Burnt Offerings (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) (19 page)

“I’m not blaming Aunt Elizabeth, and I’m certainly not blaming a
house
. Honey, I don’t even know what the ‘everything else’ is supposed to be.”

“How could you, Marian? You’ve become too obsessed with it all to see anything else clearly.”

“I am
not
obsessed with it.”

“What would you call it then?”

“Just what it is: a responsibility.”

“One that’s a hell of a lot more than you thought it would be.”

“Whatever it is, it’s mine as long as we’re here.” She paused and let him see how wearying it all was. “Ben – do you know how ridiculous it sounds? To read threat into a house. If I don’t see it clearly, isn’t it possible there’s nothing clear to see?” She passed her hand over his hair. “And maybe whatever you think is happening, is only happening
here?
” She was rubbing the back of his neck. “In your mind?”

“Would you give it up, Marian?” he repeated. “For me? Whether it’s in my mind or not, would you give it up?”

“Are you asking me to do that, Ben?”

“
Would
you?”

“It’s everything we’ve ever wanted,” Marian said faintly.

“Everything you’ve ever wanted, Marian.”

“For us.” She looked at him silently for a long while and then rested her face against his shoulder, watching the carved door behind him. “Of course, Ben,” she said. It was hardly a whisper, almost indistinguishable from the sound of the hum. She fixed her eyes on the center of the medallion, projecting the same thought over and over: Don’t let him ask it, don’t let him ask it . . .

“Something’s happening to me, Marian.” She heard him far away.

“Yes, Ben?”

“I don’t know how to describe it.”

“Tell me.”

“Things are . . . real to me . . . that I know don’t exist. So goddamned real. There are times when I just can’t control what comes into my head. It’s become terrifying.” He was holding her closer; she felt his head bury itself against her. “It’s like . . . hallucinating. I know it’s not there . . . and yet it’s real. It’s never happened before, Marian, never before this house. It
is
the house. As crazy as it sounds, I know it’s the house.”

Her fingers moved slower, soothing, against the back of his neck.

“How is that possible, Ben?”

“I don’t know.”

There was no reason to disbelieve at least part of what he was saying; but belief or not, or sympathy, or fear – they were all swirling around somewhere beyond the periphery of the medallion. And as much as she tried to feel them, the only thing that was working on her emotionally was the thought that he would ask her to give up the house. “If it were true, darling,” she said, “if I could believe what you’re saying – God, don’t you think we’d leave? I’d drag us all out of here so fast. But it’s a house, nothing more than a house. And if everything is suspect all of a sudden – from me all the way down to the ticking of a clock – well, forgive me, Ben, but isn’t that part of the hallucination as well? Trust me, darling. There’s nothing here to threaten us. Nothing.” She waited and then asked him again: “Are you asking me to give it up? All of it? Is that what you want?”

He said “No” finally; not said it, merely indicated it by leaving her question unanswered and listening quietly to Marian’s renewed promises and the assurance, repeated several times, that there was nothing wrong with him. It was everything from too much sun to not enough sleep; it was imagination and tension and all the residue of the city; their adjustment to the house, the responsibility of it; and, yes, if it had to be brought up again, the reverberating shock of the pool incident. And all the rest of it. He was not losing his mind. He was not on the edge of a breakdown.

Ben left the room eventually; possibly no more reassured, but at least the question of giving up the house had been suspended, and that had to be some kind of progress; there had to be some slight validity in what she was saying.

The house
. The word he’d used:
obsession
. . .

It delayed itself until she was alone again, with the sitting room door closed; and at first the realization jolted her like a shock wave: the house was insinuating itself into the deepest part of her being; it was taking possession of her. So completely that she couldn’t say with certainty what her life would be like, even with Ben and David, if she were confronted with the terrible choice of giving up the house or not giving up the house. How could she, in view of the mystery of it, and the approbation it showered on her so constantly – in every room, more and more, in the grounds and the pool and even the clocks ticking? Like the Allardyces had suggested, it was coming alive, bit by bit, and all through her.

She could read confirmation in the lines and curves cut into the door, and hear it in the voice of the room, and the peace that had replaced the shock wave, descending on her like grace.

