He tried to pull away, but she held fast to him. "It is," he cried in a kind of whinny, his frozen breath spilling from him like some vital essence. "And I have to tell you this, I have to," the maid at the door now, the tumbler clicking in the lock. "In all honesty, I can"t-what I mean is, Katherine, you don"t understand. I"m, I"m"-and he dropped his voice to a ragged chuffing whisper-"I"m a masturbator." masturbator."
"Good afternoon, madame," the maid said, pulling back the door. "And sir."
Katherine"s face showed nothing. "Good afternoon, Bridget," she said, ducking out from under the woolen scarf with a graceful flick of her neck and reaching up to unpin her hat in the vestibule with its mahogany-framed mirror, Tiffany lamp and Nottingham curtains. Stanley was staring down at the rug. "Bring us some tea in the parlor, would you?" she said, addressing the maid. "And some biscuits."
"Oh, I can"t-" Stanley said, still studying the pattern of the rug, "I really, I have to go, I-"
"We need to talk, Stanley." There was no arguing with the the tone of Katherine"s voice. She made an impatient gesture. "Come, give Bridget your coat and we"ll sit by the fire-you must be chilled through."
Again he let himself be led, slumped over and shuffling, a man of sixty, eighty, a hundred, his face transfigured with pain and mortification. She helped him to the couch and sat beside him. They listened in silence as the clock chimed the half hour-four-thirty, and starting to get dark. Stanley shifted uneasily in his seat. "I"m so dirty," he groaned.
"You"re not. Not at all."
"I"m not suited for marriage. I"ve done filthy things."
She seized his hand, and she was as wrought-up as he was, but it wasn"t his revelation that disturbed her-certainly masturbation wasn"t a nice habit, not the sort of thing you"d discuss over dinner or cards, but she was a biologist, after all, and she took it in stride-no, it was the idea of it that got to her, the mechanics of the act itself. She kept picturing Stanley, alone in his room and touching himself and maybe even thinking of her while he was doing it, and that sent a thrill through her. She could see him, stripped to his socks, his long strong legs, the pale hair of his thighs and chest and abdomen, Stanley, her fiance, her man. She loved him. She wanted him. She wanted to be there in that bedroom with him.
He was inexperienced, like her, she was sure of it. And that was the beauty of the whole thing. Here he was, a big towering physical specimen of a male, and yet so docile and sweet, hers to lead and shape and build into something extraordinary, a father like her father. And there was no chance of that with Butler Ames and the rest-they were smirking and wise, overgrown fraternity boys who tried women on for size, like hats, and went to prost.i.tutes with no more thought or concern than they went to the barber or the tailor. But Stanley, Stanley was malleable, unformed, innocent still-and that was why everything depended on getting him away from his mother, that crippling combative stultifying monster of a woman who"d made him into a pet and all but emasculated him in the process. He needed to get free, that was all, and then he could grow.
Katherine squeezed his hand as the maid clattered into the room with the tea things. "It"s nothing to worry about," she said. "Really. It"s your nerves, that"s all."
The room was warm, secure, wrapped up in its particularity, suspended in time. Katherine waited till the maid had set down the things and left. "It doesn"t matter what you"ve done," she whispered, and she wanted to kiss the side of his face, the bulge of his jaw, the place at the corner of his right eye where a lock of hair dangled like a thread of the richest tapestry, "because you have me now."
In June, their engagement was officially announced, and the papers in Boston, New York, Washington and Chicago all ran stories trumpeting their wealth, family connections and accomplishments, and a dozen smaller papers, including the Princeton Tiger, Princeton Tiger, printed prominent notices. Stanley was described as "the Harvester Heir" in most of these accounts, a "motoring enthusiast" and "amateur artist," and Katherine was, simply, "the Boston socialite and scientific graduate of the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology." The Boston Post decreed their engagement "a betrothal of the highest expectation and promise" and the Transcript was moved to p.r.o.nounce it "the match of the year." printed prominent notices. Stanley was described as "the Harvester Heir" in most of these accounts, a "motoring enthusiast" and "amateur artist," and Katherine was, simply, "the Boston socialite and scientific graduate of the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology." The Boston Post decreed their engagement "a betrothal of the highest expectation and promise" and the Transcript was moved to p.r.o.nounce it "the match of the year."
Josephine was in her glory, fielding telegrams, canva.s.sing caterers, bakers and florists and prattling her way across the Back Bay through one parlor after another. Nettie was less pleased. Her letters-separate letters-to Stanley and Katherine seemed to accept the betrothal as a fait accompli, but she made no bones about her disapproval of the match, especially in her letter to Katherine, in which she questioned her future daughter-in-law"s morals, education (there was too much of it), taste in millinery and footwear, dietary habits, religiosity and commitment to her last and most precious child. The word "love" never came up. As for Stanley, he seemed to be in permanent transit between Chicago and Boston, his nerves on edge, obsessing over the smallest details-"What sort of rice should we provide for the guests to shower us with, arborio or Texas long-grain?"-and every once in a while, dashing into the men"s room at the station or coming through the doors at the Copley Plaza, he began to think he was seeing that dog again in the gla.s.s. But he tried to brush it off-not to worry, the smallest of things-and instead concentrated on collecting all the announcements from the various newspapers and mounting them on red construction paper as a memento for Katherine. They set a date in the fall, the bride"s favorite season.
