“Arthur!” I yelled again. “I didn’t tell you the truth about that boy who tried to commit suicide—he didn’t. My father almost killed him, that’s what really happened. My father has a terrible temper.”
“That kid should’ve killed you, that’s what should have happened,” he growled.
Whirling away from the sofa, I dashed down the hall for the wide door, threw it open, and gasped. It was a dark, musty-smelling closet! There was another narrower door with four glass panes in its upper half on the opposite wall that couldn’t be seen from the living room. I leapt for it, but simultaneously Arthur leapt at me. We clashed just as I clutched the door’s brass knob.
How often in my life I’d felt like hitting someone, but I never did—except with Ben. When we were much younger, now and then one of us took a swat at the other and initiated a wrestling match. But those erratic explosions were governed by an unwritten, undiscussed set of rules: the one on his (or generally, her) back was the defeated and the opponent ceased and desisted; we could not cry for help or Fred would scurry to the scene and stop the battle, which imposed a measure of self-control on each assailant not to injure the other too severely. And after the first propelling anger had dissipated, either party could end the fight at any time by the traditional declaration, “I give up,” or the same idea camouflaged as a suggestion of something else to do.
Here, now, in this narrow hallway, there were no rules and no cry for help would be heard by anyone. As Arthur grabbed my left arm near the elbow with his right hand and pulled me away from the door, the animal that was me seized his swinging left hand with my right, shoved it in my mouth and bit into the soft cushion of the upper palm with the grip of an alligator.
A prolonged animal “Iuhh-uhh!” erupted out of his throat as his grip on my arm weakened. I bit deeper still. I bit till my upper and lower teeth were no more than a bone apart and I could taste the warm salt of blood. Only then, I released the hand, punched both my fists into the middle of his torso, causing him to lurch back, cradling his bleeding hand in front of his nose as he tried to examine it. His eyebrows were high, surprised, unbelieving. Funny almost—like that first appearance of puppet robbers or Aunt Catherine confronting lies or maybe me when I decided to be a woman of the world.
Despite his suddenly human response, I wasn’t sure the mind behind the eyes was in operating shape again, and I yanked open the door and slammed it closed from the outside.
“Soak it in cold water!” I yelled. “My father has a worse temper than mine!” And I broke into a gallop in the direction of the estate.
“Iuhh-uhh-ohhh,” he called back. “I hate you!”
Halfway to our house, I dropped to a jogging trot, slowed less by breathlessness than by an overwhelming a sense of failure. In the movies, the heroines resisted inevitable attacks on their virtue with a light slap on the face. They didn’t resort to references to their fathers or brothers. They didn’t get into fist fights and try to bite somebody’s hand off. A femme fatale should be capable of paralyzing an army with the lift of one disapproving eyebrow.
The night, three thirty in the morning, was black-dark, warm, and breezy. Each breeze sent shivers through me, and as I mourned my failure as a seductress, I gradually lost all touch with the mysterious place behind my eyes that, knowing the truth of what had almost happened, had roared.
All the lights were on in our living room—I could see them from a block away. Utter hopelessness retarded my steps as I tried to choose between the explanations that came to mind as to where I’d been and what I’d been doing during the last hour. I couldn’t explain to myself how an affair that was intended to have something to do with love had turned out more to do with murder, so I forgot about it. Then I braced myself to face my father’s quiet interrogation and Ben’s righteous indignation.
No one was in the lighted front rooms when I entered our house. Voices, muttering low, urgent, broken-off phrases, incomprehensible, but alarming in their tones, and a sound of strangled moaning that was even more alarming were coming from the back.
I swept through the kitchen to the full view through Fred’s open door: all three of the men in my life were in a position so foreign to any I could have imagined that for a wavering second, I almost laughed. My father, Fred, and Ben were all in their pajamas. My father was sitting on Fred’s bed, holding Fred on his lap, rocking him to and fro as if he were a baby.
Fred’s glasses weren’t on. His hands were clasped together, and shaking, in his own lap. His bare feet dangled and kicked spasmodically, in rhythm with the motion of the rocking.
