Crystal and Joscelyn followed him.
“What is it?” Crystal asked timidly.
“Yes, what’s happened, Gideon?” Joscelyn asked.
“Honora,” he said.
“Honora?” Joscelyn’s voice rose. That headache, could it have been the onset of some galloping disease?
“She won’t be living here anymore.” Gideon’s voice was flat.
“What?” Crystal cried.
“Where is she?” Joscelyn wailed. A brain tumor. Yes. Honora had been taken to the hospital—no. There would have been sirens.
“She’s not staying in my house.” Gideon’s hands were clenched.
“Gideon, nothing you’re saying makes sense.” Crystal stood over him. “Honora had a bit much sun today, and fifteen minutes ago she went upstairs.”
“First thing tomorrow morning I want you to pack her things. Juan will drive the boxes over to her father’s.”
“Why can’t she do her own packing?” Joscelyn took off her glases to rub her twitching eye.
“She left the house a minute ago.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“She slammed the door?” Crystal asked incredulously.
“Honora never slams doors.” Joscelyn’s reddened eye fluttered.
Mrs. Ekberg stuck her carefully coiffed head into the room. “Is there anything I can do, Mr. Talbott?” she asked with quavery brightness.
“Take Joscelyn on upstairs,” Gideon said.
“It’s not my bedtime—”
“Go!”
At the command in his voice, Joscelyn shrank toward the chaperon, blinking violently. “I want Honora!”
Mrs. Ekberg put her arms around the child’s thin shoulders. “Come on, Mrs. Ekberg will fix you some nice hot Ovaltine with marshmallows.”
The door closed, and Crystal put both hands on her beguilingly rounded hips. Determination carved away the pouting, movie-starlet prettiness so that her vitality and beauty blazed with near terrifying intensity. “I want to know what’s what,” she said in the loud, blunt tone that she used when intent on getting her way with the Sylvanders.
Gideon sighed, “You know how it’s disturbed me, Ivory chasing after your sister.”
“I never understood why. Honora’s nutty about him.”
“She’s been going to his apartment.”
Light-headed with shock, Crystal sank into the brocade love seat. She wasn’t surprised that Honora had tumbled, not with the lariat of chemistry between the two of them—but how could Honora have kept it from her? They shared everything. Honora was too guileless to lie. Yet on the other hand, hadn’t she been known at Edinthorpe as the safest custodian of a secret?
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Gideon said.
“How do you know?” Crystal asked in a subdued voice.
“Ivory didn’t deny it. And she, poor girl, was quite open when I confronted her.” Gideon paused. “Now you see why I can’t have her living here.”
Separated from Honora?
It was bad enough to live apart from their father. But she and Honora were indivisible. To exist without Honora steadfastly backing her up and admiring her and giving in to her? To live without her other?
“I’m not at all sure,” Crystal said slowly, “whether Joss and I can stay. Without her.”
The wrinkles in Gideon’s brow deepened and his expression turned dark. “Is that an ultimatum?”
“Gideon, the three of us have always been together.”
“Try to understand how difficult this is for me. I cared deeply for Ivory.” Gideon’s chin sank onto the new, bright tie. “I always wanted a son, and Matilda was a sickly woman from the first. She lost three babies and after that, well, we gave up.” He sighed heavily. “Curt was more or less in my care . . . . I paid for his keep and education and tried to guide him. He has the highest ethics—except when it comes to the opposite sex. He can’t restrain himself when it comes to girls.”
“Poor Honora, she’s crazy in love with him.”
“She was under my roof, my responsibility. It hurts that he had to seduce her. It hurts.”
“She isn’t having a baby?” Crystal asked anxiously.
“Not that I know of. But, Crystal, Curt flagrantly abused my trust.”
Gideon looked up. There were odd-shaped tears below his small brown eyes.
His unexpected misery caught at her. “Why not let it rest for tonight?” she asked sympathetically.
