The House on Coliseum Street

by Shirley Ann Grau

  She fumbled with the lock. He took the key and opened it. Automatically she stepped inside. He patted her cheek, roughly. Then he was walking back down toward the car. She could tell by his walk that he was very drunk.

  She called out after him: “Happy birthday.”

  SHE CLIMBED THE STAIRS. She was a little surprised to find her legs working so smoothly. She stared down at her knees rising and falling under the cloth of her skirt as they pumped her steadily up.

  Without a sign from her they stopped working. She was startled and looked around. At the top, of course. How silly not to notice. She moved down the dark hall and it seemed to her that she walked several inches above the floor. She seemed to be drifting or sailing before a silent wind.

  If I took off my clothes, she thought, I’d be light as paper and I’d blow about.

  She felt her waist to be sure her clothes were firmly anchored there.

  Once safely inside her room she dragged a chair over to the window and watched the September dawn slip up the sky. Horizon rise, she thought. And she turned her head sideways on her bent arms and rested on the sill.

  She was very drunk and things didn’t keep still. The soft muted colors of the earth and sky blended and shifted. Once she felt her stocking run, felt the little tickling down her leg.

  I ought to undress, she told herself.

  But she was very comfortable, so she didn’t move.

  In the quiet, even at this distance, she could hear the trickling of the water on the tiles of the fountain in the front yard.

  I ought to be worried about my dress, she thought, and my girdle ought to be pinching me.

  But it wasn’t, so she kept very still and watched. After a couple of hours the alcoholic whirling stopped and she could make out the trees and their leaves as individual shapes and not just blobs of color. And the sky changed from a soft deep blue to the brilliant color of the coming day.

  She wondered what it had been like for poor Mr. Norton, living upstairs, opening his windows each morning on the whisky-streaked world. Poor funny man. She had scarcely bothered saying hello to him.

  She found herself listening for the familiar sounds, knowing that she wouldn’t hear them, knowing that the upstairs attic rooms were empty.

  She was going to have a terrible hang-over. That was for sure.

  The sun was up strong and clear and falling into her eyes so that she had to blink and rouse herself. She got up then, very slowly. And looked at the white orchids in the hard light—they were limp and brown. She tucked them over her dressing-table mirror. Now the room would smell faintly of dead flowers, faintly like a funeral.

  A funeral, she thought and said aloud, “Happy birthday.”

  She undressed slowly, standing in a patch of sunlight. Both her legs had gone to sleep, from the long hours in the chair. And they hurt. She moved about, slowly and deliberately increasing the pain. Until it too was finished and she was left standing in the same patch of sun (stronger and whiter now). She finished undressing and stood watching her body in the mirror, watching the shape and color of the skin and the deep red marks that bra and girdle had left.

  She crinkled her nose at herself. It takes so long to grow back, she thought; I didn’t know they were going to have to shave there. But I didn’t know anything about it. And anyway as soon as the hair grows back, there won’t be a mark to show that it ever happened. Not a mark. And nobody will know. And nobody will be able to tell.

  But it doesn’t look nice now. It looks dirty and sick somehow, as if there were a disease. Or it looks a little like a mangy dog.

  And it’s no wonder Michael didn’t want to come to bed with me, and me looking like this. He must know how I would look.

  I wonder how long it will take. And this is so silly. I wonder if he knew I wanted him as much as I did. I wouldn’t like him to know.

  And it’s so silly. Body running away with you like this. Running so fast you can’t sleep. And all you can think of is the mark of a man. The stupid silly mark of a man.

  I’m not making sense, she told herself, I’m really not making sense.

  The sun was high now. There were stirring sounds in the street and a far-off rumble of traffic on St. Charles Avenue, punctured by the sharp clank of streetcar bells. Clara came in, letting the screen slam behind her, and began rattling dishes in the kitchen.

  Familiar sounds. She had heard them a thousand times before.

  Now she could walk over to the bed. She stretched out on top of the spread. Her body was sore all over, no, not sore exactly, but tender, sensitive, and she seemed to be burning. White hot, flesh hot.

