An Unfinished Season (26 page)

I nodded as if I understood.

What you must understand is that it would be impossible for Aurora to live here alone, quite apart from her memory of what happened here this morning. This apartment is not suitable. It's too large and expensive to maintain. It should be sold, that's obvious. I want Aurora to come live with me, I have a comfortable place in Hyde Park, plenty of room. It's near the university, where you'll be, so it's convenient. But I don't think she will. And I can't force her to. I don't know what will happen to her now. And I do think it would be good if you would speak to her.

I can't tell Aurora what to do, I said.

Nevertheless, she said.

But I will look after her.

Aunt That looked at me with a whisper of a smile and nodded doubtfully.

She said, Jackie and I were not as close as we should have been. We were very close when we were growing up and then our parents died and we grew apart. He is closer now to my sister Emily. It was awful when our parents died but Jack kept us together as a family until he went away to war. He didn't have to go. He volunteered. Can you believe it? I did not approve. He had a young daughter and other responsibilities. But Jack always made up his own mind about things, no matter what anyone else said. He did not like to listen to people. I am bound to say that as a boy, Jack did not play well with others. And when he grew up, he no longer tried. Still, he was an attentive father to Aurora, and Aurora was not an easy child, her mother's bad influence. Olivia was an impetuous woman, an egoist and a materialist. I never liked her because she talked behind my back and turned Jack against me. Poor Jack, she led him a merry chase, and finally he kicked her out. For some reason, Olivia and my sister Emily got on. Emily made excuses for her, so they were simpatico, cheaters together. Jack's strategy with Aurora was simple: he let her do whatever she wanted, no restrictions at all on her behavior and very little guidance, though he insisted on knowing where she was at all times. He has been very lucky with Aurora so far. We were a wonderful family, Wils. But we are no longer the family we had been and I don't know how that happened, and now this.

I was having trouble keeping track of the betrayals but I nodded thoughtfully each time I heard a new one. I glanced over at the window, where the doctors Bloom were arguing energetically with each other. Brando had vanished. The noise level had dropped and the animation with it, air from a balloon; people were at a loss, remembering their grief, oppressed by the atmosphere of the dead man's room. I felt myself a trespasser once again, and Aurora still out of sight in the consulting room with the gentlemen from the city. I wondered if the actor was with her, giving what comfort he could. Zapata and Stanley Kowalski were both sympathetic characters and probably he was also, speaking to Aurora in that damaged mumble, the voice of a wounded animal. Marlon Brando would be just the thing for her, an experienced older man, and if his performances were any guide, no stranger to grief himself. He would know what to say and how to say it, and I could imagine her drum face softening and becoming beautiful again as she listened to him speak of grief. An actor would have an instinct for grief, how it was felt and how it was expressed, its appalling vacancy and privacy. You wanted to let go of it and hold on to it at the same time, words bringing a measure of consolation. But that actor's instinct would come from surrendering a certain essence of yourself. You would need the courage to ignore your own personality, having confidence that something more worthwhile—really, more sincere—would come with the surrender, finding your way into another soul, even if it was only a soul on paper or on the screen or stage. I knew I could never do it. I feared disintegration. Even now I could not feel grief at Jack Brule's death. Pity for Aurora, yes, and tenderness toward her. But I had no understanding of grief because I had never felt it in my heart.

I remembered Edward Hopper's lonely woman, trying to feel better and failing; all she had was her empty room and the knowledge that night would soon fall. The telephone would not ring. No one would knock on her door. I felt myself in a bewildering netherworld, neither here nor there. Too many names and family stories had come at me too quickly. I felt short of breath and wondered if I was having an attack of Dora's dyspnea, the room so warm and airless, the atmosphere as heavy as an anvil. Aunt That and I stood uncomfortably in a closed zone of silence. There seemed nothing more to be said.

