Those Harper Women

by Stephen Birmingham

  “Oh, I’m through with you, Leona!” Diana says. “I don’t think I ever want to see you again. How I ever could have produced a child like you I’ll never know!”

  “Now Diana,” Edith says. “Harold was up to some kind of monkey business! He had no right to borrow money on my stock.”

  “Mother, if Harold had had the teensiest warning that this was in the wind, he would have done something—at least have been ready with a rebuttal. But this caught him off his guard. No, Mother,” she says, shaking her head. “You see? She’s Jack Ware’s daughter. That’s all she is—Jack Ware’s daughter.” She touches her eyelids, brushing tears away.

  “Don’t say that to me, Mother!” Leona says.

  “Why not? It’s true! I never should have married him, and I never should have had you. You were both bad—bad news, right from the start. I married a stupid, disgusting man, and had a stupid, disgusting daughter.”

  Leona jumps up from the velvet chair. “What about this news of you and Perry? That’s pretty disgusting, if you ask me!”

  “My personal life is none of your affair. But if you want to talk about personal lives, take a look at your own. What are you? Just a little tramp.”

  “Oh!” Leona says, and starts for the door.

  From the bar where he is stirring Diana’s drink, Jimmy turns and looks steadily at Leona. “Taking off?” he asks her in a quiet voice.

  Leona stands very still in the center of the room.

  Then there is a long silence. Jimmy returns with Diana’s drink, and offers it to her. But Diana, weeping silently in her handkerchief now, does not see his outstretched hand, and so he places the glass on the table beside her chair. Edith sits looking at a space of floor between her feet. Leona continues to stand addressing Jimmy with her eyes. Suddenly Diana’s head comes up, and she sniffs. “I smell smoke!”

  “What? Oh, good heavens!” Edith cries.

  And now they are all on their feet, for a cloud of very dark smoke is rising from the cushion of the velvet chair where Leona had been sitting.

  “It’s her cigarette!” Edith cries. And then, “Oh! Help! Help! Nellie!” she shouts. “Help! Fire! Fire!”

  Nellie, rushing in, apprises the situation quickly, and is the only one with presence of mind enough to seize Diana’s highball from the table and empty it on the fire. There is a noisy hiss from the interior of the chair, and then a penetrating, acrid smell in the air.

  “Now, on top of everything else, I’m an arsonist,” Leona says to no one in particular.

  At this point, Edith thinks, the best suggestion would be that they all repair to their rooms to change for dinner. The four mount the stairs together, in silence, and move in their separate directions down the upstairs halls.

  When she opens the door to her bedroom, Edith stops abruptly. A man—Gordon Paine, no less!—is standing, stark naked, in front of her pier glass, examining his body for cuts and bruises.

  “Hey!” he cries a little wildly, seeing her, and he makes that curiously girlish gesture of trying to cover his private parts with his hands. Then he grabs for the bedspread and pulls it off the bed, wrapping it around him. “Hey!” he says again.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Edith says, recovered from the confusion of finding him there. “I simply forgot you were using this room.” Then she says, “Don’t worry. I’ve seen lots better than that.” And she slams the door on him.

  Outside in the hall she thinks: Isn’t it funny. Terrible as this day has been, the sight of Gordon trying to hide himself has somehow redeemed a bit of it. Yes, she thinks, life has its little rewards.

  “To the beach?” Edith asks in a drowsy voice. “Oh, Leona, I’m not a beach person—not any more.” It is morning again, and Leona stands beside Edith’s bed.

  “Please, Granny. There’s so much I want to talk to you about.”

  “Why to the beach? Why can’t we talk right here?”

  Leona nods in the direction of the hall outside, and lowers her voice to a whisper. “I don’t want to talk here, Granny.”

  “Don’t be hard on your mother. She’s taken all this very badly.”

  “It isn’t that. It’s something I want to tell you. Come.”

  “I hope it’s good news,” Edith says. “I’ve had enough bad news for a while.”

  “Come to the beach and find out. Please.”

