During the Reign of the Queen of Persia

by Joan Chase

  “Did you come to the barn party, Gram?” we asked. We had lost some interest in the barn, for although it was getting hotter and brighter, it seemed it might just go on that way like an eternal flame and never be consumed.

  Gram said she had been a nobody then. Nobody to invite. Not then. But she’d remembered the place, the oaks along the front like a high fence.

  We looked with her up at the barn. It was heating so fast the sound was like a wild storm. After playing some water onto the siding, which hissed and remained unaffected, the firemen turned and directed all the water onto the nearby orchard trees; the sweet and sour cherry trees, side by side, were flaming. The curled singed leaves decorated them like candles set in the darkness. Another truck came in from Bluerock, and it attempted to go around back, where the locust clump was already smoldering, but it was too hot to pass on the track and they gave it up because it was only scrub growth. They played all their water on the orchard side. Everybody was just waiting for the barn to finish itself off—no houses were threatened, the night was windless and clear, the smoke lifting into the sky over the barn while across the pasture over the old duck pond the moon, calm and indifferent, floated in a few cloud wreaths.

  It became quieter and Gram said, “Lightnin’s done it, I reckon.” It had stormed earlier that evening.

  “Or a tramp,” Aunt Libby said. “Smoking.” She shivered and drew her robe close. The night reminded us of other nights, things that had happened to us.

  Gram insisted, “Lightnin’ ”; her lower lip protruded. “I always told the old man to replace them rods after he’d fixed the roof. But of course he knew better. Well, now he sees.” She looked satisfied to be right another time, rubbing in another victory.

  At that the whole front side of the barn gave way and the iron wheel that was propped against it, off a carriage, rolled along in a despairing and graceful descent and dropped into the fire, followed by another length of siding. It was proceeding rapidly now, the flames high and outlined in blue.

  After the collapse of the final two sides there was a lull while the visible internal structure of the barn, posts and beams, timbered rafters, the metal roof, stood complete, revealing once more, at the end, the original plan.

  “I wouldn’t have believed anything could happen so fast,” Aunt Rachel said.

  “And there’s all that stuff piled in there. That telescope Grace had for a while. The furniture from North Street, the sleigh.” One of the cherry trees, engulfed by flame, was hacked down and dragged in closer to the barn. Then from the lower level a sudden great explosion whooshed upward.

  “By Christ,” Uncle Dan said. “No wonder they never found that still. Jake must have buried it. Always knew that was powerful stuff.”

  Aunt May came then, flying over the silt ruts in her roadster. She leapt from the car, fast, because she was thin, all nerve and fiber. “I could see the blaze from in town. Oh, Momma, I’m as sorry as I can be. That beautiful barn.” She hugged Gram, who stood it a second, then reared back.

  “Ain’t no use to cry over spilt milk. It wasn’t no good to us anyways. Not anymore.”

  “Well, Elinor was going to keep a horse again,” Aunt May said. “And one for the girls.”

  “A lot of housing for two critters.” Gram seemed to be feeling more and more lighthearted. “Day’s commencing,” she said, and we looked with her to where the moon had been, the sky now the same silver but without the moon. “You gals,” she said, “Lila, Cynthia, Maude, Grace.” She called through the family names, the living and the dead. Confused, she gave a little moan of sorrow or impatience and went on, “Goddamn it. You kids.” She butted her head at us. “You’uns get on up to bed.”

  “Aw, Gram.” We all said it, knowing she wouldn’t really insist, that she was just spent and angry before all that had happened.

  The firemen held their hoses and yawned, smoking or squirting little jets of tobacco juice sideways out of their mouths toward the fire, ready to give up and go home. And as though with a similar resignation, the barn gave up and collapsed into itself, one section following upon the next, all of it tumbling into the stone foundation, the sills and lower scaffolding folding into and absorbed within the billowing blooms of fire. In the sudden quiet, something rustled beside us in the dark. We turned a flashlight that way, then screamed and jumped around. It was a rat, grown huge, but dazed and injured; it tottered in a circle while we carried on.

