Although Hattie and Spence Bingham lived right next door, they and their house seemed to belong to an earlier era, distant in space as well as in time. They were near eighty, Jill thought, though they’d never looked anything like it until today, when they had looked much, much older. Even their vitality, issuing, as it did, from an untroubled and unreflecting pleasure in success, seemed to sequester them in a more vigorous and brightly colored period.
Jill and Nick had attended several enormous parties or receptions held on the Binghams’ lawn, which was glorious in the spring and summer with flowers and blossoming fruit trees. The Binghams were marvelous hosts. And once or twice a year Jill would stop over to have tea with Hattie. The heavy drapes in the living room were always open, allowing the light to fall in rich panels across the polished floor and the deep silence of the old furniture, and Hattie would serve Jill tea and slices of a dense buttery cake, as well as cookies so fragile they almost disappeared by themselves.
But this afternoon it had been Spencer who opened the door. “Well, Jill,” he said. Without letting go of the doorknob, he glanced back into the dim hall.
“I’ve interrupted, haven’t I?” Jill said. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“No, no,” Spencer said, and displayed his cordial smile. “Come in, Jill. Hattie,” he called, “we have a visitor.” He dropped his voice. “She’ll be glad.”
“Well, invite Jill in, Spence,” Hattie said, and then Jill saw that Hattie was having difficulty with the stairs, so there was nothing to do except wait through the painful descent. “A visitor is supposed to come in and visit. Come in, Jill, and sit down.”
But when Jill did sit, in a generous upholstered chair near the fireplace, there was a silence.
“I can’t stay long,” Jill said. “I just dropped in to say how sorry I was to hear about—about the other night.”
“Oh, yes,” Spencer said, as if he were picking up a story in the middle. “Wednesday night. Well, we’d been over at the DeForests’ for cocktails. They had a little do for that young man—the new head of cardiology over at Lakeview. And then we went into town for dinner. We usually do on Wednesdays, party or no party, so you see what a bad thing a habit is. Because this Wednesday, when we got back and opened our door—well, it was just like being somewhere else—it was like something that hadn’t happened. I mean, if you were to go back outside and come in again, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“What Spence means,” Hattie said, “is that we opened the door of our own house, and we didn’t even know where we were—everything torn apart—drawers dumped out, furniture every which way, papers all over the place—private papers!”
“And the dolls, of course,” Spencer said.
“We want some tea, don’t we,” Hattie said.
“Hattie,” Spencer said. “Sit down, Hattie—don’t bother with that—”
“Not for you, you tyrant, for our guest—”
“No, no,” Jill said. “I really can’t stay.”
“Well, Spence has to have his tea,” Hattie said. “Unless he’s going out. Are you going out, Spence?” She turned to Jill. “He’s just been sitting around like an old man. Why don’t you call Bob Niederland, dear, and play some golf? Get outside and do something.”
“Why should I do anything?” Spencer chuckled unhappily. “I’m an old man, and I like it right here.”
“Well, we have to have something,” Hattie said. “Otherwise, it isn’t a party.”
Spencer and Jill sat quietly as Hattie made her way toward the kitchen. “Her leg is bothering her, I think,” Spencer said, frowning hopefully over at Jill. “Have you noticed?”
“Not at all,” Jill said, embarrassed.
The Binghams had never seemed absorbed in their own problems before. In fact, they’d never seemed to have problems, or to think of themselves at all, beyond whatever satisfaction they took from being themselves. Certainly they had never referred to their bodies, to infirmities. “And as you can imagine,” Spencer said after a time, “she’s heartbroken about the dolls.”
“I couldn’t even find the tea,” Hattie said, returning with juice and a plate of cookies that seemed to have come from a package. “Ruby and I worked all day to restore a modicum of order around this place, but I still can’t find a thing. That darned thief—”
“Don’t suppose he took the tea,” Spencer said. He smiled at Jill. “Didn’t have the style of a tea drinker.”
“He got our Lacy, did you hear?” Hattie said. “He broke most of the others, or spoiled them, but he took the four or five really valuable ones, including Lacy.”
