Midnight Brunch

by Marta Acosta

  “If you’re tired it’s okay to skip the meal tonight.”

  Pulling away from his embrace, I said, “Why do I get the feeling you’re brushing me off? I guess it’s okay to have the help from the lower lands do the cooking and cleaning and servicing the master’s sexual needs, but not to have her actually socializing with the high and mighty—”

  “Stop, stop.” Oswald took my hand in his. “I’m not brushing you off. It’s just…I was giving you an out if you wanted one, especially since you do such an incredible servicing job.”

  “I told you already, I want to be there.”

  Still, I couldn’t help feeling excluded and resentful as I watched Oswald leave for the baby’s naming ceremony.

  I took a copy of Brönte’s Villette to read while soaking in a bubble bath. I had loved Jane Eyre like a friend, but I found Lucy Snowe disturbing. I was at a scene where the spooky, sexually repressed Lucy thinks she sees the ghost of a nun when I heard an eerie thump at the bathroom door. The thump came again. I dropped my book in the water and sat up just as Daisy bashed her way into the room.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that when I’m reading scary stuff.” I fished the paperback out of the water and set it on the floor on a towel. Experience had taught me that slower methods of drying books worked better than sticking them under the broiler, trying to blow-dry them, or putting them in the microwave and hitting the “popcorn” button.

  When my toes were thoroughly prunified, I got out, slipped on one of my new dresses, a pretty floral print with little buttons up the front. After brushing my hair and putting on eye makeup and lipstick, I selected a dark shawl, the better for concealment, and slipped my feet into flat leather shoes.

  I took a flashlight and went outside into the night.

  The cottage was surrounded by tall shrubs and vines, so it was easy for me to stand in them and survey the Big House and the pool compound. The house was almost dark, except for the fairy lights twinkling in the trees around the patio. Light glowed at the pool compound. They must have retracted the roof.

  Daisy wanted to come with me, but she had no grasp of subterfuge, so I kept her in the fenced garden. The moon was full tonight and bright enough to let me make my way without the flashlight. I avoided taking the shortest route, the path to the pool, because the gravel would crunch with every step.

  I stumbled once on the uneven ground, but caught myself. The knothole was difficult to find in the dark. I covered the flashlight with my hand to obscure its beam and flicked it on. When my fingers found the chunk of wood, I turned off the flashlight. Slowly, carefully, I pulled out the chunk of wood. Then I put my eye to the hole.

  I expected to see the group looking like country-clubbers at their annual members meeting and social. Instead, I saw people wearing hooded scarlet robes that were edged with black borders. Their faces were shadowed and eerie in the flickering light of candles and torches that formed a circle around them.

  I searched for Oswald, thinking that surely I would recognize him immediately, but he was as anonymous as the others. When I finally identified him as the man in the second row of chairs, he didn’t look much like the man I knew and loved; it was as if someone else, someone serious and soulless, was inhabiting his body.

  I had a better view of Willem Dunlop, his face looking jaundiced and waxy, as he stood on the platform. His robe was all black, and he wavered weakly as he threw a handful of leaves onto a brazier on the altar. Bitter smoke billowed toward me in the breeze. The platform itself was covered with a layer of birch branches.

  Silas was by Willem’s side, holding my little baby friend. Willem spoke in a language that sounded like glass breaking, like metal twisting, like something that should never come out of a human mouth.

  A couple moved forward, golden hair swinging out from under one hood, and I realized that the pair was Winnie and Sam. They echoed a long, harsh phrase in monotone voices. The people behind them repeated the phrase three times, like a chant.

  My gut clenched with anxiety.

  A movement from behind the chairs caught my attention. Ian Ducharme stood there, dressed in an elegant light suit and cream-colored shirt. He’d cut his curly black hair short, which brought out his strong, indolent features. He had dark eyes with hooded lids, a prominent nose, and a full, sensuous mouth. He was only average in height, and his tailored clothes hid his broad chest and muscular body.

  Now he watched Willem with bored amusement. Reaching into his pocket, Ian took out a gold case. He opened it and pulled out a cigarette. Then he strolled into the dark shadows at the far end of the compound.

