She moaned, deep in her throat, and even that came as some relief. He touched her again and whispered her name. This time the sound was deeper, more pained. Her face was turned away from him, pressed into the pillow; she began to draw short, racking breaths, and when Ben rushed to the other side of the bed to face her, he saw that her left arm was twisted hideously under her. Her mouth was open, her upper lip pulled out of shape against the pillow. Grotesquely, the upper plate she wore had come loose in her mouth.
Ben dropped to his knees beside her and gently smoothed the hair back from her face.
“Aunt Elizabeth.”
Her breathing became quicker, more agonized. The side of her face was cold, almost bluish. He lifted his hand. If he could at least turn her onto her back, off the arm, or somehow cover that pathetic humiliation which, stupidly enough, he found especially unnerving. He touched the top of her head lightly to trace the pain, and then her feet and her legs, the moans growing as he touched closer to the arm crushed under her.
The realization jolted him: she’s going to die. And if he tried to turn her over or move her in any way she’d probably go right in front of his eyes. She was going to die.
He brought his face closer, his lips almost touching her ear. His chest pressed against the side of the bed. Aunt Elizabeth trembled, and her cry made him pull back in alarm.
“Aunt Elizabeth!” he whispered, pleading. He watched her face for some hint of recognition. There was nothing; only that steady, terrible sound in her throat. He waited, scarcely breathing himself, until watching her, and his own helplessness, became unbearable. He rose to his feet slowly, looking down at her in disbelief; as he did, her face blurred, almost mercifully, and then the room. Ben covered his eyes and then pressed his fingers against the shocks of pain. He stumbled away from the bed, and when he found himself against the opened door, the pain had intensified and the film over his eyes grown more opaque. Oh, Christ, please, he thought, let it pass. Let it pass. He started the numbers to distract himself, and it was eleven this time before the hall outside came into focus and he could move unsteadily toward the staircase.
“The doctor I took Davey to – where’s his number?” He was calling out to Marian from the open terrace door.
The urgency in his voice startled her. “What’s wrong?” She had been sitting, looking over the rear lawn. She stood up.
“Where’s that doctor’s number?” Ben repeated.
“On the hall table, next to the phone. Why?”
She heard him say, “Aunt Elizabeth” as he disappeared from the doorway.
Marian came into the hall. Ben was flipping through the pages. “What’s wrong with her?” Marian said.
“I don’t know.” He pulled a page free and threw the others back onto the table. “Christ, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“Just what I said.” He lifted the receiver and started to dial. “She’s unconscious, she’s – ” He broke off and slammed his fingers down on the cradle. “Christ, I can’t even think straight.” He redialled the number.
Marian looked toward the stairs. “I’ll go on up,” she said.
Ben said, “Goddamn!” and lowered the receiver. Marian could hear the busy signal at the other end of the line. She stopped at the foot of the staircase and watched him pace, three or four steps in either direction. “Is there a hospital, anything you know of?”
Marian shook her head. “If it’s busy, he’s there at least.”
“She’s going to need more than a hick doctor.” He started to dial again, and Marian went up the stairs quickly.
She stood at the foot of the bed, watching Aunt Elizabeth in the fading light. She tried calling her name, and when there was no response, only that pitiful gasping for air, Marian moved back from the bed, toward the lamp beside the chaise. She hesitated and then turned it on and stared at Aunt Elizabeth’s face half-buried in the pillow. She lowered herself to the edge of the chaise and sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. And it was terrible, she knew, and brutally unfeeling, but she couldn’t bring herself nearer the figure on the bed, who wasn’t Aunt Elizabeth, who couldn’t possibly be Aunt Elizabeth.
She turned her face to the door. Where was Ben, what was he doing down there?
If Aunt Elizabeth was dying – and God, how could she possibly look like that and survive? – Marian had watched death before; her grandparents, two of them, had died with her right beside them. Why should the possibility of Aunt Elizabeth dying in front of her fill her with such absolute dread?
She tried not to look at the bed.
Think of something comforting. Think of beyond the door and up the hall: the refuge of the sitting room, so close.
Ben came into the room and Marian sprang to her feet.
“Did you get him?”
He said, “No,” without looking at her, and went directly to the bed.
“The line can’t stay busy all night. I’ll go down and try again.”
Ben knelt beside Aunt Elizabeth. “You do that, Marian,” he said quietly.
She had started to walk toward the door. She stopped abruptly. “What do you mean?”
He touched Aunt Elizabeth’s hair. “They’re all busy,” he said, “every number I tried. Even the goddamned operator is busy.” He looked across the room at her and smiled that chilling smile again. “The phone’s out, in a word. Surprise?”
It took her a moment to absorb what he was saying. She shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There’s no – !” He caught himself and lowered his voice. They had been talking in sick-room whispers. “There’s no way to get through. To anybody.”
Marian tried to think when was the last time that they had used the phone. The doctor, for David. And before that? She couldn’t remember.
“If we can’t get through,” she said, “then we’ll take her to someone.”
“Who?”
