“Well of course Father always had a tree when he was here for Christmas but he always had a giant thing, huge, twenty or more feet high, it stood in the ballroom so you can imagine. … It hasn’t been used in years, of course. Anyway, we were sure the old stand wouldn’t work for the little one we bought, it’s only about eight feet high, isn’t it darling, Elizabeth was so picky about it, look how sweet it is, so nicely balanced and full. There are tons of ornaments around here somewhere, but we thought the lights might be old and corroded, so we bought new ones, tiny white ones that twinkle, aren’t they sweet? and of course we needed fresh tinsel. So we stopped in town to get all this stuff, and it was so quaint, wasn’t it, Elizabeth? All the houses had lights or wreaths, all so beautifully decorated, even the stores, and people knew us and greeted us, it was quite lovely, wasn’t it?”
Mary was pink and fresh-smelling, she flitted from one set of packages to another, she ordered Aldo to leave the tree on the front steps under the portico—“for now”—and to carry the rest of the things inside—“those things go up to my room, Aldo, yes all of them, make two trips my dear, it’s too much to carry all at once,” and Aldo, blanching at the “my dear,” dropped one of her suitcases and she didn’t even scold him, although it was one of her crocodile cases.
Elizabeth was quieter, but she too glowed, hugged Ronnie hard, talked. “We’ve never done this before, you know? Father always had the gardeners cut a tree from out back, it was a major undertaking, they needed saws and ropes and it took a couple of days to cut it and then put it up. And the servants decorated it, they had to stand on a ladder to do it, then when everything was done, we would be brought into the ballroom all dressed up to ooh and ah, but it was impersonal, it had nothing to do with us, and they always had some sort of ball or party that night, Christmas Eve. And the presents heaped around it, there were enough to stock a small shop I swear …” Her voice drifted off. Then she burst out, “Well, this tree will go into the playroom and we’ll decorate it ourselves, what a treat!”
When they had changed their clothes, they joined Ronnie in the playroom. She had already started a fire in the old stone fireplace, had already had Mrs. Browning set up a drinks tray for them, and was sitting there in her jeans and sweatshirt holding a wine spritzer, with a big grin on her face. Amazingly, not just Elizabeth but Mary came down in pants and a sweater—granted, both were probably from some designer, but Mary had never dressed so informally before. They went straight to the bar, poured drinks—a scotch for Elizabeth, vermouth cassis for Mary—and threw themselves on the comfortable armchairs with an abandon Ronnie felt certain they never showed elsewhere.
“Oh! This is so good!” Elizabeth sighed.
“Maybe we should hold on to this house,” Mary said wistfully. “For things like this—Christmas, Thanksgiving.” She turned to Ronnie. “Did Marie-Laure call?”
Ronnie shook her head.
Mary frowned. “Strange. She should have. I think her school let out on Wednesday. I don’t even know how to reach her.” A little pall settled on her face.
“So tell me what you’ve been doing,” Ronnie urged.
Elizabeth lighted a cigarette. “Mostly cleaning up my desk. This is a slow time in D.C., all the elected officials go home for the holidays, it’s not a time for policymaking. Especially since Reagan won with such a huge vote: that tells the guys that people don’t want anything to change.” She sighed lightly.
“Beyond that, I haven’t done much. I did look at a couple of houses in Virginia over the weekend,” she said, turning to Mary. “One of them was really beautiful—it had a Japanese garden out back and ten acres of land. It was in Falls Church.”
“Ummm. Missy Cambrowe lives in Falls Church,” Mary mused.
Elizabeth’s face brightened with hope, but Mary changed the subject, turning to Ronnie.
“And what about you? How’s the dissertation going?”
“Oh, slowly. But it’s going. I’ve collated most of my research. Now I have to get back to the books. What’s left is mostly methodical, painstaking work. The intelligence—if there is any—shows in the way I gathered the research. So it goes slowly. But I’m working.”
