Now, listening to Shelly go on and on about Cappie Hartstone's recent increase in breast size (" it's like she's trying out for Nursing Mother of the Year when everybody knows she's more like the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg ") and looking boldly up into that empty window, Clare felt in control. Stronger, that was it, she was stronger after her episodes.
"It's so cold," Clare said, "let's go inside."
Shelly, lifting one of the grocery bags with the wine in it, went on ahead. Clare stayed back a moment. She lit a cigarette, took several quick puffs, then dropped it in the gutter. She put it out with her heel. She decided against the half-Valium after all. I'll be okay. She took the other bag out of her Rabbit and pressed her back against the door to shut it. I do feel stronger, she told herself.
Yeah, I must be feeling pretty strong to go in there.
The Marlowe-Houston House had always intimidated Clare, even when she'd been a little girl. Because her father had been headmaster of Pontefract Prep, the family occupied the house for several years in the late '50s and early '60s. She never felt that it was home; she was relieved when, at twelve, her family moved into the old Federal-style brick house on Porter Street, while the descendants of the Houston family converted the Marlowe-Houston House into a museum of sorts as well as the site for various Town and Gown functions, like this snobby Founders Day Luncheon.
And Warren Whalen, mustn't forget Warren.
For it was within those walls of the Marlowe-Houston that she had first succumbed to his charms, had allowed him, as Shelly crudely put it, to get into her panties.
2
Inside the Marlowe-Houston House
Clare made a mental note as she went through the living room: everyone in Pontefract, Virginia, was a First Family. Not that everyone in town was invited to this Invitation Only affair. The Town and Gown Society, which overlapped with the Christ Church Altar Guild to create a hybrid Junior League-cum-Episcopalian Coffee Hour, were very careful with their genealogical research: no alien blood, please. Bill Hartstone was already leaning against the bar, exchanging good-old-boy talk with Ken Stetson, whose son, Rick, was playing bartender and sneaking a swig when the others weren't looking. Another teenager, Tommy Mackenzie, sat in a corner rigidly, wearing a coat and tie, something Clare never saw the kid in when he came over to do yard work in the summer, she barely recognized him. She felt a great deal of sympathy for him; like him, she didn't want to be here either. Tommy's father and mother stood near the picture window talking quietly among themselves. Mrs. Mackenzie always reminded Clare of a wounded bird, shying away from other people and helplessly gravitating to the safety of her own husband. Clare could not relate to wives like that; she didn't believe that any husband could be very safe.
Howie McCormick, possibly the last McCormick left in town since his parents died, tried to talk up a few of the golf set that stood near the piano. Howie was the same mailman who had handed Clare a letter from her ex-husband and at the same time told her pretty much what was in it. Thankfully, today he was not wearing his blue uniform and pith helmet. He wore a bright madras jacket and lime green pants, and he was drunk off his ass and leering at anything and everything female in the room.
Prescott Nagle was trying to plink out a tune on the piano, with Gower Lowry scowling at him from a corner of the room. Ever since she'd been a little girl, Clare had always known about, although never fully understood, the enmity between those two men. But you'd think they'd have outgrown it by now. Clare waved quickly to that group and prayed that Gower would not use the opportunity to come over and talk her up. He didn't. All the good Pontefract "Name" families were well represented, lounging on the sofas, dressed in their suits and overly extravagant gowns, and the conversation that filtered down to Clare as she passed through them centered upon the mild winter they were having, and a comparison of genealogical backgrounds. "It was my great-grandfather Campbell who built the Regency Row Arcade, but then it was just called the Row, and that was before they gutted it," or "When William, the first William in our family, married your great-aunt Jenny, he was able to," or "He took up arms with General Lee, and his wife had to run the farm by herself, even pulling the plow, yes, can you imagine."
Shelly came out of the kitchen's swinging door, and fluttered her eyebrows a la Groucho Marx. "With all this inbreeding I'm amazed you 'Firsts' aren't all twelve-fingered dwarves," Shelly said, reaching for the bag in Clare's arms.
