Francesca looked wonderful by the light of the torches. Her black hair picked up their shine, so that each curl held a gleam of red. In the half-light, her face acquired the soulful expression of a medieval beauty. Francesca’s personality was all military march and victory verse—or else pounding funeral dirge, depending on her mood—but sometimes the way she looked made one think of the most heartbreaking poetry.
Isabella’s appearance had none of that poetry, but her personality easily outstripped Francesca’s in its potential for romance. In my somewhat fanatical interest in both girls, I once mused that each would work better in the other’s body. But instantly I recognized how faulty this reasoning was: Isabella’s artlessness was matched by her flailing, exuberant limbs, and Francesca’s volcanic emotions added a passion to her classical beauty that made her irresistible. I have not since met any women who so perfectly embody themselves.
Aunt Edie was led to the place of honor at the head of the table, her chair barely fitting under the tent’s boundary. Then the rest of us, with the exception of my mother and Aunt Margery, who were acting temporarily as servers, found our places. For the occasion, Condor and Lorelei had been invited, and Uncle Eberhardt had been warned that he had no choice but to attend. Barnavelt remained at Condor’s cottage. All together we were eighteen people around the table, seven on a side and two on each end, sitting on chairs transferred from the dining room. Aunt Rose sat beside Aunt Edie at the head of the table. It was a cramped meal, and Delia Robierre, whom I sat next to, elbowed me at least five times, once knocking a forkful of food into my lap.
While we ate, the evening seemed to be an unadulterated success. The aunts were astounded by how skillfully we had transformed the lawn. Isabella glowed at their compliments, Yvette smirked, Tom laughed, Philip nodded. Pamela gravely inclined her head and said, “Yes, that did work well, didn’t it?” and implied that she had been behind it all. We told the aunts about Fisher’s architectural genius in planning the tent, and that caused Uncle Eberhardt to narrate the story of his youthful dream to build a bridge.
This story came from so far out of left field that not even the aunts had heard it before. Apparently, while still a college student, Uncle Eberhardt had conceived a vision of a bridge across the English Channel. In his first years at Dartmouth he had taken several engineering courses, and this bridge was to have been the culmination of a long and glorious engineering career. The thought of Uncle Eberhardt in college took all of his great-nieces and -nephews by surprise. We sat silent for several minutes while he ranted on, each of us trying to picture him as a young man.
“So why didn’t you become an engineer?” Isabella asked at last.
“I didn’t become an engineer, child,” he growled, “because a boy I knew introduced me to poker. That’s why.”
Condor, from further down the table, said, “I would leave it, Eberhardt,” and at the same time Aunt Margery said, “Now, Uncle Eberhardt, we don’t have to go into that ancient history now.”
“And why not?” Eberhardt exclaimed, slamming the table with a gnarled fist.
He was sitting kitty-corner to me at the end of the table, and I gaped at his fist as it came crashing down. The thumbnail was thick and yellow, cracked with deep whitish fissures. The veins were so purple and prominent that they seemed to have been placed on top of his skin. His knuckles were like beads on his bony fingers.
“Why do you call it ancient history?” Uncle Eberhardt continued, pounding the fist again. “Am I so old? Is my story not worth telling anymore? Is that it, Margery? You may wish,” he added, glaring at all of us, “to hide the history of this family, but I’m responsible for it, and by God I’m going to tell it.”
“But we know the story, Uncle Eberhardt,” said my mother.
“We don’t,” said Tom, and I was glad he spoke up, since I was thinking the same thing.
Ignoring my mother, Uncle Eberhardt turned to Tom and the rest of us in the younger generation, who were gazing at him in astonishment. “I will now relate to you the downfall of a promising young man,” he began. “All you young men, listen carefully—it could happen to you! Like you, I was a handsome young Hatfield, a favorite with the ladies—yes!—and convinced that I would be famous one day, renowned for my achievements. I might have been, too, if it hadn’t been for Peter Cavendish. That was the name of the boy who introduced me to poker. He found me one night, while I was looking for fun in the streets of Hanover.” He glowered at us from under his bushy beetle brows. “I’m sure all of you have the same urge. Resist it! It leads to no good. Peter Cavendish took me to his room and introduced me to the other boys there. They were sitting around a table, flipping cards and calling their bets. The sound of the chips clicking down on the table was strange to me then, but even now I sometimes wake up with it in my ears.”
