And am I lovable as an old woman? I cannot say. But I am a loving old woman—my nieces, many friends—and happy in my love of art. Painting was innate in me, and my love for it has increased rather than diminished over time. Fervently I hope, I pray, the divine passion for art will be with me until my death.
And now I believe I know something else that will be true, as pertains to my future and to my death. Do we not all have the power to create our own horoscopes? After just such a pleasant evening with friends as this one has been, but in my apartment in the Rue Saint-Lazare in Paris, in that still-enchanting city that has defined so much of my life, I will retire to my bedchamber. Yes, I believe I see the future. In the dark, I will lay myself down and, having lived a full day, fall happily into a sleep from which I shall not awake.
For tonight, my sail, bearing me to the land of sleep, will be a particular canvas: the portrait of myself outdoors, with blue sky behind me, wearing a straw hat, moving forward, palette and brushes in hand, inhabiting my vision.
If only I could hear my Julie’s voice!
FOUNTAIN
WHEN JERRY PARKED his old car in front of her house, Ryn—for somehow she had told him her nickname when he and Humphrey were together and she had been desperate to trust Jerry because Humphrey was so young—watched Jerry, now older, still insolent in his movements, through the sidelights beside her front door. It was dark now, but as always the fountain area of St. James Court was illumined. Her hand was shaking. She could hardly settle the wineglass on the writing shelf of her mother’s secretary. She opened the front door and positioned herself, each hand against the wide doorframe, and stood looking out waiting for Jerry to notice her. The ground and walkways were sodden with downed leaves. Humphrey was flying over the ocean.
There was no use trying to avoid the truth of Jerry’s presence. Why not finish it now? He had walked in on Marie and her son. He knew Ryn still lived across from the fountain. He would probably come again if she avoided speaking with him tonight. Most of the lights in her house were blazing away. He would know she was inside, though he had not yet looked at the porch. Because the power was off, the east side of the Court, behind the golden fountain, was a long swath of blackness. The glow of the fountain outlined his dark shape as he got out and moved past the hood of his car. She would send him away. Humphrey was coming.
Remember, she told herself, he’s just another human being. And remember, at one time she had been very friendly with him, for Humphrey’s sake. Nonetheless, he looked sinister as he nonchalantly climbed the front steps and walked toward her. He was heavier, nothing of the boy left in him. The light coming through her open door and the porch light illumined all of him as he mounted the porch steps. His facial expressions did not register her presence. It was like watching a person in a film walking forward, straight on, with no recognition of the viewer.
When he stood just opposite he said through the screen door, “Hello, Ryn. Can I come in?” His voice was neutral, almost polite.
“Of course,” she said. “How’re you doing, Jerry?” She was trembling.
And he was inside. He carefully closed the screen behind him; she could not even hear the click of the latch engaging. Control displayed itself in his hands, in his strong shoulders.
“Where’s Humphrey?” Now there was an insistence, if not an edge, to his query.
They were standing close together. She told herself they were both standing near the open door. She had her bearings; everything was orderly and quiet. Normal. He wouldn’t know about the leaks. He didn’t know Humphrey was flying home. Neither said anything for a moment.
His eyes circled the foyer once, then rested on her eyes. “Well?” he said.
“Sit down,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like to sit down?” The striped chairs and the love seat were really very close to the open front door. The chandelier above them seemed rather too bright. He glanced at the chandelier, its dozens of crystal pendants, some of them snaggletoothed replacements, and blinked.
They both sat. He’d dyed his hair red and gotten a perm. It was curly.
“Still got your fancy chairs,” he said, stretching out his legs.
“Yes,” she said. “Rose and green. I never imagined I’d like that combination till I saw these on Goss Avenue. Maybe it’s the stripes. Maybe the stripes keep the colors in order, keep them from seeming . . . seeming . . .” She could not find the word.
“Too fussy,” he supplied, and held her gaze, almost helpless, for a long time. Then he broke the spell. “Still writing books?”
“Sure. I like your hair, Jerry.” She didn’t. But she had sounded authentically normal. He couldn’t tell she was lying. Always he’d craved compliments so much that he could never tell if they were truth or lies.