It was then, just when everything seemed to be going forward and all the major hurdles had been leapt, that things began to break down. Suddenly Stanley was having palpitations-he couldn"t seem to stop jittering, bouncing up off his feet, shaking out his fingers till they rattled like castanets, twisting his neck and gyrating his head in response to some frenetic inner rhythm-and all he could talk about was Mary Virginia. Mary Virginia and his genitals, that is.
He came bobbing and jittering into the house on Commonwealth Avenue early one morning two weeks or so after the engagement had been announced, his eyes fluttering, his face in flux, talking so fast no one could understand him. He frightened the maid, upset the cook and chased Josephine"s cat all the way up into the rafters of the attic in an excess of zeal. Katherine, who"d been dressing in her room, came out into the hall to see what the commotion was, and she watched Stanley dart past her up the stairs in pursuit of the cat, never even giving her a glance. When she caught up with him on the steps to the attic, he couldn"t seem to explain himself-he was afflicted with logorrhea, the words tripping over one another and piling up end to end, and he was going on and on about something she couldn"t quite catch, aside from the frequent repet.i.tion of his sister"s name. She"d never seen him like this-his eyes bugging out, his hair a mess, every cell and fiber of him rushing h.e.l.l-bent down the tracks like a runaway freight train-and she was frightened. She managed to get him outside, out in the sunshine and fresh air, to try to walk it out of him, whatever it was.
They walked the length of Commonwealth Avenue, from the Public Garden to Hereford Square and back-or actually, it was more of a jog than a walk, Stanley setting an accelerated, stiff-kneed pace and Katherine clinging to his arm and struggling to keep up. The whole while Stanley kept shaking and trembling and running on about Mary Virginia and her illness and some sort of mysterious "whiteness," as if she were lost in a blizzard somewhere instead of quietly ensconced with her nurse and doctor on a grand and faultless estate in Arkansas. It wasn"t till they"d pa.s.sed the house for the second time, Stanley wet through with perspiration and the neighbors giving them looks that ranged from shock to alarm to amus.e.m.e.nt, that Katherine began to discern what he was driving at.
Leaping along, straining to look up into his face, her breathing labored and her mood beginning to fray, she managed to gasp out a little speech. "There"s no mental illness in my family, Stanley," she wheezed on an insuck of breath. "On my mother"s or my father"s side, so the chances are very remote that our children will suffer, if that"s what"s worrying you, and it is, isn"t it?"
"She"s sick," he said, never breaking stride. "Very sick."
"Yes," she gasped, "I know, and it"s right of you to bring it up now that we"re going to be married, but I really don"t-can"t we stop here, just for a minute?"
It was as if she"d waved a flag in front of him or given a sudden jerk at a leash-he stopped as abruptly as he"d started, his feet jammed together, one arm clasped in hers, sweat standing out on his brow and his hat soaked under the brim in a dark expanding crescent. "It"s not just that," he said, and he was talking not to her but to the ground beneath their feet. "It"s my genitals."
"Your what?" what?" They were stopped on the walk in front of a yard full of roses. Bees dug into the blossoms. The perfume of the flowers wafted out into the street. Everything had such an air of calm and normalcy-except Stanley. Stanley was making faces and staring down at his shoes. And that wouldn"t have been so bad except that two smart young women suddenly emerged from the yard under a trellis of white and yellow roses and gave them a long look before brusquely stepping around them. They were stopped on the walk in front of a yard full of roses. Bees dug into the blossoms. The perfume of the flowers wafted out into the street. Everything had such an air of calm and normalcy-except Stanley. Stanley was making faces and staring down at his shoes. And that wouldn"t have been so bad except that two smart young women suddenly emerged from the yard under a trellis of white and yellow roses and gave them a long look before brusquely stepping around them.
"My genitals," Stanley repeated.
Katherine studied him a moment, his nostrils like two holes drilled in his head, his eyes locked on the ground and every other part of him jerking into motion and relaxing again in a long continuous shudder. She waited till the women were out of earshot. "Yes," she said. "All right. What about them?"
"I-well-I-what I mean is, maybe they"ve been... damaged."
"Damaged? "
"From, you know, from my habits habits-"
She was a patient woman. And she loved him. But this wasn"t the sort of romance she"d dreamed about, this wasn"t being swept off her feet and wooed with tender intimacies and antic.i.p.atory pleasures-this was psychodrama, this was crazy. It was hot and she was perspiring and she"d meant to go out with her mother and look at some lace for her trousseau, and now here she was making a spectacle of herself in the middle of the street and Stanley carrying on over nothing-yet again. She was fed up. The furrow she was unaware of crept into the gap between her eyebrows. "If you"re so worried," she said, "then why don"t you go see a doctor," and she turned and stalked off down the street without him.
He called her from his hotel later in the day to tell her he was taking her advice and catching the next train to Chicago to see a specialist and that he"d return at the end of the week and she shouldn"t worry. But by nightfall he was back on her doorstep, Bridget in hysterics, her mother"s face drawn up tight in a knot, and Stanley acting as oddly as he had that morning-or even more oddly. He"d boarded the train and gone as far as New London, he said, still talking as if a howling mob were at his heels and this was the last speech of his life, but then he"d got to thinking about their situation and had changed trains and come back because there were a few things that just couldn"t wait a week-or even another day.
