Lewis rolled around her. “Argue with me,” he said. “I’ve been so fucking bored. I can’t find anyone who’ll agree with me for the right reasons.”
Later, when he was lying in a lukewarm tub, creating his own steam, she asked him questions: Who had really cared for him? (A nanny, his sisters.) What had he liked when he was a boy? (His dogs, drawing maps, women, reading.) He’d been kicked out of Andover for one of those things, finished up at a military academy, done well at Columbia.
Dulcy watched him turn the spigot with his toe. “Why did you come here to begin with?” she asked. “And why did you come back after the first time?”
“I didn’t really want to be anywhere,” Lewis said. “I stopped to see Samuel on my way to Butte for some interviews, and the room was cheap and so I left bags when I made a run down to Denver for a different story. The town was so strange and pleasant. People are holier than thou everywhere, but this place had a sense of humor.”
“You’re cherry—picking,” she said. “You really swan around, thinking nice things about the citizens?”
“Honest things,” said Lewis. “But I understand your sarcasm. Don’t you want to lie down again?” he said. “I’m not so hot anymore.”
She did, though he was. She hiked the windows, and they climbed back in bed. She didn’t think of pitying Lewis since spending nights with him, despite his sweats and his miserable childhood, despite running her fingers over his ribs.
“Why don’t we marry?” he asked. “Marry me.”
“I like having a secret,” she said. “Having a lover, and no one the wiser.”
“Lover,” he said. “All right.” The wind gusted through the open window, blowing his clippings around, but he had an arm clamped around her. “Why Dulcinea? Did your father read Don Quixote?”
“Yes,” she said.
“It’s better than asking why Leda or Cordelia.”
“Yes.” She turned on her side and watched the tips of his eyelashes, batting off sleep and some greater weariness. He was too thin. She shut her eyes.
“Dulcinea,” said Lewis. Another gust and they turned away from the window together, spooning against each other, thinking about wind, windmills.
Summer (June 21 to September 20)
June 29, 1170, Aleppo and elsewhere, 100,000 dead.
July 8, 1730, Valparaiso, unknown. 300—mile wave.
July 13, 1605, Qiongshan, Hainan, China, 3,000.
July 21, 365, Crete, 20,000. A wave to Alexandria.
August 8, 1303, Crete, 10,000. The same.
August 12, 1042, Palmyra, 50,000.
August 12, 1157, Syria, 20,000, largest in a sequence.
August 13, 1868, Arica, Chile, 25,000. A wave.
August 17, 1668, Anatolia, 8,000.
August 26, 1883, Java, 100,000; eruption of Krakatoa.
August 31, 1886, Charleston, 60.
September 5, 1694, Puglia, 6,000.
September 10, 1509, Constantinople, 10,000.
—from Walton Remfrey’s red notebook
chapter 19
The Sky-Blue Book of Summer Daydreams
•
Late June was the time of arrivals in Montana, of tourists and ballet troupes and suspect royalty. People who kept grand sporting camps or bred horses, local bigwigs’ wives who wintered in the East and deigned to visit only when the average daytime temperature reached sixty, wealthy fishermen from England and Germany, who didn’t entirely understand the pattern of thawing and flood, and had to seek out still-clear spring creeks while the café au lait river raged on. European wilderness enthusiasts, oil-well con men, logging crews, union organizers, vast clotty herds of sheep and cattle heading for early market by train before the summer heat could kill the load.
The women of the Sacajawea Club, sultanas of their world, had been galvanized by scandals, stabbings, canings, executions, and a flood. Now the world had gone flat, and the proverbial mud was drying. It was hot, and they arrived at the meeting with great rings under their arms; they forgot the handkerchiefs they’d stuffed up as they drank, and by the end, the inside of their blouses by the wrists were wringed with damp crumpled cloths and melted cornstarch and soda. The arrivals were a relief—mysterious, or reassuringly cyclical, or fizzily open—ended. Local rumors were the same old thing: Eugenia’s husband was again expected to visit, Mrs. Woolley had broken it off with her chauffeur, Rex’s lawyer had managed to hunt down the man who had sold him nothing in Gardiner, and both Samuel Peake and Lewis Braudel seemed to be spending their nights away from their rooms in the Elite.
