The Whiteness of Bones

by Susanna Moore

  Mamie held on to the bannister. The house was cool and silent.

  “My grandmother is confined to her room.” He startled her when he spoke in a conversational tone. She would have whispered. “These rooms have been this way since 1949. She won’t let anything be touched, although Mr. de Beaupré has put away all of the small things. Or stolen them. I hope he’s stolen them. He deserves all the Fabergé eggs he can get his hands on.”

  Alder took her into the back reception room, the one facing the old garden, and when she sat down in the draped bergère that had once been in Madame’s apartment at Versailles, little puffs of powdery dust rose from the cushion. She could smell mold and floor wax. He turned on a small pink-shaded lamp on a buhl chest in the corner and opened a red lacquered cabinet. There was a small refrigerator inside, and he took out a bottle of champagne and opened it.

  “My grandmother was very vain. The lamps in these rooms were chosen especially to bring out the fineness of her lavender-colored skin.”

  Mamie knew better than to ask if her skin really had been the color of lavender. Perhaps it had been. She looked at the paintings. They were all portraits of a high-nosed, stout woman in strands of pearls.

  “Now she’s lying upstairs, tyrannized by de Beaupré. He bathes her and feeds her and dresses her. There is a day nurse and a night nurse but she refuses to allow them inside her room.”

  “De Beaupré was the chauffeur who smoked under the tree?”

  “Yes. She was in love with him.”

  He was looking for something in the bottom half of the lacquered cabinet. He finally found it, a record of King Pleasure, and he put it on the record player and brought Mamie a glass of champagne.

  “I don’t know this music,” Mamie said. She had been talkative and excited at dinner, but now she felt heavy in her bones, languid and tranquil, perhaps because of the martinis, the still house, and the picture she had made in her mind of the old woman and the old black man somewhere above them in the big, dark house.

  He asked her if she would dance. King Pleasure sang his flirtatious, breezy version of “I’m in the Mood for Love” and Mamie took off her shoes and went into Alder’s embrace as if they had done this many times before, at senior proms and coming-out parties and summer weddings, and she felt that she had been wrong before about the feel of his hand on the small of her back. They danced on the landing.

  King Pleasure sang “This Is Always.” The old parquet floor was uneven and Mamie did not like the feel of the warped wood through her stockings, so she bent over and took them off with one hand, while Alder held her steadily by the other hand. They did not talk.

  “I knew it on that night we met, never will forget, you tied a string around my heart, darling, tell me how can I, how can I forget I met you? How can I?” King Pleasure sang.

  She held herself erect so that their eyes and noses and mouths met at the same place and when she turned her face away from his shoulder, her lips might have been his lips, her lost breath his given breath. He kissed her. Oh, she thought, I remember what it is like now. He opened her mouth with his own mouth. He did not try to swallow her with his mouth, and when he did not, she began to wonder whether he was, after all, making love to her, then it went quickly through her mind that this was a man who knew exactly what he was doing to her. The idea that he might be experienced did not offend or worry her. There was such relief and pleasure in her willingness to finally give up everything, and to give it all up to him, that she felt as if her spine were melting down her back, and dripping like candle wax onto his grandmother’s French floor.

  He took her up to the third floor. It was not his room, but a guest room. There were two narrow beds stripped of linen.

  He laid her back on one of the beds and went to the window and opened it. There was the sudden smell of magnolia, and the room was warmer. Mamie watched him. She knew instinctively that she was not to move, not to touch herself, not to speak. He undressed in front of the window. She thought about his shoes. He came to her and she sat up silently so that he could undress her. He touched her so deliberately and so slowly that she began to feel as if different parts of her body were being lighted with a torch. For a moment, she saw the burning torches of the men fishing on the reef, the flames sparking and guttering in the darkness as the wind came back off the shore-break. When he had undressed her, he lay on top of her. He held her wrists in his hands, stretched above her head, pushed hard against the frame of the bed, and when she was just about to cry out that she could not stand it an instant longer, he, too, reached the limits of denial and with a low moan, descended into her.

