by John Harvey
Her voice went cold. ‘That’s what you told me when I turned sixteen.’
‘You’ve never forgiven me, have you, Elsa?’
‘You once informed me I had nothing to forgive.’
‘And I was right,’ he said, his demeanor airtight. His armor was his suit, staid, boardroom.
‘I plan to get my own lawyer,’ Elsa said.
Nothing changed in his face. ‘Why?’
‘I’m taking a stand.’
‘Against whom?’
‘All of you.’
He rose smoothly from his chair, which told her the audience was over. On her feet, she needed a moment to maintain her balance. In one of the hunting scenes, hounds circling a wild boar appeared rabid. Robert walked her to the door.
‘I understand you’re seeing a psychiatrist.’
She threw him a look. ‘How do you know that?’
‘I see your checks.’
‘I didn’t know you went through them.’
‘I browse.’
Opening the door, he stood by it. He was now fully his legal self, cool-brained, his mistakes few if any. Elsa looked into baffling blue eyes that expressed only ambiguities. ‘I expected more from you,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I loved you, Robert.’
‘I’m sorry about that too.’
A taxi took her through the heart of the city, through the crush of Kenmore Square, where traffic sounded like the Boston Symphony tuning up, and into Brookline to a shady side street and a brick house that rose unexpectedly above great growths of rhododendron and flowering pink almond. In the driveway a pigeon swirled up like a package coming apart. Elsa said to the driver, ‘I used to live here.’
The driver, appreciative of the generous tip, said, ‘That must’ve been grand.’
Approaching the front door, she heard Marion playing the piano, not very well, with a tendency to pound the keys. The playing stopped when Elsa rang the bell.
Marion seemed not at all surprised to see her. ‘Come in, dear.’ They sat in the sun room, by far the cheeriest room in the house, Elsa’s favorite when she had lived there. Marion had a full-time maid now. The maid served tea and crustless sandwiches. ‘Thank you, dear,’ Marion said in the same tone she had greeted Elsa. Now in her fifties, Marion still had her looks, her figure and her inflated sense of self, which, in Elsa’s estimation, rivaled Robert’s.
Left to themselves, Elsa said, ‘How long have you had her?’
‘Juana? More than a month. She has many rough edges, but I’m smoothing them.’
‘She’s pretty.’
‘Very.’ Marion took a deliberate sip of tea. ‘Are you still writing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything published?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Pity. With your Wellesley education, you’d think you’d be in print by now. Perhaps you should self-publish.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Elsa said.
‘Up to you, dear. Have you found a suitable man yet? I heard you have.’
‘I know your tricks, Marion. You’re fishing, pretending you know something you don’t.’
‘Do you really think I’m that devious?’
Elsa finished off a half-sandwich and, reaching for another, smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘We’ve had our differences, but don’t you think it’s time we put them aside? I certainly do.’
Elsa poured herself more tea. ‘I’m not that scared and timid girl any more, Marion. Or that gullible young woman. I’m finally taking charge of myself.’ She lifted her teacup. ‘Why are you staring at me?’
‘Sorry, dear, but it’s amazing how much you resemble your father. When I first saw you I had my doubts, but surely that’s his chin. So sad you never knew him.’
‘I feel I do.’ Elsa rose. ‘Excuse me. I have to pee.’
Marion stiffened. ‘Aren’t you beyond that sort of talk?’
‘What would you rather I say?’
‘Let’s not get into a pissing contest, dear. You know the way.’
Elsa could have used a downstairs bathroom but chose to mount the stairs, her fingers tapping the polished rail all the way to the top, where she turned left and glanced into Marion’s bedroom. It was the master bedroom, but in the move from Haverhill to Brookline Marion had chosen it for herself, a knock needed for Uncle Edward to enter. Elsa remembered the room had always harbored an amorous smell, her uncle home or not, more so when he was not.
Toward the end of the passageway she entered a bedroom once hers and now one of the guest rooms, all traces of her gone, anything worth keeping she had taken with her, any reminders Marion had removed. In the bathroom, before using the john, she addressed the mirror in German: ‘Do I know you?’