"That's all right. Shelly, I'll get it." Clare didn't understand why Shelly was blocking her way to the kitchen.
"I don't know if I'd want to go in there if I were you," Shelly whispered. "I think you're the hot topic of the day."
"Why am I here?" Clare asked amusedly.
"People are wondering why you're not wearing a big fat scarlet 'A' across your boobs."
"Look," Clare said, indicating the people around the room with a shrewd glance, "I can't just stand here like this. Do you think I could make it out the front door?"
"You slut," Shelly laughed, "give me the wine." She held her hands out again to take the grocery bag. "You go into the dining room and admire the china. I'll find your sister and tell her you're not feeling well. Then we'll sneak you up the stairs to the roof. You can jump."
"I'll be damned if I'm going to give this place more grist for the mill."
"So you're going into the enemy camp?"
"Like Daniel into the lions' den."
"Those lions didn't have the teeth that Georgia Stetson's got, and they didn't know about Thursday night."
"They all know about Thursday night?"
Shelly nodded. "Maybe you'll want a drink before you go in there."
Everybody knows about Thursday night?
How could they? Clare didn't even know for sure about Thursday night.
"Cappie of the ballistic breasts will probably play compassionate and understanding, and the others will just glance at Georgia—who will be full of self-righteous indignation."
"Everybody knows?" Clare heard her own voice go wimpy and spineless. She'd only showed up for Lily's sake, and she should've known it would be a mistake.
"From Georgia the story of the howling dogs, and one married dog in particular, radiated out to the provinces. She broadcast it on the wire."
"Lily, too?"
Shelly shrugged. "I don't know. Who knows? Did you know when David cheated on you? Well, you were born suspicious, Clare, but I don't think the ice goddess—"
"I wish you wouldn't call her that."
"She may be your sister, Clare, but she sure ain't mine. I always thought pregnancy brought out some maternal instinct, but with her, she just gets a little higher and a little mightier "
"That's mean, I wish you'd stop, this hasn't been easy for her, she's " Clare searched for the right word.
But Shelly filled it in. "So sensitive, yeah, I know. That pale flower, Lily." Her voice was full of sarcasm.
"I'm going in there," Clare said.
Shelly stepped out of her path like a matador neatly avoiding being gored. "Your funeral."
Clare went on ahead and pushed the kitchen door open.
3
Everybody Knows About Thursday Night
Last Thursday
They'd gone to Shelly's house in the afternoon—Shelly condoned such things as extramarital affairs. Clare and Warren Whalen, brother- and sister-in-law. They always went to Shelly's because it seemed less suspicious to go into that small house on Jessup Street than to risk a motel out on the highway. Up to the guest bedroom. "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door so Shelly would know when she came back home. Clare left her guilt outside; those laws of fidelity and family loyalty had no bearing in that room. They were irrelevant details.
Even the thought of how her sister would react, with that big belly full of baby; maybe Lily would be relieved to know that her husband was having an affair with her sister and not with some stranger. Clare did a lot of wishful thinking.
But Thursday afternoon, before the notorious Thursd
ay night, she and Warren went with the sole purpose of making love in Shelly Patterson's guest bedroom, and then Clare had done something unforgivably stupid knowing Warren Whalen's nature.
She told him to fuck off.
At the time it seemed like a reasonable thing to do given what led up to it. Aside from guilt and an oncoming episode, and oh yes, her period. Her period was really the jumping off point.
"I've got to tell you something," Clare murmured to him, clutching his dark locks of hair as he continued to kiss his way down from her breasts. His "mmmph?" reply indicated he'd heard her even as he was kissing the sallow skin of her stomach, licking around her navel like it was a Tootsie Pop.