  SEPTEMBER WAS ENDING in its usual way, with sharp gusts of wind and grey sheets of rain. On the porches, leaves were jammed through screens like vegetables through a sieve. There were the usual hurricanes in the Gulf, hurricanes heading for the Texas coast. Once one passed so close that the gigantic neon clock advertising Jax beer (on lower St. Charles Avenue) got ripped off like a top-heavy flower. Coming down, it squashed two or three people, happy drunks who had come out of a nearby bar and were watching to see it fall.

  Between the storms were periods of brilliant Caribbean sunlight. Where everything shone with a desperate hard brightness, and the frenzied autumn growth shot forward. The golden-rain trees shook their hideous pink seed pods over the walks, and camphor trees dropped their greasy black berries. Some few superstitious people still sneaked out when the moon was right and picked up the camphor berries and sewed them in a little plain cotton bag; they wore them pinned on their slips and undershirts as a sure cure against fevers.

  Joan picked up a handkerchief-full and brought them into her room and left them spread out in a little wrinkling black line on the back of her dressing table, the scent mingling with the soft fragrance of the perfumes Aurelie gave her every Christmas and every birthday.

  She liked the way the scents clashed. It made the nights more comfortable somehow, when she woke and in the dark could almost feel the struggle of the camphor and the perfumes.

  Mr. Norton left the hospital. He came to the front and rang the doorbell, as if he had never been in the house before. Aurelie was not home; Joan answered.

  “Good afternoon, my dear.” He looked very well. His skin, which was always very fair had a healthy pink cast to it. His eyes behind the gold-rimmed glasses were very bright blue. He had gained weight and his cheeks were round and full; one had a dimple. “I’ve come to pack a few things,” he said. “Just a bag or two this time. I’ll come back for the rest.”

  He climbed the steep stairs, patiently, stopping halfway up to catch his breath.

  Not more than half an hour later he and the cab driver were carrying down three large suitcases. They had been hastily and carelessly packed. Bits of material stuck out; a plaid shirt sleeve dangled loosely and dragged along the floor. “Good bye, my dear,” Mr. Norton said as they passed Joan. The suitcases made slight clinking sounds. Mr. Norton was taking his liquor supply with him.

  That week too, Doris fell madly in love with a handsome Australian painter, whose name was Troy, who had wavy red hair, sun-browned skin, a thick red mustache, and an Oxford accent. He had a French Quarter apartment where the walls were painted black and the floor yellow and all the furniture was covered with a thick soft stuff like the skins of black lambs. He was also forbidden.

  Aurelie had ruled him unacceptable after their first meeting. Her objection was simple. She announced it very quietly to Doris: “When my daughters go out on a date, they go with a man, not a fairy.”

  “I know all about that,” Doris said. “Anyhow he’s a bisexual.”

  “You’re not to see him again.”

  “They’re the best kind in bed,” Doris teased. “Oh Mother …”

  Aurelie’s eyebrows lifted as she held up a single finger.

  She did not say anything. Even Doris was silenced by the angry look in her eyes.

  Aurelie, who knew everybody and spent long hours on the phone, heard within a w
eek that Doris and Troy were dating secretly.

  Aurelie never made scenes. Joan noticed nothing wrong until Doris banged into her room. It was the middle of the afternoon. Joan was by the window, painting in the brilliant afternoon light. She had given up her sketching pad in favor of an easel and small bits of canvas. Joan sighed, put her palette on the window sill, and took off the tennis cap she wore as an eyeshade.

  “God,” Doris said, “that’s mine.”

  “It’s not,” Joan said. “What’s chasing you?”

  “That son of a bitch!”

  “Who?”

  “Aurelie.”

  “In that case just plain bitch’ll do.”

  Doris threw herself down into the armchair, shaking a little side table as she did. A pack of cigarettes spilled to the floor.

  “What happened to you?”

  “God damn.”