  He wanted to see her face. He raised her head, his hands spread in her damp hair, so that the light from the garden shone on her glittering face. She did not want him to look at her. She was too open to him, too new and unused, and she struggled to turn her face away from the light, to hide herself, but he would not let her and he held her face before him until he had seen all that he needed to see.

  Mamie woke up because she was cold. The guest room in Mrs. Lee’s townhouse was full of watery light and the air was full of dust. Mamie was alone. Her panties and old Chanel skirt and blouse were on the floor between the beds. A yellowed damask tablecloth had been spread over her while she slept. She noticed a little tag that was stitched into the hand-rolled hem of the tablecloth, L. P. R. LEE—THE GROVE.

  She also noticed, standing in the bathroom doorway, an elderly black man. His white hair curled up around a red fez that sat far back on his head. He had a white, pencil-line moustache and he wore a quilted silk paisley dressing gown.

  “Won’t you come in?”

  He was holding a demitasse. The cup was so delicate that Mamie could see the dark coffee through the transparent china.

  “This isn’t for you,” he said, nodding at the cup. He took a sip. “I don’t do that anymore.”

  “No,” she said. She pulled the tablecloth closer around her, not out of modesty, but because she was cold. She looked across to the window, but it had been closed. Above the big, waxy tree and the row houses opposite, the sky was cloudless and pale.

  “I didn’t see Mr. Alder this morning. He was gone before I came down. I don’t come down unless I have to, you understand what I’m saying?”

  He handed her the cup and saucer, after all, and Mamie raised herself up against the wall so that she could drink the coffee. It was warm and very strong.

  He sat on the other bed. There was a thump on the ceiling as if a solid, small object had been dropped on the floor above them.

  “She’s echo-locating,” he said. “She doesn’t see too good anymore. I am her eyes. And her hands and her nose. Always was, if you want to know.” He spoke to Mamie in that familiar manner sometimes assumed by old people, as if he shared a past with her or, more likely, as if he could not be bothered to fill in the empty spaces. That would be up to Mamie to do.

  He crossed his legs. He wore yellow leather Turkish slippers with upturned toes. There were dry, light patches of skin on his thin, hairless legs.

  “Too much chicory?” He nodded again at the demitasse. Mamie had finished the coffee and wanted more.

  “No. Perfect, I’d say.”

  “You know, one time I drove them up to North East Harbor, Mr. Lee was alive then and we were young, the three of us, inside that Buick for two days. I often think about it. She was just about the age you are now. The actual length of a life is always an interesting question.” His eyes filled with tears. Mamie raised the cup to her mouth even though it was empty.

  “Buenos dias,” he said and pushed himself up off the bed. He thinks I’m Alder’s wife, Mamie thought. He went through the bathroom, and Mamie listened to his Ali Baba slippers slap across the cold bathroom tiles.

  There was a note for her on the bedside table. “Sick horse. I’ll be back.” It was written on his grandmother’s gray stationery. Mamie folded it in small squares and put it in the pocket of her skirt.

  She walked home across
the Park. It was not until she reached the pond at Belvedere Castle that she finally began to feel warm. The King Pleasure song wound through her like a silk thread.

  She let herself into the apartment on West Sixty-seventh Street. The curtains were drawn and it was very dark. She felt her way, hand over hand, across the room. She smelled apples and cigarette ash. She turned on a light.

  There were two empty bottles of Whit Crawford’s good Calvados lying on the floor of the entrance hall. The Brancusi head was wrapped in with what looked like a nylon hair net. Red wine had been spilled on the beige linen sofa and the antique kite had been yanked down from the beam and lay torn and splintered under the piano bench. A fire had been started in the artificial fireplace with torn-up magazines, and bits of flying paper had burned holes in the Portuguese needlepoint rug.

