Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
He pushed back the box-cornered spread and the blanket while she threw off her sundress
and underwear. When they were lying naked on the bottom sheet, he kissed her sensitive breasts, his hands tenderly caressing her hips, her slender, tremulous thighs. The sumptuous melting physical desire that he invoked was tied to her profoundest emotions, her strivings toward beauty, her sense of honor, her need to nurture and cherish and love. At his entry, she floated in a miraculous stillness, then great spasms of ecstasy bucked through her body uncontrollably and she gasped out rhythmic cries of his name. After this initial craziness, her orgasms would be gentler, and she would caress him in the ways that gave him joy until he could no longer control his climax.
* * *
They lay entwined, her heart calming, her fingers and ears still tingling.
He pulled the sheet and blanket over them, taking an ashtray onto his chest and lighting a cigarette. He inhaled deeply. “I was born in Austria.”
She raised her head, looking at him. “You’re American,” she denied.
“Sure, but not native born. Like you, an immigrant.”
“Austria?”
“Maybe, but I’m not even sure of that. Maybe Germany. It’s the same language. The truth is, I have remarkably few facts about myself.” His sigh shook the ashtray.
She kissed his shoulder, inhaling the acrid odors of his coital sweat.
“My earliest memory is of a soft-armed, pale-haired
woman feeding me a rusk soaked in something sweet. I can’t remember another thing about her, but it pleases me to suppose the soft, pale lady my mama. Then I’m living with an old woman. She told me she and I were no kin—she was a loathsome old crone, so it didn’t exactly destroy me. Vaguely—and again I’m not at all sure—I think she’d been some kind of servant in my family’s home. She and I shared a root cellar near an outhouse. Not an esthetic or hygienic location, but then we weren’t exactly royalty. The old woman had hard, pinching fingers and she coughed all night loud enough to wake the dead. But she was all I had, so when I came up with anything edible I brought it home to share with her. I worked the garbage cans behind the Ringstrasse restaurants, where the rich ate. Sometimes I unearthed treasures, a fragment of whipped cream pastry, the carcass of a game bird. I learned to move fast, to scratch and hit—the competition was keen. The reparations that the allies had wreaked on the Austro-Hungarian Empire had spawned an entire class privileged to scrounge in garbage cans.”
Her flesh had gone cold. She kept wiping her eyes, aching to comfort him, yet knowing she mustn’t halt his purgative flow of words. The sky outside grew dark, and the only light in the room was the glowing red circle from Curt’s cigarette. Chain-smoking, he dredged up incidents. A tiny girl he had seen sucking off a fat-bellied old man for one chocolate, boys his age who did the same thing, the “adult”
whores, who in retrospect must have been eleven or twelve. “No, I never peddled my bony little ass,” he said. “Don’t ask why not, I just never did. To get my food I scavenged or went in for juvenile assault and battery.”
The old woman’s coughing and blood-spitting worsened. One morning he dreamed of snow and awakening to feel her icy rigid body curled around his. After her death he had deserted the root cellar and taken shelter under a bridge.
“Weren’t there orphanages?” Honora asked.
“Too overcrowded to seek recruits. But don’t think we received no benefits under our bridge. Every night a municipal trolley came around and the sanitation department lugged away the corpses. The old woman had told me I was born in 1921, three years after the final shot. This was 1927, nine years after the war, and the dying hadn’t ended.”
One winter day he had heard a rumor of bread being given out by the Quakers, who were always engaged in such ridiculous enterprises. “I would have set out to China for a crust, so the miles to the Gürtel were nothing. It was dark, and as I charged around a corner, I butted into this solid, well-dressed American.”
“Gideon?” Honora whispered incredulously.
“Mr. Talbott, yes. He asked where I was rushing, and when I told him he took me into a bakery. Since I had no last name, he gave me one—he said after a good scrub I’d be white as ivory. So Curt Ivory I became. A meal, a bath and one thing led to another. He arranged to bring me to California. He found a couple
in Oakland, the Howells, to take care of me. They were cold, joyless people, but respectable. They must have figured they were sheltering some crazy sort of animal. The old woman had taught me to bow and click my heels like a little gentleman, so I bowed and clicked while I stole from their ice box. It was months before I left the table without a roll or a hunk of meat hidden in my pocket. I lived for the times Mr. Talbott dropped by to visit. He inspired me to become an engineer; he lent me the money for college. Honora, I know he has faults. He’s self-righteous, a puritanical dictator, but he’s also generous, kind, decent. And if you sometimes think I have too much of a soft spot for him, remember he not only saved my life, he gave me a new country, my name. He gave me my identity. I owe everything to him.”
