“Shall we?” he asked, opening his door.
“Shall we? Shall we …” she snapped, about to say, Shall we what, keep getting on each other’s nerves like this? But he was already out and hurrying around the front of the car. He held the door open, waiting for her and smiling.
The foyer reeked of chemicals so strong they seemed to seep right into her pores. Her eyes watered and she had to keep fanning her hand under her nose.
“It’s the polish,” Wesley explained. “Linseed oil and turpentine. I did all the woodwork today. This, believe it or not, is the original finish. Hand-rubbed,” he said, stroking the oak wainscoting, which gleamed under the cut-glass chandelier. “I do it every six months. It’s amazing how thirsty this wood gets.” He looked back at her. “How dry the air is,” he added, and there it was again, that sigh, like a faint whimper, and suddenly she was aware of the enormous silence here. “I’ll make some tea,” he said.
Wesley led the way up the burgundy-carpeted stairs, through a torrent of nervous facts. He said the rooms here on the second floor had been home for his parents, a brother and sister, and his grandfather Henry, who had started the funeral service in 1891. His parents were both “deceased,” and his brother was an engineer in Toledo. He passed the first door on his right, then opened the next one, into his living room. The only rooms he used up here were the kitchen, one of the bedrooms, and this square high-ceilinged parlor with its green velvet sofa and matching chairs. She was amused by the sway of the thick gold fringe on the base of the sofa and chairs every time Wesley walked by. The lamps were shaded in pearly-gray leaded glass with ornate metal bases. All the mahogany tables and radiators were topped with white marble slabs. The fireplace opening and mantel were black marble.
Martha went into the bathroom and stayed there a long time while she tried to think of something they could talk about. When she came out, Wesley was in the kitchen, filling the kettle with water for tea. She sat at the table, which was covered not only with a white linen cloth but with a cushioned table-pad as well.
He set down two vinyl placemats and the cups, creamer, and sugar bowl, arranging them so that their handles pointed in the same direction.
She cleared her throat and thumped her chest. “Where’s your sister live?” she asked. That was the question she had finally come up with in the bathroom.
“Hawaii.”
“What’s her name?”
“Ginger.”
She smiled. “That’s a good name. Ginger.” She should have had a name like that. Ginger Horgan. She pictured herself tap dancing on a stage with a top hat and a black baton. She felt lightheaded and oddly buoyant, as if she were playing a part up on a movie screen.
Wesley didn’t sit down until the water had boiled and he had filled both cups. He was perspiring. It was too warm up here for hot tea, but she dunked her tea bag up and down and didn’t say anything. He said the only air conditioning was downstairs. He hated opening the windows while it was still raining, because then he’d have to go around with a towel and dry all the sills. He loosened his tie and asked if she minded if he took off his jacket. When he did, she could see through his thin nylon shirt how his undershirt strap hung over one shoulder.
“What does your sister do in Hawaii?” She wanted to hear more about Ginger.
“She eats too much and talks too much and her latest husband is a very disreputable sort,” he said testily.
“I still like her name.” She was disappointed.
“Well, you wouldn’t like her. She’s not like any of the Mounts. She got in more trouble growing up. My father always used to say he didn’t know where she came from. He said it so much that I actually used to think she just showed up at the door one day and moved in.” He kept checking his watch before he finally fished out his tea bag and squeezed it. He dribbled milk from the creamer onto a teaspoon, measuring four spoonsful into his tea. “I haven’t heard from my sister in over fifteen years. Isn’t that strange?”
“No. My father didn’t speak to his relatives for thirty years. And my aunt still doesn’t.”
Suddenly there was a boom of thunder, and she grabbed the table.
“You jumped,” Wesley said, laughing. “You’re very high-strung. You must be creative. Do you paint or do anything artistic?”
She liked to cook, but that wasn’t what he meant.
“My sister was an artist. Would you like to see her old paintings?”
