Those Harper Women

by Stephen Birmingham

  She takes a large towel from the rack, wraps herself in it, and goes back into the bedroom. She starts to open one of the pairs of curtains, and then sees, through the crack, her grandmother outside in the garden. She is with a funny-looking little man in a rumpled blue suit and a stained fedora; they walk about, pointing at shrubs, and planting beds. And Leona, watching them, thinks with a swift pang: How terribly slowly, these days, the old lady moves.… She lets the curtain fall.

  Turning back into the room, Leona notices, for the first time, the colored postcard lying on the floor where one of Granny’s maids has slipped it under the bedroom door. Leona stares at the postcard for a moment, then slowly crosses the room, kneels, and picks it up. Wrapped in the towel, she studies the face of the card. It is a cartoon card, and its humor is of a sort that would appeal to only one person Leona knows. It is a drawing of the Eiffel Tower, and from the top of the Eiffel Tower a merry little man has jumped or fallen. As he sails downward, his hat in his hand, he cries “C’est la vie!” Leona looks at the picture for a long time before turning the card over to read the message, thinking, C’est la vie.

  An hour has passed; Mr. Barbus has gone, and Edith is alone in the garden thinking, as she ties back a trailing ipomoea vine to the wall with a piece of green wire, about last night and how, at last, Leona is willing to talk to her. Last night, of course, with Leona obviously exhausted, was not a good time. Today will be their day. The vine refuses to be tied, and springs back, and Edith gives up on it. She sits down on the stone bench. She thinks: If only Leona could see me as I really am.

  This notion reminds Edith of a thing that happened, about three years ago, when she flew to Palm Beach for one of her rare visits with Diana. Waiting in the lobby of the West Palm Beach airport for Diana (who was late) to pick her up, sitting there with her suitcases, she noticed a woman who sat facing her across the room. Looking at the woman, she experienced one of those sudden sensations of disliking someone intensely at first sight. Everything about the woman repelled her. She was dressed in a dust-colored dress, decidedly wrinkled and frumpy, and there was something about the set of the shoulders and the tilt of the chin that was arrogant and cruel. The way the feet were planted—solidly, wide apart, on the floor, in heavy dark shoes, the legs encased in gray stockings—suggested an enormous self-satisfaction. A handbag was plunked in the woman’s lap. She clutched it as though it contained the crown jewels, and her whole air of pomposity was so absurd that Edith almost laughed, until it dawned on her that the opposite wall was a mirror, and that she was looking at herself. The two of her sat there, gazing at each other in dismay, like a pair of squat bookends across an empty shelf.

  Diana, when she had finally shown up, had not helped matters, either. When they were in the car together, Diana said, “Mother, you really must do something about your hair.”

  All this, of course, was the result of those years after Charles died, when Edith became a secret candy addict, a voracious eater of chocolates, gluttonishly gobbling up pound after pound of creams and nougats—hard centers or soft, it made no difference—those beautifully wrapped Maison Glass boxes ripped open with greed.… Perhaps, she thinks, those wonderful candy orgies were responsible for what is wrong inside her now, with that mischievous organ whose name she cannot bear to think about, since thinking about it brings back the pain.

  In the car that day, Diana had gone on about which hotels in which cities had, in her opinion, the best hairdressing salons. Then she had turned to Edith and said, “I know, Mother, that it’s like pulling teeth to get you even as far away from your house as Palm Beach. But I’d really like to take you to Rome with me sometime, and let Simonetta spruce you up.”

  Now Edith sees Leona walk out onto the veranda and stand at the top of the steps wearing a white Shantung robe cut like a coolie’s, tied loosely at the waist with a red sash. She stands there, one hand holding a cigarette, the other a cup of steaming coffee. The sleeve of the robe hangs down, and the sun catches the astonishingly white skin on the underside of her arm. Her hand, holding the coffee cup, trembles.

  “Good morning, dear,” Edith calls. “Did Nellie get you breakfast?”

  Leona nods, and comes slowly down the steps. “I had a grapefruit.”

  “Is that all?”

