Black Alice

by Thomas M. ; Sladek Disch; Sladek Disch

  'That's his problem. There's nothing I can do to hurry him up. Say, Bessy, how come you moved here from East Main? I liked your old place a lot better. It was more...'

  'Homey?' Bessy suggested, pointing at the framed embroidery sampler above the icebox: GOD BLES OUR HAPPY H.

  Roderick nodded.

  'Well now, that's a long story.' Bessy lowered herself into a protesting kitchen chair. 'You see, Roderick,

  I been urbanly renewed!' And she had begun telling Roderick the long story.

  ... Roderick had just put the finishing touches to his own initials on the kitchen door when the screams began coming from upstairs ...

  Jason's English-trained Negro butler answered the door. 'Mr. Raleigh! Mr. Duquesne will be delighted to see you, sir. If you'll wait a moment in the library...'

  The library was a dark, musty, pleasant room. The curtains were always drawn now to blot out the sight of the housing development. Roderick loved this room—the smell and touch of it, the warmth and the mass of books about him: the eighty heavy volumes of the code of Virginia in uniform leather bindings, the Corpus luris Secundum, the crumbling spines of an eighteenth-century Codex. Here was the world that Roderick had been intended for. This was the world that he would have occupied (in the capacity probably of a full partner) if only it hadn't been for someone with the initials D.B. Roderick took down one of the nearest volumes and began reading the almost-meaningless, magical words.

  'If you're checking the inheritance laws, you're wasting your time.'

  Roderick spun around, snapping the lawbook shut. 'My dear Uncle Jason! How are you feeling, sir? You look quite fit. Are you over that little ... indisposition?'

  'Thank you, I am quite well.' Uncle Jason's thin dry lips were twisted in a customary half-smile. 'How nice of my brother-in-law to pay me a call just to inquire after my health. Or was there something else?'

  'As you know, sir, we have not always understood the terms of the trust fund in the same light. We have varied.'

  'We have,' Jason agreed, waving Roderick to a chair. He seated himself behind his expansive desk and folded his blue-veined hands over his waistcoat. 'And to come down to it, you want more money, isn't that it? Isn't that always it? Now, please be so good as to skip the preamble—we both know it quite by heart—and proceed directly to the absurd pretexts. For I presume you've invented new ones or you wouldn't be here.'

  'You're being unfair, Uncle Jason. If you only knew how hard Delphinia and I have tried to live within our meagre allotment. We've martyred ourselves. We've gone without. We've pinched pennies.'

  'One million pennies a year is a lot of pinching, Roderick— when you have, as it were, free board and room.'

  'Ten thousand dollars it not enough, Jason. It wouldn't be enough for just one of us.'

  Jason began chuckling, not at all sympathetically. 'Then why don't you, strange as the idea must at first seem, go out and take a job, Roderick? The trust has nothing to say against it. You know, my dear young man—and forgive me if I seem to patronise, but I am fully a generation older than you—there is something I have never been able to get across to you these many years, and that is—this is not your money. You have no claim on it. Nor do I. I am merely the executor of my father's will. The money belongs not to you, nor to Delphinia, nor me, but to Alice, your daughter. The will is very clear and, as we all know by now, it is unbreakable. It says: "The remainder of my money and property is to be held in trust until the child or children of my daughter, Delphinia, reach the age of consent. The executor shall see to the proper upbringing and education of such child, or children, and..."'

  'I know, I know,' muttered Roderick, who was pulling nervously at his gloves. The trust also states clearly that Delphinia and I are to be given the means to raise Alice as befits

  her station. Which is impossible on ten thousand a year. Double that amount would be scarcely enough. That's what I've come to see you about. Delphinia would have come with me but, as it happens, she's laid up in bed.'

  Jason sighed. 'What else have you ever come to see me about, my boy? I declare, you and Delphinia have been provided for to the outermost limits of the will already. I can't let you get into Alice's money one penny further, not for any reason.'

  'Jason, be reasonable. As Alice's father—which seems to be my only legal reason for existing—am I not expected to belong to certain clubs? To participate in civic functions? If not for my sake, then for Alice's?'

