Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (7 page)

Miss Allardyce laughed lightly. “Oh, we’ve learned that all right. Her word is
law
. Always was and always will be, as long as she’s with us. Which is always, please God.”

“Always,” Brother repeated reflectively.

For a moment the ceiling had become almost transparent to Marian, the pattern working on her like a trompe l’oeil. Brother went on, his voice growing softer, more inward, as though he were alone in the room.

“In her room all the time,” he said, “way at the end of the house where you’ll never see her, never even know she’s there.”

“All you’d have to do is leave a tray for her,” Miss Allardyce said, “three times a day. Just put it on the table in her sitting room – ”

“Never the bedroom,” Brother cautioned Marian. “It’s kept locked all the time.”

“Always,” Miss Allardyce said, “our poor, gentle darling.”

Their voices were blending. Marian could barely hear the difference.

“What could be simpler? A tray in the sitting room three times a day – which she might, and then again, might not, even touch.”

“And for that simple – ‘catch,’ as you call it, Mr. Rolfe,” Brother said, “everything here’s yours, with no strings attached.” He repeated the word to Marian: “Yours.”

“Her marvelous house,” Miss Allardyce said, letting her eyes roam around the room, “that’s been here for so many years; that she’s watched come alive and grow so many times . . . when we’ve despaired, Brother and me.”

“She’s been a pillar of strength to us . . .”

“A tower of hope . . . our darling.”

Miss Allardyce’s hands were tight on Brother’s shoulders. She loosened them in the silence and let them fall to her sides with a long, weary sigh, keeping her eyes, soft and distant, on Marian and Ben who remained motionless. Brother reached for his tissue again, and the sound seemed to call Ben back. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. The voices had worked on him like a moving point of light – a coin or a candle flame. Was it just him; the mind suddenly going blank again, like another car incident? He looked at Marian whose eyes were wide and shining. She faced him slowly.

“I wouldn’t mind, Ben,” she said. “Really I wouldn’t.” She was saying it as much to the Allardyces as to him.

It took him a while to collect himself, to wrench the sound of their voices from his mind; he covered it by looking even more thoughtful. When he was sure it would come out normal and even, he said, “That’s something we hadn’t counted on.”

“I suppose not,” Miss Allardyce agreed.

Marian kept silent; obviously she had made up her mind.

“And you’d just . . . leave her?” Ben asked them.

“We’ve done it many times, Mr. Rolfe.” There was a note of resentment in her voice.

“That’s what keeps her young,” Brother said. “Why, if she thought Roz and me would pass up our trip this summer,
she’d become an old woman overnight. Believe me she would.”

“She’s that independent, that self-sufficient.”

“Like Aunt Elizabeth,” Marian said, thinking aloud. She looked at Ben and repeated it.

Again, they were waiting for him to reply, all three of them. His impulse was to come right out and tell them – predictably, Marian would surely think – “Thanks, but no,” and assume that she would have sense enough eventually to see beyond the house and realize the absurdity of the whole deal. There was still something being left unspoken, he was convinced; something more than mere eccentricity to the Allardyces. But he recognized the look in Marian’s eyes; the house had indeed sold itself to her instantly, and it would take more than a blunt “no” to dislodge it.

“We’ll think it over,” he said as sincerely as he could, “and let you know, okay?”

“But, Ben . . .” Marian said, grabbing his arm. No pout this time; it was genuine protest.

He didn’t bother to lower his voice. “Marian. The responsibility of an – ” He caught himself, “ – elderly woman . . .”

“For
this?
” she broke in, almost embracing the room. “For
all this?
”

Brother nodded confidently to Miss Allardyce who looked
away from him quickly. “You won’t even know she’s here,” she insisted. “I promise you. She stays in her room all day. All day.”

“Sleepin’ most of the time,” Brother said.

“And when she’s not sleeping, she’s working on her collection. Right, Brother?”

He agreed. “Her pitchers. Old photos, she’s got thousands of them.”

“The memories of a lifetime,” Miss Allardyce said.

“It’s her hobby,” Brother explained, “like mine is my music.”

Miss Allardyce’s voice dropped. “What music?” she asked.

“My discs, my record collection.”

“
That
.” She waved it away. “Give him his Mantovani and his whatyoumacallits . . .”

“Roz here’s got no hobbies, no interests at all.”

