The House That Jack Built (7 page)

    She thought of the steel engraving in her encyclopedia of the Norse warriors, hoary and bearded and blind-eyed, their armour dented and pierced with spears, marching back to Valhalla as the sun went down.

    Craig became aware of her silence. He glanced at her once, twice, and then laid his hand on top of hers. 'We're only taking a look,' he cajoled her. 'I have a law business to run, I couldn't simply afford the time for a house like this.'

    'Or the money.'

    'Effie, when you really want something, "afford" doesn't come into it.'

    'Oh, come on, Craig, be serious. You heard what Walter Van Buren said. Valhalla has thirteen bedrooms, nine bathrooms, four reception rooms including a ballroom. A place like that would cost us millioins, and we don't have millions.'

    'It's only money,' said Craig, without even looking at her.

    He knew the way now, and didn't miss the dark, cavelike turning that was signposted Red Oaks Inn and Valhalla. They sped beneath the overhanging branches, and the bushes snapped and tinkled and pinged on the car. Effie could smell ozone in the air, that strange fresh restlessness before a heavy storm. But it wasn't only the storm that was restless. Craig was driving as if he couldn't wait another second to get to Valhalla, as if the keys were beginning to glow warmer and warmer in his pocket.

    Trying to distract him, Effie said, 'This man Jack Belias, who built Valhalla. Did you ever hear of him?'

    They were rising up out of the woods now, and they were squealing around the first of the hairpin bends.

    'Jack Belias? Sure. He was quite famous in the '30's… or notorious, depends on which way you look at it. We had to study some of his business dealings in law school. He could twist the law so far that it looked like a pretzel. He made all his money with this non-crease fabric, I can't remember what it was called. He made a fortune before nylon was invented. He put something like ten million dollars into the Empire State Building when John Jacob Raskob was running short of finance. It was because of him that the Empire State went up so quickly. Belias bet Raskob fifty thousand dollars that he couldn't erect it in three hundred ninety-nine days.'

    'But it took four hundred.'

    'That's right. And that's another reason why Jack Belias was so rich. He gambled a lot, and he usually won.'

    Effie said, 'I'm just wondering what kind of man would want to build a house way up here.'

    'A man who wanted his privacy, I guess.'

    'There's a difference between privacy and total isolation.'

    'So what's wrong with total isolation? Maybe he wanted some time to think. Maybe he wanted some time to find out who he was, without other people trying to tell him all the time.'

    Effie glanced at him in genuine surprise. He had said that with extraordinary vehemence, as if he were the man who was deprived of privacy; as if he took the whole idea of Valhalla personally, its creation, its neglect, and the tragedies that had happened here. His impatience to see it was almost visible, like the warping of a plate-glass window just before it shatters. He had never driven so fast, or so erratically, and Effie was shaken from side to side as he swerved around bend after bend, and jounced into potholes and stretches of loose shale.

    'Craig, for goodness' sake! We're not in any kind of a hurry. Come on, I know I complained, but we're not booked for lunch till one-thirty.'

    Craig didn't say anything, but slid the BMW around the next bend with its tyres squittering. Eflie's stomach went weightless for a split second, and the car snaked, and she was sure that he had almost lost control.

    'For Christ's sake will you slow down? This is my car and I don't want to die in it!'

    They drove through rippling surface water in a high cloud of spray. 'What's the matter?' Craig laughed at her. 'Don't you trust me, or what?'

    'Of course I trust you, but-'

    They sped past the Red Oaks Inn. Just as Craig was slowing down to take the curve, Effie saw somebody sitting on the front verandah. A man, with his arm lifted, and his mouth open, as if he were trying to call out to them.

    Instantly, she gripped Craig's knee and said, 'Stop, Craig! Stop! There's somebody waving!'

    He swerved into the parking-lot and slithered to a stop. 'For Christ's sake, what was that all about?' he demanded.

    'He's waving at us, look!'

    'So what? He's only some kid!'

    Effie opened the car door. 'He waved, all right? I want to see what he wants.'

    'He waved! For Christ's sake, people wave at anything. People wave at trains. It doesn't mean they want them to stop!'

