The O'Briens (10 page)

Cordelia helped make up a temporary bed on the bedroom floor, using the stack of woollen blankets. Cordelia disapproved of her arrangements, she could tell. Maybe selling her parents' bed had been hard-hearted, but she didn't want to sleep where her mother had died. And all the other beds in the Pasadena house were much too large and dark for the Linnie cottage anyway.

When everything was done, Cordelia folded her apron, tucked the twenty dollars Iseult gave her into her pocket-book, and started putting on her hat. Her dress was yellow gold satin with royal blue checks that matched the hat.

“Now, I am thinking of your mama.” Cordelia was carefully adjusting her enormous hat. Suddenly she turned and looked straight at Iseult. “You hear what I am saying, girl?”

“Oh yes,” said Iseult.

“Be careful what help you take on. Some gals are rank, thieving hussies.”

“Oh, I'm not getting any help,” Iseult said. “It's time I learned to do things for myself.”

“You? How you gonna tend yourself? Here is what you do: find the coloured church out here and — ”

“Millions of people take care of themselves. It can't be that difficult.”

“You ask the coloured pastor and he'll set you a good girl. Don't go forgetting yourself out here on the ocean. Find yourself good help. Be wary of strangers. People see a girl alone, next thing they want something from you. Watch yourself. Don't follow no awkward religions, but say your prayers. Wear your hat and cover your arms. Bathe every day and be a good girl, for Cordelia's sake.”

It was the first time since her mother's death that anyone had admonished her, and she felt an emptiness blooming. Cordelia opened her arms and Iseult stepped into the mothering embrace.

“Don't you mind. Gonna be all right, sugar. You gonna be all right.”

Cleansed by tears, she felt weaker, also stronger.

“There you are now, plum,” Cordelia said. “You on the track of feeling now.”

~

The next morning was foggy. Wearing a nightdress and a silk robe one of her great-uncles had brought from China, Iseult roamed from room to room, relishing her solitude. At noon she was still not dressed. There was nothing to eat in the house. She sat down in a corner of the spare room with a novel,
Howards End
, but found herself unable to concentrate.

In one of the drawers of the escritoire she found a sheaf of her mother's stationery and envelopes, scratched a line through the letterhead, and wrote Joe O'Brien what she hoped was a calm, cool, polite little note.

Marie de C. Wilkins

Weds. 3rd February

Linnie Cottage,

Venice, Calif.

Dear Mr. O'Brien,

Many thanks for the welcome of the roses. Linnie Cottage would have been quite barren otherwise. I am settling in.

Everything is a little strange, but I am getting used to it.

Yours truly,

Iseult Wilkins

Even as she signed it she felt dissatisfied with it — a dead piece, no roots or branches — but she folded it and slid it into an envelope that she addressed to

Mr. Joseph O'Brien

c/o The Venice Land Co.

Windward Avenue

Venice, Calif.

She went to the window. The fog was dissolving in a breeze. The light was sparkling now. Wild blue sky.

Feeling almost angry with herself, she pulled her note out of its envelope, picked up her pen and added

p.s. Would you care to stop for tea any day this week about

4 o'clock.
—I.W.

She washed her face, dressed, and walked to Windward Avenue, where she placed an order at the Italian grocery. Ice was sold at the feed and grain store and she ordered a block delivered. The man at the telephone company office said she certainly could have a 'phone: lines were up along all the canals. She bought soap at the drugstore and stamps at the post office and mailed her note. The post office was only a short way from the real estate office. She could have stopped in under some pretext and might have seen Joe O'Brien, but she wanted him to come to her.

When she reached home her groceries were waiting in two crates on the kitchen floor. A block of ice feathered with sawdust had been settled in the icebox. It took her most of an hour to put away her groceries, deciding just where things ought to go. It was satisfying, managing by herself.

For the rest of the day she roamed from room to room. It wasn't restlessness exactly. She felt happy, almost too satisfied to be still. The empty house and the calm space was exactly what she needed. For dinner she heated a can of tomato soup and crumbled a cracker into it. For dessert she ate half of a big, tasteless California pear.

