Those Harper Women (32 page)

“Mayor Wagner gets a share of your profits, you know.”

“Really?”

Grinning, he says, “Yeah—really.” He writes on the table: “Taxes, question mark.”

“Arch—all these details—”

“They aren't even details yet, buddy,” he says. “They're just question marks.” Looking at the tablecloth, he says, “Boy, we've got an awful lot of them too. There seems to be a lot about running an art gallery that you just don't know.”

“Now look here, Arch. Of course—there are a lot of things I'm going to have to learn. But once I get into it, once I get things going—”

“Oh, sure. You'll learn. But there's just one other thing I'd like to know. Let's suppose you're all set. You've got your two painters, and you've got a couple of dozen pictures hanging on your walls, and you're all set to open your doors—for your first two-man show.”

“Yes, I plan to do it with a cocktail party—you know, for the press, the critics, and the—”

“Okay, your show is open, it runs for three or four weeks, and nobody—not a soul—buys any of your pictures. What do you do then?”

“Arch, why are you so
negative?
Why can't you—”

“I'm trying,” he says, “to be positive—to get down a few positive facts and figures.”

“You're trying to confuse me and discourage me!”

He drums his fingertips for a moment on the tabletop. He puts down the pencil. “No,” he says. “I'm not.”

“Then what are you trying to do? Besides give me a hard time!”

He leans back in his chair and slowly rubs his chest with the flat of his hand. “You really want to know?” Facing her, his wide wraparound sunglasses contain a double reflection of her and nothing more—just as, she supposes, her sunglasses contain only a reflection of him. His mouth is expressionless. Then quickly he leans toward her across the table. “I'm just trying to get you to look at yourself,” he says. “Have you ever looked at yourself, little girl? I don't think once in that little life of yours you ever have. But
I've
looked at you, and I see a beautiful smokescreen of little excuses and pieces of make-believe. You don't know yourself what's real and what's fake any more, and maybe you've even stopped caring. All this stuff about the people who've done you wrong. Your mother who's such a cold-blooded bitch, your father who's such a sweet slob that he let your mother walk all over you both, your grandmother who doesn't
understand
you. Aw, hell, nobody's ever understood you, right? The men in your life—the Tom, Dick, and Harry you married. You were so
young
. So abused. So disillusioned. Ah, little girl, little girl—listen to me. Cut the act, drop the smokescreen, you've been doing it with mirrors too long—and it's such a familiar act. You can't do it with mirrors when you go into business. You can't sell pictures with your girlish charm or all your hard-luck stories. Nobody's going to give a damn
then
. Look at yourself. You called me a miserable bastard the other night because I said I wanted to sleep with you. You put on your righteous-indignation act—walking off in a huff with your I'm-a-nice-girl act. Hell, you know men—don't kid me. You've been doing the dance of the seven veils for me for the past week without even dropping the first veil, and I'll bet that's exactly what you've done with every one of your husbands! There's only one reason you've had three of them. You like men. You liked number one, number two, and number three—so what? You
took
them, that's all. You're not a bruised flower, or a torn little lace handkerchief, or a woman in distress—so take off the masks. Don't be poor little lost, lonely, mistreated, misunderstood Leona with
me
. For God's sake, there's a
woman
hiding under all your veils—or there'd better be!” He pauses now, looking at her levelly. “Okay,” he says, “if you need an excuse to run away from me now, there it is. I've behaved like a brute. So run away now, if you want to.”

During the whole time he has spoken to her, her eyes have been fixed steadily on him. Now she lowers her eyes, twirling the stem of her wineglass. “No,” she says quietly, “I'm not going to run away.”

“Well, good,” he says. He smiles at her and raises his glass, touching it lightly against her own. “Here's to your gallery.”

In the room, his voice is quieter, gentler. He stands at the wall, fiddling with the thermostat. “All the comforts of home,” he says. “Except one. The darn air-conditioning hasn't worked since I've been here.” He goes to the window and opens it, but there is no breeze this hot afternoon. He turns and smiles at her. “Sorry. This is the best I can do, buddy.”

