Burning Down the House (4 page)

A
LL THAT NEXT MORNING
she watched Patrizia conferring with Miranda and delivering womanly advice. By lunchtime Miranda had been convinced to get over Jonathan's involvement with the former nanny and to go through with the wedding. Neva pieced this together from snatches of conversation and gestures and looks, the two women ranging over the subject as if they were surveying and studying the floors of a luxury store. At lunchtime they were talking about rehearsal dinner details, and Neva was giving the boys their lunch. The food had arrived, along with a chef and kitchen staff. Neva served the boys from large platters arranged on a console near an outdoor table. Roman was trying to eat while playing a game. His device fell into his lunch several times and Neva helped him clean off the herbs and oil.

During the meal Neva tried to get acquainted with Felix, who was not easy to unearth. An inward boy with a delicate, occasionally quizzical expression. They ate side by side in silence, the barely audible clicks of Roman's thumbs on his machine blending in with clinking silverware, spilling food, the twittering country sounds.

Felix was usually found reading a book but at the moment he was concentrating entirely on the present, eating with deliberate poise, chewing his fried fish thoughtfully, dipping pieces into the red swirl of ketchup on the white china with a light, graceful movement. He ate his salad using the fork with his left hand.

He had asked Neva no questions since she'd started working for the family a few days earlier. He seemed to have absorbed everything he needed to know about her from watching her, observing both the way others treated her and the subtleties of mood on her generally inexpressive face. He was like a highly intelligent animal, a dolphin mixed with an exquisite monkey.

I've never had fish-and-chips before, Neva said.

Felix nodded underneath a filigree of shadows from a large tree.

I thought it would be greasier, she continued.

They were both quiet for a while.

This is fancy fish-and-chips, Felix said. It's not the real thing. It's usually pretty disgusting and more delicious.

I thought so.

I have a question.

Go ahead, said Neva.

Why is it harder not to imagine something if someone says to you, Don't think of a black dog, than if someone says: Don't think about the sentence “Are you hungry”?

Because the mind works in images. So if you hear the phrase “a black dog,” you cannot not picture it. If someone says a string of words, that's easier to forget.

Okay. Thanks.

You're welcome.

How do they study memory? Do they go into people's brains? I guess they can. I guess they'll figure it all out. It's like the way there used to be diseases that people don't get sick from anymore. We can cure them now. That will probably happen with death. I mean I can't really imagine that I'm ever going to die.

I haven't heard about a cure for that yet, she said.

I know, but it will come in the future.

If you say so, Felix. You seem to know a lot.

Where in Russia are you from?

The mountains. I'm named after a river near where I was born.

Felix looked at her for an extra beat, as if he could see the vibrant blue River Neva flowing in the sky behind her head.

Poppy is coming today, he said.

Who is Poppy?

My sister. Actually she's my cousin who was adopted by my dad when her mother died. She was six. She's seventeen now. Her mom was my dad's sister. It'll be better when she gets here. She's interesting.

Like you?

For the first time since she'd met him he blushed a little and didn't seem to know whether to laugh or to hide.

No, he said. Not like me. She's cool.

I can't imagine anyone cooler than you.

She has totally white hair. Well, the last time I saw her she did. And her eyes are kind of far apart.

I look forward to meeting her.

Are there any more potatoes?

For a long time Neva has had no friends. Not since she was very small. But Felix, this child, seems like a friend. She is twenty-six and yet this nine-year-old boy makes sense to her. He does not seem to need anything, just like her. Except this girl Poppy, he seems to need this girl Poppy. Neva feels a curiosity about the girl and a pull toward the boy. This is new and different. She is not usually taken in by these families. She doesn't despise them, but she usually feels a great distance, a divide having to do with more than money, more than education, more than privilege. She usually sees them as people with no similarity to her whatsoever, as if they were an entirely different species, even when she likes them, even when they seem to be decent, thoughtful people. But now she feels an unfamiliar kinship, a powerful loneliness that she can comprehend in this family. She could misunderstand it, could think that she and they are very much alike, and that she is one of them. But she is realistic and practical and she understands at least this much: what connects her to this particular family is their loneliness and in the case of Felix his awareness that he is lonely. He accepts it, accepts himself. Jonathan is like many of the other families she has worked for. Jonathan does not even know that he is in pain, inflicting pain, always in the vicinity of pain. Steve is something else. Steve is another matter. Steve is an ocean.

For dessert they ate ice-cream sandwiches made in innovative combinations such as gingersnap with lavender gelato or mint-chocolate-chip cookie with Earl Grey custard. Neva took the boys back to their room and got them changed into their tennis clothes and then accompanied them to the tennis courts where an instructor was waiting. Roman catapulted the ball at the Australian pro, and Felix hobbled around the court like he had someplace else to be.

Neva sat on the sidelines watching them, Roman lunging and Felix flitting, two awkward, unnaturally cultivated birds.