Clare giggled because of his tickling and the essential absurdity of her sister's husband being so avidly interested in her anatomy. "No, stop, really," she said. Her feet were shackled in the jeans he had moments ago pulled down in his sudden passion. Her peach blouse lay across the floor where Warren had practically torn it off her; beside it were Warren's Brooks Brothers tie, shirt, and blue chinos. When Warren looked up at her from her navel, she looked at the clothes. She blushed. There was something embarrassing about clothes on the floor. She felt the warmth of his face heading down in a beeline to what he crudely and charmingly referred to as home plate—all this made her not want to tell him at all. Maybe he won't even notice.
And then she imagined: a face, not his, and not her father's, but a man with no features, just an empty face, indentations where the eyes and nose would be, and a gaping, hungry mouth. Down there, between her legs. His mouth covered with her blood.
The face flicked a wormlike tongue across its red-stained lips and said, "Oh, that's lovely, my baby, my little blind Clare with no eye, a nice Big Kiss."
"Jesus, Clare, are you all right?" Warren asked, stroking her legs.
Clare was sweating, shaking. Terrified of that episode, which was the same episode she'd had since she was nine. She brought Warren's face up to her own and kissed him gently. "It's nothing."
"Honey, I thought you were in pain. Did it hurt that much?" Warren glanced back down at the small pink imprint on the inside of her thigh. "I didn't think I bit down all that hard."
Clare smiled weakly. "I thought hickeys went out in the eighth grade."
"Not leg hickeys," he winked. "Now let's get down to the good stuff."
Clare cupped his chin in her hand, forcing him to look into her eyes. He resembled a puppy getting all worked up about supper time. He licked his lips. So much like that faceless man, but no wormy tongue, or those teeth, my God, the teeth!
Then Clare just blurted it out: "Warren, I'm having my period."
He raised his bushy eyebrows and his hand began massaging her thigh, stealing home. "The old red river, huh?"
Clare winced at this description.
He continued speaking. "Now some guys have a motto that goes: I'll take a dip in the red river, but I won't take a drink from it. I, on the other hand, am willing to dive right in." He pushed his fingers up into her, and she just as quickly pulled back away from him.
"Look," she said, "just fuck off, will you?"
"Women and their periods."
"No, I mean it," and she pulled herself out of his grip, out of the tangle they'd gotten themselves into on the bed; standing, she pulled her jeans up and buttoned them. She bent over and picked up her peach blouse. "Fuck off, fuck off, get out of my life."
But Thursday night
After Warren left, rather sheepishly like a little boy who was caught with his hands in the cookie jar, Clare took the longest, most scalding shower of her life. To wash him away, off her. Her skin was pink when she toweled off. I am not unattractive, I could find someone who isn't married, isn't taboo, doesn't look like The steam began clearing from her medicine cabinet mirror, and she said aloud to her reflection:
"I am losing my mind."
She chain-smoked into the evening.
Clare met Shelly down at the Columns restaurant for their weekly Girls Night Out. Their third partner, Debbie Randolph, could not make it. Clare barely touched her food.
"Obviously you still haven't discovered the pleasures of eating as a recreational sport," Shelly said when she was midway through her third helping. Clare didn't talk much during the meal, but Shelly kept up a running monologue about the upcoming Founders Day luncheon for over an hour.
When they were through they went out the front door of the restaurant. Your first mistake. At the time, Clare didn't notice the town gossip, Georgia Stetson, sitting at one of the window tables with her husband.
As soon as Clare opened the door to go out into the street, the singing began.
There were four very drunk men swaying, laughing, slapping each other on the back, singing.
The voice that was the loudest and the most off-key was none other than Warren Whalen's. His buddies were holding him up.
They were singing "Red River Valley," punctuated by howls and coyote yips. One of the drunks shouted: "Which one of you bitches is in heat, anyway?"
In Manhattan, Clare thought, no one would bat an eye. But in this little backwater, where you were already a tramp if you were a divorc e, this was the copper. This was monumental. This would stoke the engines of all those gossip mongers for months to come.