From where she lies, on the bed, fully dressed, Leona holds out her empty glass. “Fix this for me, will you, Arch?”

He takes the glass and carries it to the dresser.

He has stripped—doing so quickly and casually—to his underpants. Moving about the room on bare, well-formed feet, there is an animal lack of modesty about him. Standing at the dresser he yawns and stretches. “It's not the company, it's the hour,” he says, grinning at her. “It was pretty early when you got me out of bed this morning.” He splashes whisky in the glass, and returns, carrying the drink to her.

“Thanks,” she says.

The room is indeed warm and airless. As he stands in front of her she sees trickles of sweat down the front of his chest, across his stomach. He is well-furred, this animal—hairy of chest, of shoulders, even of back. Leona looks away from him and sips her drink. He sits down on the bed beside her. “Sorry I can't get it cool for you,” he says again. “I'd like it cool, for a cool girl.” He circles her waist with his arm.

Leona closes her eyes. The room pounds with silence.

After a minute or so, he says, “I like you, and maybe I'm going to like you even better. That's all I need to say for now, isn't it? That I like you, and that maybe I'm going to like you even better?” Then, close to her ear, “Ah, buddy, buddy, buddy, buddy.…”

“Give me another drink first,” she says. “And while you're up, Arch, close the curtains and the blinds. Do you mind—?” And she adds, her eyes still closed—“darling.”

He takes her empty glass and places it on the table by the bed. “No more drinks for you,” he says. And he whispers an intense command to her and pulls her to him.

Time passes, the hours go by, and the days. The sun rises and sets, and the hard little wheels of the days pass over us as we lie, poor boards of flesh, in a long circle, waiting for the little wheels to make another tour across us.

Thirteen

In the old photograph albums there are many pictures of Diana when she was a little girl. In most of them, she is on horseback, in riding costume. In the horseback photographs she grows, as one turns the cracked pages of the album, from a pretty child of six to a smooth young woman of sixteen. The riding costumes and the horses change, but not Diana's pose: turned slightly in her seat, the reins held in one hand with classical precision, her other hand at her side, she faces the camera with the trace of a smile. At age sixteen, she departs from the album—away at school in New York. Indeed, the departure is virtually final; except for studio wedding photographs, she never appears again. This is because, in the years between the last horseback picture and the wedding pictures, Meredith Harper died and left her a fourth of his estate. Suddenly rich, richer than her mother, at the age of eighteen she could afford to go wherever in the world she wanted. And did.

Sometimes Edith thinks that the year Diana was born is part of the trouble. Diana was born in the autumn of 1914. Edith and Charles had been married nearly five years before the coming of Diana announced itself, and they had begun to wonder whether they would ever have children. In the tropic evenings, and on weekends, they worked together on the garden, laying out walks and beds, planting sea grape and bougainvillea and hibiscus, and the heaven tree, surprised, together, to see how rapidly everything grew. When Edith knew that she was going to have a baby, they were both very happy. (Edith's father was even more excited with the news. He presented Edith a large check. Looking at it, Charles said dryly, “It seems we're having this baby just for him.”) Helping to deliver Diana was one of Mary Miles' last duties in the Harper household. She went home, two months later, to England and to the war, “to do my bit.” (“Your mother is cured, Edith,” her father had said. “Miles has cured her.” To Mary Miles went one hundred dollars and a one-way ticket to Southampton.) But, being born in the autumn of 1914 put Diana queerly out of key with the decades and with history. She was too young to sit up all night in speakeasies or dance the Charleston or fall in love with the elder Douglas Fairbanks. By the time she was old enough to enjoy such things, the world was tired of them. By the time she was ready for parties, the world had had enough of parties. By the time she was rich enough to swing her own rope of pearls, the world was poor.

