The Cosmopolitans (18 page)

“We got a delivery here. Where do you want it? We were told to deliver before you left for work.”

Despite the fact that they strained visibly under the weight, Bette was silent. Not as a matter of will.

“It's sent over from . . .” The man in charge shifted his burden and checked out the clipboard stuffed under his arm. “Tibbs Advertising Incorporated,” he read out loud. “Miss Valerie Korie.” Shifting again, he held on to the end of the massive crate with one burly arm and with the other handed Bette a note. She opened the envelope and read to the room:

Dear Bette
,

Here is the future. You can beat the world at its own game
.

Yours, Valerie

Defeated by the etiquette of waiting for permission, the guys lowered the future onto the rug. Taking crowbars out of their tool belts, they pried the boards apart and removed the casing, revealing a large-size television set.

Relieved, the headman asked, “Where do you want it?”

Bette did not care. “Anywhere.”

“You have to tell me where.”

“Right here is fine.” She wanted this to be over.

“Right here? In the center of the room?”

“Fine.”

“Most people have it against a wall.”

“I don't care.”

“Don't you want it to be facing a chair?”

“No.”

“Okay,” he'd had it. “Sign here.”

She signed.

“Enjoy,” he laughed. The two men looked over Earl one more time. Something abnormal was going on, that was for sure. Then they went back out to the truck.

Bette put her plate down on top of the television set. She glanced back at Valerie's note.

Beat the world
.

“Earl, you called that girl
innocent
? The most cunning people are always excused.”

He held her eyes.

“Earl, please. Don't you see that my family has come all this way to destroy me once again? Ever since I was old enough to feel, I've been sacrificed to her mother, my cousin. They smacked me and caressed her. I fled, abandoned, while she married my love. And now I, the
poor relation, have found one single lamb that is my joy, and they, with whole flocks, covet my one friend and steal you from me. Hortense is robbing me of my simple happiness. Robbing me. Robbing
me
. I cannot let this happen.”

Earl's eyes dried up. They became cracked and flaked to the floor. He reached into his pocket, pulled out her keys, and dropped them onto the rug. He did not say he was sorry. But he did storm out, as though he was the one who had been wronged. He closed the door and left her, standing there, alone.

“Somebody,” she said to nobody. “Somebody has to have my key.”

Then Bette said the word
no
.

Then she said, “
You.”

But there was no one there to hear.

ACT TWO

Chapter 18

C
revelle Truscott Webb had never, ever considered—even once as a nightmarish flight of fancy—that she would someday take a night train to New York City and then a taxi to the Astor Hotel, to sleep alone in a room that cost the same nightly rate a textile worker in one of her husband's three mills earned in a month. Never. And even if, in the deepest sleep and most disturbing dream, such a fantastical occurrence had made a gesture of an appearance, it would never, ever, ever be so that she could arrive the next day at this “home” or rather pathetic “apartment” on a dreary street to speak
on purpose
to her cow of a cousin, Bette.

And yet, here she was.

It was a dark afternoon, but all afternoons were apparently such. How could this shanty ever get light with enormous buildings surrounding it in fortressed isolation from the sky? The apartment was noisy, dirty, entirely exposed to the petty details of strangers' lives. It had no charm. The contents were ancient,
not antique, and more like other people's castaways. There was no order, no color coordination—in fact, no color. And no coordination. Everything inside was relentless: overbearing stacks of books, overbearing rows of music. Each chair established for reading and none for social intercourse. There wasn't a welcoming spot. Furthermore, it was very uncomfortable. The seats were old and stained. The stuffing threadbare or gone altogether. It was absolutely
not
a home. More like a Salvation Army storeroom.

Crevelle had never been east before. Had never traveled alone before, and had never, ever been to a city larger than Cleveland. And she hoped to never have to do any of that again. She felt displaced as well as put-upon. Bette had served her a shabby pot of tea laid out on top of—of all things—a television set, standing in the middle of the room like it was a Louis Quinze on public display. The candy dish had pins in it. There were a handful of dry, disgusting, supposedly “Italian” cookies that Bette called
biscotti
. They were stale and strange. Crevelle noted immediately upon being served these
biscotti
that Bette needed a new plate.

Crevelle knew from the start that the crisis to which she had been beckoned was actually a conspiracy masterminded by the sinister General Bette. Bette was the only truly evil person in the family, and as long as evil lives, it weaves its destructive web. She and Frederick had discussed for years their deeply held belief that Bette would one day return to get her revenge. And so they were not at all calmed when she ignored her inheritance by refusing to respond to a carefully orchestrated letter from a neighbor announcing her
mother's death. They knew it was a ruse. She was a panther lying in wait until the opportunity presented itself to pounce and devour the gazelle. For this reason, they warned their children, almost from birth, to protect them from her evil influence. Evil. There was no other word for it. Anything less would be a dangerously palatable euphemism. Bette was a cancer, untreated. It was inevitable that her malice had finally escalated to such a level that the family was forced to respond. They were now obliged to pay her the attention she so desperately craved because she had kidnapped their child. Who knew how many years she had planned this disaster, how she had lured Hortense, with what promises? For, like all witches, Bette could never have her own child, and so sooner or later she would come to take theirs. And now it was sooner than anyone had expected. She had stolen their beloved daughter with the most grotesque of intents and then she had fed her to the wolves.

“You will have to trust me,” Bette said, dunking the stale biscuit into a cloudy cup of tea.

