13 French Street (4 page)

Chicago. Chicago. It was like the wild beating of surf against rocks.
Chi—ca—go … Chi—ca—go…
.

My door opened. “Is everything all right, Alex?”

“Yes. Fine.”

“Just wanted to make sure.” Her voice was a whisper. She closed the door very quietly. Some of the perfume remained in the room.

“V
ERNE
? Oh, he’s gone long ago. I drove him into town at six-thirty. He caught the seven-o’clock train for New York.”

We were alone in the large kitchen. Petra was seated on a high stool at the lunch bar, drinking coffee. The red shorts and halter she wore were very tight and her skin was very white. Creamy, because it was not a sickly white. It was lush, warm, solid. I noticed how long, how perfectly formed her legs were. Her lips were dark red in daylight, and she looked fresh, wide-awake. In the bright morning, there were traces of midnight in her hair. It foamed about her shoulders, seemed so full of life I expected it to sparkle. It did, when she moved.

She sipped coffee. “Verne said to tell you again that he was sorry he couldn’t stay. He felt real bad about it.”

I wasn’t really awake yet. I was in that blank, staring stage.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Fine, Petra.”

“Reason I asked, strange bed and all that, y’know?”

“Slept perfect.”

“Hope I didn’t disturb you when I opened your door.” She wasn’t looking at me. She rose, swung over to the electric range, took up the coffeepot, poured herself another cup, returned to the stool. All the time, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Like a magnet, a deadly magnet, even when I tried not to watch.

“You didn’t disturb me.” I was tardy with that. She drank her coffee black. I suddenly had a strong desire to touch her hair. “What’s for breakfast?”

She smiled. “I was waiting for you to ask that. Cook’s day off.” Her eyes were black. Jet black.

“Oh?”

“But I can cook, my friend.”

Ten minutes later I was at the kitchen table eating scrambled eggs, country sausage, toast, and coffee. I’d managed to avoid the stool beside her at the lunch bar by saying I liked my feet on the floor when I ate. But it only made matters worse, because she was above me, looking down. She was perched on the stool, her legs crossed, leaning back against the bar, with a cup in her hand. Her breasts filled that red halter like nothing I’d ever seen before.

The food was perfect. The kitchen was as neat as a pin.

“Where’s Jenny?” I asked.

“Gave her the day off.”

“And Verne’s mother?”

She glanced at me and chuckled. “Not up yet.” She drank some more coffee. “We’re all alone. Just you and me. But not for long. The old girl will be down shortly.”

I managed a weak grin. She grinned back.

“How long has Verne’s mother been with you?”

“Ever since we were married, right after Verne left the Army.”

I finished off the last of the sausage. Petra poured me another cup of coffee, returned to her stool. I tried to imagine that old woman unhitching a plow, digging a grave, reading from a Bible. “What happened to the rest of Verne’s family? I mean, couldn’t she sort of shuttle around? It’d make it easier.”

She stared at me, thinking. “There were two sisters. The rest were brothers. Two killed in the war. One sister vanished. The other married, but doesn’t want the dear old girl around. Husband won’t have it. One brother’s in the penitentiary for arson. Verne says he was a pyromaniac, a fire bug, but nobody’d believe it.” She lifted her hands, let them drop loosely to her thighs. “Others just gone.” Petra motioned with her thumb toward the ceiling. “She sold the farm, Verne discovered. Then one morning the people who bought it found her sitting against a fence in the cornfield, and they contacted him. He took her in.” She shrugged.

Neither of us said anything for a few moments.

“Alex.”

“Yes?”

“You’ll never know how glad I am to see you.” She got off the stool, stepped over to the table, and leaned against it with the front of her thighs. The table came to just below the rim of her red shorts. She laid her palms flat on the table top, then slowly moved them together until they touched. I smelled that perfume and my heart rocked.

“Wonder how the coffee’s holding out,” I said. “Plenty where that came from.” She moved away. “I’ll heat it up.” Her back was to me. “Alex.”

“Yes?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes.”

She whirled, shouted, “Good morning, Mother!”

The old woman entered the kitchen. She carried a cane. She said, “Good morning, Mr. Bland.”

“She’ll never say good morning to me,” Petra said. “She’s a witch. I wish to God—” She stopped, went and looked out one of the rear kitchen windows with her hands clenched before her. I couldn’t see her face. Her voice was low, throaty. “She must be a hundred years old.”