She followed him into the living room, where the paintings were either still lifes or landscapes. Each landscape seemed to depict the same red barn or covered bridge. She was disappointed that they were so flat and childish. She wanted Ginger to be a brilliant artist. “They’re very nice,” she said. “And the frames are really beautiful.” The heavy frames were far more impressive than the paintings.
Wesley thanked her. He had found his sister’s canvases in the attic and had them framed. “They give me a sense of family,” he said.
He took her down the hall to show her how he had renovated part of this second floor for business use. “People can’t understand living with your business the way I do, but, then, I can’t imagine coming home every night to an empty house.”
She wondered if a corpse in the house kept it from being empty.
He opened a door and turned on a light so she could see inside. Soft music began to play. “It used to be the master bedroom,” he said. Now it was the casket-display room. The satin-lined caskets seemed suspended in midair on their Plexiglas stands. Overhead, the recessed fixtures flared a soft ray of light down into each casket. Propped on every pleated or smocked pastel head-pillow was a plastic card embossed with the model name of that particular casket. Nearest the door was the “Homeward,” a coffin of polished dark mahogany. Beside it, in rock maple, was the “Godspeed.” She pictured it with retractable wings and exhaust pipes jetting from the end.
Wesley opened the doors of an enormous walk-in closet. He pressed a button, and tinted lights glowed over a rack of men’s dark suits and women’s pastel chiffon dresses in clear plastic bags that swayed in ghostly undulation as they passed. Price tags hung from the sleeves.
“It saves the bereaved having to go shopping in a regular store,” he explained. “And it keeps some of them, the deceased, from looking, well …” He looked around, grimacing. “Tacky,” he whispered. “You know, if you ever need a dress for something, don’t buy one. Just come by and pick one out.” He glanced at her. “And I’ve got a lot of size eights in there. In fact, I just got a new one that would look beautiful on you,” he said, searching through them until he found a pale-blue cocktail dress with seed pearls edging the neckline. “Do you like it?” He held it under his chin.
“It’s nice,” she said, uneasy with the intensity in his eyes above the shimmering dress.
“You know, you’ve got classic features,” he said, then turned abruptly and hung up the dress.
“No, I don’t,” she scoffed.
“You do! And, believe me, I’ve done enough reconstruction to recognize good bone structure,” he said, coming close, squinting and angling his head in professional appraisal. “I’d say you have just about perfect symmetry.”
“I do?”
“Oh yes. Your cheekbones are exquisite.” His voice was steady and calming. “You’re beautiful.”
She grinned, and his whole expression seemed to rush toward her, his warm breath melting over her like wax. He cleared his throat. “Would you mind if I hugged you?” he asked, so softly she could barely hear him.
She shrugged. “I guess not.”
He put his arms around her, and at first they stood politely together, with only their shoulders touching. And then his arms tightened and hers lifted and they held each other with an urgency, not of passion, but of great relief.
Twenty-three
Mr. Weilman tapped on the bedroom door, then backed in with a spoon and a jar of applesauce on a silver tray. “Guaranteed to stay down,” he said, unscrewing the lid.
Martha’s dizziness had become so constant that she had to will herself up and out of a chair, slowly, ever so firmly, and the same thing coming down the stairs, her eyes guiding her feet to every step. The worst of it was her shaky stomach. For the past week, she had been living on saltines and ginger ale. Mr. Weilman said it was the same flu that had gone through the neighborhood.
“Baby food?” she asked, shuddering. Just the thought of it sickened her.
“Reba Lewis sent it over,” he said.
“Reba Lewis?”
“In the green house,” he said. “Katie’s mother.”
Reba Lewis was at least the fourth neighbor Mr. Weilman had consulted about her nausea. Laura Barrett had even sent over her own chicken broth.
Mr. Weilman sat on the edge of the bed and offered her a spoonful of applesauce. As soon as she swallowed, her stomach heaved. She gagged, and Mr. Weilman held the tray to her chin. She had never felt this sick.