  I turned my attention back to Willem. He gestured to Silas, who held the baby over the stone basin on the table. Something glinted in the candlelight, a delicate glass goblet.

  Silas spoke for the first time, saying, “The blood iss the river, the blood iss the life.” He was translating for Willem. “Blood must be taken, and blood must be given, for it iss written.”

  Willem reached to the table and lifted an object. He held it tremulously aloft. It was a knife with a jeweled handle.

  It was a knife by the baby, my baby, and I had to stop it. I opened my mouth, but a hand closed over it and I felt myself in an iron grip. I twisted and kicked back hard, and bit down on the hand, even as I smelled Ian’s familiar spicy cologne and heard him whisper, “Calm down, querida.”

  Four

  Fiesta Con Los Vampiros

  T he baby was in danger, so I did not calm down. I writhed and kicked back, and one shoe flew off. I bit Ian’s palm and jabbed my elbows into his ribs. Years of garden work had made me a strong girl, but he didn’t flinch or loosen his grip.

  In fact, I got the distinct impression that he was enjoying the physical contact.

  Bending my head forward in preparation for throwing it back so I could break his nose, I heard him whisper, “The infant will not be hurt or harmed. I promise you this.”

  The odd thing was that I believed him.

  When I stopped trying to hurt him, Ian said, “Now, I’m going to let you go.” He nuzzled his face against my hair, and I felt his lips briefly on my neck.

  I remembered with crystal clarity our brief liaison. I thought it must be very wrong to be aroused by another man when I loved Oswald. I knew it was absolutely wrong for him to seek arousal from a young woman in a committed relationship.

  Ian released me; I didn’t bother looking for my shoe and immediately put my eye back to the peephole. Edna, her hood pushed back away from her face, held the happy, healthy baby. Sam and Winnie, who had also pushed back their hoods, stood beside the marble basin. Silas handed Sam the knife.

  Poor Sam looked as if he was the unwilling guest at a costume party. Holding his left palm out, Sam said slowly, “This child is my blood and my life. I will love and protect this child always.” He winced and cut his palm. The incision was too tentative to cut his skin. Sam gazed helplessly at Winnie, who took the knife from him.

  She caught his gaze and smiled reassuringly. She then made a small incision. She immediately cut her own palm and said in her sweet, firm voice, “This child is my blood and my life. I will love and protect this child always.”

  I teared up at this expression of parental devotion.

  Sam and Winnie held their hands over the basin and Willem picked up the crystal chalice. It held what I assumed was water, which sloshed in his shaky grip. He splashed the water over the couple’s hands and spoke in that unspeakable language; like a dubbed film, the sounds did not match the movement of his mouth.

  Silas said, “It iss sso proclaimed that this child shall henceforth be Elizsabeth Tabitha Grant-Harding.”

  Sam and Winnie grinned as Edna handed them back the wriggling baby. Elizabeth!

  I turned to face Ian and stomped on his foot.

  “Why, darling?” he asked quietly. He picked up my wayward shoe and handed it to me.

  “Because you took pleasure in my fear,” I whispered. Ian still had the disconcerting ability
to make me think: sex, sex, sex.

  “Ah, but I find your presence so uplifting. Now hurry and arrange yourself so that Oswald doesn’t suspect you’ve been out here spying. We’ll talk later.”

  Ian walked toward the swimming compound, whistling cheerfully, and I loped off across the field. When I arrived back at the shack I noticed that my neat little shoes were dusty and the top buttons on my dress had popped off, exposing most of my tetas in their pretty pink bra. Damn Ian Ducharme.

  I kicked off the shoes and took off the dress to survey the damage. Perhaps it could be repaired. I looked through a cigar box with safety pins, stray buttons, and a few bobbins of thread. But none of the buttons came close to matching.

  The front door opened, and I grabbed the first thing I touched in the closet, a ruby-red dress in a stretchy jersey. I pulled it over my head and wiggled it down over my hips. If Winnie had worn this dress, it would have looked stylish, but the cut and clinginess accentuated all my curves. This was a high-heels type of dress and I jammed my feet into black open-toe stilettos. I was smoothing my hair with my hands when Oswald came into the bedroom.

