Here I Stay (23 page)

"Reba, it isn't going to snow! But I can see I'll
have problems getting Mrs. Horner to work this winter. Where does she live?"

They discussed possible solutions to Mrs. Horner's timidity about driving—she lived several miles out on a graveled country road which, according to Reba, was unreachable in bad weather except by jeep.

"By the way," Andrea said, "is Mrs. Horner illiterate?"

"She can write her name," Reba said shortly. "Never wondered about it, to tell you the truth."

The implication was clear—what did it matter? And Andrea was inclined to agree. "I just didn't want to put her in an embarrassing situation by assuming she could," she explained.

Reba's face cleared. "I see what you mean. That's nice of you."

"Oh, I'm so nice I can't stand myself."

"Why do you put yourself down all the time? You are a nice person. Or you could be, if you'd take the time."

"I've never had the time," Andrea admitted. " 'Being nice' is a luxury I can't afford."

"Bull," said Reba. " 'Nice' is a dirty word to you. You think it's an admission of weakness. Hell's bells, girl, I've been there myself. But I was wrong and you're wrong. The quality we're discussing—and I admit 'nice' is a stupid, inaccurate word for it—is a sign of inner strength and peace of mind."

"You sound like Martin," Andrea said. "Which reminds me—"

"Go ahead, change the subject," Reba jeered.

That was Andrea's intention, but she didn't want to admit it. "No, really. One of the reasons I came was to talk about Martin. I don't want to pry, but I
realized yesterday I was facing a potentially awkward situation."

She went on to explain her dilemma about the holidays. "I don't want him to feel he isn't welcome." she said mendaciously. "And to ask him pointblank might give that impression."

"He isn't figuring on going anywhere," Reba said. "He hasn't anywhere to go."

"No family? No friends?"

"He's got heaps of friends. Hell, he could stay with me anytime, he knows that, and there are others who feel the same way. But there's nobody close. At least..." She hesitated, stirring the dregs of her coffee in an aimless fashion, and then said abruptly, "Contrary to what you may think, I don't usually blab about my friends' private affairs."

"Then don't tell me."

"I think I better. It's only fair to Martin. He has got kin. He's got a son. Twelve years old. Martin hasn't seen him for three years."

Andrea's jaw dropped, her mouth forming a perfect circle of surprise. Before she could comment, Reba raised a massive, admonishing hand. "See? That's what I mean. If you only knew those facts, which aren't hard to find out, you'd think the wrong thing. Martin is crazy about the kid. What happened was not his fault but his tragedy.

"He was as crazy about his wife, too. She wasn't worth it—one of those overbred, undernourished little wisps of a girl with big baby-blue eyes and silvery-blond hair, and no brains to speak of—but Martin worshipped the ground she walked on. I knew 'em both back in those days, when he was still a starving young reporter. That was one of the reasons why her family objected to the marriage—that
and the fact that he was a Jew. Oh, yeah, they made no bones about it; they were old Southern gentry, rotten with family pride. The one gutsy thing Marietta ever did was tell them to go to hell and elope with Martin.

"It never would have lasted. By the time they'd been married a year he was heavily in debt. She couldn't stop spending the way she always had, and when he'd try to explain that he couldn't afford to buy her fur coats and jewelry, she'd cry and have a tantrum. When she found out she was going to have a baby, all hell broke loose. I guess the poor little jerk had a few screws missing; she acted like she didn't know where babies come from and couldn't figure out how hers had got where it was. She tried to make up with her family, but they wouldn't have anything to do with her; she had made her bed, and now she could lie in it.

"She died having the baby. No stamina, no guts...Once she was properly dead and gone, the family came down on Martin like a swarm of killer bees. He had murdered their darling, and they wanted her baby. Daddy was an ex-judge, one of the old-boy network that runs Virginia, and Martin didn't have a chance. The fact that he was drunk for six months after Marietta died didn't help. Unfit, that's what they called him. He didn't fight back. I guess he didn't care about anything."

"I had no idea," Andrea murmured. "You'd never think, to see him now..."

"He's fine now," Reba said. "He's got the guts that poor little wife of his never had. Losing custody of the kid shocked him out of his misery, I guess; he stopped drinking and worked like a son of a bitch. Once his career was underway, he went back
to court and was awarded visitation rights, but by that time the kid had been taught to fear and hate him. Finally he quit trying. Said it was too hard on the boy."

"I'm glad you told me," Andrea said. "I won't say anything to him."

"You better not. I don't want to lose another friend on account of my big mouth."

"If you're talking about me, you haven't lost my friendship," Andrea said with a smile.

"No more spiritualists?"

"The sensation, such as it was, seems to have died down." Andrea rose. She felt an overpowering need to get out into the sunshine. Martin's unhappy history had cast a shadow over her spirits. No doubt Reba's account had been biased. Nevertheless, Andrea believed it.

"I'll make a point of asking him to have Thanksgiving with us," she said.

"That would be real..." Reba grinned, and finished the sentence, "...real nice. I haven't seen him as attached to anybody as he is to you and Jimmie. Andy—have you ever thought about—"

"About what?"

"Never mind," Reba mumbled. "I guess you haven't."

"I can't imagine what you're talking about. Why don't you come for Thanksgiving dinner too? The food won't be up to your standards, but I'll cook a turkey—if Mrs. Horner can tell me how."

"You come here."

Reba's face had turned an odd shade of dirty gray. Her eyes shifted away from Andrea's, like those of a mass murderer caught with a bloody knife in hand. "I was going to ask you anyway," she said quickly.

"It's easier for me, you know that, and you deserve a day off, and—"

"You still feel the same way," Andrea said, incredulously.

"You are still terrified of the house."

Reba didn't answer.

