Quinn (15 page)

“My grandfather, I think. His genes must have skipped a generation.”

“Is he still alive?”

“No. I was fourteen when he died.”

Ann listened to the distant commotion from downstairs and wondered how long Will had been sitting beside her. He ought to go back to the party. She ought to urge him. Instead she said, “Tell me about him, your grandfather.''

Will began to talk, the old man coming to life until Will could almost smell white-pine sawdust in the darkened room. Then Ann told him about her family, with stories of life in Kilkenny before coming to America when she was five years old.

It was nearly ten o'clock when Quinn burst into the room. “Thanks a lot,” she said in a voice that trembled with fury. Will and Ann looked guilty. “It's time for people to leave and Will hasn't met half of them.”

Will started to get up off the floor. “I'm sorry—” he began.

She cried out, “Oh, what's the point? Just stay up here and rot, for all I care!” She wheeled around and marched out the door, giving it a mighty slam behind her.

Will looked at Ann. Her face was solemn, but her eyes were dancing suspiciously. Will's mouth began to twitch around the edges and suddenly they were both laughing, ashamed of themselves but unable to stop.

“Oh, dear,” Ann said, trying to catch her breath.

“I'm in for it tonight,” Will said.

“I don't suppose she'll speak to either of us ever again.” Ann took a deep, shuddering breath to sober herself up. “I should have sent you downstairs. I had no right monopolizing you.”

Will rose now, stretching his legs to get the kinks out. “Most of the time I was here you were asleep. Are you coming down?”

She shook her head. “I don't think so. It would only … well, it's hard for other people, my being ill. They don't know what to say, and it makes them uncomfortable.”

“It's hard for her, too.”

“I know.”

Will bent to give her a kiss on the cheek and walked to the door like a soldier going off to battle.

Quinn was already ushering people out the door. Will stood beside her and tried to redeem himself by saying a few words to each person who left. He had. a good memory for names and was able to produce a personal good-bye for nearly everyone.

“Good night, Roseann. Glad you could come,” he said, then glanced at Quinn in hopes of an appreciative smile. What he got was a cool glare. He observed the stiff set of her head and felt chill icy mountain air swirling around him. Will had never seen this cold anger in her before. He preferred the explosions, the hot exhibitions of temper that quickly fizzled out.

By the time the last guest had left, it was eleven o'clock. It took them two hours to clean up. While John was with them in the kitchen, Quinn was carefully polite to Will, but in their moments alone she spoke monosyllabically or not at all.

John was exuberant. He piled dirty plates next to the sink for Quinn and grabbed a dish towel. “Fancy staying so late with no dinner. That's the sign of a great party. Oh, and I got such a fine look at the Huntington limo,” he said. “There's an Irish driver, fellow by the name of O'Hara. His cousin's at the plant.” He winked at Will. “Nice of 'em to hire a Mick.”

“Van's not like that,” Quinn bristled.

“I know, I know, just funnin' with you, girl,” John said with mock offense. “I liked them both, Vanessa and her hairy boyfriend. They're glad about the two of you going over there tomorrow.”

Quinn and Will responded to this with silence. John regarded them carefully, then hung up his dishtowel and said, “Think I'll take a glass of milk to your mother.” He collected the milk, a clean plate, and two cookies, and wished them a hasty good night. Only Will answered. Quinn continued washing ashtrays with silent efficiency.

“All right,” he said, once John was safely out of range. “Let's talk.”

“There's nothing to say.”

“I told you I was sorry. I am. I let you down.”

A serving dish slipped out of Quinn's grasp and shattered in the sink. She wailed.

Will reached for her, but she struck his arm away. The misery in her tear-streaked face dismayed him.

“Did you cut yourself?” he asked her.

She shook her head.

“Quinn, I'm sorry—”

“You hated them, didn't you? I should have known. It's not fair. I wanted, I wanted …”

He held her now, and she stood rigid, spilling out words and tears. “God, I had such a crazy idea about how it would be. Crazy, I must be crazy. You and Mom and all my friends, everybody loving the b'Jesus out of each other. And the worst of it is, I don't even know them anymore. I grew up with those people and I feel as though they're off in a different world. They're practically family, and I was bored and lonely. I'm so disgusted with myself, Will. I'm turning into a snob, just like you.”