She looked at him a long moment. "What things?" she asked, ushering him into the parlor and closing the door behind them.
He seemed confused, agitated, his movements jerky and clonic. He knocked over a vase of gladioli, water spreading a dark stain across the tabletop, and didn"t even seem to notice. "Things," he said darkly. "Vital things. "
She watched the water fan out, seeking the lowest point, and begin a slow, steady drip onto the carpet. She"d made a date with Betty Johnston to go visiting that evening and she was already impatient and exasperated. "You"ll have to be more specific, I"m afraid," she said. "If I don"t know what these vague "things" are, how can you expect me to discuss them with you?"
He kept shuddering and twitching, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a tightrope walker. "About us," he said. "About our, about my-"
"Genitals?" she offered.
He averted his face. "You shouldn"t say that."
"Say what? Isn"t that what this is all about? Your genitals? Not to mention hypochondria. Correct me if I"m mistaken, but isn"t that the subject under discussion? Didn"t you just leave this morning to go to a specialist and clear up the suspense?" Suddenly she felt very tired. The whole thing seemed hopeless, as if she"d been wrapped up in a blanket and pitched headfirst into the dark river that was Stanley, and no coming up for air. "Listen, Stanley," she said, and she could hear the rustle of skirts in the hallway, her mother and Bridget listening at the door and fidgeting with their sleeves and b.u.t.tons, "you"ve got to get a grip on yourself. You"re acting crazy, crazy, don"t you realize that?" don"t you realize that?"
He stopped his quivering then, automatically and without hesitation, and for the first time he seemed to notice the overturned vase and the dripping water, and when he bent for it she a.s.sumed he was going to set it upright, to rectify the problem and make amends. But when he lifted it from the table-heavy leaded crystal with a sharp crenellated edge-and kept lifting it till it was c.o.c.ked behind his ear like a football, she couldn"t help opening her mouth and letting out a tightly wound shriek of fear and outrage even as the mirror behind her dissolved in a flood of silvered gla.s.s.
Her mother, the claws of disappointment raking her face, agreed that yes, it might be for the better if she were to go to Europe for a while to think things over. But it wasn"t the end of the world-everyone had second thoughts, "even your own mother, and look what a saint your father turned out to be." It was normal-entirely normal-and nothing to cry over. So she should dry up her tears and pack her things and think of it as the vacation she so rightfully deserved after all those grinding hours she"d put in at the Inst.i.tute. That"s right. Go ahead now. And hush.
The next morning, while Stanley was on his way to Chicago to consult his specialist about the arcana of his body and mind, Katherine directed Bridget and the two younger maids to begin packing her things for an indefinite stay at Prangins. She"d made up her mind-it was the only thing to do-and yet why did she feel so sick and miserable? She couldn"t sleep. Couldn"t eat breakfast or lunch. She ached and creaked like a ship at sea, converting dry handkerchiefs to wet ones, her eyes and nose running in spate, and she spent the afternoon in bed with a headache. The maids tiptoed by the door and the clothing whispered in the hallway, the hatboxes, the steamer trunks, all these particles of her life in sudden motion. She lay there through the long afternoon, watching the curtains trace the sun, and she"d never felt so desolated in her life, not since her father and brother left this earth.
But there was no sense in crying-Stanley was too much for her, too big a reclamation project, she could see that now, and everything he was, the vision she had of him, lay shattered on the parlor floor. She had to get away, she knew that, but it wasn"t going to be easy. Because even while she grieved and fought to steel herself against him and the kind of life she"d hoped for, she kept thinking of him in the grip of his mother, of Nettie, the vampire who would drain him till he was a withered doddering white-haired husk of himself sitting at the foot of her deathbed and the dust gathering like snow. Katherine couldn"t let her do that to Stanley-no man deserved such a fate-and what"s more, she couldn"t just walk off and leave the playing field to Nettie. She was a Dexter, and the Dexters never quit on anything.
Suddenly she was up and scattering the maids, bending over the trunks and suitcases and unpacking in a raw fury of motion, each dress and skirt and shirtwaist returned to its hanger a lightening of the load, but that was no good either, and before long she found herself slowing and slowing until the process began to reverse itself and she was packing all over again. And why? Because she was going to Switzerland, to Geneva, to Prangins, and she was going to stay there until all this was sorted out and she could look at herself in the mirror and say that nothing in the world could compare to being Mrs. Stanley Robert McCormick. And if she couldn"t? If she honestly couldn"t? Well, there was always Butler Ames-or the Butler Ames who would come after him.
The shadows were lengthening on the wall and the house had fallen into a bottomless well of silence when Bridget stuck her head in the door. Did madame need a.s.sistance? Katherine looked up. There were dresses everywhere, an avalanche of them, hats, coats, scarves, shoes. "Yes," she said, "yes," and by nightfall order reigned, everything packed, filed and arranged and her pa.s.sage booked on a steamer leaving for Cherbourg three days hence.
