Dark Homecoming

by William Patterson

  Variola made a face in disgust. “Coven,” she spit. “That was your word. Not mine.”

  “She was our leader,” Hoffman said. “And she will be again.”

  Variola laughed in derision. “You poor deluded creature.”

  Mrs. Hoffman folded her arms across her chest. “You think I’d ever swear allegiance to you? That I’d ever recognize you as leader of our coven?”

  “I believe there will be others who will do so. Others who are not as foolish or as deluded as you are to think she can ever be brought back.”

  “I’m not threatened by your alliances with chambermaids.”

  Variola smiled. “But Mrs. Hoffman. I’ve decided to embrace the new mistress of the house. She has expressed an interest in the fine arts of the islands.”

  It was Mrs. Hoffman’s turn to laugh. “I am even less threatened by her.”

  “You have repudiated all I taught you!” Variola shouted, angry all of a sudden. Every single glass object in the parlor—every vase, every figurine, every ashtray—suddenly went flying around the room. Mrs. Hoffman had to duck to avoid being hit, though she did so with only the slightest alarm. “You have corrupted my faith! Papa Ghede will not stand for it!”

  “You agreed, Variola,” Hoffman seethed. “You promised to bring her back! You were paid very well to bring her back!”

  “I kept my promise,” Variola said, her voice a low growl.

  “At what cost?” Mrs. Hoffman demanded, her eyes suddenly filled with emotion. It looked as if the plastic mask might crack.

  “The cost you insisted on,” Variola told her softly. “What we have today is all because of you.”

  “But I have been taking steps to correct it, to make things better,” the housekeeper said, even as she waved a hand around her. The shattered glass nearest to her reassembled as if in reverse motion and returned to the shelves. “I have been doing what I could to bring her back even as you have sat idle.”

  “I have done all I can to bring her back,” Variola said, waving her own hand now. The remaining shattered glass was quickly and efficiently restored.

  “There must be more that you can do,” Mrs. Hoffman said. “Or I will have to continue doing things my way.”

  “Your ways don’t work,” Variola told her. “There must be no pain . . .”

  “Then step up and do what you were asked to do,” Hoffman replied. “What you promised to do that terrible day of the accident.”

  Variola was silent. The two women resumed staring at each other without speaking any words. Memories of the year past thrummed between them.

  This time it was Variola who broke the silence. “And what about Mr. Huntington? He is a wild card, you know. Will he do as you say?”

  “He has no choice, does he?” Hoffman replied.

  Variola sighed.

  Mrs. Hoffman turned, walking stiffly out of the parlor and up the stairs. Variola sighed once more, turning herself and returning to the kitchen, chanting a prayer to Papa Ghede under her breath.

  37

  “Mom, don’t hang up the phone,” Liz said.

  She’d been trying to reach her mother for weeks, but Mom would never return Liz’s calls or emails. Every time Liz called, she always ended up getting Mom’s voice mail. Apparently, when she saw it was Liz calling, Mom wouldn’t pick up the phone. Finally, this morning, Liz had had enough: she blocked her number when she called, so her mother wouldn’t know it was her. And, sure enough, Mom picked up on the first ring.

  “Why would I hang up on you?” she asked Liz.

  “Because you clearly have been avoiding me.”

  “You’re paranoid, Liz.”

  “You never even called to congratulate me after the wedding!”

  “Congratulate you? After you ran off and got married to some guy I’d never even met?”

  “Mom, we’ve been over this. We were on the ship—it was spontaneous—romantic—”

  She heard her mother sniff. “Spontaneous! Romantic! More like impulsive and foolhardy. Liz, you barely know this man you’ve made your husband.”

  “I know him very well,” she replied, even if, down deep, she still worried sometimes that she didn’t know David all that well. Despite how wonderful things had been between them lately, Liz hadn’t forgotten how he’d abandoned her and left her here to deal with all that unpleasantness on her own. She’d forgiven him, and she felt pretty certain he regretted his behavior—but Mom’s words just raised her doubts all over again, although she’d never give her mother the satisfaction of knowing that.