“People grow in different directions. That doesn't make them better or worse, and it doesn't make you a snob.”

“But are they growing or standing still?”

Will was silent.

“I didn't like what I was seeing tonight, and I took it out on you. I'm sorry. I guess this was supposed to be one night when everything was all better.”

“You mean your mother.”

His intuitive grasp of her meaning started her crying again. There was no anger now, only sadness.

“Oh, screw it,” she said. “You're not God Almighty. I want you to be, I guess. Will,” she sounded tired, “what's going to become of us? I don't even understand why we're together.”

He shook his head. “It's one of the great galactic mysteries.”

She dried her eyes with the dish towel. “See what I found under the piano bench?” She reached into her skirt pocket and handed him an unopened packet of condoms.

“Whose?”

“I'm truly shocked. The mind boggles.” She sniffed noisily. “Maybe it was Father Riley. Pity to just toss them out.” She had begun to look more thoughtful than unhappy.

Will reached for her again, but she shook her head. “No. I'll just start all over with the melodrama. Let's finish cleaning up this mess.”

Will was finding it tough to fall asleep. Quinn insisted that for the remainder of their visit Will use her bed while she slept on the sofa. But the bed also seemed doll's-house proportion under his sprawling limbs. Quinn had made him try it out this morning, and when she saw him draped across her mattress with his boots hanging over the edge, she burst into laughter. The bedspread with its frills and flowers only added to the incongruity. She had pounced on him with delight. Now he felt as if he were precariously afloat on a child's rubber raft. Besides, after the emotional intensity of the past hour in the kitchen, his mind was buzzing.

His thoughts leapt to Idaho for comfort, but that topic had recently assumed a menace of its own. Quinn had been like a caged bird out there. She had tried hard, but there was no denying the relief in her face when the plane took off and headed east. He would think of Ann instead, beautiful Ann with the alabaster skin. She had endowed Quinn with her generosity of spirit and blue eyes, but everything else had come from John. Tonight, during that moment by the kitchen sink, Will had caught another glimpse of Quinn's anguish at losing her mother. It was easy to understand. With the image of Ann's face in his mind, he began to float off into sleep.

Suddenly there was a change in the air inside the room, a breeze against Will's exposed arm. A warm body crawled into bed beside him.

“Jesus, what are you doing?” he whispered.

“I got lonely,” Quinn said.

“Your father'll be in here with a shotgun.”

“They're asleep.”

“Uh huh,” Will said dubiously.

Quinn pulled her T-shirt over her head, slipped off her bikini pants, and stretched out on top of him, curling her legs around his, and tucking her feet underneath him. She felt his erection grow against her bare stomach.

“This is the bed of your childhood. We can't do this,” he protested.

“I'm not a child now. I'll redecorate.” She kissed him. “It was so spooky and dark downstairs. I was scared.”

“No, you weren't.” He ran his hand down her spine; her vertebrae made a delicate ripple against his fingers.

“Promise me you'll never leave me,” she whispered. He wanted to cry, but instead smothered the urge against her shoulder, enfolded her, kissed her almost ferociously, on her mouth, her cheeks, her neck. They made love, tumbling about the bed with no regard for John and Ann, who lay awake in the bedroom down the hall.

“In our own house. Mother of Jesus.”

Ann snuggled next to him. “Shh,” she said.

“How could he, the snake in the grass. And her, too. I blame her as well. They won't get away with it …” He started to get out of bed.

“No.” Ann's voice was clear and sharp. John was so startled that he sat back down on the edge of the bed and peered through the darkness at her.

“You let them be, John. It's not our concern.”

“In my house it is,” he retorted.

“If they want to make love, well, that's wonderful.”

“And this from my sweet Old Country convent lass.”

“A lot of things don't seem as important as they did once.”

He was silent for a moment. The tension from his body had set the bedsprings quivering, but now it escaped from him like a sigh and he slumped against the pillow. Ann's hair brushed his arm and she curled against him like a child.

“Annie …”

“Mm.”

“I don't want you to leave me.”

“I know.”

“If you did, I'd want to go with you.”

“You can't think that way.”

“I know I couldn't leave her alone. But there's nothing for me without you.” His voice sounded thick, and she reached up to touch his mouth.

“That
would be a sin,” she whispered.