“Good. This house in Falls Church has four bedrooms, each with its own bath. They’re not as big as the bedrooms in this house, but they’re a decent size. And enough for all of us!” Elizabeth added, looking at Mary.
Mary met her eyes briefly, then looked away.
“And what about you?” Ronnie asked.
“Oh, I haven’t done anything, really. Nothing different.” Mary gazed at the fire. “Actually, I just picked up where I left off—only paying the bills this time. Same old life.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Yes. I guess it is.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it.”
“No,” Mary admitted slowly. “No. It lacks … something.”
Elizabeth fixed her eyes on Mary.
“We were all so … we could say what we thought to each other. Even if it was vicious, full of venom. We could be ourselves. It was so … liberating, so … I felt like a real person. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like a real person for any extended period in my life before.”
“I’ve missed you all too,” Elizabeth admitted ruefully. “Very much. I’d get home after work, well, after dinner, I usually eat out, and I’d walk around my apartment talking away, telling you all—well, things you wouldn’t be interested in, what a bastard Arthur Gilliam is, how sweet Jim Mangdoni doesn’t have a chance at Treasury and why, and all the convoluted disgusting politics of the place. They’re sending me off on an arm-twisting mission soon after the first of the year. Ten days, six countries, endless cups of tea, tact and diplomacy masking the threat of economic force. My face is tired when I come back from these things. I used to look forward to them, they were such a challenge. But now—I don’t know—they seem sort of pointless.”
“Would you consider giving up your job?” Mary wondered.
“Give up my job? I’d die!”
“You could teach economics in some nice college. Some pretty school in a pretty town, like Princeton. Get away from all the politics, the infighting.”
“No place is more infested with politics than academia. And of the pettiest sort.”
“There’s no escape, is there,” Mary said wistfully. “Listening to my friends this past—what, two weeks?—I keep hearing how petty they are, how ingrown their concerns. And you know, they don’t talk much about politics, but under the surface it’s their major concern. They always have to be somehow in touch with the people with the power. And they have to let you know they are, that they have an invitation from Helmut or François or Margaret or Nancy. Going back after Father’s death—well, everyone knew I was rich again, they just knew it—and the phone rang and rang, and the invitations piled up, and oh! the names that got dropped, all those names. …
“Once, that pleased me. I took it as a testimony to my own power. Now … I don’t know what happened to me here. I feel my stay here ruined me in a way.” Her face was sober, thoughtful, not petulant.
No one spoke. The fire crackled, a log fell, and Ronnie got up to fix it. When she finished, she—as usual—wiped her sooty hands on the sides of her jeans and sat down again. She sipped her drink. She gazed at Mary. “Are you sorry?”
Mary flushed, shook her head so her hair flew around. “No. No. I’m not. I’m sorry I can’t get pleasure from something that used to give me pleasure, but …”—she set down her drink hard on the table beside her—“I just wish I knew what would give me pleasure now!”
“But you do know,” Elizabeth said with surprise.
“What?”
“Being with us.”
25
WHEN MARY CAME DOWN for coffee Sunday morning, Ronnie and Elizabeth were still sitting at the breakfast table, and she smiled with delight when Ronnie exclaimed, “I don’t believe it! You in jeans?”
“Well, we’re going
to put up the tree, aren’t we? I always dress for the occasion, and jeans seemed right for the occasion. I bought them specially in a place on Second Avenue that sells sportswear, a store where no one knew me. Things there were really cheap. I never knew clothes were that inexpensive.” She posed for them, turned around. “Tell me the truth. Am I too broad in the rear for them? What do you think?”
“You’ve got a great shape,” Elizabeth said appraisingly.
“Really, Lizzie? You’re not putting me on?”
“No. Shapely is the word.”
“Ronnie?”
“The accurate word.” She smiled.
“Not too shapely?”
“Such distinctions depend on the eye of the beholder,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes. Yes. Okay.”
She slid into a chair and poured coffee into a cup.
“Did you have breakfast in bed?”