“She was the first one we owned,” Spencer explained to Jill. “We found her in Smoky Mountain country. The first time we went down there, the year we were married.”
“Oh, the Smoky Mountains in those days…” Hattie said. “Well, we went back after the war once, and of course everything had changed. But in those days—well, you can’t imagine—it was so remote, just those cloudy green hills and silent roads, dirt roads, with leafy little hidden enclaves here and there of those peculiar mountain people. You could hear the train whistle sometimes, from way up over the mountains, but that was as close as the world came. And they still spoke their own kind of English then, practically some sort of Elizabethan English—they were almost like an odd little race of animals. Anyhow, Spence and I were driving around up there, and we stopped in Asheville, to poke around some big barn of a place full of antiques. Junk, really—and I spotted Lacy. Can you imagine? She had a handmade lace dress and a lovely white wax face—so elegant and perfect it was almost eerie. Some poor mountain woman’s dream of a lady, I suppose. And that’s what started us. Afterward, we liked to look wherever we went, and eventually we found ourselves with a whole world, all sorts of nationalities, all sorts of periods. But we never looked for value. Who would have dreamed that dolls would become an item of value? Of course, everything does sooner or later, now. Isn’t it funny? Old toasters and everything—all that ugly kitchen trash we hated so. But we never even thought of that. It was the feeling. You couldn’t believe what people put into some of those little things—all the beauty and personality that anyone could imagine, that anyone could want in a human being…” Hattie sighed and looked past Jill out the window.
“And do you think that’s what they broke in for?” Jill asked. “The dolls?”
“What?” Hattie said.
“Oh, there’s no question about it,” Spencer said. “We’ve been over it a hundred times, with each other and with the police. There’s no question that there was someone involved who’d learned the value of the individual dolls.”
“Oh—” Jill said. She put down her cookie, which was slightly stale, she noticed.
“They got Spence’s Confederate rifle, too,” Hattie said, suddenly indignant. “He was very fond of it.”
“Picked up some loose cash, and a bit of silver,” Spencer said. “But nothing much. Just enough to make it look like any old break-in. At least until we could collect our wits.”
“There was stuff all over the place,” Hattie said. “There was even—oh, lord…”
“Oh, now, it doesn’t matter,” Spencer said.
“He had even taken a drawer of my underthings and scattered them around,” Hattie said. “You see, there was simply no need for all that violence.”
“We know,” Spencer said. “That’s what we’re saying.”
“But the worst was the ones he didn’t take,” Hattie said to Jill. “Oh, you could hardly believe your eyes—little arms and legs all over the place—their bodies all twisted; sawdust, stuffing pulled out of them, porcelain faces smashed up, eyes just staring at the ceiling, or the floor, or wherever they’d been thrown. Hurled, really,” Hattie said. “They were ours. We found them, we loved them, but now they’re ruined, and I feel sorry that I ever brought them here. It’s as though this was never our house, we just thought it was. All you could think was blood.”
Through the Binghams’
window Jill had looked at the hedge that hid her own house from view. Long shadows fell across the lawn, and a late, ciderlike light sliced through the room, charging a panel of tiny suspended dust particles between herself and the Binghams. Beyond it, Hattie and Spencer were insubstantial, wavering, as though they had just acquired a contagious susceptibility to old age. “I’m sorry about the tea, Jill dear,” Hattie said.
“I notice that Jill keeps her own counsel,” Owen was saying. “I’d give a penny, or more, for Jill’s thoughts on this matter.”
“I’m afraid I—” Jill ransacked the previous few moments for any words she might be able to retrieve. “Well, I’m afraid I really haven’t any thoughts on the matter at all.” She laughed.
That serene lawn. The china, and all that glowing old wood. What a flimsy fortress the Binghams’ house had proved to be. This was what their lives had come down to—the husks of their bodies. The Binghams had valued themselves highly. They had accepted as their due many beautiful things. But the instant the robbery tore away the fragile illusion of their invulnerability, their merit no longer seemed secure, either. And what the world had rendered up to them, it was now clear that the Binghams kept on sufferance. What they had, Jill thought, what they were, could be tossed aside at any moment, just like the oldest of their possessions, their bodies.
