Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

  David tried to move away a little. “It’s okay,” he said weakly.

  “No, it’s not. I was terrible to you.” She rubbed her face against his hair. “We’re going to go in there right now and we’re going to touch everything we can find in that crummy house.” She held him at arm’s length, waiting for the pouting look to disappear. “Even break stuff if you want. Okay?”

  “I don’t want to break anything,” David said.

  Her hands framed his face, making him even more uncomfortable. “Because I love you,” she said with an intensity that was almost as frightening as the sound of her voice in the living room. “More than her, more than her house. More than anything. You know that, don’t you, sweetheart?”

  When she finished, the knot, inexplicably, was still there.

  At five to six she knocked on the door of the study. There was no reply. She opened it and peered in. Ben was asleep on the couch, his arm covering his face. He stirred when she called his name, and then raised his head sleepily.

  “Sorry,” Marian said without coming into the room. “Thought you might like to know – it’s six and I’ve got a shakerful of martinis cooling in the fridge.”

  He put his head down again and stared at the ceiling.

  “Ben? Did you hear?”

  He said, “Yeah,” and that was all.

  Marian didn’t come beyond the doorway. “I might even join the two of you tonight. Would you mind? Ben?”

  He slid his legs off the couch and sat up, rubbing his forehead with both hands. “Six?” he said.

  “Six. Have you been sleeping all this time?”

  “A little,” he said.

  “Aunt Elizabeth hasn’t come down yet. How’d you like to call her? I’m right in the middle.”

  “I don’t imagine I’d be very good company tonight.”

  “Well . . . why don’t we try it anyway?” She felt the tension concentrate itself in her hands which she clasped behind her. “You’re not going to let me drink alone, are you?”

  “No, Marian,” he said wearily, and there was something distant and chilling in the way he said her name. “I wouldn’t think of it.” He gave her a brief, ironic smile, and that was chilling too. “Anything to accommodate you.”

  She said, “Thank you,” and looked away. The typewriter, she saw, was just where she had left it, still covered; the paper in a neat pile on the side of the desk, with the mimeographed syllabus on top; the reference books and the American Lit texts were stacked evenly. Nothing had been touched.

  “I’ll be on the terrace,” Marian said. “There’s caviar on ice, if you’re interested – the good stuff, six whole ounces of it.” She paused and then dropped the strained geniality. “If it’s a new beginning, then we ought to do it up right.” She had tried to put just enough of a plea into her voice.

  Ben lowered his hands. The smile was back. “How many of those do we get, Marian – new beginnings?”

  “Just as many as we need, darling,” Marian said.

  “Oh,” Ben said, but she had already gone.

  He did go up to Aunt Elizabeth’s room eventually. She had expressed it exactly, he reminded himself: “I don’t know how Marian feels about anything anymore. Except this house.” At least that wasn’t something he was imagining. But even if her feelings mirrored his – the house was becoming more and more of an obsession – what was he supposed to do? Pull them all out for Marian’s sake; pretend that the only reason for going back to the apartment was to save Marian from her own weakness, and that he was acting decisively and selflessly? It would be almost simple if he could honestly say that were the only threat he saw in the house. But what about the rest of it – the threat that was either wholly imaginary, or that actually (and incredibly) existed, independent of his own mind? How could it exist? How could he reasonably counter Marian’s argument that it was a house, nothing more – and pretend to even a semblance of sanity?

  Just thinking about it made the throbbing in his head drive itself deeper, and the film passed over his eyes again, rippling the panels in the door to Aunt Elizabeth’s room. He waited for the pain to pass, counting the seconds and using the numbers like talismans – up to six this time, longer than usual, and seven, and – seven. It stopped. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, steadying himself against the doorjamb. When he opened them again, the film had dissolved and the edge of the pain blunted itself to that slow throbbing.

  He waited and then knocked, several times, until he thought he heard Aunt Elizabeth’s voice.

  She was in bed when he entered the room, her back to the door, exactly the way he had left her. He called, “Aunt Elizabeth,” and she turned toward him just slightly, saying, “Benjie . . .” with a weariness in her voice that made him forget the pain.

  “Did I wake you?” Ben said.

  “No.” She tried to turn a bit more, and then let her head fall back against the pillow. “I’ve just been dozing.”

  He moved nearer the bed. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” Her face looked very small and white and her body seemed lost in the vastness of the bed.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “I’m just so tired I can’t move.”

  “I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”

  “I’m glad you did,” she said without moving. “I can’t sleep my life away.”

  “Another forty winks?” He came closer. How terribly old she looked to him, her legs and arms so thin, all veins and bones.

  “No,” she said, and raised her hand an inch above the bed. “I’ve got to get up. Just give me a minute or so to put myself together.”

  He watched her close her eyes and swallow hard. “Aunt Elizabeth?” he said, trying not to sound too alarmed, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Of course I am, Benjie. What time is it?”

  “Around six.”

  “And how – ” she paused to swallow again “ – how’s my martini doing?”

  “It’s in the works.”

  “That’s the best medicine I can think of at the moment. Wait for me on the terrace, will you?” She looked in his direction, a little to the right of where he was standing.

