Authors: Sharyn McCrumb
There didn’t seem to be an answer to this one. After all, Geoffrey was Aunt Amanda’s son, so it wouldn’t do to tell him the truth—but he seemed to have no illusions about the place. They walked out to the car. Elizabeth decided to change the subject.
“We’ve been so out of touch for the past couple of years that I’m afraid I don’t know what you’ve been up to,” she said brightly.
“People are always afraid they don’t know what I’ve been up to,” Geoffrey replied.
“I mean, are you in school?”
“Hardly. I do have a degree. I hear you’ve just acquired one from the family alma mater.”
“Yes. I majored in sociology.”
“Of course you did. Are you about to ask me what I do?”
“I guess I was.”
“Well … one has one’s hobbies—the theater and so forth. But my main function is that of critic.”
“Of drama?”
“Of life.”
They had passed through Chandler Grove’s downtown, a dozen shabby storefronts, several minutes before, and were now speeding along the county blacktop, which curled through rolling hills, dividing Hereford pastures from Holstein. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do either, Elizabeth thought. But the Chandlers have so much money it doesn’t matter. I, on the other hand, will need either a job or a husband by the end of the
summer. The only other alternative is to go to graduate school, which will postpone the whole issue for another couple of years.
“Of course, Captain Grandfather keeps insisting that I join the navy. He says it would make a new man of me. ‘Not unless you believe in reincarnation,’ I told him.”
Elizabeth laughed, filing the military away for further consideration.
“You’re not by any chance an actress, are you?” asked Geoffrey.
“Me? No. I’m too self-conscious. But Bill played in the Shakespeare Festival on campus last year. Why?”
“We have quite a decent little theater group in Chandler Grove. Our director actually had a bit of Broadway experience ages ago, but he’s retired now, and only does this to keep busy. We did
Camelot
last winter, and I was Mordred. I just thought you might be interested.”
“What are you doing this summer?”
“Sinclair has got it into his head that we must do a classic, though I assure you it will be wasted on the audience in Chandler Grove, who think that Madame Bovary is a type of dairy cow.”
“Are you doing Shakespeare?”
“No. Even more obscure.
The Duchess of Malfi
. I am to play Ferdinand. It’s very handy, really. Our
Camelot
costumes can be reworked and used again this time. I am beginning to feel quite at home in a sweeping black cloak.”
“I’d love to see your production,” said Elizabeth politely. “When will it be?”
“Well, we’re not sure. It was going to be in three weeks, but we’ll have to postpone it. With all the uproar at home, I haven’t been able to learn all my lines. We’ve had to cancel a few rehearsals, and Mother has commandeered the only local seamstress, so instead of altering costumes, she is turning out unspeakable yellow dresses!” He shuddered.
“I guess things must be pretty hectic with the ceremony so near …”
“Well, they are for Mother, of course,” Geoffrey replied. “She’s ringmaster of this show. Father confines
himself to his study and pretends to be writing his book on colonial medicine; Captain Grandfather affects a masculine disdain for women’s matters; and Eileen is mooning about like a
Vogue
Ophelia, working on a painting. I myself am bearing up remarkably well.”
“And Charles? Did he come home for the wedding?”
“Yes, dear brother Charles is on exhibit. Fresh from his commune. You know, I used to think that a commune was sort of a twentieth-century version of a monastery, but if Charles is any example, I think it must be a twentieth century version of a leper colony.”
“Well, he’s always been a changeling, hasn’t he?” asked Elizabeth.
“Always,” Geoffrey agreed. “When we played Civil War as kids, he always wanted to be Harriet Tubman.”
“I know,” said Elizabeth. “Bill always says that Charles is either going to be famous or notorious before he’s thirty.”
“Sorry Bill couldn’t come. He would have made a nice change.”
“Oh, I know, but he had these tests in law school …”
“Spare me,” said Geoffrey. “I am not a cretin. I have made enough excuses to know one when I hear it.”
“How is Eileen?” Elizabeth blurted out. She had wanted to change the subject, but the subject of Eileen didn’t seem safe either.
“Eileen is vague,” Geoffrey said thoughtfully. “She moons about, and doesn’t say anything significant. She’s lucid, of course, but you can have a conversation with her and come away not knowing anything about what she thinks or feels.”