  “Well—” Edith is thinking of such things as beach attire, and of how people her age sit on the beach these days, and of sand in the shoes and the underthings. Will there be a folding chair? An umbrella? As though she can hear her grandmother’s thoughts, Leona says, “I’ll get the things together. All you need to do is get in the car and come. And let’s hurry, Granny—before everyone else gets up.”

  “But what about—” What about people, she thinks? The news is out, it was in the papers, full of words like swindle and manipulator. Last night the telephone began to ring; it rang until she did as Arthur suggested, removed the receiver from its hook. Surely, on the beach, people will recognize her and say, “There’s old Edith Blakewell—I wonder how she feels today? Did you read about her brother.… Have they found him yet? Do you suppose she’s completely wiped out?” This makes up Edith’s mind; she would like to know what people are saying. “Very well,” she says briskly. “It would do me good to get out. Run along and get things ready, and I’ll get dressed.”

  When Edith gets downstairs, Leona is nowhere in sight, but she finds Gordon Paine sitting on the veranda, dressed, with his suitcase. Seeing Edith, he jumps up.

  “You’re up bright and early, Gordon.”

  He laughs nervously. “Yes, I’ve got to go, Edith. Things at the office. I—I’ve got to get back.”

  “Of course,” she says. “Well, it’s been nice seeing you, Gordon.”

  “This whole thing—this business about your brother—is completely incomprehensible, and I’m sure none of it is true. But anyway—”

  “I’m afraid it is true, Gordon.”

  “Anyway, I want to thank you for your hospitality.”

  “What hospitality? I haven’t given you much of that.”

  Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he says, “I’m awfully sorry about what’s happened. And of course—not that it’s apt to come up, but in case it does—you won’t mention to anybody that I’ve been here, will you? To the newspapers, or anything? I mean it sounds like a pretty nasty business, and by the fact that I’ve been here it might look as though I were connected with it in some way. As though I, or my firm, had been advising you or something. Mostly for your sake and Leona’s—it wouldn’t look right if my name were involved.”

  “I understand, Gordon.”

  “And as for Leona—”

  “Yes?”

  “She understands that it wouldn’t be wise if she and I were seen together for a while. But perhaps, when this thing blows over—”

  “Yes.”

  “I always thought it would be nice if we could patch things up, but—”

  “Such things will have to wait a while. I understand.”

  “Well—” He stands awkwardly, looking embarrassed, his eyes averted. It is as though he thinks she is still picturing him with all his clothes off—which, of course, she is. An auto horn sounds outside the gate. “My taxi,” he says, picking up his suitcase. “Good-by, Edith. Say good-by to Leona for me. Tell her I’ll be in touch with her—later on.”

  He walks rapidly along the veranda and down the front steps, carrying his bag.

  A few minutes later Leona comes out with her striped canvas beach bag. “Ready, Granny?”

  “Yes, I’m ready.” They go down the steps to where John waits with the car.

  Seated in the back seat beside Leona, Edith says, “You know, I’m almost beginning to enjoy this! Isn’t that the damnedest thing? It’s getting to be fun, in a way—seeing how various people react to what’s happened.”

  Leona touches her grandmother’s knee. “When I was little you used to te
ll me, ‘Saying you’re sorry doesn’t help.’ I know it doesn’t help. But anyway, Granny, I want you to know I am—terribly sorry.”

  “Let’s not talk about it any more.”

  Behind John’s uniformed shoulders and cap, they descend the hill in the air-conditioned car and then, at the intersection of Garden Street, they are forced to pause to let a short funeral cortege pass by in front of them; it moves slowly, the headlights of its cars blazing, and Leona says, “Hold your breath, Granny.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “For good luck. Whenever you pass a cemetery or a funeral procession, hold your breath. Don’t you know that rule?”

  The dark little cars crawl by.

  Edith taps the window glass that separates them from John, and he lowers the glass. “Who is it, John?” she asks. “Do you know?”

