Love Among the Walnuts

by Jean Ferris

  After a quick visit to see his parents, Flossie, Attila, and Louie (who stayed at Walnut Manor all the time now but wasn't allowed to leave the sickroom for fear of L. Barlow Van Dyke, the cat molester), Sandy always had a visit with Sunnie. Usually she read to him, something he could hardly listen to because he was so absorbed in watching her rosy lips forming the words. And she talked to him, telling him stories of her life, sharing bits from her readings, expressing her opinions on all manner of things. And asking him his.

  Sandy was dismayed at the number of times he had to say "I don't know" when she asked him what he thought. He was beginning to wonder if, for all his educational advantages, he actually ever had thought.

  After his engrossing, and often bewildering, time with Sunnie, he would go down to the library and play Monopoly with Mr. Moreland and L. Barlow Van Dyke. Boom-Boom and Everett, who weren't interested in finance, played gin rummy games at another table.

  L. Barlow Van Dyke had initiated some changes in the Monopoly game that gave them investment options beyond the usual hotels, houses, and railroads: He had made cards allowing them to buy and sell treasury bonds, gold, art, raw land, and pork belly futures.

  "Pork belly futures?" Sandy asked, laughing, sure that they were playing a joke on him.

  "Don't ever laugh about money," Mr. Moreland said severely. "Pork belly futures are as good a way to increase capital as anything."

  "Yes, sir," Sandy said, contrite. It seemed as if every day he discovered a new way in which he was ignorant.

  Just before lunch Sunnie would come downstairs, knowing that if anything changed with her patients, she would hear the bell Bentley had rigged to each of them. She'd put Mr. Moreland's vitamin pills and a glass of water next to the Monopoly board and move on before she had to listen to any of his imaginative cussing.

  Sometimes she sat with Virgil and Lyle, watching TV. She made them watch a few minutes a day of TV programs about the outside world: nature, travel, adventure programs.

  "Oh, please, Sunnie," they'd beg, agitated and fearful. "Turn back to Bowling for Dollars. This program is so ... so..." They never could say exactly what bothered them so much, but, clearly, they suffered. Sunnie tried only once to get them to watch the news. It took them several days, huddling together in front of Leave It to Beaver reruns, to recover.

  Sometimes she sat on a stool beside Eddy, talking to him about Louie or something she'd read or her mother the actress or her father the street juggler—the same sorts of things she talked to Sandy about each morning. Eddy never responded.

  But maybe the way he watched her, rapt and silent, was a response. Sandy thought that he himself must look that way when she talked to him. How he wanted to dazzle her the way she dazzled him, but he knew it was impossible. She must regard him as a child, a simpleton, a boob, the way he was coming to regard himself as he realized more and more how little he knew. Pork belly futures were the least of it.

  Sometimes Sunnie played games with Boom-Boom and praised him so lavishly that he smiled shyly around the thumb in his mouth and looked at her adoringly.

  While she was engaged in these activities, Mr. Moreland would toss down the handful of vitamins she'd left him and scowl his fanciest scowl at anyone who saw him do it, muttering, "Flotsam! Shinsplints!"

  Just before Opal came to call them to lunch, Sunnie sat on the arm of Sandy's chair as he bent over the Monopoly board, and he felt as if another light had been turned on in the room. Impetuously he gambled a chunk of his money on a long shot, an upstart biotechnology stock bought on margin, flaunting his new expertise like a twelve-year-old showing off on his bike.

  CHAPTER 13

  Competition was always keen as to who would get to sit next to Sunnie at the lunch table. On this day Graham and Dr. Waldemar won.

  Opal skated in from the kitchen on her dust mops, with a tureen of soup in her hands and an unlit cigarette in her mouth—she had reluctantly agreed with Sunnie that it was unsafe for her to smoke with oxygen tanks for the sleepers stored upstairs—then skated back to the kitchen for a platter of toasted cheese sandwiches. Outside the big windows, snow fell softly, covering the shuffleboard court and filling the empty pool.

