“Don’t mention it. We have a new appointment for you. Three o’clock tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Alan.”
“Good-by, Edith.”
It does not take her long, then, to decide what to do. She rings for Nellie, and asks Nellie to have John bring around the car.
The young manager at the Virgin Isle Hotel is a man known to her, and as Edith Blakewell approaches the desk he gives her a small, abashed smile and mutters a greeting.
“I presume you know what I’m here for,” she says.
He nods.
She opens her purse and takes out a carefully folded fifty-dollar bill and hands it to him. He takes it, pockets it quickly, and reaches behind him for a key. “Four-seventeen,” he says.
She takes the key. “Is this a good time to go up?”
“Yes. She’s alone. He went out about an hour ago with a bag of golf clubs. If he comes back, I’ll detain him till you’re gone, Mrs. Blakewell.”
“Thank you.”
She crosses the lobby to the automatic elevator.
On the second floor, the elevator stops, and a great many small children in dripping bathing suits flood in. Their wet hands reach up and press all the buttons. “This is fun!” one of them says. With the authority of a parent (since these children seem to be parentless), Edith reaches up and unsnaps all the buttons. The children gaze at her hatefully. On the fourth floor, she pushes her way through the wet suits and disembarks. The corridor is empty, and she goes quickly down it to number 417, then hesitates, looking at the key in her hand. Then she knocks. From within, there is a murmured response and a stir of feet. Then Leona opens the door.
“Oh!” Leona gasps. And then again, “Oh! What are you doing here?” And she starts to close the door.
“Leona,” Edith says very rapidly and softly, “I didn’t come here to scold you or to ask you to come back. I simply came to see whether there was anything you needed.”
Then Leona opens the door again. She throws her arms around her grandmother and immediately bursts into tears. Edith steps into the room and closes the door behind her.
“Leona,” Edith whispers. “Leona—this has got to stop.”
“Yes,” she sobs. “Yes, yes, yes.…”
They sit on the bed, Leona’s arms around her. Leona has on a man’s raw-silk robe, and the bed is unmade. The Venetian blinds are down and the curtains are drawn, and the room is quite dark. They sit, letting Leona cry, and outside the closed window the sound of a springboard pounds from the pool.
“What’s going to happen to me?” Leona asks. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“Nothing at all,” Edith says. “Nothing at all. Will you come home with me now?”
“Yes.”
“John’s outside with the car. I’ll wait for you there while you dress.”
“All right.”
“Leona—you’re all I have. Really all. Why didn’t you let me know where you were?”
“I couldn’t, Granny. I was afraid of what you’d say.”
“Oh, Leona. Afraid of me?”
“This is the worst thing I’ve ever done, isn’t it?” Leona says. “The worst. It’s the worst thing anybody’s ever done.”
“Oh, Leona, I’ve done much, much worse things than this,” Edith says. “You just don’t know.” Edith stands up. “Now hurry. Don’t be too long. I’ll be outside in the car.” She leaves the room and walks to the elevator again.
A few minutes later, when Leona comes spinning through the wide glass doors and starts down the steps of the hotel, her head high in the yellow sunshine, her white skirt blowing in the breeze, her purse on her arm, she looks so radiant and young that Edith almost forgets that Leona has ever done anything to hurt her. Edith’s chauffeur steps smartly out of the car, clicks his heels, tips his cap, and holds open the rear door for Leona. When they are enclosed at last in the back seat of the automobile, Edith leans forward and rolls up the glass partition between them and the driver. The car turns slowly down the long, curved drive, away from the hotel, and Edith says, “I’ve—learned that Mr. Winslow still plans to go ahead with his story.”
“Yes.”
“You weren’t able to persuade him otherwise?”
“No.”
“But you did try.”
“I tried and it didn’t work. I’m sorry, Granny.”
“Well,” Edith says with a sigh, “that’s still no reason to run away for two days. When I heard you were here, I was afraid you were trying a more—physical approach to him. But I’m glad it wasn’t that.”
“No, it wasn’t that.”
