The Binding Chair (27 page)

T
HE
S
UNNY
C
OAST OF
F
RANCE

“T
HANK
G
OD FOR
S
UZANNE
,” A
LICE SAID
.

“I suppose.” Cecily turned from her stomach onto her back.

“What? You don’t think she’s nice?”

“
Nice?
”

“Stupid word. What I mean is, she’s made life possible. You must have noticed that May is … well, not as impossible. Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Cecily said. “It’s just. I don’t know. Why her, of all May’s projects?” She winced, either at the sun or at a thought she didn’t share. “There’s something—she seems both odd and familiar. It … I can’t explain. She reminds me of someone, I can’t think who.”

“Well, I don’t care. I’m just glad she appeared.”

“Yes. May is happy. Less unhappy.”

The two sisters were lying on chaises by the pool. It was a hot day, and the bougainvillea blazed in the sun, the magenta of their blooms so intense that they quivered before the eye, rendered the darting hummingbirds as dull as sparrows.

“Do you think she misses Shanghai?” Alice asked.

“I don’t know,” Cecily said. “In all the years we’ve been in Nice—what is it now? Seven?—She’s never spoken of going back. And the passage to China, it’s not so long as it was.”

“For a visit, you mean? She’s not the visiting type. Not once she’s turned her back on a place.”

“No, I know. It’s just that she’s so … She reveals little of herself. Never talks of the past. Arthur. Rose.”

“But,” Alice said, “she never did speak about Rose.” Alice didn’t mention the other daughter. Agnes. She never had.

“No,” agreed Cecily. She stood and stretched, walked slowly down the steps of the pool’s shallow end, dogged by Fräulein. The two wore identical bathing costumes and swam in unison once up and down the length of the pool.

“Daddy doesn’t care for her,” said Alice, as Cecily emerged dripping from the pool. The water coursed down her sister’s smooth legs.

“Who? Suzanne?” Cecily asked. “Well, what does that matter?”

“It doesn’t. I was just—” Alice turned over on her back, closed her eyes against the bright sun. “Do you think they’re … you know?”

“What?”

“Are they … You know what I’m talking about. They share a bedroom. It has one bed.”

“How should I know?” Cecily reached for the comb she’d left on the table by her chaise and inadvertently knocked it to the ground. Alice watched as Fräulein picked it up and handed it to her sister.

Was it the result of so unusual an upbringing, the ever-present silent and obliging staff of boys and amahs? Though it hadn’t affected Alice in this way, Cecily never would pick anything up from the ground. Never, not for all the rest of her life: not a shoe, not a spoon, not a letter, a stocking, an earring, a pen. And, as if in sympathy with her sense of entitlement, the world complied. Just as Fräulein had retrieved the comb, so did Alice, her father, Eleanor, or even May pick up and place in Cecily’s languid white hand whatever she had dropped.

Alice looked at the narrow body tucked snugly next to Fräulein’s. “Well,” she said, “you might know better than I whether or not they’re lovers.”

Fräulein smiled one of her small, cryptic smiles, sat forward on the chaise, and unscrewed the cap on a bottle of lotion. “If you want to know what I think,” Cecily said. “I think you’re too involved with her moods. Her private life.”

“Involved? I’m not
involved
. Involved how?”

“Just that. What do you care what they are?”

“I’m curious. That’s all.”

“And she,” Cecily said. “She’s just as … The two of you have … I don’t know. It’s as if she’s jealous of Evlanoff. You can’t imagine what she’s like when you spend the night with him.”

“What
is
she like?”

“Violent. Raging. That glass door—what did she tell you, that the wind slammed it shut? She threw one of those heavy brass bowls through it.”

“Because I went out?”

“Because she can’t control you anymore. You’ve stopped being her … hers. Her girl. Her daughter. Whatever she thinks you are. Were. And the only thing she has, the only thing she thinks she might hold onto you with, is …”

“Money,” Alice finished.

Cecily held out her other arm for Fräulein to rub with lotion. “Convincing Daddy to cut you out. If you insist on seeing him. If you were to marry him. The problem is, she’s afraid you don’t care enough.”

“About the will, you mean.”

