Bereavements (21 page)

Martin no longer much cared. In the Spartan order and obsessive cleanliness of his own small quarters, he had forgotten Grover—with more important things to worry about.

He stepped out of his clothes, showered quickly, then, without drying off, just a towel across a shoulder, stood by an open window. The early evening had cooled the air considerably and a faint easterly breeze evaporating the wetness on his skin was almost icy, helping to improve his temper, though not much.

The awkward events of the afternoon kept nagging at him.

Had
he behaved like an idiot?—a smart-assed, obnoxious bore? If anyone, ever, had said to him, seriously, “Shall we consider our liaison a
fait accompli?”
he would have thrown up on the spot.

Shit!

On the other hand . . . There had been a kind of lazy, bored amusement in her eyes. After all, the words hadn’t been serious although the question certainly was, and surely she hadn’t taken them so, else she wouldn’t have matched his nonsense with a transparently coy and vaguely seductive—
”entente cordiale.”

Well . . .
L’espirit d’escalier,
and fuck it!

He’d have this woman. He wanted her. He needed her. He deserved her.

They deserved each other.

The leaves
were
golden—those caught by the sun: all the colors of fire—like he’d never seen before. Oh, he was aware of the changes late summer brought to the trees of Central Park, and Riverside, and Morningside Heights, but never, ever like this.

Maybe it was the car, too, as it sped along in the clarity and immense hush of the after-dawn light at ninety, ninety-two, ninety-four miles an hour.

Angel’s eyes kept moving from the speedometer—with secret urging glances at Dori’s impassive face, hoping, praying to see the needle touch one hundred—to the burning whirlwind of the world outside: arched masses, curling tunnels of flame.

Ninety-
seven
. . . Ninety-
eight . . .
And with the slow crawl of the needle upward, his widening, broadening smile quite matched it.

Ninety-
nine
. . .

When it touched the one-hundred mark, there was a small explosion of boy: laughter, flailing arms, rollicking head.

In the back seat, Mrs. Evans, delighted, leaned forward to see what the joke was, but she never knew, never found out. So, content to be mystified, she settled back again to resume her knitting—her
knitting!
—that blood-red scarf her beautiful Jamie would never wear?

Then for whom was she knitting? Why had she started it again?

No one, nothing had told her; not quite yet.

It was chicken all right (he later discovered): a breast, but, bewilderingly, made into an almost perfect ball, all crunchy and brown on the outside.

Someone called Delia, who served him—a smiling, white-haired woman in a black dress and frilled apron, wearing a quilted mitten and warning him not to touch his plate because it was “piping hot”—leaned over and showed him how it was to be cut open. He watched, amazed. It was stuffed inside, and a small stream of melted butter with specks of green (“ ‘urbs and spices,” Delia whispered in his ear) oozed out, thick and steaming.

Mrs. Evans seemed a little doubtful. “You’d better try it,” she suggested. “We can always scramble some eggs or dream up a sandwich or two.”

But he found it delicious. Man, never, ever had he tasted anything like it: chicken so smooth, so meltingly rich that the first bite gliding over his tongue was something of a shock. Before the fork reached his mouth again, he saw a rash of gooseflesh cover his arms, then disappear.

He was less enthusiastic about something called an artichoke (Mrs. Evans spelled it for him)—a dull, grey-green “flower” that was to be eaten (he learned) with one’s fingers, pulling off petal after petal to dip in a tiny pool of lemony butter in a little curled leaf of a plate.

He ate most of it, however, thrilled because “some people have been known to die eating an artichoke,” Mrs. Evans told him, showing him how to avoid the spine which, if it caught in his throat, might choke him to death.

Fascinated, spearing the tender heart of his flower, Angel understood, he thought, how it got its name. The “choke” part was easy—shit!—it could choke you to death!—and the “art” was probably because it was something pretty (like a painting), a strange green flower. And the two parts put together with the “I” in-between, meant a kind of beautiful choking to death, or (i.e.) “
I
am
choking
to death eatin’ this beautiful
art-istic
flower.”

