Nine Women (11 page)

Well, that’s past and gone now, but it still bothers me, you know. I keep wondering what happened that night. There he was sitting and reading, like he always did. He’d fixed a sandwich and a whiskey with lots of ice. The reading lamp was tipped just right over his shoulder, he had a new detective story. And then, like somebody had called him, like somebody had called a good child to come home, he put the book face down and walked straight out the door and rowed away.

Eventually he was declared dead, and they found he had a deposit box in the Main Street Bank; there was just one thing in it: his will, neat, handwritten, very precise. He left the house to me. “She has taken good care of it for so many years,” he wrote, “I should like to think of her living in it now.”

Didn’t that cause a row. People whispered all sorts of things; Dr. Hollisher’s daughter came back making scenes and threatening to sue. Alfred, who was pretty annoyed himself, suggested we go visit his daughter in Chicago. And a cold wet spring we had there too.

Of course Alfred and I never lived in the house. It was bigger and nicer than mine—it had that lovely view across the bay—but I couldn’t ever live there. Whatever the law said, it wasn’t mine. It belonged to Dr. Hollisher. I knew I’d feel his ghost. And I knew that every night I’d be listening for that same call he heard.

We sold the house to a couple with two young children. I drive past it now and then, just to see. They’ve painted it a pale pink with black trim, there’s a slide where the camellia garden used to be and a swing on the oak tree in the side yard. If they hear anything, those people, they’ve never said.

Alfred and I put the money in a savings account. We’ve decided to use it to travel, to go to places we never could have afforded before. Next week we’re leaving for Egypt and a trip up the Nile to Aswan. I’ve always wanted to go there. Ever since I was a little girl looking at maps, I’ve said: I want to go there.

Now, I’m sure that when I finally get there, when I really do see Cairo and Thebes and Karnak and the Valley of the Kings, everything will be so wonderful and exciting, I’ll forget how it was all possible.

But I don’t know. I just don’t know.… The planning hasn’t been as much pleasure as I thought it would be. And sometimes I do wake up at night listening. I still don’t hear anything.

And I wonder, maybe I should.

B
Y ONE O’CLOCK THE
other bank of the small bayou had completely disappeared in the summer night fog. In the muffled quiet, the flock of pet ducks, the five not yet killed by turtles, climbed slowly out of the waterside reeds and plodded halfway up the lawn, to fall asleep abruptly, heads under wings. The lawn, smooth green zoysia silvered with fog like a warm hoarfrost, rose gently to the flagstone terrace of a low curving glass and steel house. Inside, beyond tall mist-haloed windows, lights burned brightly in rooms that were quite empty, except for an occasional white-jacketed waiter, collecting forgotten glasses and plates.

In the service drive, concealed by bushy azaleas, two young men put the last of the band’s electronic equipment into a bright red van and, yawning, drove away. Immediately a caterer’s truck pulled into the empty space to load neatly tied plastic trash bags. Someone began whistling softly. Overhead a mockingbird answered sleepily.

The wedding was over.

Barbara Eagleton, mother of the bride, sat on the curving stairs in the front hall. Her thin brown face, so much like Diana Ross’s, was creased with fatigue. She was trying to decide whether she wanted to laugh or cry. While she thought, she absentmindedly picked bits of food from the stair carpeting and tossed them down to the polished wood floor. Occasionally her fingers brushed irritably at a wide stain on the peach chiffon of her skirt. She hated the smell of stale champagne.

All in all, she thought, the wedding had gone very well—from the candle-lit church to the candle-lit reception. The house looked lovely, everybody said so. The band, brought especially from New Orleans, was marvelous. Her daughter, Solange, had been married surrounded by all the signs of affluence, the sweet glittering softness of money.

Her eyes, trained by years of housekeeping, moved along the hall. The wide cypress boards—ones she’d found in an old plantation house, lovely old boards—were sprinkled with bits of wedding cake, their shiny polished surface dulled with a film of sugar. The Tabriz rug glistened with bits of broken glass, tiny bits like grains of sand, sparkling in puddles of spilled champagne.

In the morning the cleaning crews would come.