    Effie turned to him furiously. 'If you really want to know, I don't care why he's waving. But I wanted to slow you down. You never drove like that before.'

    Craig puffed out his cheeks in resignation. 'All right. I'm sorry. But what's the use in having a fast car if you never go fast?'

    'What's the use in having a fast car if you're lying in the cemetery?'

    They were still arguing when they climbed out of the car. They slammed their doors much more forcefully than they needed to, and they kept an angry distance as they walked up to the inn. As they approached, they were watched with obvious trepidation by a skinny bespectacled youth with very long chestnut hair who was sitting on the front verandah with both heavily-booted feet raised on the rail. He wore a yellow-and-black checkered work-shirt, and a sleeveless vest of thick gingery tweed. In spite of his outdoorsy clothes, his face was the colour of semolina. He had large brown eyes that were magnified by his spectacles, and a large sharp nose that was simply large, no magnification necessary.

    Parked on the opposite side of the inn was a dusty '69 Dodge Charger which presumably belonged to him. Most of it was black, but its hood was off-white and its driver's door was metallic green.

    'Hi, there!' called Craig, with forced, over-loud friendliness, as they climbed the steps up to the verandah. The young man watched them without saying anything, without taking his boots off the rail. He had righted one of the inn's occasional tables, and Effie was immediately fascinated by the picnic lunch which he had meticulously spread out on it, on an opened-out copy of National Enquirer. Two or three slices of pumpernickel, an orange, a small half-empty jar of blueberry jelly, a carton of Philadelphia Cream Cheese, four Saltines, a tomato and a dill pickle.

    'You waved,' said Effie, brightly.

    The young man slowly blinked at her, and then blinked equally slowly at Craig.

    'Did you want something?' asked Effie. 'Or were you just… waving?'

    'Oh, sorry, I wanted something. You're Mr. and Mrs. Bellman, right? I was trying to catch your attention.' His voice was surprisingly deep for his pasty, juvenile appearance, and he had a very distinctive Massachusetts accent. Effie would have guessed that he came from Boston's North Shore originally, Salem or Marblehead.

    Craig put on his martyred talking-to-retards tone. 'You were trying to catch our attention?'

    'That's right.'

    'Well, you caught it. You caught our attention. Here we are, all attentive. Now what?'

    'Do you live around here?' Effie asked him. 'The reason I ask is, I used to come to the Red Oaks Inn when I was a girl, I mean my parents brought me here, and I was just wondering if you happened to know what happened to the owners.'

    'Oh,' said the young man. 'The owners.'

    'Effie, sweetheart,' Craig put in. 'This young man has attracted our attention, or so he says. Do you think we can ask him why?'

    Effie persisted. 'Mr. and Mrs. Berryman, do you remember them? She was kind of plumpish with white hair and he was tall and very skinny with eyeglasses. I asked at our bed-and-breakfast and down at the Country Goose but nobody could clearly recall.'

    'I guess people wouldn't,' the young man nodded. 'People, like, forget things here, when they don't particularly want to remember them.'

    'Do you know what happened to them?' Effie coaxed him.

    'Jesus,' said Craig. 'We're driving past, he waves, and we still don't know why. All of a sudden, it's old folks week, and we're talking long-lost inn owners.'

    The young man said, 'I don't know the whole story.' There was a long, taut pause. Lightning crackled in the near distance, with a sound like tearing calico, and then the hills echoed with a muffled drum-roll of thunder.

    Craig said, 'What was it?'

    The young man blinked and looked around. 'Thunder I guess.'

    'I know it's thunder. What I meant was, what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Berryman?'

    'Oh, them. Well, this was six or seven years ago. Business got worse and worse, and in the end they went bankrupt. Then Mrs. Berryman died in a fire. I don't know what happened to Mr. Berryman. Right after the fire he left, and nobody ever heard from him again. Some people say that he went to Minnesota, but I don't know.'

    'Oh, I feel so sorry for them,' said Effie. 'They were always such happy people.'

    The young man lifted his feet off the rail. 'My mom always says that happiness is finite. That's what makes it happiness. If it lasted too long, we'd all grow to hate it. Like, if we had prime rib for every meal, or orgasms went on for a week.'