Elizabeth considered this. “You know, there’s somebody you haven’t mentioned.”
“Captain Grandfather? I told you—”
“The groom,” said Elizabeth.
“Oh.”
“Well? Don’t you like him?”
Geoffrey was quiet for a few moments. To keep from staring at him, Elizabeth turned to look out her window at the sweep of pine forest and pasture. Wild mustard
flashed yellow against the red clay ditches, and dark wooded hills framed the sky.
Finally Geoffrey broke the silence. “What do you want to know? Whether he’ll fit in? Doubtful. He doesn’t have our particular brand of insanity.”
“Could you manage a description?” prompted Elizabeth.
“He is the sort of liberal who affects an Afro. He has a New Jersey accent, and he is a graduate student in English literature—specializing in quotation without analyzation, I think.”
“That sounds just like you,” Elizabeth said. “You don’t dislike him because of Eileen. You dislike him for some obscure literary reason. But does he really care about her?”
“It’s hard to tell. Everybody that Eileen ever brought home proposed—we always assumed it was the house. We’d find them wandering down corridors counting the bathrooms.”
“I guess you’re not looking forward to the ceremony.”
“ ‘Such weddings may more properly be said to be executed than celebrated,’ ” Geoffrey intoned.
“Is that from your play?”
“Yes. I revel in Ferdinand. He is most apt at times.”
The car rounded the last bend in the road.
“Oh, well,” sighed Elizabeth, “I’m sure everything will—Good Lord! What is
that?”
“I knew I should have warned you,” said Geoffrey sadly.
T
HE
C
HANDLER MANSION
was a blunt-faced structure of Georgian brick, at least a century old, and looking rather like an architect’s rendering of a Hereford bull. It had served both as residence and business establishment for the original owners. While it did not predate the Civil War, it was considered a showpiece in the county, and when the Chandler Grove weekly newspaper published its Christmas issue it always asked Amanda for recipes to print as examples of the gentry’s holiday food. Amanda always complied, dutifully copying out a few cake recipes from back issues of
Ladies Home Journal
. She never tried them herself, but the paper seemed satisfied.
The house had been built by Amanda’s great-grand-father, Jasper Chandler, shortly after the Civil War. He had financed it with the profits of a lumber mill, which he had founded, and which was later sold by Jasper’s grandson William Chandler, who had decided to make a career of the sea. He kept the house, however,
leaving his wife and three small daughters there while he sailed various oceans.
Years after the death of his vague but patient wife, William retired inland to his country home, which was now the residence of his middle daughter Amanda and her husband, Robert Chandler, a scholarly country doctor who was also her second cousin. William’s retirement from the navy had been physical, not mental, and his habit of wearing a uniform at all times and running the house like a destroyer quickly earned him the title of “Captain Grandfather” from Amanda’s three off-spring: Charles, Geoffrey, and Eileen. His daughter Margaret’s children, Bill and Elizabeth, also called him that, but Alban, the son of his oldest girl, Louisa, called him “The Governor”—the result, no doubt, of the prep school education Louisa had insisted on giving him.
Except for the addition of bathrooms and other modern conveniences, the house looked much the same as it had when it was built. Amanda’s obsession with antiques kept the furniture in the nineteenth-century mode; in fact, much of it was the original furniture. The grandfather clock by the staircase had been brought from England by sailing ship, and the Persian rugs, Benares brass, and Chinese figurines testified to Captain Grandfather’s career as a sailor.
Scattered about the house were geometric paintings in a very modern style, representative of Eileen’s efforts as a painter rather than a reflection of the inhabitants’ taste in art. The paintings might have been more prized by psychologists than by art critics. Indeed, more than one of the consultants in Eileen’s case had passed many silent minutes studying the indistinct purple forms that swam in gray backgrounds.
The paintings had all been done before Eileen was sent away to Cherry Hill for treatment. Since her return ten months earlier, she had not resumed her work—not until the painting she was presently working on, a wedding gift for Michael, which she would allow no one to see.
Various other touches of individual personality were visible in the house: a rat’s nest study, which was Dr.
Robert Chandler’s domain; a chemistry lab in the attic, outfitted for Charles, on the condition that he not blow them all to kingdom come; and a studio for Eileen in the glassed-in porch.