It had been a wonderful party, she thought, everything a wedding celebration should be—joyous and lively, floating on oceans of champagne. There had been only a single bad moment, when the youngest Mitchell girl passed out in the bathroom. Her friends quickly revived her with ice packs and hot towels and great whiffs of pure oxygen. (A tank stood ready in the bedroom; Barbara Eagleton thought of everything.) She had come round very nicely with such treatment. When she said a polite good-bye some time later, Barbara noticed that she walked quite steadily, though her Nipon was hitched crookedly at the waist and her eyes had an empty cancelled look to them.

Noisy in the damp night air, a caterer’s van backed down the driveway. And a large tree roach swooped on crackling wings through the open front door to begin delicately eating bits of spilled food.

Barbara stood up, shuddering, took one step toward the insect, then changed her mind and went to the pantry instead. A waiter was packing away glasses. “There’s a huge roach in the front hall. Could you get rid of it—I can’t stand the things. Just wait until I’m out of the room.”

She hurried back across the hall, not looking at the shiny black shape nibbling the sugary grains, and closed the living room door firmly behind her.

“Whatever is chasing you, Barbara?” Her mother was sitting alone in the Queen Anne chair by the window. “I’m just finishing supper”—she smiled at her empty plate—“which is the worst thing I could possibly be doing. My diet will be ruined for a week.” She got up slowly, majestically; the stays of her corset creaked audibly. “I’ve been looking at that picture,” nodding toward the painting of
HMS Courageous Liverpool 1879.
“I mean really looking. It’s absolutely hideous.”

“You gave it to us,” Barbara said.

“Yes,” her mother said, “that’s why it bothers me.”

From the front hall, partly muffled by the closed door, came sudden running and stamping, and muffled giggles. “Whatever is that?” Her mother yanked the door open. “My, that roach is giving you quite a chase, isn’t it? No, no, don’t do that. Don’t squash it on the rug.”

Barbara fled hastily to the terrace. After the air-conditioned house, the summer night was stifling, the fog a heavy pressure against her body. Its astringent wetness filled her lungs and she coughed, feeling almost panicky. Then the feeling was gone and the night was no more than a usual summer night and the fog only a soft mist that blurred everything pleasantly.

In the corner of the terrace two waiters were searching for glasses in the flower beds; they moved slowly, laughing softly to each other, voices distant and muffled. The lighted swimming pool gleamed a clear turquoise blue in the night. On its surface the guttered remains of a hundred flower candles bobbed and turned gently. And in the center of the pool, in a floating chair, was Justin Williams. His silk tuxedo lapels glistened, his boutonniere was a sharp crisp dot, his sodden trousers and black shoes trailed over the edge of the float. He lay back, totally relaxed, contemplating the glow on the tip of his cigar.

“Justin,” she said.

He lifted his cigar to her in greeting, silently.

“I’ll get one of the young men to help you out.”

“No, my dear, I am perfectly comfortable.” He paddled his feet gently. “If you see a waiter, though, you might ask him to bring me a drink.”

“Do you really want another drink? Are you sure you’re all right? Really?”

“It has been a wonderful party, my dear. And, until the fog came in, the stars were as soft as the ones in Jamaica. Do you remember them?”

“Yes,” she said.

They’d met in Kingston years ago—she and her mother on vacation. Barbara was overwhelmed by the physical beauty and the languor of the place; she spent drowsy uncounted days doing nothing. Her mother seemed to come more alive in the heat; she went everywhere, saw everything. She visited ruined sugar houses and thriving coffee plantations, a convent school, an experimental agricultural station, and a bauxite plant. She went to native craft shops and she visited museums. And she met Justin Williams at an exhibition of Haitian paintings. He was some sort of magistrate, Barbara remembered, and a businessman. They had tea, he drove her back to the hotel, he took them both to dinner. Thereafter he became a part of their days, as guide and storyteller, even once taking them home to meet his wife, a beautiful half-Indian woman who was childless.

“Jamaica was wonderful,” Barbara said, “especially that first time.”

After that her mother went to Jamaica three or four times a year and Justin visited them on all family occasions, like her wedding and the christening and marriage of her daughter. He did not like the United States. “I do not like the presence of so many white skins,” he told her once. And he remained her mother’s friend, year after year. At times Barbara found herself wishing he had indeed been her father.

“I’d never seen a country so beautiful,” Barbara said.