“The first shingle we find, or a hospital, or somebody!”
“She can’t be moved.”
“How do you know that?”
“I tried.” He sat back on his heels and stared at Aunt Elizabeth’s face. The quick catches of breath were becoming more agonized.
“Then what do we do – watch her die?”
“I don’t know what to do, Marian. I’m trying to think of something.”
She had to get out of that room. It had become suffocating, and the sounds coming from Aunt Elizabeth were frighteningly ominous.
If she could calm herself and think reasonably, if she could go into the sitting room for just a few minutes.
“I’ll try to reach him again,” she said in the silence. “If I can’t reach him, I’ll take the car and go out and find someone. Or you can take the car. There’s got to be some way.”
Ben continued to stare at Aunt Elizabeth. The car. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but if the phone was out, conveniently, then what help would the car be? It wouldn’t be made that simple for them, would it? Let her try it. Just let her try it.
“Ben?” She was waiting.
Ben looked up at her. “You still don’t get it, do you, Marian? It’s still all in my mind.” He touched the pillow. “This, like everything else.”
Marian remained still, almost defiantly. They were at opposite ends of the room, with the awful fact of Aunt Elizabeth between them. And whatever spring had fed the tenderness she felt for Ben just a while ago, out on the terrace, had dried inside her. There was suddenly nothing. Whether she would feel the same way in another minute or so, or not, right now Ben and Aunt Elizabeth and everything else existed only to keep her away from the comfort of the sitting room.
It was getting darker, and if she waited for Ben to think his tortuous way to a solution,
Aunt Elizabeth would die in Mrs. Allardyce’s house.
“Stay with her,” Marian said, and walked out of the room.
“I’ll stay with her,” Ben said. He touched Aunt Elizabeth’s forehead very lightly. “Of course I will.” He brought his hand down to her lips and tried to think of something else, like Aunt Elizabeth finally behind the wheel, doing eighty on a stretch of open road.
Marian went directly downstairs for the number, and on the third try reached the doctor who remembered her with no particular interest. He asked for the symptoms which Marian described vaguely, and interrupted her to ask Aunt Elizabeth’s age. She could almost see his head shaking at the other end of the line. He would, magnanimously, stop by as soon as he could, though at that age . . . She gave him directions (he had never been to the house, knew it only vaguely) and the phone number.
She went back up to the room and announced, “He’s coming. Dr. Ross.” She waited for Ben’s reaction.
He hadn’t moved from Aunt Elizabeth’s side. He gave Marian an incredulous look. “You got him?”
“I got him.” She couldn’t resist adding, “The operator as well.” He still looked incredulous. “Ross’s line was busy for a while. The operator’s might’ve been as well, I suppose.”
“All the lines were busy, Marian,” Ben insisted. “I didn’t make it up.”
“I’m sure you didn’t. The important thing is he’ll be here.”
“When?”
“As soon as he can.” She was standing just inside the room, and however childish it was, there was some satisfaction in Ben’s puzzled expression. “I think it might be a good idea to keep David downstairs tonight. I can set up one of the servants’ rooms. Is there anything you want me to do before the doctor comes?”
Ben shook his head and rose to his feet.
“There must be some way to make her a little comfortable,” Marian said.
Ben carried the Windsor chair to the side of the bed. “I’m afraid to move her.”
She watched him sit, facing Aunt Elizabeth. She had made her point, she supposed, and to mention the phone again would have been needlessly cruel. But it wasn’t conspiring against them after all, she wanted to assure him, no more than the house was. And as for Aunt Elizabeth – well, hopefully the doctor would exorcise that suspicion as well. And leave room for the next wave of phantoms.
All she said, however, was, “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”
Marian closed the door in case David should happen to come upstairs while she was still in the sitting room.
The lamp was on, the drapes drawn shut. Mrs. Allardyce’s dinner tray was on the table beside the wingchair. It was untouched.
Marian moved around the room, slower and slower, as the knot began to loosen inside her. She lingered over the photographs and the flower-filled urns and vases; the gold candlesticks and the silver candelabra, and the two bronze holders she had found in the basement, huge and vaguely liturgical. She touched the tables and the porcelain figurines, the damask walls and the crystal, and she could feel the hum coursing through everything she touched, vibrantly. Especially the door. She traced the carvings with her hands raised and her eyes closed, and it was like touching something or someone loved profoundly, and then feeling the touch returned.
The gown rippled with the movement of her hands.
She moved away from the door, lifted a small cylinder of gold-tipped matches from the table, and lighted the candles in the bronze holders, and all the other candles in the room. She turned off the lamp and stood spellbound by the serenity and the dazzling beauty of the room.
The wingchair and the silver tray glowed in front of her, and before she realized what she was doing, she had sat down and brought the tray closer to herself. She unfolded the napkin and reached for the silver knife and fork. The presence directing her hands and imposing itself on her will was almost palpable, and she felt no desire to resist or question the force. She cut into the meat, and in a moment all she was aware of was the hum and the incredible fragrance of roses rising all around her.