By this time silence had dropped over the table. The aunts themselves were enthralled by his story. Eberhardt hadn’t had so much attention in years.
“Peter Cavendish invited me to play. I told him I didn’t even know the rules, but that didn’t matter. He wasn’t playing for the rules; he was playing for the money—cold, hard cash! In those days the Hatfields were a rich family. He knew that as well as I did. Why not bring a young man like me to the table, wet behind the ears and primed for a fleecing! Yes, children, that is what happened to me. I was fleeced, trounced, taken. I lost three hundred dollars that night, and what is worse, I gained in return a thirst for the game. I went home rehearsing the cards I had played, wondering how I could have played them better. I read books on poker, I asked friends about it—and the next time Peter Cavendish invited me to his room, I said yes. A fatal mistake, children! And an even more horrible mistake was that my studying had paid off—I won. Hand after hand, I pulled the chips to my corner. I thought Peter Cavendish would be impressed, but he looked at me with a cunning smile. Yes, he knew he had hooked me well!
“When I lost to him that night, I thought it was a fluke—simply bad luck and bad cards. I kept playing, not only with him but with others. Before long I was asking my older brother for money—that was your grandfather. He gave it to me, not knowing why I needed it. I never graduated from college. I was sent away for gambling! And what did I do after that? I gambled more! I supported myself on the ruin of my family. The savings were drained. I finagled a letter out of your grandfather that authorized me to draw on his account, and I took the money myself. I traveled the world—Asia, Africa, South America, the Caribbean, more places than you’ve ever dreamed of! And what did I see? Nothing but green felt, children. Green felt and poker chips and money passing from hand to hand—usually from my hand to someone else’s.
“What kept me going, you might ask. Yes, I see your mothers’ faces—they know all too well what became my constant companion during those long years. Gin, children! Gin and plenty of it. A godsend, it seemed at first. I needed energy to stay alert through game after game, loss after loss. But devil-sent would be more accurate! How well I remember waving my empty glass—another, and another! Anything to keep me awake, though the cards were swimming in front of me. Of course your grandparents were horrified. It was the last straw, they said. Yet they welcomed me into their home again and again, hoping I would give it all up.
“I didn’t—not for years. Oh, I came back here every summer, mooching off your grandfather’s generosity, but I could never resist taking the first ship out in September. What did I care how long the journey was, as long as I found a poker game at the end of it! That was my life for thirty years before the funds ran out, and I came home for good to see all these beauties here deprived of their wealth.”
He waved a claw at the aunts, and they, released from the sound of his voice, tried to shut him up. “We lived a happy enough life without the wealth,” my mother said. “So there’s no need to harp on the past.”
“Yes, yes, you think I’m the only villain in the family!” he shouted. “You think I’m the only one with a past to hide. But the worst of wha
t I started in this family wasn’t losing money—it was losing dignity! Look at you!”
“Don’t start naming names, Uncle Eberhardt,” Aunt Rose said, frowning.
“And why not? You’ve all been very coy, but I know what’s going on. Of course the worst ones are absent. This boy’s father is so heartless he wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice his own wife’s sister to the rabble.”
He waved his hand in my direction, and what felt like a bucket of cold water splashed over me. It was then that the evening lost its glow. We sat with our shoulders hunched, waiting for what he would say next. None of the cousins dared to look at me, and even my mother was so taken aback that she just said, “Oh!” and couldn’t manage anything more.
“Harold may be dead, but we all saw the path he was heading down,” Eberhardt continued. “It’s a good thing in the end that German bomb blew his head off. God knows where he’d be now if he were alive!”
“There’s no need to defame the dead, Uncle Eberhardt,” my mother said.
