Who Killed Blanche DuBois?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  Claire looked out the window again. She enjoyed the sensation traveling gave her of being cut off, of belonging neither to the past nor the future, but in transit, in between the place you have left and the place you are going. Outside, the sun was setting over the river—the clouds had parted just long enough for her to see a pale pink glow over the western October sky. The wind had picked up and the tree branches along the riverbank swayed to its rhythm.

  Wer reitet so spät

  Durch Nacht und Wind?

  Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind

  Claire shivered. Goethe’s poem had always thrilled and frightened her. She had fallen in love with Schubert’s musical setting of it in college, but she wasn’t sure why it popped into her head at this moment.

  Er hat den Knabe

  Wohl in dem Arm,

  Er fasst ihn sicher,

  Er hält ihn warm.

  Claire looked across the aisle at the little red-headed girl, still asleep on her father’s lap, her stubby hand stubbornly clutching the box of raisins. She was not a beautiful child, and she slept carelessly sprawled on her back, mouth open, but she had the grace of childhood. Youth is beauty; beauty, youth. Maybe that’s what Plato really meant to say, after all—those Greeks worshiped youth, didn’t they? Claire looked down at her own hands, her skin already showing the crisscross hatching of aging. She forced her eyes back to the window; this was an unfulfilling train of thought she refused to sink into, this pointless contemplation of bodily decay.

  Claire could see the lighthouse at the bend in the river and knew they were almost in Hudson. The river stretched out ahead, lit by the afternoon sun. Gulls drifted lazily overhead, wailing their high screeches. The train gave a couple of long, low whistles and pulled into the station. Claire looked around for Robert. He had been hired to photograph a wedding and would probably be out late. She sighed. Publishing and photography—why couldn’t at least one of them be in a nine-to-five profession?

  When Claire got off the train she saw Star Taxi’s green-and-red neon sign across the street, but as soon as she had the thought of hiring a cab she felt a pang of Calvinistic guilt; it was, after all, less than half a mile to Robert’s house, albeit an uphill half mile. Claire trudged up the hill to Warren Street, passing the Savoy Bar and Grill, where five or six beer-bellied patrons sat watching the TV that hung over the bar. One of them looked out at her as she passed, and the blankness of his stare was startling. She continued up the steep hill and turned onto Warren Street.

  Hudson had been a thriving whaling port in the nineteenth century, and later a fashionable resort, but had fallen on hard times in the latter part of this century. The last five or ten years had brought the town the kind of rebirth Claire had seen in so many neighborhoods in New York City: first the artists and writers, attracted by the run-down charm and cheap real estate, then the antique dealers, and then the inevitable yuppies. Claire wasn’t sure what category Robert fell into; neither artist nor yuppie, he was one of the earlier settlers and therefore looked upon latecomers with the contempt which is the right of any true pioneer. Also, Robert was English, so condescension came naturally to him. In spite of its renaissance, the town still retained a worn, shabby working-class appearance, and as Claire walked up Warren Street she passed the archetypal Hudson family: a fat, stringy-haired mother with three dingy, pasty-faced children. All the joy seemed to have drained from the woman’s face years ago, and the children looked as worn as their mother. The sight of them depressed Claire, and she quickened her steps. The architecture of Warren Street was actually of great interest, as Robert had pointed out to her. Today, however, the street looked bleak and lonely. She was glad when she reached number 465.

  Robert lived in a large, heavy, late-nineteenth-century brick town house. He had painted it a light, creamy green, with forest-green trim. It loomed over her, its shutters closed and locked; Robert did not like the noise from the street during the day, preferring to spend his time in the back garden, which faced a quiet alley. Claire knocked just to be sure Robert was not in, and then, hearing no answer, slipped her key in the lock and entered.

  The house was dark and quiet. Only the Tiffany hall light was on, casting a green glow over the dark woodwork. Claire walked through the long narrow hall into the kitchen, with its blue willow china stacked neatly in the glass cupboards, the knife rack full of perfectly sharpened knives, the antique iron stove beautifully polished. Robert did everything so well, so meticulously, that next to him Claire felt sloppy and undisciplined. She looked out the door to the back porch, almost expecting to see Robert out there, sitting on his chaise reading or puttering about in the garden, digging up forgotten bulbs. But the only sound that came from the garden was the dry rattle of dead leaves as the wind ruffled through them.

  Claire went back inside the house and put the kettle on. for tea. It was a habit she had acquired from Robert. Since they had been together she had switched from coffee to afternoon tea with an ease that surprised her. Coffee had always signified the urban existence to her, but now she took tea in the afternoon, just like any English woman.

  She wandered through the house while the water was heating, into the long back living room with its deep red velvet couch and faded Persian carpets, then into Robert’s study, with the fabulous sliding mahogany doors closing it off from the back parlor. There was no doubt that this house had “character,” and Robert’s careful decorating had enhanced its quirky charm. Robert hated anything done badly. He tackled everything with a grim determination until he had mastered it. Claire’s own strivings toward excellence often took second place to her desire for comfort, but Robert was different, and she respected him for that. She sometimes found his constant need for achievement tiresome, but she would never have admitted it.