“Susan tells me you have some night bloomers,” Lyle was saying. “May I have a tour?”
“Heavens—” Jill said. Only she and Lyle were left at the table. “Thank you, Lyle—no, I’d better make coffee.”
As Jill went through the swinging door into the kitchen, a shadow swelled on the wall, twisted, and broke in two.
“Jill.” Nick spoke at her side. “Are you feeling all right?”
“—All right?” Jill said.
“Poor baby,” Amanda said. “You were looking all green out there.”
Jill looked at Amanda, and at Nick. “I’m fine,” she said.
“You’ll be fine,” Nick said, and patted her rear end. “You know,” he said to Amanda, “she wasn’t sick for one minute with Joshua.”
A hard presence stepped forth within Jill and faced her. Nick was selfish, this presence announced. He was arrogant; he was domineering and reckless; he overestimated his skill in all things, and underestimated the abilities of others; he drove too fast, he thought too little, he expected too much; he was careless, deceitful, and calculating. Jill had not told Amanda, she had not told anyone except Nick, that she was pregnant. “Did you make coffee?” she said.
“We were just going to,” Nick said. “You didn’t look up to it.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
Jill waited until the swinging door had come to rest behind Nick and Amanda, and then she turned out the lights and sat down at the counter. Was she going to be sick, she wondered.
Out in the garden Owen was wandering among the high, pale blossoms. Shapes and lines were etched shockingly against the brilliant night, and even from where she sat, Jill could see the tense flare of petals, blades of grass arching with the weight of gathering condensation, and the creases of Owen’s face, arranged, as always, into folds that might prefigure either bliss or grief. Owen bent down over a flower, his large padded backside catching the moonlight, and straightened up again as Amanda appeared on the terrace. Her arms were crossed against her chest, although the air was warm and still. She closed her eyes and tilted her face back. Her nails, her hair, and her thin gold bracelets shone. “Hello,” Owen said, and the small sound was right next to Jill’s ear.
Amanda opened her eyes. “Hello,” she said. She and Owen smiled at one another tentatively, sadly, and then Amanda returned inside.
Alone again, Owen made a circuit of the garden. Really, Jill thought, she ought to feel pity for him. In all the time she had known him—except for that one instant upstairs tonight—even in the face of Kitsy’s corrosive deficiencies, her inept, gnawing flirtations, his demeanor had never altered.
Owen stopped in the far corner of the yard, at Joshua’s swing set. He pulled the swing back and released it, pausing to watch as it rocked back and forth, before he moved on. Jill turned on the light and made coffee.
When she returned to the living room, it seemed to Jill that something must have happened in her absence. Nick was again stationed at the window, gazing darkly out in the direction of the Binghams’, Lyle was perched, none too steadily, on the piano bench, and Owen leaned against the open French doors, but attention seemed to be directed toward the center of the room, where Bud, speaking loudly, strode back and forth between the armchairs in which Susan and Amanda were seated, while Kitsy hovered at the periphery, as though she were unable to approach more closely. Bud’s voice was poisonously reasonable, and although he addressed himself ostensibly to Susan, who watched him like a browbeaten jury, he looked steadily at Amanda, who sat, eyes closed and head back, swinging her foot.
“I’m just trying,” Bud said, “to clarify what you were saying earlier, Susan, about product-liability law. That is—correct me if I’m wrong—but wasn’t your point that we need those laws if we’re to have any viable protection of the consumer, and yet, at the same time, you say, those laws are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by unscrupulous people. Wasn’t that your point?”
“I really—” Susan said.
“And all I’m saying,” Bud said, “is that I’m in total agreement with you: it is no longer possible to rely on laws or institutions, because we now have a certain sort of individual who twists laws or institutions, and undermines them by using them for his or her own purposes. The rest of us can hardly be blamed if we’re suspicious. Or are forced to behave cynically ourselves.”
Amanda sighed.