On Elsa’s return to the sun room, Marion looked up with a faint smile and said, ‘You haven’t once asked about your uncle.’
‘I was getting to it.’ Elsa sat down, retrieved her teacup and crossed her legs. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘Recovering beyond expectations. No stroke is going to keep him down.’
‘Is he still in that nursing home?’
‘Yes, dear. We chat by phone.’
‘I plan to visit him.’
Marion shrugged. ‘You don’t seem to like us any more, dear.’
‘He’s been stealing from me.’
‘That’s ridiculous and cruel of you to say such a thing. You live wonderfully off the investments he’s made for you.’
‘No, Marion. I live off my father’s money, plus my mother’s – though I no longer know where much of it is.’
Marion’s color sharpened. ‘Let me set you straight, young lady. Your father walked a thin line. He was a manipulator, a conniver. Sure he made money, but your uncle made it grow.’
‘How strange,’ Elsa said glibly. ‘All this time I thought Uncle Edward was just the bookkeeper.’
‘He was the brains!’ Marion immediately gathered herself. ‘I’m not trying to take away anything from your father. All things considered, we got along quite well.’
Elsa rose to leave. ‘I’ll see Uncle Edward tomorrow.’
‘Are you going to cause trouble?’
The maid reappeared. Elsa smiled at her.
‘Juana, I don’t believe I’ve introduced you to my niece. This is Miss West.’
‘I’m not actually her niece,’ Elsa said, still smiling. ‘I’m my father’s daughter.’
Barefoot in a terry robe, Marion poured herself a second glass of port, a self-imposed limit, just enough to give her a glow, and called out, ‘Is it ready yet?’
Juana appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Marion, wineglass in hand, paused at the curve in the stairs. ‘Is the phone plugged in?’
Juana reappeared. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Thank you, dear. Thank you very much.’ At the top of the stairs she said, ‘What did you think of my niece?’
Juana, hesitating, pushed fallen locks of hair from her young face. ‘She seem nice.’
‘You work for your money, dear. Hers is a gift.’
Marion moved on. The master bathroom awaited her, womblike in its warmth, the air sultry. A bouquet of pink carnations topped a column of marble near the bidet. Marion dropped her robe and slipped into a sunken tub brimming with suds. Bubbles burst near her nose. After luxuriating for several minutes with her eyes closed, she stretched an arm and seized the phone, near which she had placed her glass of port. The call was to Haverhill. Extension 210, the rehab center.
‘Edward?’
‘Yes.’
‘You sound better.’
‘I’ll be home sooner than expected.’ He had lost the slur in his speech, though he still needed a walker and help getting in and out of bed.
‘I had a visitor,’ Marion said and took a slow sip of port. ‘Your niece. Robert called me earlier, so I was expecting her.’
‘Is there a problem?’
‘Nothing Robert can’t handle.’
; ‘Ah, yes. Good old Robert.’
‘Don’t get touchy, Edward.’ Marion raised a knee and soaped it with a sponge. ‘I thought you’d gotten over that.’
‘Tell me how, and I will.’
‘I shouldn’t have called. I’ve upset you.’
‘Why did you call?’
‘To prepare you, Edward. Elsa plans to visit you tomorrow.’
‘Should I have Robert here to coach me?’
‘Now you’re being sarcastic.’ Marion’s other knee rose from the suds. ‘That’s not like you, Edward.’
‘Are you in the tub?’
‘How can you tell?’
‘Your voice.’
She retrieved the wineglass. ‘Different voices, different events. You know most of them.’
‘But not all.’
‘That keeps me a mystery. We friends again, pet?’
A minute or so later, after ringing off, she drained the wineglass, turned on the tap for more hot water and slid down to her chin. Her eyes closed, her head hot and turbulent with a kaleidoscope of thoughts, she luxuriated for twenty minutes more, was reluctant to rise and wasn’t sure she would.
