their eyes stinging. As they neared Kaarlo’s chalet, lights blazed out onto the snow and suddenly there was Gertrude, in her white parka, standing out in the snow shaking a dust mop, the motes of dust caught in the light coming from the kitchen window, dust and dirt falling, drifting through the shaft of light onto the clear snow.
“Hi, kids, come on in for a moment,” Gertrude said, as though there were nothing strange about her standing there in the dark shaking the mop.
They followed her into the shed, stood waiting while she took off her parka (and the white of the parka was soiled like the snow on which she had shaken the mop), tossed it at a hook, which it missed, bent clumsily to pick it up, missed the hook again, finally got the parka hung by the collar on the third try, left the dust mop lying where she had dropped it on the floor, so that anyone entering or leaving would trip over it.
She went into the living room where the fire was going and a Mozart concerto playing and a half-empty glass of dark liquid stood on the bookshelves, firelight flickering against it, gold, amber, alive. She picked it up and drank, then turned around to look at the two girls who had come in after her and now stood, Virginia awkward, embarrassed, Mimi leaning against the desk, casual, waiting.
Gertrude moved to Virginia, the liquid moving in her glass, catching and holding again the firelight. “Virginia,” she said, “why are you so skinny? Why are your eyes so big and green?”
“She’s a poet,” Mimi said quickly. “All poets are skinny. Can you imagine a fat poet?”
“Who asked you?” Gertrude turned up the volume on the phonograph, deliberately rude, Mozart suddenly loud and distorted to drown Mimi out. “People are skinny because they aren’t loved. I know.”
“Would you like us to make you some coffee?” Mimi asked.
“And what the hell exactly are you implying?” Gertrude took a step backwards, lost her balance, and down her elbow went on the record and the Mozart let out an agonized shriek and the record broke in two. “Look what you made me do!” Gertrude whimpered. “That was one of Kaarlo’s favorites.”
“You can tell him Virginia broke it over my head in a fit of temper,” Mimi suggested, at which Gertrude unexpectedly broke into a spasm of laughter.
“We have to go home now,” Virginia said timidly. “Mother’s expecting us.”
“Do you have to do whatever your mother says?” Gertrude asked. “Or your father? I should think you’d want to do the opposite, so under no circumstances would you grow up to be like them.”
Virginia raised her head. “I’d like to be exactly like them.”
“And why, miss? Your father was fired for incompetence, wasn’t he?”
“He was not!”
“So he
comes here and sits on his ass like a sick fish all winter writing stuff so dry nobody’s ever going to read it, and your mother’s scared to play the piano in case anybody should hear her, in case anybody should catch on to the fact that she’s so goddamned unhappy even I look happy in comparison—”
Suddenly in the firelight Virginia’s freckles seemed to leap out as her color receded. “You lie!” she cried. “You’re jealous!”
“I am not jealous!” Gertrude shouted back, bringing her face down close to Virginia’s, so that the two of them stood panting at each other like two angry children. “What the hell have I to be jealous of?”
“Because they have each other!” Virginia shrieked. “Because my mother has my father and my father has my mother and they love each other and you don’t even know what love is about and all you’ve said is lies, foul, slimy, filthy, contemptible, abominable, stinking lies!” Her arm went back and her hand hit, sharp and loud against Gertrude’s face, and Gertrude’s skin turned white where the hand had slapped.
“Well, thank you very much for the visit, Madame de Croisenois,” Mimi said. “I really do think Virginia and I should be going now. Come, Virginia.” There was a lightly mocking irony in her voice, but her eyes were deeply troubled. She pushed Virginia ahead of her, leaving Gertrude with her cheek slowly turning red, out of the living room, through the kitchen, into the shed, where Virginia fell over the dust mop. Mimi picked her up, leaned the mop against the wall.
“So our precious images are as easily smashed as that Mozart record. Come on, Vee, let’s get out of here.”
“She lied!” Virginia cried, her voice high and shrill.
“Of course,” Mimi said. “She was drunk. She didn’t know what she was talking about. Haven’t you ever seen anybody drunk before?”
“Sure,” Virginia’s voice dropped bitterly. “Plenty of times.” Then, “I shall never touch a drink again in my life! Never!”
“That’s nonsense,” Mimi said. “You can’t just generalize about anything. It’s like saying you’ll never take a drink of water because you might fall in a river and drown.”
“I’m tired of people being tolerant!” Virginia shouted. “If I don’t want to drink I won’t drink and nobody can make me!”
“So who said anybody wanted to?”
“I hate you when you’re tolerant and sophisticated! I hate Gertrude! I hate Kaarlo! I hate sin! I hate Mr. Fielding! I hate Tommy O’Hara! Daddy wasn’t fired!” She began running down the path, slipping, sliding into snowdrifts, sobbing, slithering, falling, Mimi after her, not quite able to catch up, just reaching the yard as Virginia banged on the door of the villa, fumbling with the knob, at last pushing it open, rushing into the dark hall, through the empty living room, the dining room, into the kitchen where Connie sat in the hip tub singing to her rubber fish, and Emily and Courtney, each holding a glass, stood by the stove. With one furious gesture Virginia snatched the glass out of her father’s hand and flung it against the far wall where it shattered, glass and liquor splattering about wall and floor.
“Virginia!” Emily cried, looking at her daughter’s mottled, distorted face.
Connie began to shriek.
Mimi came blundering in. “We were at Madame de Croisenois,” she said. “She was quite drunk.” Her throat was so dry she could scarcely get the words out.
