Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (18 page)

“They were closed when Ben went in there; tight.”

“Then David might have closed them.”

“David was asleep.”

“Before he fell asleep.”

“And then he opened them again before you came in. Make sense, Aunt Elizabeth.”

“How can I make sense when you’re shouting at me? I can’t think when you shout like that.”

“I’m not shouting.”

“You
are
and you’re accusing me of – I don’t know
what
you’re accusing me of.”

Marian lowered her voice pointedly. “I’m not accusing you of anything. Isn’t it reasonable to want to know what caused that heater to go on?”

“Ben never once implied I was responsible.”

“
If,
” Marian said, her voice rising above Aunt Elizabeth’s, “if I’m implying that, I’m also implying that it was an accident; it certainly wasn’t done to hurt David.”

“Hurt David? Me?”

“Accidentally, I said.”

“Not even accidentally.” She was fumbling in her pocket for a handkerchief, her knuckles white and bony, cadaverous almost.

“There’s no sense in pursuing it. It’s over, he’s all right.” She watched Aunt Elizabeth dab at her eyes. Her dress, a short-sleeved cotton print Marian had seen her wear before, hung shapeless from her body. She was suddenly very old to Marian, so old that it seemed like an illusion. It might have simply been the fact that she wasn’t wearing makeup or that her weekly trips to the hairdresser had been suspended. But the trembling, the change in her voice?

“Where’s Ben?” Aunt Elizabeth said. “Ben will believe me.”

Marian sighed with resignation. “I believe you too.”

“You don’t,” Aunt Elizabeth said and pulled her elbow back, out of Marian’s reach.

“We’ll just have to be more careful, that’s all.” She had taken the gardening gloves off; she started to slip them on again.

“Of me?”

“You’re seventy-four, Aunt Elizabeth.”

“What does that mean?”

It hadn’t struck Marian as cruel, merely honest. She wished now she hadn’t said it. “We all forget things,” she said.

“I don’t forget things, Marian,” Aunt Elizabeth said weakly. “I know what I do.”

“Of course you do,” Marian said. “Let me get your breakfast.”

“I don’t want any breakfast.” She turned to leave. “Please tell Ben I’m in my room.”

“I’ll bring it to your room if you want.”

Aunt Elizabeth stopped; her hand went down to the table for support. “Just like you bring it to her room – the other old woman? Please don’t bother, Marian.”

He had awakened with the pain above his eyes, and the aspirin hadn’t helped, nor the dark glasses he’d worn for the drive to Southold and back. At one point on the road he’d had to stop the car, not only for the pain, but for the sudden, momentary blurring of his vision. It passed, but the pain persisted.

He spoke above it, telling Aunt Elizabeth, “I’ve never known you to blubber like this.”

She was sitting on the edge of the chaise in her room, twisting the handkerchief in her hands. Ben was beside her, with his arm around her shoulders very lightly, as if the slightest pressure might weigh on her insupportably. Even the pain couldn’t distract him from the change in her.

His words brought the handkerchief up to her eyes again. “I’m sorry, Benjie, I can’t help myself. She had no right to talk to me that way.”

“She was upset, she didn’t know what she was saying.”

“I’d die,” Aunt Elizabeth said, touching his knee for emphasis, “
die
before I’d do anything to hurt Davey.”

“I know that and so does Marian.”

“Does she?”

“Of course she does. You know how Marian feels about you, Aunt Elizabeth.”

“I don’t know how Marian feels about anything anymore. Except this house.”

Ben was silent. “That’s not like you either,” he said quietly.

“I’m sorry, Benjie. She’s gotten me so upset I don’t know what I’m saying.”

“Look,” Ben said, “you two have never had words before. Why, all of a sudden?”

“Ask Marian.”

“I did ask her, exactly that. It’s possible, isn’t it, that you misinterpreted what she was saying?”

“I know what I heard, same as I know what I do. I may be an old lady, Benjie, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost all my marbles.”

“You’re not an old lady,” Ben said. He looked at her hair, so fine it was almost transparent; the scalp showed underneath, white and lifeless. When had it started? Or was this too all in his mind? “Stop thinking yourself into old age, hunh?” He squeezed her hand affectionately.

“I am old, Benjie,” Aunt Elizabeth said.

“Old, my ass. All you need’s a little touch-up paint.”

She gave him a small, wet-eyed smile. “Tomorrow maybe.”

“Why not now?”