They lay quietly together, listening to the rustling noises from down the hall.

“She looked fine tonight, didn't she?” Ann said.

“Same as always.”

“She's so full of fire.”

“Is that what it is? I thought it was piss and—”

“John, she's almost a woman. She's not your tomboy kid anymore.” John thought that over. Now Ann sounded wistful. “It's hard to remember being that young. I was once, wasn't I?”

John bent his head to kiss her. “You've never been more beautiful than you are right now,” he said. “And I want you.” The last was added in a voice that held many questions. Her illness had made them hesitant.

She responded with deep kisses. After a while she said, “It won't be the last time, John, I promise.”

Van's voice over the phone quavered and buzzed like the upper-register strings inside a piano. “We'll send the car for you. About five, okay?”

“How's it going?” Quinn asked, responding to the strangled hum in her friend's tone.

“I'll be awfully glad to see you. Stan, too.”

They hung up. Quinn whooped to Will, “Hey, slip on your spats! They're coming to fetch us in the Silver Ghost!”

At five o'clock sharp, as faces pressed against windows up and down Gardner Street, the Huntingtons' Rolls-Royce glided to a stop outside the Mallory house. Quinn and Will dashed to the car. Neither of them owned dress coats, and preferred to brave the cold rather than drape their army-surplus-style jackets over their best clothes. O'Hara, the chauffeur, ushered them into the backseat. Quinn settled back with a sigh. There was a subtle breath of warm air as O'Hara adjusted the thermostat to their coatless condition.

“Oh, my God, is this heaven?” Quinn whispered. Then she giggled. “Why am I whispering?”

“Damned if I know, honeypot,” Will bellowed.

“Shh!” Quinn protested.

As the car pulled away from the curb she leaned forward to wave at the neighbors' animated parlor-window curtains, attempting the familiar stiff gesture of Queen Elizabeth the second. She turned to grin at Will.

He wore a white turtleneck sweater, a navy blazer, and gray slacks. His hair, freshly washed, had dried in a soft wave across his forehead. The sunstreaks made him look as if he had just dropped into town from Acapulco.

“You
don't look out of your element in this heap,” Quinn said. “You're a natural profligate.”

He yanked on a lock of her hair. “Some of the greatest English monarchs were redheads, you know.”

“If you value your life, don't mention it to Jake.” She hooked a strand behind her ear and listened hard for the engine's purr. “I wish
I'd
had the chance to take a look under that hood. Maybe I can sneak down to the garage after dinner.”

“Oh, no, you don't. You're not abandoning me to the Yankee Establishment.”

“You're nervous.”

“Aren't you?”

“No. What for?”

“Well, I'm just a hick from Idaho. I don't know about this Boston Brahmin stuff.”

“Neither do I. But that makes me curious, not nervous. Besides, Ingraham, you're so loaded with class you'll dazzle 'em. Mark my words.”

He leaned over to kiss her on the mouth. “They're marked. And I don't care to dazzle. I just don't want to screw things up for Van and Stanley.”

The Rolls turned up a cobblestone street that was lined with town houses, mostly brick with white trim. Decorative lanterns shone on graceful wrought-iron railings. Cars were parked along the curb where there should have been horse-drawn carriages; otherwise the street was a portrait of another time. There was a feeling of safety here, of the preservation of valuable things, not just possessions but orderliness, a respect for history, and a kind of stolid optimism.

“There ain't nothin' like it in Red Falls,” Will said.

“Not in Medham either.”

A butler met them at the front door and reached for their nonexistent coats. Without missing a beat he smoothly withdrew his hands, as if the gesture had been an adjustment of his cuffs. He led Quinn and Will to a high-ceilinged, paneled room that managed to be elegant and cozy simultaneously. Stanley and Van were sitting on an exquisite Louis the Fifteenth sofa. Dr. and Mrs. Huntington faced them on its mate. A glass cocktail table between the two couples held a silver tray of decanters and crystal tumblers, wineglasses, and goblets. Stanley and Vanessa leapt up as if the springs had suddenly burst through the brocade upholstery to hurl them toward the ceiling.

“So glad you're here,” they said, bumping noses to kiss Quinn. The butler did not depart exactly; he seemed to fade and become gradually invisible.