  "I used to hate the snow when I was a little girl," Sunnie said, "because my mother was always out in it and I worried about her." She put a sandwich on her plate and one on Graham's, then gently took his hand and shook her head when he reached for another one. "But here it's so beautiful and peaceful, I feel completely different about it. Isn't it funny how I can change my mind like that? Do you know, I've never built a snow man? Have any of you? I know just how to do it. I've read all about it." She grabbed Graham's hand again as he made another attempt at getting an extra sandwich. "I know! We'll make one this afternoon, after I've tended to my sleepers. Yes, all of us; don't you look at each other that way, Virgil and Lyle. It's not as if I'm suggesting anything that will hurt you. It'll be fun, you'll see. Doing it yourself is better than watching someone else do it on TV. Stop scowling at me, Mr. Moreland and Mr. Van Dyke. I'll bet you can make wonderful snowmen. I think you should make snow tycoons and let them light their pipes with dollar bills." She stopped Graham's hand again and gave him a handful of carrot sticks from the relish tray instead. "It's important to keep moving. It always cheers you up to get some exercise."

  Suddenly the front door burst open, and Sandy, looking through the big, open dining-room doors and across the wide front hall, saw Bart and Bernie come in, beating the snow off their overcoats and leaving puddles on Opal's polished floor.

  "Ah," Bart said, starting across the hall with Bernie trailing him. "Dr. Waldemar?" He held his hand out to Mr. Moreland, who just looked at it.

  "I'm Dr. Waldemar," said the genuine article, standing up. "What can I do for you?"

  "I'm Bartholemew Huntington and this is my brother Bernard Ackerman. Our brother and sister-in-law, Horatio and Mousey Huntington-Ackerman, are patients here, and we've come to visit them."

  "No!" Sandy shouted, jumping to his feet.

  Every face at the table turned to Sandy. How could he deny his father and mother visitors? The rest of the inmates would love to have a visitor.

  "Don't let them anywhere near Mousey and Horatio. Flossie or Attila, either," Sandy said, coming around the table to stand almost nose to nose with Bart. His heart was pounding so hard he was almost sick—it was a way he'd never felt before in his life—but he would not let Bart and Bernie have another chance to hurt anybody he loved.

  "You can't keep us from seeing our own brother," Bart snarled.

  "That's what you think," Sandy snarled back, surprised that he knew how to snarl, since he'd never done it before.

  Dr. Waldemar looked helplessly from one to the other of them until Opal came skating out of the kitchen with a tray of dishes filled with rice pudding. She deposited her tray on the table and inserted herself between Sandy and Bart. Her cigarette poked Bart in the chin, and he took a step backward.

  "What's going on here?" Opal asked. "Who the heck are you two grizzly bears?"

  "I'm Mr. Horatio Alger Huntington-Ackerman's brother, and this"—he jerked his thumb at Bernie—"is his other brother. We've come to visit."

  "No visitors," Opal said.

  "What are you talking about?" Bart snarled again. "He's my brother."

  "No visitors. That's our policy with comatose patients," she said. "They're too delicate. Now beat it before I call the cops."

  "I can get a court order to see them," Bart said. "I've done it before."

  "Goody for you," Opal told him, jabbing him in the chest with her cigarette, which broke in two, half of it sticking to his damp overcoat.

  Bernie had already retreated to the front door, but Bart plucked off the broken cigarette, dropped it on the floor, crushed it with his foot, and kept glaring at her. She glared back.

  "We'll see about that," Bart said finally, and stalked to the door, slamming it behind him as he left.

  A ring of shocked faces around t
he lunch table looked at Sandy. Opal asked the question they all wanted the answer to: "How come you're so dead set against your uncles seeing your parents?"

  "Don't call them my uncles," Sandy said. "I don't want to be related to them in any way. They're attempted murderers."

  A gasp went around the table, but not from Opal. She picked up the broken cigarette, rubbed her dust-mopped foot on the spot it left on the floor, and said, "Yeah? Who'd they attempt?"

  "Mousey and Horatio and Flossie. I'm afraid I attempted Attila," Sandy said sadly, "but I didn't know the cake was poisoned when I gave it to her."

  "Huh?" Opal said, and so did everyone else at the table.

  So Sandy sat down and told them the whole story.

  When he'd finished, Opal put another unlit cigarette in her mouth and said, "We're going to have some more trouble with them. We'd better be prepared. Hey, Dr. Waldemar, wake up. We've got a problem here."

