The voice that responded to hers was dry and precise, and careful with syllables.
“Miss Buchanan?”
“Yes.”
“This is Earl Joslin speaking. Mr. Burns’ lawyer. I should like to see you at your earliest convenience.”
“Today?”
“It it’s convenient.”
“What do you want to see me about?”
“I’d prefer to tell you when I see you, if you don’t mind.”
“I see. Do you want me to come to your office?”
“I’m not in my office now and would rather not go there. May I call on you for a few minutes at your apartment?”
“Yes, of course. I’d be pleased to have you.”
“Very well, then. In about an hour, I’d say.”
It had naturally occurred to Donna that Aaron might have left her something in his will, and she supposed that it was about this that Joslin was coming. She did not imagine that the bequest, if there was one, would be large, and she honestly hoped that it wasn’t, not because she was troubled by any sensibility to higher morality, but simply because a large bequest would be embarrassing and would suggest a relationship she would rather not have known. She would not be seriously troubled whether the bequest was large or small, but what did trouble her seriously was the shop and its disposition and the threat to the beautiful beginning she had made there.
She put some recordings on the phonograph, selections from Swan Lake, and again decided against a drink. Earl Joslin would probably accept one when he came, and she would join him. Sitting in the brocaded chair, she listened to the music of Tchaikovsky, and stared at a Van Gogh reproduction on the wall. Responding to the bright sound and color of two tortured minds, she was suddenly reminded of the poet Villon, and of the boy named Enos Simon who had told her about the poet and whom she had neither seen nor thought of for a long, long time. Why, she wondered, did so much beauty come from darkness and despair, and what had ever become of Enos Simon? Tchaikovsky was a dark and distorted man, as were Van Gogh and Villon. Yet the world had received from them a legacy of beauty such as few men leave. Enos Simon would almost certainly not leave from his life a residue of anything, but she wondered where he was and what he was doing and thought for the first time since the fall that he’d left that she would like to see him again.
Having moved backward in her mind, she did not return until the recordings played out and she got up to reverse them. She had no sooner done this than the buzzer sounded, and she opened the door to Earl Joslin, slim and gray and dryly impeccable, who stood waiting at the threshhold. Seeing him there, she recalled immediately Gussie’s reference to a weekend, and she found the idea incredible, something she could not imagine. But Gussie had not dated it, and so perhaps it had happened long ago.
“Good evening,” she said. “Come in, please.”
“Good evening, Miss Buchanan.”
He smiled slightly and stepped past her into the room. The smile had a kind of pale clarity, like winter’s sunlight, somehow oblique and from a source far off. She took his hat and topcoat and carried them into the bedroom and returned to find him standing near the phonograph with his head canted in a posture of listening.
“Do you like Tchaikovsky?” he said.
“I don’t know. The Swan Lake score, at least. I know very little about music, really.”
“It’s very nice, very buoyant. When I was younger, I preferred the heavy things, the Pathetique and the odd Beethovens and things of that sort, but as I grow older and heavier myself, I find myself liking the lighter touch. Mozart, I think, is my favorite now. Do you care for Mozart?”
“Not especially, I’m afraid. As I said, I know little about music. I suspect that my judgment is not particularly good.”
“Oh, well, perhaps Mozart is for old men trying to forget they’re old, although I doubt that such an evaluation would be generally acceptable.”
He turned away from the phonograph, repeating his thin smile, and she wagered with herself, watching him, that he was Scotch and soda. She was mildly surprised, therefore, when he said in response to her offer of a drink that he would take bourbon in plain water. She went into the kitchen to fix the drinks, filling his glass from the tap at the sink. When she returned, he was still standing as she had left him, not a perceptible difference in his position or posture. He was, she thought, a remarkably quiet man, deliberate, conservative with sound and motion, as if he practiced a cult of quietude in a world too loud and too agitated. Handing him his drink, she asked him to sit down, and he did so after her.
“I suppose,” he said, “you’ve guessed my reason for coming.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I thought it would be something about the shop, but I wasn’t sure.”
“Has it occurred to you that you might have been remembered in his will?”
“Yes, but I haven’t thought much about it one way or another.”
“I’m happy to say that he left you ten thousand dollars.”
“Ten thousand! That’s quite a lot of money.”
She looked down at her glass, feeling in her breast a sudden clot of pain at this post-mortem evidence of his generosity, a savage resurgence of self-reproach that she had deserted his body in death.
“On the contrary, I think that it’s not as much as he really would have liked you to have.” Earl Joslin sipped bourbon and water and looked at her quietly over the rim of the glass. “How well did you know Aaron, Miss Buchanan?”
“Quite well. He was my friend as well as my employer.”
“Yes. I knew that, of course, without asking. I was his friend, too, besides being his lawyer, and I always enjoyed his confidence. He valued highly not only his personal relationship with you, but also your business relationship. He considered you an extremely talented and clever young woman. This is something you are aware of, naturally.”