Throughout the house there came a wild gust of cold wind.
“Oh, the door,” Mimi cried, and disappeared again.
Emily put her glass down. She caught Virginia in her arms and it took all her strength to control the shaking body, the flailing arms. She could do nothing but hold her tightly and wait until the spasms of sobbing had subsided.
Mimi came back in and clumsily began to sweep up the shattered glass.
Connie, abandoned, forgotten in the tub, redoubled her shrieks until Courtney picked her up, stood her naked, dripping body on the table so that bath water splashed down into the bowl of salad Emily had set aside. Taking the warm towel from the chair by the stove he wrapped it around her, dried, and dressed her in her nightclothes.
As suddenly as Virginia’s hysteria had started it stopped. “I beg your pardon,” she said, formally, coldly. “I will go to my room.”
“Just a moment, Virginia.” Courtney raised his hand to halt her. “Don’t you think you owe us an explanation?”
“I guess I was feeling like Carry Nation,” Virginia said. “Down on the drink.”
“And why, all of a sudden and so violently?”
Virginia sat down, hiccoughing, exhausted. “Because of Madame de Croisenois, I suppose.”
“What about Madame de Croisenois?”
“Oh, daddy,” she wailed. “I can’t explain! She was drunk and she was awful and she made me angry.”
“What were you doing at Gertrude’s?” Emily asked.
“We were on the way home,” Mimi said, shaking the pieces of glass out of the dust pan into the bin. “She was standing outside the chalet and she saw us and asked us to come in.”
“I’m sorry,” Virginia said. “I’ve told you I was sorry. Please couldn’t I go to my room now?”
“It’s time for dinner,” Emily said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“If you sit still for a moment and calm down you will be.”
“Virginia,” Courtney said. “You haven’t had a tantrum like this for years. What happened?”
“I’m an adolescent,” Virginia said. “I’m supposed to be unstable. I write poetry. Poets are supposed to be difficult. I fell under two horses and almost got killed. It also happens to be my time of the moon. I’m emotionally shaken.”
“You have a facile and excellent gift with words,” Courtney said. “I’m sorry I don’t quite believe you.”
She raised her swollen, unhappy face to him. “Oh, daddy, I’m grown up now, I’ve left home and gone away to school and been on my own. There’re some things I can’t tell you and mother, particularly when I don’t understand them.”
“Don’t you think we could help you understand them?” Courtney asked gently.
She shook her head. “If you want another drink, daddy,” she said, “I won’t throw this one on the floor.”
Emily sat across the table from Courtney in the small and hideous dining room that night and her heart ached with a flood of love for him and she wanted to get up from the table and rush to him and fall on her knees before him and bury her face in his lap and cry, “Oh, Court, Court, I do love you. I do love you, nothing that happens can ever make my love for you stop!”
And what a sound and fury if she did that! Almost as much as if she burst into a torrent of tears or tore into a tantrum like Virginia’s.
So she sat there and Virginia said, “Mother, I realize that after my behavior this evening I am in no position to ask favors, but do you think we could go up on the télépherique tomorrow? I mean would you go with us? It’s something we want quite frightfully to do.”
Emily looked at her child, the freckles still unusually dark against the dead-white skin, the green eyes huge and pleading. “I don’t see why not,” she answered lightly. “But I think you’d better go to bed early tonight.”
“May I go tomorrow?” Connie asked. “Am I secluded?”
“Yes, Connie, very,” Virginia said, “and you may go. And I am going early to bed.”
“I’m going early to bed, too,” Connie said. “Will you tell me a story, Vee?”
“Sure, Con.”
“A made-up story or ‘Little Black Sambo’?”
“Whichever you like.”
“A made-up one, then. Like the one where if you could understand the trees talking you’d know everything.”
It was, Emily thought, a fine example of a quiet domestic scene. Only in a movie might the background music remind the audience of violence, that a glass had for no reason been thrown, that a young girl had been hysterical, and only Mimi with her candid violet eyes knew the answer. And Emily herself, the mother sitting at
the table, enfolding all with the gift of her love, did not belong in her place at the head of the happy family group, handing Mimi a plate of cakes, giving Courtney a second dish of compote. For her, too, the background music would be dissonant, off key, schizophrenic to indicate her double life, her life here, which was real, and her life with Abe which was the dream, the life on a different level, almost a different dimension, as a dream can seem a separate dimension, so that when she was away from him her belief in him seemed to dwindle in precisely the same way that on waking one loses the shocking reality of a dream. Her happiness in his presence and her faith in his love for her seemed to fade like gaily colored material under the too-bright light of reality, like music when doors and windows have been slammed against it; that was it most of all: when she was away from him it was impossible for her to believe that he loved her.
She looked at Connie and the child was still eating dessert and she took the spoon and began to feed her, and while she was doing this familiar duty, her mouth automatically opening and closing as she raised the spoon to the child’s mouth, took it away and dipped it again in the saucer, she began to feel almost peaceful, as though the background music too had changed, as though nothing had happened.
Immediately after dinner Virginia and Connie went up to bed. Mimi sat alone in the living room playing solitaire, forgetting, in the sadness that was as deep about her as the clouds about the village, to offer to help Emily with the dishes. Sam had not kissed her; she was upset by Madame de Croisenois’ behavior; she was somehow a failure. She slapped the cards down on the small table half-heartedly. Once she tiptoed upstairs, but Virginia had already fallen into an exhausted sleep so she came back down to her cards. When the phone rang she leaped to answer it like a bullet out of a gun.
A Winter's Love Page 21