Stanley wrung Will's hand until his fingers were white from the compression of blood vessels. Dr. and Mrs. Huntington had risen as well, but stood by the fireplace, waiting and smiling remotely. Quinn regarded them with curiosity over Vanessa's cashmere shoulder. They had beautiful teeth.

“We're so pleased you could come,” Mrs. Huntington said. She had Van's long-boned face, but more chiseled so that she was handsome rather than pretty. Dr. Huntington's was fleshy. Quinn decided that he must have been handsome in a standard kind of way when he was young but his small features had not aged well. If it weren't for his height and grace, the man would be quite indistinguished. Van was fortunate to have inherited her mother's looks.

Quinn addressed her attention to Dr. Huntington. “I want to thank you for sending me to Dr. Loomis,” she said. “He was very kind to me.”

“How was the old man?” the doctor asked.

“He said to tell you for him that you're a son of a bitch,” Quinn said.

Mrs. Huntington looked startled, but her husband laughed and propelled Quinn over to the sofa. While they drank cocktails, Dr. Huntington regaled them with reminiscences of macabre pranks from medical-school days. Meanwhile, Stanley practiced drinking martinis, and by nine o'clock his eyes had a certain unfocused glaze. Quinn's stomach had begun to growl loudly enough for Will to raise his eyebrows at her. The butler became visible again beside a paneled section of the wall and ushered them into the dining room.

The seating arrangements were accomplished in an atmosphere as formal and hushed as the room. Quinn made note of the wallpaper above the mahogany wainscoting. It was a reproduction of a pattern she had seen in an exhibit at the Gardner Museum. Will would be interested. No doubt he would also ask her in that deadpan hick voice of his if the Huntingtons were reproductions as well. She caught sight of Van's panicked expression. While Quinn was absorbing the decor, a vast silence had settled over the dinner table. “What lovely silver, Mrs. Huntington. It's antique, isn't it?” Quinn asked.

“Thank you, dear,” said Mrs. Huntington. “Yes, it belonged to my great-grandmother, who was a friend of Abigail Adams.”

“Isn't that thrilling?” Quinn said to Will. She held up a teaspoon. “Maybe Abigail drank untaxed tea from this very spoon.”

“Actually,” Dr. Huntington interjected, “Myra's father swiped the entire set from the Copley Plaza in 1946.”

The general laughter was more uproarious than was warranted. Quinn noticed that Dr. Huntington's face had lost the relaxed aura of geniality she had seen in the other room. The eyes were bloodshot, and there was something fraudulent about the smile. Hadn't Van once told her something about her father's being terribly impressed with his wife's social prominence? Apparently he resented it, too; that was a nasty crack about the silverware. Mrs. Huntington had laughed a stiff decorous death rattle, but was patently wounded. She didn't look at her husband. And neither of them ever seemed to look at Stanley. Quinn wondered if they knew that Stanley once had an audience with the queen in Buckingham Palace. It was the sort of thing that would impress them. Her mind began to whir. She saw that Will had already started on Mrs. Huntington. Lord, he could charm the peel off a banana if he only set his mind to it.

“For a westerner, the history of New England is maybe even more precious,” Will was saying. “A place like this, Beacon Hill, for example. It hurts to see even one old town house cut up into apartments. It must be like the death of a friend.”

Go get 'em, Uriah Heep, Quinn thought. But Mrs. Huntington was leaning toward him with a flushed face.

“Isn't that amazing?” she gushed. “I was just feeling that very same way recently when the Stanfords next door sold their house. Apparently some real estate person bought it for speculation, and heaven knows what will become of it in the end. Probably it'll be razed and made into a parking lot. Imagine, it was built in 1791. I don't know if I can bear to look Amanda Stanford in the eye again.”

That end of the table accounted for, Quinn concentrated on prodding Dr. Huntington into a conversation with Stanley. The doctor sat at the head of the table with Quinn on his right and Stanley on his left, a perfect configuration for her purposes. The challenge plus four ounces of expensive wine brought an attractive blush to her cheeks.

“Van tells me you've been doing volunteer work with the clinic,” Quinn said.

“A couple of hours a week, yes,” Dr. Huntington answered.

“I never think of doctors as rating very high in the altruism department. Aren't you pretty exceptional?” Quinn's face was all admiration. She kept glancing at Stanley to include him. She didn't want him sidetracked into another conversation.

