Those Harper Women (15 page)

The room is dark, but through the heavy curtains she can see that it is sunny outside, broad day. She asks herself: Do I have a hangover? The answer is both yes and no, and disappoints her a little. Considering how much she had to drink last night, the hangover really should be more severe than it is. All she has is a dull headache and a dry region in her throat.

She gets out of bed, goes into the bathroom, and runs cold water in the bowl. She swallows two tumblerfuls of water and, with the second tumbler, two aspirin tablets and a vitamin-B-complex capsule. Then she scrubs her face fiercely with a wash cloth and cold water, and looks in the mirror at the result, which is considerable damage to her waterproof mascara—which, apparently, she forgot to remove last night before she went to bed. Only then does she notice also that, obviously, she has slept in all her clothes. This discovery steps up the beat of her hangover considerably, and for a moment or two she leans against the washbowl, thinking Dear God, what is
happening
to me? Then she flips on the water in the shower and begins to unbutton her dress.

The shower is a benediction, a purification. She runs it alternately hot and cold, standing directly underneath the spray with the water rattling deafeningly on her plastic shower cap, and she begins to feel a little better. Bit by bit, details of the evening before come back to her. What time was it? Three or four o'clock, surely, and she remembers that he needled her about her art gallery, and about her brief career at Bennington. Well, perhaps he had a point there, about Bennington; Jimmy had kidnaped her from Bennington. And then, later—oh, she remembers, oh,
dear
—having a maudlin conversation with Granny, sitting on the bed, talking about love.
Love
. This was exactly, precisely, absolutely, the one sort of conversation she had promised herself
not
to have with Granny. And now in some stupid, sentimental moment, she has done it. Probably she cried. A crying drunk. And now, of course, Granny will be involved. Granny will give her no peace, no peace at all, until she has spread open Leona's soul. She shuts off the shower, and steps out, dripping. “Why does she
do
this to me?” she asks herself. Why does she want to get so close that she can see and touch all those deep and secret places which, all her life, Leona has so carefully guarded from any other human being's view? Why does she want to
know
me? she asks, banging her forehead with her balled fists. Then, without thinking, she answers her own question. It is simple. “Because she loves me.”

She takes a large towel from the rack, wraps herself in it, and goes back into the bedroom. She starts to open one of the pairs of curtains, and then sees, through the crack, her grandmother outside in the garden. She is with a funny-looking little man in a rumpled blue suit and a stained fedora; they walk about, pointing at shrubs, and planting beds. And Leona, watching them, thinks with a swift pang: How terribly slowly, these days, the old lady
moves.…
She lets the curtain fall.

Turning back into the room, Leona notices, for the first time, the colored postcard lying on the floor where one of Granny's maids has slipped it under the bedroom door. Leona stares at the postcard for a moment, then slowly crosses the room, kneels, and picks it up. Wrapped in the towel, she studies the face of the card. It is a cartoon card, and its humor is of a sort that would appeal to only one person Leona knows. It is a drawing of the Eiffel Tower, and from the top of the Eiffel Tower a merry little man has jumped or fallen. As he sails downward, his hat in his hand, he cries “
C'est la vie!
” Leona looks at the picture for a long time before turning the card over to read the message, thinking,
C'est la vie
.

An hour has passed; Mr. Barbus has gone, and Edith is alone in the garden thinking, as she ties back a trailing ipomoea vine to the wall with a piece of green wire, about last night and how, at last, Leona is willing to talk to her. Last night, of course, with Leona obviously exhausted, was not a good time. Today will be their day. The vine refuses to be tied, and springs back, and Edith gives up on it. She sits down on the stone bench. She thinks: If only Leona could see me as I really am.