“I think so. He always implied as much, though he never said it directly. It was unnecessary for him to say it.”
“Yes. The best relationships are those in which things are understood. Possessing, as you did, this understanding, were you aware that his private life was not particularly happy?”
“I was aware that he did not love his wife, if that’s what you mean.”
“Precisely. Please excuse the deviousness that my training has given me. And yet, not loving his wife, he left her, with the exception of your bequest and a small one to Miss Ingram, all of a very large estate, which is much more than the law requires. Do you understand why he would do such a thing?”
“No. I haven’t thought about it.”
“If you were to think about it now, could you understand?”
“I think he must have considered it a kind of moral obligation.”
“True. I can see that your relationship with him was really quite sensitive. As for me, however, I would call it penance.” He drank again from his glass and sat for a few moments in silence, either waiting for her comment, if she had one, or considering how to continue. “Aaron Burns was a lonely man,” he said. “He was really more than that. He was a tortured man. All his life he was emotionally vulnerable because of the heritage he had rejected. He married for reasons that had nothing to do with love, and the marriage was a great mistake. Afterward he looked upon his wife as a kind of merited punishment and upon his life with her as a kind of penance. To have treated her in his will otherwise than he did would have seemed to him like an evasion of the penance he thought just. It would have been like trying to cheat Yahweh. Do you understand what I am trying to say?”
“I understand what you are trying to say, but I don’t understand why you are saying it.”
“Well, neither do I, precisely. Let’s just say that I am troubled by the memory of this man. Therefore it’s a relief to talk about him with someone he loved. Is that a satisfactory reason?”
“Yes. I’m sorry if I sounded rude.”
“No. Nothing of the sort. Perhaps I should not have spoken so freely.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Good. Then no one is offended. Tell me, Miss Buchanan, are you prepared to continue in your present position at the shop?”
“Yes, but I’ve been wondering if I would be asked.”
“I’m asking you now. I talked with Mrs. Burns this afternoon after the services, and she agrees that the shop should remain open until it is finally disposed of.”
“Is it going to be sold?”
“Yes. That is what Mrs. Burns wishes.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
“So am I, frankly. Would you like to know what I advised her to do?”
“Yes.”
“I advised her to keep the shop and put it under your management.”
“I’m flattered and very grateful.”
“There’s no need to be. I’m convinced that you are perfectly competent, which precludes flattery, and I was unable to get my advice accepted, which makes gratitude excessive.”
“Nevertheless, I am grateful to you for trying. Do you think it would do any good if I were to talk with Mrs. Burns?”
“No, I do not. In fact, I’m afraid it would be unpleasant for you to attempt it.”
“I’d be willing to risk the unpleasantness if there were the slightest chance of success.”
“I predict that there’s more than a risk of the former and less than a chance of the latter. However, you are perfectly free to see her if you please. If you do, I wish you luck.”
“Thank you. Will you have another drink?”
“No. I think not. It has been very nice talking with you, but now I had better go.”
He stood up, and she stood also. Taking his empty glass, she set it with her own on a table and went into the bedroom for his coat and hat. Returning, she found that he had walked to the door in her absence, and he took the coat and hat from her and stood with the coat draped over one arm and the hat held in his hand.
“Goodby, Miss Buchanan,” he said. “Since I am temporarily in charge of Aaron’s estate, it is certain that we’ll meet again.”
“I hope so.”
“Thank you for seeing me.”
“On the contrary, I am grateful to you for coming.”
4.
There was, after the reopening of the shop, an appreciable increase of interest in Donna Buchanan originals. It was real and discernible and tremendously exhilarating. Stimulated by this, and needing in the difficult aftermath of Aaron’s death the relief and defense of intense activity, she entered a period of creativeness in which ideas were conceived and executed with a hot facility and perfection. And in her mind she began to evolve the plan for a show, an exclusive presentation of original gowns to those who would come by invitation. The only oppression was the threat of the shop’s disposal, and every day she resolved to go to see Aaron’s widow. But this was something she dreaded exorbitantly. Every day she postponed it until the day following, and the day never arrived.
In the third week, Queen Hattie returned and asked for Donna. With her was her husband, William Walter Tyler himself. He sat in a chair with his knees crossed and his hat in his lap while Hattie modeled for his approval (after Serena had modeled it for hers) a gold lamé sheath which Donna had designed. Tyler liked the gown and Hattie bought it.
When they were ready to leave, Tyler took Donna’s hand and held it for a moment in both of his. It was a gesture of mild intimacy that surprised her a little but did not offend her.
“I greatly admired the last gown my wife bought here,” he said. “You have a fine talent, Miss Buchanan.”
He said this with an odd wistfulness which was as surprising as his gesture in taking her hand, and she had a feeling that he was suggesting a genuine regret that his devotion to his wife was restricted in expression to the admiration of her gowns. But this, she thought, was really ridiculous, an impression based on preconceptions that were probably not valid. He had certainly meant to suggest that to a strange woman he had only met.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are kind to say so, but Mrs. Tyler certainly made the gown appear at its very best.”