Wesley Mount had called or come by almost every day, but she still couldn’t talk to him. It was more than this illness; she was mortified every time she thought of her hungry embrace in his apartment. He probably thought she had been aroused by that dirty movie. On her dresser were the five get-well cards he had sent in the last five days. He had also sent a fuzzy yellow wind-up duck that waddled noisily around with a sign that said “Get Well Soon!” Yesterday he had brought her a can of English peppermints and a vase of red gladioli. She could hear him downstairs now, urging Mr. Weilman to call a doctor. There was dehydration to consider here, as well as her electrolyte levels. What seemed a minor imbalance could quickly flare into a critical condition. Mr. Weilman assured Wesley he was monitoring the situation, and he reminded him of his own medical experience these last two years. Wesley countered with his far vaster experience, and what he often saw, the end result of negligence.
“Negligence!” Mr. Weilman’s indignation resounded up the stairs.
“I don’t mean you, Ben,” Wesley assured him. “I mean anyone who ignores the signs of a potentially grave condition.”
She pulled the sheet over her head, and the tented heat swelled with her own staleness. She curled smaller and tighter, drifting in and out of sleep while, from the street and yards below, the children’s voices caught in the flow of her dreams, a cry, a word, a twig, a red feather, a whiffle ball, a frayed paper cup bobbing and glimmering, then sinking out of reach. She ran after them, but they fled, and finally, when she understood that they would never stop as long as she chased them, she stopped and watched them go, watched them grow smaller and smaller, and then they disappeared.
“Martha. Martha? Can you hear me in there? Martha, it’s me. It’s Julia.”
As she struggled to wake up, Julia explained that she had just dropped off tickets for the art auction. “You were in bad shape last week, but now you look even worse,” Julia said, brushing cracker crumbs off the sheet.
She couldn’t even remember Julia being here last week. Without food, she was growing weaker. Her appetite and memory might have dimmed, but it was strange how her senses seemed to have heightened. If Mr. Weilman sighed in the kitchen, she could hear it. Daylight was blinding. The weight of the sheet on her toes was painful. She let herself be propped against the pillows so that Julia could take her temperature. It was normal, Julia told her, staring at her as she shook down the thermometer. She went downstairs, and returned with a glass of ice water, which she told Martha to sip slowly. She backed through the door now with towels and a basin of tepid water. She wrung out a washcloth and rubbed it with soap while she quizzed Martha about her bowels. Had she had any headaches, backaches, chest pain, coughing, sputum, sinus pain, ringing ears, double vision? Julia handed her the washcloth, and Martha took off her glasses. Julia dipped them into the basin and dried them on the towel, reeling out her string of questions while Martha washed her face and neck. She could feel the skin tightening on her bones. The air was sharp with Julia’s spicy perfume.
“Any bladder infections? Any burning? Any discharge?”
As she shook her head, it occurred to her that this illness might be the final, fatal stage of what had been consuming her all these years.
“When was your last period?”
She couldn’t remember. They had always been so irregular she had long ago given up keeping track. They came when they came. Every four weeks. Six weeks. Two months. Blinding migraines and twisting cramps, wrapping up the pads and hiding them in her pockets until she could tuck them deep down in the trash so she wouldn’t have to listen to Frances’s smug sigh, “Oh, so that’s why.” Sometimes she would forget, and by the end of the day her pockets would be stuffed with the foulness. When her periods didn’t come, she was always grateful.
“You must have some idea. Think, now,” Julia said. “Did you have one in July?”
“I don’t know.”
“There was the Fourth. Steve’s party?” Julia coaxed.
“No.” This was so embarrassing, and it certainly had nothing to do with her periods. She had never been sick like this with them.
“June?” Julia asked, returning her glasses.
She couldn’t remember. June. What was June? How could she have forgotten? In June, Mack had come. “May,” she said. The end of May. The night of the PlastiqueWare party.