 

Then, quite suddenly, the apartment began to empty. The doctors Bloom were the first to go, followed by the women who had come alone, the ones who had been so distraught. Emily stood at the door thanking everyone for coming and receiving a murmur of condolence in reply. Behind me, two older men took a last sip of their drinks, put the glasses down, and shuffled from the room. They were the two who had been talking about Auschwitz and Ravensbrück and I wondered if they had settled their argument concerning tattoos. They seemed friendly with each other, so I supposed that they had. I had the German names in my mind so that I could look them up later and understand about the tattoos. Alone now in the dining room, I listened to the goodbye sounds at the door. I poured a scotch, my first of the afternoon, and stood sipping it, looking at the table with its remains, half-eaten sandwiches, crumpled napkins, dirty glasses, and stale cigarette smoke in the air. I stepped into the corridor and took a few steps down it. When I heard voices in Jack Brule's study, I ducked into the consulting room and closed the door. I could not avoid looking into the glassed-in bookcase and was surprised to see the skull on the top shelf. The bullet hole was conspicuous along with the gold-filled molar, and I wondered if the doctor had felt a premonition and had taken the skull out for a last look. Sudden noises in the corridor made me hold my breath; and then the voices receded and I relaxed and resumed my speculation about the origin of the skull. But it had yielded all it was going to yield. I sat on the edge of the couch and sipped my drink, thinking that a room like this one would encourage fantasy, the dark curtains and patterned carpet, the small window that admitted so little light, and Jack Brule silent in the ladder-back chair out of the patient's sight. I stood and stretched, glancing again at the skull in the bookcase, and exited into the corridor. The study door was open, the room empty.

Everyone seemed to have departed. I took my drink to the dining room window and looked out. The world was returning to normal, rush hour in Chicago, people moving across the street in the afternoon sunlight, everyone in a hurry as if they had urgent errands that needed attending to without delay. I stood at the window a few moments longer, watching the people in the park and thinking that I should call my parents and tell them what had happened. They had not met Aurora but that didn't mean they shouldn't know her father had died. I knew my father would have good advice; and my mother would know what to do. Below in the street, two gray-haired men stood talking, their heads close together. When the taller of the two turned to look up, I was startled to see Henry Laschbrook, Ed Hoskins at his elbow. Henry scribbled a note on the pad in his hand, and they both hurried away up the street, waving their arms for a taxi.

At a rustle behind me, I turned from the window.

Consuela said, Hello, Wils, in a voice so small it was almost a whisper.

W
HEN I TOLD HER
how sorry I was, Consuela gave a helpless shrug of her shoulders. She fell into the nearest chair and closed her eyes, her hands on her knees. She looked years older, her face swollen, her skin slack and without vitality. Consuela wore no makeup or jewelry and her black dress looked slept in. I wondered where she had been all this time.

I said, Can I make you something?

She said, Is there any Cinzano?

I said, They've cleaned us out. Except for scotch.

Scotch, then. I'll be in the living room.

I made the drink and followed her into the living room. Of course the Cinzano was on the drinks tray but when I moved to prepare her what she wanted, Consuela waved her hand. Never mind, she said. I don't care what I drink.

She lay back on the sofa, holding the drink with both hands on her stomach, staring into the middle distance, her lips moving soundlessly. It seemed to me then that Jack Brule's ghost was in the room with us. When I saw a drink untouched on the cocktail table I was certain of it. The apartment was silent and I wondered where the aunts had gone.

I said, Is Aurora all right?

Yes, she said. Aurora's fine. She'll be here shortly.

I've been worried—

She's dressing, Consuela said.

What a terrible shock, I said.

Yes, she said. Yes, it was. Consuela took a small sip from her drink and closed her eyes, grimacing as if the act of swallowing were painful.

I said, You were a long time with the men from the city.

Who? she said. Oh, them. Yes, they stayed quite a while.

Connie, I said. Can you tell me what happened?

She moved her head from side to side, her eyes still closed. She said, What did Aurora tell you?

Nothing, I said. I described the cab ride from the Art Institute, when she had been in shock, unable to say anything beyond the fact that her father was dead.

Jack shot himself, Consuela said. This morning. Two-twenty
A.M.
, to be precise, in our bathroom.

I could not believe what I had heard. I turned away from her voice.