  “Besides,” Mom was saying, “you denied me the chance to plan a wedding for you. You denied your sister and brother the chance to be a part of your big day.”

  “That’s what I’m calling for, Mom. I want you and Deanne and George to come visit. We’re having a dinner party next week—it’s a big deal, David’s pulling out all the stops. His parents are coming, too.”

  Her mother harrumphed. “We can’t afford to fly down to Florida for a dinner party.”

  “Mom, David’s going to fly you down. It’s time you met him. He wants so much to meet you.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Mom?” Liz asked. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “He’s got his assistant working on the tickets now. I was thinking, the day after the party, we could maybe drive down to Miami—or would you rather go to Orlando, maybe take in Disney World? You know how much Deanne and I always wanted to go there as kids.”

  “Right, and I could never afford to take you.”

  “Well, now we can go!”

  “Sorry, Liz, but we have a prior engagement next week.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t just call us up after ignoring us for weeks and tell us your rich husband wants to jet us around and take us places. Sorry, Liz. We’re not at your beck and call. Maybe your houseful of servants, but not us.”

  “Mom, you’re being unreasonable. Put Deanne on the phone . . .”

  “She’s out. And I have to be somewhere, too. Thanks for the invite, Liz, but I’m afraid it came a little too late.”

  Mom hung up the phone.

  Liz was steaming mad. She was about to call her sister—Deanne would be very happy to come, she was sure—but then she took a deep breath. She knew how sensitive her mother was. She’d raised them on her own, struggling to overcome her own problems. Maybe Liz had touched a nerve calling her this way. She could feel her anger subsiding as she remembered how Mom had fought so hard to get sober, and how abandoned and alone she’d felt when Liz took the job on the cruise line. Liz was still hurt by David’s abandonment of her—but hadn’t she abandoned her mother in the same way?

  The old tape loop of guilt started playing in her head again. Down deep, Liz believed that everything that went wrong in her life was ultimately her fault.

  She knew who could shake her out of that sort of thinking. She hit Nicki’s name in her contacts on her phone.

  “Hey, this is Nicki,” her voice mail announced. “I’m back on dry land, so leave your message and I will get back to you.”

  “Hey,” Liz said after the beep. “Are you in Atlantic City? Have you started the new job? Hope things are going well. Call me when you get this. I just want to vent a little bit about my mother.” She drew out the two syllables in the word mother. “Oh, and David is back home and everything is great and happy and wonderful again. Call me. Love you.”

  Great and happy and wonderful. Liz stood there at the window, her phone in her hand, looking out over the topiary. In the distance she could spy a bit of the sculpture garden—the wings of that hideous cow-angel. Great and happy and wonderful.

  That was really how things were—weren’t they?

  Standing there, she caught a whiff of gardenia. She told herself she must be imagining it.

  38

  “How does such a handsome, obviously successful man as yourself end up sitting at a bar like this
one, all alone on a Saturday night?”

  The blond woman sitting next to him with the tattoo of a star on her neck lifted her martini glass in a sort of toast.

  Roger clinked his glass with hers. “Well, truth is, I was invited to a gala dinner party tonight, but I had to decline.”

  “Because you’d rather sit here, drowning yourself in gin?” She winked at him. “I’ve been counting. That’s your third.”

  “Fourth,” Roger corrected her. “I had one at my gallery, before I came over here.”

  “You hold your liquor well.” She looked him over. “Gallery? What kind of gallery?”

  “An art gallery. Uptown.”

  The woman snickered. “I don’t really understand art.”

  “That’s all right,” Roger said, taking a sip of his martini. “I don’t really either.”

  The bar was a dive, wedged between a check-cashing business and a boarded-up building with signs posted declaring it had been condemned by the city. The bar smelled of beer and urine, and the lights were low. The countertop was sticky.

  “You come here often?” the woman asked.