    'Your mom sounds like quite a philosopher,' said Craig. 'My mom? Forget it. My mom could use a head transplant.'

    Effie laughed. 'That's not a very complimentary thing to say about her.'

    'Hey… she's the first to admit it. If you ever talked to her, you'd think she just arrived from Mars about an hour ago. If you're staying in Cold Spring, you probably met her already. She runs the Hungry Moon Natural Nourishment Store on Main Street. Health foods, crystal balls, occult stuff. You know how she got here? My grandparents brought her to Woodstock in '69 and like left her behind. Forgot her. Can you imagine it? Just forgetting your kid like that, like some umbrella?'

    Effie said, in disbelief, 'The woman who runs the Hungry Moon is your mother?'

  'Sure. That's right. Have you met her? You don't mind if I eat my lunch?'

    'No, no. Go ahead. But your mom is so young-looking!' The young man laboriously spread one slice of his pumpernickel with Philly cheese. 'She's young-looking because she's young. She was only twelve when my grandparents left her at Woodstock. I guess she must have been tough, though, because she lived with this busload of hippies for three or four years afterwards. Actually my grandparents did come back looking for her after a couple of months, but by that time she didn't want to go.'

    'When did she have you?'

    'Well, she was sixteen years old when she got pregnant, that's all. But I guess she was lucky. Mr. and Mrs. Berryman gave her a live-in job right here at the Red Oaks Inn. She saved up just about everything she earned, and then she opened the Hungry Moon. That's it; the story of my dubious ancestry.'

    'Your mom's name is Pepper something, is that right?' asked Effie. 'I've talked to her once or twice.'

    'That's right, Pepper Moriarty. My name's Norman. Actually on my birth certificate it says No Man because mom wanted to name me after my father, and she wasn't exactly sure who my father was. Sometimes she says I was born by virgin birth. She was lying in this field one night with her dress pulled up around her waist, and this shoot-ing-star came streaking down from the sky and, like, penetrated her. She said she saw a terrific flash of white light, and that was it: she was knocked up with me.' He frowned beneath his dangling hair, and spread blueberry jelly on one of his Saltines. 'I'm very open-minded, and all, but I don't actually think that's very likely.'

    'Whatever, it's still a nice story,' Effie smiled. 'Is that one of your mom's diets you're eating?'

    Norman frowned at his jelly-smeared Saltine. 'Actually it's my own diet. It's very balanced, and you can actually see that it's balanced. Black is the opposite of white, so I eat black bread with white cheese on it. Blue is the opposite of yellow so I eat yellow Saltines with blueberry jelly. Red is the opposite of green, and so on. I went to art school,' he added, with obvious regret. 'I guess I should have gone to dietician school instead.'

    Craig was impatiently jingling the keys to Valhalla in his pocket. 'It's been great talking to you, Norman, but we have to make tracks. We're getting a little pushed for time here.'

    'You never saw Valhalla before?' asked Norman.

    Craig was visibly irritated. His eyes always went foxy and small when he was irritated. 'How do you know we're going to Valhalla?'

    'You couldn't be going anyplace else. After the Red Oaks Inn, Valhalla is all that's left on this mountain, apart from the view. Besides, I was supposed to meet you here. That's why I waved. Mr. Van Buren called me, see, and asked me to tag along. As an adviser, kind of, and a guide. I didn't realise you were going to be so quick. I went to Pig Hill and they said you wouldn't be back until after lunch, so I guessed you were going to go eat first.'

    'Craig's very impatient to see Valhalla,' said Effie. Impatient? God, he was jingling those keys like a jittery warden at Sing Sing.

    'Why don't you finish your - uh - lunch?' Craig suggested. 'Then you can catch up with us.'

    'Oh, I guess I shouldn't,' said Norman. 'Mr. Van Buren said I should keep you company the whole time, because some of the building is like pretty unsafe. Besides, he said you'd probably want to know what it would cost to put it all back together, and that's where I come in. Restoring local houses, that's one of the things I do. Admitted, I never restored a house as big as Valhalla, but I'm very good on floors and ceilings. I can render. I can tile. I've put in three spiral staircases, two timber, one cast-iron. And a whole limed-oak kitchen, too.'