She slept in her blanket nest on the floor and woke late. There was no fog. She made coffee and walked through the rooms holding a steaming cup, still pleased with the emptiness and the morning light in each room. She did not leave the house or even dress. Late in the afternoon she filled the bathtub and lay in it with light and air wafting in the open window. Feeling sleepy, she touched her floating breasts and tried to imagine carrying and delivering a baby. It seemed impossible, but plenty of people had done it, even in her family.

She didn't know yet what she was going to do. She wanted to just
be
for a while. To collect herself. Much of her life had just been a refraction of her parents' desires and needs. She wanted light, and time to think — if that was what one called the business of living in one's mind and instincts, with nothing else for company. More an animal than a person: that was what she wanted to be for a while.

But animals need heat. She started to wonder why Joe O'Brien had not called on her as promised. After all, his brother had described him as “a gentleman of leisure.” She felt a cut of anxiety. Perhaps he had left already for Mexico.

She had no claim on him, only that he'd promised to call.

She stepped out of her bath, dressed quickly, and began straightening her empty rooms again. That she might never see him again was troubling. How sensitive and intelligent he had seemed, with his blackness and those quick blue eyes. He had listened so carefully, but after mulling over what she said maybe he'd dismissed it as girlish and silly and decided to have no more to do with her.

But he had probed her thoughts. Listened to her. And she'd felt her body exercising some radiant power over his — she hadn't admitted that to herself until now, but it was true. She'd felt it. She made up her blanket bed and began cleaning her kitchen, scouring the sink, washing down countertops, throwing out orange peel, coffee grounds, and empty soup tins. She couldn't stop. She went from room to room, dusting every window ledge, breathing sharp, shallow breaths, her heart pounding. After an hour the house was perfectly orderly and clean, but still it did not satisfy, and she did not know what more she could do. Then she remembered Cordelia in Pasadena, washing windows every couple of weeks.

Lifting Joe O'Brien's white roses from their bucket, she breathed in their fragrance. Then she put them in the bathroom sink and filled the bucket with a solution of vinegar and water and began cleaning windows, starting in the kitchen and working her way through every room. They didn't seem very dirty at first, but the slanting afternoon sunlight began detailing every smear. No matter how much she polished she could see swirls on each pane.

When she ran out of rags, she went through her clothes until she found a dress, grey silk, made by the Chinese dressmaker on Fifth Street who made frocks and gowns for the matrons and daughters at the Pasadena Club. It was the dress Iseult had worn to her mother's funeral. She began tearing it up and using the scraps of silk on her windows. She cleaned every piece of glass in the house, including the mirror above the bathroom sink. And still they weren't clean — they were murkier than ever.

Suddenly she was exhausted. She dumped the bucket into the kitchen sink and refilled it with cold water, then gathered the roses from the bathroom. Stepping over the dress lying in tatters on the floor, she felt ashamed of what she'd done. Without eating or undressing, she lay down on her blankets and almost immediately fell asleep.

Awakening in darkness in what she knew must be the heart of the night, she could not get back to sleep. She had lost all her composure and clarity. Her mind was sore from exhaustion.

She could hear coyotes yipping. In Pasadena there'd been coyotes; she was used to their hysterical noises. Dogs of death, her mother once called them, the only time she had heard her mother use that word.

A house was just a house. He had a railroad, mountains. He was making something of himself. She was trying to but not getting very far. Sunlight, space, setting — they were aspects of existence but weren't in themselves reasons for living. They were like the wind blowing across the land, not the land itself. She had to find her purpose; she needed her own ground.

Alone was no good. Someday she would need children and a sense of life widening, not narrowing.

Patrick Dubois on the stairs; her father in his upstairs library all alone; Joe struggling with his little book of manners — men might seem harder, more forceful, but really they were as unsure of themselves as women.