  There was a hash pipe on the dining room table. Under the dining room table was a naked girl. She was asleep. She had the sturdy overarched body of someone who has done too much amateur gymnastics. Mamie could not see her face. It was covered with long light brown hair. The hair suddenly fell from around the girl’s mouth, and Mamie could see that she was smiling in her sleep.

  “Hi,” Claire said.

  Mamie, to her own irritation, jumped at the sound of her sister’s voice. Claire had just taken a shower and her wet hair was held back in big plastic clips. She looked young and clean.

  “You missed Sean. He really wanted to meet you.”

  “Why would he want to do that?” Mamie asked. She tried to brush some of the ash and burnt wool of the rug into the shallow fireplace with her foot.

  “I think he read your letters. I’m not sure. I can’t remember. Anyway, he thinks you’re interesting.”

  “My letters?”

  “He’s great, Mamie. He says he only likes thin people.”

  Mamie bent down to brush the ruined rug with her fingers. There was a strong, bitter smell of singed hair.

  “Is he still taking pictures of little dogs with hard-ons?”

  “He has another project now. It’s so brilliant. He’s doing this whole series on famous accidents, like the truck driver who decapitated Jayne Mansfield. He’s already done the boy who delivered the sandwich that choked Mama Cass to death.”

  “Are you all right, Claire?” Mamie said.

  The girl under the table mumbled in her sleep. Claire, who was wearing underpants and a LET’S GO, METS! T-shirt, looked at Mamie in amazement.

  “I suppose you spent the night at an all-night library,” she said. She took a big plastic bottle of Coke from the refrigerator, what Alysse called “a maid’s bottle,” and drank from it.

  The girl under the table said, “Fix me one, too. I’m so thirsty.” She crawled out on her stomach, expertly using her elbows to pull herself forward. Urban Special Forces, Mamie thought.

  Claire said, “Mamie, say good morning to Brooke.”

  “Hi, Mamie!” said Brooke. Her top lip pulled up over her big front teeth. She had very small breasts. She went to Mamie and put her arms around her. Mamie could smell the smoke from the fire in her lank hair.

  “Don’t you remember me?” Brooke stepped back to let Mamie look at her.

  “I’ve thought about you so many times,” Mamie said. “Are you all right?”

  “You keep asking that,” Claire said.

  Brooke yawned and shook herself like a dog who has just come out of the water. Mamie had noticed that the girls at Felix’s salon, in their harmless narcissism, watched themselves in the mirror at every possible opportunity. Brooke’s nudity was very different. She behaved as if she did not have a body at all.

  “I’m real sorry you weren’t here last night,” Brooke said.

  She dropped sleepily onto the stained sofa. She yawned again and smiled. “Though I’m not sure how Sean’d feel about three girls.”

  Mamie picked up the ruined kite. It had flown a hundred years ago, traveling one day from a small farm village in Japan, across the Pacific, across the country, to hang from a hollow wood beam in Whit and Vivi Crawford’s apartment. It managed to hold on for another entire two weeks after we moved in, thought Mamie.

  Brooke was rolling a joint on the coffee table. She emptied the loose marijuana from a small plastic bag into a silver bowl commemorating Whit Crawford’s victory the year before as Over-Forty Doubles Champion. She saw Mamie staring at her.

  “It’s easier to clean this way.” She sifted and separated the twigs and seeds.

  Mamie sat down wearily on the piano bench with the kite hanging over her knees.

  “Where were you?” Claire called from the kitchen. There was the loud sound of the blender. Claire was making the morning Mai Tais. Mamie didn’t answer.

  Brooke asked if Mamie minded if she turned on the portable television. “It’s like cartoons,” she said when the tiny screen lighted and the images jumped jerkily one after another. Claire brought in a tray with three big Mai Tais.

  “How did he read my letters?” Mamie asked her.

  Claire shrugged. “He was in your room for hours.”

  “He tried some of your clothes on,” Brooke said. “He looked real cute. Oh!” She turned suddenly from the television set to ask Claire, “Do you think he was telling the truth about …” She looked at Mamie. “You know …” she said slyly to Claire.