  John turns and smiles, showing them the trove of gold in his mouth and speaks in his soft Cruzan patois. “Andreas Larsen. But he was an old man, Miss.” (But surely that was not the name John murmured; not him, not today, it couldn’t be, because isn’t he already dead? Didn’t she hear, once, that he had died? No, this is her imagination working; she is dreaming, and this is a dream.)

  “Why, Granny—what’s the matter? Are you feeling sick?”

  “Nothing, nothing.” She grips Leona’s hand tightly. The cortege passes, and they drive on.

  “Did you know the man, Granny?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure.”

  “Ah, Granny. I’m sorry.”

  Beaches bring everything into such bright focus. Perhaps it is the dazzle of sun on sand, the sun on the tinfoil surface of the water that intensifies every object, counteracting any gauziness in the air … it intensifies the people, the lounging ones, the sleeping ones, the love-making ones, the running and splashing ones. Clad in what goes for beachwear these days—clothes not designed to conceal those few, poor, typically human glands, but rather to emphasize them—the atmosphere of sex is thick and soft as butter in the air; you could slice it with the handle of a spoon. Beaches intensify and focus without clarifying anything. It is astonishing to see, even at this early-morning hour, how many and how much the old beach contains—dried kelp and rockweed, ice-cream sticks, peanut shells, coconut husks, sticky glasses covered with sand and aswirl with the warm remnants of soft drinks, and the rubber balls and the floating toys of children; and the children’s screams, and the scolding of mothers, the shouts, the hellos, the dashes into water, the splashes and the squeals and the dunkings and the shrill lifeguard whistles. Leona is off at one of the little shops at the edge of the beach—open, palm-thatched shops that sell everything from popcorn to comic hats—to rent beach chairs for the two of them, and now there is an, unpleasant-looking boy of fifteen or so, with a gritty voice and wearing an elasticized figleaf, who comes prancing across the sand with a small barracuda he had netted. Everyone throngs around him to admire this remarkable catch.

  “Throw it back!” Edith demands.

  “Look, lady,” he says, “a barracuda is a dangerous, man-eating fish. You want me to throw him back so he can eat somebody? You must be nuts.” And very vigorously and thoroughly he beats it to death by swatting its head an excessive number of times against the armrest of a beach chair. All muscle and openmouthed cruelty, he wields the tiny fish as though it were a billy club, until its head hangs as humbly as a darning egg inside a sock. Gratified, he turns and gives Edith a glum look.

  “How are you so sure that it was a male?” Edith asks. “Just because you obviously are? There are thousands more spet like that one in the sea. Destroying one will hardly do any good.”

  A dream …

  “How I dislike beaches,” Edith says to Leona when she returns with the chairs, unfolding them and setting them up.

  “Why, Granny?”

  “Because I can’t swim in the raw any more!”

  They sit down.

  “You can’t believe how this beach has changed since I was here last,” Edith says.

  Leona is looking at Edith curiously. “Are you sure you feel all right, Granny?” she asks.

  Edith laughs. “No—I’m not sure I am at all! I think I’ve had too much excitement in the last few weeks.”

  “And I’ve brought a lot of it on, haven’t I? Well, Granny, one of the things I have to tell you is that I’m going back to New York.”

  “Oh,” Edith says.

  “Coming here was—it was a mistake, this time. I’ll come back for visits, but they won’t be visits like this one. But first I’ve got to straighten out—oh, so many things.”

  Edith nods.

  “And maybe you’ll come to New York and visit me.”

  “I’m too old for New York. I wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “It’s really not that far away. It’s not the moon.”

  “But what about your gallery?” Edith asks. “Of course we’ll have to get this other business settled first. This business that’s happened with—with whatsisname—with—” (Has she suddenly forgotten her brother’s name? “Who are you?” she asks that pale, downy, bored young face. “Harold,” he answers.) “With Harold.”

  “Granny, are you sure—” Leona begins. “Are you sure you feel all right? Are you ill?” What is it, Leona wonders? Is it perhaps only seeing her grandmother in such strong sunlight that makes the old woman’s skin look so extraordinarily pale, oily-white, and the bones beneath the skin so fragile? And the white skin hatched with lines, and the mortality of the veined hand she touches … is that it? The cruel light?