  Dr. Waldemar's chin rested on his chest and his breathing was heavy and regular.

  "Shoot," Opal said. "The guy's really slipping. Sometimes I think I ought to park him in an armchair in the library and run the place myself. Which I'm practically doing anyhow." She deposited her cigarette in a cup of rice pudding. "Well, OK. I believe you, kid. We've got to protect our sleepers. Too bad the fancy security system we used to have broke and we never fixed it. Any other suggestions?"

  Lyle and Virgil put their arms around each other and shivered. Graham took another rice pudding from the tray and started in on it, first making sure that Sunnie wasn't paying attention. Eddy, of course, didn't do anything, and Boom-Boom sucked furiously on his thumb. Mr. Moreland and Mr. Van Dyke looked at each other, frowning impressively in silent competition, to see who could come up with a suggestion.

  "We could hide them," Mr. Moreland said.

  L. Barlow Van Dyke made a strangling sound and shook his head.

  "Where?" Opal asked. "And what about all their gear?"

  "You've got a lot of buildings here, cottages and stables and stuff. Put them in one of those."

  L. Barlow Van Dyke's face was turning purple as he shook his head over and over.

  "Don't you think a court order would allow Bart and Bernie to search the outbuildings?" Sunnie asked.

  L. Barlow Van Dyke paled by a couple of shades and nodded smugly.

  "Oh, onion juice!" Mr. Moreland said. "I forgot about that."

  "We could say they had something contagious," Sandy suggested. "Then Bart and Bernie couldn't go near them."

  Sunnie threw her arms around him. "That's a wonderful idea. Bentley's so clever with his chemistry things. He could cook up something, I'm sure, to make them look sick. Or we could paint spots on them or something. That would keep Bart and Bernie away from them. But it's more important than ever that we get them to wake up. I have an idea of my own," she said, letting go of Sandy. "I think we should all spend more time up there with them. We have to bring them back into life, not keep them isolated. There's a fireplace in their room—I think we should have our after-dinner reading upstairs instead of in the library. Aren't you all tired of sitting around the library, anyway?"

  "Is there a TV?" Lyle asked, still clinging to Virgil.

  "No," Sunnie said. "Just real people. We'll start tonight, after we've had an afternoon out in the snow. You know, your unconscious works on a problem even when you're doing something else, so while we build our snow people we must all think about keeping our sleepers safe, and who knows what we'll come up with. Now let's go outside."

  Every head except Sandy's and Boom-Boom's was shaking from side to side, reluctance as thick in the air as Opal's cigarette smoke used to be. Graham took two more rice puddings from the tray.

  "No objections," Sunnie said sternly, returning Graham's puddings to the tray before he could take even one bite. "We're all going outside if I have to dress you up myself. You've got twenty minutes to get ready."

  "I want to go out," Boom-Boom said around his thumb.

  "Good," Sunnie said. "That shows how smart you are. You know what's good for you."

  Boom-Boom beamed.

  It was more like an hour before Sunnie got everyone, including Dr. Waldemar, bundled up and out the door to the backyard, but she did it. She herded them ahead of her like a flock of recalcitrant sheep, with Sandy and Boom-Boom as the enthusiastic sheepdogs, pulling Eddy's cart and keeping everyone else in line.

  Dr. Waldemar, after messing around with a pile of snow for a few minutes, decided it was too cold for him and went inside. Lyle and Virgil tried to follow him, and so did L. Barlow Van Dyke and Mr. Moreland. But Sunnie stopped them. She said Dr. Waldemar was the boss and the oldest—heavens, he must be eighty—and so he had special privileges. The four men turned around but not without grumbling, at least from three of them. Mr. Van Dyke contributed a virtuoso scowl.