  The old man waved his hand impatiently. 'Participate all you like, Roderick. Run for mayor, if that suits you. But don't expect Alice's trust fund to finance your campaign.'

  That's not what I mean, damn it! I mean ... joining clubs ... establishing valuable social contacts for her future ...'

  Jason slapped his open hand on the desk with surprising force for a man of his age. His pale grey eyes sparkled with feeling, but his face was composed as he said, a moment later: 'No! I will not dole out money for you to join another country Club, if that's what you mean. And I doubt that your daughter would find much profit in the "valuable contacts" you're liable to establish with that money. That money is not your entertainment fund, Roderick. It is Alice's living, her dowry, if you'll excuse such an old-fashioned notion, her future. Have you no sense of proportion, man? The most valuable contacts she can have right now are with her father and mother. She needs above all to grow up loving people and being loved, to think of someone besides herself, to rid herself of those unwholesome fantasies. That girl has been through a terrible ordeal. How you can come here now, after all that has happened? No, I will not talk about that with you, Roderick—it would only make me angry and fretful. We understand each other, all too well, I fear.'

  'It's because I worry about Alice...' Roderick began.

  'Poppycock. You worry about yourself, and my sister worries about herself and her imaginary ailments. If it were otherwise, Alice wouldn't be in the state she is today. You are a selfish, frivolous man, and Delphinia is a selfish, frivolous woman.

  'No, don't run away, Roderick. Hear me out. You'll continue to get your ten thousand a year for as long as Delphinia or you are alive. You may fritter your half of it away on nightclubs and "valuable contacts" if you wish, and Delphinia may feed hers to her hypochondria, but you'll not get one penny more! Not one penny!'

  Instead of having risen at the end of this speech, the old man's raspy voice was lowered to a hush. Jason wasn't one to idly bluster, Roderick knew. This had been a serious statement of policy, and it boded ill. He stared with pursed lips at the only outward sign of Jason's upset—a purplish vein that pulsed in his high, soulful forehead. Then, bowing his head in a curt farewell, Roderick turned away and headed for the door.

  Outside, Roderick's fists unclenched about his walking stick. His jaw relaxed then, and the flush of anger faded to a dull glow of resentment. Whistling the same Victor Herbert march tune, he walked to the Hotel Chesapeake Cocktail Lounge, ten blocks away. He would not let himself be cast down. Actually, he hadn't expected anything to come of his visit to Jason, but he had owed it to Delphinia to try. As soon as the bartender saw him come in the door, he began mixing a martini, dry, on the rocks.

  Chapter 3

  Were the dear little canaries trying to say something to Delphinia? Were they trying to say:

  Just a minute, Delphinia dear,

  And your own dear Rodipoo will soon be here? It would be a comfort for her to believe it. She'd been waiting for him to return from Jason whole hours now. The Lord knew she had few enough comforts to support her. Wasted by illness, conspired against by doctors, scanted by her husband, and scorned by her only child—it was a harder life than a woman of delicate constitution should have had to bear. She lifted her eyes to heaven—as much in accusation as in prayer...

  .. And saw the cracks in the ceiling. By now Delphinia knew every one of them by heart. Directly over the bed was a great patch of chipped paint that resembled a horse and rider, posting. Over to the left, above the escritoire, was a
lady in hoop-skirts, as clearly defined as if she'd been painted there by an Old Master. Beyond that, in the northeast corner, was a face that could be a man's or a woman's, depending on Delphinia's mood and the events of the day. Once, unwisely, she had complained to Jason about the cracks in the ceiling (hoping he would relent and let them have the house on Boston Street for themselves), and he had sent plasterers in to repair the cracks. Delphinia had had some difficulty explaining why she'd sent the plasterers away.

  Such a day: Delphinia's back hurt! The canaries were starving! Rodipoo was taking forever! She wanted to stamp her loot from sheer pique, but there was nothing to stamp it against but the contour mattress. Her bed was so monstrously big that when she sat halfway up in it her foot was a yard away from the foot-board. It made her feel like a little girl sometimes.