  “Oh, you’re still up.”

  “Of course I am. But I fell asleep dressed and, uh, I have to just tidy up.”

  “Okay,” he said with a somewhat befuddled expression. “If you’re sure you want to go.”

  “Oswald, if you don’t want me to go, would you just say so?” When he didn’t answer, I stomped into the bathroom. Looking into the mirror, I saw that my grappling with Ian had smeared my lipstick across my face. As for the dress, I could have worn it soliciting, and jaded hookers would have thought me trampy. No wonder Oswald was hesitant.

  I could have changed, but then I thought, these people have just been wearing weird robes and performing a creepy ceremony, why the heck do I need to impress them? I repaired my makeup, and Oswald and I went outside.

  He hesitated and said, “Don’t you want a sweater? It’s getting chilly.”

  “I’m fine. How was the baby event?”

  “Long and dull,” he said, pulling his eyes up to my face. After a moment, he added, “Ian finally showed up.”

  “Um, Winnie will be happy.”

  I had to walk on the balls of my feet across the field so that my heels wouldn’t sink into the soil. The glimmering fairy lights in the trees, the glowing lanterns, and the cheerful pots of flowers on the patio made the earlier scene at the swimming compound all the more unreal. White blooms of nicotiana delicately perfumed the air.

  “There’s a breeze kicking up,” Oswald said, glancing again at my clinging red dress. “I can run back and get a coat for you. It will only take a minute.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine.”

  The guests milled about with Bloody Marys and small plates of food. Ian stood across the patio, talking to Sam’s parents. He saw me but did not approach.

  The baby was in her basinet, snoozing innocently, while Winnie adjusted a ribbon-trimmed pink blanket over her. “Hi, Win,” I said. “How is little Elizabeth?”

  “Oh, Oswald ruined my surprise. I wanted to tell you myself.”

  I smiled innocently.

  “We’re calling her Libby.”

  Gabriel joined us. “Libby is so old-fashioned,” he said. “I’m going to call her Za, I think.”

  Gabriel and I wandered over to the drinks table. “Miss Milagro, I’m not complaining, but whatever inspired you to wear this scandalous dress?”

  “It was an accident, but difficult to explain.”

  “I’m sure the uncles appreciate it, but you can bet that the aunts will poke out their eyes if they catch them looking.” He poured two glasses for us, but we didn’t have a chance to talk. The aunts surrounded Gabriel. They stroked his pretty red hair and admired his complexion as if he was a chubby three-year-old instead of a sleek urban creature.

  I edged away from the group and walked smack into Silas. “Misss De Loss Ssantoss,” he said, fully enjoying all the s’s in my name.

  “Misster Silass,” I said softly, trying to figure out this guy. My internal Geiger counter didn’t register him anywhere on the sexual scale of straight and gay. His eyes didn’t stray from my face.

  He sidled close to me. “I do hope you don’t judge Willem based on the ideas he expressed yesterday,” he said with twice as many s’s as needed. “I ssit beside him in order to assuage any outbursts that are so uncharacteristic of the honorable and noble man he once wass.” Silas subtly reached his fingertips to his head. “You understand?”

  Was Willem in the first stages of dementia? “I think so.”

  Silas gave a relieved smile. “Reasoning with him now is futile. But we try to treat him with the respect he earned in the decades before. We choose tolerance over censure.”

  “I take it he was a different man.”

  “He was a gentleman and a sscholar, a shining light!” said Silas. “It ssaddens my heart to witness his deterioration, but I feel honored to be of assistance in the ssunset years of his life.”

  I liked Silas’s formal way of speaking. I imagined him as someone who had spent too much time with old papers, and not enough with people. His lack of sexuality, too, was interesting. “That’s very kind of you.”

  “Winnie mentioned that you are a writer. How exciting that must be!”

  I warmed to him. “It sounds exciting, but I just sit at a desk for hours.”

  “I’m sure you are too modesst. Tell me, what do you write?”

