She cocked her head a bit sideways while looking up at him. “I don't know about that, but I do know farm work sure burns the fat off your body.”
“Oh, Clay, guess you'd better buy another hunter, and I'll take care of it.” Izzy laughed, a pleasing musical laugh.
Walter spied Sister pressed between Clay and Izzy. He pushed his way toward her.
“You can't have her all to yourselves. It's my turn.” Walter kissed Izzy on the cheek, which she rather liked, then used his body to make a path for them through the people.
“You're a hero.”
“You say that to all the boys,” Walter teased her.
Once out of the worst of the press, she took a deep breath. “Well, Walter, it's been my privilege to watch how a woman works a man for her gain. Whew. I never could do it.”
“You never needed to do it.” His slight grin enhanced his rugged handsomeness.
“Walter, you are a true Virginia gentleman.”
“I mean it. Guile, throwing yourself at a man, deceit, and that sort of thing. It's not you. You could never do that.”
“Maybe that's why Ray found other women attractive. I didn't play the game.”
“Ray found other women attractive because he needed conquests to feel like a man.” Walter, Ray's natural son, said this with authority.
Both Walter and Sister had learned of this old secret a year ago. Everyone knew but them, and Walter was the spitting image of Ray Arnold Sr.
“It's all water over the dam, honey. We're still here, and life is wonderful.”
“Life is wonderful because I have you in my life.” He kissed her tenderly on the cheek. “You've given me foxhunting, understanding, and more than I can express.”
“Walter, you'll make me cry.”
He hugged her. “That would shock everyone here.”
“Have you been drinking?”
He laughed. “No. One cold beer. No, my New Year's resolution is to tell the people I care about how I feel. I'm overcoming WASP restraint.”
“Is there a class for this? I need to sign up.”
They laughed together, then Walter said, “Did you hear on the news? Found one of the alcoholics dead down at the train station.”
Walter could have said winos, but, being a physician, he looked at alcoholism with a scientist's eye.
“What a dreadful way to squander a life.” Sister shook her head.
“Yes,” Walter replied. “It's an insidious disease in that it's both chemical yet voluntary. In my darker moments I wonder if they aren't better off dead. Medicine can't reach them. Perhaps God can reach them.”
Sister considered this sentiment. She truly believed that people could be redeemed.
Xavier bumped into her, back to back. “Pardon me. Oh, Sister, if I'd known it was you, I'd have bumped you harder.”
Walter kissed her again on the cheek and moved away. “Any New Year's resolutions?”
“Lose forty pounds.” He grimaced. “Damn, I don't have a spare tire, I've got enough to put four Goodyears on a Camaro.”
“It's all that sitting at work.”
“If only I had your discipline,” he moaned.
“Not sure it's discipline. I don't sit at a desk. I'm in the stables, in the kennels, out on the land. I burn it right off. Humans weren't meant to sit still for hours. Apart from the pounds, think what it does to your back.”
“Damn straight.” He leaned over to her, speaking softly into her ear. “Is Sam Lorillard going to be hunting with us a lot?”
“I don't know. It's up to Crawford.”
“I'm not the only one with a big grudge against Sam. Edward's not overwhelmed with him. Jerry Featherstone either. Ron. Clay. Actually, if you went down the hunt roster, there are a lot of us who gave him a chance over the years. He either seduced our wives, stole money, lied about horses, or smashed up trucks.”
“I know, Xavier, I know. But in the hunt field, all that is left back at the trailers. What you all do or say when we're not hunting is your business.”
“I'm not going to make a scene in the hunt field, but I might rearrange his face if he looks at me cross-eyed.”
“You don't think people can change?”
“Hell, yes, they can change. I'm gonna be forty pounds changed. But inside? Their character? No. Sam was born weak, and he'll die weak. He'll probably die dead drunk, forgive the pun.”
“I hope not, but I appreciate your feelings. If he'd lightened my wallet, I think I'd turn my back on him, too. I'd like to think I wouldn't, but I reckon I would.”
The swirl of gossip and laughter and the running feet of the children filled the Bancroft house. A group of men and women, standing in the corner of the dining room, were discussing why the state of Ohio produced great college football teams but rotten pro teams. The discussion was raising the rafters.
Everything Tedi and Edward did, they accomplished with great style. Before leaving with Betty Franklin, Sister thanked her host and hostess as well as Sorrel Buruss.
“Great day. The snow has picked up.” Outside Betty squinted at the deep gray sky.
“If you want to go home with Bobby, go on. You can pick up your car tomorrow or whenever.”
