Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (17 page)

Again, he wanted to tell her, but how? She was propped up on the pillow beside him, with a gardening book open on her lap, and talking about the progress she was making in the greenhouse. At least she’d cleared away some of the debris – and would he remember to take it to the garbage pit tomorrow and burn it? The plants had been separated into “possible” and “hopeless” categories; and while her gardening experience had been limited to some apartment plants, she had been unusually successful with her philodendron and dracaena, and with a gardenia and Boston fern as well, both of which, she informed him, could be bitches.

He was only half-listening. How to tell her? “By the way, Marian . . .”? Or “Marian, I’m frightened . . .”? Or “Marian, I’m not sure, but . . .”? And
why?
What could he expect her to do – reason away the fears, encourage them; agree with him that, yes, there was something inimical in the house conjuring up these phantoms to torment him, and of course there’s nothing to do but pack up immediately, and find some nice doctor for him to see? The more he thought about it, the more confusing and incoherent it all became; and that itself became one more frightening realization. Thinking, simple reasoning was at times impossible, and his brain, when it did function, distorted reality. At times, he reminded himself; there were lucid moments. But which ones were they?

Marian had turned out her light. She said, “Goodnight, darling. I’m beat,” leaned over and kissed him.

“Sleep well,” Ben said, and watched her turn her back to him and pull the sheet up to her neck.

He leaned back and reached for a cigarette. The James novel he’d started reading a few days ago was on the night table; twenty-odd pages – the extent of the work he’d done on his new English IV class. He tried to recall what he’d read and then flipped through the opening pages for confirmation; at least it hadn’t all gone.

The light was hurting his eyes, aggravating the headache he’d developed after dinner. There was a slight throbbing now just above the eyes. He put out the cigarette and the light, and kissed the sheet covering Marian’s shoulder. She was asleep.

He tried lying on his right side and then his left and on his stomach, pressing his forehead into the pillow to numb the throbbing; when he lay on his back he heard it, just as he’d expected, somewhere under the bedroom windows. If he gave in and went to the window he’d see the limousine, he knew, even though there was nothing below but the terrace and the lawns sloping down to the bay. He shifted to his right side and lay his hand very lightly on Marian’s hip. He could see a line of light beyond her, at the bottom of the closed bedroom door.

If he could sleep, if it would just come. The throbbing had separated itself from the pain in his head; it was outside. Would it stop if he went to the window and acknowledged it? The pain with it? And let him sleep? He closed his eyes and moved lower in the bed. His feet were sweating, and the palms of his hands; he could feel a tightening in his groin. How could she be asleep, breathing so evenly?

Who was it in college – Hoffman? Last day of the course. “Ladies and gentlemen, one word of advice: always get a good night’s sleep.” Thank you, Dr. Hoffman.

It came eventually; fitfully, a few minutes at a time – not sleep, but a dulling grogginess that, paradoxically, sharpened his senses, chambering sounds. The throbbing still, and then something else – a ticking somewhere beyond the closed door. Louder, more regular, and gradually replacing the sound under the windows. Ben’s eyes opened again; he raised his head and the pain sharpened above his eyes. The ticking was in the hall, and when he looked in the direction of the sound he saw a shadow passing slowly across the thin line of light at the bottom of the door; someone moving up the corridor toward the old lady’s room. He listened for footsteps or the creaking of floorboards. There was only the steady ticking. He passed a hand over his forehead and then got out of bed carefully, trying not to jog the pain. The windows were near his side of the bed, about ten feet away. Was it still there or had it disappeared with the sound? He struggled with the impulse to go to the window; took a step toward it, and then turned abruptly and headed for the door. The ticking was outside – the hall clock. He opened the bedroom door and saw the pendulum swinging in the glass case. There was nothing else; the hall was empty, the double doors at the end closed, Aunt Elizabeth’s as well. And David’s, whose door was never closed.

Ben walked across the corridor quickly, disregarding the pain and the swinging pendulum. As soon as he put his hand on the knob he smelled the gas rising from under the door. He twisted the knob and pushed against the door, and then again, and then with all his weight, shouting, “David! David!”

The door snapped open and he rushed into the room, ripping at his pajama tops and covering his face against the fumes. He threw aside a chair and ran to the bed, shouting David’s name as he reached down and scooped him up, dragging the covers with him. Marian had come to the door and then pulled back suddenly.

“
What is it?
”

When she saw Ben lifting him and carrying him toward her, and David with his eyes half-closed and twisting in Ben’s arms, she came into the room with a cry.