The sounds crept into his sleep, more insistently: the rattling gasp for air and then the pained exhalation, hoarse and mortal. Ben opened his eyes.
She was in the same position on the bed, but her skin, shrivelled and tissue-thin, had the pallor of death. There were two dark hollows where her eyes had been, and the flesh was stretched transparent over the bridge of her nose. She had become incredibly old, mummified almost, and the more Ben stared at her, the more she seemed to age; her jaw slackened and her lips tightened inside her mouth.
He was asleep still, he had to be. Or he was hallucinating. He closed his eyes and tried to shake the image out of his brain. The sounds enveloped him.
The pain had intensified and there was something almost reassuring in the throbbing inside his head. It was the pain he trusted, not what he thought he was seeing, and the pain meant that, however real it seemed (even a bumper pressing against his leg), it was an hallucination. And if he waited long enough (count) and tried not to panic, he could will it out of existence – the transformation he was imagining would disappear and he’d see that in reality there had been no change in Aunt Elizabeth at all. It was all illusory, a projection of the pain.
He closed his eyes tighter and began to tick off the numbers.
Marian placed the silver on the empty plate and lay the napkin on the tray. She moved the small table to one side and then sat back in the wingchair, gripping the arms.
The fragrance had grown even stronger in the room, waves of it – gardenia as well as rose, and peony and honeysuckle and something like lilac, and other fragrances she didn’t recognize. She raised her head and looked around the room, trying to trace the source. It was not only in the room, it was beyond it, she was sure. She rose from the chair and moved toward the sitting room door, and then past it, into the hall. The fragrance was there as well, and at the top of the stairs, and all through the house, drifting through the rooms from somewhere. She crossed the entrance hall and went into the living room.
When he heard the car approaching the house, he opened his eyes, and real or not, nothing had changed. He looked away from Aunt Elizabeth, toward the windows. It was dark. How long had he been asleep in the chair since Marian had told him about the doctor? The car was stopping near the front steps, to the left of the windows, and just as he was about to rise and look down at the drive, he realized from the sound outside that it wasn’t the doctor. He stiffened in the chair and listened to the motor idling in the vast silence outside. Aunt Elizabeth’s struggle for breath was more desperate. He thought he saw her stir, just perceptibly. The pain hammered at him, and then it projected another sound, one he hadn’t heard before. It was somewhere in the house, dimmer at first than the throbbing of the motor. He tried to make it out. It was near the foot of the stairs – something sliding, being dragged over the wooden floor. And then it was on the stairs, coming up. A sliding, then a thud – a heavy bumping sound. And again. Slide, bump, slide, bump – the sounds coming faster and closer. He saw it again – the stirring on the bed: Aunt Elizabeth’s right hand trembled and her head moved slightly, as though she were hearing the same sounds. The moaning was constant, deeper – a strengthless, animallike keening that had to be the edge of death.
Ben’s hands tightened white on the chair. He leaned forward and saw her twist herself onto her back. The sound was near the top of the stairs. Slide. Bump. He sat paralyzed, watching Aunt Elizabeth’s eyes open to the sound, to the metallic rattling now, at the end of the corridor. Something was being wheeled toward the door very quickly. Aunt Elizabeth suddenly sat up in the bed, her tongue swelling between her lips. She turned her face to the door.
It was a dream, he wasn’t seeing any of this, wasn’t hearing those sounds. Not the choking or the chambered rattling directly outside the door, or the great bl
ow against it that made the door fly open. He wouldn’t give in to it, wouldn’t look, not even when it was wheeled beside the bed, and the polished lid pulled open brutally by the chauffeur who moved toward Aunt Elizabeth then as she stared lifeless at the white satin lining. He wouldn’t look.
The greenhouse. Marian moved through the living room, flicking on lamps as she approached the alcove and the glass door opposite the wall of shadowy photographs. The fragrance was stronger. She breathed it in, waiting with her hand on the knob and trying to see into the darkness beyond the door. The anticipation was making her hand sweat against the knob; she turned it slowly and pulled the door open. The warmth and sweetness spilled over her, and it was a moment before she could fumble for the row of switches just inside the greenhouse, and finally make the whole glory of the room burst on her.
The long shelves and tables were filled with color, sprays of it, with rows of billowing plants, an infinite variety of them, growing thick and vividly green. What had been stiff and lifeless now hung from the clay pots and brass planters, laden with blossoms. There were orchids, great climbing masses of them, and huge exotic blooms, and ferns with lacy sprawling fronds, and odd shaped leaves and petals riddled with the most intense colors. As far as she could see, up to the glass ceiling and all the way to the other end of the greenhouse, there was life, miraculous new life, with everything unnaturally large and bright.
She walked slowly down the narrow passages, pulling the folds of her gown closer. Filling herself with the wonder of it all. And if there was a certain uneasiness creeping in, very subtly at first, well, that was understandable in the face of such an awesome mystery. She stopped to touch the pattern of a leaf, to breathe in the fragrance, bending as if in homage to the sheer perfection of the flowers, of the life the house was offering her.
Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) Page 20