  “Aunt Elizabeth? I’m . . . a little worried.”

  “About me?” He nodded and she repeated, “Me?”

  Ben said, “Yes.”

  Her voice became a bit steadier. “I won’t have that, Benjie. Now you go downstairs and bring those martinis out to the terrace. I’ll be down in a jiffy.” He waited. “Did you hear me, Benjie?”

  “I heard you.”

  She looked up at the ceiling again. “Worst thing you can do to an old lady – ” again, a swallow and a pause for breath “ – is encourage her self-indulgence. Out with you.”

  “How many times must I tell you? You’re not an old lady.”

  “Oh, Benjie,” Aunt Elizabeth said, “I think it’s about time we put that idea to rest.”

  She asked him to close the door after him (“Now, please. I won’t be looked at in this frightful state”). Reluctantly, Ben left the room.

  Aunt Elizabeth waited, and then once again tried to lift her head from the pillow, biting her lower lip to ease the strain which she could feel travelling down the length of her spine. It was even more severe this time, wrenching enough to make her moan and drop back against the pillow.

  “Dear God . . .” The effort left her too exhausted to speak the words. She repeated them to herself: “Dear God . . .”

  To find herself so completely drained of strength that she couldn’t even rise to a sitting position – how was it possible? She had gotten out of bed that morning (with some difficulty, more than the day before, but she had gotten out); had walked back to the bed just a few hours ago, with only a little assistance from Ben. If the weariness and the dizzy spells
had been common the past few days, they had certainly not been this debilitating. What was wrong with her?

  Dwelling on it, she told herself; thinking herself into a state of paralysis. It was panic that was crippling her, nothing physical. Will, she reminded herself. She drew a deep breath.

  It was frightening – to feel so helpless, so suddenly. Surely Ben had noticed, which, on top of everything else, she found humiliating.

  Again? Again. Empty the mind first.

  The fogginess that surrounded the bed was distracting her, feeding the panic. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the simple mechanics of propping herself up on the bed.

  She began to slide her hands over the bedspread to position her elbows; the material, a smooth black and gold satin, abraded her skin. She raised her head again, very slowly this time. She could feel the trembling in the back of her neck and in her hands especially. Her elbows moved away from her sides, and the pain spread out, sharpest where her elbows pressed down into the mattress. She held her breath and tried to draw all her energy into her left arm, as she had done when Ben had come into the room. The elbow moved a quarter of an inch, then another, and with the movement came a wave of nausea to intensify the pain, and the frightening realization that it would snap under her weight; if she wasn’t careful . . . so slowly careful . . . her arm would crumble under her.

  Her arm. “Dear God,” she thought again, “help me.”

  She shouldn’t have sent him away, however humiliating the admission would have been. If she could call him . . . Once more, one more attempt and she would.

  She swallowed hard and rolled her body just a little to the left, fighting the nausea and closing her eyes against the spinning of the room. A little more then; and if she could just not cry out . . . gather her strength against the pain . . . for only another quarter inch.

  The pain welled viciously and shot itself into her arm from every part of her body. And though she tried to scream to release the horror of what was happening to her, the cry lodged itself in her throat for the moment or two she remained conscious and then slipped out as a thin stream of air, barely a sigh.

  Marian brought the caviar out to the terrace on one of the gold trays she had found. The condiment bowls were silver.

  “I tried to improvise,” she said archly, “but nothing in gold worked. We’ll just have to make do, I suppose.” She gave a brave smile.

  She had changed into a full, blue hostess gown with, appropriately, gold piping and blue-and-gold slippers.

  Ben was leaning against the balustrade, looking at the shoreline across the bay. When he turned to face her, she set the tray down on the glass table, and then spun around with her arms raised to display the gown. He had never seen it before.

  “Like it?” she asked.

  Ben nodded. “Looks kind of strange,” he said. “I’ve gotten so used to you in jeans and a shirt.”

  “The change will do us both good.” She smoothed down her hair. “I did whatever I could with – ” She rolled her eyes up, hopelessly. “Promise – this week something drastic.” She had made no attempt to cover the gray spreading at her temples. She touched it. “I should’ve remembered: my Aunt Marge, rest her soul – went totally gray almost overnight when she was about twenty-five. But totally. You think that’s what’s happening to me?”

  “Looks that way,” Ben said.

  “I hate it, myself. Does it really bother you?”

  “I’ve gotten used to that too.”

  “It’s infuriating. You don’t have a bit of it.”

  “It’s all inside,” Ben said. “Where’s Davey?”

  “Where else? In front of the tube. I made him a Shirley Temple. Shall I bring ours out?” She glanced at the terrace door as an afterthought. “Where’s Aunt Elizabeth by the way?”

  “Upstairs. I’m worried about her, Marian.”

  “Oh, she’ll be fine,” Marian said. “I’ll apologize as soon as she comes down. Aunt Elizabeth isn’t the type to hold a grudge. I was upset; she must realize that.”

  “It’s not that,” Ben said. “Something’s wrong with her.”

  “What do you mean, wrong?”

  “Physically. She won’t admit it of course.”