The noise, she said. The noise was terrible. I thought someone had thrown a bomb, yet I knew at once that it wasn't a bomb, that it was Jack and that he had shot himself not ten feet from our bed, the door closed, the tap water running. I knew all this because I was wide awake.

She took a long swallow of her drink, her eyes still closed.

The police came. They stayed for hours, it seemed to me. When they went away, they took Jack with them in an ambulance. There were three police cars and the ambulance, lights in the street. They were kind but they had questions and we had to answer the questions, about the ownership of the gun and the circumstances. The night's circumstances and Jack's state of mind. Who I was and what I was doing in the house. I had to give them my passport.

She took another swallow of her drink.

God, I loved him. We have been together more than one year.

She began to cry, choking, a kind of wail. I sat beside her on the couch and took her hand, stiff and cold as ice. Her fingers were curved like talons. She remained like that a moment, her face damp, her hands frigid. Then she leaned back with a long sigh.

Stay quiet, I said. You don't have to say anything more.

We had quarreled, she said. Gone to the theater and then to dinner, and at dinner we quarreled, something we did not do often but when we did, we kept at it until one of us declared victory and the other defeat. We quarreled in the cab home and quarreled when we got home and kept quarreling in the bedroom, and when we were exhausted the matter still wasn't settled. We didn't want to settle it. We wanted a quarrel that we could look back on later and remember as the worst quarrel we had ever had, a quarrel for the ages, neither of us giving one inch.

A quarrel of principle, she said.

Aurora heard us. Aurora liked it when we quarreled—

Connie, I said.

—and so I am certain she heard every word.

Fix me another drink, Wils. A big one.

I took her glass and refilled it from the bottle on the sideboard.

Thank you, Wils.

Connie? Would you like to rest awhile?

That's what she liked doing, listening at keyholes. Listening to her father and me quarrel, make love, make dinner, read aloud to each other—we did that, you know, in the evenings. So we had an audience. I think Jack knew it, too, knew Aurora was there and didn't care. Life in all its complexity overheard by a child with a vivid imagination. Consuela paused then, her eyes refocusing. She said, That which is overheard is never understood completely. She tapped a simple rhythm on the edge of her glass with her crimson fingernail. Around us the house was silent, and if I had not known better I would have said it was empty altogether except for us two in the living room.

But this quarrel was different, Consuela said. Jack was different. I suppose you'd say that we hit every note on the scale.

It was private, Wils. Private between Jack and me.

At one point, I think it was in the cab though it might have been later, Jack said I was not a suitable woman. He didn't like my manners, the way I talked, my character. He said I was Balkanized and he hated me for it. “A Balkanized personality” was the phrase he used. But he didn't mean it. I'm sure he didn't, it wasn't like him. I had said the same things to him, not in this quarrel but in another quarrel, and we agreed to forget it. I apologized right away and wrote him a note later. I was so ashamed. But he never apologized. So it's still there between us and it will always be between us, something unresolved.

You don't think he meant it, do you? One of those terrible statements that come out in the heat of a quarrel that's the truth. Straight from the heart.

Of course not, I said.

I don't either.

He wasn't himself, I'm sure.

No, she said.

People say things, I said.

Yes, they do.

Say whatever comes into their heads—

I wonder how often they say things and then shoot themselves.

Connie, I said.

Not often, I'll bet.

Somewhere in the apartment I heard a telephone, one ring and another, but whoever it was rang off after nine rings. I remembered the interminable sound of the telephone that night at dinner with my parents, the signal for the brick through the window. I stared at my drink and tried not to think of the nature of the quarrel and Jack Brule later in the bathroom.

And Aurora heard all of it, every word, Consuela said. I'm sure she enjoyed it. Otherwise, why listen? Why make the effort? So there were actually three of us in the quarrel, Jack, me, and Aurora, though only Jack and I had speaking parts. Aurora was the walk-on in the corner. We'd quarreled before, as I told you. But this was different. Jack was different, playing for keeps in a way he never had before. And he made no effort to apologize. Consuela looked at me, her eyes pleading, her hands beginning to tremble.