How Stanley got wind of it, she would never know. But as the gangplank was drawn up and the anchor weighed and her mother and the servants standing solemnly amongst the crowd and waving handkerchiefs in a slow sad sweep, he suddenly appeared, a foot taller than anyone on the quay, a giant among men, hurtling through the crowd on the full tilt of his manic energy. She was hanging over the rail with a thousand other pa.s.sengers, a handkerchief pressed tragically to her face and one white-gloved hand waving, waving, already bound over to the smell of the sea, coal smoke, dead fish and third-cla.s.s cookery. And there he was, Stanley, Stanley Robert McCormick, standing tall in the June sun, shouting up to her amidst the pandemonium of voices and engines and the two irrevocable blasts of the ship"s horn.
"Katherine!" he was shouting, and she could see his face and its diminished features as if from a cliff or the edge of a cloud, and somehow, even from that height, she could hear his voice piercing through the din as clearly as if he were standing beside her. "It"s all right," he cried, waving something above his head, a sheet of paper, some sort of certificate, the boat drawing ma.s.sively back now till it seemed as if it was the dock that was moving and she was stuck fast. "I can have"-and here the ship"s horn intervened, the rumbling metallic ba.s.so obliterating all thought and comprehension and Stanley"s voice trailing off into the faintest persistent whine of desperation and hope-"I can have children!"
OF DEATH AND BEGONIAS.
O"Kane was eating a steak at Menhoff"s on a wind-scoured November night when news of the Armistice came over the telegraph-belatedty, because the wires had been down since morning. The wind had kept people in, but there were a few couples having dinner under the aegis of Cody"s chaste white candles and the usual crowd out in the barroom swallowing pickled eggs and gnawing pretzels while their beers sizzled yellow and their shots of whiskey and bourbon stood erect beside them like good soldiers. Nothing short of the apocalypse would have kept that crowd from exercising their elbows, and O"Kane meant to join them after a while, but for the moment he was enjoying his steak and his French-cut potatoes and his first piquant gla.s.s of beer while the wind buffeted the windows and made the place feel snug as a ship"s cabin.
He was reading a bit in the paper about the completion of Las Tejas, a new Montecito palace modeled after the Casino of the sixteenth-century Villa Farnese in Viterbo, Italy, when Cody Menhoff himself came bursting out of the kitchen in a white ap.r.o.n singing, "The War"s over! The War"s over!" Actually, the dishwasher was the first to hear of it, beating a procession of shopowners, drummers and tomato-faced drunks by a matter of minutes. He"d been out back dumping a load of trash when he heard a hoot and looked up to see a pack of boys hurtling down the alley in a scramble of legs and white-capped knees, a flag flapping behind them like wash on a line. "What"s the news?" he shouted, though he"d already guessed, and one of the boys stopped banging two trashcan lids together long enough to tell him that the Huns had made it official. He"d relayed the news to Cody, and Cody, a big Dutchman with a face like a b.u.t.terchurn, roared through the place and set up drinks on the house for all comers.
Before long there was a string of cars going up and down the street honking their horns, and the front room began to fill up, wind or no wind-and this wasn"t just a capricious breeze, this was a sundowner, the dried-out breath of the season that came tearing down out of the mountains in a regular cyclone, bane to all hats and shake roofs and the brittle rasping fronds of the palm trees. But there was no wind inside Menhoff"s, except what the crowd was generating itself. People were cheering and making toasts and speeches and then somebody sat down at the piano and struck up the National Anthem and everybody sang along in a bibulous roar, and when they"d gone through it three times they sang "G.o.d Bless America," "Yankee Doodle" and "The Stars and Stripes Forever." It was heady and glorious, and though O"Kane had planned on limiting himself to two shots only (things had been slipping away from him lately and he was trying to curb himself) there was no stopping him after that. He got into the spirit of things, slapping backs, crowing out jokes and limericks, dancing an improvised jig with Mart, who"d turned up just past nine with Roscoe and a glowing high-crowned face of victory. By ten O"Kane was off in a corner, singing the old sad songs in a fractured moan of a voice, and when Roscoe came for him the next morning he had to vomit twice before he could get his suit on and go out to see how Mr. McCormick was receiving the news.
The celebration lasted a good six weeks, right on through Christmas. You could step into any place in town, from the lowest saloon with the pitted bra.s.s rail and the sawdust on the floor to Menhoff "s and the dining room at the Potter, and there"d always be somebody there to raise a gla.s.s to the Armistice. And then it was Christmas, and you had to have a nip of the holiday cheer or you weren"t properly alive, and a week after that the New Year floated in on a sea of dago wine and a raft of nasty rumors about the Drys and Prohibition and the women"s vote, not to mention the influenza epidemic, and O"Kane told himself he"d taper off as soon as the deal went through with Jim Isringhausen for the orange grove he"d been saving for all his adult life-or most of it, anyway-because he"d have to celebrate that and no two ways about it.
He never missed a single day"s work-only a drunk and an alcoholic boozer would fall down on his responsibilities like that-but he would go out to Riven Rock at eight A.M. with the fumes of his morning booster on his breath and practically beg Sam Wah to scramble him up a couple of eggs to settle his stomach. It was a bad time, his head always aching, the colors rinsed out of everything so that all the stage props of the paradise outside the door seemed faded and shabby, and he began to worry about winding up like his father, that flaming, bellicose, hamfisted lump of humanity sunk permanently into the daybed and unable to keep a job for more than two weeks at a time. He had to cut back, he really did. And throughout the winter he promised himself he would. Soon.