She sighed and wilted beside him. “I don’t have the strength at the moment.” She looked longingly at the bed and started to raise herself, leaning on his arm. “More than anything I’d like to be able to get into that bed and close my eyes for just a while. Like a very young lady,” she assured him, “who’s just suddenly so tired. Help me, Benjie?”

He found Marian preparing Mrs. Allardyce’s lunch tray in the kitchen.

“David’s on the terrace,” she said, “with a
book
. He says it stinks but he seems to be plugging away. The ‘G.I. Joe’ was good for twenty minutes. How much did you pay for it?”

“I forget.” He told her about Aunt Elizabeth, and Marian, without any wasted motions – hot soup into blue Spode bowl – said, “If I hurt her I’m sorry. The fact is she
was
in his room.”

“Why would she lie, Marian?”

“She’s not lying; she just doesn’t remember what she did. She didn’t, then she did close the door, and the windows, and – ” Marian dismissed it with a wave. “Face it, darling, Aunt Elizabeth is getting old.”

“She wasn’t ‘old’ back in town.”

“No, she wasn’t,” Marian said; “and we didn’t live with her then either.” She placed the bowl on a plate and moved them onto the silver tray, adding an immaculate linen napkin and a silver spoon which she held up to inspect. “We saw her once every week or so then. Usually fresh from the beauty parlor.”

There was a deliberateness in her last statement which seemed especially intended for Ben. “You’ve seen the change?” he said.

“I’ve seen it,” Marian said. “She’s letting herself go. She has been ever since – ” She caught herself and repeated the phrase, shrugging it off: “Ever since.”

“Ever since what, Marian?” The pool. Neither he nor Aunt Elizabeth had ever mentioned it. Was the memory of it as painful and obsessive for her as well, still? And could a shock like that have done it, or at least started it?

“Ever since we took on country ways,” Marian said lightly. She placed a Venetian bud vase with a single yellow rose on the tray. “She’ll be fine, once she begins to recognize her limitations. Seventy-four is seventy-four.”

“Go up and talk to her, Marian,” Ben said.

“I will, darling,” Marian said. She lifted the tray. “Later.”

He brought his hand against the edge of the tray. “Now. For me?”

“Ben, I’m late,” Marian protested. “As soon as I’ve – ”

“I’ll take that up to the old lady.” He tried to take the tray away from her.

“What are you doing?” She held it tighter, instinctively protective, and with a threat in her voice and face that the quick, nervous laugh failed to cover.

“It’s important that you talk to her now,” Ben said.

“I’ll talk to her later,” Marian insisted, and looked down at Ben’s hands on the tray. “Now, darling –
please
.” He let go of the tray and the threat softened to an ingratiating smile, playfully scolding. “My responsibility, after all,” she reminded him. She kissed the air between them and left Ben in the kitchen.

Aunt Elizabeth’s door was closed when Marian passed it. She might have been too harsh with her, though probably not as insensitive as Aunt Elizabeth had no doubt made out to Ben. She should have realized that age was Aunt Elizabeth’s vulnerable point and any reference to it would bruise her vanity. She took the keys to the double doors and the sitting room out of her pocket. She’d go in to see her later and apologize.

Marian climbed the five steps and unlocked the outer door, steadying the tray quickly as the bud vase slid toward the Spode bowl. She pulled the key out and left the door open behind her.

Vulnerable: the word came back to her. Ben and the pool; why had she even hinted at it? Not deliberately certainly, not to hurt him. She tried to remember the context as she turned the key to unlock the sitting room door. If it had come out as a taunting reminder, that had not been her intention. How could it be?

She entered the room and the silver vases, the gold pitcher and candlesticks she had found yesterday glittered in the room’s soft, peaceful light, and for the moment crowded Aunt Elizabeth and Ben and what Marian had or hadn’t said out of her mind. She carried the tray to the tea table, set it down, and then turned slowly, surveying the room – from the carved door (gold faceted today, a huge medallion) to the bowls of flowers and candelabra set on polished tables to the mass of faces graced now with vases filled with wildflowers. She started to move toward the pictures and then stopped suddenly and spun around to face the door she’d left open. Ben was watching her silently.

She felt her heart jump. “My God!” she cried. She looked quickly at the carved door, and then back at Ben, her voice hushed. “You frightened me.”

He was coming into the room, which made Marian hold out her hands, cautioning.

“Please, darling,” she whispered, moving toward him, “she doesn’t like anyone in here.”