  Leona sits down at the round garden table with a little sigh, and the plastic-covered cushion of the chair exhales a small matching sigh of its own. She smiles at Edith, but it is a small smile, and it looks as though it hurts every muscle of her face. They sit in silence then while Leona drinks her coffee with little sucks and gasps.

  Edith waits until Leona sets down her coffee cup. Then she stands and, looking up at the windows of the house, her hands on her hips, she says, “Leona, I’ve been thinking. How do you feel about this place? Do you like it?”

  “I’ve always loved this house.”

  “Would you like to own it some day? After I’m gone?”

  “Oh, Granny—”

  “I’m quite serious. It’s got to go to somebody. The hospital wants it for an annex. Mr. Barbus wants it for a motel.”

  “Who is Mr. Barbus?”

  “A manure man. Tell me honestly how you feel. The property has some value, if you don’t want the house to live in. Mr. Barbus estimates that, as a motel, it could earn twenty or twenty-five thousand simoleons a year.”

  “Oh, Granny! I don’t want to talk about what’s going to happen after you’re gone.” She smiles again, and her smile is better this time. “Besides you’re never going to be gone. You’re indestructible.”

  “I wish you were right, Leona, but—”

  “Now please. I mean it. Don’t. I’m—depressed enough today.”

  “Depressed?” Edith sits down again, this time at the table opposite Leona. “Well, don’t be,” she says. And then, after a moment, “That was so—nice, last night. Our little talk. I only wished—”

  “Granny,” Leona says, “I’ve got to apologize for that. I must have sounded like an idiot. To be honest with you, I’d had too much to drink. I’m sorry.” She smiles again. “Too much of Great-Granddaddy’s rum.”

  “What? Oh, Leona—I thought you knew better than to drink that firewater! It’s for peasants. How do you feel today?”

  Leona reaches out and squeezes Edith’s hand. “I was joking,” she says. “But I was N.E.S., as Jimmy used to say. Not Entirely Sober.”

  “Well, you seemed perfectly fine to me. In fact, it was very cozy.” After a moment she says, “But I think Uncle Harold’s call upset us both a bit.”

  “Actually,” Leona says, “I don’t remember exactly what I said.”

  “Well,” Edith says, beginning carefully, “one thing you said, which interested me, was that you didn’t really love any of the men you married. You merely married them.”

  Leona’s face is a blank. “Well, I guess that’s true,” she says finally.

  Edith sighs. “Yes, I suppose that’s the trouble. It seems to be what Americans do. Americans marry. Europeans have love affairs. Amours.”

  Suddenly Leona laughs. “Yes, I guess that’s why I’ve had three husbands.” With one hand she executes a brisk salute. “I did it for my country, suh! But what about you, Granny? You were only married once.”

  “In your generation, Leona, Americans seem so much more American than they were in mine.”

  “Or in Mother’s?”

  “It’s progressive, dear,” Edith says, beginning to enjoy this conversation, even though it has taken a somewhat silly turn. “I was married once, your mother was married twice, you’ve been married three times and, I trust—at twenty-seven—”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “At twenty-seven, Leona—I know how old you are—I think it’s safe to predict that some day you will have been married four times. It gets more so and more so, you see.”

  Leona is smiling still. Lifting her coffee cup, she says, “It must be wonderful to be old. Old and wise and through everything.”

  Edi
th detects a note of sarcasm in this; perhaps not. Anyway, she decides to ignore it. “It’s holy hell being old,” she says briskly, “as you’ll find out one day when it’s happened to you.”

  They sit silently now. Meditatively, Leona sips her coffee.

  “Which—” Edith begins “—which of them did you like the best?”

  Leona seems to have trouble deciding. “Oh, I guess Gordon.”

  “Have you thought you might try seeing him again?”