Verne’s mother staggered in a meandering line over to the breakfast nook at the far side of the kitchen. She wore the same gray dress, I thought at first. Then I saw it was fresh, unwrinkled. A different one of the same style and color. Her white shawl. On her feet were carpet slippers that folded out at her ankles. The only sound as she walked was a faint shuffle and the light rap of the cane.

“Petra, I’m hungry.” The old woman’s voice was full of wavers; it trembled and it was very faint. “I’ll just have a little tea. Some soda crackers in milk.”

Petra watched her without expression.

“Warm the milk.”

I said, “Petra, d’you get a paper?”

“It’s on the front porch. I didn’t bring it in yet.” As she looked at me, her eyes spoke, trying to say something. “Go look around, Alex. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

As I left the kitchen I heard the old woman say, “Bet you gave Jenny the day off.”

“Shut up!” Petra said. But she didn’t say it loud enough for Verne’s mother to hear.

I found the paper and settled down in what looked like Verne’s study, across the hall from the living room. He had a large desk, so I sat there and spread the paper out on the desk. The books in the bookcases looked somehow too neatly arranged to have been read lately.

I wondered what spot on the wall Verne beat his head against after he’d locked the door.

Beyond large windows, autumn was violent with color. A red maple stood close beside the study and its leaves looked as if they had been sprayed with blood. I tried to read the paper. It was no go.

The desk was clear save for a large, unstained blotter, a single pencil, and a framed picture lying face down. I looked at the picture and it was of Petra. A full-length shot. She was lying in a hammock, with one leg dangling, her hands behind her head. Without thinking, without realizing it for a moment, I suddenly knew I wanted the picture. She smiled out at me. I had to have the picture. It was a strong, abrupt desire, and for an instant conscience, will, everything vanished. Then I laid it carefully face down again and stepped away from the desk.

“Did you like it, Alex?”

I whirled. Petra was standing in the door, leaning against the jamb. She held her arms up, tying a white ribbon around her hair, so it bunched at the back of her head.

“Yes. It’s a fine shot of you.”

“Verne took it. The hammock’s still there, too. Only nobody uses it any more. It stayed out there all last winter. It’s faded now, but it used to be very bright.”

“I’m afraid the hammock doesn’t count much in that picture.”

She knew what I meant, but she said, “How do you mean?”

I
smiled and she smiled. Her hair looked fine tied up that way and we stood that way staring at each other for a long moment.

I heard nothing, but I saw the listening in Petra’s eyes. She turned slowly. The old woman’s voice reached me thinly from the hall. “That milk was sour, Petra. I don’t like sour milk.”

“She spies,” Petra said. “Oh, God, Alex. She’s a witch.”

As she moved out into the hall, I noticed for the first time that she wore a red wrap-around skirt over her shorts. It swung at the hem, pendulous, as she strode off.

I went over to the desk and looked at the picture again. I had an overpowering desire to steal it, but I laid it back down on the desk and left the room quickly.

The hallway was dim. Madge Collins. A nice name. Chicago. Madge had blonde hair, dark blonde hair. Her eyes sometimes were blue, sometimes gray. Slim, she was always neat, crisp, quick-moving. She had thousands of sisters, in all parts of the world. Lined up, they would possibly be hard to tell apart. But she was mine and I wanted her always to be mine. Because I knew the woman beneath the crisp exterior. I remembered the letter I’d written to her, and headed for the stairs.

Petra. She stood alone. There was nobody like Petra. One image was made, then the gods shattered the cast. Why?

Halfway up the stairs, I glanced at my watch. Ten-thirty. I wanted a drink. Well, I was on a vacation, so why shouldn’t I have a drink if I wanted one? I’d intended to see about mailing the letter to Madge. It could wait. I went back downstairs into Verne’s study, because I’d remembered seeing a decanter of whisky on a shelf beside one of the bookcases.

There was no glass. For the first time since I’d left the Army, I drank straight from a bottle. It warmed me and I felt better. Some of the panic that had started growing with morning subsided.

The picture was not on the desk.

My hand shook as I replaced the glass stopper in the decanter and returned it to the shelf. Verne’s study was directly beneath my bedroom. Somebody was moving around up there.