‘Juana, where are you?’ Juana was downstairs but heard the call and came up fast. The fluffy towels Marion wanted were right where Juana always left them, in plain sight and within easy reach. Juana moved them closer and retreated. ‘Thank you, dear.’
Marion stepped from her bath and admired herself in the long panels of a mirror. How many women her age and even younger wouldn’t kill to have a figure like hers? A hand on her hip, she turned sideways. Her bosom was a springy addendum, her buttocks a solid postscript.
‘Wow!’ she said aloud. If her own image excited her, what must it do to others? ‘Juana, come in here and look at me.’
Elsa lived in a brownstone on Beacon Street, a fourth-floor condo with the Public Garden, the Common, the library and the theater district all within a stroll. She had converted a large bedroom into a reading room with two club chairs and three walls of books, as many in German as in English, some in French. A smaller room was her sanctuary for writing, her portable typewriter abandoned for a word processor, which Gordon had urged her to try.
Older than she by ten years and shorter by three inches, Gordon was her upstairs neighbor and a professor of humanities at Boston University. His usual attire was a blazer and bow tie. When carrying a book bag, he resembled a remarkably neat child. Sitting in one of her club chairs and sipping cappuccino, he said, ‘Nothing to show me?’
He was a frequent reader of chunks of her writings. At present she was at the start of a novel in which she was the protagonist. Her purpose was to rescript her life and give herself better lines and a more forceful part, but today she had written nothing.
‘Too busy seeing people,’ she explained from deep within the matching chair, ‘including my shrink.’
‘Is the dear man helping you?’
‘He’s in love with me.’
‘So am I, in my fashion.’
They exchanged smiles. Each was comfortable and caring with the other. When one had a cold, the other delivered soup.
Gordon appreciated her wit, she admired his learning. Sundays they brunched at the Ritz. Her company, he told her, gave him height. He escorted her to the theater and to the movies. Each wept when Debra Winger died in Terms of Endearment.
‘Never not be in love with me,’ she said.
‘Not to worry.’
Studying her over the rim of his cup, he remembered when she moved in some seven years ago and answered his knock wearing a sleeveless top. He introduced himself with a bottle of wine. When she accepted it, he glimpsed hair in her underarms and thought her wonderfully natural. Now he thought of her as an indoor flower vulnerable to direct sunlight.
‘More cappuccino?’ she asked.
‘I’m fine.’ He squinted. ‘But you’re not.’
‘Yes, I am. Would you like to hear some music?’ Gordon knew the music she meant. Her mother had loved American jazz, and her father, she’d been told, had favored Sinatra and certain big bands. Their tastes dominated hers.
‘No music,’ he said. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’
‘Just the mood I’m in. One day carries no proof there’ll be another. We take it on faith.’
‘Certainties don’t exist, you know that.’
‘They did when I was little, very little.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have grown up.’
She frowned. ‘Why did you?’
‘Pure curiosity. Otherwise I wouldn’t have.’
‘I’m glad you did.’ Her eyes filled.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m happy.’
‘You don’t look it.’
‘Joy and sorrow,’ she said. ‘In German, they sound much closer. Liebe und Leid. Easy for one to bleed into the other, and they often do.’
He looked at his watch, time to leave. He had an early class in the morning. They carried their empty cappuccino cups into the kitchen, where he took hers, rinsed both out and placed them in the dishwasher. Then he smiled. ‘I’d make a great spouse, wouldn’t I?’
‘I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, Gordon.’ She walked him to the door and, opening it, kissed his cheek. ‘Promise me something.’
‘Anything.’
‘Swear you won’t get AIDS.’
Elsa rose early, ensconced herself at the word processor and composed the synopsis of a story she’d been mulling for some time. She printed it out, read it over slowly and shivered. An hour later, she met a friend for breakfast at the Parker House.
‘Thanks for taking the time, Rachelle.’
The waiter served Elsa eggs Benedict, Rachelle only toast.
Elsa dug in. Rachelle, nibbling, said, ‘I still hate you.’
They’d been roommates at Wellesley, where Rachelle’s weight had fluctuated radically. She was either gaining or losing while acquiring no fixed shape of her own. At present she was in her hefty mode.