Mr. McCormick seemed to continue his gradual improvement during this period, though the news of the Armistice hit him hard on two accounts. For one, he could no longer follow the offensives and mark up his maps and bury his nose in five or six different newspapers each day, and that left a widening gap in his life, though Dr. Hoch tried to interest him in any number of things, from growing orchids and learning the clarinet to lawn bowling and crossword puzzles. The second thing was his wife. Now that the War was over and women on their way to getting the vote, there was no excuse for Katherine to be away from him for so long a time. She hadn"t been to Riven Rock since the previous Christmas, when he"d accused her in so many words of adultery, though she sent him weekly letters and packages of books, clothes, candies and new recordings for his Victrola. That was all right as far as it went. And Mr. McCormick appreciated it, but his wife was out there in the world and he wasn"t, and the idea of it was a source of constant agitation, a low flame flickering under a pot and the water inside simmering to a boil.
O"Kane was in the upper parlor with Mr. McCormick, Mart and Dr. Hoch one day three weeks after the Armistice, when a letter from Katherine arrived with the morning mail. It had been a dull morning, Hoch unusually silent and Mr. McCormick fretting round and haunting the rooms like a caged animal, and even the movie had failed to materialize because Roscoe had a touch of the grippe and hadn"t been able to make the trip into Hollywood the previous evening, and there was nothing new from Flying A, just four years ago the biggest studio in the world and now about to fold up its wings and die. The winds were still blowing, tumbleweeds rocketing down out of nowhere and acc.u.mulating against the back door and every windowsill decorated with a ruler-perfect line of pale tan dust, and that made the atmosphere all the more oppressive. O"Kane"s head was throbbing and his throat so dry it felt like a hole gouged out of the floor of Death Valley, but still he made an effort to engage Mr. McCormick in conversation and even began a much-interrupted game of chess with him. And Dr. Hoch, recognizing Mr. McCormick"s restlessness as a symptom of something worse to come, ordered the sprinklers in the trees to be turned on, but instead of the usual anodynic whisper of falling water there was nothing but a kind of distant blast as of a firehose hitting a wall and the occasional tremor of the windowpanes as the wind attempted to make the gla.s.s permeable.
All three of them-O"Kane, Mart and Dr. Hoch-watched as Mr. McCormick accepted the mail from the butler through the iron grid of the door and dropped into an easy chair to read through it. The first two letters apparently didn"t interest him, and after examining the return addresses and sniffing at the place where the envelopes had been sealed, he let them fall carelessly to the floor. But the third one was the charm, and after examining the writing on the face of the envelope for a long moment, he slit it open with a forefinger and settled down to read in a voice that was meant to be private but which kept breaking loose in various growls and squeals and a high scolding falsetto that seemed like another person"s voice altogether. Mr. McCormick was some time over the letter, bits and pieces emerging into intelligibility now and then as his voice rose from a whisper to a shout and fell off again: Jane Roessing"s house-seven degrees above zero-you remember Milbourne-dog died-new hat-Mother down with influenza. Jane Roessing"s house-seven degrees above zero-you remember Milbourne-dog died-new hat-Mother down with influenza.
There was a silence when he"d finished, and into the silence Dr. Hoch projected a question: "Any news?"
Mr. McCormick looked up blankly. "It"s from K-Katherine."
The doctor, owlish and quizzical: "Oh?"
"She-she won"t be coming till the night before, or the day, that is, the day before Christmas. Too busy, she says. War business, you know, mopping up. The-the suffrage movement. She"s in Washington."
"Ah, what a shame," Dr. Hoch said, but his heart wasn"t in it. He hadn"t been feeling well himself lately, and he looked it, pale and shrunk into his collar, his face wrinkled and sectioned like a piece of fruit left out to dry in the sun. There was pain in his eyes, a cloudy scrim of it, and the dullness of resignation. He"d confided to O"Kane that he"d taken the job at Riven Rock for health reasons-the Pathological Inst.i.tute had become too much for him, and the climate here, amongst the celebrated Santa Barbara spas, was bound to do him good. But it wasn"t doing him much good as far as O"Kane could see-his beard had gone from gray to white inside of a year and the only thing you saw in his face was the scar, which seemed to grow more intense and luminous as the rest of his flesh shrank away from it. Amazingly, he was two years younger younger than Meyer, but anyone would have taken him for Meyer"s father. Or grandfather even. And another thing-he wasn"t a Kraut, but a Swiss, and so was Meyer, though they both talked Kraut, and he"d explained to O"Kane that German was the language of his part of Switzerland, near Basel, and that some Swiss spoke French and others Italian. O"Kane had just shaken his head: every day you learn something new. than Meyer, but anyone would have taken him for Meyer"s father. Or grandfather even. And another thing-he wasn"t a Kraut, but a Swiss, and so was Meyer, though they both talked Kraut, and he"d explained to O"Kane that German was the language of his part of Switzerland, near Basel, and that some Swiss spoke French and others Italian. O"Kane had just shaken his head: every day you learn something new.
