Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics)

by Robert Marasco

  Walker shrugged. “I’ll tell ’em.”

  They were back in the hall. Walker pulled out a round gold pocket watch and checked it against the Regency clock on the console. “To the minute!” he said, snapping it shut. “ ’Scuse me again.” He climbed up the stairs, leaving Marian alone in the hall.

  She brought her hands together, prayer-like, and pressed them to her lips, bowing her head thoughtfully and pacing until Walker came puffing back down the stairs, carrying a small Pan Am flight bag which he was zipping shut.

  “Why did you come back?” Marian asked him.

  He raised the bag. “Pick up a few things. His nibs’s pills mostly.” He started to walk across the hall.

  Marian called out to stop him. “Are they far, Walker – Roz and Brother?”

  “Not so far.”

  “If it was an emergency, they could get back, right away?”

  “There’s no emergency that I can see.”

  Marian walked up to him, beside the front door.

  “Walker . . .” she said, “Aunt Elizabeth is dead.”

  “The ole gal?”

  Marian nodded.

  “Sorry to hear that,” Walker said. He paused. “And the others?”

  “I don’t know!” Marian said helplessly; her voice rose and broke on the words. Walker looked toward the staircase, cautioning. “Ben – ”

  “Your husband.”

  Marian nodded again. “I don’t know what’s happened to him; all of a sudden. His mind – it’s – ”

  “Rested,” Walker said peacefully.

  “No!”

  “Just rested, that’s all. We all need a little rest once in a while, Mrs.; mind as well as body.” His voice had softened strikingly.

  “I don’t know what to do!” Marian pleaded.

  “Just what you been doin’, Mrs.,” Walker said. He started to go out the door.

  “Walker!” It filled the hall, part command, part plea. Marian stood where she was, in the middle of the hall, and waited for Walker to take a few steps back into the house. “I don’t want it anymore.” She shook her head to emphasize the words. “Not this.”

  “You don’t want . . . what?” Walker asked.

  Marian took a deep breath, and for the first time she gave it a voice – the suspicion that had grown to certitude: “I won’t sacrifice everything. I won’t see them hurt. I can’t, Walker. Not for anything!”

  “No, Mrs.,” he said, “not for anything. But what about for everything?” He waited for her to absorb the question, and then added, “For her?”

  Marian hesitated, and he could almost hear the voices warring inside her. “Not even for her,” she said weakly.

  “For the gold and the silver?” he reminded her, and it was his voice but it was Roz and Brother speaking as well, and the voice she had heard inside herself so often. “For her house and everything she has in it? Whatever’s hers is yours, Mrs., if you want it. You ought to know that by now . . .” He moved closer to her. “How much of a sacrifice is it – for all of this?” He looked up at the chandelier, the ceiling, the staircase, and Marian’s eyes followed his. “Think of it, think of all the others who managed to do it, to burn everything but her out of themselves. Our mother.” He paused. “What you see here is all her. Accept it, Mrs., and you accept her too.” Marian was silent. “Besides,” Walker added with head-shaking sympathy, “I’m afraid you got nothing to say about it at this point.”

  “But I don’t understand!” Marian said helplessly.

  “There’s a lot we don’t understand and accept anyhow,” Walker said, touching her arm very lightly. “Be patient, Mrs.” The touch became less than a reassuring pat.

  “Tell them to come back, Walker,” Marian repeated.

  “How can I, when it’s all begun?”

  “It can stop, can’t it?”

  “You want it to stop, Mrs.? Down inside yourself, the deepest part, you really want it to stop? You want to give up all of this?”

  “Yes.” She said it inaudibly.

  “When you begun it?” Walker continued. “You, Mrs. You’re the one’s been polishin’ the wood and the silver. You been bringin’ up her tray three times a day. You’re the one’s been fillin’ her room with flowers. You’re the one she depends on . . . for everything.” He brought his face very close to hers. “And when you see her, Mrs. – it’s all goin’ to be worth it. In your heart you know that, don’t you?”

