What It Was Like

by Peter Seth

  ≁

  The Princes’ house looked bigger and more magnificent than ever at the end of the long green lawn, far back from the street at the end of the cul-de-sac. It never failed to amaze me, how this peaceful-looking fortress could contain such poisonous feelings.

  “My father likes his privacy,” she said, driving slowly through the crunching gravel of the driveway on the side of the house. “Or rather, liked his privacy. He really liked being far away from people.”

  “It’s a beautiful house,” I said truthfully. “At least from the outside.”

  “I hate this house,” she said, stating a fact. “And I’m gonna get out soon. It’s time.”

  “Good,” I said, and didn’t question her further as she pulled the car around to the garage in the back.

  “A four-car garage?” I said, impressed. I realized that I had never been around to the back of the house. It had a huge backyard with a big patio and barbecue and what looked like a whole lawn area that I couldn’t even see all of.

  “Hey. Check this out,” she said, pulling a little metal device from the console of the Mustang. She pressed a button on the little box, and one of the garage doors, the one closest to the house, started to rise, all by itself.

  “Cool!” I said, and it was cool, listening to the slow grinding of gears as the door disappeared upwards.

  When the garage door was fully open, Rachel let up on the brake and rolled the Mustang into place.

  As we came to a stop, I saw a white Cadillac parked on the other side of the garage.

  “Wait a second,” I said in surprise. “Isn’t that Eleanor’s car?”

  “Don’t worry, silly,” Rachel said with one of her musical laughs. “Eleanor and Herb are away for the weekend, thank God, and they took his car. We are all alone.”

  And with that, she put on the parking brake and turned off the engine. The silence was a relief.

  “Ah,” she said. “A moment of peace. Finally.”

  She turned to me with a warm smile, “This is what I’ve been waiting for.”

  Then the dog started to bark.

  “MAX!”

  ≁

  We went into the house through a door in the garage, into a laundry room, and finally into the kitchen.

  “Max!” Rachel kept yelling at the dog as she scampered around my legs, sniffing me, barking, threatening to, but not actually biting me. I shuffled in, carrying my suitcase, using it as a shield against the dog.

  “Max! Don’t you remember the most important person in my life? I don’t get this; she’s really very friendly,” said Rachel as she put her keys and purse on the marble counter by the sink. “Come on, Max . . . Maxine! In here!”

  She snapped her fingers down low at Max, who loved her mistress and followed the finger-snaps back into the laundry room, where Rachel immediately shut the door.

  “Thank goodness!” she breathed. “I love her, but sometimes I wish there was a button to turn her off!”

  “Sometimes I wish people were like that,” I said.

  “Me too,” she agreed, locking the laundry room door and taking a deep, dramatic breath. “Now we can relax.”

  I had never seen her bedroom. In all the time we had been together, she had never taken me up to her room. (It wasn’t her fault, really. Eleanor never made me feel welcome in this house.) But now she held my hand and walked me up the stairs to her bedroom, up the fancy staircase with the big balcony overlooking the foyer and the giant, ugly chandelier hanging in the middle of it all. She didn’t say a word: she didn’t have to.

  She opened the door to her room and let it swing wide for me to enter. It was, of course, like a princess’s boudoir. White furniture, sheer lavender curtains and bedspread, perfumed air, soft light glowing from the little lamp by the bed.

  “I didn’t know that you had a canopy bed,” I walked in slowly and quietly on the thick, creamy shag rug, “but I might’ve guessed.”

  “It’s been waiting for you,” she said behind my back.

  When I turned around, she was already unbuttoning her blouse.

  ≁

  The whole weekend began just like that: like a dream – in and out of her bedroom. I admit it, I was grateful to be near her again, to touch her body, smell her smell, everything. As I’ve said before, I know what’s good.

  Afterwards, she brought us tea with some fancy cookies from England on a tray, with a flower in a skinny vase balanced on the corner.

  “Do you like tea?” she asked as she settled back onto the bed.

  I sipped a little bit of the hot liquid, “Not really.”

  “Come on!” she said. “Tea is good! Cultured people drink tea!”

  “I do like cookies.”

  She laughed at that. She looked pretty when she laughed, when I could catch her in an untroubled moment. But then – I couldn’t help myself – I asked her a question.

  “By the way, I meant to ask you,” I said, reaching for a second cookie. “Did you ever talk to that lawyer? . . . About your grandma money.”

  “Yes,” she said. “As a matter of fact I did.” And she took a sip of tea.

  “And what did he say?”

  “He said several things.”

  “Such as?” I was instantly wary: she was being so measured in her responses.

  “Well,” she said and took another sip of tea. “He said . . .”

  I think she was using the tea sips to give herself time to think.

  “He said that it turns out . . . that I don’t get my grandma money until I’m twenty-five.”

  “No!”

  “That my dear mother somehow had the terms of my grandmother’s will changed, so that I don’t get anything until I turn twenty-five. And she can still control it even then since she’s the exec – exec –”

  “Executor?”