“It’s not going to be any less painful in the morning.”
“Gideon, tonight’s not the time to make any permanent decisions. I’m positive this whole business won’t seem as bleak tomorrow.”
“You’ve got so much common sense, Crystal. You’re right. I’ll sleep on this unpleasant mess and settle it in my mind before we have our talk.”
She left him hunched in the huge, shadow-rimmed room.
Upstairs, she sank into one of her slipper chairs, her delicate, carefully manicured hands covering her face as her sobs began.
She pitied Honora profoundly. Honora adored Curt, but he would never marry her. He hungered after large-scale opulence—Crystal recognized the same passion in herself—and would marry Imogene or somebody rich like her. The bastard, Crystal thought. Taking Imogene to big galas and sneaking Honora into his apartment.
Joscelyn crept in, her cotton pajamas buttoned awry.
“What’s going on?” she whimpered.
“Gideon found out Honora’s been going to Curt’s apartment. She’s been sleeping with him.”
“What a lie!”
“She admitted it to Gideon. That’s why he’s sending her away.”
Joscelyn rushed out.
In her room the child stood peering around, then turned, running full speed into Honora’s room, climbing onto the high bed, flopping down on her stomach. She sniffed at the pillowcases, the tender, sweet odor of Honora. But soon the stale smell of her own tears erased all the other smells. It was impossible to believe that Curt had forced her sister into that obscene tangle of excretory organs. It was equally impossible that Honora had left her without a goodbye, a desertion incomparably more bitter than her unknown mother’s death.
13
At nineteen past seven Honora was sitting on Curt’s bed, the phone clamped between her shoulder and her ear as she gazed blankly at the hard morning sun slanting through the window.
Last night when Curt had pulled up outside the tall apartment house he had detached his door key from his chain. “You go on up,” he had said. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour to clean up the office.” This was the umpteenth time that she had phoned Talbott’s, and with the identical results: a constant ring. It’s a switchboard, she told herself. But if Curt were in the silent building, wouldn’t he have heard and gone downstairs to discover who kept calling so relentlessly?
Almost nine hours, she thought. Nine hours!
Images had paraded through her mind. His car colliding with a huge oil truck and the combined wreckage bursting into orange flames. A robber with the flash of gunfire in the darkness of Maiden Lane. A body plummeting from the Golden Gate Bridge—of her mental dioramas, this image, the body hurtling and disappearing into the black, heaving waves, was by far the most vivid.
A single tap sounded. Dropping the receiver, she rushed to the front door, struggling with the unfamiliar catch.
Curt stood there grasping a large carton filled with rolls of construction drawings. He was pale, but his left eyebrow rose in its usual sardonic arc of greeting.
Her relief was so intense that her legs turned to water. “That’s the longest hour on record!”
“Packing—there’s three more of these in the car,” he said, dropping the carton with a thud. “Not to mention my auf Wiedersehens to the old stamping grounds.”
“You might have let me know!” Her fury astonished her. Who was this shrew? “It’s almost eight.”
“If you’ll notice, there’s no time clock to punch in this apartment
.” He was grinning.
Drawing back her hand, she hit his cheek with all her strength.
At the sharp retort of her slap, her preposterous rage dissolved. She touched her lips tenderly to the reddening mark. “Darling, darling. I’ve been a lunatic. Didn’t you hear the phone?”
“It often rings at night.” He put his arms around her and his sigh shuddered through her body. “When I got there I couldn’t pull myself together. Rejection hurts. Christ, all these years I’ve hero-worshiped him.”
“Oh, Curt . . . .” She was stroking her fingers up the crisply clipped hairs on the tendons of his neck.
“One things’s for certain. We can’t live in the same town with my former boss. How does Los Angeles sound to you?”
“I’ve always wanted to see Hollywood,” she murmured.
She was caressing his shoulders, his arms, his buttocks. She felt the vigilante instinct to protect him and use her body as a barricade between him and all misery, yet her eyes and vagina were wet with the saline moistures of lust.