‘You look great,’ Elsa said.
‘No, you do. I know exactly what I look like. What did you want to see me about?’
‘My writing.’
‘How did I guess?’ Rachelle was an editor at Little, Brown. ‘I’ll give you my standard speech. The bare bones of all stories have been rattled since we first began spinning tales. It’s language that keeps stories going, that refreshes and renews them. Language is a breathing thing, forever changing, shifting meanings, creating hues, adding nuances. That’s your strength, Elsa. You write beautiful prose.’
‘Then why did you reject my manuscript?’
‘Let me finish. I read every word of it. You compose a sentence in the shape of a woman, full of grace and charm and flashes of intuition. A masculine sentence delivers the force of the obvious, but yours carries the delight of the unexpected.’
Elsa dabbed her mouth with a napkin. ‘I’m waiting for the other shoe.’
Rachelle pointed. ‘Are you going to finish that?’
‘It’s yours.’ Elsa shoved her plate forward. ‘Okay, let it drop.’
‘This is delicious.’
‘Rachelle. Please!’
‘Your stuff is too introspective, too airtight. How to put this? Your stories are like hothouse tomatoes. The outdoor taste is lacking. Am I offending you?’
‘No. Go on.’
‘There’s no plot and little movement. And too many of your stories have a vague father figure lurking in the background, more a ghost than a character.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Now you’re angry.’
‘No. I anticipated the criticism.’ Elsa reached into her bag and extracted a folded sheet of paper. Unfolding it, she passed it over to Rachelle. ‘Read this. It’ll take only a minute.’
‘What is it?’ Rachelle donned glasses.
‘Synopsis of something I’ve started.’
Rachelle started scanning it and stopped halfway down. Returning to the beginning, she knitt
ed her brow and read it slowly and carefully to the end. Then she shivered. ‘Jesus, Elsa, where did this come from?’
‘I could make it a short story or work it into a novel. Whatever would feel right.’
Rachelle said nothing.
‘It’s about the unthinkable.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Would Little, Brown be interested?’
Rachelle folded the paper and returned it. ‘I don’t think so, Elsa.’
Behind the wheel of her seldom-used red Toyota, Elsa drove under the speed limit on I-93, with an eye in the rear-view. Any glimpse of a state police cruiser terrorised her. The trip to Haverhill, usually under an hour, took longer than she had planned. The rehab clinic was located near Lake Saltonstall, known to natives as Plug Pond. Flowers, some slain by careless feet, followed a walkway to the entrance. Inside, she knew her way around. Her uncle had a private room with a wide window overlooking a garden. At the open door she could hear the noon news. Peering in, she said, ‘Hello, Uncle Edward.’
Pivoting in a bedside chair, he said, ‘Come in, come in, Elsa. It was just on the news. Count Basie died. He was one of your father’s favorites.’
‘I know.’ She looked down at a large round man wearing a Japanese robe of calligraphic patterns. ‘My mother told me.’
He used a remote to turn off the television. She knew he expected a kiss on the cheek, but she could not bring herself to do it. Instead she drew up a chair and said, ‘How are you doing?’
‘Hard to say. We’re all temporary, Elsa. It’s mortality that gives life value. Immortality would flood the market and I’d be a poor man.’
‘But you’re not, Uncle Edward. You’re rich.’
He smiled with a sigh. ‘But how much control do we have over our lives? Even the wealthy worry about cancer.’
‘You beat yours.’
‘It could come back. Your aunt thinks I’ll live for ever, stroke and all. That may not suit her.’
‘She’s not my aunt.’
‘A shame you two never got along. Your father’s fault. You look too much like him and Marion couldn’t get past that. It was a love-hate thing with her. Jack had that effect on people. God, I miss him.’
Elsa experienced a wave of anxiety. Her uncle had some time ago given her a graduation picture of her father, Haverhill High, class of 1950. In the picture her father stood tall and smiled broadly, as if his world would never end. Quickly she said, ‘Are you comfortable here, Uncle Edward?’