Ben, kneeling before them by the side of the bed, was trying to catch one foot, then the other, and when he was successful, he rubbed the pale, white skin with his hands with a circular movement.
“Hold on, hold on,” was what my father was saying in a sing-song chant as he swung Fred backward and forward.
It was Fred who was moaning, also in rhythm with the rocking. At the end of each moan, he said, clearly, “Hold me; hold me.”
My father held him tighter. The rocking, the moaning, the rubbing, the repeated plea, went on for another minute as I stood stricken and hardly breathing at the doorway.
Once Ben looked up, straight at me, without pausing in his massaging, and didn’t appear to care that I was there or not.
As I watched, Fred’s clasped hands flew apart with force enough to undo my father’s protective arms and Ben’s grasp on one foot, and Fred fell to the floor. He gasped once with a great tremor, seemed to hold his breath for an elongated moment, and finally breathed again quietly.
What I remember after that is disconnected, the way only brilliant fragments are recalled out of a long nightmare. A man with a doctor’s satchel came. Without asking who he was, I led him back to Fred’s room. He spent a long time in there. He told us that Fred was to be moved to a hospital and he made a telephone call. Two other men arrived and carried Fred out of the house on a stretcher; they didn’t bump into a wall or a doorframe on the way out. My father followed them, leaving Ben and me by ourselves. We waited and waited, not speaking to each other very much. And when we did speak, it was with the cool politeness of strangers.
It had been daylight for quite some time when my father returned. He looked tired, but unmistakably happy.
“It was a bad attack,” he said with an incomprehensible smile. “But it was lucky. A warning. He’s going to be all right.”
“When? When will he be back?” we wanted to know.
My father’s smile disappeared. “He needs several weeks of complete rest—then, partial rest. He won’t be back—with us.”
Before Ben or I could question this, he said emphatically, “But the point is, he’s going to be all right. The doctor assured me. He’ll have to go home…”
“Home?” I cried. Fred’s home was our home.
“To his maiden cousin in Wales,” said my father. “His destination every time he threatened to leave all these years.” My father smiled again. “But you should have heard the protest he put up when he heard the doctor and me talking about it. Even under sedation, he made a frightful squeal. When I realized what he was thinking, I said, ‘Fred, you know you won’t rest with us. Would you rather take a chance on dying?’
“He said, ‘I might die, sir. That’s what I think.’ I said, ‘But not soon, if you go to your cousin’s.’ Nevertheless, the son-of-a-gun insisted that I look over his will.”
With us trailing along, my father took an old leather briefcase from Fred’s closet, brought it to the dining room table, and opened it. From it, he withdrew a thin letter and three large, brown paper envelopes.
One contained a clipped-together stack of French francs. Another had a bunch of United Kingdom pound notes. The fattest held a thick stack of pre-war German marks. My father didn’t add them up. “He never did believe we weren’t going back,” he commented as he unfolded the letter. It was dated ten years before, and he read it to us. (I have it on my desk now.)
&n
bsp; The last Will and Testament of Frederick Straun Holly. I hereby bequeath all monies to be divided equally between my cousin, Elizabeth Holly Hooks, Benjamin Briard, and Lucresse Briard. All personal effects to same. Except for my chauffeur’s habit, including visored cap, in which it is my wish that my body be dressed for burial. It is my earnest desire that the site of said burial be beside the grave of Mr. Walter Briard, wherever that may be, if such is at all possible…
My father looked up in astonishment. “Why…he always assumed that I’d go first! The son-of-a-gun!”
“Is Fred younger than you?” Ben asked.
“He’d never say. But I think he’s three or four years older.” My father resumed reading.