“Some people are too busy being useful for hobbies.” They had moved apart for the bickering. “His hobby,” she said to Marian and Ben, “is his health, his eternal health.”

“You just watch it,” Brother said in a fit of coughing that
Roz’s mention of health seemed to have triggered, “just watch
yourself.”

She looked away from him. “The people last year – ” she said, and Brother corrected her with, “Two years ago, dummy.” The coughing fit was passing.

Roz glared. “Two years ago,” she said, “ – they didn’t see her once.”

“The McDonalds,” Brother remembered fondly.

“Wonderful family,” Miss Allardyce said. The voice was rising again, and she was moving back behind Brother’s chair.

“Or the time before, as I recall.” Brother straightened in his chair, the rattle in his throat gone. “The Doncheys.”

“Another wonderful family.”

“They were all, Roz, all of them. The Wassoffs.”

Miss Allardyce smiled. “And Norton, Brother, remember?”

“Do I? And Spiering.”

The names came at Ben and Marian, a whole litany of them that Roz and Brother were calling up with mounting and almost childish enthusiasm: Costanza, Kappes, Whipple, Ferguson, Thorne, Zori, Ableman, Wright, Griffin, Loomie, Costello . . .

They stopped abruptly, and Roz and Brother seemed lost in meditation for a moment.

“Wonderful families, all of them,” Brother said, and Miss Allardyce nodded and said, “Just wonderful.”

There was a silence. “And now,” Brother said quietly, “ – Rolfe?”

Miss Allardyce repeated the name, like a prayer. “Rolfe.”

The announcement, small-voiced and whining, came from the open terrace door, wrecking the silence: “I fell.” He limped two steps into the room, holding up his arms and displaying two scraped elbows. His jeans were torn and his left knee gaped through, ragged and bleeding.

The shock took a while to reach Marian; when it did it jolted her. She cried, “
David!
” and ran to him across the room. “What happened?” She was on her knees in front of him. “My God, baby, what happened!”

“I fell!” he repeated shakily, and her reaction brought on the tears.

Ben was beside her, examining the wounds. “Okay, sport, easy now.” He raised the scraped elbows gently. “Easy.” Marian had her arms around David. “Is he all right? Ben, is he all right?”

“You want t’ wash out them cuts,” Brother said. He had wheeled himself closer.

Miss Allardyce snapped her fingers. “Bring him this way, into the kitchen.”

Their voices, the rasp and rattle back, were filled with concern.

“He’s all right,” Ben said. “Aren’t you, Dave?”

“I fell on the rocks,” he said to Marian where all the sympathy seemed to be. She had taken out a Kleenex and was wiping his elbows, wincing along with him.

“I
told
you,” she said to Ben, “he shouldn’t have been left alone.”

“An accident, that’s all,” Brother said, leaning forward to see. “Roz here’s got a first-aid kit. Go get it.”

“C’mon, Dave, alley-oop!” Ben lifted him and Marian grabbed his hand. “What’s a few cuts, after all?” He held him tight and moved toward the door to hurry Miss Allardyce.

“It
hurts,
” David cried.

And Marian said, for Ben as well, “I know, baby, I know.”

They followed Miss Allardyce out of the room, leaving Brother who heard Marian say, “I’m sorry,” to Roz, “we should’ve been more careful.”

Brother waited until the voices disappeared and then wheeled closer to the window, pulling his robe closed at the neck. Light was moving above the water like a nimbus, blinding him to the opposite shore. In a while, something shuffled behind him.

“What’s all the hubbub?” Walker asked.

Brother didn’t turn. They were perfect, the woman especially; a natural. “Boy got hurt,” he said to Walker.

“Serious?”

“He’ll live.”

Walker came to the window. He stopped beside a pedestal supporting a large gardenia plant.

“They takin’ the house?” he asked casually.

Brother shrugged. Of course they’d take it. He’d never been wrong yet. “We’ll see,” he said.

Walker lifted the plant which was stiff, brown, and leafless.

Brother turned his head. “Where’re you goin’ with that plant?”

“Out to the car.”

“Why?”

He nodded in the direction of the door. “Whozis said it was dead.”

“Did she?” Brother faced the bay. “Look again,” he said.

The base of the plant, just above the powdery soil, was a pale green, and above it, on a dead branch, were two fresh shoots.

Walker looked at Brother’s back, then at the plant again, reexamining it. “Now ain’t that somethin’,” he said.