  The bed was such a nice bed—an heirloom that had been in Delphinia's family for ages. Her mother's grandmother was supposed to have rescued it from the burning of Atlanta, single-handedly fighting off Sherman's henchmen. It—and maybe the cameo clasp on the neck of her nightgown—was the only remnant of what had been a proud old Southern family.

  There was still money, of course, but it was new money, money without a tradition to ennoble it. Her father, Morgan Duquesne, had made his fortune speculating in tobacco futures and real estate back in the 'twenties. Still, tradition or no, if Delphinia could have had that money, she would have been much happier. She would have given it a tradition. Her pale thin fingers twiddled on the counterpane as the thought of how she might have ennobled that money: elegance, chandeliers, a tremendous staircase, gardens; parties every Friday night—not parties—balls!—invitations to all the best homes—which she might ignore if she so chose! Dozens of coloured servants, including a butler just like that sonofabitch at Jason's, and a chauffeur in livery. Relaxing on the veranda in the evening, friends dropping in to gossip and admire the elegance, the chandeliers, the...

  Dreams! She would never have that money. The injustice had been done, and now it could not be undone. She would spend the rest of her life a prisoner in her own bedroom. It was like a romantic old story, the sadness of it...

  Delphinia had never been a strong woman, and the shock of her father's will, coming as it had hard on the heels of Alice's delivery, had turned her into a permanent invalid. She could still remember the fateful afternoon when the will had been read, the musty office, and that terrible, sly smile of Jason's when he came to the part that had disinherited her. Her father had warned he would do it, but she had never taken him seriously. Jason must have put her father up to it. Jealous Jason. Otherwise it was too incredible. She must remember and tell that to her lawyer. They should sue Jason for alienation of affections.

  Actually, they should have sued him long ago, because when the will had been read, Delphinia had swooned right on top of one of the heavy oak chairs in Jason's office and injured her spine. He had been thoughtful enough to pay the hospital bill for X-rays and such. (Or had that been just some mode of his foxiness? Just a clever way to sidestep his legal responsibilities?) After the hospital, the arthritis had set in, and Delphinia had to be confined to her bed. No matter what nonsense the doctors talked, Delphinia had faith that she would be delivered from her cross some day. It was all a matter of finding the right doctor. If only Jason would let her make a trip to Europe to consult specialists...

  It wasn't fair! And it always came back to Jason! Jason, smiling that sly, lawyer's smile of his, telling her she wasn't reallysick! If only he knew the pain she suffered every day from the arthritis—not to mention a stomach as delicate as a butterfly's. Jason, sending around his quack doctors for 'checkups'. Doctors? Spies, rather, whose only interest was in seeing how close to death's door she was and then reporting back to him!

  Delphinia poured herself a glass of icewater from the pitcher on the bedside table, shook one of the useless pink tablets into her palm, and swallowed it with a sip of water. Gasping from the exertion, she set the glass back on the porcelain tray. A few drops of water spattered on to the surface of a tortoise-shell hand-mirror. After wiping it with a tissue (it was exactly for chores like this that she ought to have had a maid of her own), she began to examine her features as carefully as an augerer would search for omens.

  I'm pale as a white rose, she thought. A single, delicate vein showed upon her ivory brow like an ornament. A hairdresser came in once a week to rinse lavender into Delphinia's long, greying hair and do it up exactly as it had to be done. It was worth the effort—everyone said her hair was like a work of art. She had the pale grey eyes of a Duquesne, but hers seemed to have taken on the delicate lavender tint of her hair, or of the vein in her forehead. Or of the vivid purple shadows beneath her eyes? The shadows came from lack of sleep and would vanish if ever her illness were cured and the insomnia went away.

  The coral rosebud of her lips which she had put on fresh an hour before, puckered and drew near to the friendly, flattering mirror, but before they could touch it, she heard Rodipoo's familiar tread in the hallway—why did he always seem to march everywhere?—why couldn't he just stumble around like everybody else?—and Delphinia had barely time to set aside the mirror and fluff the artificial nosegay pinned to her nightgown before he came in the door.

  'Rodipoo! Quel surprise!'

  Rodipoo looked sullen and out-of-sorts, and he slumped in the genuine imitation antique Louis Quatorze chair beside the bed, which was most unlike Rodipoo to do. The canaries had suddenly gone wild with anxiety, and Delphinia knew that something terrible had happened.