  “Then don’t press it, darling. If it’s wrong enough, she’ll tell us.” He wasn’t listening. He was looking at the tray of caviar; looking, as a matter of fact, everywhere but directly at her. That was something she was getting used to. She wanted to tell him: just once be distracted from something else by her; for five minutes let nothing, real or unreal, be wrong with any of them; let it be as pleasant and free of suspicion as it was in those first few days. But she had said as much several times to no avail. “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I am dying for a martini. You know how long it’s been since I’ve had one?”

  All he had heard was the question mark, and when Ben shook his head, seriously, Marian threw up two imaginary hands and pushed the tray in his direction. “Go ahead,” she said, “dig in.” She went into the house for their drinks.

  Aunt Elizabeth still hadn’t come down when Marian returned with the pitcher of martinis and three chilled glasses – two “ups” and an ice-filled “down” with extra vermouth.

  “David opted for the sewing room,” she explained. “Roger Ramjet’s on the tube. I must say, some of those cartoons are damn funny.” Ben was pacing a bit. The caviar, she noticed, still hadn’t been touched. Marian held up the pitcher to catch his eye. “Shall I pour?”

  Ben stopped. “I’d better go up and check her,” he said.

  Marian said, “Ben,” with less patience.

  “She was coming right down.”

  “Then she’ll be down.” She began to pour. “Can’t you and I have one quiet, uncomplicated minute together? Like in the old days?” She brought his drink to him and made him take it. “To the old days,” she said, touching her glass to his, “wherever they’ve gone. They seem to have gotten lost in all the confusion, haven’t they? If it’s my fault, I’m sorry.” He was looking at his glass. Exasperated, she said, “Look at me? Please?” He did and she said, “Thank you,” softening it with a smile. “You never told me – do I or don’t I get another chance?”

  “Chance for what, Marian?”

  She shrugged. “To try to get things back into normal perspective. ‘Things’ being, I suppose, our life.”

  He was silent a moment. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. What I think might be just wishful.”

  The pause was longer. She watched for even a slight change of expression. There was none; he simply tapped her glass with his.

  “Is that as loud as it comes?” she said.

  Ben lifted his glass higher. “That’s good crystal,” he said: “You ought to know that.”

  She sipped her drink, watching him over the rim of the glass. And the idea of his leaving her, or even withdrawing temporarily from the house, must have been inconceivable to her to begin with, since she felt neither surprise nor relief at his reaction to the question, which turned out to be the quiet admission that, “I’m not ending anything, Marian.”

  She moved away from him and walked slowly beside the balustrade. The hedges were growing fuller beside the terrace; peonies were beginning to flower, and masses of rhododendron. She paused above a rosebush filled with salmon-colored buds. They would open in a day or so, and the yellow roses next to them, and of course the reds with all their different shadings. Their fragrance would fill the sitting room.

  She looked beyond them, over the sweep of lawn. “Don’t you love this time especially?” she said to Ben who was silent behind her. “The color gets so intense.” She turned and walked back toward him and there was something commanding in the ease and grace of her movement. “It’s looming bigger and bigger though, isn’t it?
The city, the return to reality.” She was beside him. “If for no other reason but that . . . bear with me? Let me – revel in it just a while longer?”

  “I told you, Marian,” Ben said, “I have no intention of wrecking your summer.”

  “It ought to be a little less grudging than that.” She ran her finger up his chest, then followed the line of his chin and lips. “There’s no such thing as my summer. It’s ours.” She smiled a little ruefully. “ ‘How I Spent Our Summer Vacation’: how many words would you like, Mr. Rolfe?” There was no gray, she noticed, not a single strand; and except for the lines in his forehead and that pinched look between his eyebrows, his face was smooth and strong; the crushes his female students developed were reasonable enough. She let her eyes linger, relearning his face. “I love you, you know,” she said.

  “And I love you, Marian,” he said simply.

  “Despite – ?”

  “ – nothing. It’s a fact of my life: I love you.”

  The words and the soft helplessness she saw in his eyes silenced her. She could feel a jumble of contradictory emotions rising inside herself, and the frustration of trying to hear one voice above all the others – that and the simple physical closeness of Ben – made her eyes tear. And if she had given in to the impulse the moment it flashed through her mind, if it had lingered just a fraction of a second longer, then she would have said it to him: If you love me, then for God’s sake help me.

  It passed, however, and the image of the sitting room banked with roses flashed into her mind, and the hum and the way the maze in the door caught the light. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and when she felt a little less vulnerable and sentimental, she laughed apologetically and said instead, “Now how about some of that caviar?”

  He left Marian spooning caviar onto wedges of toast, and went back up to Aunt Elizabeth’s room. He opened the door a crack without knocking, and called, “Aunt Elizabeth?” There was no reply. He opened it wider and saw her lying on her side in bed. “Hey,” he said, “you stood me up.” She was lying absolutely still. He moved more anxiously into the room, keeping his eyes on her back. She might not have heard. “We had a date – ” he started to say, and then stopped beside the bed. He hesitated – she was so still and, what he could see of her right arm and legs, so white – and then leaned over and touched her shoulder.