And Edith sometimes wonders, too, if horses are to blame for Diana. If this is true, then Edith herself must share the blame, for it was she who introduced Diana to the strange climate of horsedom, to the smell of satlery and the strong dark of stalls and stables. What is it about people and horses? It is altogether curious, and sad, the things that those dumb, beautiful animals seem capable of doing to human beings—making them hard where they should be soft, soft where they should be hard, determined where they should be hesitant, resilient where they should be strong. Edith has never met a horsy person she has liked. In a group of people, she can spot a horsewoman immediately. Talking to one, she can feel the horsewoman mentally digging her heels into her sides, to make her canter.…

Studying the old photographs, turning the pages, with the stack of old albums beside her on the chaise, Edith Blakewell searches for an answer. But Diana remains a puzzle. Once, Diana's first husband, Jack Ware, had said to her, “Mrs. Blakewell, can you explain something to me about Diana?” It was in the days when Leona was only four or five years old, and Jack and Diana had begun sending Leona to her for long periods while they tried to solve their difficulties. Jack had come to St. Thomas to take Leona back with them for a while. Trying to cover his embarrassment by kneading the fingers of his big hands together until the knuckles showed white, he looked at the patch of floor between his feet and said, “She doesn't like me. I love her, but she doesn't even like me. And it isn't even
me
she doesn't like. It's—well, it's sex. Do you know that she's refused to sleep with me since Leona was born?
Refused
. ‘I did my duty to you by having the baby,' she said to me. ‘Now my duty's done.' You know—you've read, it's been in all the columns—about this fellow Perry Gardiner who's been squiring her around? All our friends are convinced that Diana's sleeping with Perry Gardiner, and they laugh at me behind my back. But I happen to know that Diana
isn't
sleeping with Perry Gardiner. She isn't sleeping with anybody. I came right out and asked her why the devil she didn't sleep with Gardiner. If she's getting the name, she might as well have the game. And Diana said, ‘Listen here, I
like
Perry. And the reason I like him is because he leaves me
alone.
' Can you explain it, Mrs. Blakewell? What's wrong?”

“Well, Jack,” she says to the invisible Jack Ware now, “what do
you
think? Do you think it's
me?
But how could it be me?”

From Southport, Connecticut, where Jack Ware lives now with his second wife and four young children, there is no immediate reply.

Turning the pages of the albums, her eyes alight on a figure who has no business being there among the past and present members of the Harper family. Her presence there is ironic. It is Monique Bertin. Under the photograph, in white ink in her mother's wispy hand is written, “Europe sailing—1912. Bon voyage!” And there they are, all the members of that Europe sailing someone had photographed on the pier. The members are each identified, in the same handwriting: M. D. H. (Edith's father); D. B. H. (her mother); Mary (Mary Miles); Schiller (Schiller the governess, who has one firm hand on the eleven-year-old Harry and the other on the nine-year-old Boots, a long-ago nickname of Arthur's). And, standing slightly to one side of the others in the group are Bertin and Mme. Bertin. The photograph is so blurred and faded, and was taken from such a distance, that it is really not possible to make out the features of either of the Bertin's faces. The words
Mme. Bertin
are written with the same emphasis as the other names. Clearly Edith's mother, in the year 1912, had no inkling whatever that Monique occupied the position she did. Edith resists a sudden impulse to tear that picture off the page and to deprive Monique Bertin of the immortality of old albums. But no, she belongs there. Let her stay. “Bon voyage!”

Edith tries to remember now when it was, exactly, that she began her personal campaign to get rid of Monique Bertin, and why it was, precisely, that she had decided that the business between her father and Monique had to be broken up. Why had she taken out her old anger at Louis on Monique who, after all, was doing only what she was paid to do? After all these years, it is hard to remember what all her motives were for doing what she did. But, considering what she did do, it is easy to understand why Monique did what she did in return. Yes, that was a turning point … a great deal pivoted around that. Puzzling over the picture, with the album opened in her lap, Edith dozes. In their old-fashioned photographed poses, the picture people enter and populate her half-waking dream. Their voices murmur inaudibly, then rise.

She had been lying on the sofa in the drawing room, a few weeks after Diana was born, and Charles and her father were arguing behind the closed doors of the library. The drawing room was filled with fresh flowers from the garden. She heard Charles say “Murderer …”