“But reason enough to defame the living, Caroline!” he cried. “Loretta was a slut from the age of twelve. She probably got it from hearing about all the things I was doing. She ran off with that Spanish thief and came back with you three, ready for more! I know what she’s doing now, I’ve heard the talk! It’s a disgrace to the Hatfield line, but it’s all part of the trail of corruption. The trail of corruption that I began!”
“I don’t see why I have to listen to this,” Francesca said, pushing back her chair. “I’ll be in my room if someone wants me.” She walked out of the tent before anyone could think of stopping her.
“Eberhardt, that’s enough,” said Condor.
But Eberhardt plowed ahead. He seemed unstoppable, and we sat as if frozen, watching as he wheeled and shot at each of us in turn. “That child,” he said, nodding at Francesca’s retreating form, “is headed for the same fate as her mother, and not one of you is lifting a finger to stop her. God knows where the rest of you children will end up. If it isn’t sex, it will be drink, or gambling the way it was with me, or something far worse!”
My mother drew back her shoulders. “I will not stand for this any longer,” she said. “Uncle Eberhardt, please apologize to all of us.”
“Apologize, my foot, Caroline!” he snapped. “Besides, I don’t see what you’re upset about. They haven’t started yet, these little innocents.” He leered at us.
Then, to our complete shock, Yvette said, “I wouldn’t be so sure.” She was staring at Tom as she spoke. At first I couldn’t understand what had provoked her outburst, but later I remembered the seating arrangement. Yvette was sitting across from Tom, and Lorelei was on her right. The entire meal, therefore, she had been looking at Tom while he looked at Lorelei. Lorelei herself was unaware of the cloud of anger next to her. She had been cowering under the blows Eberhardt was delivering to our family and was probably glancing at Tom out of fear.
“What did you say, child?” Eberhardt asked Yvette.
“Some of us have started, haven’t they, Tom?” she said, smiling maliciously.
“Yvette, what are you talking about?” Aunt Margery said.
“She’s being an idiot,” Tom said. “Don’t listen to her. At any rate, we can be sure she’ll never cause any trouble. She’s going to be a spinster for life.”
This was an unfortunate thing to say because it caused Yvette to throw caution to the winds. She stood up, her chair toppling behind her, pointed at Lorelei, and yelled, “Even if I am a spinster, it will be better than being a whore like her!”
Lorelei’s face flushed red. She stared at her plate, and through all the acrimony that followed she didn’t look up or say a single word.
“Yvette! Apologize at once for insulting one of our guests!” Aunt Margery exclaimed.
“A more unfounded accusation I have never heard,” my mother said. Her lips were trembling, and I was terrified that she was about to cry. “The idea is absurd.”
“You think so?” said Yvette. “Why don’t you ask your nephew about that, Aunt Caroline? You all think Tom is so wonderful. Well, Uncle Eberhardt has the right idea about this family. You ask Tom whether he’s been sleeping in his bed half the nights we’ve been here, or whether he’s been out with Lorelei in the nearest haystack!”
“Fuck you, Yvette,” Tom said, pushing back his chair. It was the first time I had ever heard the word. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t in my dictionary.
Aunt Edie shrieked, but no one paid any attention to her. Her birthday had been eclipsed by family scandal.
“How dare you say that to me!” screamed Yvette. She had begun to cry, but she was so angry that she ignored her own sobs, which made for a strange sight, as if she were fighting through a curtain of tears that someone else had dropped over her. “You know it’s true. You’ve been sleeping with her every night for months!”
“You’re disgusting!” Tom shouted. “I know why you’re so angry—because you’re jealous! You’re green with envy because Lorelei is so much better than you are. But let me tell you, even if you weren’t my cousin, I wouldn’t sleep with you. You’re a block of ice, that’s all. A block of mean, jealous, underhanded ice!”
“I don’t want you to sleep with me!” Yvette screeched.
The party was in shambles. The shouting match between Tom and Yvette had been held against a background of cries and gasps. Half the chairs were overturned, and most of us were standing openmouthed in a circle around the table. I had retreated to my mother’s arms when Tom stood up. Only Uncle Eberhardt and Lorelei remained seated. Eberhardt was watching the chaos with an enigmatic half-smile on his face. Lorelei was still staring at the food on her plate, but she was trembling violently.