She led him to his rumpled, still made bed, yanking off the tailored spread: it was the first time she had taken the initiative for sex, and her breasts felt enormous, engorged. Pulling off her blouse and bra, she brought his face down to her, whimpering as he kissed the erect nipples, her fingers inpatiently working his fly.
“You’re like hot silk,” he muttered.
She raised up, kissing his chest, his belly, taking him in her mouth, hearing his faraway groans.
He came, more salt on her, then fell asleep almost immediately, sprawling on his back, his clothes awry. She rested her cheek on his hard thighs, after a few minutes hearing a small, constant buzzing. She had not hung up the phone properly. Replacing the receiver, she put on his paisley silk robe and went into the galley-size kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. Almost immediately the phone sounded. She picked it up before the ring completed itself, not wanting the bedroom extension to awaken Curt.
“Hello?” she said.
“Honora?” Gideon’s surprised voice grated against her ear. “Is that you?”
Idiotically, she pulled Curt’s robe tighter around her bare breasts. “Yes. Curt’s sleeping.” To her own ears the words sounded like an open confession of the act she had performed to make him sleep. “I’ll ask him to call you back.”
“That’s not necessary. You can give him the message. It’s for you, too. From here on in there is to be no communication between either you or him with anyone in my household. That includes your sisters.”
It took a moment for the dimensions of this to sink in. Not to comfort dear, anxiety-ridden little Joscelyn whom she had held as an infant in her child’s arms? To be severed from Crystal? Never to see them?
“Did you hear me?”
“Isn’t that up to Joss and Crystal?” It was as if the words were disconnected from her.
“I won’t have them corrupted. You are not to hang around them.”
“That’s very hard, Gideon.”
“It won’t be so difficult if you remember this.” The loud, bullying voice vibrated though the telephone wires. “I have a great many friends in the engineering profession up and down the state. Come creeping around my back door and I’ll see to it that Ivory doesn’t get a job planning a backyard privy.”
She shivered at the threat.
“Did you hear me?” he asked.
“I heard you.”
“And I don’t want you at your father’s place when they’re visiting. No letters. No communication. Nothing.”
“I won’t bother them,” she said levelly.
“Good. Now we understand each other.”
After she hung up she stared at her reflection in the distorting curved steel of the Revere kettle, considering the numerous ways that Gideon Talbott could destroy Curt’s future.
Curt came in, stretching.
“Who was that?”
“Gideon.”
He halted in midyawn: a sophisticated pulley produced his wry smile. “What’s with him?”
“He called to remind us that we are persona non grata on Clay Street,” she said lightly enough, then, finding it impossible to repeat the final vituperative threat, she began to cry.
He put his arms around her. “Hey, hey.”
“He’s like a family to you . . . I’ve pushed you apart.”
“Let’s not start that.” He stroked between her shoulder blades.
“You’ve lost your job.”
“Big fucking deal. I’ll get another.”
She pulled away from him. “Just because we’ve been to bed together is no reason for us to get married. I know Gideon pushed you into saying that and—”
“Honora,” he interrupted. “You don’t know me very well if you figure I can be shoved into doing what I don’t want. I’ve screwed other girls, and not married them.”
“Did you with Imogene?”
“Sure, why not? She goes in for it heavily. From now on, though, I’m going to be dull and faithful.”
“I’ve brought you bad luck.”
“Like hell. Look, I’m not going to lie and tell you I’m overjoyed how it turned out with Gideon, but wasn’t it clear from what I told you the other night? I make my own luck.”
“Maybe he’d forgive and forget if we broke up.”