Desire was the most interesting thing.

She grew even more restless. Her legs thrashed and kicked under the blankets. She heard noises rising outside, rustlings and scrapings. Coyotes? She fought panic. Finally she went out to the living room, wearing a blanket around her shoulders. It was three o'clock by the Leavenworth clock. From her front window she could see hundreds, thousands of electric lights sparkling on Venice Pier. Was the Incubatorium closed; were the newborns asleep? Were the nurses? Perhaps they had visitors through the night. Perhaps she ought to dress and go out there, she thought; there was nowhere else she felt so alive.

No.

I have to get this under control
, she told herself,
or I am going to lose my mind
.

She dragged her nest of blankets into the living room. As she lay on the floor, the electric glow falling through the windows resembled moonlight. All the energy she had been using in the past few days to bolster her sense of self was spent. Wrapped in the old blankets, she felt drained and spiritless, but she lay awake for a long time before she could sleep.

~

The morning fog was white and wet. She made herself take a bath before getting dressed. She measured and boiled coffee and buttered and ate a slice of bread, trying in each small sequence of actions to recover her poise. Lightness, joy, freedom seemed very far away. Everything tasted like nothing. These bare rooms were nothing, and so was she.

She was afraid to leave her house; afraid that if she did, she'd never return to it.

The fog had not cleared by noon. It seemed to curdle more thickly than ever.

That was the afternoon Mr. J. O'Brien came to tea.

~

The knock on the front door startled her. “Miss Wilkins? Are you at home?”

She considered not answering the door, hiding in her bedroom. She wasn't strong enough to entertain a visitor, especially him. But if she hid from him she'd despise herself even more. She was bathed and dressed at least.

She opened the door, smiling. “Mr. O'Brien, what a nice surprise! Won't you come in?”

In one hand he held a bunch of irises wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, in his other hand a wrapped parcel. He thrust the flowers at her.

“How kind! I've so enjoyed your roses. Please come in.” She took the flowers into the kitchen and started clipping the stems. She didn't have a vase so she filled a glass with water and brought the flowers out.

He wore his blue suit, a striped shirt, another stiff white collar, and a maroon necktie, and he looked handsome, dark, and strong.

“A present for the house.” He held out the parcel.

“Really, this is too much, Mr. O'Brien.”

“Hardly. Open it.”

She pulled away the wrapping. It was a big quarto-sized volume:
Interior Arrangement and Furnishing of the California Bungalow
. Kneeling on the floor, she opened the book and slowly turned pages. There were photographs and floor plans, drawings of chairs, lamps, and furnishings.

“Oh, this is quite thrilling! How thoughtful of you.”

“I thought you might find something in it.”

She saw him glance at her nest of blankets on the floor. “I don't have a real bed yet,” she said quickly. “Or chairs or a table. So your book will be my guide.”

“There may be one or two ideas there you can use. Maybe I'd better come back some other time, when you've had a chance to settle in?”

“I have tea and sugar and milk. I think we'll manage.”

He followed her into the narrow little kitchen and she felt him watching her while she lit the stove and got out her mother's tea things.

“Are you finding room to breathe?” he asked.

She looked around at him and smiled. “Will this white fog ever lift, Mr. O'Brien?”

“Oh, it won't last. By the way, you can order firewood at the feed and grain on Washington Boulevard. A fire would cheer things up.”

He carried the tea tray to the living room. She had failed herself so far, but having another body in the cottage was reassuring. His masculine voice and scent relieved the pressure of the emptiness.

“We'll sit on the floor,” she said, “if that's all right.”

“Of course it is.”

His body gave the room dimension. The emptiness no longer seemed monstrous. He poured tea while she opened the book and examined the photographs, elevations, and room plans. Each house, each room, every piece of furniture had clean horizontal lines.

“Some of our friends in Pasadena lived in these sorts of cottages. They were called cottages, but they were quite grand houses.” She slowly turned pages. “My mother didn't like them but I thought they were beautiful.”