Heart Troubles (15 page)

She followed them though, and when they were in the street once more she looked hard at Robert. “You look pale,” she said ominously. “There's blood all over your lips.”

Miss Ungewitter spun around in the middle of flagging a taxi. “Blood!” she cried.
“Where?”

“Oh—it's only ice cream,” said Harriet. “I thought it was blood.”

“It is blood,” said Robert.

The taxi stopped and Harriet got quickly into the front seat beside the driver, and Robert and Miss Ungewitter got in the back. Miss Ungewitter lay back on the hard horsehair cushion. The day was hot and sweltering. Would it never end? Turning her head slightly as the little car mounted the steep street toward the summit of a hill, she tried to see those pink villas, those waxen junipers and cypresses and knotted ghostlike trees all wind-bent from the southern gale. But, jolting and banging along the cobbles, there was a heavy ground haze over everything and, between the yellow stucco buildings, the gray glint of the Mediterranean lying shrouded in fog, stirring restlessly under the great heat of it all.

Pillars of smoke rose straight from several chimneys, and there was a dark, foul smell in the air like the between-cars smell of trains, and the upholstery of the taxi itself exhaled a dead stench like faded lilies. There were no birds, no gnarled fingers of trees, nothing of the picture-book Azure Coast as she saw it, bouncing along with Robert's elbow jabbing hard into her thigh and Harriet's stiff back in front of her. Tricklets of perspiration swam down the hollow of her back. You curly-headed fool, she thought, would you come to France too? Scoundrel, scourge of my life. Behind the bushes, around the next corner of that wall she would see him lurking, wrinkling up his nose to smile at her. But he wasn't there, he had tricked her again. Oh, come back again, she thought.

“Do you think I'll ever get married?” Robert asked.

“Oh, I've no doubt you will someday,” she said.

“When I do, I want to marry somebody like that Leona.” His elbow dug sharply into her side and she reached down, pressing him gently away.

“Leona? Who is she now?”

“That lady with the Indians there.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, still not understanding. “The Indians.”

“If she called like that, I'd get there before they did.”

“Where? Get where?” They were nearly home now, rounding the last corner. Appear now or forever hold your peace, she told him. Ahead was the gate and the driveway.

“To the fire, where they were going to burn her.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, remembering the movie. “Those were Spaniards though, not Indians.”

“Harriet is ugly, isn't she?”

“No, Harriet is very beautiful.”

“I don't think so,” said Robert.

“Nobody cares what you think,” said Harriet without turning around.

“Children, children!” said Miss Ungewitter. “We're almost home.”

The taxi stopped and Harriet got out and started haughtily up the walk to the house. Miss Ungewitter counted out the money carefully, paid the driver, and gave him the usual tip. As the taxi drove away in the dust, she and Robert walked up the path together. Robert was clutching his parcel under his arm, and Miss Ungewitter took hold of his other hand. “You can set it off from the terrace if you like,” she told him. If some captain was silly enough to mistake a child's firework for Saint-Tropez light, he deserved to wreck, she decided.

“I don't mind setting it off in the garden,” Robert said.

“That's my good boy,” said Miss Ungewitter. “Whatever you want to do.”

The children's father didn't show up for dinner, but Miss Ungewitter had put on her good blue dress anyway, thinking that he might. And it was a good thing she had, because after the children had finished eating and she was sitting alone at the table with her coffee, he did come in. He was very sunburned.

“Good evening, Miss Ungewitter,” he said. “How did it go?”

“Well, we went to a movie this afternoon, Mr. Bartholomew,” she told him.

“Oh, remind me of that when I give you your check on Friday,” he said.

“I don't mind, sir. I don't mind giving them a little treat.”

“Were they good? Did they behave?”

“Good as gold,” she said. “Oh, that Robert! He has a firework I bought him that he'll be setting off as soon as it gets dark.”

“You shouldn't spend so much of your own money on them, Miss Ungewitter,” he said. “You're much too generous, I've reminded you of that.”

“Oh, it's my pleasure, Mr. Bartholomew,” she said.