“Curt, darling, I bless him.”
“One of the reasons I love you is whenever I look into your eyes, I’m healed of my childhood.”
“It’s over,” she said, hugging him fiercely.
“Things like that are never over.” He switched on the light. “Honora, you must always remember that starving boy lives inside me. He’ll always go for the jugular. He’ll always prod me to grab and scratch for the kind of luxuries those rich bastards who ate in the Ringstrasse cafes had, he’ll do whatever he must to push ahead.”
“You’re not ruthless.”
“Face it, Honora, my dominant trait’s ambition. I intend to make it to the top.” He
forced a smile. “Come on, all this talk of starving’s made me ravenous. Let’s scramble some eggs.”
She watched the strong, well-knit body cross the room before she got out of bed.
* * *
Joscelyn lay immobile in the center of the big, soft bed, carefully simulating the deep, modulated breath of sleep. Her ears were alert, though, and her eyes staring into the governing darkness. She was a mess when either of her sisters went out at night; especially when Honora was absent a gamut of terrors prowled. Tonight, with Gideon away too, the flesh of her enforcedly still body was covered with goosebumps. Joscelyn was keenly intelligent, and certainly old enough to understand that her fears were irrational . . . yet, mightn’t that creak herald an intruder, couldn’t that shadow in the corner be a lurking kidnapper, wouldn’t an old house with this much paneling burst into instant conflagration?
Mrs. Ekberg believed that Honora was out with a friend—Vi Knodler, that waitress at Stroud’s she still sometimes saw—but Joscelyn knew that Honora was spending the afternoon and evening with Curt and was with him now. Joscelyn accepted that her sister was sticky in love.
Joscelyn’s prepubescent heart, too, had an icon shrine lit by smoky candles for Curt. He had it all: style, brains, a gorgeous convertible, an impervious, sarcastic smile. The thing she couldn’t understand was why Gideon, whom
she admired, didn’t want Honora going out with this flower of manhood.
The sound of a car grew louder, and Joscelyn, an outspoken agnostic, found her mind teeming with infantile prayers.
Please, God, let it be Honora, I’ll be nice to everyone tomorrow if it’s her.
A light blossomed behind her curtains, abruptly extinguishing when the motor was cut.
Only when the side door opened and closed, and Honora’s light footsteps ran up the staircase, did she roll over and breathe normally.
“Honora,” she called. “That you?”
Honora came in, switching on a light. “You’re still up, Joss?”
“I
was
asleep until you came in.”
“I tried not to make a racket.” Honora came to press her night-cool cheek on Joscelyn’s forehead.
Joscelyn inhaled the unique body fragrance that was dewy and sweet. There was a smell of soap, too, as if she’d recently showered. Another reason to envy both sisters: neither ever had the odor of smelly feet, as Joscelyn was positive she did. “I’ll never get back to sleep.”
“If you were in my bed would it help?” Honora asked.
Was that a trace of hesitancy in the soft voice? Joscelyn’s face burned. Was Honora remembering the first week they were in this house, when every morning this bed had an ignominiously sunken damp splotch? “Your snoring’s hardly the cure for insomnia.”
“Do I snore?” Honora asked in a hurt
little voice.
Remorse flooded through Joscelyn. Her pride halted her from confessing her lie.
“Sometimes, but not too very loud,” she said, adding aggrievedly, “Oh well, if you insist, I’ll give it a try in your room.”
It was an inviolable commitment for the four Sylvanders to spend Sunday together. Gideon had bought a luxurious wood-bodied Chrysler Town and Country (because it had been delivered on Crystal’s birthday, he referred to it with stilted jests as Crystal’s convertible) and enrolled the two older girls at Ace Driving School. In sporty magnificence, the top down, they would pick up their father. Langley had moved from Lombard Street to Stockton Street, a better class of flat, he said, but the exterior of the building was yet more shabby, and they never glimpsed his apartment. He was always waiting on the pavement for them.
The weather had remained hot over the weekend. Honora had told her father they were bringing a picnic, but as they drove up Stockton, he was waiting on the shady side, his long, weedy body encased in his narrow, three-piece black pin-striped suit. His white flannels, made for him on Savile Row in his halcyon honeymoon days, had turned an uneven, sulfuric yellow, and he owned no American sport clothes. They
drove across the bridge, winding up to a piny park in the Berkeley hills. The heat is more intense on the inland side of the Bay, yet Langley, ever the gentleman, did not shed his jacket. He mopped his brow while making the whimsical remarks that kept laughter bubbling at their redwood picnic table.