(4)

The wounds, once Ben had cleaned them, were slight; and although it was Marian who had shown the most concern (so much so that she could barely remember the kitchen afterwards, except that it was huge and bright and wonderfully old-fashioned, with everything double-sized), it was Ben who urged them out to the car, saying, “I think we better get the chief here home.”

“He’ll be just fine, won’t you, sonny?” Miss Allardyce said. “Heck, any boy who can survive New York
City
. . .”

Marian put her arm around his shoulders and squeezed him protectively. He was no longer wearing his wounded expression; the patched knee and elbows were evidence enough. “He just has to get used to the country,” she said to him.

“Well, there’ll be plenty of time for that,” Miss Allardyce said. She reached into a box and pulled out a chocolate chip cookie. Ben was signalling Marian, indicating the door impatiently. “In a minute!” she gestured.

David tried to bite into the cookie, made a face, and then held it out to Marian distastefully. “It’s like a rock,” he said.

“Probably stale,” Miss Allardyce said with a sigh, “like everything else around here. Throw it out.”

Ben was holding the kitchen door open. “Let’s go, Dave,” he said, addressing Marian. When she passed him she slapped his arm and whispered, “Why are you in such a hurry?”

Miss Allardyce turned and pointed to a passageway beside the kitchen. “Servants’ wing’s through there,” she said; “unused, needless to say, except for the old fool. Laundry room, pantry, sewing room, and whatever else you can think of.” She took Marian’s arm and led her back to the entrance hall. Ben had slipped past them, joining David who was limping toward the front door. “Once you’re all set up, there’ll be no need to leave the place; everything’s here.” They passed beside the staircase which now had a small metal platform with a folding chair at its foot. “Brother’s inclinator.” Brother himself was not in evidence. “Dining room,” Miss Allardyce continued, “library.” Her thumb arched over her left shoulder, pointing backwards. “Greenhouse through there. A mess, I’m afraid.” Marian remembered the photographs in the alcove, and of course there was no way she could mention them without admitting she had been snooping. Miss Allardyce led her directly ahead, without stopping to open any of the closed doors. There were six bedrooms on the second floor, two with sitting rooms. “Besides our mother’s suite in the west wing.”

The phrases came back to her, and the incantatory sound of their voices: way at the end of the house . . . where you’ll never see her . . . never even know she’s there. . . .

There were another four above that, if Miss Allardyce remembered correctly. “Half the rooms I haven’t been in for years; some of them never, would you believe it?” Heat was oil, tenants’ expense; not that they’d need it. There were individual heaters in the bedrooms for cool spells. She rattled off more details: linens, dishes, pots, all provided; the old fool would show them the pool house and the gardening shed when they took possession. Sorry,
if
.

Ben and David were still walking ahead; Ben impatiently, Marian thought – and rudely so, which surprised her; not bothering to look back or show even token interest in Miss Allardyce’s booming inventory.

“Did you hear all that, Ben?” Marian called.

“I heard,” he said from the porch, and bent to check the bandage on David’s knee.

Marian shrugged an apology to Miss Allardyce who dismissed him with a reassuring wave. “He just doesn’t want to seem too interested,” she said. “Brother spotted it.”

“Let me work on it,” Marian said. “Can we call tomorrow?”

“Noon the latest.” She stopped her just inside the front door. “We’d hate to lose you, but . . . Like I said, there are others.”

“I don’t think you’ll lose us,” Marian assured her. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

She smiled and Miss Allardyce smiled back. “I don’t think we’re going to lose you either.” She was giving Marian that close, discomforting look again. “You won’t be sorry, Marian,” she said. “Believe me.” It was her other sound, the voice underneath, and Marian heard rooms and rooms again, and basements and sub-basements, the words rolling inside her with the cadence of waves.

Ben’s voice came at them from the edge of the porch. “It’s a beautiful house, Miss Allardyce,” he said, and the waves stopped inside her. He took a step down, supporting David who laughed when the wood creaked under them. “Thanks very much.” It was politic enough, and as far as he was concerned, final enough as well.

She had looked back at the house just once as they drove through the field, then sat back and stared ahead silently. Ben was watching the twists in the road, glancing at her quickly once or twice. He had seen the same expression often enough in the past to realize that she was already rearranging the furniture; casters rolled in the silence and the smell of lemon oil blew in with the hot rush of air.