4
FOUNDERS DAY
"Is Lily here yet?" Clare asked when she finally screwed up the courage to walk into the kitchen. Definitely the enemy camp. Georgia Stetson and Maude Dunwoody did not look up from the hams they were carving. Cappie Hartstone did look up for a second (and yes, her breasts were definitely a few cups larger than normal—do women "stuff" after thirteen?). Cappie offered a perky little half-smile before returning her attention to the range where she was stirring some kind of gravy.
Yes, I suppose we all know about Thursday night's little sing-along. How did it go, Georgia? Did you take the direct route or did you slip it in casually, something like, "And you'd think the Whore of Babylon wouldn't have the nerve to show up for a family-oriented gathering like this." Or was that too subtle for the Rona Barrett of Pontefract? Was it more like: "That little tramp stealing husbands couldn't even leave her own sister's husband alone, but she was always after what that younger girl had. Looks, happiness, love, and now even a husband. You should have heard those men, ladies, howling like horny dogs after her, and I guess we all know that's as good as she deserves."
Cappie, still stirring the saucepan, said, "Lily's around somewhere, I think, Mrs. Terry, although I wouldn't know."
"Thank you," Clare replied, trying to sound sweet. Unruffled. "Is there anything I can do to help?" She was afraid of what kind of reply Georgia might give to this, but the women continued slicing ham.
Maude Dunwoody set her knife down and wiped sweat from her brow. She glared at Clare. "Your own sister, how could you?" those eyes were saying. But she said without emotion, "She might be in the cellar. Someone's down there, anyway."
Cappie acted as if she were about to say something to contradict the information that Maude had just volunteered, but her mouth remained clamped shut.
What the hell possessed me to come to this luncheon? Just to have an afternoon away from Daddy in exchange for this?
Clare moved cautiously between the women and their cutting boards on her way to the cellar door. Clare would not normally go down into the cellar by herself. She associated very bad things with that part of the house; she remembered that face that came at her out of the darkness, the face like her father's, the hands that touched her. But she'd only been a little girl, and she hadn't believed it was anything other than her imagination.
But on Founders Day, she felt that perhaps this was her only retreat, and if her younger sister were down there, maybe she would be able to talk about the baby-to-come, something, anything to take her mind off her troubles.
Clare opened the cellar door, and in spite of the stale, musty air that hit her as she took a tentative step down, she was happy to be out of firing range of these w
omen. The light was on in the cellar, and she walked carefully down the old steps, clinging to the thin wooden banister with her left hand, her right hand feeling along the cold stone wall as she went into the bowels of the house. "Lily?" she asked as she went down, and it was after all just a cold cellar full of old junk.
Someone was lifting bags of ice from the corner near the steps on the far side of the cellar which led outside to the backyard. It was not Lily, but a man, and before he turned around, Clare recognized him and thought: not my day.
It was Warren.
"I was just leaving," she said, backing up the steps.
"Yeah, 'beam," Warren said, "you go right back into the clutches of those hometown harpies, why don't you?"
"What do you mean?" She paused.
He held up his hands, splaying his fingers out. "See? They shoved bamboo shoots up my fingernails. I confessed to things I've never even fantasized about."
"Serves you right—you're a schmuck. I guess we're both schmucks. Where's Lily?"
Warren shrugged, lifting a bag of ice up from the floor. "Around. She said she wasn't feeling well—you want to give me a hand? I'm supposed to crush these for daiquiris or something."
"Does she know?" Clare figured: What the hell? and went back down the steps, finally sitting on the bottom one. Before Warren could answer she sniffed the air, wrinkling her nose. "Is there a gas leak or something?"
"Septic tank maybe." Warren pointed to a brick-lined shelf alongside the wall. "You lived here before, didn't you know about that old conduit under there?"
Clare ignored this question. "What about Lily?"
Warren's violet eyes locked into hers before she could glance away. As if even now, even after Thursday night, she was still his property. The thick, dark, wavy hair, the square set to the jaw (with that little dimple pressed into his chin), those deep-set jeweled eyes. Clare realized she hated him for his good looks. He's better looking than I am. Maybe better looking than any other man, woman, or child in this town.
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