  “I haven’t seen her!” Marian cried.

  He hushed her, his hand on her again. “You will. You will.”

  “Is that why you came back? To tell me that?”

  Walker’s hand tightened on her arm. “Accept it, Mrs. All the way now. Bring her back to us. Our mother.”

  She repeated the words after him soundlessly, several times, like a silent prayer: “Our mother.” He was gone when she raised her eyes. She saw him crossing the porch and disappearing down the front steps.

  “Walker!” Marian ran after him and stopped on the porch.

  Walker looked up at her.

  “Please . . . ?” she said one final time.

  He was on the bottom step; he raised his foot to the step above and leaned forward, making the wood creak.

  “Step’s a little loose down here,” he said. “See to it, will you?”

  He got into the car, turned clumsily, and drove off without looking back at Marian. She watched it until it had passed completely out of sight.

  Then she went upstairs, past Ben and David, without looking into their rooms, and sat for a long time in the gold brocade wingchair. Until she had worked up the strength and the resolution to approach the door and press her hands against the carved surface.

  “Help me,” she whispered, “to accept it. Give me the strength. And whatever’s weak . . . whatever affection in me is still keeping this door between us . . .” She waited, scarcely breathing, and then the words came out in a burst of passion: “Burn it! Burn it out of me! Burn it out, all of it!” Her fists hammered against the door. “Burn it out, burn it, burn it . . .”

  As often as she went up to the sitting room, which was constantly, she would let her eyes travel slowly over the multitude of faces on the table, until she had memorized the shape and position of each of the silver-framed pictures. There was, blessedly, no change – not on the day of Walker’s visit or the day after or the day after that. And if there had been, if suddenly another frame, or two, had materialized, then what would she have done? Gathered them up, Ben and David, as Ben himself had tried to do, and spirit them away from the house? Or accept it, the way Walker had said? Submit herself to the incomprehensible will of the house and accept it with a resignation that had to be more than she could command.

  Despite Walker’s assurance and despite the intensity of her plea in front of the door, it hadn’t been burned out of her; there was still an affection as strong as her longing to be part of the mystery of the house that was binding her to them. Bringing her, on several occasions, into David’s room in the middle of the night where she would sit and watch him sleep for hours, protectively. And making her seize hopefully on the merest flicker of recognition she thought she saw in Ben’s expressionless face; the slightest movement, however illusory, that might indicate a remission of the paralyzing shock that had locked him, unreachably, inside himself.

  And while she watched, while the priorities alternated hourly, seemingly beyond any ultimate resolution, the house continued to flourish: the rooftiles and clapboards and flagstone gleamed, the cracks in the long stone balustrade healed themselves, there was new color in the rugs and drapes and fabrics, and a deepening richness in the wood and stone. And without incident, with nothing to alarm her.

  Except Ben, if she cared to dwell on it. And David’s reaction to Ben, to the silent
, staring presence in the bedroom opposite his, or on the terrace; or, on one occasion, under the beach umbrella beside the pool where Marian had seated him and watched closely for a change in his expression which never came; not even there.

  It had been a testing, Marian became convinced, like a biblical trial in the desert: would she have been willing to give everything up – for the house, for Mrs. Allardyce; for the force or the abstraction behind them which she had seen in the deepest part of herself? The continuing approbation of the house was evidence enough that she would have. And, thank God, it had never had to reach the final testing point.

  She searched through the photographs less frequently as the week wore on, and stopped coming into David’s room during the night, and sleeping beside Ben in their bedroom. Her nights she began to spend in the wingchair in the sitting room once again, and a good part of her days as well.

  During the week her hair went completely white.