“Ever get a movie contract?”
“Not yet.”
“So what’s Humphrey up to?” His hands rested loosely on his thighs, but he seemed hyperalert.
“He’s married now.” Would that settle it? Wouldn’t it, would it, wouldn’t it, couldn’t it end the dance?
“Man or woman?”
Ryn was startled. She wondered if the implication were true, that Humphrey had actually been or was bisexual. She wondered if she hoped so. Which mode would be easier? Startlingly, the face of Frieda, her college friend, flashed in her mind. Frieda straddling a windowsill, her expression mysterious and knowing, pleased. Winter hung in the snowy air, white crystals were falling. New York.
Jerry was waiting for her answer, and his face was beginning to pass from neutral to a collection of escalating emotions: a sneer, then suspicion and anger. She had left the front door standing open. Somebody passing on the sidewalk might see them both, sitting there in fancy chairs, looking civilized.
“A man,” she said.
“God damn,” he said. He reached out and with a single swipe knocked over the little cabriole-leg table between them. The table fell, almost silently; the clear glass bowl on the table bounced without breaking on the rug. It was heavy glass. Expensive, carved with octopi and sea horses, a gift from Leslie. The delicate table, lying on its side, looked stunned and helpless. Without value.
She stood up. “You have to leave now,” she said. She was frightened, but she felt sure that was what she needed to say. She said it quietly.
“Yeah.” He didn’t move. “Give me his address first.”
“You can’t find them,” she said. “They’ve moved far away, out of the country.”
“Where to? I just want to write to him. See what’s going on.” Was his voice going unsteady? “Maybe leave things less raw between us.” His voice had stuck in his throat. He swallowed hard, and his head swung to one side as he swallowed. “Where is he?”
“Greenland,” she said. She was sorry to hear Jerry’s grief; she was glad that Humphrey and Edmund had moved so far away, but . . . wouldn’t she have joy at noon? Her son at home?
“I hope you don’t think you can get away with lying.”
Did she hear Janie and Tide coming down the second staircase? Would Janie have been able to hear the table fall over? Probably not. The rug was too thick. But Tide would have heard it; he might have felt it. Wasn’t that Tide’s toenails clicking down the bare second staircase? Maybe Tide had thrust his muzzle into Janie’s hand, told her they needed to go downstairs.
“I said you need to leave. I’m telling you to leave.” She raised her voice and stood up.
“I’ll leave when I have the address. In Greenland or wherever the hell!” His voice was quite loud, clearly threatening. She was glad the heavy front door was standing open. It had started raining again. Maybe someone passing would hear, but no one was passing. The way the door was bent all the way back, with the outside facing in, seemed unnatural. The sperm whale door knocker that Humphrey had given her caught her eye. She looked away, lowered her voice. It was raining very hard again, beyond the porch. Rain like long harpoons.
Maybe Tide had told Janie, his muzzle in her hand, that they
were needed downstairs, but not outside. First, the dog would just get Janie to go down the stairs; doggy business, she would think. But then, once on the first floor, he would indicate not outside. Not that, he would say. He would point himself at the kitchen door. A tiny whine. Telling her. Tide was a kind of animal angel. Yes, Tide did love her, at least for Janie’s sake. Wouldn’t he come down to help? He’s so smart.
Suddenly she realized that she had mumbled aloud her admiring, pleading phrase. Almost blown her cover.
“What did you say?” Jerry asked. He, too, had risen.
“They just moved there.” She remembered all Jerry’s cruelty to Humphrey. She remembered the gun. “I’ll have to go upstairs to get the address.” She would create time for Janie and Tide, time to figure things out. Maybe Jerry would just go away if Janie and Tide showed up. “I don’t know it off the top of my head. Their new address.” Without waiting for his reply, she turned and started up the stairs. Don’t follow me, she thought distinctly, with silent force.
After the turn in the steps, she glanced down. He was standing still, waiting in the foyer. Its four legs sticking out, the little table lay on its side on the carpet like a dead animal beside the road. Jerry was looking through the screen door at the rain, and she could hear the sweep of wind. She finished climbing the stairs.