Now that I’d drunk the straight whisky, I wanted some water. There was another door in the study. I went over and opened it, expecting a closet. Beyond was a music room, with a baby grand piano, a large leather couch, a record player, and a case stacked with records. There was one window hung with crisp white curtains. The air was stale. I opened the window and autumn breathed on me. It was like summer, only the smell was autumn and blue skies and beyond the edge of an apple orchard colorfully splotched hills rose to a sharp horizon. There was dust on the window sill.

Dust powdered against my fingers when I touched the piano keys. The record player had been shut off halfway through a now dusty record, the arm and needle somehow evocative of a contented past abruptly severed. The record was Debussy’s Abrabesque Number 1 in E Major. That was not Verne. It might once have been Petra; it might still be. Yes. It was possible. It was not haphazard selection; not with the library of records in this room.

I went on through the door leading from the music room. A small alcove with a small couch in it led into the main hallway beneath the stairs. I felt myself wishing my own record collection was one tenth as large as the one in this house. I knew I was trying to force my thoughts into other channels—anything so I would not think of that woman.

It was all foolishness. Less than a day ago I would have laughed at anyone who had said he felt as I did.

Once, when I was very young, I had wanted to play the piano; wanted to learn how very much. I saved money and took lessons. But I knew my folks wouldn’t hear of such a thing. As I accomplished each lesson and sought out pianos to play on—because we didn’t have one—I knew eventually I’d be found out. It would end. Something would happen.

That’s how I felt now, only much worse, much more strongly. It had been the same when I tried to paint. I painted anyway, but my family talked me out of that, too. Consequently, I never learned to do anything I really wanted to do. Because I thought there was nothing left. And then it was too late; I felt it was too late. My father died and surprised me by leaving me some money. I’d always had a slight interest in old relics and Indian mounds, so I went and studied archaeology. It was, I decided at first, my way of escaping the knowledge that I had failed to do what I wanted. By taking an opposite. Picks, shovels, brushes, maps, mules, bones, and rusty iron. But I had fun, too, and then I had my dream about the museum and now that was my life. So I had really found what I really wanted.

As I started up the stairs again, Petra called to me as she came along the hall. “Alex. Come on. We’ll take a ride.” She paused, smiling, and her knee parted the slit in her red skirt. She was wearing red sandals. She painted neither her toenails nor her fingernails.

“I’d like to mail a letter,” I said.

“Yes. Well, we’ll ride into town, how’s that? Have to take the old gal along. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Sure.” I could feel myself relax.

“Yes. Then we’ll come back here and eat. I’d like to show you around. Tomorrow we’ll go to the lake.”

“Be right with you.” I hurried upstairs and into my room to get Madge’s letter from beneath the blotter.

The picture of Petra lay face up on the center of the desk. Something tense and slow tightened inside my chest, like black thread slowly winding on a spool.

I got the letter to Madge, found my pipe and tobacco pouch, and went on downstairs.

Petra and the old lady waited in the hall. “Ready?” Petra asked.

“Yes,” I told her. “I’m ready.”

The old woman watched Petra, and her eyes glowed in the daytime just as they did at night.

W
E DROVE
between hills through autumn. Petra had insisted that I sit in front with her. Verne’s mother was perched in the middle of the back seat. Twice I looked around at her expressionless yet sly face. I wanted to mention the picture. Several times I nearly did, but I couldn’t, quite. I felt she knew. It was a large car, black, a Buick. Petra drove at a steady sixty.

“We couldn’t talk so well with her up here, you see?”

“I guess that’s right. If she doesn’t mind.”

“She put up a fuss. But what the hell?” She glanced at me. Each time she moved her right leg, the skirt parted a bit more. I avoided looking toward her, but I felt compelled to.

“It’s so nice to ride,” Verne’s mother said. “We take one every day, hey, Petra?” The laugh. The dry rustling of leaves with chipmunks or mice skittering among them. “Hey, Petra?”

“Yes!” Petra shouted. She was biting her lip and the car’s speed increased. Then we were in the small town of Allayne. A long, elm-shrouded main street. The business section was about four or five blocks long. We went to the post office and I mailed the letter to Madge. Allayne seemed a quiet, peaceful town. There was a courthouse with a silver dome and the sun gleamed on it. The clock on the city hall read eleven-thirty as we headed back out of town.