“I'm going over to the Casino with the Conrads,” he said. “I'll probably be back before eleven, though.”

“Have you had your dinner, Mr. Bartholomew?”

“Yes, I had dinner at the Conrads'. This was their dinner party, did I forget to tell you? I'll say good night to the children now.”

“Have a good time.”

“Thank you, Miss Ungewitter. Good night.”

After he had gone Miss Ungewitter took her full coffee cup out onto the high terrace. The large tree in the center was full of enormous green blooms that were faintly malodorous, but the sun was going down and a cool breeze had come up almost chilly from the west. The hot sirocco from Robert's desert, she thought of it, cooled by its journey across the sea. It fanned and cooled her moist cheeks and forehead. The terrace frightened her so. It was a jumping-off place between here and the hereafter, this high, wind-swept patio with the hill falling away beneath it, and on one side the city was sprinkled like a crazy quilt at her very feet, and on the other side was the rocky beach with the waves breaking on it now. Coming in, coming in. Waves always came in, never flowed out. Timidly she walked to the very edge, then retreated several steps quickly. The children were safe in the garden behind the house. No one was aware of her peril. Distantly the telephone rang and distant feet pattered to answer it. Distant voices jabbered incomprehensible foreign words. The waves crashed far below. “Dorothy, Dorothy!” What? What is it? She almost spoke aloud.

The lights were turned on in the living room. Miss Ungewitter crossed the terrace and sat down heavily in one of the white peacock chairs and tried to remember where she had left her sweater.

Suddenly she saw Robert standing behind the trunk of the tree, watching her, “How long have you been there?” she asked him almost crossly, wondering whether she had been talking to herself.

“I'm waiting for it to get dark enough,” he said.

“Where's your sister?”

“I don't know. In the house.”

“Doesn't she want to watch while we set it off?”

“She says you're a fat old witch.”

“Does she?”

“Are you?”

“Well, what do you think?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, that wasn't a very nice thing for her to say, was it?” And she almost added “after I took her to a movie and bought her ice cream,” but she thought better of it and said nothing.

“You are fat.”

“I have a lot of height on me, don't forget,” she said, “to make up for it. And I used to be quite slim, what's more.”

“I don't mind if you're fat,” he said.

“Come out of the shadows where I can see what I'm talking to,” she told him. He stepped out. He was carrying the Catherine wheel. “I think it's dark enough,” Miss Ungewitter said suddenly. “Here, I've got some matches. Let's set it off! Bring it over here.”

“Nobody will see it,” he said.

“Oh, yes, they will. All over town they'll see it. Ships at sea will see it, wait and see.”

“But hot Harriet or Daddy.”

“Harriet is—” She wondered how to put it so that he would understand. Harriet—odd, gawky, cross Harriet, Harriet whose moods changed so fast you couldn't tell from one minute to the next
how
she would be, faster than you could say Jack Robinson. Harriet, who one minute wanted to love everybody and the next minute wanted to kill everybody and see them all lying dead at her feet. Harriet, who just that morning had asked what she could do about her front, it was growing so large, larger than any other part of her. Harriet who thought she was all out of proportion and who pretended to be a beauty queen to make up for it! “Harriet is too old,” she said finally.

“She makes me sick.”

“I know. Well, we must try to please Harriet sometimes.” Miss Ungewitter stood up and smoothed the front of her blue dress with her fingertips. She took the Catherine wheel from him now. Suddenly, as she held it gingerly between her two forefingers, it took on the aspect of a deadly, dangerous weapon. Unlighted, it was calm and harmless, but touched with a match it was a spinning wheel of fire, the devil's own lamp.

Carefully she set it on the high wall of the terrace. Then she realized that it had to be nailed to something or it would simply spin itself over the edge. She looked around for a proper place for it. There was a spike in one of the branches of the tree where a swing had once been, and Miss Ungewitter pushed her chair to this spot and stepped up on the wicker seat to reach. The wind whipped her skirts tight against her legs. She fastened the pinwheel firmly to the spike and then lit several matches which the wind quickly blew out. Finally she had one going and she held it to the fuse, and then, seeing it was lit and sputtering, she jumped clumsily off the chair and grabbed Robert's hand. “Watch out!” she cried irrationally as the thing began to spin.