“You laugh, my darling,” Bud said. “But I’m serious.”
“But are we saying—are we talking about something?” Susan said.
“Yes,” Bud said, as Amanda said, “No.”
“I’m a bit lost here, myself, Bud,” Lyle said, turning around at the piano. “Could you define your terms?”
“You’re a deliberate son of a bitch, aren’t you, Lyle,” Bud said pleasantly. “I’m simply speaking generally. About the misapplication of principles.”
“But, Bud,” Susan said. “It’s hardly a principle’s fault if someone—”
“How true,” Owen said. “Now let us—”
“No, Lyle,” Kitsy said, claiming a central position on the arm of Susan’s chair. “I think that what Bud is talking about is a climate, a climate in which people invoke principles in order to pursue their own selfish—”
“Why not let Bud persecute his own wife, Kitsy?” Nick said.
“That’s right,” Bud said. “Why not let me persecute my own wife. I think I was doing a damned good job of it.”
Amanda smiled, but Kitsy flinched as though she’d been slapped. “Do whatever you want to your own wife. I really don’t give a shit.”
“Would anybody like to tell me what this is about?” Jill said.
“Nothing,” Nick and Amanda said in unison.
“We’re talking about a climate, Jill”—Kitsy’s face was clenched with anger—“of selfishness, of turning things to our own advantage. Of taking things that belong to other people or pretending not to notice if someone else does. These are things—”
“‘Things,’” Susan said. “Does anything feel dizzy?”
“—and these are things we’re all involved in,” Kitsy said. “All of us. Collusion. Because take the thing we’ve all been thinking about all evening—the Binghams. My point is, for instance, that we’re all involved with the Binghams.”
“The Binghams!” Nick turned from the window with a laugh of surprise. “We’re all involved with the Binghams?”
“Heaven knows what you’re involved with,” Kitsy said. “I wouldn’t know.” She looked at Amanda. “But one thing I do know, Nicholas, is that every one of us understands exactly who broke into the Binghams’ house, and not one of us is w
illing to say or to do anything about it because of what some people call—”
“The plot thickens—” Lyle pounded on the piano. “We know who broke into the Binghams’.”
“And just who is it,” Amanda said, “that we all know to have broken into the Binghams’, Kitsy?”
“‘Who’?” Kitsy said. “Dwayne, obviously.”
“Who’s Dwayne?” Lyle said, lifting his palms comically.
“Dwayne!” Susan said gaily to Lyle, as everyone else looked at Amanda. “The brother of that girl who works here, isn’t that right?”
“What on earth gives you the idea that it was Dwayne?” Amanda said, recovering. But Jill had to sit down. Of course it was Dwayne, she thought. Kitsy was right. She’d only pretended to herself because of Amanda that she didn’t know. But now—“Would you mind telling me how we all know it was Dwayne?” Amanda said.
“‘How,’” Kitsy said. “What do you mean, ‘how’? Who else could it be? He knows the house, he’s worked there. He always needs money—everyone knows what a drug addict will do for money. It had to be Dwayne. But we’re trying to protect a whole group of people, even though we know perfectly well—”
“‘Group of people’—” Amanda said. She stopped and stared at Kitsy.
“I am now going to play chopsticks,” Lyle announced.
“Shut up, Lyle,” Susan said gently and with unexpected lucidity.
“—Listen to yourself, Kitsy,” Amanda said. “Just listen to what you’re saying—”
“And you,” Kitsy said. “Listen to what you’re saying. You’re saying that such people shouldn’t even have the dignity of being held accountable for their own failure to adjust to society. But that’s pa—”
“Do you think it was Dwayne who stole Bunny Wheeler’s Majolica vases?” Amanda said. “Do you think it was Dwayne who stole that Soutine from the Art Institute?”
“—that’s patronizing. It’s not fair to them. Other immigrant groups have made something of themselves. Other immigrant groups haven’t depended on us for help. Even if they’ve come from tragic situations, even if they’ve lost everything—” Kitsy gestured toward Susan. “Like the Jews—”
The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg Page 32