Mr. McCormick was still sunk into the easy chair, Katherine"s letter draped across his chest, his legs splayed and his eyes sucked back into his head. He"d been agitated all morning, and now he was looking unhinged, every sort of disturbing emotion playing across his face. O"Kane braced himself.
"A shame," Hoch repeated, "but at least you can look forward maybe to speak with her on the phone just at Christmas and then you will share the intimacy of her voice, no?"
"She"s a b.i.t.c.h!" Mr. McCormick snapped, leaping out of the chair with a wild recoil of legs and arms, and he rushed up to the doctor and stood trembling over him as he tore the letter to pieces and let the pieces rain down on the doctor"s white, bowed head. "I hate her!" he raged. "I want to kill her!"
"Yes, yes, well," Dr. Hoch murmured, never moving a muscle, "we all have our disappointments, but I"m sure you will feel very much different when she is here in this house and you are speaking with her on the telephone apparatus. But now, well"-and he clapped his hands together feebly-"I"m not feeling so very good as I might and I was thinking maybe we all go for a ride, what do you think, Mr. McCormick? All of us together-Mr. O"Kane, Mr. Thompson, you and me? For the change of scenery, yes? What do you say?"
Mr. McCormick"s face changed in that instant. He looked to O"Kane and Mart and then back to the doctor with an enthusiast"s grin. He liked his ride, but in Dr. Brush"s time-and now Hochs-the rides were few and far between, because they were dangerous and a whole lot of bother for everyone concerned. Mr. McCormick, of course, had to be watched every second, wedged between O"Kane on the one side and Mart on the other, while the doctor, be it Hamilton, Brush or Hoch, was obliged to sit up front with Roscoe.
"Yes," Mr. McCormick said, grinning wide round his decaying teeth-he hated dentists with an unreasoning pa.s.sion and put up such a fight the doctors had all but given up on having his teeth treated-yes, I think I"d like that. I"d like that very much. For a, a change, sure. I"ll order Roscoe to bring one of the cars round. And we can take a lunch in paper sacks-can"t we?"
Mr. McCormick always took a while getting himself from one place to another-it was one of his quirks-and both O"Kane and Mart had to help him choose the proper hat, gloves and overcoat and rea.s.sure him that he looked fine, absolutely fine and splendid, and that the weather outside wasn"t really anything to concern himself over. "It"s not like we"re in Waverley anymore," O"Kane joked, and then he and Mart had him at the barred door to his quarters, and the keys turning in the locks.
There was no trouble, not on the stairs anyway, and Mr. McCormick, who"d just last month turned forty-four in a big fraternal celebration in the theater building, was looking every bit the lord of the manor with the hair silvering at his temples and a slate-colored felt hat that brought out the keenness of his eyes. He stood up straight for a change, with his shoulders squared and his head held high, and he didn"t drag his right foot or stop in the middle of the stairway and back up two steps for every one he went down-one of his favorite tricks. No, he was the soul of propriety until Torkelson, the butler, opened the front door for him, and then he was off, slipping out of O"Kane"s grip like a Houdini and darting right past Roscoe and the waiting car.
This was nothing new. Probably half the time he got out of the house for his walks or the trip over to the theater building for a concert or movie, he"d break into a run and O"Kane and Mart would have to run along with him, as if they all three were training for the marathon. Dr. Hamilton had felt that the running would do Mr. McCormick "a world of good" and that the staff should give him his head, so long as he didn"t break for the bushes or attempt to leave the property. Brush didn"t seem to care much one way or the other, and Hoch, in his Kraut-or Swiss-enthusiasm for physical suffering, concurred with Hamilton"s feelings on the subject. And so Mr. McCormick ran, and O"Kane ran with him-which at least had the unforeseen benefit of burning the whiskey out of his pores.
On this morning, though, Mr. McCormick got the jump on both him and Mart, and by the time they got around the car he was streaking up the drive, at least fifty yards ahead of them. "Wait up, Mr. McCormick ! O"Kane shouted, his temples already feeling as if they were about to explode. "What about our drive?"
If Mr. McCormick heard him, he gave no sign. He just kept on, running in a flat-out sprint, running as if all his judges and demons were flocking after him, and he didn"t head for the main gate but instead surprised O"Kane by lurching to his left, plunging deeper into the property. The road that way led to the stone garage that was set back away from the house in a grove of trees, and then it branched off to the west toward Ashley Road and the far side of the property. O"Kane chugged along, Mart at his side. "The son of a b.i.t.c.h," he cursed. "Why today of all days? My head feels as big as a balloon."
Mart, whose head was wasas big as a balloon, just grunted, trotting along in his dogged, top-heavy way. "He"s heading toward the Ashley gate," he observed in a wheezing pant, and O"Kane looked up to see their employer wheeling again to his left and disappearing up the long snaking drive that bisected the estate. And that got his heart pounding, because that was where the nearest house was, Mira Vista, and there were women there now, imperious pampered overfed society women-women like Katherine.