“
Get out of here
!
” Ben yelled at her, pushing her back toward the door.

“My God! Is he all right? Ben! Is he?”

She followed him into their bedroom. Ben lay David on the bed and went to the windows, throwing all of them open. When he came back to the bed Marian was leaning over him, helplessly, rubbing his face, his hands. David’s eyes were open; he was gagging. Ben lifted him again and carried him to the window, holding his head out and saying, “Come on, Davey, breathe in deep, deep.
Marian
.”

She was beside them, repeating, “Is he all right?”

“Hold him. Like this.” He put her arms around him. “That’s it, Dave,” he said, “that’s it.”

He left them and went back into David’s room, throwing on the light and going for the gas heater which was hissing at one end of the room. He covered his face again and reached for the knob, twisting it shut and cutting off the sound. All the windows were closed; he flung them open and then came out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

Aunt Elizabeth was standing in their doorway, her robe drawn tightly around her. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Ben said, moving past her. “He’s going to be all right.”

Marian was leaning beside David at the window. Ben put his arms around him, pressing his chest lightly. He looked up at Ben; his lips and chin were wet and trembling; he gagged and then started to cry. Ben thrust his head out the window again and said, “You’re going to be okay . . . okay, Dave.”

“Is he?” Marian formed the words silently, grabbing Ben’s arm.

Ben looked at the back of David’s head and nodded, too tentatively, to reassure her completely. He said, “Call a doctor.”

She rose to her feet, repeating, “Doctor . . .” vaguely, and then she remembered the list downstairs on a kitchen counter. She hesitated, looking anxiously at David, and the enormity of what might have happened hit her suddenly. She began to cry and knelt beside him again. “I don’t understand,” she said, “I just don’t understand how it could have – ”

“Get that list and call a doctor!” Ben yelled at her, and she saw his eyes close against something inside him and his body tense. He turned away from her. “Go ahead,” he said; his voice had faded to a whisper.

Aunt Elizabeth was wringing her hands in the middle of the room, staring at the window. Marian passed her without speaking, and as she left the room heard her saying, “Ben . . .” in a small, trembling voice. She went down to the kitchen and found the list, sliding her finger down the page until it reached W. G. Ross, M.D. She dialled shakily, and while she was waiting for the phone to be picked up – four, five, six excruciating rings – the clock beside her in the entry hall chimed the half-hour. All Marian heard was an angry voice saying, “Dr. Ross.”

He had asked her, brutally direct – first, was he breathing, and second, was he conscious; and if he was, then there was nothing to be done, certainly not at one-thirty in the morning. “Nothing?” she had protested, and the voice had become surlier, repeating, “Is he breathing okay?” Then fresh air and sleep for now, and he would see the boy in his office at nine in the morning. “If it was a gas heater, then it’s either fatal or it’s not fatal,” he had assured her; “nothing in between. Have the boy get some rest.”

He was conscious and he was breathing regularly, Ben told her. He made David walk to the bed – unsteady, but he was walking. Marian covered him and sat beside him for a while, watching him sleep on Ben’s side of the bed. She rested her hand lightly on his shoulder. His breathing was deep, and, yes, regular, and he stirred when she pressed her lips to his forehead which was cool, not feverish.

Ben had gone into David’s room. “It’s off,” he said when he came back; “It’ll be all right.” That was all. He went to the armchair next to the window, sat, and propped his feet up on a hassock.

“But
how,
Ben? I don’t understand.”

“Get some sleep,” he said. He closed his eyes and sank deeper into the chair, rubbing his hand across his brow. The pain was back, more intense; it had probably never even gone, if he weren’t too drained to remember.

“Ben?” Marian called uneasily. “Is there something you know?”

“I don’t know anything at all right now, Marian.” Nothing at all except, thank God, there were still some of those lucid moments left. But not now; all he wanted was the comfort of the word –
nothing
. Nothing. Turn off the pain and think
nothing
.

Marian watched his hand fall and dangle over the arm of the chair. She got up from the edge of the bed, smoothed the covers over David, and crossed to her own side. She looked from David to Ben, and then around the room distractedly, as if she were trying to trace a sound or a memory or a fragrance. Her eyes stopped at the closed door and she remembered: Mrs. Allardyce.
Had she heard?
Had the noise reached the sitting room? Until that moment she hadn’t even thought of her; and while the inattention – if that’s what it was – was justified,
still
. . . not even to have thought of her.