This notion reminds Edith of a thing that happened, about three years ago, when she flew to Palm Beach for one of her rare visits with Diana. Waiting in the lobby of the West Palm Beach airport for Diana (who was late) to pick her up, sitting there with her suitcases, she noticed a woman who sat facing her across the room. Looking at the woman, she experienced one of those sudden sensations of disliking someone intensely at first sight. Everything about the woman repelled her. She was dressed in a dust-colored dress, decidedly wrinkled and frumpy, and there was something about the set of the shoulders and the tilt of the chin that was arrogant and cruel. The way the feet were planted—solidly, wide apart, on the floor, in heavy dark shoes, the legs encased in gray stockings—suggested an enormous self-satisfaction. A handbag was plunked in the woman's lap. She clutched it as though it contained the crown jewels, and her whole air of pomposity was so absurd that Edith almost laughed, until it dawned on her that the opposite wall was a mirror, and that she was looking at herself. The two of her sat there, gazing at each other in dismay, like a pair of squat bookends across an empty shelf.

Diana, when she had finally shown up, had not helped matters, either. When they were in the car together, Diana said, “Mother, you really must do something about your
hair.
”

All this, of course, was the result of those years after Charles died, when Edith became a secret candy addict, a voracious eater of chocolates, gluttonishly gobbling up pound after pound of creams and nougats—hard centers or soft, it made no difference—those beautifully wrapped Maison Glass boxes ripped open with greed.… Perhaps, she thinks, those wonderful candy orgies were responsible for what is wrong inside her now, with that mischievous organ whose name she cannot bear to think about, since thinking about it brings back the pain.

In the car that day, Diana had gone on about which hotels in which cities had, in her opinion, the best hairdressing salons. Then she had turned to Edith and said, “I know, Mother, that it's like pulling teeth to get you even as far away from your house as Palm Beach. But I'd really like to take you to Rome with me sometime, and let Simonetta spruce you up.”

Now Edith sees Leona walk out onto the veranda and stand at the top of the steps wearing a white Shantung robe cut like a coolie's, tied loosely at the waist with a red sash. She stands there, one hand holding a cigarette, the other a cup of steaming coffee. The sleeve of the robe hangs down, and the sun catches the astonishingly white skin on the underside of her arm. Her hand, holding the coffee cup, trembles.

“Good morning, dear,” Edith calls. “Did Nellie get you breakfast?”

Leona nods, and comes slowly down the steps. “I had a grapefruit.”

“Is that all?”

Leona sits down at the round garden table with a little sigh, and the plastic-covered cushion of the chair exhales a small matching sigh of its own. She smiles at Edith, but it is a small smile, and it looks as though it hurts every muscle of her face. They sit in silence then while Leona drinks her coffee with little sucks and gasps.

Edith waits until Leona sets down her coffee cup. Then she stands and, looking up at the windows of the house, her hands on her hips, she says, “Leona, I've been thinking. How do you feel about this place? Do you like it?”

“I've always loved this house.”

“Would you like to own it some day? After I'm gone?”

“Oh, Granny—”

“I'm quite serious. It's got to go to
some
body. The hospital wants it for an annex. Mr. Barbus wants it for a motel.”

“Who is Mr. Barbus?”

“A manure man. Tell me honestly how you feel. The property has some value, if you don't want the house to live in. Mr. Barbus estimates that, as a motel, it could earn twenty or twenty-five thousand simoleons a year.”

“Oh, Granny! I don't want to talk about what's going to happen after you're
gone.
” She smiles again, and her smile is better this time. “Besides you're never going to
be
gone. You're indestructible.”

“I wish you were right, Leona, but—”

“Now
please
. I mean it. Don't. I'm—depressed enough today.”

“Depressed?” Edith sits down again, this time at the table opposite Leona. “Well, don't be,” she says. And then, after a moment, “That was so—
nice
, last night. Our little talk. I only wished—”

“Granny,” Leona says, “I've got to apologize for that. I must have sounded like an idiot. To be honest with you, I'd had too much to drink. I'm sorry.” She smiles again. “Too much of Great-Granddaddy's rum.”

“What? Oh, Leona—I thought you knew better than to drink that firewater! It's for peasants. How do you feel today?”

Leona reaches out and squeezes Edith's hand. “I was joking,” she says. “But I was N.E.S., as Jimmy used to say.
Not Entirely Sober.
”

“Well, you seemed perfectly fine to me. In fact, it was very cozy.” After a moment she says, “But I think Uncle Harold's call upset us both a bit.”