…At the time of my demise, should the remains of the aforementioned Mr. Walter Briard have been cremated, as Mr. Briard has voiced a preference for rather than for a decent burial, I herein implore those in concern to please try to arrange a resting place for me in a cemetery near the scene of said cremation. I humbly suggest, in such circumstances, that a clergyman of any faith might be of assistance, even though one with whom my legatees (herein named) have had no previous contact may prove to be a bit sticky. Therefore, I beg that they consider this second suggestion—that they offer the available man of the cloth whatever monetary gratuity necessary, to be taken from the monies of my estate, for the accomplishment of said service.
“Ho!” my father exploded, and we all burst out laughing.
We laughed until Ben lay across the table, heaving, and my father held his head in his hands. I doubled up on my chair, my knees pressed into my chest as my laughter became painful.
Then, all at once, though the pain didn’t stop, I wasn’t laughing anymore. I was crying. “But Fred isn’t going to die, is he?” I sobbed.
“No,” my father consoled me, not laughing anymore either. “Not for many years, I hope—if he spends them quietly at Miss Hooks’s.”
There seemed no reason to cry, and nothing we could say. Though we were trying, none of us could imagine life without Fred.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
PASSAGE
The maid from the big house came in to clean ours and cook our meals during what felt like weeks that Fred was in the hospital. Her food was too neat and skimpy compared to his. We felt that our eating inflicted a willful injustice on the woman.
Fred was released—thinner, paler, resigned to the future the doctor decreed for him.
My father announced plans in a charged, determined manner. He could no longer take his time with individual clients. He wanted to be available to as many of them as possible at the same time. New York was the capital of the art objects world—he knew many people there—he didn’t know why we hadn’t gone there to live years before. On the telephone, he bought a house overlooking the Hudson River, forty miles north of the city.
He and Ben, and he and Fred had nagging arguments about the car. Ben wanted to take Fred’s place at the wheel for the trip. Fred wanted to take his own place. And my father said he’d sooner learn to drive himself in the next few days than trust either one of them to get us and his velvet-lined satchel to New York.
Fred gave in, Ben fumed, and my father donated the old Buick to his friends in the big house—to use, sell, or junk—and he bought train tickets. The funny thing was, we all really wanted to fly, but we knew we’d have more time together on the train.
Once again, everything in the house was packed. But there was a difference this time that disturbed my usual detached equanimity about the proceedings: all Fred’s belongings, including his old leather briefcase and its contents, were going with him on the train, and from it to a ship, to cross the Atlantic. And he wouldn’t be with us at the new house to oversee the unpacking of everything else.
On the way to the railroad station, packed into a taxi, we passed Arthur Frith’s house. His two elderly supervisors must have come home, for he was sweeping the flagstone path in front, the one that had served as my escape route the night of Fred’s, and my, attacks. Arthur glanced up and, involuntarily, I waved to him. He did not wave back.
My glance shifted to Fred, in front with the driver, and I burst into tears. “I don’t know why…don’t know how…it’ll be…” I whispered helplessly to my father.
“No one knows how life will be,” he said. And, as Ben turned around inquisitively from the jump seat, “There’s no rehearsal for living—or leaving.”
CHAPTER NINE:
WINDING HILL
When anyone asks me where I’m from, to save time, and because we lived there the longest, I say Winding Hill. Only once has anyone asked me what it was like there—a dreamy taxi driver in Milan when I was in my late twenties. To save time, again, since I was in a hurry to get to whatever was next—in that instance, the airport—I quipped that it was just a really old river town. “Ah,” he said, “like Firenze.”
Winding Hill was nothing like Firenze. There were differences—differences between Winding Hill and all the other places we’d lived. In ways, Winding Hill was the queerest, among civic anomalies. It was a carefully preserved residential oasis sprawling across the hills between two small, heavily industrial towns to its north and south. From almost any acre of it, you could see the river; the richer the householder, the higher on a hill was his house, and the more of the river he could see.
It was a worried community. The citizens worried about real estate developers attempting to buy large tracts from the estates of deceased Winding Hillers and putting up twenty-of-a-kind contemporary structures among the half-century-old houses. They worried about getting to the train to Manhattan in the mornings; morose husbands were sped to the station by tense-faced wives in a matinal ritual that made narrow, treacherous Winding Hill Road look like a speedway from its top to its bottom where it merged into the station platform at the river’s edge.