“You can’t believe that nasty piece of work Irina,” said Vinca Macalester. “They probably both turned her down, and she’s having her revenge. But I heard a different rumor: Eugenia’s husband is dying. A friend who lives in Provo heard something about a heart attack.”
“Hard to die if you don’t exist,” said Margaret. “Do you think they’re even still married?”
Dulcy had been thinking the same thing, but Margaret surprised her. Now they fell silent because Eugenia had just entered the dining room: she was showing off her new cook, and her shellpink silk dress made her seem like the single largest item in a room of beefeaters. After a winter of dormancy, she’d had every inch of the hotel scrubbed and spruced; after months of accepting Gerry’s drunken body as drapery in her hallways and apparently in her auntly bed, word was that she’d sent him home to his empty house, and that he’d once again sobered up. “He’s dry drunk now, and mean,” said Samuel. “This is when the drunks of town should hide.”
Dulcy began to understand that Eugenia’s pattern of lassitude and furious action was a kind of seesaw: she stayed still as long as she could, then burst into action, then fell quiet again and stored up a fresh batch of worry. Now she was her own volcano, and her flossy hair and pearls billowed as she handed out the new menu. The chef was from Europe, very exciting , but Dulcy wondered if Europe meant one of Irina’s cousins. The waiter used sign language to steer her toward safe appetizers, but he was hint-free about the main course. Now, as he delivered their plates and she peered down at a beige pile, she was sure she’d been right.
Leonora Randall was having pale food, too: scallops in a cream sauce, with mushrooms and baby onions. “Lovely, isn’t it?” Eugenia asked, sticking to wine. Margaret, profoundly nice, and lucky in her choice of chicken, said it was all delicious, and Vinca, who was pregnant again, said she didn’t have much of an appetite, and Dulcy said the effort was promising.
“You wound me, dear,” said Eugenia. “Have you even noticed the new awning?”
Dulcy and the others had mostly noticed that Gerry Fenoways had entered the room, and was walking straight toward Eugenia, who had her back to the door. He looked leaner and years younger. He greeted them all now as if he’d never not been perfect, but what was his alternative? He put a proprietary hand on Eugenia’s cushioned shoulder, and she looked up at him as if he were a spider on the ceiling and she was judging the distance for a swat. “My dear,” he said, “I need to have a brief word with you.”
“Well, Gerald, I’m entertaining. Perhaps in the morning?”
“Perhaps in the lobby, now,” said Gerry.
“No,” said Eugenia.
Gerry studied her. Margaret began to search through her bag for some unknown item. “Things have been a bit of a blur,” he said, “and I haven’t handled myself or my business well, but the time has come to have a heart-to-heart with Uncle Errol about our investments.”
Eugenia sipped her wine. “You know he’s fragile, dear. Didn’t he address your questions in his last letter?”
“I can’t recall what questions I asked, in all honesty. I intend to visit him. He would be my uncle, my blood. You only married the man!”
He laughed, and though Dulcy did think he made a point, it was a horrible sound. They all wa
tched Eugenia reach for the glass again.
“I can’t allow you to exhaust him, Gerald. I’ll see him soon, and I can pass on your concerns.”
“Maybe we should visit him together, Aunty.”
Dulcy had some insight into the look that Eugenia and Gerry exchanged: they wanted each other dead. Vinca rose and said she felt unwell, really had to go. Eugenia and Gerry didn’t notice—he reached down for Eugenia’s wineglass, twirled it, smelled it, put it down hard enough to splash.
Eugenia pushed away from the table, not a very ladylike gesture. “I will not be humiliated by you in public, and I will not let you bully an unwell man. What would your mother say about you foisting yourself in this way on her little brother? Perhaps you’d like to discuss breaking the partnership. It would be easier to do this before Errol buys the next property. We’d rather have the hotel to ourselves.”
“I have no fucking intention of giving you anything you want.”
“Gerald, perhaps you should simply drink. Not drinking isn’t making you any happier.”
“You’d like me to kill myself.”