  An hour later the yard was populated with a crowd of snow people. Mr. Van Dyke and Mr. Moreland had made two rotund snow tycoons facing each other, their round tummies touching. They each smoked a corncob pipe—goodness only knew where Opal had found them—stuffed with Monopoly money. Lyle and Virgil made identical snowmen, so close together it was impossible to tell where one left off and the other began. Boom-Boom's creation was a snow woman with a snow child tucked into her side. All of Graham's snowmen were slender—with wide shoulders—wonderfully sculpted, and hardened into ice with water he'd brought in a pitcher from the kitchen. Sunnie and Opal between them made a throng of people, in a multitude of shapes, sizes, and genders. Sunnie even made a few four-footed snow creatures of pet size. Opal's figures tended to be less rounded than Sunnie's, but they definitely had energy and originality. She stuck cigarettes in all her snow people's mouths, and Sunnie went around taking them out. Everett didn't make any snow people of his own, but he helped everyone else with theirs. Poor Eddy didn't do anything, of course, but he made an attentive audience, which every performer needs.

  Sandy horrified himself by making two snowmen in the shapes of Bart and Bernie—which wasn't hard, because Bart and Bernie were shaped just like snowmen—and then knocking their heads off. As angry as he was, he was ashamed to lower himself to the point where he was acting like they did. He put heads back on his snowmen, but before he knew what he was doing, he had knocked them off again. It felt wonderful, he realized with guilty glee. He did it a few more times before he was satisfied to put the heads back on and let them stay.

  His life at Eclipse had been so placid, so tranquil that the strongest negative emotions he had ever felt had been annoyance when he couldn't get the top off a jar of pickles and mild irritation at the prospect of having Bart and Bernie for dinner once a month. In the past few weeks, he had discovered an entire catalog of feelings he hadn't even known existed: terror at the thought that Horatio, Mousey, Flossie, and Attila might ... he couldn't even think the word; fury and hatred toward Bart and Bernie, plus a real fear that they might try something on Sandy himself; soaring joy at the new things he was learning to do—drive, understand high finance, beat Mr. Moreland at cards without feeling guilty about it. The way Sunnie made him feel occupied a whole category all by itself. Knowing she regarded him with the same fondness she felt for everyone else at Walnut Manor filled him with a sadness that was new to him, too.

  He sighed and punched his snowmen in the stomachs, leaving fist-shaped holes.

  "You've made the buttonholes too big," Sunnie said, coming up behind him. "They should be just big enough for a piece of coal. Of course, we don't have any coal, but I think the barbecue briquettes look nice, so square and all. You want some? I'll help you fix the holes in your snowmen." She set to work fixing. "Isn't this fun? Look at all the people we've made. Wouldn't it be perfect if we could make a world exactly the way we want it, with just the people we want in it, the way we've done here? Then there wouldn't be any horrible conflicts and everybody would be happy." She sighed. "Sure, I know there's always conflict, even between people who love each other. But I look at that as good confli
ct. It's what you have to do to get problems worked out. You can't agree all the time, even with people you love. Think how boring that would be."

  That's how it had been at Eclipse, Sandy thought. There was no conflict. And they'd all been happy, hadn't they? But Eclipse, from what he could tell, had almost no relation at all to the real world. Had he been bored at Eclipse? He hadn't thought so. But now, seeing just the little he had of what went on outside the estate's walls, he knew he'd never be satisfied to seclude himself in there again. It was too peaceful, too quiet. Now he knew there were lots of interesting places to go and interesting people to meet, even if going and meeting did lead to conflict.

  "I don't know much about conflict," he finally said.

  "Thank your lucky stars," Sunnie said. "But don't forget, you're getting a crash course in it from Bart and Bernie. When you're through with them, you'll have a Ph.D. in conflict."

  "You think so?"

  "You'd better if we're going to protect your darling family from them. And it's not just your family anymore, either. It's you and Opal—did you see the way Bart looked at her when she threw him out of Walnut Manor?—and probably all of us now that they know we're on your side. They're bad clear through, and they won't stop until they get what they want or until we make them stop."

  Sandy shivered.

  "Right," Sunnie said. "We've all been out here long enough. We need some hot chocolate—with marshmallows, of course—and a fire. But first I want to get my camera and take pictures of every one of these snow people. I feel like I know them all because I know their parents."

  That night, after dinner, Sunnie turned off the TV in the library, took up her copy of The Wind in the Willows, which she was reading for the second time because everybody loved it so much, and led the way upstairs to the sleepers' room. Sandy had lit the fire and arranged the chairs for her. It would be the first time she had read without the TV playing in the background. There were only the hiss and crack of the burning logs in the grate and the cottony silence that came from Walnut Manor's being enveloped in falling snow.