They worried about what they called the “new people”—residents of fewer than ten years, some of whom had built houses with inch-thick fieldstone facades meant to resemble the older fortress-like houses, and others who bought old places through the executors of former occupants’ estates. Those houses were still referred to by the names of the original owners.
We had the “Welch” house, which we rechristened the “noisy” house. Our name was a triumph of accuracy. Fifteen minutes after we arrived, we understood why, though it had been on the market for several years, no prospective buyer who had seen it had purchased it until my father told a realtor on the telephone that he’d take it, sight unseen—and, as it happened, unheard—provided we could move in immediately.
It was a stark, square, white stone building with twenty rooms—ten huge and ten tiny—set on a plateau halfway up Winding Hill Road, like an enormous headstone. Happily, its neighbors were all more than three acres removed. For there wasn’t a faucet one could turn on without an ear-shattering response from the innards. A quarter- turn brought a harsh, low growl accompanied by a shrill wheeze that went up and up until its hissing decibels mercifully escaped the human ear. A full revolution provoked a violent crescendoing choking, clanging, and beating coughing spell, suggestive of a pair of armies clashing in medieval warfare. The flush of a toilet produced an even fiercer riot; it made one imagine that the implacable granite exterior walls were about to collapse. All the doors scraped or wheezed or whistled or squeaked; the kitchen’s outside screen door was an odd one—it howled and squealed pathetically on the out-swing, but closed without so much as a whisper.
Rarely was there a quiet moment once we moved in, and the series of cleaning women and part-time cooks who passed in and out within the space of two weeks was dizzying. These people were distinctly individual souls with only one characteristic in common: they were all, for different reasons, unqualified to fill Fred’s shoes. My father began to appreciate Fred’s abilities more than he ever had before.
One woman, Tenny, had a mental block against laundry. She disappeared after my father found all of his shirts, abandoned in a heap, tied together by on
e shirt’s sleeves and apparently hurled down the steps to the dank, dark cellar. Agnes was a stickler for routine; for her three-day tenure, she put dinner on the table at seven o’clock sharp whether my father was ready to eat or not. Mrs. Saalig was a brooding type who insisted upon being called Mrs. Saalig, which would have been quite all right except that she also insisted upon calling my father Walter and making the living room her salon in which she entertained him during her two days of service while the dinners burned. Mrs. Bellamy, who came and left just as swiftly, enjoyed an austere prejudice against food in general. Fresh fruit and vegetables were “contaminated,” fowl and desserts were too fattening. Acceptable (to us) portions of anything acceptable (to her) were bad for the stomach juices.
At this same time, my father and I took turns answering Aunt Catherine’s sudden and uncustomary flurry of correspondence. Ben disqualified himself from this duty by insisting he might say the wrong thing to her. Before we left Chicago, my father had informed her of Fred’s attack and departure, and her first letter was waiting for us when we arrived in Winding Hill. In increasingly hysterical handwriting, she explained that she only wished she were “free to come keep house for you all, now that you don’t have somebody to keep things going right the way they should be for growing youngsters anymore.” This was followed the next week by a second letter, apparently mailed the day after the first, nearly screaming her remorse at our dire situation. Since my father had responded to the first letter, at my turn, I filled three pages, in larger than my normal handwriting, by telling her not to worry, I loved Winding Hill, (I didn’t dislike it as I had our Chicago suburb, so that didn’t seem too sizable an exaggeration), that I had made new friends again, (not really an “L-I-E” because school was to start in a few weeks, and I would have the opportunity to do so), and Tenny and Agnes and Mrs. Saalig and Mrs. Bellamy took up a page and a half. I was just being informative, but it seems my descriptions fanned Aunt Catherine’s fears even more, and her third response was a long telegram announcing that if there was one thing about her that was a true fact, it was that she knew where her duty lay, she had always been the more responsible of Jen and herself, and that she would arrive the following Thursday to help set our new house in order.
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