“Ah yes, Jamaica,” he said to his cigar. “Even these do not taste the same. Mr. Manley and his government ran me out, yes, and all the people like me. But I have not done so badly, little Barbara, not so badly.”

“So I hear,” Barbara laughed. He lived in Nassau now, was interested in Florida real estate development. “My mother says you’ve been very successful.”

“Ah.” Against the blue pool depths, his dark face hung suspended, motionless. His eyes scanned the terrace, saw no one. “Waiter,” he shouted, “waiter.” The ducks on the sloping lawn shifted and gabbled. A waiter came at a trot. “Young man, a Scotch and water, please. Water, not soda. My need is great.”

Justin Williams let the hand holding the empty glass slip to his side, touch the water. His fingers loosened and rose, flicking themselves dry delicately. The glass sank, wobbling slowly.

Barbara looked down. There were a dozen glasses on the bottom, as well as a bridesmaid’s bouquet, paper napkins, a very long orange scarf, and a single shoe with a glittering rhinestone heel.

“Barbara,” his soft voice floated through the layers of warm night, “I asked your mother to marry me.”

“What did she say?”

He waved his cigar back and forth, a comet against the night. “She said she would never marry any nigger from Jamaica.”

“Yes. Well”—Barbara shrugged—“that does sound like her.” But why, Barbara wondered, had the subject of marriage come up at all? Why now?

Justin kicked his feet lazily in the water. “A man should be married. It is the way of things. My wife has been dead for two years. I have honored her memory with a double period of mourning, because she was a good woman. But, you must know, I am a married man by nature. I have lived all my adult life as a married man. I intend to be a married man again.”

“I am sorry about my mother,” Barbara said. “I wish she would marry you.”

“There are many women in the world,” Justin said slowly, alcohol-numbed. “Many many women. Some of them are beautiful and young, but they are not the sort one marries, not a man like me. At my age blood does not rule the head. But an intelligent woman, a capable woman, a handsome woman, of suitable age, a friend. That is your mother. And she says no.”

The coatless waiter returned with his Scotch and water. Justin stretched out his arm—there was ten feet of pool between them.

Barbara got the pool skimmer and with its long pole pushed the floating chair to the side. Justin accepted the glass and slowly flutter-kicked himself back into the exact center.

He took a small sip. “Barbara, my dear, I have tried to be reasonable. I offered her a marriage contract. I am not a poor man…”

“Neither is my mother,” Barbara laughed. “If you like, I’ll talk to her, but I don’t think it will do any good.”

“Your father was a Jamaican,” he said.

“That’s what my mother tells me.”

“Ah.” A gentle sigh and then silence. He seemed to have forgotten she was there.

A sudden burst of laughter from the kitchen—curious, she went to the open door. Three waiters and her husband, Henry, leaned against the polished steel counters, drinking cans of beer.

“Why, Barbara,” Henry said, “I had no idea you were outside.”

“Justin is floating in the pool.”

“Still? He’s been in there for a hell of a long time. Well, not to worry, Barbara. We four shall remove him. Without falling in ourselves, of course.” He toasted her with the can of beer. “What shall we do with him?”

“He certainly can’t go back to the hotel in that condition.”

“Barbara, I had absolutely no intention of depositing him on the Regency’s doorstep like a sack of wet laundry to be hauled inside by the doorman and dragged upstairs by bellboys.” A pause. His voice became serious. “Don’t worry, Barbara, I’ll take care of him.”

“Fine.” She opened the refrigerator, which was jammed with white boxes. “My lord, look at all this uneaten food. Such a waste.”

“Your mother gave away twice that much.”

“My mother … Yes … Henry, do you know Justin asked her to marry him?”

“In that case we’ll pull him out with extra care.”

“Mother said no.”

“Okay, we leave him in the pool.”

“Oh, really, Henry, don’t joke like that. He needs help. Where’s the beer? I didn’t know we had any.”

Henry grinned. “Will one of you gentlemen direct Mrs. Eagleton to the secret supply of beer.”

As soon as she left, their laughter began again, following her back through the house. In the dining room a thin stream of tiny ants marched across the buffet, down the wall, and into a baseboard crack.

For a brief moment she saw a vision of a house emptied, eviscerated by patient, neatly aligned ant armies, so that by morning the studs stood naked, a skeleton in the rising sun.