“Money. Her. Any of it. You know, you’ve always chosen to ignore—or maybe you really never understood—that May only cares for people who are weak. People she can manipulate.”

Alice said nothing. She looked up at the villa, a pile of wealth painted optimistically pink, the hue of perfect ripeness, and all—most, anyway—thanks to Eleanor’s tooth, the plate May had bought for her. “Everything we have,” Alice said, adjusting the umbrella over her chaise, “comes from her caring for a, a person she could manipulate, to use your word. What would there be without Miss C. and her tooth?”

…   

A
FTER THE RIGORS
of transferring their household (what of it remained after the fire) from Shanghai to the Riviera, May had fallen into depression. Not that she spoke of it, and months passed before the rest of the family understood that something was wrong. Something other than fatigue, grief.

As for what May felt, the changes were subtle, at first they were. As if while she was walking through a garden the color had slowly, furtively drained from the flowers, the sky, the grass, and left her in a gray place. Alone, and without the capacity to feel desire. Everything she saw was the color of dust. Not that this was unbearable. It was possible to persevere without joy; she told herself it was. But then, suddenly—or was it her awareness that was sudden?—after pleasure had departed, then the conceit that life had meaning, this also abandoned her. Why such struggle? To what end?

Easy enough not to ask such questions while immersed in the details of setting up house, a process complicated by the family’s having moved into a less than completely prime location before an ideal villa on a more desirable street went up for sale. As May had never before experienced this prosaically female pursuit, she made the mistake of assuming that decor would provide satisfaction, even solace. She imagined that the discovery of, say, the perfect vase for the niche in the foyer might offer a vicarious sense of harmony. That she herself might feel as if she were at last in the right spot. Why else would the best draper be booked for months in advance? For what other reason was the upholsterer’s showroom crowded with avid, bright-eyed women eagerly fingering textiles and signing bank drafts?

May fussed over carpets and cabinetry; she oversaw plastering, painting, and stenciling, the installation of a new kitchen, the hiring of a chef and sommelier from Provence. She bought beds; she bought blankets; she bought teapots, champagne glasses, and punch bowls. Divans. Desks. Club chairs, armchairs, and hassocks. Coffee tables. Clocks. Candlesticks. Silverware. Dessert plates. Fifty white linen napkins, monogrammed in red.

She interviewed a score of gardeners, hired three, fired two, had the grounds torn up and relandscaped, presided over the digging of each hole for each shrub.

And then, when she was done, when there was nothing left to do, she despaired. What had any of it been for?

Each morning she flinched when through the open curtains she saw the sea crawl toward the shore, its glittering blue surface a cloak over evil intent. Dark, seething omens. Above the beach, wind shook the palms, it hissed through the umbrella pines and filled her with foreboding. Cypress on the hillsides rubbed together, gnashing and black, like dragons’ teeth. Lemons hung malignly from the trees. Pine cones split open in the dry heat and made a noise like ill-fitting dentures, chattering, clacking. Mocking her.

Worse, hers was a misery that had no company. What tormented May seemed to delight others. Was that Milton’s vision of hell? Dante’s? Or was it that heaven consisted in observing from on high the torments of the damned below? Her memory, her ability to think: it wasn’t just her feet anymore; now everything was failing her. Sleep. Appetite.

The pink insides of a fig, cut open and laid on a plate, metamorphosed into a medical drawing of a dissected ovary, a repugnant swarm of life. She shuddered and pushed it away. The houseboy who served it to her, the maids, they all filled her with loathing and terror. What more were they—what more she?—than bags of entrails, wet mouths at one end, sticky anuses at the other. Life was … there was no way to defend it. She looked up to the charming ruins of Roquebrune and saw a lair for angry dragons. The white light blinded her; it set a halo of bright pain around her head.

She quarreled with Alice, often apropos nothing. “You’ve become judgmental of me,” she accused her on the afternoon they visited Roquebrune. The two of them were sitting in a picturesque café; their untouched water glasses sparkled like diamonds.