  Before the men could even move, Gram snatched the stout stick Rossie held and gave the rat one lick across its head. It staggered around and bled and then fell dead. The firemen, across the silt drive, stared at Gram. So did we, mouths slack before the soot-marked old woman with her white leather pocketbook dangling from her arm, on the ground the dead rat.

  “Gawd a’mighty,” an old guy muttered. And spit. “Guess we may as well be going on.” The men began pulling in the hoses. The smoke was still hanging over the empty place where the barn had been and the roof glowed red. As never before from that place, we could see the faraway lights of the next town across the valley.

  “Guess I fixed him,” Gram said, looking at the rat. She wanted to be sure we appreciated her.

  Rossie took it up on the end of a stick and after trying to scare us with it, so that it kept getting bloodier, he scraped and mauled it until he got it over to the edge of the fire pit and flipped it in. The men were finished and most of them went away, leaving one old man on guard over the remaining smoke and ashes and glowing timbers.

  We heard the sparrows and blackbirds beginning to chirp for the new day out in the dark orchard. “Well, I guess that’s about it,” Aunt Rachel said. Then she got annoyed with Rossie, who was still trying to touch us with the stick. “You big baby. You’re too old for that,” she said, threatening to whack him with the stick if he didn’t settle down. We felt like little kids again, with Rossie there deviling us and catching it from his mother.

  We walked along the drive backwards with our eyes on the horizon where the barn had been. One of us tripped and shoved the others. “Watch where you’re going, girls,” Aunt Rachel said, as if she doubted we ever would. Then she turned to look at Rossie, who was walking ahead of us thumping on the ground with the big stick, reminding us of Grandad going through the hollow. “Tom can’t do a thing with him either,” she said to Aunt Libby. “Guess he’s not a miracle worker. Maybe the best thing for Rossie would be to stay on here and learn to farm, like his granddaddy before him.”

  Uncle Dan was listening and said, “You better hope to God he finds his way out.” Then he added, “We had us some swell times, though.” In his voice was the sound of endings, his life something that had happened a long time ago.

  From behind us we felt and then heard the thud of hooves striking the ground. We knew her as we turned, recognizing the high wavering squeal. Queenie, thinner and more ornery-looking than ever, but still the same huffy little sprawl-legged pony. We’d been too busy for whole summers to think of her. We all stood and watched her emerge out of the damp of morning. She stopped to watch back, in front of the trees, stiffening with her familiar exasperating caution, calculating our distance, our intentions, ready to vamoose. Her disheveled coarse mane was coiled tight with burrs and debris, her body shaggy and mud-caked. Phantom-like, with mist tatters curling at her ankles, she called out to us again. Years of knowing her, sensing that the slightest movement forward would send her scampering, kept us perfectly still, not even daring to reach out a hand, some distance short of the fence—just sweet-talking her a little, telling her how we’d missed her since we had grown up, that we had dreamed of her.

  Queenie snorted, shifting her weight a step nearer, and we could see the loose skin shiver under her neck. Her head was butted down and the thick gray in her forelock and mixing in with the brown fur of her haunches gave her the painted look of an Indian pony.

  “You old bag of bones,” Aunt Rachel said. “You’d like some sugar, wouldn’t you, baby? One of you girls get an apple an
d see if we can get her.”

  We brought one from the orchard, tramping the mist-beaded, scorched grass. We held it out, calling in low murmurs, suffering her ways, coaxing. And she moved a yard or two closer, her head snaking just over the ground, stretching toward the apple, toward us—which made us jerk backwards, although she was some distance away.

  “For crying out loud,” Aunt Rachel said, and tossed the apple to land and roll near her. Queenie judged her chances, rushed forward, snatched it and carried it off, backing away. Then she wheeled and vanished toward the ravine, an old acquaintance, never friend, three-quarters wild and looking, for all the world, Aunt Rachel said, like roast piggy on the hoof, that apple wedged in her lifted jaw.

  “Varmint,” Gram humphed. We were amazed that she had stopped there with us. “Oughta be sold for glue.”