“Trust you?” Crevelle could not believe the gall. “It is
because
of you that my daughter is marrying a darky savage three times her age.” Crevelle knew better than to drink from that cup. The porcelain was cracked and had probably never been washed.

It had been over thirty years since Bette had heard the phrase “darky savage.” In fact, she had forgotten that it even existed within the realm of human vocabulary. What a strange sound to come from a person's lips. Over time she had forgotten a lot of the details of that life, what
they
believed in, fought for, how they
characterized the world. She'd retained a basic repulsion, but its many precise causes had, truthfully, somewhat faded. This meeting brought a great number of them back to mind in sharp relief. Implicit here was the fact that, as usual, Bette had told her cousin the truth. Repeatedly. Not about Earl's nature, of course, but about everything else. Her hope had been that Crevelle would come to face reality, and then the two of them could work together and ultimately reconcile. This had always been Bette's wish, that she and her adversaries could have experiences together in which the truth would be revealed. But that was precisely why they shunned her, wasn't it? To repress the truth. And here, Bette saw Crevelle repeat her age-old dilemma. If Bette is evil then she is not to be believed, but if she is human—with feelings and a heart—then what would Crevelle do? This situation was strangely ideal to start the path toward truth and healing because Crevelle needed something. Therefore, she was being forced by fate to face the dangerous precipice of the false tale she'd been hovering over all of her life.

Bette tried again. “No, Cousin,” she said calmly. “You are wrong. I
share
your anger. I am not the cause of it.”

“A darky,” Crevelle fluttered. This was just more than she could take. “A black who cannot put food on the table?” Contrasting this fact with Bette's calm demeanor only amplified one thing: Bette hated them so much that there was no conceiving how low this monster would crawl. “After all these years . . .” Crevelle rocked her head in dismay. “After
decades
! You still have nothing better to do than spend your time hating
us. Trying to destroy us. Just because I have Frederick's love.”

After each of Crevelle's statements, Bette refound her strength. She had to. It took an enormous amount of courage, but after each blow she paused and located it again. No matter what anyone else did, Bette had to rely on what was true.

“Wait! Crevelle,” Bette softened and came closer. “You are not seeing the person in front of you. You have invented another Bette. More convenient for your purposes but not me. Listen to my words. Hear my feelings.
I do not want them to get married
.”

“Liar!”

Bette had to think. How could she help this idiot listen?

Lightning cracked.

Bette turned, out of habitual pleasure, and watched the bolt's charge find its way through the buildings' secret spaces, illuminating their souls.

Crevelle, too, had a reflective thought. She noted that in Ohio, a tree would have split in two, but in this God-awful cesspool, nature had no place, no role.

“More tea, Cousin?”

The curtains whipped as Bette poured tea into her own empty cup and left Crevelle's untouched. Then she went to close the window and used the opportunity to stare out into the flashing gray. Tenth Street was smothered in black rain.

The outside world is dark and true
, she remembered. And she needed it to get her friend back.

Bette had given Crevelle an opportunity to love. And Crevelle had thrown that opportunity away. Ever
since this nightmare had begun, Bette felt that certain things inside her had changed. Again. Certain internal aspects shifted in place. It was as if a blood vessel snapped and her spine was slowly filling with it. Something terrible and unknown was on its way, unstoppable and organic. It was as though she'd grown a third lung and an extra oxygen supply. Something was destroyed and something superhuman replaced it. There was essential change. And it was accumulating by the day, by the hour. With each insult hurled by Crevelle, Bette transformed. After all, resistance can only be impervious for so long. How many opportunities could she give everyone to tell the truth? How many times could she hope before something great was terribly lost? Yet a new kind of blinding strength was required to be able to continue to give.

Suddenly, Valerie's face appeared before her, like the man in the moon. A vision. A rejuvenation. At the same time, a kind of haunting and a healing. And with it came Valerie's brash lips, forming a word . . .
psychological
.

“Crevelle,” she said, simply turning. “I've found it more
psychological
to not oppose Hortense. It makes more sense to keep her trust and then become available to her as the relationship with that man inevitably collapses.”

Her cousin was unable to understand.
Psychology
had not yet come to Ashtabula.

Instead, Crevelle had her own vocabulary for crisis, and it was rooted in attack. “Do you know why no one loves you?”

Bette, it so happens, had long wanted to know the answer to this question.

“Why?”

“Because,” Crevelle said. “You have no generosity.”

“But . . . I just offered you . . .” Bette had offered her cousin so many important things, but she selected the most effective one. “Your child.”

Crevelle's nerves were frayed. How had she been plunged into this nightmare? It was not her hell. It was someone else's. She reached into her purse for her cigarette case.

Bette also had a cigarette case. A newly purchased prop, bought on instinct at Romanoff's from his display of penknives, lighters, watches, and other accoutrements of social negotiation, for exactly this occasion. She'd practiced swiping it off the mantel, and then enacted the gesture as if it were a daily routine. Reach, swoosh. Reach, swoosh. Bette intercepted Crevelle's stretch and, locking her cousin's eyes, snapped open the silver locket.

“Lucky,” Bette said softly.

“Yes, I smoke Luckies.” Crevelle was confused, but took the cigarette and waited obediently for a light.

It worked.

“You have beautiful hands, Cousin,” Bette said through the match's glow. “You are still beautiful enough to inspire passion.”