“I don't mind driving home in the snow. Gives us a chance to be together.” Betty happily stepped into Sister's red GMC half-ton. “How do you like your other truck now that you've had it a year?”
“Like it fine. Nothing pulls like the Ford F350 Dually. But I like this for everyday.”
“You had that truck since the earth was cooling.”
Sister turned on the motor, flipped on the windshield wipers, and waited a moment while the blades flicked off the new-fallen snow. “Nothing about this on the weather report.”
“Why listen? We're right at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We have our own weather system.” Betty shivered. The heat would kick on once the motor warmed up.
“Got that right.” Putting the truck into four-wheel drive, they carefully rolled down the long driveway. “What did you think today?” asked Sister.
“Hounds worked well together, and you were smart not to bring out the young entry. Even though we finally hit a good line, the patience it took to find it might have been too much, what with all the people.”
“Thanks. I'm pleased. Thought the T kids came right along. They've matured early,” Sister said proudly.
“Good voices.”
“Yes.” She changed the subject. “Betty, Xavier and others sure are upset about Sam Lorillard hunting with us today.”
“He's not high on my list, but he's no problem out in the field. I just hope the guy can stay the course. His brother spent good money on him. A one-month stay at a detox center complete with counseling dents the budget. The horrible thing is, half the time the people slide right back to their old ways. Look at how hard Bobby and I tried to keep Cody off drugs,” she said, referring to her oldest daughter. “She couldn't or wouldn't do it, and by God, she's paying the price, but so are we.”
“Can she get drugs in jail?”
“Of course she can.” Betty sighed. “She says she isn't using, but I don't believe it. She puts on her good face when Bobby or I visit. She tells her sister more than she tells either of us. And you know what, I have cried all the tears about it I can cry. You birth them, raise them, bleed for them, cry for them, and pray for them, but they're on their own.”
“Yes.”
“I'm sorry. Sometimes I forget that you might be glad to have Ray Jr. here even if he did drugs.” Betty exhaled through her nostrils. “I don't think Rayray would have gone that route. Kid always had sense. Some do, some don't.”
Sister slowed for a curve, “Oh, they'll all try whatever is out there: marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, the date rape drug. I can't even keep up with the proliferation of mood-altering substances. I think all kids try it once. I worry more about alcohol than drugs. Our whole society pushes booze and drugs at you. The stuff I like to sniff is the odor of tack, horse sweat, and oats. Don't even mind the manure. And I like the sweet scent of my hounds, too.”
“Heaven.” Betty put her hands up to the heating vent. “Doesn't matter what any authority decrees in any century, people will take whatever makes them feel good. You and I have one kind of body chemistry, Cody and Sam have another. And who knows why?”
“Big Ray drank, but he controlled it. He could go months without a drink and then maybe knock back four at a party one night.”
“He was tall though. He could handle it better than a pip-squeak.” She turned to observe Broad Creek, swollen and flowing swiftly under the state bridge on Soldier Road. “Another day of this, and that water will jump the banks.”
“We were lucky we didn't run into trouble today.”
“I thought of that, too.” Betty turned to look at Sister. “Want to hear something crazy?”
“You're talking to the right woman.”
“I feel younger, stronger, and better now than I have for yearsâyears. Cruel as this sounds, I think it's because Cody is put away. She can't come home and drag me down. She can't call from Los Angeles or Middleburg or Roger's Corner.” Betty mentioned the convenience store located at the intersection of Soldier Road and White Cat Road. “I'm free. She's in jail, but I'm free. My energy is my own.”
“I understand that.”
“I didn't at first. I thought I was a terrible mother. Bobby set me right.” A glow infused her voice. “How did I have the sense to marry that man? He's not the best-looking guy in the world. When I was young, I thought I was going to marry someone handsome, rich, all that. But he persevered. The more he did, the more I got a look at his good character. He's a wonderful man, a loving husband, and a loving father. I am one lucky woman.”
“He's lucky, too.” Sister pulled off Soldier Road onto the dirt state road, considered a tertiary road by the highway department. Snow was deeper here.
“Thank you, Jane. You're a good-looking woman. I hope you find someone again.”
“I thought about it for a time after Big Ray'd been dead two years or so, but then it faded away.” She turned onto the farm road, snow falling harder now. “I thought I was past that until Walter returned to the hunt club two years ago. Last time I saw Walter, he was on his way to college. Once Walter was hunting with us, I felt so drawn to him. It was physical. Shaker finally told me, bless his heart. Wasn't easy for Shaker. Maybe I knew without knowing.”