  “You never would!” Aunt Rachel said. We vowed to ourselves. No. Never. Before that we would turn fugitive, run into the farthest woods with Queenie and disappear forever.

  “I might,” Gram said, just being stubborn. “It ain’t horses I’m thinking of anyways.” She bared her own small yellowed teeth in a mirthless smile, then walked on.

  “Just look at that old woman,” Aunt Rachel said, trying to get her attention again. “Just like her to be out all hours, gallivanting.” We all laughed because Gram was that way, flamboyantly, joylessly unpredictable. Gram marched on. Rossie and Uncle Dan crossed into the yard and disappeared toward the house.

  Gram stopped to rest at the top of the drive. We came around her, and Aunt May, who had been driving her car slowly behind us as though we were in a procession, honked and went around to go on home. In the first sight of the house it could have been on fire too, the sunlight striking fireballs at the windows.

  “You’ve got insurance, haven’t you, Momma?”

  “Course I have it. That and a lot more.” She seemed revived then and went on toward the house, moving faster.

  “I hope that doesn’t mean you’re going to be pulling back all the rugs at this hour, digging things out,” Aunt Rachel said.

  Gram stopped and faced her. “That ain’t none of your affair, young miss.”

  Uncle Dan called out from the porch, where he stood watching us come up, his face amazed and admiring too. “Glad you women made it back. I don’t know whether to think you’re a band of witches or ladies of the night.” He held open the door and we passed through.

  After the barn burned, Gram didn’t plant the vegetable garden at the back of the yard and over the next three years she sold off the land where the orchard had been and then she never had apples for pie—that was her excuse anyway. When we complained about the noise and lights from the restaurant built on the other side of the hedge, she snapped out that it was a lot more company than a field of daisies with never a smile in them. All she really wanted, it seemed, was to go out with her friends. Della came to clean every Friday, but still Gram felt the house was getting away from her, the ledge on the back porch stuffed to the ceiling and all the closets bulging. The house had become too much, she said, was too large for only five people. Her daughters were more settled in their own lives now, Aunt Rachel married to Tom Buck, Aunt May a Christian Scientist and married to one now besides, and Aunt Elinor was so successful in business she could hardly get away from New York—after she had her teeth straightened, Gram took one look at her and told her that she had now completed the job, had managed to become a perfect stranger. Still members of the family came often to visit so that sometimes Aunt Libby and Uncle Dan felt robbed of their privacy, interrupted in their family life, not that they would ever have refused anyone who wanted to come.

  Every summer Anne and Katie came for a long visit. Gram saw to that. When they would arrive without a dime in their pockets and scarcely a change of clothes, Gram would grumble, “I hate to give him the satisfaction,” then would take them downtown and buy what they needed. Nice things, but no more than was essential, suspecting Neil was amused because she had to do it. “I can’t let them go ’round like that. He’s never thought of anybody but hisself,” she said, not minding that he would have said the same of her.

  “It won’t be that much longer,” we heard her say one day when we were helping out by cleaning the living room before we went off to the pool. Celia would be meeting Phillip there, for that was the time when they were engaged to be married, and they were together nearly all the time.

  “They’re growing up,” Aunt Libby said. “Never thought I’d see it happen, or live through it.”

  “Can’t be too soon for me. Gals in the house—I’ve had my fill. Can’t count the years, the numbers. Bleeding and reeking. This place reeks!” From the other room we imagined her eyes gleaming, having said just what she wanted, scaring us to death. “I’m leaving,” she said then.

  “For heaven sakes, Momma,” Aunt Libby said. “Five nights straight.”

  “Can’t help it. I am. But I don’t mean that.”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  “I mean I got me a buyer.”

  We rushed toward the kitchen, as if we could do something. We listened for what she would say next, that old woman holding all the cards, but when we walked in she was just sitting in her chair over by the window. She looked right at us with an expression that closed off any discussion. “I’m tired,” she said.