P
OPPY DID NOT
let the men who appeared with headsets and strong arms to take her belongings take her belongings, at least not one suitcase in particular, a beat-up purple T. Anthony, which she lugged by herself up some stone steps into a vast foyer with checkerboard marble flooring and, following that, up a green-carpeted staircase. She came upon her room by herself and looked around at the quiet chandelier, the Persian rug, the intricately patterned wallpaper, and huge bed. She took in that this house belonged to real people from another family who were once very rich, perhaps as rich as her family was today, and who now rented out their stately home for lavish events. A slight feeling of discomfort, something like pity, stirred the foliage around the gate of her inner mansion, that world usually cut off from too much feeling. However, here—in the orbit of her family and especially Ian—feelings could not be entirely held at bay. They were blowing in, first signs of a storm.

A rumble of the mattress as she hoisted her purple valise onto it, inciting ripples of dark pink velvet bedspread. A rosy reflected light colored her face as she unzipped the bag and rummaged around for a change of clothes. A slight breeze from the drafty house brushed the bangs of her now-brown hair, her new short cut showing off the line of her long clean neck. Her eyes lay wide and searching in her gently mocking, pretty face. Out the window the sun was just slanting sideways through the tall trees, out of which rose little birds like flying thoughts distracting the world from some great mystery behind the greenery. She pulled on a striped and slouchy dress and slipped her toes into low suede boots and strode coolly out of the room.

Before all of this, shortly before the wedding, Poppy had accepted the persistent attentions of a rich young musician who had been slavishly pursuing her for months. They got together at a party Patrizia and Steve threw for Poppy at that semi-new hotel in Williamsburg. Soon after the party Poppy had announced to Steve that she wouldn't be applying to college in the fall. Steve was in the middle of a complicated multinational negotiation at the time and decided to humor her until her idiotic idea went away and that boy with the ridiculous beard finally bored her. Steve had no awareness that she would take his evasive “we'll see” attitude as an affirmation of her plans. And so it continued with the musician whose privileged life was nothing compared with Poppy's advantageous perch atop the universal elite. He—his name was something offbeat his parents had come up with that was meant to make him extraordinary—looked on in lust and admiration and studied everything about Poppy: her angled face, her knowing naïveté, her sarcastic smile and adorable wit. Her careless, fearless, superbly plain sense of style and ravishing big eyes. In the month of June of the year 20—, the boyfriend looked on as she boarded a plane bound for the wedding of her half brother Jonathan, flying away from him, the boyfriend, and away from the sweltering diseased heat of a soot-smeared summer in New York, into the seductive, self-annihilating beauty of time captured in the endlessly rolling, eternally mythic English countryside.

Poppy thinks that she is the heroine of her own life but knows, deeply, that she is not. She feels the calm air around her and senses that nature has some wisdom she does not yet understand, some equanimity, while she herself is all impulse and wonder and fury and bottomless hope. Her hopefulness is so deep that it is almost shallow. It is her desire to understand that keeps it from being shallow. She desperately wants to understand who she is, how she got here, what to do with her life. Her life seems all at once too fragile and insubstantial and the only thing she has, and so this leaves her both willing to destroy it and afraid to risk her entire universe, this not-girl-anymore but not-yet-adult life. Some days she would like to risk everything.

Would she be different if she hadn't lost her mother at so young an age? Would she be different if she had known her father? Would she be different if she hadn't had so many resources? (The fancy school, the low suede boots.) These questions swim absentmindedly around in her consciousness, but she never notices them. If she did they would reveal themselves as impossible to answer, but she might learn something from contemplating them, not the answers but the fact that the questions bother her, worry her, distract her like small invisible insects in the air.

She doesn't know yet that the questions themselves are her biggest problem, that they are keeping her from deciding what to become. Instead she throws all of her love at the world, swatting at the insects, smacking them with love, without knowing that this is what she is doing. This makes her brave but not strong, intense but not knowing. This makes her heartbreaking to anyone who can see her for who she is.

She left the house and walked the grounds. There was nobody around. Eventually she followed a path and in the distance she could hear splashing and a man's voice. At the end of the path there was more grass and, beyond that, gray-stone paving surrounding a swimming pool. Lush plantings bordered the pool and curved and dipped here and there into the water.

There were a couple of tasteful lounge chairs scattered around the pool, and in one of them sat Jonathan. He sat on the edge of the chair, not lounging. Alix was sprawled out on another chair, wearing an oversize man's shirt over her bathing suit, sunglasses, and a hat. Miranda was in the water, doing slow and sinuous laps. Poppy took off her boots before anyone noticed her and walked barefoot on the grass toward her siblings. She crossed the stone paving along the edge of the swaying water and stood at the end of Alix's lounge chair and still holding her boots in her hand said: Hello, Big Sis.

Wide eyed, she continued: I am starving and I cannot believe how beautiful it is here. I've been looking all over for everyone. Where can I get something to eat?

Alix peered over her sunglasses at Jonathan who was scrolling through his texts. Welcome, Poppy, Jonathan said.

Miranda raised her head from the water.

Poppy. How was your flight?

Jonathan looked Poppy up and down and went back to his phone.