Ben stopped and looked slowly around the room. “Where is she?” he asked with something more than simple curiosity.

Marian’s voice became even softer. “In her bedroom.” She nodded at the carved door. “Asleep.”

Ben listened to the hum. “What’s that noise?”

“I don’t know; air conditioner probably. It’s in her bedroom.”

She had slipped her hand through his arm and was trying to guide him back to the door. He moved away from her and walked toward the bedroom, following the sound of the hum.

“Exquisite, isn’t it?” Marian said as Ben looked at the carvings in the door.

“It’s something,” he said. He began to trace the pattern, and Marian found herself tensing, as though his fingers were moving over her own body.

“Come on, Ben,” she called softly, “let me lock up.”

“In a minute,” he said. He walked slowly across the room, stopping at the gold pitcher which he remembered seeing the day before. “You brought it up here,” he said.

“Yes.” He seemed surprised. “I showed it to her yesterday,” Marian said defensively. “She asked me to leave it here. The candlesticks as well.” It came out effortlessly, and however right it seemed in view of the intrusion, it was a lie, which disturbed her.

“You see her regularly?” Ben asked.

“Fairly,” Marian said, and that disturbed her as well.

He was moving toward the photographs, and Marian felt herself tensing even more. “Her collection,” she said, keeping her voice low. She came beside him. “Fascinating. People she’s known all over the world. It’s her whole life, these pictures.” She saw him lingering over a photograph on the edge of the table – a child unsmiling. Marian tugged at Ben’s arm. “It’s very personal, darling; one of her crotchets, I’m afraid.” She tugged again. “I know this would upset her.”

Ben looked at her, and though she was trying to cover it with a smile, he saw the face over the tray again. “What are you so nervous about?” he said.

“I’m not nervous. I told you, she doesn’t like anyone in here.” She pulled the keys out of her pocket. “Can we leave now?”

“I’ve been curious about this room,” Ben said.

“Well,” Marian said with a sweep of her hand, “you’ve seen it.”

“Why do you keep it locked?”

“She prefers it that way.”

“And she gave you the keys?”

“They were in the envelope the Allardyces left.”

He was beginning to walk across the room, thank God, toward the door. “Were the keys you used to wind the clocks in there too?” he asked casually.

Marian hesitated, just briefly. “The clock keys were in the cases, most of them. Why bring that up?”

“I just wondered if you wound all those clocks.”

“Of course I did. You’ve seen me doing it.”

“They’re working now, you know. How’d you finally manage it?”

“Persistence. Look, this is beginning to sound like the third degree.”

“I don’t mean it that way,” Ben said. “You just seem to know more than any of us around here.” He nodded at the tray beside the wingchair. “Her lunch is getting cold. You’d better call her.”

“She’ll come out when we leave. Can we now?” Ben didn’t move. “God, you’re acting strange. I’ve told you, honey, she doesn’t like anyone in her room.”

“Except you.”

“Except me, yes.” She looked at the carved door again, anxiously. “We agreed, didn’t we – she’s my responsibility?”

“You think maybe she’s become too much of a responsibility, Marian? The house too?”

“I’m not complaining, am I?”

“No,” Ben said, “you’re not.”

“Then don’t you.” She came closer to him and gave him a long, overly exasperated sigh. He stared at her, and though she could see her face in the pupils, the eyes seemed turned inward. “What is it, darling?” she whispered. “Tell me.”

It had happened again, very briefly – the sudden blurring, the wedge of pain between his eyes. He winced and felt her hands on his face.

“Ben?”

Her features slid back onto her face.

“How important is it to you, Marian? This house?”

The questioning, the almost belligerent way he had come into the room should have prepared her. It hadn’t and she could feel her throat tighten around the reply. “Important enough, I guess. Why?”

“If I asked you to,” he said very slowly, “would you give it up?”

“Give it up?”

He nodded, and when she asked, “Ben, are you serious?” he nodded again.

“
Why?
” Her voice caught on the word.

“You can ask that, after what happened here last night?”

“Last night?”

“What if I hadn’t reached David in time, Marian?”

She shook the thought out of her head and said, “Don’t even suggest something like that.” Then, trying to keep her voice steady: “What has that got to do with the house, with leaving? Look, I can’t believe you’re serious.”

“I am, Marian.”

“Ben, Aunt Elizabeth
admitted
she was in David’s room – ”

“ – and everything else that’s been happening to us here, Marian – is that Aunt Elizabeth’s fault as well?”