“I’d like you to be at ease. I hope that you can achieve some happy balance.”
Gerry stared at her, probably wondering what it all meant. Not good things for him, thought Dulcy, getting to her feet to leave while Margaret did the same. Did Eugenia have his trust, or just his money? Had it been both, and now might it not be either?
•••
The beginning of summer, over three occasions:
They were all invited to a garden party down in the valley, thrown by a man who Grover hoped would invest in his movies. Grover wanted Lewis to go, because he could “vouch for me professionally,” and Lewis wanted to go because he was thinking about writing a piece about the humorous ways wretched excess—serious Eastern money—played out on a frontier landscape. Their host had six thousand acres, a spring creek, a mile of river, and a house that had employed most of the region during construction the year before. The owner, Mr. Bartle, had bought boats for guests, and brought in five hundred pheasants and the newest targets. The river was still muddy, and the pheasants were presumably nesting, but a target-shooting picnic and spring-creek fishing would be a fine time. Samuel was excited, Rex was excited, Dulcy and Margaret planned to be snobby about the house.
That morning Lewis left early for the hotel, hoping for a telegram about his last article. When she saw him a few hours later, waiting for their buggies outside the Elite, he looked ill and angry.
“What’s wrong?”
He looked away. “Nothing. I’ll tell you later.”
They ended up riding with Grover’s wife, Clara. She had chestnut curls and a moppet voice and a fitting nickname: Bubbles. She was beyond happiness to be reunited with Grovy. “Love him,” she said. “Love him, the silly man. We hug and hug.”
Maria Nash had limited experience, but hug wasn’t the word that came to mind when she thought of lovers’ reunions. Nevertheless, she smiled along with all the other women and tried to not dwell on how much Clara Dewberry, amazed and happy at every little thing, sounded like a pet monkey. Dulcy made herself deaf, and she looked out at the world through the buggy fringe as if she were looking at a stage, the screen of a moving picture, a window on a changing museum.
The house was new, ungainly and brick, a Victorian pile set ostentatiously on a bleak Mongolian plain instead of the lush river bottom. Their host, Mr. Bartle, was extravagantly friendly, gratingly intelligent; his wife wore a plank of turquoise silk that ended midway down her concave shins, and she staggered on nail-thin heels as she led them down the stone path to the gardens and through the bland, velveted main rooms of the house. Rex ran around calling drinks, drinks, just as he had at his mother’s house, and the host asked questions: should they test the boats today, or wait? Should they play badminton, or shoot a few birds after all?
Someone sane pointed out the mud in the river, the wind in the air, and the fact that the spring creek had sprung a temporary leak. A second and third round of drinks was served, and they milled, waiting for the lunch bell—“a cowboy bell!” according to their ever-enthused host. Samuel kept moving away from Clara, and Clara kept following him. His aversion was palpable, and she seemed to be attached by a string. Grover ignored both of them. Dulcy watched this from the center of the lawn as she listened to their hostess tell plump Margaret about her new diet—only dairy—while Margaret munched on creamed crab toasts with a half smile. They were on Dulcy’s right, and Grover and Lewis were on her left. She heard Lewis say quietly, “Take care of the people who love you, Grover. Don’t be a shit.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass, Lewis. Read your own lecture.”
The food was good: crayfish bisque, asparagus, chicken potpie. Dulcy let herself drift in and out of overheard conversations. She watched Lewis—she always loved to watch Lewis, but she tried not to be obvious about it—and wondered about his mood. Grover was wooing his host with information about the film company he thought they should invest in, perhaps take over, at the very least ally with. It was revolutionary, bent on telling full stories, whole plays—
“What kind of stories?” asked Lewis.
“Arthurian legends,” said Grover primly. “This company—Globe, isn’t that perfect?—had an unrelated loss, and the timing would be ideal for an investment.”