(9)

It was mid-afternoon when Marian came out of the sitting room. The security and peace – the feeling that what she was being called upon to do was right, was morally defensible – faded with the click of the lock; reality obtruded, and with it an edginess, a sudden loss of clarity. She had lied to Ben, and however noble the reason, she had never deliberately done that before. Of course he had put her in that position; worst of all, he had made her confront the fact that her life might slowly be divorcing itself from his. And while there might be strength to face that awful possibility in the sitting room (where, at one point, she even recognized it as a kind of elevation), the sitting room was behind her now, the insights locked inside. And what a minute before had been enlightenment could become, if she let herself dwell on it, moral upheaval; and edginess, panic. Unless she found something in the house – the greenhouse, the terrace, whatever – to distract herself.

Aunt Elizabeth’s door was still closed, thankfully, and so was the door to Ben’s study. She looked out the kitchen window for David; his book was on the terrace, with the “G.I. Joe” and the tangle of “Hot Wheels” equipment.

David. David. If ever there were the question of a choice, then wouldn’t David be involved? And if David were involved, then how could there possibly be any choice?

She went outside and scanned the rear lawn for him. (It was greener, the shrubs growing fuller.) She called, “David?” and walked the length of the terrace. She called again, and heard him say, “Coming!” from the living room. Then she heard a crash of glass in the area of the voice.

She rushed into the room and saw him standing, very frightened, above a shattered crystal bowl.

“It slipped!” he said.

“
Slipped?
” She was staring at the pieces scattered over the Aubusson. “What were you doing with it?”

“Nothing.” He backed away. He’d been holding it in front of his face, scanning the room and watching the distortion through the base of the bowl.

“That bowl was precious,” Marian said. “Look at it!”

“It just slipped,” David repeated. “I didn’t mean to break it.”

“I don’t care what you meant.” She fell to her knees and spread her hands helplessly over the broken crystal.

“Daddy can glue it maybe,” he said.

Marian closed her eyes tightly and heard her voice rising, trembling with emotion. “I’ve told you – you’re not to come into this room.”

“There was nothing to do,” he whined.

“I don’t care,” Marian yelled across the room. “You are not to touch her things!” She hammered her fist against her knee. “Ever!” Again. “Ever!” and again. “
Ever!
”

When she opened her eyes he was gone. Marian bent forward and began to gather up the pieces gently. The knot she had felt inside herself when she left the sitting room tightened, and she began to sob. For the bowl at first, and then David, and then herself.

She was still sobbing when she found David later, sitting in the middle of the steps in front of the house. He started to rise when he saw her, but she put her arms around him and sat beside him.

“Forgive me, baby,” Marian said. “Whatever I said in there, I didn’t mean any of it. Please forgive me.”

David tried to move away a little. “It’s okay,” he said weakly.

“No, it’s not. I was terrible to you.” She rubbed her face against his hair. “We’re going to go in there right now and we’re going to touch everything we can find in that crummy house.” She held him at arm’s length, waiting for the pouting look to disappear. “Even break stuff if you want. Okay?”

“I don’t want to break anything,” David said.

Her hands framed his face, making him even more uncomfortable. “Because I love you,” she said with an intensity that was almost as frightening as the sound of her voice in the
living room. “More than her, more than her house. More than
anything. You know that, don’t you, sweetheart?”

When she finished, the knot, inexplicably, was still there.

At five to six she knocked on the door of the study. There was no reply. She opened it and peered in. Ben was asleep on the couch, his arm covering his face. He stirred when she called his name, and then raised his head sleepily.

“Sorry,” Marian said without coming into the room. “Thought you might like to know – it’s six and I’ve got a shakerful of martinis cooling in the fridge.”

He put his head down again and stared at the ceiling.

“Ben? Did you hear?”

He said, “Yeah,” and that was all.

Marian didn’t come beyond the doorway. “I might even join the two of you tonight. Would you mind? Ben?”

He slid his legs off the couch and sat up, rubbing his forehead with both hands. “Six?” he said.

“Six. Have you been sleeping all this time?”

“A little,” he said.

“Aunt Elizabeth hasn’t come down yet. How’d you like to call her? I’m right in the middle.”

“I don’t imagine I’d be very good company tonight.”

“Well . . . why don’t we try it anyway?” She felt the tension concentrate itself in her hands which she clasped behind her. “You’re not going to let me drink alone, are you?”

“No, Marian,” he said wearily, and there was something distant and chilling in the way he said her name. “I wouldn’t think of it.” He gave her a brief, ironic smile, and that was chilling too. “Anything to accommodate you.”