“We shall just have to sit tight, then, and prepare ourselves for the worst—from Harold. He’ll be furious with us both if a story appears, and it may delay my getting the money to you for your gallery. But you’ll get it, don’t worry—though it may take a little longer. I’ll see that you have it.” Then she adds, “And with no letters to Gordon. I’m sorry about that. It was a bad idea.”
“No, it was a good idea, Granny;” Leona says. “I’ve thought about it, and I’ve written to both of them.”
“I beg your pardon?” Edith says. “Both who?”
“Both Gordon and Jimmy. I’ve asked them to come.”
“Gordon and Jimmy! Are you out of your mind? Whatever for?”
“It didn’t seem fair to ask one and not the other.”
“Fair! You talk about fair after this—this God knows what that you’ve been up to with some man? You mean Gordon and Jimmy both here at the same time? Do you intend to use my house for this? To hold a convention for all your old husbands? Oh, how can you do such stupid things! It’s one thing after another with you, isn’t it? Not that I think there’s a chance in the world they’d both ever come!”
As the large black limousine descends through the streets of Charlotte Amalie, through the heavy noontime crush of bicycles and traffic, Edith says, “Now why are you crying? I merely said I don’t think there’s a chance in the world they’d both come. Do you think they’d come? Oh, please stop crying, Leona!” Gripping the woven handstrap at the side of the door in her gloved hand, Edith says, “Oh, how much longer do we have to go on having these tempests, Leona? I’m spent from them, Leona—do you hear me? Spent.”
Seventeen
“And now, if you can believe it, Sibbie,” Edith is saying, “they are both coming. Jimmy Breed telephoned last night, and there was a letter from Gordon this morning. Why in the world would they agree to such a thing?”
From the top of the stepladder where Sibbie Sanderson stands, her mouth full of picture wire, Sibbie says, “The whole thing is completely nutty, sweetie. It makes no sense at all.” Four days have passed, and Sibbie has arrived to hang her new picture. She has decreed that it be hung in the small sitting room in place of the Inness, which has been taken down and now stands in a corner, its face to the wall.
Sibbie climbs down from the stepladder, and surveys her work. “You know,” she says, “the more I look at it, the better I like it. Yes, if I do say so myself, sweetie, it’s pretty damned good.”
“You don’t think it’s too large for that spot?” Edith asks.
“No, it’s perfect there. The only thing it needs is better light. It should be lighted from the top, with a museum light.”
“There’s one over Papa’s portrait in the library.”
“Let’s switch it,” Sibbie says.
“But the bulbs are burned out.”
“Got any fresh ones?”
“Look in that little drawer.”
Armed with fresh light bulbs and lugging the stepladder, Sibbie leads the way into the library. She places the stepladder in front of the Sargent and mounts it.
“Hello, Papa,” Edith says softly. And then, looking up at the two of them—the tall, thin, intense-eyed man in evening clothes and the large woman in the ballooning dirndl and copper bracelets who lean toward each other, face to face, almost nose to nose—their combination is so bizarre that she ha
s to laugh. They look as though they are about to dance.
“What are you laughing at?” Sibbie asks, screwing in bulbs.
“Be careful Papa doesn’t come crashing down on you.”
“Boy,” Sibbie says, “what I wouldn’t give to own this picture, sweetie.”
“Would you like it, Sibbie?” Edith asks. “I could leave it to you in my will.”
“When I think of the prices Sargent gets—”
“Well,” Edith says tartly, “I’m certainly not going to give it to you if you plan to sell it. Anyway, it should probably stay within the family.” Then, looking up at Sibbie on the ladder, she says, “The only explanation could be that they’re both still in love with her.”
“Well, I wouldn’t even try to look for an explanation if I were you, sweetie. It’s all too nutty. Besides, I don’t believe in love. Not with these young people. All it is is sex. Here, hold this for me,” she says, handing down a burned-out light bulb.
“But what am I going to do with them, Sibbie—this husband-convention I seem to be having? Where am I going to put them all?”
“When do they get here?”
“Jimmy arrives this afternoon, and Gordon will be here by dinnertime.”