“That’s true,” he said. “She’s a lovely woman.”
And now in Tyler’s voice, she would have sworn, the odd wistfulness was effaced by an odd, impatient anger, but this too must have been no more than a peculiarity of inflection that implied what it did not intend. Saying goodby, he turned away and followed his wife out of the shop.
The next morning, compelled by an inexplicable urgency that surmounted her dread, Donna called Aaron’s widow from the shop and was given permission to see her at three o’clock that afternoon.
The sense of urgency was the result of an unreasoned conviction that she had reached a particular point in time, a brief period that was psychologically propitious, that she would succeed today in what she would have failed at yesterday or would fail at tomorrow. There was as little validity in the conviction as in the priestcraft of the zodiac, but it sustained her, through the morning and the afternoon, to the time when she was in a taxi and on her way. Then, in the taxi, the hysterical assurance drained from her at once, leaving her hollow and spent and assured of defeat. She compelled herself to complete the errand because it was something she had to do.
When she reached the house, she was let into the hall by a woman she had never seen before but who she suspected was not Mrs. Cassidy. She was younger and wore a white dress that buttoned down the front, suggesting the effect of a uniform. Donna assumed at once, and correctly, that she was a practical nurse Shirley Burns had hired to serve roughly the same purpose a placebo would serve. She offered to take Donna’s coat, which Donna retained, and then went out of the hall on rubber soles, leaving her alone in the hall where Aaron had died. How long ago? Only three weeks, plus a few days. And where, precisely, had he fallen and died and lain? A step or two from the foot of the stairs. A little to the left of them. There, right there, on polished oak that bore no stain or scar or any kind of sign, though it seemed, somehow, that it should have. Struck by the idea that if she went and stood on the exact spot she might establish the contact she had tried and failed to establish in her apartment, she went and stood on it. But there was no more this time than there had been the other time. She was still standing there when the woman returned and told her Shirley Burns was ready to see her.
Shirley Burns was sitting in a high-backed chair with a small lamp burning on a table beside her. A book was turned face down in her lap, and she did not rise nor invite Donna to sit.
“Miss Buchanan?” she said. “Yes,” Donna said.
“Why have you come to see me? I am not well, and I’d appreciate it if you would be brief.”
“I’ve come to speak with you about the shop.”
“What about it?”
“I understand that you plan to sell it. I want to urge you not to do it.”
“Indeed? In what way do you consider yourself privileged to interfere with my plans?”
“If I give you that impression, I’m sorry. I admit that I have a selfish motive in wanting the shop to continue as it is, but it would also be profitable to you.”
“So I have been told by Mr. Joslin. I repeat to you what I said to him, that I do not wish to be bound to this city by any interests at all. I intend to settle my affairs and leave as soon as possible. However, assuming for the moment that I keep the shop, am I to understand that you are suggesting that I put the operation of it into your hands?”
“That’s my idea, yes.”
“Why should I do such a thing?”
“Because I am competent and can contribute more to its success than any other person. Your husband knew this to be true, and Mr. Joslin knows it now. I’m sure he would be glad to recommend me if you were to ask him.”
“It is unnecessary to ask him, for he has already volunteered that information. Apparently, Miss Buchanan, you made quite a strong impression upon my husband and his lawyer. Especially upon my husband.”
“I believe
that we understood and respected each other.”
“Certainly he must have valued you quite highly. You have been informed, of course, that he left you ten thousand dollars.”
“Yes. He was considerate and generous, and I’m grateful.”
“Perhaps your gratitude is not altogether necessary. I feel certain that his generosity was no more than posthumous payment for yours.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. Do you wish me to say it directly? Do you think I am such a fool that I don’t understand the bequest was payment for the use of your body? I wish you to understand, whatever you call yourself, or were called by my husband when he was alive, that he has made you appear in the end no more than a common whore, which is exactly what you are.”
Once before in her life Donna had felt as she felt now. The time had been that late-May night when her father had violated the illusion of a fragment of time. In fury, with a physical feeling of cold, but calm, almost detached in her apparent reaction, she looked at Shirley Burns, as she had looked that other time at her father, with revulsion and scorn that excluded hate.
“I am as willing as you to speak frankly,” she said. “I am willing to tell you directly that Aaron and I slept together many times. We did so frequently in this very house, and I have walked through your room and despised you for an inadequate woman without the brains or passion or guts to hold a man who was worth holding. You did your best to destroy him, but I saved him, at least some part of him, and for this you hate me. As for me, I consider hate an extravagant concession that you are not worth. I only despise you, as Aaron did, and am sickened by you, as Aaron was. I regret I came here, and now I am going. And you can go to hell — if you can find one worse than the one you’ve made.”
Wake Up With a Stranger Page 9