They were sleeping, both of them. She walked quietly to the door, and her excuse for opening it and leaving the room was not simply the responsibility of a helpless old woman, but that ticking out in the hall which she was hearing for the first time.

Coincidence, she said to herself. Firmly. Coincidence as well with all the other clocks she hurried downstairs to check. Nothing more. And if there was any doubt, any feeling of dread; if she remembered saying even once, “My
God
” – then the remembrance was lost after a while in the solace of the sitting room, where the hum and the patterns in the carved door could elevate even the sound of a clock ticking to a benediction.

Ben called her from the village the next morning to tell her that the doctor – a cantankerous old man even by day – had looked David over, and the recovery, as far as he was concerned, was complete. Ben was taking him to Southold to hunt up a toy shop and a new “G.I. Joe” outfit. They’d be back by noon. He added, cryptically, “How’s Aunt Elizabeth?”

“She’s not up yet,” Marian said.

She understood what might have been in back of his concern later, when Aunt Elizabeth found her in the greenhouse. She knocked on the glass door timidly, and Marian, who was loosening the soil around the large skeleton of what was once a wax begonia, beckoned her in. Aunt Elizabeth pointed to the doorknob and shook her head. Marian dropped the spade and opened the door for her, twisting the knob to test it.

“It wasn’t locked,” she said to Aunt Elizabeth, and walked back past rows of orange and blue pots, most of them holding lifeless brown stumps.

The windows, the lower panes at least, had been cleaned, the broken pots removed, and all the “possibles” lined up neatly on the shelves and the long tables.

Aunt Elizabeth was making her way slowly to Marian’s work area, scraping her feet against the thin gravel floor.

“Have you had breakfast?” Marian asked.

“It’s too late for breakfast,” Aunt Elizabeth said. “I overslept shamefully.”

Her voice had changed; it sounded strained and quavery. Her face, when she came closer, was pale, with dark circles around her eyes.

“How is David?” she asked.

“Better. With that kind of thing it’s either one way or the other. Thank God it turned out the right way.” She packed the dirt around the plant and watered it.

“You can’t imagine how frightened I was – to see him like that. My Davey.” Her voice shook even more; she steadied herself against the table.

“So were we all,” Marian said. “If I keep myself busy enough I can try not to think of it. He’s all right, thank God.”

She squeezed past Aunt Elizabeth for the plastic bag of potting soil. The change in her, close up, shocked Marian. She was trembling, the skin on her face and neck was loose and so thin that it seemed almost transparent.

Aunt Elizabeth wiped her eyes. “Marian?” she said hesitantly. “I didn’t . . . I didn’t touch the heater.”

The statement took Marian by surprise. “Well . . . of course
you didn’t, Aunt Elizabeth.”

“If I did,” Aunt Elizabeth continued, “I’d certainly remember.”

“No one said you did.”

“I just covered him, that’s all.”

Marian stopped. “Covered him?” She looked at Aunt Elizabeth. “What are you talking about?”

“It was cold. Sometimes I’ll look in on him. And if he’s thrown off his covers . . .” She was forcing the words out slowly, the effort leaving her breathless.

“You were in David’s room? Last night?”

“I told Ben. Sometimes I can’t sleep and I’ll – ”

“Wait a minute,” Marian interrupted her. “
When
were you in David’s room, what time?”

“I don’t remember exactly.” Her lips were dry, trembling.

“And Ben knows this?”

“I told him, last night. You’d gone downstairs.”

Marian remembered asking him whether there was something he knew; he’d disregarded the question. And even this morning it had been some kind of freak accident, or David himself had turned the heater on and was too frightened to admit it immediately. Why hadn’t he told her about Aunt Elizabeth?

“What exactly did you do in his room, Aunt Elizabeth?”

“I told you – only covered him; he’d thrown his blanket off.” Her hand came up to her other arm as if to ward off the remembered chill. “It was cold, this house has gotten so cold . . .”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

“The windows?” Aunt Elizabeth shook her head. “The door? David’s door is never locked, never even closed. It was locked last night; Ben had to force it open.”

“I didn’t touch the door.”

“It couldn’t have closed itself.”

Marian was looking directly at her; Aunt Elizabeth avoided her eyes. “I might have . . . closed it . . . without thinking.”

“All right, think
now
.”

“I don’t remember.” She shook her head suddenly. “No, I do, I do. There was a draft. I thought by closing the door . . .”

“What else do you remember?”

“I couldn’t have locked it. Why would I do that?”

“All right, you didn’t lock it, it locked itself. What about the windows?”

“The windows were open.”