The car tunnelled through the woods, stopped at the stone pillars, and turned right, onto the dirt road. Ben took his foot off the gas, said “Whew!” and shook his head. “So that’s what they mean by the Funny Farm.” Marian held the stare, straight ahead and, now that he noticed, somewhat stony. He shrugged, looked furtively left and right, and stepped on the gas pedal hard, spinning the rear wheels and raising a cloud of yellow dust. He released his foot immediately and waited for Marian’s reaction.

“You know I don’t like games when you’re driving,” she said icily.

“Sorry,” he replied.

The stone wall disappeared behind the foliage. She drew a deep breath to power the words, and finally announced, “You were impossibly rude.”

“Was I?” he said innocently. “I wasn’t aware of it.”

“You could’ve shown some interest. It was downright embarrassing.”

“Honey, you showed enough for both of us,” he said, patting her knee for emphasis. “I heard the pitch; I just wanted to get out of there.”

“You made that clear enough,” she said, shifting in the seat and loosening a bit. “Do you mind telling me why?”

He half-turned in her direction, then brought his eyes back to the road. “Oh, come
on,
babe; you’ve got to be kidding. Someone ought to go in there with a large butterfly net.”

“Because they’re a little eccentric?”

“Eccentric?” he laughed. “Honey, that kind of eccentric is out-and-out certi
fi
able.”

“They got carried away, that’s all.”

“Not yet, they didn’t; but they will, they will.”

“Whatever they are,” she said while he chuckled, “it has nothing to do with the house. It’s perfect, it’s absolutely ideal.” He waited for the smile to disappear.

“You’re sure about that,” he said.

“Of course I’m sure.” She drew her leg up under her and faced him. “Ben, I honestly don’t see what there is to
think
about. It’s exactly – it’s
in
finitely more than we were looking for.”

“I wasn’t looking for anything, Marian. I’m just along for the ride, remember?”

“For once,” she said, a little angrily, “be serious.”

“All right,” he said, “serious.” He looked at her long enough for her to bring her hand up to the wheel which was vibrating with the ripples and potholes in the road. “I don’t like the house.” He said it simply and firmly and – she knew the tone – very seriously.

It hardly came as a surprise to her; his reaction to the house had been as obvious as her own. She forced a laugh anyway. “Don’t like it?” she said in disbelief. “For God’s sake,
why?
”

David was pushing a half-unwrapped sandwich over the seat and under her nose. “What’s this stuff?” he asked.

“Chicken salad,” she said quickly, anxious to pursue Ben’s absurd statement.

“We got anything else?”

“Shrimp salad.” She brushed the sandwich away as David made a retching sound. He sat back and Marian draped her hand over the seat and touched his knee gently. She kept her eyes on Ben.

“There’s something weird about the place,” he said finally. “Christ, Marian, you must’ve felt it yourself.”

“All right, they’re weird, they’re crazy,” she said for the last time. “But, honey, we’re renting the house, not Miss Allardyce and her brother.”

“The house is what I’m talking about, the whole deal. There’s something suspicious about it.”

“I call it luck.”

“Luck, hunh?”

“Luck. I mean, just to have it fall into our laps like that – ”

“Marian,” he cut in, “you don’t rent an estate like that for nine hundred dollars.”

“Why not? Maybe they don’t need the money, maybe it’s more important to have someone look after the place, just
be
there. That’s worth some concession, isn’t it? Especially if they happen to be the right people.”

“Meaning us?”

“Us. Is that so hard to accept?”

“All right, maybe not. What’s a damn sight harder to accept, even from two weirdos like that, is the rest of the deal – the old lady. You don’t leave a ninety-year-old woman – ”

“Eighty-five.”

“A hundred and eighty-five, what’s the difference? You don’t leave an old lady with total strangers, and I don’t care how right they happen to be. It’s A, presumptuous, and B, irresponsible. Christ, do you really want that kind of burden?”

“For that house? Yes, if those are the terms.”

“Will you try to see something besides the house. Like who feeds her – ?”

“A tray, three times a day; that’s all.”

“Who cleans up after her, what if something should happen?”

“You heard what they said: we won’t even know she’s there.”

“Whatever those nuts may think, an old woman needs some kind of attention.”

“Does Aunt Elizabeth?”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Does Aunt Elizabeth?” she insisted.

“Aunt Elizabeth is different.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know Aunt Elizabeth, which is more than you can say for Mama Allardyce.”

