Poe (20 page)

When he was gone I tried to keep self-contained, not be a burden. I’d take out the trash without my mom having to ask me three times; I’d wash what few dishes there were and put them in the dishwasher, adding my mother’s favorite brand of detergent. I folded my clothes and made my bed before school. Tried to make it up to her in my own way.

Which of course made me hate him just a little, my father. He wouldn’t call while he was gone and left no way for us to reach him. It was like being periodically and inexplicably abandoned. But what made me hate
her
just a little was the fact that when he finally came back unannounced, appearing one day at the front door with his suitcase in hand, she’d act like he’d never been gone, even if it’d been weeks. Suddenly the vacuum would be buzzing, we’d have roast duck for dinner, and I’d find my underwear starched into near-cardboard perfection. Was he having an affair? Did he have another family stashed away, or was he involved in something illegal, like the Russian Mafia or maybe a Colombian drug cartel? Whatever he was up to drained him completely; he’d stay in bed for at least a week, with my mother carrying his meals on trays to their bedroom. Eventually I realized that whatever he was doing, my mother must have known, or if she didn’t know, she didn’t care. So to a certain degree I stopped caring, which created a distance between us—my mother and me.

I park the car and head up the creaking stairs to my apartment. Walking in I find the candles have gone out, so I run them under the water for a second to make sure the wicks aren’t smoldering, then toss them in the trash. Maybe I’m not different than my dad—here I am abandoning Lisa in a way to chase down some long-dead mystery. Maybe I’ll never learn more about my father, his “thing.” Maybe she’s right, it’s all random and there’s nothing
to
learn.

The book is on the couch where I left it. I sit down and pick it up. The leather cover is soft in my hands; it has a smooth sheen, and
the corners are bent with obvious signs of wear—this wasn’t a book that sat unread on a shelf, gathering dust. I open it in the middle, randomly flipping through some of the yellowed pages. It’s amazing to think someone carefully traced each line of each letter; it must have taken years for the Greek text alone. But what does it mean? What does the symbol on my ring mean? Why do I care?

“What the hell am I doing?” I say, tossing the book on the floor. “Can you tell me that, Poe? Can you tell me what the fuck this is all means?” My voice echoes through the empty apartment.

There is, of course, no response. There never is when you want one.

CHAPTER TWELVE: AMELIA

T
here is the glow of a party in the distance and a live band. Not the kind of music I’m familiar with: it’s an old-fashioned warble, a woman’s voice, rising out to a night sky filled with stars.

There’ll come a time when you’ll regret it
,

There’ll come a time you’ll want to forget it
,

’Cause I’m gonna haunt you so
,

I’m gonna taunt you so
,

And it’s gonna drive you to ruin
.

A bright staccato laugh rises out above the murmur of a small crowd. I look down and find that I’m wearing a black tuxedo, with black leather shoes polished to a high shine. A cigarette burns in my hand. I toss it to the gravel driveway and crush it with the edge of my heel. Gold cuff links in my shirt sleeves catch the light of small round headlights coming toward me, and I step aside as a Packard, black with a round hood, roars by. I watch as it pulls up to Aspinwall, where a butler smartly steps forward to open the car door.

I must be dreaming. Or I’m in a really, really bad cliché of an MGM film. I half expect to see Fred Astaire tapping by with Ginger Rogers on his arm.

From behind me a tiny woman in a white silk gown glittering with embroidered crystals approaches. Her platinum hair cascades down her back in highly styled curls, and she grips my arm lightly.

“Are you coming?” she says, her voice like a bird’s.

I nod, and she laughs as if I’ve said something funny and pulls me past the paper lanterns hanging from the neatly pruned elms into a courtyard filled with large white tents. Waiters in white jackets drift by, balancing gleaming silver platters filled with hors d’oeuvres. On a small raised stage I see the source of the music, a small orchestra; all the musicians are wearing fake beards and turbans, while the singer sways in front of a microphone, looking like a recent escapee from a harem, gauzy red silk draped over her head. Her eyes are lined with thick black kohl.