  She had brought him over the rise of lawn once again and made him sit under the faded beach umbrella beside the pool, and watched him a while, and then, when there was nothing, watched David splashing in the low water, the pool incident of two weeks ago wiped completely out of his mind. When the umbrella’s shade passed beyond Ben, Marian moved from the edge of the pool and adjusted the angle of the pole to protect him from the fierce mid-day sun. His lips were dry and there were beads of sweat on his brow and upper lip, which she dampened with a wet towel. And then, calling David out of the pool and ordering him to rest in the shade until she had come back with their lunch, Marian went back to the house.

  David dried himself and then sat on the concrete floor, at Ben’s feet in the circle of shade. And looked up at him without speaking, without even trying to reach him anymore. Except to touch him surreptitiously every once in a while – his foot or the hand resting limply on his knee. And that didn’t work either, and for the rest of his life his father would stare beyond him as though he didn’t even exist, however close to him he tried to come. Even when he stood up, as David did now, right in front of him, leaning forward on the arms of the chair and staring directly into Ben’s eyes.

  He tried to think of something to say to him, and all that came to him beside the pool was the fact that, whatever his father used to think about him, he really could swim, without the tube, without anything at all. And if he wanted, he was ready to show him, and wouldn’t that be a surprise big enough to cure him of his sickness?

  He announced it to Ben, and still there was no reaction, even when he kept repeating, “Do you want to see? Well, do you or don’t you?” And beside the frustration, there was a little bit of anger creeping into his voice. He shook Ben’s arm. “C’mon! Do you?” And whether he wanted to or not, he’d show him; he’d do it right in front of him, while he was looking straight into the pool.

  Marian would bring the tray up to Mrs. Allardyce later, after she had shepherded them both back to the house. She lifted the cups of cold consommé and the pitcher of grape juice onto the second tray, red plastic, and carried it to the kitchen door. She twisted the knob, not far enough for the door to open. She raised her knee to support the tray and twisted it again and pulled in. The door wouldn’t move. She muttered, “Dammit,” put the tray on a counter, and tried again. It was locked. Her fingers went to the inside latch; she turned it right and then left, her fingers whitening with the effort. Still, it wouldn’t open! It couldn’t have locked itself –

  She hurried to the window, panic growing in her, and strained to see beyond the rise of lawn, down to the pool which was hidden from view. And then it hit her, even without seeing. Her hands jerked up to her face, and almost voiceless, she said, “No! Oh, God! No!” She ran to the front door and that was locked too, and she screamed it out now, filling the house: “NO!”

  He had swum all the way to the middle of the pool where he stopped, winded, and began to tread water clumsily, turning to face Ben who seemed to be looking directly at him.

  “What’d I tell you – ?” he tried to say, but his mouth filled with water. He gagged and tried to raise his chin, but the water slapped against it, higher and higher, as if an unseen hand stirred it and sent it over him in faster and rougher waves. He breathed it in and choked on the burning in his lungs, and flailed wildly and more desperately, crying out to Ben who blurred distantly in David’s eyes. The water rose over his head, the rolling waves beating him lower and lower.

  Ben’s hands began to tremble on his knees, fighting against the heaviness that weighed them down. His eyes were fixed on the center of the pool which might have been a shadow passing through the whiteness in his mind, and a cry penetrating dimly from far away. His hands rose strengthless to the arms of the chair, under the umbrella that was now blazing with color, and as he tried to push himself forward, his mouth opened on a great, soundless moan. The chair shook under his weight. He lifted himself and moved an inch beyond the perimeter of shade, and then another, before he fell forward.

  The moan unshaped itself, and two thin lines of blood started to run from his eyes, absorbed by the sun-baked pavement, which pressed, smooth and polished, against his face.

  They were all locked, every one of them. She came into the living room, blind with terror, and whatever was in her stumbling path, however precious, she threw it aside until she reached the doors to the terrace; and they were locked, and all the other doors from the room as well. She turned and searched the room for something to smash through the doors, and as she did, she saw the walls brightening with color, as though the paint were being poured down them, and the panels and rosettes and cornices carving themselves vividly into the ceiling, and everything in the room taking on a splendor that was dazzling. And she knew immediately what it was that had already happened at the pool, and hurled herself against the locked glass doors until they shattered. And went back down to the pool where she saw what was behind the continuing approbation of the house.