“Don’t be so flip,” she said, and when he looked to see whether she had meant it seriously, she pointed left and said, “Turn here.”

They had reached the blacktop perpendicular to the dirt road. He made the turn and caught David in the rear view mirror, his upper lip smeared with mayonnaise.

“How’s it going, Dave?” he said.

David said, “Fine,” and Marian turned and said, “You liked the house, didn’t you, sweetheart?”

“It was okay.”

Marian wiped his lip with a tissue. “And you’d learn to be a little more careful, wouldn’t you?”

“We gonna buy it?”

“We’d be crazy not to, don’t you think?” She was brushing his hair back from his forehead which was damp and a little red from the sun.

“I think we should look at some of the others,” Ben said.

Her hand rested on David’s head for a second; he moved away and she let it fall. “Why?” she said wearily. “If you don’t want that one, you obviously don’t want any of them. Like you said, you’re just out for the ride.”

“If we find something, we’ll take it,” he said, and for the first time he really meant it, even if it had come out to pacify her. He gave her knee a reassuring squeeze, and when she remained silent, obviously brooding, he squeezed harder and repeated, “Okay, babe? Cross my heart?”

He made the gesture and she faced front, her eyes passing somewhere under his shoulder.

“As far as I’m concerned, we’ve found it,” she said sullenly. “I don’t want to see anything else.”

“Come on,” he said, nodding at her bag. “Dig in and pull out that list.”

“I don’t want to see anything else!” Marian repeated with a vehemence he had seldom heard in her before.

When, ten minutes later, they passed through the small cluster of buildings again (there was a car parked outside the post office this time, and some activity behind the window of the general store), they were both still silent. David leaned between them and asked, “When’s the picnic?”

“Some other time, chief,” Ben said.

Marian continued to stare ahead, calling out monosyllabic directions until they reached Riverhead and the Expressway which eventually became jammed with traffic in both directions. At one point she reached into the picnic hamper for a shrimp salad sandwich. She unwrapped it for Ben and held a thermos cup of coffee for him while he inched past construction crews and overheated cars and, near the Nassau-Queens line, a wicked three-car smashup.

He brought up the house once more, apologetically, and was about to catalogue his objections again, but she cut him off with a resigned “It’s forgotten.” Still, she refused to look at any other houses, and when he said, “Maybe next week then?” she shrugged and replied, “Maybe,” with little interest.

It was after two when he pulled into the Bus Stop in front of their building. He kept the motor running and let Marian out, and David who was going upstairs for their baseball gloves and a softball.

“Hon?” he called out to her, leaning across the seat. “You’re all right, aren’t you?”

She looked up at the building, counted the eight floors and added two for an even, therapeutic ten, and said, “Of course I’m all right.”

He watched her walk away without turning. “We’ll be back by four, okay?”

“Whenever,” she said. She dodged the kids, the tricycles, the jump ropes and a ball whacking against the side of the building, edged past the knot of women at the entrance, and disappeared inside.

Ben sat up and leaned against the wheel. Forgotten, my ass, he said to himself.

It was the treatment, of course; laid on a little heavier than usual, but following the basic paradigm: distance, silence, a cold plate for dinner. He had pointed it out to her after dinner, misjudging her mood. She flared up and locked herself in the bathroom for ten minutes. He might have given in at that point and called the Allardyces, despite his feelings about the house. Hell, if it was that important to her . . . But his own instincts were still stronger than her stubborn petulance. No doubt she was feeling exactly the same way, and for all the times he had given in – the evidence was ranged around the apartment – she could give in this once.

She was in bed before him and when he leaned over to kiss her, to make one more attempt, her breathing suddenly became heavier and more regular. She was making herself sick, he had told her earlier, all over a lousy house for the summer, and yes, she agreed resentfully, she was making herself sick, she wanted it that much.

It was ridiculous. A
house
, after all.

Ben lay back, his hands behind his head, and distracted himself with the sounds from the neighboring building. There was a party somewhere above the courtyard; the decibel count would rise until around two when the music would stop and there’d be ten minutes or so of drunken banter below the windows. The late movies then, and the accelerated hum of air conditioners, until the string of bars let out and Northern Boulevard roared with the sound of souped-up cars and an occasional police siren. Saturday nights, a whole summer of them, a whole summer of – what? Another course, another fumbling attempt at his Master’s? Scrounge around for a job teaching summer school?