I don’t have a clear memory of how everyone left the scene of the disaster. I can’t remember Lorelei going home or Condor returning to his cottage. I don’t know who ended up clearing away the debris from the party. The aunts took Tom and Yvette into the kitchen and left the rest of us to our own devices. My mother dried my tears and told me to go to bed, and I was so shaken that for once I obeyed. On my way into the house I encountered Francesca standing by the front door. I waited for her to move aside so I could go in, but for a long time she didn’t—she just stared down at me, her face in darkness. Then she said, “What a terrible summer this has been, Richard. What a horrible, awful summer this has been.”
It was one of the most chilling remarks I’ve ever heard. I felt as if she were passing a final judgment, not only taking away any chance of future enjoyment but also destroying the magical days we had already experienced. I became afraid that night, after I got into bed, that what I had believed to be an exciting and joyous summer had in fact been a bleak journey into despair. I worried that my memory itself wasn’t valid—that all this time it had been presenting me with lies.
13
Phone Booth
The next morning I felt a confused sympathy for Aunt Edie. Of course I had no idea what she thought about the shambles that was supposed to have been her birthday dinner, but anything less than outrage over the neglect of someone’s birthday rights seemed to me unthinkable.
Aunt Edie usually went out at dawn for a walk, ate a muffin with orange juice in the kitchen, and then returned to her room to read until ten o’clock. Once she closed the door, her bedroom became an inviolable haven. No one, on pain of her extreme displeasure, was ever to enter, and on the one occasion when Tom, during a lively game of Hide and Seek, barged into the room with a shout of “I’ve got you now!” he had to endure a forty-five-minute lecture on the etiquette of closed doors. The line he quoted to us for many days afterward was “You might have caught me in my drawers,” a possibility that struck him as both hilarious and horrifying.
That morning I spent twenty minutes giving myself a pep talk and then tiptoed downstairs to Aunt Edie’s bedroom. Thanks to Tom, I had a vivid image of her in voluminous white underwear trimmed with lace. As it happened, however, when she barked, “Come in!”
and I entered the room, I found her wrapped in a bathrobe, sitting in a chair by the window. She had not yet fixed her hair, and it flew out from her head as if trying to escape. Other than that, she looked presentable.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” she snapped. I had never seen her lips so thin or her eyebrows so angular. All her features seemed to be focused into one accusing finger, pointing straight at me. “Do you think now is a good time to disturb me, Richard?” she went on. “I have no interest in seeing any of you reprobates.”
Not stopping to wonder what “reprobate” meant, I said, “I’ve come to apologize, Aunt Edie.” I spoke in a small voice. My apology was genuine, but the fact that I didn’t think I was to blame for what had happened put me in a puzzling position.
At least, however, I had caught Aunt Edie’s attention. “An apology, eh?” she said. “I’ll admit I didn’t expect that. Go on.”
“Well, it wasn’t very nice to have that big fight at your birthday dinner,” I said. “It wouldn’t have been nice anyway, but it was especially bad because we were supposed to be celebrating your birthday, and we’d worked so hard on getting the tent ready and setting up the table that it was horrible to ruin everything by shouting at each other.”
Surprisingly, Aunt Edie smiled—a dry, vengeful smile. “What you really mean, Richard, is that you’d like to demand an apology from Tom and Yvette, is that it? Maybe one from Uncle Eberhardt too, for that remark he made about your father—which, by the way, I don’t believe is true. Your father would protect Loretta if it became necessary.” I was grateful to her for saying that, though I wasn’t sure she was right. “In any case,” Aunt Edie continued, “I accept your apology for what it’s worth, which isn’t much since all you’re really saying is that you feel guilty for other people’s bad behavior. Most people would say that’s a laudable feeling, but I think it’s a waste of time. You should be angry at them, not trying to cover their tracks by making apologies they should be making for themselves.”
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