  “Exactly,” she put her teacup down in its saucer with a clank. “My father doesn’t care. He’d give me the money now. Anything to shut me up. It’s Eleanor.”

  “It’s always Eleanor,” I said. I didn’t want to add fuel to her fire: it was just the truth.

  “I know,” she said, smoothing out the bedspread. “I know, I know, I know.”

  “Well that’s a disappointment.” I played it safe, understating the matter. I knew that she was counting on that money for her after-high-school, non-college plans.

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked sympathetically.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” she said slowly. “But I’ll tell you one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m going to have to do something.”

  ≁

  Later, as it was getting dark, Rachel showed me all around the house, drawing the curtains as we went. I had never seen the den or the office or the guest suite or the kitchen or the butler’s pantry or the finished basement before.

  I said “This is huge” so many times that she finally had to say, “Stop saying that! It’s just a house!”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m just saying.”

  “I don’t care about all this!” Her voice echoed through the far reaches of the basement. “Don’t you understand? I just want out! . . . It’s so close I can taste it.”

  I didn’t say anything back, seeing that while some things had changed, some things had not. She was still holding a great deal of anger inside; I had to be careful, if I didn’t want to lead her into areas of dangerous thinking.

  “Come see this,” she said. “If you want to see something.”

  She led me back upstairs and into Eleanor’s large bedroom, with its flowery fabrics, heavily carved furniture, and overwhelming odor of expensive perfume.

  “Doesn’t it smell in here?” said Rachel. “Like dead flowers or something. I keep telling her to air it out, but it doesn’t help.”

&nbs
p; “Jeez,” I mumbled, looking around, feeling the solidness of the thick, chiseled wooden post on the corner of the bed and smelling the sweet, thick air.

  “Look in here,” she said as she vanished into a doorway.

  I followed her into a closet, an enormous clothes closet with shelves and drawers and double-hung racks of blindingly colorful dresses all around the walls. And row after row of blouses and Capri pants and scarves and belts in a jumble of patterns and fabrics, enough to make you slightly dizzy.

  “This closet is bigger than my bedroom!” I said truthfully, looking all around. “Who needs this many clothes?”

  There must have been a hundred pairs of shoes on little shelves, taking up one whole corner of the closet.

  “She thinks that she has secrets in here,” Rachel snickered.

  I have to say that it felt creepy, being in Eleanor’s closet. I didn’t want to be this close to anything about that woman, much less her underwear, her brassieres, and her smell.

  “Come look at this!” said Rachel, walking out of the closet as suddenly as she walked in. I followed Rachel across the room. I could tell that she really enjoyed trespassing on her mother’s territory.

  Rachel went into an adjoining bathroom – all pink tile, gold fixtures, and fluffy pink carpet – and slid open the mirrored door on the medicine cabinet above the pink marble sink.

  “You want to get high?” she asked, picking up pill bottles from the little shelves and shaking them. “Some uppers? Speed kills . . . time. Maybe some downers in case you can’t sleep because of the pills you took before? Maybe something in-between, in case you get a little touch of menopause that turns you into a raving lunatic? . . . I should have put poison in one of them a long time ago.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “Besides, you’d get caught.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” she said. “I would switch out the powders. Eleanor’s a candidate for suicide anyway. No one would be surprised.”

  “You should stay out of there,” I said, not liking to be in Eleanor’s bathroom. The air was moist and heavy, as if the windows in there, too, hadn’t been opened in a very long time.

  “Why should I?” said Rachel, closing the medicine cabinet. “I’m sure she looks through my stuff all the time.”

  She walked back into the bedroom, saying, “I can just hide things better. She’s smart, but sometimes she can be so stupid. Fortunately.”

  I followed her out, saying, “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” but Rachel went straight to another door on the far side of the room.

  “This is the old closet that she gave part of to Herb, the creep,” she said as she ripped open the door and dove into the far reaches of the closet floor. Hanging above her, I could see a row of men’s suits and sports jackets and lots of white shirts that looked like they’d come straight from the dry cleaner’s.

  “Look at this!” said Rachel, turning around, waving a big black gun up in the air.

  “Hey! Put that down!” I yelled, alarmed at the sight of the revolver that looked absolutely huge in her hands.

  “You know I know how to handle a gun!” she scoffed, admiring the gun from different angles.

  “Be careful!” I said.

  “I am being careful!” she said. “I’m being very careful. I’ve taken it out before. And I know how to put it back so he never catches me.”

  She looked closely at the gun, turning it around to see it from different angles. “I think it’s a thirty-eight.”

  “Is it Herb’s?” I asked.

  “I told you he was in the Mob,” she said with satisfaction.

  “Please put it back,” I said.

  “Here!” she held it out to me, “Feel it!”

  “No,” I recoiled.

  She put one foot up on an ottoman and posed with the gun placed at her hip and said, “You think I look like Faye Dunaway?”