The only awkward note of the afternoon rang when Langley raised a Dixie cup of Mrs. Wartobe’s lemonade. “Here’s to being in our own climate next summer,” he toasted.
“I’m staying here, Daddy,” Honora said softly.
“What’s that?” Langley peered in surprise at his pet, his steadfast English girl.
Her creamy skin was flushed, and the faint sheen of sweat made her radiant. “I like California,” she murmured.
“Face it, Daddy,” Crystal said, fanning her wide-brimmed straw hat in the hot, still, pine-odored air. “We’re Americans.”
“It takes five years to get citizenship,” Joscelyn corrected, but didn’t refute her sisters’ main point.
Langley drank his lemonade in silence. After a minute, he rose to his feet, mimicking an aged, crablike walk. “Girls, who am I?”
By the time Honora guessed Lear, he had them laughing so hard she could hardly get out the name.
* * *
They dropped him off at six.
When they drove up Clay Street they saw the Cadillac parked in the porte cochere with Juan
hauling Gideon’s small suitcase from the trunk. Gideon, on the steps to the side entry with the larger valise, set down his briefcase to lift his arm in greeting.
“The return of the native,” Crystal called flirtatiously from the Town and Country’s driver’s seat.
“It’s swell to have you back, Gideon,” called Joscelyn, who never passed up a chance to use his first name.
“Welcome home,” Honora cried warmly.
“The-ere’s n-oooo pu-lace like ho-o-ome.” Gideon’s gravelly, toneless voice raised in song.
It was so unlike him that Honora stared. The virile auburn sideburns were freshly barbered, his suit jacket was jauntily open, displaying a spritely red tie. Being in love herself, she speculated whether Gideon, too, had fallen into the tender trap. Though Matilda Talbott had died only a little over a half year ago, she had been an invalid a very long time. It would not be surprising if Gideon had found some sympathetic widow—his high standards of morality would prevent his wooing a divorcée. And with a little jolt, she accepted that though he was short-legged, bald, with strong, ugly features, he had vigorous presence—and more than enough wealth—to attract older women in their thirties and forties.
The girls piled out of the convertible, leaving it for Juan to drive down to the garage, which had been the carriage house.
Joscelyn took Gideon’s thick, reddish hand, and Honora picked up his attaché case.
Crystal kissed near his cheek. “How was Oxnard?” she asked.
“The refinery’s going well, but you can’t imagine how I missed you girls,” he said with a hearty, jocular laugh. “Now go get washed up. Curt’s coming to dinner.”
Mrs. Ekberg was waiting in a dark corner of the immense hall. Coming forward, she nervously fingered her swirled gray French knot. “Mr. Talbott, may I have a word?”
“After dinner.”
“This is important,” Mrs. Ekberg twittered.
“Have your charges been harassing you?” he asked, winking at Crystal.
Mrs. Ekberg’s narrow features contorted into beseeching desperation.
“Come on in the office, then,” Gideon said, setting his valise on the parquet.
The girls clattered upstairs. “What do you suppose Ekberg’s so het up about?” Crystal said.
“You got home late Thursday night,” Joscelyn retorted.
“Even she’s not idiotically prissy enough to let that get to her. Maybe the principal phoned that our Jossie’s being expelled after one week.”
“Ha-ha,” Joscelyn said.
Honora said nothing, but ran into her room.
“That’s right,” Crystal called. “Go make yourself bee-oot-eous for Curt.”
* * *
Mrs. Wartobe, who took off Sundays, had left a cold supper that Juan served. Mrs. Ekberg was not at the table—she often excused herself
from meals when her colitis was acting up. Gideon had plunged from his homecoming pleasure. Head hunched between his thick shoulders, he silently forked up cold cuts and potato salad, glaring at a big, lazy fly as it buzzed through the room.
Though Honora normally reacted like mercury to the emotional temperature, she paid little attention to Gideon’s mood shift. Her efforts were expended on not gazing at Curt. He and Crystal were carrying on a meaningless banter, artificial notes ringing too loudly in the strained atmosphere. Joscelyn, always unnerved by anger, spilled her chocolate milk on the cutwork cloth. Mopping up created a welcome diversion. They were toying with Mrs. Wartobe’s meltingly rich devil’s food cake when Gideon got to his feet, dropping his napkin on the table. “Come into my office, Ivory,” he said, and stalked from the room.