It spun at first slowly, lazily, and then, gathering momentum, it spun rapidly, wildly, with a great whirring sound, showering the leaves of the tree with sparks, lighting up the topmost branches, pricking out the ponderous blooms with shafts of red streaked with orange, and blue streaked with red fire, and in the center the light was blinding white like burning magnesium, and faster and faster it spun, and the sparks came huge now, great clusters of stars falling apart around that moon of light, and the sparks flew into the hollyhocks and over the edge of the terrace, down, down into the endless darkness.

Robert screamed with delight. The Catherine wheel spun on while everything stopped for Miss Ungewitter and the universe centered on this mad shining thing that powered itself and drew its deadly energy from some invisible sun. Robert was looking for shipwrecks now, and the wheel spun slower, slower, and the sparks were fewer, till finally, with a sputter of blue and gold and crimson, the wheel stopped, stood motionless, glowing for an instant, and went out.

It was a moment or two before Miss Ungewitter could say a word. “Harriet! Harr-i-
et!
” Robert was shouting. “Did you see it? Did you see it?”

Miss Ungewitter turned around and looked toward the house and saw that Harriet had, indeed, seen it. Harriet's face was pressed against the living-room windowpane.

“Tell me about it, tell me about it,” Robert repeated, jumping and tugging at her hand. “What made it
do
that? Why did it keep going and
going?
Do you think a ship saw it? Do you think they saw it from the Casino?”

“I think the man in the moon saw it,” said Miss Ungewitter. But what she couldn't tell him, what she herself even did not understand, was that for a moment—oh, only an untraceable moment in it—she had seen something, something in the burning center of that blinding sun, features etched in the white brilliance, features which assembled, materialized, and became for a moment two almost real eyes over a wrinkled nose above a smiling mouth that curled up and drew a sudden deep cleft in the birthmark on that cheek, his cheek, the last touch of reality. And for a moment there she had almost said, “Oh, you are here, you did come to France after all, you silly man, you did appear again.” But then it had begun to fade.

“It's your bedtime,” Miss Ungewitter said. “Harriet saw it—there she is, see her? She saw it. Come on, time for bed.”

“Will you carry me?” he asked her.

“Oh, we're too old for that, aren't we? Going on seven? Well, maybe once more.” He said that she couldn't, but she said, oh, yes, she bet she could, and to show him she could she picked him up by the armpits and for a couple of steps did carry him. Then she remembered Harriet still watching, and she thought, No more foolishness, enough is enough. He didn't mind, and did as he was told, walked like a man beside her into the house.

LYDIA

The girl who was lying face down on the terrace beside the pool turned her face to one side and looked at the young man who was sprawled, or rather spread-eagled, on the yellow towel next to her. Her look was not one of invitation, nor was it one of rebuke. It was a practiced look, involving a slight arching of the eyebrows, a small upturning of the mouth, and a widening of the eyes. “What will you do if I tell you?” she asked. It was a flirtatious look; she was aware of it.

“Just call you by it,” he said.

“Very well. It's Lydia,” she said.

“Hello.” She turned away from him and looked straight ahead, toward the pool and the swimmers, her chin resting on her folded hands. Directly in front of her, in a little arrangement, were a bottle of suntan oil, a raffia purse, a pack of cigarettes, a small enameled lighter, and a fashion magazine spread open, face down. She reached now for the cigarettes, extracted one carefully from the pack, and seemed to wait, still looking directly ahead, at nothing. The young man pulled himself up on his knees, reached for the tiny lighter and flipped it open, holding the flame in front of her.

She took her time noticing this. Then, cupping her hand around his, she held the light he offered close to her cigarette, and inhaled. She let her eyelids flutter up now, to meet his eyes. Then she exhaled a sharp stream of cigarette smoke and continued looking straight ahead. The young man, who was blond, slim, and muscular (a lifeguard? she wondered), returned to his original position on the towel. Smoking, the girl said nothing.