She said, “Thank you,” and looked away. The typewriter, she saw, was just where she had left it, still covered; the paper in a neat pile on the side of the desk, with the mimeographed syllabus on top; the reference books and the American Lit texts were stacked evenly. Nothing had been touched.

“I’ll be on the terrace,” Marian said. “There’s caviar on ice, if you’re interested – the good stuff, six whole ounces of it.” She paused and then dropped the strained geniality. “If it’s a new beginning, then we ought to do it up right.” She had tried to put just enough of a plea into her voice.

Ben lowered his hands. The smile was back. “How many of those do we get, Marian – new beginnings?”

“Just as many as we need, darling,” Marian said.

“Oh,” Ben said, but she had already gone.

He did go up to Aunt Elizabeth’s room eventually. She had expressed it exactly, he reminded himself: “I don’t know how Marian feels about anything anymore. Except this house.” At least that wasn’t something he was imagining. But even if her feelings mirrored his – the house was becoming more and more of an obsession – what was he supposed to do? Pull them all out for Marian’s sake; pretend that the only reason for going back to the apartment was to save Marian from her own weakness, and that he was acting decisively and selflessly? It would be almost simple if he could honestly say that were the only threat he saw in the house. But what about the rest of it – the threat that was either wholly imaginary, or that actually (and incredibly) existed, independent of his own mind? How
could
it exist? How could he reasonably counter Marian’s argument that it was a
house,
nothing more – and pretend to even a semblance of sanity?

Just thinking about it made the throbbing in his head drive itself deeper, and the film passed over his eyes again, rippling the panels in the door to Aunt Elizabeth’s room. He waited for the pain to pass, counting the seconds and using the numbers like talismans – up to six this time, longer than usual, and seven, and – seven. It stopped. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, steadying himself against the doorjamb. When he opened them again, the film had dissolved and the edge of the pain blunted itself to that slow throbbing.

He waited and then knocked, several times, until he thought he heard Aunt Elizabeth’s voice.

She was in bed when he entered the room, her back to the door, exactly the way he had left her. He called, “Aunt Elizabeth,” and she turned toward him just slightly, saying, “Benjie . . .” with a weariness in her voice that made him forget the pain.

“Did I wake you?” Ben said.

“No.” She tried to turn a bit more, and then let her head fall back against the pillow. “I’ve just been dozing.”

He moved nearer the bed. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” Her face looked very small and white and her body seemed lost in the vastness of the bed.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “I’m just so tired I can’t move.”

“I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”

“I’m glad you did,” she said without moving. “I can’t sleep my life away.”

“Another forty winks?” He came closer. How terribly old she looked to him, her legs and arms so thin, all veins and bones.

“No,” she said, and raised her hand an inch above the bed. “I’ve got to get up. Just give me a minute or so to put myself together.”

He watched her close her eyes and swallow hard. “Aunt Elizabeth?” he said, trying not to sound too alarmed, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Of course I am, Benjie. What time is it?”

“Around six.”

“And how – ” she paused to swallow again “ – how’s my martini doing?”

“It’s in the works.”

“That’s the best medicine I can think of at the moment. Wait for me on the terrace, will you?” She looked in his direction, a little to the right of where he was standing.

“Aunt Elizabeth? I’m . . . a little worried.”

“About me?” He nodded and she repeated, “Me?”

Ben said, “Yes.”

Her voice became a bit steadier. “I won’t have that, Benjie. Now you go downstairs and bring those martinis out to the terrace. I’ll be down in a jiffy.” He waited. “Did you hear me, Benjie?”

“I heard you.”

She looked up at the ceiling again. “Worst thing you can do to an old lady – ” again, a swallow and a pause for breath “ – is encourage her self-indulgence. Out with you.”

“How many times must I tell you? You’re not an old lady.”

“Oh, Benjie,” Aunt Elizabeth said, “I think it’s about time we put that idea to rest.”

She asked him to close the door after him (“Now, please. I won’t be looked at in this frightful state”). Reluctantly, Ben left the room.

Aunt Elizabeth waited, and then once again tried to lift her head from the pillow, biting her lower lip to ease the strain which she could feel travelling down the length of her spine. It was even more severe this time, wrenching enough to make her moan and drop back against the pillow.

“Dear God . . .” The effort left her too exhausted to speak the words. She repeated them to herself: “Dear God . . .”