“Stop it, Honora, just stop it.” He gripped her hands, compressing the knuckles. She grimaced in pain, but he didn’t relax his hold. “The past is the past. We’re moving toward the future. I am going to be a success, I am going to build highways and dams and bridges and cities, I am going to the goddamn top. And you’re going to be with me. I’ll probably wear you out because I am so hot for your smooth, smooth body and the innocent way you give a blow job. We’re going to fight, and we’re going to disagree, and we’re going to be very happy. You’re going to have my children—and I want three.”
She had stopped crying. “Maybe four?”
“Three’s the starting point.”
“Honora Ivory . . . what an awful mouthful. Too many vowels.”
“That’s more like it. Now blow your nose and make us some breakfast. Today’s our wedding day.”
No matter how deep Curt’s misery, he always managed to function. He ate a half dozen scrambled eggs surrounded by bacon, smeared his toast with strawberry jam, between mouthfuls laying out their plans. “We’ll go talk to your father. Maybe he’ll come up to Lake Tahoe with us. We can be married on the Nevada side without the three-day wait for blood tests.” They would honeymoon overnight at the lake, then drive down to Los Angeles. “We’ve joint-ventured with various companies down there, and several have hinted I could have a job if I ever decided to leave Talbott’s.”
He set her to packing his clothes while he went down to talk to the manager about subleasing this apartment. He rounded up cartons for the books and papers in his built-in shelves, tipping the janitor to lug these boxes plus the two in his car to the storage basement.
By eleven thirty the apartment was bare of personal belongings. While Curt showered the phone rang.
“Ivory residence,” she murmured, tentative after the last call.
“So you are there.”
“Daddy,” she said. “We were just coming to see you.”
“And I didn’t believe Talbott.”
“He told you?”
“His man brought your things around, no message, nothing, and of course I couldn’t discuss it with a servant, and it’s hardly the sort of matter to go into with your sisters. So I had to call Talbott. He told me I could reach you at Ivory’s number.” Langley’s voice was clipped, unpleasant. He had bolstered himself with a full pint of whiskey before dialing Talbott’s.
“Daddy, we’re getting married.”
Silence at the other end.
“I know this is a big shock to you, but we’re coming over to explain.”
“That’s quite unnecessary. You’ve made your plans and there’s nothing I could add.”
Th
e door to the bathroom opened, and Curt stood there, wrapping a towel around his waist. His wet hair hung over his forehead and water dripped down his strong, hirsute legs onto the plushy gray carpet—this was the first carpeted bathroom Honora had seen.
Tendrils of steam curled into the bedroom as he took in her dismayed expression.
“Who is it now?” he asked.
She pressed the phone to her breasts. “Daddy, Gideon told him.”
Curt took a step into the small bedroom, reaching for the phone. “Hello, Langley,” he said easily. “Has Honora explained our plans? We’d like you to come to Tahoe to give the bride away.”
Honora couldn’t hear Langley’s reply because Curt pressed the receiver close to his ear.
“Langley, you found out in a rotten way, and I can understand you’re not brimming with goodwill, but it would mean a lot to Honora—and to me—if you’d drive up with us.”
Another pause.
“I’m sorry that’s how you feel. No, don’t worry about the clothes, she’ll buy what she needs in Los Angeles. Yes, we’re leaving right away.”
He hung up. “I’ll make it up to you, love,” he said, putting his arms around her, holding her to his wet body, stroking back her hair. His deep gentleness always came as a surprise to her: it seemed completely misplaced in a man who regarded life with detached amusement.
* * *
They drove on Highway 40 across the hot heart of California, near Sacramento switching to a narrow road which wound through the old gold-mining towns. When they stopped for hamburgers at Placerville, they found a dim little store that sold souvenirs and jewelry. There was only one wedding band small enough to fit her finger, sterling silver electroplated with gold.
It was dark by the time they arrived in Tahoe and the lopsided moon was reflected in the immense dark glass of the lake. The first thing they saw in Stateline was a blinking neon sign: TAHOE WEDDING CHAPEL. The false front was V-pointed like a church, and above the door, multicolored paint masqueraded as a stain-glass window.
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