Apparently the subject put a hairline fracture in Dr. Huntington's crust of bemused detachment. He went so far as to shake his forefinger at Quinn for emphasis. “I keep trying to persuade my colleagues that it's not only a humanitarian gesture. If every physician would only donate a few hours a week, we wouldn't be facing the specter of socialized medicine.”

Ah, bless you, she thought. Unwittingly he had precipitated the arrival of Quinn's conversational destination.

“Do you think socialized medical care would be so disastrous?” she asked.

“Unquestionably. You'd see such a decline in quality, patients would be dropping like flies. Thank you, Evelyn.” He helped himself to a slab of roast beef from a heavy silver platter. Evelyn had well-developed biceps, Quinn noticed.

“I wonder how it's working out in England,” Quinn said. Dr. Huntington began to reply, but Quinn quickly rushed on. “Stan? What was your feeling about socialized medicine when you were in London? You know, if it's working out.” Almost home.

Stanley swallowed an enormous lump of beef un-chewed. “As a matter of fact, I had an opportunity to sample the system firsthand. The emergency room was slow and inefficient, but once they finally got around to fixing me up, they did a good job of it.”

“What was the problem?” Dr. Huntington asked him.

“Food poisoning.”

“Must have been the crumpets from your visit with the queen.” Quinn dropped it ever so casually. Stanley smiled at her, and she read his eyes:
You devious little thing,
they said.

Myra Huntington's face snapped around from the foot of the table, bringing to an abrupt halt her lamentations regarding historical preservation in Newport, Rhode Island.

“You're kidding,” Will said, fully aware that she was not.

“Stanley had tea at Buckingham Palace,” Quinn reiterated firmly.

“How interesting, Stanley,” Myra Huntington said. She kept her voice mild, but her curiosity showed in the eager arch of her torso. She was eight feet away from Stanley, but somehow seemed to be leaning close enough to touch noses with him.

“It's not all that interesting,” Stanley said with just the right touch of modesty. But by Myra Huntington's standards there was plenty to tell, not so much his being chosen to participate in a summer drama apprenticeship at the Royal Academy, but rather the list of notables present at the palace reception. Stanley recalled the names of nearly every lord and lady, embellishing the list with only one imaginary luminary named Randolph Higgenbotham-Ramsey.

“You never told us Stanley was so active in the drama,” Mrs. Huntington accused Van.

“No,” Van said. She restrained herself from adding
Would it have helped?

The conversation had loosened now. When Stanley spoke, he was granted the courtesy of full attention from the Huntingtons rather than the cool gaze usually reserved for other people's ill-mannered children.

After dinner Dr. and Mrs. Huntington said good night and left the young people by the fireside to evaluate the evening.

“An abundance of snow in the area tonight,” Stanley remarked.

“A blizzard was just what we needed,” Van said. “Thank you, both of you.”

“If we could only install you here permanently,” Stanley continued.

Quinn adopted a heavy brogue. “In the words of my aged father, the queen sits on the pot just like everybody else.”

There was a burst of laughter. “It would have been comforting if you'd mentioned that while we were on the subject of Buckingham Palace,” Stanley said.

“I was too busy imagining Vanessa's father on the toilet.”

“Very crass,” Will said. He draped an arm around Quinn's shoulder and pulled her next to him. “Look at the way that decanter shatters the light from the fire. Prisms all over the ceiling.”

Van snuggled against Stanley. “Will,” she said, “how'd you know Mother was such a Henry James fanatic?”

“Intuition,” he answered. “And the bookcase.”

“If she could have eaten her chocolate souffle out of your hand, she would have.”

“The good doctor is taking us to his club for dinner tomorrow night,” Stanley said. “The membership's all turning out to see what a Jew looks like.”

“Just be yourself and try to look biblical,” Van suggested.

“They've all got kids with names like Hilary and Darcy and Muffin,” Stanley said. “I like John Mallory's advice better. In my mind's eye every Queen Anne chair shall become a commode.”

They sat drinking wine and talking until there was nothing left in the fireplace except soft red coals. In the car on the way home Quinn asked Will if he had noticed the exquisite wallpaper reproductions.

“No,” he answered. “Are the Huntingtons reproductions too?” Quinn's delight baffled him, but he endured her enthusiastic kiss without complaint.