  Roger sighed. “My first time. I needed to go somewhere where no one knew me. Where I could, as you say, drown myself in gin.”

  “Well, my name is Lana, and now, someone knows ya.”

  They clinked glasses again.

  “So,” Lana said, “what’s her name?”

  “Excuse me?” Roger asked.

  “Her name. The woman you’re drowning yourself over. The woman you’d rather be with tonight, instead of here, in this dive.”

  Roger looked down at his glass. “You’re a smart girl,” he said.

  “Not really. Just wise to the ways of men.” She took a drink. “You haven’t told me your name.”

  “Roger,” he said quietly.

  He looked over at her. She was pretty enough. Blond, blue-eyed. The star tattoo on her neck suggested she was a bit of a free spirit. She wasn’t all that young, but she wasn’t old either, despite the lines around her eyes and her mouth. She was a smoker, Roger suspected. But there was a vitality to her that intrigued him.

  Lana smiled. “How about if we finish our drinks and go take a swim? My apartment isn’t far from here, and we have a nice pool.”

  “I don’t have a bathing suit with me.”

  She winked. “You won’t need one.”

  He downed the last of his gin.

  39

  Liz stood in the foyer, greeting the guests as they arrived. They had invited eight couples, and all but one had accepted, seemingly eager to get an up-close look at David’s new wife. The Delacortes were there, of course. Mrs. Delacorte air-kissed Liz as if they were old pals, though she never made eye contact with her. Mr. Delacorte winked at her, which made Liz distinctly uneasy. He was introduced as “Dr. Delacorte,” but what kind of doctor he was, Liz had no idea. The Merriwells were incredibly snooty, calling Liz “Lisa” three times before she corrected them. The Claytons were a little better; when Liz told Mrs. Clayton that she was from New Jersey, the older woman had replied that she was, too. For a moment Liz had thought she’d found a friend—until the overly made-up lady (her pancake and rouge had to be half an inch thick) leaned in and said, “But my parents insisted I go to school in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Miss Porter’s, then Smith.” Her eyes twinkled. “Where did you go to school, Liz?”

  “Trenton High,” she replied. “And then the College of New Jersey.”

  Mrs. Clayton retreated to her dinner plate and didn’t speak to Liz again.

  Most everyone was in their fifties or sixties; only two couples seemed to be in their thirties, and only one had a wife anywhere near Liz’s age, though she was a textbook example of a gold digger. “You did good, honey,” she said, leaning into Liz, her bracelets jangling. “We gals from the wrong side of the tracks have to be pretty damn shrewd if we want to catch a big fish.” And then she giggled, jangling away on her wealthy husband’s arm.

  So that’s what they think of me, Liz thought, steaming. That I’m some floozy from “the wrong side of the tracks” who married David for his money.

  They all had some connection to David’s business. The older couples had been friends with his parents for years. All of them came expecting the elder Huntingtons to be there. Indeed, Liz had expected the same thing. But a few hours before the party David had told her that his mother and father had declined.

  “They can’t get away from New York,” he’d said. “Too much going on.”

  “Talk about canceling at the last minute.”

  David had looked away.

  “David,” Liz had said, a realization dawning on her. “You knew about this! How long?”

  “I’m sorry, darling. I forgot to tell you . . .”

  “You forgot? David, that’s not something you forget. Here I was, all anxious about meeting your parents, and you don’t let me know they’re not coming . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Liz. Dad mentioned it yesterday when we were on the phone talking about business matters. It slipped my mind.”

  “Why aren’t they coming?”

  He still hadn’t looked at her. “I told you. There’s too much going on for them. To fly down to Florida would just be too much . . .”

  “They’ve known about this for some time!”

  “Dad was very apologetic.”

  Liz had glared at him. “They don’t want to meet me. Isn’t that it? They don’t approve.”

  “Liz, stop imagining things. Stop playing the victim.”

  “Playing the victim? Listen, David—”

  “Can we not argue, darling? Let’s just have a wonderful dinner party without them. All right?”