  “Better,” I said, reaching to take the gun from her. “Much better. I don’t like blondes. And I’m no Clyde. Why don’t you put it back?”

  She turned and held the gun high, trying to keep it away from me.

  “No, let me hold it for a while!” she demanded. She really seemed to want to keep the gun, and I instinctively knew when to retreat.

  “OK!” I said, my hands raised. “Just be careful, and then put it back.”

  She pivoted and aimed toward the far corner of the room.

  “Ka-CHKK!! Ka – CHKK!! Ka – CHKK!!!” she shouted, shooting at nothing. “Take that, Sharon Spitzer!” she yelled, blasting her imaginary target twice more.

  “You really want to shoot Sharon Spitzer?” I asked, my eyes never leaving the gun.

  “Well,” she paused. “You said you didn’t like blondes . . .”

  She put the gun down on the dresser – thankfully – and oozed into my arms for a long kiss. (I think the gunplay excited her.)

  We kissed for a very long time as she molded her body to mine.

  In a moment of breathing, I murmured, “Sharon Spitzer once told me that summer things never last.”

  “Well, she was wrong,” Rachel whispered between kisses. “I’m glad I shot her.”

  ≁

  We ordered in Chinese food that night.

  “Why go anywhere when the whole idea is to be together?” she reasoned, and I agreed with her.

  “We get delivery people all the time,” she said. “That’s what they’re for.”

  She handed me the menu and said, “Pick out what you want. Order anything. Eleanor left me the cash.”

  “Well, that was nice of her.”

  “It’s the only thing good about her,” Rachel shot back. “She certainly doesn’t cook.”

  “Do you like spare ribs?” I asked her, looking down the list of soups, entrees, and chef’s specials.

  “I like whatever you like,” she said.

  “Right answer,” I responded. “Even if you don’t mean it.”

  That made her laugh.

  “You think it’s easy? Being this perfect?” she trilled as she drew the menu out of my hand. “OK. Leave everything to me.”

  ≁

  We ate in the big back room with the hot, tropical wallpaper, in front of the big TV, next to the big rough-stoned fireplace. Everything about this house conspired to make me feel small and poor, but I resolved not to let it bother me. I had every right to be myself with Rachel, and now that I had her back, there was no reason to change.

  We ate until we were stuffed. (I have to say that her take-out Chinese food was much better than the stuff we got from House of Chang, and it wasn’t just because it was different. I know what “better” is. At least I was learning.)

  I played with the controller for the giant TV while we ate. It was a very cool toy and saved lots of walks across the wide room, to and from the channel selector, going back and forth between The Brady Bunch and High Chaparral. My father would absolutely flip over a thing like this.

  “Do you want any more pork?” Rachel asked me, carrying in one of the little white cartons from the kitchen.

  “Is that a leading question?” I had to joke. I mean, her comment was just sitting there, in mid-air.

  “Oh, you rude boy!” she gasped, faking outrage. “Can’t a person say anything anymore?”

  I had to laugh at her. It was good to put her on the defensive, where she had me so often.

  “Yes, Rachel,” I said. “I would love more of your pork.”

  With a smirk, she forked more pork onto my plate and said, “Say when.”

  “When.”

  And she stopped.

  “Thank you, waitress,” I said. But as she turned and walked away, I had to add, “I always tip my waitresses.”

  She laughed and said, “You better!”

  ≁

  I helped Rachel clean up the kitche
n. It had two sinks, two ovens, and a refrigerator the size of a small bank vault. I was good at wiping the counters off. My father was fairly fanatical about crumbs – “You wanna draw bugs?” – so I learned to be a good counter-wiper like him. I was also showing off how domestic I could be for Rachel, just as she was showing off for me, rinsing off the dishes and putting them neatly in the dishwasher, everything just perfect. Maybe someday we could just live like this, like normal people, with no conflict from the outside. We could just be ourselves, a couple in our own place. Maybe not this grand, but our own. Someday.

  When we finished with the kitchen, we went back to the big room with the television and cuddled on the couch all the way through the end of The Name Of The Game and something called Bracken’s World.

  All day I hadn’t mentioned anything about her promise (though I thought about it all day). Now was as good a time as any to bring it up.

  “So,” I started casually. “Did you talk to Nanci today?”

  “What do you mean?” she said. “I talk to Nanci every day. Almost.”

  “So,” I said. “Did you set her up for tomorrow night? For, uh, you-know-what?”

  “That depends on what you-know-what is,” she answered with a sharp cackle.

  “You know what I mean,” I said, moving closer to her on the couch. “You’re the one who suggested it.”

  “What –” she said, turning to face me. “I’m not enough for you? Just me alone?”

  “You’re enough for any guy,” I said positively. “In fact, you’re too much! But in a good way.”

  “Too much what?” she goaded.

  “Too much everything,” I answered. “Too pretty, too smart, too sharp, too sure of yourself, too everything.”