“Everyone knew but you and Walter.”
“That he's Ray's natural son?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Stirred me up. Not that Walter is going to sleep with me. The man is in his middle thirties and I'll be seventy-two this August. Or is it seventy-three?” She giggled for a moment. “Can't believe it, no matter what the number is. Christ, the years fly by so damned fast I can't keep track. But I woke up, or my body woke up, or something. You're sweet to tell me I look good, but Betty, how many men are going to look at me unless they're eighty? The game's over for me.”
“It's New Year's Day. Want to make a bet?”
“How much?”
“One hundred dollars.”
“Betty!”
“I bet you one hundred dollars that a man does come into your life before December thirty-first. Deal?”
“Easiest one hundred dollars I'll ever make.” Sister laughed as she pulled into the stable yard.
In the stable, the two women checked their horses. Having left the breakfast early, Sari and Jennifer had gotten all the chores done. The radio hummed, on low for the horses. The news was reported on the hour.
“Hey, did you hear that?” Betty, standing next to the radio, called over to Sister, who was checking water buckets.
“Not paying attention.”
“The first guy, the one they found dead the night of the twenty-seventh, Saturday? Well, he was full of alcohol to the gills, but hemlock as well.”
“What?” Sister paused for a moment.
“He drank hemlock, just like Socrates.”
“On purpose?” Sister was incredulous.
“And this morning they found another one frozen down at the train station. Dead.”
The two women looked at each other. Sister said, “What on earth is going on?”
CHAPTER 7
Clay and Isabelle Berry loved to entertain. Their modern house, built on a ridge, enjoyed sweeping views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Because each of their rooms opened into other rooms or onto a patio, people rarely became bottled up in narrow door openings at their parties.
The floors, polished and gleaming, were hard walnut, stained black. Izzy, as Isabelle preferred to be called since she was named after her mother, Big Isabelle, fell under the spell of minimalism. Every piece of furniture in the house had been built to fit that house. Each piece, a warm beige, complemented the lighter beige walls.
The occasion for this party, January 2, Friday, was Izzy's thirty-eighth birthday. A few guests, possessed of remarkable stamina, hadn't stopped drinking since New Year's Eve.
Tedi, scotch and water in hand, whispered to Sister that these were blonde colors. As Izzy was a determined blonde, she shone to great effect.
The kitchen, stainless steel, gleamed. Overhead pin-pricks of high-intensity light shone down on guests.
The downstairs boasted a regulation-size pool table, itself starkly modern.
Donnie Sweigert, along with three other men, manned the two bars, one in the living room, one downstairs.
A flat-screen TV, built into the wall of the library, glowed. The one in the poolroom did likewise. Both TVs had men and women watching snatches of football reportage. They'd get a pigskin fix, then quickly rejoin the party, only to return periodically or ask another sports fan what he or she thought about the countdown to the Super Bowl.
Sister and Tedi both stared as a commentator narrated clips from the most recent pro football games. The playoffs kept excitement mounting across America.
“Do you think these men are mutants?” Tedi asked.
“How?”
“Look at their necks.” Tedi clinked the cubes in her glass as a close-up of a well-paid fullback beamed from the wall.
Wearing a fabulous electric blue dress, Sister stared. “And that's just someone for the backfield. Imagine what the defensive guard looks like.”
Clay, who was moving by, a drink held over his head thanks to the press of people, overheard.
“Better nutrition, better dentistry. Remember, a lot of bacteria come in through the mouth. Better workouts, better methods for reducing injuries or healing them when they occur. Better drugs.”
Tedi smiled at her attractive host. “When you played football in high school, you made All State, Clay, and you never looked like that. You had a good college career, too.”
Clay, middle linebacker for the local high school, had been outstanding at the position. He'd won a scholarship to Wake Forest and been a star.
He laughed. “Tedi, you're very kind. Think how long ago that was. I'll be forty-four this year. I don't think I would do half so well at Wake now as I did then. It's a different game. The training alone is so different.”
“But you never looked like a bull on two legs.”
“Steroids.” He shrugged genially. “Just wasn't much of an option then. Even if I had taken them, I was too small to make it to the pros. I don't mind. I came home, built a business, and discovered golf.”
Sister touched his arm. “What is it they say about golf: a good walk ruined?”
He laughed. “The devil plays golf. He'll give you just enough great drives, good putts, to keep you coming back.”
“So pretty out there, a verdant paradise.” Tedi adored golf, carried a respectable twelve handicap.