“I just
adore
jazz,” says the blond on my arm. “My
mother
says it’s sinful. Isn’t that a gas?” She pulls out a cigarette from her glittering purse, which reminds me of Maddy’s, but with a higher caliber of crystal. I realize she’s waiting for a light, and I search my pocket, which remarkably yields a gold lighter.

“Thanks,” she says, blowing some of the smoke in my face, a strange form of flirtation. “I’m Alice, by the way.”

Suddenly the murmur turns to astonished gasps, then a smattering of applause. I turn to see, of all things, an elephant emerge from the woods with a woman sitting on top wearing blousy trousers and a tight-fitting bodice, like an Indian princess from
A Thousand and One Nights
. Her skin is creamy white, glowing under the paper lanterns.

“She always makes an entrance,” says the blond bitterly.

“Who’s that?”

The woman turns to me, surprised. “Mrs. Aspinwall. You don’t know her?” There’s a hopeful edge to her voice.

“No,” I say.

“I’ve never met anyone who didn’t know Mrs. Aspinwall. You must not be from around here.”

“I’m not.” I leave her side to go get a closer look.

I push through the crowd, and time seems to slow—I can see every detail, hear every sound. A woman in her fifties holds a martini too tightly, smelling like she took a bath in musky perfume—“How did she get her hands on an elephant? That’s what I want to know.” I pass by a tall, gangly man with thin round glasses—“The market will recover; it always does.” A little girl zips by, chasing a brown puppy. She’s followed by an overweight and much slower maid—“Delia, stop now; time for bed.”—until finally I reach the front, where I find Captain Aspinwall, puffed up with pride, standing at the elephant’s head—“Spent our honeymoon in Bombay; that’s where she got the idea.” Mrs. Aspinwall is still perched on the elephant’s back, looking away. Her long brown hair is curled into a shiny wave, and I hear her bright laugh again; it sparkles high above the music. She turns to the rest of us.

She has no face.

“Love, can you help me down?”

Shock ripples through my body, but no one else seems to notice. Captain Aspinwall gallantly holds out his arms, and she jumps lightly into them, causing another small round of applause. The shoes on her feet are pointed and curl upward at the ends. She runs a delicate hand through her hair. “Don’t encourage me. Next I’ll be swallowing a sword.”

With what mouth?

But everyone laughs. A waiter holds up a platter with small shot glasses, and I take two.

“Well, I don’t know about anyone else,” she says. “But I’m completely famished. Have they started to serve?”

“Just the hors d’oeuvres, love,” says Captain Aspinwall. “We were waiting on you.”

“Well tell them to start serving the duck. I hate it when food is served cold.”

“Yes, my heart,” he replies, heading immediately for the kitchen, and I wonder if everyone here is her servant in one way or another.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” she says, turning to me and extending a hand.

I swallow, look to where her face should be. “We haven’t. I’m Dimitri.”

“A Russian name? You must be one of Richard’s friends from New York. He doesn’t take me there nearly enough. I’m obviously Mrs. Aspinwall, but you can call me Amelia.”

A second and apparently visible wave of shock hits me.

“You don’t like the name? Neither do I. It’s such an old-fashioned name, like Gertrude or Myrna. I thought about officially changing it to Greta, like Greta Garbo, but Richard put his foot down. Come sit with me. We should get to know each other.”

And just like that I’m now a part of her cadre, under her spell. As I follow she tosses out greetings, clasps hands, works the crowd—“What a darling dress, Sammy; you must tell me where you got it”; “Oh, hello Doug, so glad you could come”; “Edgar, it’s been far too long; you must drop by more often, I insist.” She is, I realize, a born politician.

Her long table is at the front of the tent to the right of the band, and she points me to the seat directly next to her. For a moment she hums along to the song, and I try not to stare at her face, or where her face should be. It’s like the person who rubbed her image out from the photograph in the newspaper has somehow rubbed her out in my dream as well.

“You’re
sure
we don’t know each other?”

I shake my head.

“That’s funny, because you look
familiar
somehow. But that can’t be, because I don’t know many Russians. Except for the gardener. But you don’t have an accent.”

“You have a Russian gardener?”