“Yes. Just want a second cup of coffee. I’m dieting anyway, I hardly eat any breakfast now. I just had a slice of that wonderful Italian bread toasted, with a little butter and Mrs. Browning’s wonderful raspberry jam.”
“You look thinner.”
“Really!” She was pleased. “I’ve lost six pounds. I plan to lose fifteen. I’m not aiming for the anorexic look, just to lose the bulbous one,” she laughed.
“You’ve made a good start.”
Cheered, Mary was the organizer this morning. “Okay, first we have to find the Christmas ornaments. Where would they be?” she asked Ronnie. “The attic?”
“Probably. I’ll go up with you.”
“Why don’t we all go? We’ll all have to help carry them down,” Elizabeth said.
So they all climbed up to the attic, and Ronnie, who had some memory of helping Noradia put the ornaments away, found them in a corner along with a giant tree stand and boxes and boxes of lights.
“So many lights! Shall we put some outside?”
“Why,” Elizabeth shrugged. “We’re not having guests.”
“Just for ourselves! It would look so cheery! I’ll ask Aldo to do it.”
“The groundsmen usually did it, but they’re all off until spring,” Ronnie said. “But”—her voice dropped to its boyish register—“I could probably do it.”
“I’ll help you!” Elizabeth said enthusiastically.
So they spent most of the day in trial-and-error setting up of the tree (whose trunk Ronnie had to saw to fit the holder), attaching lights to the tree and to two tall laurel bushes in front of the house, and then hanging the ornaments, many of them extremely old and delicate. They chatted desultorily throughout their work, easy together, their conversation alternating between affection and sarcasm but never breaking into argument. By the time they hung the tinsel, they were drinking eggnog, and got a little silly, tossing tinsel at each other, into each other’s hair. At last they fell laughing into chairs, admiring the tree, the ornaments, their handiwork.
The tree crowded the room, which was crowded already, and Elizabeth decided they should fold up the Ping Pong table, which they never used anyway, and slide it into a closet. This took considerable figuring out and effort, and they were tired when they were through, but all at once the room looked lovely—the great stone fireplace, the tree fronting bookcases in the corner, the overstuffed chairs in a circle that included both. Dim light still glowed through the glass doors to the terrace.
They all sighed at once.
They had given Mrs. Browning and Teresa the day off, deciding to eat out. As the time to dress approached, Mary grew subdued.
“I wonder what happened to Marie-Laure.”
Then, later: “Suppose she comes while we’re out?”
“We could leave a note and a key for her.”
“I did want to be here to welcome her. She hasn’t been here in a couple of years. …”
“She would have called if she were coming, wouldn’t she?” Elizabeth asked impatiently.
“Do you want to stay home? We can rummage in the fridge,” Ronnie suggested.
“No, no, we’ll go.”
They went up to dress for dinner, meeting in the foyer at seven-thirty. Ronnie appeared last, her color high, and her breath short with excitement. Both sisters did a double take; both exclaimed. She was wearing black wool pants and a pale blue silk shirt, with a royal blue embroidered vest and black low-heeled shoes.
“Ronnie! You look wonderful!” Mary cried.
“Decided to get out of uniform, huh?” Elizabeth commented dryly.
Ronnie just grinned.
Aldo had to drive them; the Alfa would not hold the three of them. As he let them out in front of the restaurant, Ronnie’s tension level rose. But there was no trouble in the restaurant. It was a slightly pretentious old inn, homey in appearance but formal in service. Ronnie had never been in such a place before in her life. She’d been to expensive restaurants with Susan, but they were all in Boston, a cosmopolitan place used to varied combinations and colors of people. But this was a countryish place with stained wood beams in the low ceiling, used to catering to the respectable white couples who inhabited this area. Yet the maître d’ did not look startled by her, none of the waiters or customers looked at her strangely. No one stared at the darkskinned woman eating with the two white ones. It was all right. Could it just be her clothes? Or was the world not what she had thought it?