Bartle, alerted by the word loss , made a grinding, inquiring sound in his throat. “Human vagaries,” said Grover. “An insane engineer lost the money. I’m not quite straight on this, but Mr. Maslingen made a killing on mines after the Boer problem, and then the profit went missing, and then they had to sell a newspaper—”
Dulcy felt the kind of cold-lipped dizziness that came with a faint or stomach flu. She felt so sick she couldn’t find any pleasure in the idea of throwing up on Clara, who was so fascinated by the conversation that her chin was almost hooked on Dulcy’s left shoulder. Grover rolled on. “And then the engineer’s daughter, a crazy girl, jumped out a train window. She put them through hell . The man’s engaged again now, but still.”
Lewis finally met Dulcy’s eyes. “She killed herself, and that’s the beginning and the end of it,” he said. “But it does sound like its own long movie.”
They all walked to the range; he passed behind her, touching the small of her back, and said, “Keep your head up.”
So she did. The men shot first. Dulcy had used a gun once at a friend’s farm near Cold Spring, at a candidacy party. People had loved to have Walton at such events because of the way he worked his accent around the normal nasty American political vocabulary. What he said, if a person truly listened, was not in fact complimentary. Clara launched into a monologue on biting insects. Grover bellowed politics, his voice swelling in the air. Lewis, drunk as a skunk, shot very well—she heard people mutter Philippines—and claimed all the shards in his cheek heated up next to the warm barrel, and a Bozeman woman he seemed to know—had she known the last mistress?—touched his cheek to see if he was lying.
The idea of Priscilla the mistress worked its way through drinks and panic. It made Dulcy miserable in a new way, and misery made her surly. When Lewis finally met her eyes now, she looked away. She thought of walking down by the river but guessed she might be shot. Dulcy took a turn with the gun and only ticked one out of six disks that Bartle’s boys threw in the air. “Try again,” said Rex, beaming with his newly happy eyes over his newly bumpy nose.
“Did you remember your glasses?” called Lewis.
This time she obliterated three of the six.
More drinks; onward to the river, which was still huge and brown and deadly. While the guests politely admired the impressive riverboats, some locals tried to explain to the host that pulling them into the river while it was this high, and they were this drunk, was a bad idea. Dulcy wandered off into the cottonwood bottomland. It was green, high-grassed, orchard
as a cathedral. It would be a wonderful place to live, if the river didn’t rinse you out every few years.
Birds flushed behind her, and she turned. Lewis was running toward her.
A few minutes later, down in the grass, she said, “You knew and you didn’t tell me. You let me feel safe.”
“You are safe. I’ll keep you safe. What the hell do you think happens in my head, when you look at me like that?” he asked.
“Did you know the woman who petted your face?”
“No.”
She could have said, did you know her friend, but she left it alone. “Why were you so sour earlier?”
“My sister telegrammed me. My father died.”
He went back out to the crowd first. From the voices she guessed Bartle was persisting in putting people in boats, if only to estimate how many would fit. She walked the other way for a few minutes, plucking at the bark and grass stuck in the pleats of her blouse, wanting to be away from these people. She cut back to the river path for easier walking but heard something and moved behind a tree. Through branches and wild clematis she could see Samuel standing ten yards away. He stared blindly at the river, then tilted his head back and closed his eyes. For a horrible moment she thought, he has a gun, and he’s going to kill himself, but then she saw that Grover was kneeling in front, and had Samuel in his mouth.
She slid back into the party. No one had noticed she’d been missing.
•••
Lewis was not going to the funeral, because his stepmother wouldn’t have it. He’d just seen his father, and he’d known it would be soon, and they’d left each other on better terms than usual. Dulcy had to understand how different it had been: her father might have been difficult, but she’d loved him and been loved in return.
He explained this later, in bed. She told him what she’d seen in the woods, that Samuel had to be careful. “Leave it,” said Lewis. “Samuel’s lonely.” This had been going on for years, and it was hard on Samuel, because Grover would sleep with anything, male or female. Lewis said she shouldn’t waste her pity on Clara, who was willfully blind to all of it (Dulcy hadn’t actually thought of Clara), and Grover’s wayward affections were only part of the story: he made gentlemen’s movies. One was called Wild William Tell , but instead of Tell’s son and the apple, Grover filmed girls wearing only hats and cowboy chaps, wiggling body parts at Indian archers, who inevitably had to walk closer to check their aim. Sometimes the cowboys got there first.
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