  Things had moved so quickly with Robert that she didn’t really feel like she knew him very well yet—he had just sort of swept her off her feet with his attention. There was so much that she appreciated about him: for instance, he didn’t mind if she brought work up with her when she visited; in fact, he encouraged it.

  “It’s interesting, what you do,” he said, and then he would ask her things about her job. Claire had been with some men who only wanted to talk about themselves, and she found Robert’s attentive interest in her life flattering. He liked mysteries, and had read several of her authors.

  The teakettle in the kitchen began its slow ascending whistle and Claire walked through the front hall toward the kitchen. A riding crop leaned up against a brass-handled walking stick in the corner by the front door; above them an intricately carved hat rack hung from the wall. Claire had once teased Robert about having taste as good as a gay man’s, but he did not find her comment particularly amusing. Not that there was anything latently homosexual about Robert, as far as she could tell; with his even, sure strokes and deft hands, he seemed totally at ease with heterosexual coupling. Claire poured the tea and sat down in a deep red velvet armchair. She leaned back and closed her eyes, letting the steam from the tea envelop her face. She drank a little and put the cup on the floor, then closed her eyes again.

  As the sun sank over the Hudson Claire dreamed she was walking through a winter landscape, under a low slate-colored sky. Bare tree branches whipped back and forth in the wind, and there was no sign of life anywhere. Claire didn’t know where she was headed, only that she must get there before nightfall.

  Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?

  She was alone, and yet she had the feeling she was being followed. She stumbled across the frozen ground, tripping and catching her coat on brambles, afraid to turn around and look. She walked faster, but the faster she walked the more she felt the unknown pursuer closing in on her. She began to run. An unseen vine wrapped around her leg, pulling her down to her knees. In terror, she turned to look back—

  “Claire, darling, wake up.”

  She opened her eyes to see Robert bending over her. A lock of his light brown hair fell over one eye. He was handsome
, she thought, so handsome: strong Celtic jaw, high cheekbones, and blue, blue eyes.

  “Oh, Robert.”

  “What is it, darling?”

  Claire stretched and looked around the room. The lamps were lit and Robert’s photography equipment lay on the couch.

  “Are you all right? You look upset.”

  “Oh, it was nothing—just a bad dream.”

  “Well, it’s all right now—I’m here to protect you.” Robert turned and picked Claire’s coat up from the couch where she had left it. “Come on, I’ll make you a nice cup of tea, then, shall I?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  As Robert picked up the coat, the article from New Woman fell out. He bent over and picked it up.

  “What’s this?”

  “Oh, I brought that for you to see—it seems I’m getting my fifteen minutes of fame after all.”

  “Well, then, we must celebrate. How about dinner at Antoine’s?”

  “Oh, that would be lovely!”

  “Right. I’ll just see about tea, then.”

  Robert went into the kitchen. Lovely. A few months ago Claire never would have used that word, but she had absorbed some of Robert’s Englishness by osmosis. She went into the kitchen, where Robert was preparing the tea tray with his efficient, smooth gestures.

  “Mind if I check my machine for messages?”

  “Help yourself,” he said, indicating the phone.

  Claire dialed her number, and the machine picked up after two rings, indicating that there were messages. Robert wrapped his long arms around her, resting his head on her shoulder.

  “How about a little hors d’oeuvre?” he whispered into her ear.

  She pressed the “2” button on the phone to access her messages and listened to a long harangue from Willard Hughes, one of her authors, about how Ardor House really had to work harder to sell his books.

  “Oh, God—Willard!” she said as she hung up.

  “Never mind; you just go into the parlor and I’ll bring the tea in there,” Robert said.

  Claire went back to the parlor, sat down, and leaned back in the chair, listening to the comforting sounds of rattling china.

  “Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht?”

  “Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht?

  Den Erlenkönig mit Kron und Schweif?”

  “Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif.”

  Chapter 2

  Claire stood in the middle of Amelia Moore’s crowded Upper West Side living room, hoping Willard Hughes would not see her. Willard Hughes was an extremely unpleasant person. His voice had a plaintive, whining quality, subtle but insistent. He also had a disquieting nervous habit: when he was feeling anxious or pressured, his shoulders would twitch upward in a kind of involuntary shrug. This mannerism had the effect of undermining whatever he was saying at the time, as if he were qualifying it with this gesture of ineffectuality. Actually, Willard was not ineffectual at all; he was energetic, insistent, and demanding. He called her up more often than any of her other authors, to cajole advances or complain about publication deadlines, and he was in need of frequent hand-holding during the time period in which he churned out his books. Claire had to admit he could write, though there was an essential nastiness underlying all of his work; he seemed to revel in the most sordid aspects of crime. He was Claire’s best-selling author until Blanche’s latest book outsold all of his.