Their delight at being out together was marred only by Mary’s anxiety about Marie-Laure. There wasn’t even an argument about the check: Elizabeth insisted on getting it and merely patted Ronnie’s hand when she tried to pay her share. Since Mary just said, “Fine, thanks, Lizzie,” and Mary had inherited millions, Ronnie decided to let it be.
But as she lay in bed that night staring at the ceiling, she wondered if she had created a totally false picture of the world she lived in. She tried out different scenarios: suppose she had showed up with another dark-skinned woman? She sensed that there would be no problem in that restaurant as long as they were properly dressed. If she’d worn jeans, they might have refused to seat her. Or suppose she’d shown up with someone like Corrinne D’Almay with her wild hair and flowing clothes, her overwhelming number of necklaces and rings. They might have stared, but they probably would have seated them. But they would balk at a white boy in jeans. What it was was that standards varied greatly in the world: in an expensive restaurant, only dress and money mattered. That would not be the case when she went to find a job. It wasn’t that she had built a paranoid vision, it was that she had made it more total than it was. It existed: but it did not encompass her. Somehow, that thought consoled her, and she turned on her side and slept.
Monday was filled with activity—the sisters had offered Mrs. Browning their services as sous-chefs, and while she accepted tentatively, in the end she was glad of their help. They could fetch and carry, they learned to load and unload the dishwasher—Elizabeth did it even better than Browning herself, she admitted; they managed to learn where utensils were kept. They could be trusted to stir a sauce, if not to beat a salad dressing.
They were preparing two meals at once—a buffet dinner for that night, which Doris would set out and clean up, so Mrs. Browning and Teresa could spend Christmas Eve with their families, and a formal dinner for the next day, when Alex would arrive, “and Marie-Laure, I hope,” Mary said wistfully. So there was a fresh ham to be baked (“Will Alex eat that?” Ronnie asked; “Oh, I think so,” Mary said. “Didn’t she eat ham while we were here?” “Well, there’s plenty of other stuff,” Elizabeth pointed out) and a roast beef, with a leg of lamb already larded with garlic for the next day; there were seviche for tonight and escargots en croûte for tomorrow, nine vegetables (four of them white) and a melted goat cheese salad with arugula (Elizabeth’s one specialty), and a salad of greens and white beans and red peppers (roasted by Ronnie). Mrs. Browning made the two pies and finished the torte she had begun days earlier. The work took all of them the entire day but even Mrs. Browning and Teresa enjoyed it. These two ladies were sh
ocked when Mary insisted on playing music, very loudly, on the tape player she had brought with her: they weren’t used to music while they worked, and certainly not to the dancing that kept breaking out. There was much laughter in the kitchen that day.
It was after four when the doorbell rang. They stared at each other. Doorbells did not ring often in this house, certainly not the front doorbell. Teresa straightened her cap and apron and went to the door, returning to the women waiting in the kitchen with the news that Miss di Cenci was at the door.
“Marie-Laure!” Mary cried, and ran out to the foyer without even removing her heavy white coverall apron.
The sisters stood in the kitchen, uncertain about how long to allow Mary to welcome her child, how long an absence would appear rude on their part. Eventually, Elizabeth pushed open the swinging door and walked toward the foyer. Ronnie followed her.
Mary was talking wildly (“So good to see you, it’s been so long, I didn’t know where you were, I called everywhere, where were you? I wasn’t sure you were coming”) while embracing a slim stiff figure with long straight hair, who held one arm loosely around her mother’s back; the other hung down at her side. She stared at the figures gathered behind Mary, and Mary turned.
“Marie-Laure, you know your aunt Elizabeth, you remember her from the funeral, and Grandad’s eightieth birthday party. And all the Fourth of July parties.”
In fact, the two had barely talked over all those years.
The girl held out her hand, smiled graciously, a learned smile. “Yes, of course, how good to see you again,” she said in rounded formal tones.
Christ, Ronnie thought.
“And this is your aunt Ronnie. You’ve never met her, but she’s our youngest sister.”
The girl stared at Ronnie, smiled stiffly, and said, “How do you do.”
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