  “You know, I saw him the last day I was in New York, before I came here. I ran into him on the street. He was on his way to play squash at the Racquet Club. We stood there, Granny, grinning at each other like two monkeys, trying to think of something to say. ‘I’m on my way to play some squash,’ he said. ‘I’m on my way to St. Thomas,’ I said. We said goodby. Isn’t that funny? We’d been married four years, and we had absolutely nothing to say to each other. After Jimmy, I wanted somebody solid, I guess. Gordon’s solid all right, but he’s also an awful prig. I didn’t know that when I married him, but he turned out to be a prig.” Smiling she says, “I bought a prig in a poke.”

  “Did I tell you Jimmy came by to see me—about six months ago? He called me up and came for lunch and a swim.”

  “How was he?”

  “Fine. The poor boy is losing his hair, though, which is a shame. He seems too young.” Crossing her fingers under the table, Edith adds, “Still, he seemed more mature when he was here. A bit more—calmed down.”

  “Oh, Granny, there must be something else!” And Leona looks quickly up into the green leaves of the tree-of-heaven that shades the table, as though that something else may be hidden somewhere in its branches.

  Edith purposely does not bring up, in the silence that follows, the name of Leona’s last husband. Edouardo Para-Diaz’s mother, she remembers, was a thief, in addition to having produced a highly unusual son. He and Leona were married in Sevilla, and the “Condesa” asked to borrow Leona’s diamond earclips to wear to the wedding. “Si, con mucho felicidad, mi condesa,” Leona said, and lent them to her. She never got them back. They were after Leona’s money, the whole pack-lot of them, Edith is sure. And it wouldn’t be surprising to Edith to learn that it cost Leona more than the earclips to get rid of the Spaniards. After it was over, Leona took up her residence in Florida. (To Edith, in a note once, Diana said, “She’s lucky that I have the Palm Beach house. It’s handy for divorces.”)

  “And you never loved any of them,” Edith says at last.

  “Can’t we change this subject, Granny? Please?”

  Edith leans forward. “But you said, last night, that you didn’t think you had the ability to love anyone.”

  “Well,” Leona says sharply, “if I did, where would I have got it from? Could I have inherited it, do you suppose? From Mother?”

  “Now don’t be so hard on your mother, Leona. She—”

  “Listen!” Leona says. “Do you know what she wrote to me today? On a postcard—a stupid comic postcard—not even airmail? She said, ‘It’s fun at the Ritz. Just forget all your troubles, sweetie, and come over here and have some fun.’ She didn’t even bother to sign it!”

  “What prompted this message?”

  “Just a little, simple—request for a favor, that’s all! Just a favor I asked of her, Granny! And that was her answer—it’s fun at the Ritz! Oh, Granny!” Suddenly she closes her eyes tight shut and pounds the heels of her palms on the edge of the table. “Just a favor! Oh, damn!” Her eyelids blink rapidly, and she bites her lower lip hard. “Sorry,” she says. “Blew up, I guess.” Edith watches her as she fumbles in her pack for a cigarette.

  “Which Ritz is she at?” Edith asks finally.

  “Paris. She’s there for the collections.” Blowing out cigarette smoke, she says, “Maybe I’ll do that—fly over and have fun at the Ritz.”

  “Oh, don’t leave me yet!”

  “I’m joking. She has Poo with her.”

  “Poo for the collections? How ridiculous.”

  Edith stands up and walks to Leona’s chair. Standing behind her, she places one hand on Leona’s shoulder. Quietly, she says, “Can you tell me, dear, what the favor was?”

  “Just a simple one!” Then she shakes her head. “No, it was a big one, I guess. A project of mine. Something I want to do. Anyway—c’est la vie!”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “Not yet, Granny; honest I can’t. It’s still too much—up in the air. More so today than ever.”

  “Leona,” Edith says, “someday I’d like to take you to Magens Bay—to the beach there. I want to see that beach again, suddenly, and besides I want to show it to you. There’s something I want to tell you. Would you like to go today, dear? Right now? John could drive us.”

  Leona shakes her head again. “Not today, Granny. I have a mission to perform today. Remember?” Leona looks up at at Edith over her shoulder. “Have you forgotten? I’ve got to see Eddie Winsow and ask him to call off his hounds.”