  All of a sudden Joan remembered. “Somebody told her, huh?”

  “I’d kill them,” Doris said softly, “if I knew who.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Joan shrugged. “What’d she do?”

  “No allowance.”

  “None?”

  Doris nodded. Under the deep sunburn her fair skin flushed in spots, like damp blotches on a plaster wall. So that’s what she’s going to look like when she gets old, Joan thought suddenly. She’s going to be one of those ruddy-faced old women who look tipsy all the time.

  Aloud she asked, “For how long?”

  “Indefinite.”

  Joan nodded her head thoughtfully. “That’s tough.”

  “You’re god-damn right.”

  “Charge accounts?”

  “I didn’t ask,” Doris said, “but I’d be willing to bet she fixed those too.”

  “She’s going to pay for college, isn’t she?”

  “A check for tuition made out to the college.”

  “This one really did it, huh?”

  “Look,” Doris said, “you don’t know the half of it. I’m supposed to play at Atlanta this coming week end.”

  “A tournament or something?”

  Doris tossed herself about in the chair, so hard that the wood squeaked. “I can take it without any trouble. I’m bound to.”

  “Why’d you go with him?”

  “Who?”

  “The guy. What’s-his-name?”

  Doris shrugged. “How’d I know she’d flip like this? But I’ve got to go. I’ll die if I don’t go.”

  “Sounds to me like Aurelie really means this one.”

  “You’re telling me.” Doris pulled her knees up to her chin and examined them carefully. “And today I stumbled and skinned myself good on the courts. You wouldn’t like to lend me some money?”

  “If I had any money,” Joan said, “I’d have taken a vacation.”

  “God damn it,” Doris said, “you’ve got to have money.”

  “Don’t take it out on me,” Joan said, “you’re supposed to be fighting with Aurelie.”

  “I picked my father wrong,” Doris said quietly to the chandelier. “What I need is a nice rich crook like my sister’s old man.”

  “He wasn’t a crook.”

  “That isn’t what the tax people said.”

  Joan knew she would give her the money. It had happened too often before for her not to know what was going to happen now. She gave up with a little sigh. “A house full of bitches.”

  “And that,” Doris said triumphantly, “is just exactly what I’ve been saying.”

  “How much?”

  Doris was rummaging around the top drawer of the desk. “Here it is.” She pulled out a checkbook.

  “How much?”

  “A couple hundred.” She was turning the pages studying the stubs. “Say,” she said, “doesn’t tell how much you’ve got.”

  “I’ll have to call Robert D’Antoni and ask him.”

  “Call him right now.”

  He had been her father’s lawyer, a short pudgy man with great rolls of wrist fat showing under his cuffs and swollen fingers that could scarcely hold a pen. He hated Aurelie with a quiet determination and had no use for her children, excepting always Joan. He enforced the provisions of Mitchell’s will with grim satisfaction. He and Aurelie fought fiercely—first face-to-face, then on the phone, and finally, when they could no longer bear each other, by letter. He and Joan had lunch once a month, a quiet ritual, a memorial to her father.

  “No,” Joan said, “I don’t have to call him. I’m sure I’ve got that much.”

  “I can hardly wait to see Aurelie’s face when she finds out I’m going.”

  Joan wrote the check. “I wonder how much you owe me by now.”

  “Ask D’Antoni… God he hates us.”

  “I suppose he does.”

  “Hell, old duck,” Doris said, “we’re all living off your old man.”

  “I know.”

  Doris folded the check and put it in the pocket of her shirt. “It really is a house full of bitches.”

  “I know,” Joan said.

  For the brief period between the closing of summer camp and the opening of school, Aurelie’s daughters all came home. Joan met two of them in the hall—Phyllis and Celine. They were twelve and fourteen and had grown so over the summer she scarcely recognized them.

  “When did you all get in?”

  “Last night.” They had been at camp together and they had got in the habit of giggling and talking together, like the twins in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. “We didn’t see you at dinner last night.”

  “I wasn’t here,” Joan said.