Julia didn’t say anything for a moment. Her face reddened. “Could you be pregnant?”
“What?” She stared at Julia, stunned by the question.
“Could you be pregnant?” Julia repeated in a choked voice.
“No!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “I don’t know. No! I couldn’t be.”
Julia’s twenty-minute trip to the drugstore and back seemed to take hours. Martha lay on the bed now, with the sheet drawn to her chin. To this point, the procedure had been painless, but so awkward that they had barely spoken. Julia sat on the bed reading the instructions, and then she told Martha to go into the bathroom and urinate into a paper cup and leave it in the sink. When Martha came out of the bathroom, Julia went in with the pink-and-blue box, the pregnancy-testing kit.
Things were clinking in there; water was running; and now the toilet flushed. All she wore under the sheet was her pajama top. She lay with her eyes closed and her ankles locked. The noon heat was heavy, and yet she was covered with goosebumps. The sheet felt cold everywhere it touched her.
She remembered her only other internal examination, her feet in cold metal stirrups, her rump dragged by the tiny pug-nosed nurse to the end of the sweat-damp paper-covered table, the humiliating position an almost unendurable misery, with the doctor’s voice beyond her sheeted legs warning her against the coldness of the speculum widening inside her flesh.
“Please hurry, please hurry,” she whispered, starting to shiver. The possibility of pregnancy brought not a single image to mind. All that was real was this taste of sourness and this fatigue like a vast inertia, a deadness from which she could not rise.
The bathroom door opened, and Julia came out holding up a paper stick. Wincing, Martha hiked the sheet up to her knees. At least the stick was tiny compared with the doctor’s instruments.
“Martha?”
“Go ahead. I’m ready,” she said, uncrossing her legs and pulling the sheet up to her waist. She spread her legs and held her breath, dreading the insertion.
“Oh, I’m not … You thought … No. Oh, Martha!” Julia yanked down the sheet, covering her. “It’s done,” she said, leaning close and explaining the procedure: she had dipped the stick into the urine. “See. It’s pink.” Sighing, she sat on the edge of the bed. “I did it twice to be sure. It turned pink both times.”
Neither one spoke. Martha looked away. What did that mean?
“Pink means you’re pregnant.”
“Pregnant”—what on earth could that possibly mean?
“Do you want to tell me who the father is?” Julia asked.
She closed her eyes, aware that something, a form, a great wonder was beginning to coalesce. Love, she
thought. Was that what it meant?
“It’s him, isn’t it? Colin Mackey.”
Martha bit her lip.
“What will you do?” Julia asked.
She turned her head and tried to cover her smile. Julia looked so troubled. She knew she should be upset too, but all she felt was relief.
“You can’t go through with this, Martha. There’s no way. And you don’t have to do it alone. There’s a clinic in Burlington and no one will …”
“I’ll be all right.” She wanted Julia to leave. She had no interest in anything right now other than talking to Mack.
“If you don’t let me help you, then you’re going to have to tell Frances.”
She couldn’t believe Julia was threatening her. “Please go. Please!”
“Martha, you can’t have this baby!”
“Leave me alone. I’ll do what I want.”
“No, Martha. Oh God, no, you can’t.”
“Why? Tell me why,” she demanded, sitting up and wringing her hands to keep them from slapping that smug, perfect face.
“Oh God, Martha, think of it. Think what its … Think what your life would be like,” she said with a look of horror.
“Get out!” Martha said, springing at Julia. “Get out of here!”
After Julia left, she dressed quickly. She felt so lightheaded that she seemed to float down the stairs, then from room to room, with Mr. Weilman dogging her steps, asking her how she felt and what could he get her to eat, what could he do.
“Nothing. I don’t want anything.” She wanted to be alone so she could call Mack.
He followed her into the front hall. “At least you’ve got some color. How about some toast?”
A Dangerous Woman Page 33