  “Oh, yes,” Edith says. “That’s true.” She had, she realizes, completely forgotten. “Well, then, soon. We’ll go to Magens Bay soon.”

  Leona stands up. “I’d better get dressed.” She starts toward the house.

  “Mr. Winslow could wait till tomorrow,” Edith says.

  “Better get him quick, Granny, before he buzzes back to New York.”

  “Yes,” Edith says. “I suppose—”

  Watching Leona as she runs up the steps to the veranda, she calls, “Will you be having dinner with me tonight, dear?”

  “Sure,” Leona says. “At least I think so.”

  “Good,” Edith says thoughtfully, standing alone in the garden.

  Running up the stairs to her room, Leona glances at her watch. It is nearly noon. She has no clear idea where to look for Eddie. He will certainly be out of his hotel now. Perhaps one of the beaches would be a good place to start. Yes, he is probably at the beach now, having lunch. She slips off her coolie robe, thinking, yes, I’m a girl who, given a job to do, does it; it’s one of the things you taught me, Granny. She will look for him first at Morningstar. And this Magens Bay that Granny was talking about, she wonders—where is that?

  Seven

  They had met often again at Magens Bay that winter of 1907—whenever they could without Edith’s mother noticing it. And, one afternoon, Edith remembers finally saying to him, “I want to stay here with you, Andreas.” She had made her mouth form the words she had planned to say, “Stay here—and marry you.”

  She had been afraid he would laugh at her for saying it, but he hadn’t laughed. He looked at her for a moment, and then looked away.

  “I want to marry you,” she repeated.

  “Edie—”

  “Then will you?” Suddenly she knew she didn’t want to hear his answer at all.

  “You’re leaving for Paris in five weeks.”

  “I don’t want to go to Paris. I want to stay here, with you.”

  His voice was thoughtful. “But you’re going to Paris, on the fifteenth of May. Then, from there, you’ll go back to your place in New Jersey for two months, the way you always do. And then you’ll come back here in the fall, and I’ll be here.”

  “Please don’t joke about it, Andreas. I don’t have to do all those things, do I?”

  “Have you asked anyone about this?”

  “No.”

  “Because you’re afraid to ask, aren’t you? What are you afraid of?”

  “No one,” she insisted, “but—”

  “It’s your father, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  He said nothing.

  “But I will! I’ll ask him. I won’t even ask him. I’ll tell him—simply tell him that I’m going to marry you.”

  “Will you really do that?”

  “Andreas—do you think he’d ever let me?”

  “You see,” he said, scowling darkly at the horizon, “you know he wouldn’t. You’re as free now as you’ll ever
be, which isn’t free at all.”

  “Still, I’ll do it—if you want me to.”

  He was silent for a while. “I can’t tell you that I want you to do it,” he said finally. “Because you’ve got good reasons to be afraid of asking him. If you do it, it will be up to you.”

  “Then I’ll do it—as soon as he comes home. Meanwhile, I’ll tell my mother.”

  He had smiled at her then, holding her fingers in his hand, separating and lifting them one by one.

  “Do you love me, Andreas?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  Talking to her mother was harder, that winter, than it had ever been before. Even awake she seemed asleep now. More and more of their card games were played in an endless quiet and, when Edith spoke to her, her mother would either change the subject, or interrupt, or appear not to have heard her at all.

  “It’s your trick, Mama,” Edith would say.

  “Oh … is it?” The cards would flutter and spill from her hand.

  She even seemed to have lost interest in talking about the servants and whether they stole or not, which had always been a favorite topic. Finding her perfume gone the day after Edith had inundated herself with it, Dolly Harper had merely muttered, “It’s gone … they’ve taken it.” She never seemed to notice now who waited on her. There was one girl, Alicia, who brought Edith’s mother flowers from the garden every day—a beautiful, mahogany-skinned girl with opal eyes who came with armloads of roses and lilies and bougainvillea. Her mother never asked Alicia to bring her flowers, and Edith doesn’t remember her ever thanking the girl for them. But she does know that her mother noticed the flowers because of a thing that happened.