O"Kane gave it all he had, but he wasn"t worth much that morning, and he would have been the first to admit it. Sam Wah"s salvatory eggs were coming up in his throat like a plug, like something evil he was giving birth to, and his legs had begun to go numb from the hip sockets down when he became aware of a rumble and squeal at his back and turned to watch Roscoe motor on by in a farting blast of fumes, Dr. Hoch wired into the seat beside him with his beard flapping in the breeze through the open window. O"Kane kept going, though Mart had fallen by the wayside. He followed the dwindling rear panel of the big Pierce car until the gate appeared down a stretch of concrete road all hemmed in by trees and the car began to get larger again. A moment later he was there, choking for breath, feeling just exactly like the victim of an Indian uprising with six or seven arrows neatly st.i.tched into his lungs, his groin and his liver.
Roscoe was still at the wheel, pale and washed out from his bout of the grippe, but Dr. Hoch was standing there at the open gate with Mr. McCormick, and Mr. McCormick didn"t even seem to be sweating. "What the-" O"Kane panted, Ringing himself against the hood of the car for support. "What-?"
"Oh, Eddie," Mr. McCormick said, his eyes gone away to hide in his head again. "Hi. I was just-I thought-well, we should go out this gate today, so I-I came to open it, because we should see the begonias, the new begonias-"
O"Kane was stunned. He was obliterated. He had maybe nine breaths more to draw on this earth and then it was over. "Begonias"?" he wheezed.
Mr. McCormick gestured for him to turn round and look behind him. Bewildered, O"Kane slowly pivoted and gazed back down the road that fled away into the distance and to the moving stain that was Martin Thompson limping there at the far end of it. And sure enough, there they were, a whole fresh-planted double row of them on either side of the pavement and stretching all the way back to Mart and beyond: begonias.
And then Christmas fell on them from the realms of s.p.a.ce, the earth twisting round the sky and Aldebaran bright and persistent in the eastern sky, the season festive, the stuffed goose, the songs and drinks. Marshall Fields" in Chicago sent out a decorated Christmas tree and foil-wrapped presents for the whole staff (which now numbered fourteen in the household and forty-seven on the grounds), along with the usual baubles and candies and tan-sh.e.l.led Georgia pecans, and baskets of prime California navels that had traveled from the San Fernando Valley to Chicago and back to California again. Outside, on the front lawn, the big Monterey pine, as wide around at the base as two men fully outstretched till their fingertips met on either side, was festooned with multicolored lights and set ablaze in the night. O"Kane sent his mother a sweater of virgin wool and a porcelain reproduction of the State of California flag for his father, and he sent Eddie, Jr. a jackknife care of his mother and not Rosaleen, who couldn"t be trusted with anything you didn"t tie round her neck with a note attached to it. And he found a filigreed bracelet in fourteen-carat white gold for Giovannella, who refused it on the grounds that Guido would want to know where it came from. "I"ll wear it only for you, Eddie," she said. "When we"re alone. In bed."
Katherine came and went in her customary storm of gifts, complaints and commands, but not before O"Kane had the opportunity to listen in on her annual conversation with her husband-this time from her end of the line. It was the day before Christmas and she"d just arrived, late as usual, and that hurt Mr. McCormick to the quick and she didn"t even seem to notice. The windows were smeared with rain, it had been dark for an hour or so, and O"Kane was drunk, drunk on the job, and G.o.d help him if the Ice Queen were to pin him down with one of her endless interrogations and catch a whiff of it on his breath. He shouldn"t have been drinking, and he knew it, but it was Christmas and Sam Wah was brewing a wicked pungent rum punch with raisins and slivers of orange peel floating round the top of it and half the people on the estate were slipping in and out the back door stewed to the gills. And besides, he was depressed. It was his tenth Christmas in California, ten years of nursing and drinking and getting nowhere. He wasn"t rich yet or even close to it, he didn"t own an orange grove or an avocado ranch, his one son was an alien to him all the way across the country in Boston and the other one was named Guido-and why not get drunk?
Anyway, he was sneaking out of the kitchen and through the back hall to the central stairway after quaffing his sixth murderous cup of hot Chinese Christmas punch, when he heard Katherine"s voice and froze. It wasn"t as if he was surprised to see her-they"d all been tiptoeing around and looking over their shoulders since early that morning, even Hoch-but he was half hoping she wouldn"t come at all. She didn"t bring anybody a lick of happiness-just the opposite-and it was his opinion, shared by Nick, Pat and Mart, that Mr. McCormick would have been better off without her. The way he"d paced and fretted and worked away at himself with the soap that morning was just pathetic, as if he was afraid she could smell him over the line. He was so excited he hadn"t been able to eat his breakfast and pushed everything but the soup away at lunch, and he barely noticed the little gifts the employees had given him-Ernestine Thompson had knitted him a scarf from her and Nick, Mart gave him a pencil sharpener, and O"Kane, in a symbolic gesture, presented him with a keychain inscribed with the legend WHEN ALL THE DOORS OPEN TO YOU. They were nothing more than tokens really, but in past years Mr. McCormick had made a big deal over them.
"What do you mean by that?" Katherine"s voice rose in anger. Edging out into the entrance hall, O"Kane could see movement in the library beyond. It was Katherine, and her back was to him. She held the telephone in one stiff ice-sculpted hand, tilting her head forward to speak into the mouthpiece. Torkelson was stationed just outside the door like a cigar-store Indian, his face wiped clean of all interest or emotion, a butler to the core. He was staring right at O"Kane, but he never even blinked.