“Clay!” Izzy called from the living room.
“The birthday girl.” Clay smiled. “Good hunt yesterday, Sister. Despite the weather, we're having a terrific season.”
“Thank you, Clay.” She was glad to hear the praise as he left to join Izzy, who was surrounded by women from her college sorority.
Kappa Kappa Gamma songs filled the house.
“Janie, were you in a sorority?” Tedi asked. “I don't remember. They didn't have them at Sweet Briar, did they? Didn't have them at Holyoke.” Tedi didn't wait for her question to be answered since they both realized Tedi figured out the answer for herself. “Loved Holyoke. Loved it. But you know, I missed you so much. Think of the fun we would have had if we'd gone to the same school.”
“We'd have gotten ourselves thrown out.” Sister grinned.
“Wellâtrue.” Tedi tipped back her head and laughed. “And I never would have met Edward. Imagine going all the way to Massachusetts to meet your future husband, himself a Virginian, who had gone all the way to Amherst. Course I was wretched when neither Nola nor Sybil elected to go to Holyoke. Still can't believe they did that.”
“That's the thing about children. Damn if they don't turn out to have minds of their own.”
The corners of Tedi's mouth curled up for an instant. “Shocking. But really, Janie, University of Colorado for Nola, and then Sybil, well, she did go to Radcliffe. She applied herself, probably to make up for Nola. God, how many schools did that kid roar through? I miss her. Even now.” Tedi stopped for a moment. “Stop me. Really, what is it about a new year? One casts one's mind over the years, but the past is the past. You can't change a thing about it.”
“Historical revisionists certainly are trying.”
“Yes, well, that's not exactly about the past. That's about a bid for political power now. Rubbish. Every single bit of it.” Tedi knocked back her scotch. “Sometimes I think I've lived too long. I've seen it all, done it all, and now am colossally bored by the ignorance and pretensions of the generations behind us. If anything, Nola and Sybil's generation is tedious, hypocritical, and lacking in fire.”
“Tedi, they've only known peace and plenty. That's like a hound who has only slept on the porch. If they have to run, they'll be slow at first, but I promise you, they'll run.”
“You're always hopeful.”
“I'm an American. They're Americans. When the you-know-what hits the fan, we do what has to be done, and it doesn't matter when or where we were born. Doesn't matter what color we are, what religion or none, what sex or how about having sex. Anyway, you get my drift.”
“I do. I'm still cynical.” She turned her head. “And speaking of that generation, here comes an extremely handsome member of it.” She smiled, holding out her hand as Walter took it, pressing it to his lips, then leaned over to kiss Sister's cheek.
“You two look radiant.” Walter knew how to talk to women; beautiful would have been very nice but radiant showed imagination. “Sister, that color brings out your eyes.” He stopped, then lowered his voice. “Can't get out of this.” He smiled big as a dark, intense, attractive man, early forties at most, pushed over to him. “Mrs. Bancroft, Mrs. Arnold, allow me to introduce Dr. Dalton Hill from Toronto. He's come up from Williamsburg, where he gave a lecture this morning.”
Tedi, who'd looked him over, inquired, “How good of you to make the trip. What is your specialty, Dr. Hill?”
“Endocrinology.” He exuded a self-important air but had good manners, nonetheless. “However, my lecture was on the development of ornamentation in furniture during the eighteenth century.”
“A passion?” Tedi's eyebrows lifted.
“Indeed.” He inclined his head.
“English and French furniture from the eighteenth century is beautiful,” Sister joined in. “Is there anyone who can make such pieces today?”
“Yes.” His voice was measured. “A few, precious few. It's not talent, you see, it's temperament.”
Both women smiled.
Walter said, “I never thought of that, Dr. Hill.”
“Call me Dalton, please.”
“Dalton, you hunt in Canada, don't you?” asked Walter.
“If you're going to be here for any time at all, please hunt with us.” Sister extended an invitation.
“You are the master, I believe?” Dalton had been informed of Sister's status when he asked Bobby Franklin who the tall, striking-looking gray-haired woman was.
“I am, and I'm a lucky woman.”
Ronnie Haslip came by, Xavier and Dee behind him. They swept Walter and Dalton along with them after a few more comments.
“Has an air about him.” Tedi sniffed.
“Winding, are you, Tedi?”
They laughed and headed back to the bar. Tedi ordered another scotch on the rocks, and Sister asked for a tonic water on the rocks with a twist of lime.
Donnie, who had been nipping a little here and there behind the bar, quickly made the drinks. “Ladies.”