Alix pulled her hat brim over her face. She was in a bad mood. Her silence seemed to express the idea that extreme privilege was like extreme deprivation: it could bring people to a savage state. She felt, at the moment, under no obligation to be kind. This was bizarre even to her because she had been looking forward to seeing Poppy, but the presence of a contented Jonathan, the irritating sound of Miranda's lithe figure cutting through the water, and now the appearance of her much-younger, more beautiful cousin/half sister made her want to retreat into a chalet of self-loathing. Perhaps if Ian had been present she would have chosen to offer Poppy her better self, but Alix had no idea where he was and so she was stuck with these shameful feelings and no one to help her manage them, not that she should need anyone. She was thirty-seven years old. She allowed herself to behave badly and this only made her feel worse.

Poppy turned to Jonathan. Do you know how to make her say hello? she said.

Jonathan looked up from his hands. He regarded Poppy without much expression.

Why isn't she saying hello to me?

Jonathan shrugged and made a “who cares” movement with his head.

Poppy stared down at Alix.

Jonathan without looking up said to Alix, I don't know why you're being so rude—can you just say hello?

Alix said: I'm resting. She can see that. And I saw her five days ago in New York. This is not some major reunion.

Jonathan laughed a little breath.

What are you laughing at? said Poppy.

Miranda got out of the water, grabbed a towel, and slid over toward Poppy. I won't hug, she said, because I'm all wet, but we're so glad you're here.

Thanks for saying so but it doesn't really seem like it.

Miranda slipped her sandals on and headed back to the house.

Poppy stared down at Alix again. Poppy's eyes were very blue and narrowed.

Alix readjusted her position.

Poppy made big dramatic pinwheel motions in the air around her head, an act of mime that left Jonathan breath-laughing again. Hello, she said, waving broadly at Alix.

I'm tired. It's been stressful around here. Don't push it, said Alix.

Push it? Push it? Poppy said. What is wrong with you? Can't you be civil?

Hello, Poppy, Alix said, from underneath the hat.

Why am I the only mature one around here? said Poppy.

A languid wind brushed through the trees making them heave and sigh. Poppy dropped her boots on the grass and took her dress off over her head. She let the loose fabric fall to the ground. She bent her thin arms around her back and unclasped her bra. Her rib cage rippled like the inside of a piano. She stepped out of her boy-shorts underwear and dropped all of her sheer decorative lingerie on top of her dress. She swept past the pile of clothes and when she reached the edge of the pool she straightened up and turned her head over her shoulder to look at Alix and Jonathan. Neither of them looked at her.

The wind had stopped, no stirring leaves. Under the water, intersecting wavering ovals of light surrounded her in an electrified net. The bottom of the pool was painted a chalky white. She swam to one end and back and hauled herself out and made footprints like the shadows of faraway birds. Then she came to the pile of clothes and stood there.

Alix and Jonathan ignored her.

Poppy stood naked and dripping.

Jonathan gazed upward and then back to his phone.

How about showing a person a little love? said Poppy.

Jonathan stood up.

Poppy started shivering and Jonathan pointed to a stack of neatly folded towels on a weathered wooden table.

Go, cover yourself up, he said. He made a shooing motion with the hand that held the phone.

Poppy's face clouded. You assholes, she said. She stood over Alix and dripped on her. Jonathan's expression did not change. He just brought up his hand with the phone in it and held it above her as if he were going to strike. A great show of force in the silence. A clicking into place of the unnatural natural order. Then Alix lifting herself up onto her elbows, the rustle of her hat falling off her head.

Poppy stood her ground. You guys are so old, she said.

Alix and Jonathan didn't respond. There was a swooning of air through the trees. Poppy found Jonathan's eyes with hers.

And you are an infant, he said.

I feel sorry for your future children if this is how you treat an infant.

Alix said something about how she was getting soaked and this was ridiculous and Jonathan put your arm down. Then Poppy bent over and picked up her clothes. Then she walked to the edge of the pool. Then she threw her clothes into the water.

Jonathan's face drained. Poppy, don't do that. Look I'm sorry, he said, unemotionally.

She walked back over toward him and Jonathan pulled away from her like a man avoiding a drunk on the sidewalk.

He stepped farther back as she lunged at him with her wet arms. Then he stepped back again. Poppy leaped lightly onto the lounge chair and pulled the phone out of his hand. Jonathan froze. She scrolled through his texts and read a couple of them out loud. They were meaningless. Then she selected a number from his contacts and made a call as she walked quickly to the other end of the pool.

Jonathan followed her. He was breathing heavily and he cursed and pointed at her, following her around the pool. Poppy turned back quickly and feinted and then threw the phone over Jonathan's shoulder onto the stone paving. The guts and innards of the mechanism sprayed and Jonathan's knees bent and his Oh fuck echoed. Poppy had already run over to collect the parts and she pitched each piece into the water before Jonathan had even picked up the splintered walnut cover and she skipped the little battery across the surface of the pool and yelled a Goodbye you expensive made-in-China piece-of-shit toy into the air as the bits of metal and plastic sank.

Poppy surveyed the scene. Alix looked exhausted and spent and Jonathan was leaning over with his hands on his knees. Neither of them moved. Poppy strode over to the table with the towels on it and wrapped one around her body and secured it in between her breasts and headed away down the path. The birds were gone. The breeze was entirely gone too. She tucked her wet hair behind her ears and walked back to the house.