  People frequently reacted negatively when I told them about my political horror stories, but Silas seemed fascinated. I told him about my short stories, my attempts at screenwriting, my novel, and the new Uno! Dos! Terror! novellas.

  “I know someone will recognize your talent sssoon, Misss De Loss Santoss. You possesss a unique character,” he said. “I’m also intrigued by your personal story of ssurvival. May I call you and set up a time to have a coffee?”

  “I don’t have my own phone, but you can call the house and they’ll give me the message.”

  Suddenly, Silas’s elderly charge bellowed loudly, “An abomination!”

  Now, whenever I heard someone say “abomination,” I naturally assumed they were talking to me.

  But Willem pointed at Gabriel and said, “The homosexual is an abomination. Your duty to your family is to marry, continue our blood and traditions. Your parents were right to disown you for the shame you have brought to us all.”

  I waited for Gabriel’s blistering reply. But my friend, usually so quick-witted, stood in shock, a blush suffusing his lovely face.

  I took in the stunned expressions of the guests, the yelp of an animal in the distance, a moth battering itself against the glass shade of a lantern, Silas looking dismayed.

  I didn’t care if Willem had been a nice person once. I wanted to tackle him and crack his egghead open on the slate pavers until his brain leaked out like a rotten yolk. I wondered if “justifiable irkiness” was a defense against vampire-slaughter.

  Ian was suddenly beside the wretched old man. He said in a cold tone, “Dunlop, you have offended all thinking people. You will leave now and go back to your dark little world.” For all his bonhomie, Ian had gravitas and his words penetrated the eggman’s shell.

  The older man gaped, and then gazed helplessly at his aide. Silas looked around the gathering and said politely, “Thank you sso much for your generous hosspitality. You have been more than kind. We must go now, but please continue to enjoy your-selvess.”

  Willem tottered into the house. Silas paused to tell Gabriel, “I am very ssorry for Willem’s behavior. He’d had a good sspell, but the travel has upset his routine.”

  Gabriel was silent and Silas glided away.

  Then Ian put his arm through Gabriel’s and led him to the shadows under a tall oak.

  The silence was broken by Edna turning to me and saying, “And I thought you would be the one to make even more of a spectacle of yourself, Young Lady.”

  “The night is still
young, Edna. Wait a little longer and I may,” I said.

  Everyone laughed nervously and then began to talk again.

  Oswald left his parents and came to me.

  “Do you think Gabriel’s all right?” I asked him.

  He glanced at his cousin and said, “His folks can’t come to grips with his being gay.”

  I wondered if that was part of my connection with Gabriel: we weren’t what our parents wanted. My parents hadn’t wanted me at all, and his parents had wanted a different kind of child. “He can’t choose his sexual orientation,” I said.

  “It’s not the orientation that bothers them as much as the family line dying out.” Oswald looked nervous, as though he’d divulged too much of his cousin’s confidences.

  Who knows what Ian was saying to him, but a few moments later Gabriel was smiling, and everyone started having fun.

  I was trying to figure out if I really wanted to eat little quail eggs and, if so, how to go about it, when I realized that the awful incident had made me momentarily forget about the eerie ceremony. Maybe it was the vodka in my drink, but the faces around me looked mysterious, not in a glamorous way but in a what’s-hiding-under-that-old-log kind of way.

  The problem with being raised by an abnormal family was that I had no standard for normal behavior.

  I drifted at the periphery of the party, watching and listening. The conversation was perfectly ordinary, but the guests would disappear off to the barn. I wended my way there and entered the dark building. I loved the rich aroma of animals and hay. Light and laughter spilled out of an open stable door. I knew what I would see as I moved toward it and looked around the door frame.

  Oswald and his parents were engrossed in conversation as they drank pink-tinged drinks. Ernie, the ranch hand, was mixing the drinks: spring water with organic, grass-fed lamb’s blood. When I had been infected, the sight and smell of blood had excited me. One taste was enough to send a rush of bliss, like a drug, through me. But my immune system overcame the contamination, and those days were gone. I left the barn and went back to the patio.