  And Edith is thinking that of course if Leona goes this time, she will not come back, not for visits, not for anything. If she leaves now, they will never see each other again. She sits very still.

  “Would you like to borrow my sun hat, Granny?”

  Edith shakes her head.

  “We might be able to work it out so that you could start your gallery on a smaller scale,” Edith says. “In New York—or even here in St. Thomas.”

  “No, Granny.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about the gallery.”

  “It’s just that other things are more important now. Granny, last night I couldn’t sleep, thinking of all the things you’ve done and wanted to do for me. The gallery—everything. You’ve always been so good to me, and I’ve hardly ever thanked you—once. But my life was running on such a crazy track. I never seemed to be able to think. Or see. Anything.”

  “Leona,” Edith says quickly, “you don’t have to go yet, do you? Can’t you stay here with me just a little longer?”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head slowly. “No, it’s time to go.” She smiles a small, faint half-smile that seems more like a smile at herself than at Edith. “I’m a city kid, Granny. A jungle cat. It’s time for me to go back to my jungle.”

  “But that’s the point. Leave the jungle. Escape now. Escape. Stay here where it’s safe and warm.”

  Her smile fades, but she continues to look at Edith. “The way you did, Granny?” she asks finally.

  “Yes, the way I did.” Then, all in a rush, Edith says, “Listen to me. No one has ever belonged to me. I’ve killed or crippled every person I ever loved. Someone has got to belong to me, Leona. Won’t you belong to me? Leona, I’m seventy-five years old. Stay here.”

  At the end of the long silence that follows, Leona stands up slowly, pulling the striped beach towel around her shoulders. She looks away across the sand. “My enemy lives in that jungle, Granny. I’ve got to find him and track him down.” Then, almost as an afterthought, as though it didn’t matter, she says, “And there’s another thing. I’m not going alone. I’m going with someone.” But the look in her eyes says that of course it does matter, and that the words were experimental, spoken to test their permanence and substance upon the ear.

  “With a man?” Edith says. “Do you mean you’re going to get married again? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “No. He hasn’t asked me to marry him, an
d I don’t want him to ask me—not yet. We’re not ready for that, either of us. But he is willing to let me go with him, and so I’m going to go with him.”

  “What?” Edith cries. “You mean you’re going to be some man’s mistress? Who? Short-neck?”

  “Oh, look,” Leona says, pointing. “There he is—looking for us!”

  “What? Where? Leona, listen to me—”

  “See?” She waves her hand. “He doesn’t see us. Let me get him. Wait here.” With the towel over her shoulders she runs off across the beach.

  “Leona!” Edith calls.

  Edith Blakewell stands up. Her sunglasses are steamed from the salt spray in the air, and she removes them and cleans them with her handkerchief. Standing there in the blazing sun, she is not conscious of the beach any more, and is thinking only: No, I cannot have this; I will not have this! Then, like running specks, she sees them coming from the far end of the beach. Hand in hand, darting between umbrellas and around sunbathers, they come—their hands breaking briefly apart, then joining again, as they run. From a distance they wave to her, and a strange thing happens. Edith’s eyes blur and she sees, in the young man running, Andreas. He stops to scoop up a handful of sand, and he tosses it, scattering in their path. An indolent woman sunbather turns on one elbow to look at them, and it seems impossible to behold any longer this vision of her own happiness; a surf of years rolls over her, turning her in it, transposing Leona and herself. Then, with an effort, she pulls herself back. Her cobwebbed eyes clear, and she sees that it is not Andreas but only Jimmy Breed.

  “Don’t look so unhappy, Granny.”

  The folly of everything she has ever dreamed or planned for Leona overwhelms her. It doesn’t matter. He is terrible. They are all terrible—all Leona’s men. They have always been; they will always be.

  “Granny?”

  “Unhappy!” Edith cries. “Oh, I will not have this, Leona!” And she turns and runs herself, awkwardly and heavily, away from them, across the beach.