  So Liz had refrained from saying any more. But all through the event she couldn’t shake the idea that David’s parents had canceled because they didn’t want to give their friends the impression that they approved of their son’s marriage to this girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

  At the table, the silver and china sparkled under the light of the chandelier. Mrs. Hoffman had had the maids polishing and shining all day. Liz sat with Mr.—or rather Dr.—Delacorte on her right and some man whose name she’d forgotten on her left. Mrs. Merriwell sat opposite her. The conversation mostly went over Liz’s head. The men talked business with David; the women talked about people they all knew but whose names meant nothing to Liz. She mostly stayed quiet, picking at her salad, not in the least bit hungry.

  “And do you have a career, Liz?” Mrs. Merriwell asked at last, startling her into life.

  “I’m a dancer,” Liz replied. Eyelids flickered around the table as people tried to get a look at each other, as if to say: A dancer?

  David chimed in helpfully. “She’s thinking of opening her own dance academy here in town.”

  Liz saw Mrs. Clayton sneak a peek at Mrs. Delacorte as she forked a slice of tomato from her salad into her mouth.

  “I haven’t decided definitely on that yet,” Liz said. “But possibly.”

  “Are your parents still living?” Mrs. Merriwell asked.

  Here it comes, Liz thought. They’re trying to find out what sort of family I come from.

  “I don’t know if my father is still alive,” she said honestly. “He walked out on us years ago.”

  A chorus of ohhs sounded from around the table.

  Liz considered adding, just to slake their curiosity, that her father had been a traveling salesman before he took off, and that her mother was currently working in a Laundromat. But she figured she’d given them enough information to chew on for the moment.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she said, standing, “I’ll see about the soup.”

  She felt eyes on her as she walked out of the room into the kitchen.

  Waiting for her was Rita.

  “Is everything all right, ma’am?”

  “Yes,” she lied. “I just thought I’d let Variola know that we’re . . . we’re ready for the soup.”

  Rita surpri
sed her by taking her hands in hers. “They’re horrible people, aren’t they?” Rita asked. “They think they’re better than you. Better than all of us.”

  Liz didn’t know how to respond. “Rita, they’re Mr. Huntington’s friends . . .”

  A small smile spread across the maid’s face. “I’m sure he knows how phony they all are, and why he subjects you to them, I don’t understand. Well, stay strong. Don’t let them make you feel bad about yourself.”

  Liz was speechless.

  “I’ll let Variola know about the soup, and we’ll bring it out right away.” Rita squeezed Liz’s hands, then let them go. “Everything is going to be all right, Mrs. Huntington. You can trust me.” Her smile broadened. “I’m your friend.”

  Liz still didn’t know what to say. She watched Rita hurry off. Taking a deep breath, she returned to the table.

  “It is hard getting and keeping good help these days,” Mrs. Merriwell was saying as Liz sat back down. “You can never be sure if they’re legal, first of all, and second of all, you can never be quite sure whom you can trust. I’m always afraid they’re going to steal the silver.”

  Mrs. Delacorte was nodding. “It’s terribly unfair that we can’t feel safe in our own homes.”

  Dr. Delacorte smiled at his wife, then leaned in toward Liz. “Do you feel safe in your own home, my dear?” he whispered.

  Liz thought it a very odd question, given everything she’d been through. “Now that David is back home,” she replied, “I feel very safe and very happy.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” Delacorte said, looking at her with his sunken green eyes in such a way that Liz felt very uncomfortable. “I like it when pretty girls like you are happy.”

  Liz was eager to change the subject. “So what do you do at Huntington Enterprises, Dr. Delacorte?” she asked.

  “Oh, I don’t work for Huntington. I’m just on the board of directors. And a stockholder, so I have a stake in any advice I give David.” He chuckled. A piece of lettuce was stuck between his teeth. “The rest of the time, I’m an anesthesiologist.”

  “An anesthesiologist,” Liz repeated.