  It was one of her new habits. She no longer ate dinner at home. Or if she did, she ate very early or very late—after even Clara had gone and the kitchen was empty.

  All the sisters were home for a week; the house rattled and banged with their presence. Then they were gone. Only the two oldest, Doris and Joan, remained, and the house settled down. “All these girls,” Aurelie said aloud to the quiet house, “how can I ever manage to pay for all these weddings?”

  Because she was lonesome and feeling the subtle tugs of age, Aurelie made peace with Doris. It had come upon her so suddenly. One morning she was looking in the mirror applying make-up—and there it was, her face staring back at her. The lines that had always been there but she had not noticed them, not really. And the eyelids that were beginning to be just a bit puffy and a little too dark. And the beaked French nose that was a bit narrower and already a good bit like a corpse’s sharp bill—she shuddered and told herself firmly to stop.

  She went on with her make-up, methodically, because she never allowed anything to stop her routine. But she felt slightly nauseated and quite afraid. To cheer herself up, she made a series of appointments at the very best beauty salon.

  She also forgave Doris and restored her tiny allowance when she started back to college. Joan registered too, although she hadn’t really been sure she wanted to. Still when the day came, she found herself walking over, studying the catalogue and filling out the forms.

  She didn’t take a regular degree course. She picked her courses at random, and kept choosing them until her schedule was filled.

  She wasn’t interested. It was just something to do. While waiting.

  She thought of that sometimes. Waiting for what? And she didn’t have an answer. Even for herself.

  Sometimes it seemed that she was waiting for the telephone to ring. She would find herself awake at night, listening hard. And sometimes she would pick up the instrument and listen to the steady buzz on the other end.

  She got asked to resign from her sorority. She had forgotten to go to three meetings. Aurelie was distressed. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “I belonged to that sorority and you’re not going to resign.”

  Joan shrugged.

  “I was a founding member,” Aurelie said heatedly. “They can’t do this.”

  Aurelie stalked off to her room and put in long-distance calls to the proper people.

  Joan watched her go, wi
th a tiny smile on her lips. Then she went up to her room, got out her typewriter and pounded out with two fingers her resignation.

  Having learned in your organization the virtues and merits of the capitalist system, I now resign. Since I have only a certain sum of money for membership dues, I must resign from your club and use that money to join the Communist Party. It is slightly more expensive, but will I feel be well worth it as an investment in the future.

  She signed the letter, and glanced at it again. It sounds crazy, she thought, and it is crazy. And what in God’s name am I talking about. There must be something wrong with me. I’ve never heard of anybody in my family who was crazy before. But this isn’t the sort of thing they’d be likely to tell you. And I wonder.

  And the funniest thing of all is that I liked belonging to the sorority. I like it. And it was fun. And I don’t want to stop just because I forgot some meetings.

  But Aurelie can fix it up. Aurelie always knows the right people. Aurelie can fix it. Daughters of founding members don’t get thrown out, no matter what they do. Aurelie will have it all fixed by tomorrow. And everybody will forget it. Aurelie knows so many people. Fix up anything. And what do they do with the little shrimp child? Red and stringy. What do they do? Do they bury it? But you couldn’t do that. It isn’t a person. The grave of a shrimp, the grave of a seaweed. What to put on the marker? And that would be silly.

  So down the toilet.

  And this stupid letter, this stupid silly letter.

  Aurelie could fix it. Could fix it all.

  She read the letter again, carefully. Then sealed it, and made a special trip to the corner to mail it.

  A couple of days later Aurelie glared at Joan over her breakfast grapefruit. “I don’t really know what to think. Why didn’t you tell me you wanted to resign?”

  “You found out,” Joan said, sadly. “You always find out.”

  “While I’m working hard as I can, you ruin the entire thing.”

  “I don’t know why I wrote that.”

  “Why?” Aurelie clutched the front of her green housecoat closer over her bosom. “My dear child, I am beginning to think there must be insanity somewhere in your father’s family.”