To find herself so completely drained of strength that she couldn’t even rise to a sitting position – how was it possible? She had gotten out of bed that morning (with some difficulty, more than the day before, but she had gotten out); had walked back to the bed just a few hours ago, with only a little assistance from Ben. If the weariness and the dizzy spells had been common the past few days, they had certainly not been this debilitating. What was wrong with her?

Dwelling on it, she told herself; thinking herself into a state of paralysis. It was panic that was crippling her, nothing physical.
Will,
she reminded herself. She drew a deep breath.

It was frightening – to feel so helpless, so suddenly. Surely Ben had noticed, which, on top of everything else, she found humiliating.

Again? Again. Empty the mind first.

The fogginess that surrounded the bed was distracting her, feeding the panic. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the simple mechanics of propping herself up on the bed.

She began to slide her hands over the bedspread to position her elbows; the material, a smooth black and gold satin, abraded her skin. She raised her head again, very slowly this time. She could feel the trembling in the back of her neck and in her hands especially. Her elbows moved away from her sides, and the pain spread out, sharpest where her elbows pressed down into the mattress. She held her breath and tried to draw all her energy into her left arm, as she had done when Ben had come into the room. The elbow moved a quarter of an inch, then another, and with the movement came a wave of nausea to intensify the pain, and the frightening realization that it would snap under her weight; if she wasn’t careful . . . so slowly careful . . . her arm would crumble under her.

Her arm. “Dear God,” she thought again, “help me.”

She shouldn’t have sent him away, however humiliating the admission would have been. If she could call him . . . Once more, one more attempt and she would.

She swallowed hard and rolled her body just a little to the left, fighting the nausea and closing her eyes against the spinning of the room. A little more then; and if she could just not cry out . . . gather her strength against the pain . . . for only another quarter inch.

The pain welled viciously and shot itself into her arm from every part of her body. And though she tried to scream to release the horror of what was happening to her, the cry lodged itself in her throat for the moment or two she remained conscious and then slipped out as a thin stream of air, barely a sigh.

Marian brought the caviar out to the terrace on one of the gold trays she had found. The condiment bowls were silver.

“I tried to improvise,” she said archly, “but nothing in gold worked. We’ll just have to make do, I suppose.” She gave a brave smile.

She had changed into a full, blue hostess gown with, appropriately, gold piping and blue-and-gold slippers.

Ben was leaning against the balustrade, looking at the shoreline across the bay. When he turned to face her, she set the tray down on the glass table, and then spun around with her arms raised to display the gown. He had never seen it before.

“Like it?” she asked.

Ben nodded. “Looks kind of strange,” he said. “I’ve gotten so used to you in jeans and a shirt.”

“The change will do us both good.” She smoothed down her hair. “I did whatever I could with – ” She rolled her eyes up, hopelessly. “Promise – this week something drastic.” She had made no attempt to cover the gray spreading at her temples. She touched it. “I should’ve remembered: my Aunt Marge, rest her soul – went totally gray almost overnight when she was about twenty-five. But totally. You think that’s what’s happening to me?”

“Looks that way,” Ben said.

“I hate it, myself. Does it really bother you?”

“I’ve gotten used to that too.”

“It’s infuriating. You don’t have a bit of it.”

“It’s all inside,” Ben said. “Where’s Davey?”

“Where else? In front of the tube. I made him a Shirley Temple. Shall I bring ours out?” She glanced at the terrace door as an afterthought. “Where’s Aunt Elizabeth by the way?”

“Upstairs. I’m worried about her, Marian.”

“Oh, she’ll be fine,” Marian said. “I’ll apologize as soon as she comes down. Aunt Elizabeth isn’t the type to hold a grudge. I was upset; she must realize that.”

“It’s not that,” Ben said. “Something’s wrong with her.”

“What do you mean, wrong?”

“Physically. She won’t admit it of course.”

“Then don’t press it, darling. If it’s wrong enough, she’ll tell us.” He wasn’t listening. He was looking at the tray of caviar; looking, as a matter of fact, everywhere but directly at her. That was something
she
was getting used to. She wanted to tell him: just once be distracted from something else by her; for five minutes let nothing, real or unreal, be wrong with any of them; let it be as pleasant and free of suspicion as it was in those first few days. But she had said as much several times to no avail. “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I am
dy
ing for a martini. You know how long it’s been since I’ve had one?”