“He’s divine. He can make my rosebushes bloom in winter. He whispers something to them; I’ve seen him. But he only gives me the red ones. The white ones he saves.” She leans forward and says in a conspiratorial tone, “He has jars and jars of the creepiest stuff—Pollie
told me she’d never had such a scare as when she tried to clean his room. Said there were actual dried batwings in a jar.”

She turns to an invisible waiter behind her, clicks her finger, and he darts forward. “Do tell Pollie to make sure the cream is whipped properly for the mousse.”

“Yes, madam,” says the waiter, disappearing to wherever waiters go.

“I tell you, it’d almost be easier for me to cook myself. If I don’t stay on Pollie she’ll send out burnt pork chops. Servants get distracted so easily.”

I realize that like any other politician, she’s completely self-absorbed.

“Take our stable boy. Twelve years old, the little scoundrel, and he ran away with fourteen silver spoons and a chafing dish. I let Pollie stay, even though he’s her brother and she should have known. But it’s not easy to find someone who can make a cheese soufflé that won’t fall. In this part of the world at least. What do they eat in Russia? Something nasty with beets, if I remember.”

“Amelia!” calls out a portly man from the dance floor. “I’m famished! Where’s the main course?”

“Coming, Stanley. Give your wife one more spin. It’ll be worth the wait, I promise you!” Then to me under her breath, “Not that he needs another dinner. He’ll be dead from a heart attack by sixty, like his father.”

A large woman comes up behind us, opens her arms.

“Doris,” says Amelia, “you look ravishing tonight. Simply ravishing.”

While they exclaim over how beautiful they both are, I scan the crowd, wondering what it is I’m supposed to see. Some of the servants look familiar (from the Aspinwall photograph probably), but none of the partygoers, who twirl on the grass with a woozy swirl, and I’m surprised to realize that the two shots of whatever hard liquor I downed earlier are having an effect. This is a dream after all. Still, I loosen my bow tie.

As soon as Doris is out of earshot, Amelia whispers, “God, what a terrible dress. It looks like someone with dull scissors cut up a burlap bag. They lost everything in the crash, sad to say.”

A waiter deftly leans between us, puts down a delicate porcelain plate with neatly sliced roasted duck, white asparagus, and julienned potatoes. My mother served something nearly identical every Christmas Eve. The smell washes over me and causes a wave of grief to rise, choke my throat.

“Ugh, a little overdone,” complains Amelia. She picks up her fork, and there’s something strangely familiar about the way she does this, its studied grace… and something else too about the
cadence
of her voice. I try to make the connection, but then her fork spears a slice of duck before disappearing into the haze of her face. I feel like I’m going to be sick.

“Distracted, like I said. Oh, speaking of Russians—I’m going to have a séance here on Halloween. You should come.”

There, in between the dancers, I see something for just a split second. My fingers clutch the tablecloth.

“My gardener was the inspiration. He has the oddest book with the most
provocative
pictures—beheaded women, demons dancing around a funeral pyre, very macabre. I’ve seen him carrying it in his leather bag. He pulls it out when he thinks no one is looking, but of course I’m always looking. I once asked him about it and he pretended to not understand me.
Such
an annoying habit with foreign servants—you have no idea,
no idea
how difficult it was to plan a successful party in India. Still, I managed a peek at this book of his—not that I rummage around the servants quarters, but you can’t be too careful. And then Eleanor mentioned that when she went to England, séances were all the rage; anyone who’s
anyone
has a salon. They invite
real
psychics who channel spirits—Russians, she said, are very good—and the most
amazing
things happen. Eleanor said she met an actual disciple of
Rasputin
, who was able to make contact with her grandfather Edmond Wright—no
connection to the Wright Brothers; they made their money in coal, the Wrights.”

A face, caught at the edge of the dance floor, cold and familiar, flashes and then disappears.

“So I asked the gardener if he knew of anyone, and he just stood there, looking for all the world like an imbecile, and I know he understood me perfectly well—he even smiled a bit, like
I
was the idiot, if you can believe such an impertinence—and then he turned on his heel and walked away, just like that. I would have fired him,” she says with a sigh, “but I’ve become somewhat famous for my red winter roses. They’re very pretty on the Christmas tree.”