  The stairs were almost too much for her. She stopped several times and rested her face wearily against her hand on the bannister, and then pulled herself up again. When she reached the upstairs hall she hesitated, as though she were suddenly unsure of her direction. Then she saw the double doors ahead of her, and stared at them for a long time. She started to move toward them, but stopped at the door of the room that had been Ben’s and hers. And hesitated again. She went into the room, into the bathroom where she pulled off her wet clothes and wiped her hair dry. Not thinking of anything at all, too drained and dead inside ever to think of anything again. Whatever she was doing, she was doing automatically.

  She chose the long blue-and-gold gown and dressed herself, and pulled a comb through her white hair. Then she went down the hall, looking neither left nor right, and entered the sitting room.

  The pictures were there, of course, at the very edge of the table. Ben and David, each of them with that same blank and lifeless stare, their eyes fixed on a point that would always be somewhere beyond Marian. Ben. And David. She touched them. And if there were any tears, any emotion at all, left in her, she would have asked, “Why aren’t I there with them? Why have I been saved?”

  Saved . . .

  She sat in the wingchair, her hands opening and closing against its arms. She heard the hum and stared into the door, silently, feeling something deeper than she had ever felt before build slowly inside herself. Deeper than anger or hate or betrayal or loss – total, unrecoverable loss.

  There’s nothing more, she said to herself; and then she said it again, aloud, still staring at the door.

  “There’s nothing more. Nothing. It’s all in order now, all the way it should be.”

  She waited, and then rose and walked toward the door.

  “And there’s nothing, nothing at all left.”

  She stopped and her eyes travelled again over the maze in the door. She raised her hand and touched it, and the hand tightened
into a fist which struck against it, just once.

  “Is this how it ends?” she asked. “With this still between us? After I’ve given you everything?”

  The fist loosened, and almost beyond her control began to move over the surface of the door with a slow, caressing motion.

  “Mrs. Allardyce?” she called softly. “Mrs. Allardyce?” She rested her face against the door. “There are times when you’ve been so close to me . . . and I’ve seen you so clearly in everything that’s in your house . . . Why should this door still be between us now . . . when I’ve given you everything?” She waited for the strength to well up and power her voice and her hand, and when it did she pounded the door. “There’s nothing more to give!” she cried. “Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing . . .”

  She heard the click, and felt the door move against her hand, just slightly. The suddenness of it, under her cries, stunned her. She stood absolutely still, and then a smile, part astonishment, part triumph, began to transform her face. Her hand went down to the gold knob and pulled the door towards her. The hum grew, deeper and more resonant as the door opened wider, pushing out against her, even after she had pulled her hand away.

  It was massive, incredibly thick behind the carved facing, like the door of a great vault. The smile froze on Marian’s face as it continued to open, beyond her control, with the hum growing even louder, shaking her, shaking the room with its power, and a thin light issuing, becoming stronger. She threw herself against it, trying to stop the movement of the door, to cut off the overwhelming force of the hum and the terrible blaze of light whitening everything. The door pushed against her, opening wider, and she felt herself screaming at it, screaming at the vastness, the magnitude of the power being released on her. And then felt nothing, and heard nothing, and saw, in the heart of the whiteness, a point, a shadow, which she knew was the source of the light, rushing toward her. Closer. Closer. The features swirling and gathering themselves out of the shadows. Hideously old, leaning forward in a great chair, with her eyes blazing out at Marian. Closer, more penetrating, burning everything out of her – grief and affection and memory – burning it out finally, until there was nothing. She raised her hand to touch the figure, and it was a gesture of acceptance. The eyes blazing in front of her faded then, and the figure dissolved, leaving the chair empty. For Marian. Who closed her eyes and began to move forward slowly, hearing the voices chambered in the vast silence.