The sprawled giant of a house, hugging a hill, had been built with two “wings” (that’s what they were called) on either side of a big middle center with arched “pillows,” and it contained (Mrs. Evans had to stop to remember) “—oh! I don’t know: forty-two rooms, give or take a few.”

“Was it a hotel?” Angel asked. “I mean, did it use t’be?”

“No.”

“But how could one person”—with a flash he remembered Jamie—”or two, live in so many rooms, even with maids an’ all?”

“Well . . .”

How
could
one person, or two? She explained in detail. “My life wasn’t always—like this: private, alone. I remember the house filled with people: from the theater, and films—actors, singers, dancers—entertainers of all kinds. My husband, not Jamie’s father, my third husband, Mr. Harrison-Smith, who bought and maintained all this, was a very public person. He wasn’t happy unless tens of people were milling about. He didn’t care at all that most of them were opportunists, shamelessly using him. Why . . .”

But on the southwest side of the house as they turned, Angel discovered the swimming pool—God, it seemed as big as a lake, looked as deep as the ocean, still filled to its rim with water “because,” Mrs. Evans told him, “it’s better that way—to equalize the pressure and prevent the walls from cracking; and the logs there—” (he saw them at intervals lashed to the sides) “will break up the ice this winter when it freezes.”

She saw desire dancing in Angel’s eyes, and, with the sun high and strong, the area sheltered and windless, it seemed warm enough.

“In the cabana—that little house there, at the end, you’ll find some suits—” her face clouding with distress “—bathing trunks that will just about fit. And, I’m sure, a terry robe and towel. Do you swim?”

How shameful to admit that he couldn’t.

“Well then—” not surprised; “it doesn’t matter—just stay at this end, where it’s shallow; it begins at two feet and stretches”—pointing in the distance—”to five where the rope is and those colored buoys; then it drops off sharply and becomes very deep under the diving boards.”

She added as an idle afterthought: “Someone drowned there once: a young actress. They found more alcohol in her blood than water in her lungs.”

And she settled herself poolside in a white wicker rocker, knitting again, her eyes hidden by the darkest of sunglasses.

There were at least ten bathing trunks in the
cub-ban-yub,
all colors, many styles, from bikini to boxer, approximately the same size, exactly his. But for reasons he couldn’t and didn’t try to explain, he was unable to bring himself to wear any; he emerged from the shadows into the sun, a towel slung over his shoulder, in his own white jockey shorts. They were small, almost bikini in style, and flyless, so he thought Mrs. Evans wouldn’t even notice, imagining he was wearing one of the ones he was “ ‘asposed to.”

If she did notice, she didn’t mention it at all, watching him with pleasure as he splashed in the blue-green water, so covered with bright autumn leaves, it seemed a perfect carpet.

He stayed in so long his fingertips turned wrinkled and blue.

She called him several times, then begged him: “Angel, you’ll be ill!”

Finally he came out: grinning, boney knees shaking, teeth chattering. While she dried him, Delia was called on the poolside phone, and she brought out with her a huge brown blanket in which he was wound and half-hidden, like the folded creature in a dark cocoon, then instructed to squirm out of his shorts (she knew!) which were taken into the kitchen to hang in front of the stove.

She then rubbed and scrubbed his hair dry, but it was clear his marvelous Afro was ruined, and they both laughed as she held up a pocketbook mirror so he could see the fright-wigged horror he’d become, neither of them the least bit caring.

He then sat peaceful and warm and depleted in the sun, until his eyes, scanning the distance, found, nested in its exquisite landscaped setting, her son’s white tomb. She told him what it was.

It was clear she didn’t want to talk about it much, but his curiosity was overpowering.

“An’
that’s
where he is—not buried in the groun’ like everyone else?”

She didn’t answer at all, and then he remembered seeing movies, like Dracula, where they showed you the insides of tombs where the coffin is right there, like just on a slab of stone or an altar, maybe right in the middle, or, if there were many corpses, in the walls, sliding in and out like drawers in a chest.

So that’s how Jamie must be (he thought) picturing vividly the dead boy—centered, since the tomb was his alone, high on an altar, maybe with big gol’ candlesticks all aroun’, or a flame burning eternally and forever.