“How’s she coming with her art gallery thing?”
“It’s—progressing,” Edith says.
“Hmm,” Sibbie says. And then, “Now try the switch.”
Edith flips on the switch, and the portrait lights up.
“My God,” Sibbie says, standing back so abruptly that she almost topples off the stepladder. “My God, what a man!”
“Yes.”
Sibbie stares at the picture for a moment, and then says, “Run get me a screwdriver, sweetie, so I can get this bracket off.”
But Edith, looking up at her father’s illumined, hard-jawed face, says, “No. Let’s leave him with his light. He needs his light. It’s good for him …”
The imminent arrival of Gordon Paine and Jimmy Breed has posed, for Edith, something in the nature of a hostess’ dilemma. She has, she realizes, let things slide a bit around the house in recent years—particularly in the area of mattresses and pillows, sheets and bedding. Curtains too, in some of the upstairs rooms, have disintegrated and have never been replaced, and a number of the smaller bedrooms are simply no longer habitable—certainly not in fit condition for receiving guests. And so, Edith has somewhat reluctantly concluded, the best solution is to give Gordon her own room. Naturally it is a nuisance to have to move out, but this—after saying good-by to Sibbie—is what Edith and Nellie are doing now: emptying dresser-drawers and closets, preparing the room for Gordon, and carrying Edith’s things to one of the bedrooms in the back of the house. As for Jimmy, he will simply have to put up at a hotel. It will put a better appearance on things if the two are not under the same roof, and it will also reduce the chances of any friction between them. Whether either man knows that the other is coming is something Leona has neglected to mention.
One hopes that Jimmy will behave himself. Edith’s most enduring picture of him was obtained in a motion-picture newsreel she happened to see a few years ago. The film showed a New Year’s Eve crowd scene in Times Square, but one young man stood out from the crowd. In white tie and tails, he was seated cross-legged on the roof of a taxicab that was moving slowly down the street, and the young man—it was unmistakably James Machado Breed—was very carefully pouring a magnum of champagne over the windshield of the taxi, while the taxi’s windshield-wipers beat furiously at the froth.
“Do you remember the night you poured champagne over the car?” Leona asks him. “That was how you celebrated your New Year’s Eve. I celebrated mine in the hospital, miscarrying our baby.”
“Ah, bitter, bitter,” he says. “How can I be blamed for not being around for something I was never told was happening?”
The afternoon sun has left the beach, and most of the afternoon swimmers with it. They have the beach to themselves, the sand pocked with the indentations of hundreds of feet, and as they walk they add their own to the existing craters—craters which the tide and the trade winds will have erased by morning. Jimmy still wears the city clothes he wore when she met his plane—arriving, as she had guessed he would, with only a slim brief case for luggage—but he has left his jacket in the rented car, along with his shoes and socks, and he walks in his shirt sleeves and bare feet, his trousers rolled up above his ankles. Leona has removed her shoes too. Jimmy stops now to nudge a piece of rockweed with his big toe. “Ah, the lure of tropic islands,” he says. “I might have known this was where you’d be. You always come winging back here, don’t you, Lee, like a boomerang.”
“I’m glad you came, Jimmy.”
“Well, a letter like the one I got from you made it kind of a command performance. The age of chivalry is not dead, in spite of what you read.”
They continue along the beach: “Gosh,” he says wonderingly, as though bewildered and delighted by the thought, “but I did use to drink a lot, didn’t I? I don’t drink like that any more, though, and it’s too bad. They were kind of fun, those drinking days.”
“I never liked you when you drank. It changed you.”
“Well, that was the point, for God’s sake. I was sowing my wild oats. But you can’t blame me for that either, Lee. You’ve sown a few yourself, I understand, since I saw you last.”
“I know.”
“But then one day I realized that no matter how much or how fast I drank, the distillers of America could always make the stuff faster. I saw I couldn’t win. That’s why I cut down. I was being outdistanced by the distillers of America. Besides, I’m not a kid any more.” He bends his head to her. “See the bald spot that’s the envy of all my friends? And neither are you, I might add, a kid any more, Leona.”