“I couldn't help but notice your rifle and the scope the other day. What a beautiful piece of equipment.” Sister took her drink from him, fished a dollar bill out of the unobtrusive slit in her dress, dropped it in the tip glass.
“Thank you.” He nodded, then said, “I saved and saved. Cost me over two thousand five hundred dollars.” He paused for effect. “I'll go without food to get the best. Makes a huge difference.”
“Yes, it does,” Sister replied.
“Clay Berry is tight as a tick with his employees.”
Tedi piped up. “I know you went without food.”
They moved back into the crowd, after a few more words with Donnie.
“I suppose I ought to find my husband. It's ten, and the roads will be dreadful.”
“I ought to move on, too. Thought maybe Gray Lorillard would be here.”
“Do you know he's rented the dependency over at Chapel Cross, the Vajay's place? Haven't they just brought that farm back to life?” Tedi paused. “Alex is here,” she mentioned the husband. “Solange should be here, too. Well, there're so many people packed in here, I think I've missed half of them.”
Tedi put her drink down on a silver tray, half-finished. She'd had enough. “I study how different civilizations deal with wealth. How different people deal with it.” She could say anything to Sister. “The truth is, few people can handle it, whether it was China in the seventeenth century, a great industrial fortune in Germany in the nineteenth, or today, dotcom, that sort of thing.”
“You've managed.”
“I was trained since birth, Janie. When you make it in your lifetime, it's quite savage really. You're a stranger from your own children who never had to fight for it. I was fortunate in that our money was made with Fulton, with the steamboat fortune. It has been prudently invested and managed ever since. I grew up in a milieu that understood resources and understood restraint. Edward, of course, has more recent wealth. His grandfather developed refrigeration for food processing, transporting foods. But the Bancrofts were and are people of common sense. They kept working, kept producing. But we were all born and raised before the Second World War. Times have changed.”
“Yes, but they always have.”
“Then let's hope there's a pendulum. I was flipping through the channels last night before falling asleep, and I caught, for the barest second, a show where people had eaten a lot of food, consumed different colors of food dyes, then threw it all up to see who vomited the best color. That's just unimaginable to me.”
“Me, too.” Sister leaned on Tedi, so petite. “If you've been watching the gross shows, then what do you think of the sex channels? Not that they're gross, just hard-core.”
“Oh,” Tedi brightened, “I like them.”
They both laughed uproariously as the Kappas sang more lustily.
As Sister, Tedi, and a captured Edward stood outside the house, its windows ablaze, and casting a golden glow over the snow, sounds of merriment seeped from inside.
“Well, dear, win anything?” Tedi figured Edward had played pool.
“Forty dollars. Five bucks a game. Took five dollars from Ronnie. We needed smelling salts to revive him. I swear Ronnie has the first dollar he ever made, probably sewn over his heart.”
“Maybe that's why he doesn't have a boyfriend,” Tedi said forthrightly as they walked to their vehicles.
“Now why do you say that?” Sister listened to the crunch of packed snow under her heels.
She hated heels, but she looked so good in them, and they could jack up her six feet to six three if she wanted. She liked that.
“Too damn cheap. If a man dates another man, doesn't he pay for dinner just as one would with a woman? And then if Ronnie found a partner, I bet he'd watch every penny and drive the other man insane.”
“Well, I think many men keep their finances separate,” Edward remarked. “Not quite like marriage or our version, I should say, because now even middle-class people sign prenuptials.”
“I think of the money at stake when we married, it's a wonder we didn't spend a year on prenuptials.”
“I know it's wise, but it seems so calculating. Doesn't seem like a good way to start a marriage,” Sister said.
Edward thought a moment. “You and Ray had no agreement concerning finances?”
As she opened the truck door, she answered, “No prenuptial. I didn't have much. I mean, we were comfortable, but nothing extravagant. Ray was about the same. Everything we had, we made together, and we didn't think divorce was an option. Look at our generation. How many divorced people do you know?”
“That's true.” Edward waited as Sister, door open, changed into a pair of L.L.Bean boots.
“I can't drive in these damned things.” She tossed her heels onto the seat. “Oh, who else did you clean out down there at the pool table?”
Edward puffed out his chest. “That Toronto doctor. Bragged about what a good pool player he was, so I let him have the first one, then I cleaned his clock. A bit of a pill, that one.”
“We thought so, too.” Tedi giggled.
“You drive safely now.” Edward pecked Sister on the cheek.
Tedi playfully kissed Sister, too, then said in her beguiling voice, “Minimalism is for the young.”