Alice laid her fork down on her plate. “Oh come—”

“It’s true,” May said before she could protest. “I feel it, your disapproval.” She drew a breath, held it, let it go. “It’s not unnatural. When I was twenty-five I was just as critical. It’s because you’re young that you refuse to see that every person does his or her best.… We’re all imperfect. Broken. But one has to grow older to admit such disappointment. If you allowed me my failings … you’d have to allow the possibility of your own.” As May spoke, her voice changed, softened. She punctuated her sentences with sighs. “And that wouldn’t be right. Because you are young, and you must feel as you do. That the world is open to you.” She put her hand across the table to Alice. “It’s the way I want you to feel.”

Alice stared at May. What an odd little speech from her aunt. Unprecedented. She’d begun by sounding angry and ended sad. May usually traveled in the opposite direction. Alice couldn’t think what to say in response.

May looked out past the rocks to the sea. It lay flat under a wrinkled skin, ancient and alive, timeless. She’d been wrong in finding China overburdened by tragedy. She had no desire to return there, but China at least was honest, its streets unashamed of humanity’s squalid soul. This rocky coast, this blue sea, this pristine land—Nice, what a ridiculous name for the city where Paganini put down his violin and died in a pinched room on the Rue de la Préfecture, his curtains drawn, his body curled tight as a starved tick’s, hiding from the merciless sun—this meretricious place lied about life. It was trying to trick her.

W
HEN SLEEP WAS
possible, May was plagued by nightmares. Arthur appeared with Rose in his arms. He stood in the garden, the trees shuddering around him.
I found her!
he called.
I found her!
And she tried to go outside. She had to get to them to see if Rose was dead or just asleep. She was confused, and even in the dream she asked herself, was she about to die? Could she be dead already and join them?
Come! Our new home awaits us!
Arthur sang, and May walked to him in her sleep, she stumbled and fell on the stairs.

Alice came after her, running down three at a time, thanking God she was at home. She picked her aunt up and spoke to her, but May wasn’t awake.

She was walking up a hill, up a long winding path to reach a mulberry tree—for the dream had changed; now it was like a story she’d heard as a child, the story of the mother of one of the immortals. May reached the hilltop and there was the hollow mulberry tree, but inside, instead of a baby, she found the corpse of her daughter Agnes.

May prepared Agnes’s body for its passage through the next world. According to custom—traditions which for so long she had ignored—she took a rice bowl and she broke it. Then she washed her daughter’s long body with care, she dressed it in new robes. At Agnes’s shoulder May placed a lamp, that its light might guide her on her dark journey. In her left hand she put rice balls, with which to placate the dogs of the underworld, and she curled the fingers of her right around a stick—in case the rice didn’t work.

To pay the dragon who guarded the precarious gates to Nai Ho Bridge, May filled Agnes’s mouth with gold and jewels. She tried to. Because this was the part of the dream that always went wrong: the coins and the rubies, the pearls and jade pieces all spilled out. It was as if Agnes were spitting the riches back at her. No matter how many times she replaced them, not one would stay in. Alone on the windy hill, the mulberry yawning open before her, a womb transformed to a grave, May would panic. She’d shove the pearls back in, she’d force her daughter’s lips closed around them, but nothing worked. The pearls got dirty, bloody. The new robes tore, and the two of them fought each other, entangled in long wet dirty bandages.

May woke, her hair heavy and lank with sweat, arms and legs slicked with it, her nightdress, too, wet and cold. She grabbed for Arthur and found herself in Alice’s arms.

S
HE WAS FORTY-SEVEN
years old. She drank green tea with sugar, drank jasmine tea with milk and sugar, drank chamomile without, ate nothing. Without opium, she could not sleep. If it wore off, if she woke and could not fall back to sleep immediately: this was unbearable. Her heart beat so insistently, so fast and so hard, that if she lay on her stomach or her side, she felt it against the mattress. If she turned onto her back, she felt it in her neck and her wrists; she couldn’t bear the touch of the collar and cuffs of her nightdress.

A Dr. Michael Evlanoff, whom Alice met the morning May suffered a spell of dizziness and vomiting (streaks of blood in the basin, her nose bleeding as well), examined her and said she would die. She was killing herself.

“My luck,” May retorted, parchment-faced, horizontal, venom-tongued. “To be ill on a holiday, when only Russians pay house calls.”

Evlanoff snapped his bag shut. When Alice gave him a check, he tore it up. “There isn’t any cure,” he said. “And I won’t take her money.”