  But actually Gram had what she called a new lease on life. She crawled along the borders of the carpeting and rugs, lifting out cash, certificates and deeds. She hired Della for extra days and worked beside her. When we laughed at her getup, bandanna and work shirt and overalls, she just raised her straggly gray-shot eyebrows, an old woman who slept with her pocketbook under the mattress, who, when she was traveling in the West and there was an earthquake, woke up and thought for certain the tumbling about of things was a man going after her purse. She never doubted what she was about, what she was worth and why she’d been able to hold on to it. We were as separated from her as always, living on there, awaiting her decisions, with everything that happened heightened with the poignancy and solemnity of an old tale.

  Gram was as close-mouthed about her negotiations on the sale of the farm as she was about the financial details of her gambling—playing ten bingo cards at a time, she won at least once every evening, and that was all she reported to us. If anyone called her to account, costs versus winnings, she was immediately defensive, her stringy neck flushed, the cords throbbing. “Leave me be. Ain’t none of it’s your business.” That was that. Once Gram flared up, she went on until her opposition had been inflamed to a raging equal to her own and the air was blue. But whereas Gram’s abuse swelled to support her willfulness, a ready and useful weapon, such displays frightened the rest of us, made us fearful of a likeness to her which shamed us. So Gram always had the last word; no one was up to her.

  “I’ve found me my house,” she’d announced a few weeks later. She had Aunt Libby drive us by on a Sunday afternoon. It was a brick ranch house in a new development on the old Masters place. Set on about an acre of lawn with a few wire-steadied saplings arranged around it, it had a large bay window on the front, though all the other windows were high tiny rectangles, suggesting a fetish for privacy since no neighbors were near. The kitchen was tiny too. Uncle Dan said it would feed three people who had already eaten—which, Gram retorted, was more than she intended anyway. But there were two full-sized garages, altogether a space nearly as large as the rest of the house, the curtained windows making them appear like extra rooms from the outside. And Gram was proud of the powder room by the front door and the large basement where company could sleep and Uncle Dan could work on his projects.

  It was right after Aunt Elinor called, excited about a client she had obtained for her agency, that Gram said, “The Jew will be here next week.” That was the first we’d heard of him. The house was prepared and Gram took the long soak that readied her for her affairs. In the hall we met her, a towel flapping in front, steam rolling out of the bathroom around h
er, making it seem she was a genie released from a bottle. These baths could never erase completely a pervasive smell that emanated from her, a sourness of teeth and age, of heart. We watched her dress. She lay on the bed to corset herself, then disappeared an instant under the dark green dress with its marble print. She put on her cameo, rhinestones and pearls. Without a mirror she rouged herself, powdered her still-damp cheeks and brushed at her hair, which was as set in its way as a wig. As the rest of her. Then she smiled vaguely toward us as she put on her glasses, read our expressions and said, “Now wipe off them sourpusses. Ain’t a funeral. Besides, I want him to notice how pretty my gals is.” So gleeful she was. She might as easily have sold us.

  Then the Jew was coming down the drive in a long black car. Quietly it came, as purring and sleek as Mr. Weiner, who stepped from it smiling, paunchy and balding, as we had expected, smoking a cigar. Gram licked her lips. He held out his hand to greet her, but she, the old farm woman, didn’t even notice and wiped and twisted hers against her dress, as if she wore an apron.

  “You have a beautiful place here, Mrs. Krauss,” he said. “Lovely.”

  Mr. Weiner walked the lawn with Gram. He admired her flowers, perennials planted long before, and then he stood awhile under the rose arbor, looking down toward the unraveling tapes-try of undulating hills and cloud shadows staining some fields dark, turrets of far barns, encircling woodland. He took her arm. He might have grasped a railing, her stance was so graceless and unyielding. But he seemed not to notice, courtly, enjoying everything. At the house he remarked on details we had thought only we appreciated or had ever noticed, the prisms, the granite aprons, the solid oak-paneled doors, the planked flooring. He named what we loved so that we trailed after him to hear, bitterness edged aside for now.

  “Your girls love this house, Mrs. Krauss,” he said as if in praise of us too. Then he added, “They’re beautiful. I lost my own at about this age.”