Through the library, through the open arch into her bedroom. She opened the drawer to the printer, lifted out a sheet, and tore off a strip. Quickly she wrote down what seemed like a possible address for a city in Scandinavia, but she couldn’t remember the name of a single city in Greenland, so she wrote down the name of a city in Finland she had once visited with Mark and a postal code that was a combination of numerals and capital letters.
At that moment, from below, Jerry shouted, triple forte, “Kathryn! Hurry up!”
With a spasm of fear, she dropped the pen. Then she opened the drawer and took out the snub-nosed Cobra. Her fingers shaking, she found bullets in the corner of the soft bag. She pushed bullets—mostly hollow nosed, lethal—into the chamber and turned the cylinder so that a loaded chamber was aligned with the barrel. Quickly, she slid her arms into the sleeves of a raincoat and put the gun in the right-hand pocket. She wouldn’t use it, surely not. She believed that. But she would feel less afraid. She wanted to appear less afraid. He would not hurt her son.
In the library, when her ears filled with the sound of hard rain, Ryn realized she must have accidentally left a library window open all this time. She hadn’t noticed earlier, diverted by the leaking ceiling. Yes, over there below the raised window in the library bay, the nice oak floor was wet, the little puddle was glimmering but that scarcely mattered. The whole house was leaking again; she could hear the rain coming through the ceilings and splattering into the trays and pans.
With her hands in front of her so she could watch them (they were shaking, palsied), she crossed the library—directly below, he would hear her steps—grasped the window, and lowered it with a bang. Everybody lowers a window hard when the rain’s been coming in. Confined to outside, the rain sounded more normal. Yes, outside the house now. Under control. Not the whole interior universe filling with rain. She crossed the library back to her desk. Yes, with a warning bang—she had lowered the window and validated her detour.
She placed the strip of paper, like a little white flag, in her left hand so that it would be clearly visible and distracting and started down the stairs. She wanted to call out “Hold on,” in a neutral way, but her larynx wouldn’t engage. Familiar and warm against her right hand—already the cross-hatched handle of the gun was becoming friendly—the gun and her hand hid, concealed, up to her wrist in the slash pocket.
Trying to gather her wits and to quell her trembling, she took her time going down the steps. She wasn’t going to have an accident, break her neck. Slowly, carefully, she released the gun and trailed her right hand on the oak handrail, so he could see both her hands. Grainy with dust trapped under the varnish, the handrail reminded her fingertips that it had never been as smooth or as polished as it should be. She had always criticized it, found it lacking. Sufficiently sturdy for balance, though. The weight of the gun in her pocket pulled the raincoat down on that side. She felt its weight swinging from her shoulder. But it was a small gun, with its truncated barrel. Compact. He wouldn’t notice it in her pocket. Never let anybody take the gun away from you. Had she been advised that? Maybe she just knew it.
Maybe she’d been imagining it before, but now she was sure she could hear Janie and Tide descending the back stairs, beyond the wall, footsteps, dog toenails clicking down the servants’ stairs, and she knew she’d left her kitchen door unlocked, near the bottom of their stairs. Unafraid, they moved more briskly than she and they would reach the first floor ahead of her, but their tempo was matter-of-fact, not excited or terrified. They would hesitate before opening her kitchen door. Don’t knock.
Taking a long breath, Ryn resolved to spare them by doing whatever it was she was going to do quickly, before they traversed the kitchen, before they could pass the green table, cross the realm of blue and red, pass her mother’s piano. She wouldn’t let them get mixed up in what she had to do, but she mustn’t hurry. At least Janie wouldn’t see. Ryn wanted to aim for his head, his smirk, if she had to.
She believed she wouldn’t need to shoot. Wasn’t he ready to go now? But what if he came back tomorrow, when Humphrey was with her? What if he tracked Humphrey down, if she let Jerry leave? He’d done that before. Humphrey had run away, but Jerry had found him, sweet-talked him back. Before their final parting in Atlanta. That wouldn’t happen now. Humphrey was a man now. He knew.