  Mamie carefully laid the kite on top of the piano. Claire held out a Mai Tai to her. Mamie shook her head.

  “I don’t know about Mamie. She’s hard to please,” Claire said.

  Mamie looked at her.

  “Do you remember that boy you met at UCLA?” Claire asked. “He showed up on Kaua‘i wearing a terry-cloth beach jacket that matched his bathing suit and beach sandals and Mamie took one look at him and went into the water and stayed in. She body-surfed for six hours rather than come out. I thought she was going to drown from exhaustion. He kept calling to her to come out, the waves were too big for most people to even go in, and she pretended that she didn’t see him and caught another wave. He finally went back to his hotel and Glenwood, a two-hundred-pound Hawaiian boy, had to go in to help Mamie out. She was so tired she literally could not get out of the water.”

  “I was an asshole,” Mamie said.

  “Well, Sean said that was how everyone did sex,” Brooke said with a pout to Claire.

  “Let’s ask Mamie,” Claire said.

  “Let’s not,” Mamie said quickly. “I don’t want to know what he said or how everyone does it. I especially don’t want anyone in my room again. Ever. And that includes both of you.”

  “God,” said Brooke. She looked at Mamie with exaggerated fear and Mamie did not know whether she was making fun of her or if she really was frightened.

  Claire sat calmly in one of the Eames chairs and sipped her drink. “Where were you last night?”

  “With Alder.” Mamie stood up and stepped around the bottles and cushions on the floor.

  “Don’t tell A-ly-eese,” Claire sang.

  “Fuck you,” said Mamie and walked out of the room.

  Mamie pulled Whit Crawford’s favorite leather chair, the one from his happy years at Yale, over to the small window of the library and sat in it. It was not easy to get the chair through the books and clothes that had been dropped on to the floor and just left there, but Mamie did not have the heart to begin cleaning the room. She had been looking forward to having a few hours in which she could think about Alder. She had a queasy and tremulous feeling in her stomach. It was not unpleasant and Mamie, of all people, would never complain about a symptom that might be taken as the first sign of lovesickness. She looked over her shoulder at the bed. The silver Deardorf’s hatbox full of her mother’s and Lily Shields’s letters had been opened and the letters and postcards were scattered across the bed. Lily Shields always sent funny cards, nude men diving from the cliffs of Capri, and her cards, spread out on the bed, looked as if they had been arranged there for a photograph. Mamie slipped off her shoes and put her feet up on the windowsill.
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br />   She could suddenly smell her body. Gertrude had once told her that if you had sex with the wrong man, you would smell bad. Gertrude even claimed that she could tell how long it had been since her own man had last come by the way she smelled after making love with him. That was her way of knowing if he had been true to her. Mamie smiled. She had not known that she remembered these love-tricks whispered to her so many years before. Her vagina did not smell bad. She had not made love with the wrong man.

  Gertrude worked as a cashier in the Big Save in Waimea. Mary found her the job when Gertrude’s pretty brown belly had grown so big that even Mary, who was not particularly observant of people, had to admit that Gertrude was going to have a baby. Gertrude wanted the baby even though she was not married to Benjie. Mamie and Claire had tried to convince Mary to let her stay, but Mary thought that Gertrude was a very bad example to the girls and the other servants. It had never occurred to her, of course, that Gertrude was the primary influence in the lives of her daughters.

  Gertrude had moved to a tiny house near the river and Mamie and Claire stopped at the Big Save almost every day when they were home from school and stood alongside the cash register and talked to Gertrude as she worked, pulling the fish and taro and cases of beer along the rubber conveyor belt. Mamie and Claire threw the groceries into brown paper bags while Gertrude gave orders to everyone. “Janine, how much da root beer? Mamie, you look too white, girl. Try check da price root beer, Claire.” Gertrude had three children now and Benjie was one of the most feared police officers in Lihue.