  Claire moved over to the punch bowl to avoid encountering Willard. She knew Amelia had invited him so that Claire would have more people to talk to. Amelia Moore was so sweet, so oblivious to malice of any kind, and she had no idea that Claire felt distaste for Willard. Claire had considered telling Amelia in confidence, but she could imagine how Amelia would deal with the news: there would be phone calls to Willard, invitations to tea to “talk things over” and “iron out this misunderstanding.” Amelia just didn’t understand that it was possible to simply dislike someone. She opened her heart and her home to anyone and everyone, with a largesse that made Claire worry about her.

  Amelia Moore’s parties were legendary. Her father had been chairman of the music department at Columbia, and when he died her mother moved back to eastern Long Island. The spacious nine-room apartment on West 116th Street had gone to Amelia, and she celebrated her good fortune by entertaining lavishly. Amelia knew an amazing assortment of interesting people. She knew everyone on the Columbia music faculty, and gave occasional voice lessons herself, so there was always an abundance of musical types at her parties. At the last one Claire was proposed to by an eighty-three-year-old Irish concertina player, a courtly man whose disappointment at her rejection was swiftly dispelled by a rollicking rendition of “Haul Away Joe.”

  Amelia moved through the room, greeting people and keeping an eye on the food supply. She was in her element; her eyes shone and dimples appeared on her plump cheeks whenever she smiled. She wore a billowy blue flowered dress which concealed her avoirdupois, as Blanche called it. Claire wandered through the room, past two separate groups of people talking about the Simpson verdict.

  “You can’t even begin to understand,” an elegant black woman was saying to her companions, two white women. One of the white women listened intently, forehead furrowed; the other, who was short with frizzy grey hair, interrupted impatiently.

  “But it was another case of a man murdering a woman,” she said. “Don’t you care about that?”

  Claire didn’t stick around to hear the black woman’s response; she found the whole subject depressing. Until the Simpson verdict, like a lot of white people, she was unaware of the depth of racial enmity within the country. The verdict hit her hard, more because of what it revealed about racial division than anything else. She was in an exercise class at the gym when the verdict was read, and was startled and horrified by the whoops of joy from the black women in her class.

  At the punch bowl, Claire pretended to refill her glass, fishing at a strawberry that floated and bobbed between ice cubes. She glanced in Willard’s direction, but to her relief he was busy with other quarry. He had cornered Blanche DuBois and was digging in, lighting a cigarette without taking his eyes off her. Even in the dimly lit corner of the room, his balding head shone like a beacon through the pathetically thin strands of black hair he insisted on combing over it.

  Willard had always been jealous of Blanche, and once he even accused Ardor House of promoting her books more than his. Claire could see Blanche’s discomfort; as she shifted her punch glass from hand to hand, her eyes moved around the room. Willard was speaking so loudly Claire could hear him.

  “What do you mean you don’t decide the means of murder until it happens?” His left shoulder was beginning to twitch spasmodically.

  Blanche answered in the deliberate, calm tone of a parent trying to quiet an unruly child in public. Claire couldn’t quite make out the words. She thought about rescuing Blanche, then decided she really didn’t have the emotional energy. Besides, Blanche could take care of herself. Claire smiled. Could Blanche’s parents have known how much she would resemble Tennessee Williams’s heroine when they named her, or had Blanche deliberately set out to live up to her name? Actually, Blanche’s appearance was misleading: her fluffy, dyed blond hair and frilly pastel dresses camouflaged a determined, iron will; like many other Southern women, she had merely learned to hide her strength.

  Willard looked really angry now. He was hunched over, jabbing at Blanche with his index finger. Claire could hear his voice, hoarse with emotion, but the din from the party was getting louder and all she could make out was “no—imagination—need—interesting methods . . .” Blanche was staring rather rudely into space, just past Willard’s head, but evidently he didn’t notice. Her fingers played with a loose strand of hair, and she looked meditative, thoughtful.

  Across the room Claire could see Blanche’s sister Sarah, dressed as usual in somber colors: a trim rust jacket over a formal black skirt, her short brown hair lying smooth against her head. Sarah
DuBois was older than Blanche, and though neither sister would reveal her age, it was rumored Sarah was quite a bit older, maybe even the child of another father. That certainly seemed possible—the qualities which in Blanche resulted in trim girlishness had, in Sarah, produced a thin ascetic. Taller than her sister, Sarah was long and lean and given to boniness. Her high cheekbones and thin patrician features would have been striking if it weren’t for the sour, disgruntled expression stamped on her face. She always wore her dark hair straight and unadorned—for all anyone knew, Blanche’s hair was naturally the same, but Sarah disdained bleaching and curling, just as she disdained other “coquettish affectations.” It was as though Sarah had taken every personality trait of her sister’s and flipped it over; she was the exact opposite of Blanche in so many ways it was sometimes hard to believe they were sisters.

  Claire inched her way toward the food table. As usual, it was filled with a staggering quantity of rich and interesting delicacies: three kinds of pâté, salmon mousse in a fish mold, puff pastry stuffed with bruxelles, an amazing mushroom soufflé, an almond vol-au-vent, fresh fruit tarts. In the center of the table was a large basket with baguettes and round loaves of pain de campagne. Amelia had spent her junior year of college in France, and had been a passionate cook ever since.