  He told her everything he'd said to Jason or Jason to him. She could scarcely bear to listen. Rodipoo got angrier and angrier. His shoulders hunched, and his chin came jutting forward aggressively. He looked like a bulldog. How could a man do so little exercise and remain so strong-looking? Why, he looked more like some Norfolk sailor than a Southern gentleman who'd never had to do a day's work in his life.

  It had been just this—the lower-class burliness coupled with a gentlemanly manner—that had first endeared Rodipoo to her. It had been a mistake to fall in love. She should never have given in to his demands for an elopement. But how was she to have known he'd been expelled from college two weeks short of graduation? He had deceived her. He knew she would have never eloped with him if she had thought he wasn't the sort of young man a Duquesne could be proud to marry.

  When Roderick was done telling his same old story, Delphinia lowered her eyelashes contemptuously. 'You're drunk,' she said. 'Were you drunk when you went in to see him? Is that why you were so ready to surrender to his base conditions?'

  'Delphinia, there's no need for us to fight. We have enough real problems without tearing each other apart again.'

  'Oh, it's all very well for you ! But do you ever think what it must be like for me! To lie here, day after day, with nothing to look at but a cracked ceiling! Oh, I wish I were able to leave this bed. I wish I could go to Jason's office and lay it on the line to him. I can promise you that I wouldn't go creeping away with my tail between my legs, like a beaten dog! God, I wish I were the man in this family. If I had my strength and health about me, there is nothing I wouldn't stop at to get what justly is mine. Murder would not be too much ...'

  'Delphinia, you're being silly, and you're going to end up in a state.'

  'That money is my money. It belongs to me. And it's your fault that I don't have it. If I'd married a decent man—if you hadn't lied to me—Daddy would not have cut me out of the will. It's your fault that we're practically starving!'

  'It's nobody's fault but your father's. You might as well try to blame it on Alice, who wasn't a year old at the time.'

  'I do! It is her fault! What does she need all my money for? Why does she need a full-time personal servant, who costs I don't know how many thousands for the three months of the summer, when I lay here at death's door with no one to look after me? Who's the sick one—me or Alice? She's not sick. She puts on an act to get attention. I should know what sickne
ss is. My life has been nothing but one long sickness. So don't talk to me about Alice! Schizophrenia—my ass! What's schizophrenia compared to arthritis?'

  Delphinia developed this train of reasoning at some length, but when she looked up from behind her lace hankie, damp with tears and sweat, she discovered that Roderick had tiptoed out of the room. It was just as well. She needed to rest after the emotional ordeal she had been put through. Eventually the canaries quieted down, and the house became so still that Delphinia could hear, somewhere outside in the garden, Alice singing a French song about a fox and a crow.

  Mes sincer's compliments, cher monsieur du Corbeau

  'Dans ce chic habit noir, Ah! que vous etes beau!

  Et si votre ramage egale vos atours,

  Vous etes la phinix des forets d'alentour.'

  Sur I'air du tra la la, la,

  Sur I'air du tra de ri de ra

  Tra la la!

  Alice glanced up quizzically at Miss Godwin, for the little flourish of grace notes that she had added as her own contribution had got lamentably out of hand.

  'Your French is improving, Mademoiselle,' Miss Godwin observed tactfully. 'And now that you've shown me you still remember La Fontaine—which I never for a moment doubted —why don't we get down to the business of state capitals? What is the capital of Alabama?'

  'Montgomery.'

  'Of Alaska?'

  'Juneau. Miss Godwin, there something else I had to talk to you about this morning.' Miss Godwin half-closed the book on her lap and pushed up her reading glasses with an impatient forefinger. 'It's a personal problem. Remember, you said I was always supposed to tell you about anything like that right away —instead of talking to Dinah.'

  'You haven't been talking to her lately, have you?'

  'No,' Alice said. Quite honestly, for it had been fully a week since she'd had her conversation with Dinah sitting in front of St. Arnobia's in the rain. 'No, I waited till I could talk to you this morning. It's about Mommy. You see ... I don't think ... I mean, I wonder sometimes ...'