By eleven the others had also canceled. Andrea sat down at the kitchen table and ate four of Mrs. Horner's orange biscuits while she read the paper backward, from the comic page to the front. It was impossible to face today's headlines straight on; one
had to work up to them gradually, by way of B.C. and Heloise and the acrimonious debates of the District of Columbia school board.

This was her first true winter day in the house. The icy rains and sleet of March had not prepared her for this—a hiatus, a break in the frantic routine of living. The snow fell in great slow clumps, and in utter silence, without the hiss of sleet or the drum of rain. The birds had sought shelter, or huddled in stoic discomfort on branches and power lines.

When she went to call Jim to lunch, he said he didn't want any. He wanted to finish this part of the painting; Wayne was coming over later to help him move the scaffolding. Snowing? So what about it? Wayne's dad had a jeep, he'd be here one way or another.

Andrea would have lingered, but Jim's responses were short, almost brusque, and the sight of him balancing on one foot atop the scaffold made her nervous. She trudged back downstairs and made sandwiches, which she carried up to him, receiving in return an abstracted "Thanks, I'll eat 'em later."

Martin didn't come to lunch either. She let Wayne in when he arrived—how he had managed to get through the snow she didn't know and didn't want to know. Sometime later she heard him leave, but did not get up from her chair. She felt as lazy and unmotivated as the drifting snow. She was lying on the couch finishing the mystery story she had been reading for weeks when a streak of pale sunlight illumined the page.

The clouds had parted as if by design to frame the coppery orb of the setting sun in an aureole of molten light. The long slope of fallen snow on the south lawn shone with a shimmer of golden-rosy
pink, against which the branches of shrubs and trees stood out in delicate outlines. It was magical—a winter day in Fairyland. Pink snow, like the self-multiplying mounds the Cat in the Hat had tried vainly to clear away...How Jim had loved that silly book! She thought of calling him, and suggesting that they go out to make pink snowballs and a rose-colored snowman; but just then the clouds drew a veil over the face of the sun and the enchantment vanished. Just as well, she thought, her face as shadowed as the soft gray snow. It would hurt her almost as much as it would Jim to know that he must limp, slowly and dangerously, where once he had run like Mercury with wings on his heels.

She put on her coat and boots and went out, taking a broom with her. The snow had stopped and the clouds were lifting. A lovely irregular line of soft lavender showed to the west, as the sky cleared to bare the shapes of the mountains. The sun had gone; a faint afterglow marked the place of its death. Andrea started sweeping the porch, but soon tossed the broom aside. It was too beautiful an evening to work. Every change in the light transformed the landscape, bringing subtle shadings of color to the snow, colors for which there were no words—not violet or silver or azure, but blends of all three. Her breath made white puffs in the darkening air as she walked slowly toward the gate, scuffling her feet in childish enjoyment. As dusk deepened, the shadows of the shrouded shrubs stood out against the eerie shimmer of the snowcovered ground.

When she reached the gate she turned, with a sense of almost breathless anticipation. The house rose up in all its solid perfection, its white walls reflecting the silvery glow of the snow. The tower
windows formed concentric arcs of light. A shadow passed back and forth against the lower arc—Martin, pacing. The rest of the house was dark. The bulb in the hall lamp must have burned out. She distinctly remembered turning it on before she went out.

There was no traffic on the road. Darkness closed in around her, but she had no feeling of loneliness or isolation; a company of shadows surrounded her, the memories of all those who had lived in the old house, who had paused where she stood now to admire its beauty and anticipate the warmth of homecoming.

Not until the last afterglow died and stars sprang up in the night sky did she retrace her steps. Once she closed the door the hall was as black as pitch; the fanlight and the narrow strips of glass that bordered the door were shadowed by the overhang of the veranda. Surefooted and unconcerned, Andrea felt her way toward the light switch. As she moved with hands outstretched and eyes blind, something brushed past her and started up the stairs.

She felt it pass. She was about to call out a greeting, for it was something—someone—familiar, as unmistakable even in the darkness as Jim's presence would have been, or Martin's.

Then she realized she had no name to give it. It was not Jim, nor Martin.

Her hand found the switch. The light made her blink. She knew, even before she looked, that there would be no one in sight.

From upstairs came the sound of a door opening and, after a moment, Martin's voice. "Andrea?"

"Here," she called, her voice steady.

"Where are you?" His footsteps sounded along the corridor.

"Down here. What do you want?"

Martin stopped on the landing and looked at her, shading his eyes with one hand. "What do
you
want?" he asked; then, seeing her snowcovered boots and coat: "Were you upstairs a minute ago?"

"I just came in."

He descended the rest of the stairs and stood beside her.

"Didn't you knock on my door just now?"

"No."

"I must be losing my mind." He brushed his nonexistent hair back from his forehead in a puzzled fashion.

"Maybe it was Jim," Andrea suggested. She had no intention of telling him of her experience. He would speculate and question and turn it into something sinister, frightening. It had not been frightening. It had been...hers. Her own private encounter. No one else's business.

She heard Jim coming down the stairs. As he moved along the second-floor corridor, she met Martin's eyes and knew what he was thinking—no one could have mistaken Jim's walk for hers, or been unaware of his approach. Nevertheless, as soon as Jim was within earshot, Martin asked him.

"Not me, I've been upstairs all afternoon. Maybe it was a burglar. A polite burglar, whose mum taught him to knock before entering."

Martin was not amused. "I don't know whether it knocked or not," he said slowly. "It was the cat that made me think someone was there. He bounded up and stood staring at the door. Then he jumped off the bed and ran to it and mewed to get out. He was excited. Purring and pacing back and forth, the way pets do when—"

"You are wasting your talents on nonfiction," Andrea jeered. "You ought to write ghost stories. For heaven's sake, Martin!"

"When they greet someone they know," Martin said.