"I will not be talked to in that tone of voice, Stanley, I just won"t.... What did you say? Do you want me to hang this phone up right now? Do you? ... All right, now that"s better. Yes, I do love you, you know that-"
O"Kane watched her shoulders, the movement of her wrist as she manipulated the receiver, the light gathered in her hair. He knew he should hightail it up the stairs before she turned and spotted him, but he didn"t. He was caught there, fascinated, like a boy in the woods watching the processes of nature unfold around him. There were birds in the trees, toads at his feet, snakes in the gra.s.s.
"Now Stanley-no, absolutely not. How many times do we have to go through this? I haven"t seen or heard of Butler Ames in G.o.d, ten years and more, and no, I haven"t been to dinner with Secretary Baker.... I resent the implication, Stanley, and if you"re going to-no, absolutely not. Newton Baker is a friend, an old friend of the family, and as Secretary of War under President Wilson he naturally came to instruct us from time to time, and we-"
There was a silence and Katherine shifted her weight from one foot to the other and turned her profile to the open door. Her face was pale and blanched, but she was wearing makeup and red lipstick and she looked dramatic in the lamplight, like a stage actress awaiting her cue. She was listening, and O"Kane could imagine the sort of disjointed and accusatory speech Mr. McCormick must have been delivering on the other end of the line, and he watched as she held the receiver out away from her ear and tried to compose herself.
"Don"t you say a word abut Jane Roessing-she"s a saint, do you hear me? ... That"s absolutely disgusting, Stanley, and I"m warning you, I am-really, I just don"t believe what I"m hearing. Everything is me, me, me-but did you ever stop to think what I"m I"m going through? going through?
"No, I"m not trying to upset you, I just want you to understand my position, to think for one minute what it must be like for me to have to go out in society without you on my arm, with no man at all, always the odd one out- "Yes, I know you"re trying to get well. No. No, now I won"t listen to this, and you leave Jane out of it, she"s been a-I have nothing to hide. Yes, she is here. She"s come to keep me company at the hotel, and I promise you I won"t neglect you. I"ll be here every day for the next two weeks, and you just tell me what you need and I"ll-"
O"Kane made his move then, trying to slip up the stairs while she was distracted, but even as he took the first tentative step he watched her face change-"No, she thundered, "d.a.m.n you, no; I"ve never ... Jane is just a friend" friend"-as she swung round to slam the receiver down on its hook and let the full furious weight of her gaze settle on him. He snapped his head round-he hadn"t seen her, didn"t even know she was back, he was just a nurse doing his duty-and he felt his legs attack the stairs in a series of quick powerful thrusts. And it almost worked, almost, because he was halfway up the staircase and the iron grid of the upper parlor door in sight when her voice, strained and distinctly unladylike, caught up with him. "Mr. O"Kane," she called. "Mr. O"Kane, will you come here a minute, please?"
Slouching, hands thrust deep in his pockets, O"Kane descended the stairs, crossed the entrance hall and pa.s.sed within six inches of Torkelson where he stood pasted to the wall outside the library door (he could see the pores in the man"s face opening up like the craters of the moon and the fleshless nub of his butler"s nose, and he swore to himself if Torkelson so much as lifted his lip in anything even vaguely resembling a smirk he was going to slug him, if not now, then later). Torkelson never moved. He drifted away on O"Kane"s periphery and then O"Kane was in the library, conscious of the peculiar odor of the books-calfskin and dust, the astringent ink and neutral paper-and of something else too, something unexpected: cigarette smoke. Katherine was brilliant, glaring, incinerated in light. She gave him a curt nod, stepped round him and called out, "You can go now, Torkelson," before pulling the door shut.
O"Kane"s senses were dulled. He felt as if he were wading through hip-deep water. He stood there stupidly, all the saturated neurons of his brain shutting down one by one, until he finally noticed that he and Katherine weren"t alone. There was another woman present, a redhead in a holly-green dress short enough to show off her legs from the knees down-very good legs, in fact, and O"Kane couldn"t help noticing. She was sitting in a wing chair against a wall of books and smoking a cigarette in an ivory holder.
"It"s good to see you again, Mr. O"Kane," Katherine said, turning back to him, but she didn"t smile and she didn"t hold out her hand. She nodded brusquely to her companion. "Mr. O"Kane, Mrs. Roessing. Jane, Mr. O"Kane."
O"Kane gave them each a tight little grin, the sort of grin the hyena might give the lion while backing away from a carca.s.s on the ancestral plains. He was feeling woozy. Sam Wah must have poured half a gallon of rum into that punch-and G.o.d knew what else.
"Have a seat, Mr. O"Kane," Katherine said, and she was pacing back and forth now.
He did as he was told, lowering himself gingerly to the very edge of the wing chair opposite Mrs. Roessing.
"I just wanted to tell you that I"m back," Katherine said, "and that I plan to be here for the next two weeks, seeing to estate matters, and that Jane-Mrs. Roessing-will be a.s.sisting me. Then I"ve got to get back to Washington and don"t know when I"ll return. Now: how is my husband-in your opinion? Any change?"
"He"s more or less the same."
"And what does that mean? No improvement at all?"