The most formidable example of family eccentricity was not in the Chandler house at all—but it was visible from any of the front windows.
June 9
Dear Bill,
I’m here—by way of the Chandler Grove Bus Station, though I’m sure there’s a more direct route—through the looking-glass, perhaps. It’s worse than we thought.
Geoffrey picked me up at the bus station. I think he has been possessed by Noël Coward, but even that didn’t prepare me for what was to come.
There I was on the drive back to Long Meadow, making polite conversation and mentally casting the Marx Brothers in a movie version of this fiasco (Harpo would play Eileen), when we rounded the last bend and I saw what I hoped was a hallucination (I’ve been expecting them), but what turned out to be a monument to the rampant insanity in our family. There across the road from the Chandlers’ sedate Georgian brick mansion is the Disneyland castle, complete with little spires and turrets and a sentry box.
“An architectural right-to-life group!” flashed through my mind, immediately to be replaced by the real explanation: Alban.
I’m sure you haven’t succeeded in repressing the memory of Alban completely. He’s years older than we are, of course, so we rarely had anything to do with him; I always thought of him as the target for Aunt Louisa’s monomania: “Is Alban anemic? Is Alban adjusting well?” You remember.
Well, he has inherited Uncle Walter’s business now—and fortunately the people who run it—so he is at large. He came across this castle when he went to Europe with Aunt Louisa, and has duplicated it in the pony meadow. Aunt Louisa is living in the castle, too. (Nobody is quite sure what to call it. Geoffrey calls it Albania.)
I haven’t seen either of them yet. As we swung into the driveway, I asked if Alban might be in the tower observing us (with crossbow?). “He’s not home,” said Geoffrey. “The flag isn’t flying.”
Other than that, everything is pretty much the same. The backyard stable now houses a Ferrari instead of a barrel-shaped pony, but the orchard and the lake and the mansion are all the same.
So is Aunt Amanda.
When we went in, she was sitting in the back parlor, surrounded by a pile of envelopes, murmuring, “Dessert fork, tray, towels …” She reduced me to servitude at once. “Elizabeth! I’m so glad you’re here. There is so much work to be done about the invitations and the gifts and what-all. And of course we can’t bother Eileen with all this. She’s painting.”
I am writing this letter in between addressing invitations. I haven’t seen anybody yet, so I can’t give a full account of the horrors. I want to slip this out with this afternoon’s batch of invitations. I’ll write you again soon, because I want to subject you to as much vicarious misery as possible. Tell Milo hello for me.
Chanderella,
Elizabeth
Charles Chandler sat curled up in the middle of his bed with an open chemistry book and an assortment of colored sticks and jackrocks, which he was carefully fitting together. He resembled his brother Geoffrey—as Geoffrey might have been drawn by El Greco: ascetic,
emaciated, and rather scraggly. He was totally absorbed in his project, oblivious to the blare from the stereo.
Geoffrey appeared in the doorway.
“Elizabeth’s here,” he said to the figure in lotus position on the bed. “I would have brought her up, but Mother snared her with wedding work.”
Charles nodded, or perhaps undulated to the music; it was hard to tell.
“Anyway, you’ll see her at dinner,” Geoffrey continued. “We are having swine flesh, as you so colorfully put it, and Mildred seems to be fixing some sort of fodder for you.”
“Soybean casserole,” said Charles. “Much better for your body.”
“On the contrary, cows eat it constantly, and they only live to be twenty-three. On that scale, you may not last out the month.”
“Do you want to know what I’m making?” asked Charles, indicating the sticks and jackrocks.
“It looks like a reindeer,” snapped Geoffrey. “What I
would
like to know is why you are playing the
1812 Overture
at 45 rpm.”
“It helps me to visualize covalent bonding,” Charles answered, screwing another white stick into a jackrock. “I am building a molecular structure.”
“Fine, as long as you don’t put it up across the street!” He scowled in the direction of the window. “Bill didn’t come, by the way.”
“No? That’s unfortunate. I would have liked to discuss my proton theory with him.”
“Why don’t you discuss it with Satisky?” asked Geoffrey. “You might bore him to death and put an end to this circus.”