“I know that too. That’s why—”
He cuts her off. “When are you going to tell me what’s up? Why the command performance?”
“I want to wait till Gordon gets here.”
He stops dead, looking at her. “Gordon?” he says. “Gordon Paine, the squash player? The man you married—Gordon Paine? He’s coming? Jesus, Lee—what is this? A double post mortem? When’s the next plane out of here?”
“Please, Jimmy—it’s important to me to talk to both of you. I had a dream—”
“A dream!” He snorted. “You had a dream. Oh, Leona, come on!”
“I’m quite serious. I thought if I could talk to both of you—”
“It is a double post mortem. You, me, and Gordon Paine. Jesus, Lee!”
“Please try to be nice to Gordon when he gets here. He was nice to me once—when you weren’t being quite so nice.”
“Nice to him? Why shouldn’t I be nice to him? I’m crazy about Gordon. Gordon’s a prince. He’s like a brother. He’s a damned stuffed shirt and a horse’s ass and you know it. Besides,” he adds, “there’s no question of my being nice to him because I’m not even going to see him. I’m leaving. To hell with your fun and games.” He turns and walks to the water’s edge.
“Please,” she says. “It isn’t fun and games. It’s the most serious thing I’ve ever done.”
He stands with his back to her, looking out at the water, his hands in his pockets, and says nothing.
She crosses the sand to him and touches his sleeve. “Please, Jimmy.”
“It’s always the same with you, isn’t it? Fun and games.”
“Not this time, truly. I thought if we could meet—on neutral territory—”
“Neutral territory! This is about the most un-neutral territory you could have picked—your own private little island hideaway. Remember how you used to threaten to go to Saint Thomas?” He mimicks her. “‘I’m just going to go to Saint Thomas, where people are nice to me.’” He kneels, still with his back to her, looking out at the sea. “You don’t seem to realize how stubborn you used to be,” he says, “how determined. Being married to you was like being married to an institution. Like being married to the First Na
tional City Bank.”
“I’m different now. I’m broke now. The institution is on its last legs. Please don’t go till I’ve said what I want to say to you both.”
“Hell,” he says quietly, trailing his fingers in the scurf of a wave, “I’m already here. I might as well stay.”
“I’ve got you a nice room at Smith’s Fancy. Granny says she doesn’t have room for you both—only for Gordon But I’ve got you a pretty room.”
“Granny,” he says, still not looking at her. “She never changes either, does she? Good old Granny.” He stands up and dusts his palms on his trouser legs. “Well, let’s go say hello to the old dragon.” He starts back along the deserted beach to where he has left his car.
“Actually,” Leona says, to fill the awkward silence that follows, once the hellos have been accomplished, “this was really all Granny’s idea.”
“Ah,” Jimmy says, nodding gravely. “The wisdom of the elders.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that, Leona,” Edith says hastily. “No, it wasn’t my idea at all.” They stand in the small sitting room, and Edith says, “Well, sit down. Let’s have a drink. What’ll you have, Jimmy? What is it you young people say? Name your poison?”
Jimmy smiles, passing a hand across his mouth. “Nothing, thanks. Not right now.”
“Hm,” Edith says. “That’s not like you, Jimmy. Well, I’m going to have a drink.” She goes to the cellaret and splashes whisky in a glass. “No,” she says. “My father was always holding little family meetings. I’m not sure they ever accomplished much.” Then she says, “I’m sorry I can’t ask you to stay at the house, Jimmy. But I think, under the circumstances—”
“Don’t give it a second thought, Mrs. B,” he says. “I’m all checked in at Smith’s Fancy.”
“Not to be Mrs. Grundyish, but I just don’t think it would look quite right if both you men were staying here.”
“Of course,” Leona says thoughtfully, “since Jimmy’s the first one to get here, he really should be the one to stay at the house, shouldn’t he? Would you stay here, Jimmy, if Granny’d let you?”
“It’s not a question of letting him, dear.”
Those Harper Women Page 31