He had Edmund. Humphrey loved Edmund, thank God.
She couldn’t hurry on the stairs, so shaky she was, old, old; her legs were like jelly. Really old and shaking now. He’d aged her ten years. And it made her angry. As she put her hand on the newel post at the turn, she wondered if Janie had an emergency attack command for Tide. He was a big dog. Ryn felt nauseous with anxiety.
At the bottom of the stairs, she said, “I don’t feel too well.”
“Having a chill?” he asked, gesturing at the raincoat.
“It’s October,” she said.
Jerry had moved deeper into the house. The little table was lying on the rug behind him now.
Like scratches, lines were all over his face. A fever blister on his lip, alone and palely loitering. Heavier. Of course she was shaking even though the paper was a dud. It carried no lethal message, would not take him to the realm of Humphrey and Edmund.
When she held out the paper with the address, her curled fingers looked a hundred years old and the skeleton visible inside. She had never seen such an old hand, a flag of death, of human fragility. She glanced at his eyes, made eye contact.
For the first time, his face was softening a little, surprised; he was registering her years.
She handed him the paper, and he studied it. “Greenland,” he smirked, and turned his body a little, toward the door. Maybe he would just leave. She had always tried to believe the best about Jerry, about anyone of intelligence and occasional kindness.
She could hear Janie and Tide crossing the tiled kitchen, then the dog’s toenails snicking on her parquet oak floor. Moving quietly, Janie and Tide were making their way past the kitchen table, stepping into the living room. A moment more and Jerry would be gone, but already from the living room, a low growl, more threatening than thunder, rumbled from Tide’s throat, and he was picking up the pace; Janie’s knee recklessly bumped the piano bench because they had started to hurry. Surely Jerry was hearing them, too. He turned fully back to Ryn with an expression of pure contempt.
The glance struck her like a blow to the face. Like a claw, his contempt snatched the skin off her face and the scales from her eyes. Humphrey had been at the mercy of this man. Why had she not been able to protect Humphrey, to keep him safe at home?
“Married, huh?” Jerry said. “Well, he can just shove it right up his
rosy red rectum.”
She cried out with pain, a high, weak protest, a keening like unprepared dying, and her hand and the gun came out of her pocket. Then the long streak of dog between them, lengthening and leaping, hurling his animal self into the man’s chest and shoulders, his dog face shooting past the man’s cheek, and Jerry falling backward onto the downed table, snapping off two legs, a moving scramble—
And Janie’s shriek, penetrating everything, calling Tide back, and Jerry rising as quickly as he could from the wreckage, Kathryn pointing the gun at the man’s face, and Janie’s fingertips, light as spider legs, running down her sleeve and over her bare hand onto the gun.
“Don’t shoot him,” Janie said, her voice quiet and breathy. The room stilled and fell to silence. Standing beside Ryn, Janie said, “Never, ever come back here.” Her voice was soft with tender wonder. It contained nothing of command. Where did Janie find that voice? Ryn was numb, yet she could move.
Her finger curled on the trigger, the gun in front of her, her hand in control, and she was sighting down the barrel, carefully. He turned his face in profile, unafraid, toward the door. He would leave now, but she knew she should not let him leave, unafraid and contemptuous. Because she mustn’t allow him just to walk away, she took new aim and pulled the trigger.
Something like a scorch and the residue of an ax blow appeared beside his foot, a four-inch hole of blasted carpet and splintered oak. Now he was a-tremble. Now he had wetted and shat himself; now his face was crumpling into something infantile as she took much more careful aim, closer, precisely, and thought Squeeze don’t pull and then the second shot, perhaps less deafening, a second shot she recognized as the everlasting echo of the first.
Not only the carpet blasted but also the very margin of his shoe. At the curve where his little toe might have lived, there was devastation, and the beginning of the flow of purple blood. Without looking back, Jerry rushed through the door, more noise than man, across the glazed porch, a swath of clothing hobbling. Then he was thumping down the rainy stairs.
The Fountain of St. James Court; Or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman Page 39