“Actually,” Leona says, “I don't remember exactly what I said.”

“Well,” Edith says, beginning carefully, “
one
thing you said, which interested me, was that you didn't really love any of the men you married. You merely married them.”

Leona's face is a blank. “Well, I guess that's true,” she says finally.

Edith sighs. “Yes, I suppose that's the trouble. It seems to be what Americans do. Americans marry. Europeans have love affairs. Amours.”

Suddenly Leona laughs. “Yes, I guess that's why I've had three husbands.” With one hand she executes a brisk salute. “I did it for my country, suh! But what about
you
, Granny? You were only married once.”

“In your generation, Leona, Americans seem so much more
American
than they were in mine.”

“Or in Mother's?”

“It's progressive, dear,” Edith says, beginning to enjoy this conversation, even though it has taken a somewhat silly turn. “I was married once, your mother was married twice, you've been married three times and, I trust—at twenty-seven—”

“Twenty-six.”

“At twenty-
seven
, Leona—I know how old you are—I think it's safe to predict that some day you will have been married four times. It gets more so and more so, you see.”

Leona is smiling still. Lifting her coffee cup, she says, “It must be wonderful to be old. Old and wise and
through
everything.”

Edith detects a note of sarcasm in this; perhaps not. Anyway, she decides to ignore it. “It's holy hell being old,” she says briskly, “as you'll find out one day when it's happened to you.”

They sit silently now. Meditatively, Leona sips her coffee.

“Which—” Edith begins “—which of them did you
like
the best?”

Leona seems to have trouble deciding. “Oh, I guess Gordon.”

“Have you thought you might try seeing him again?”

“You know, I saw him the last day I was in New York, before I came here. I ran into him on the street. He was on his way to play squash at the Racquet Club. We stood there, Granny, grinning at each other like two monkeys, trying to think of something to say. ‘I'm on my way to play some squash,' he said. ‘I'm on my way to St. Thomas,' I said. We said goodby. Isn't that funny? We'd been married four years, and we had absolutely nothing to say to each other. After Jimmy, I wanted somebody solid, I guess. Gordon's solid all right, but he's also an awful prig. I didn't know that when I married him, but he turned out to be a prig.” Smiling she says, “I bought a prig in a poke.”

“Did I tell you Jimmy came by to see me—about six months ago? He called me up and came for lunch and a swim.”

“How was he?”

“Fine. The poor boy is losing his hair, though, which is a shame. He seems too young.” Crossing her fingers under the table, Edith adds, “Still, he seemed more
mature
when he was here. A bit more—calmed down.”

“Oh, Granny, there must be something else!” And Leona looks quickly up into the green leaves of the tree-of-heaven that shades the table, as though that something else may be hidden somewhere in its branches.

Edith purposely does not bring up, in the silence that follows, the name of Leona's last husband. Edouardo Para-Diaz's mother, she remembers, was a thief, in addition to having produced a highly unusual son. He and Leona were married in Sevilla, and the “Condesa” asked to borrow Leona's diamond earclips to wear to the wedding. “
Si, con mucho felicidad, mi condesa,
” Leona said, and lent them to her. She never got them back. They were after Leona's money, the whole pack-lot of them, Edith is sure. And it wouldn't be surprising to Edith to learn that it cost Leona more than the earclips to get rid of the Spaniards. After it was over, Leona took up her residence in Florida. (To Edith, in a note once, Diana said, “She's lucky that I have the Palm Beach house. It's handy for divorces.”)

“And you never loved any of them,” Edith says at last.

“Can't we change this subject, Granny? Please?”

Edith leans forward. “But you said, last night, that you didn't think you had the
ability
to love anyone.”

“Well,” Leona says sharply, “if I did, where would I have got it from? Could I have inherited it, do you suppose? From
Mother?
”

“Now don't be so hard on your mother, Leona. She—”

“Listen!” Leona says. “Do you know what she
wrote
to me today? On a
postcard
—a stupid comic postcard—not even airmail? She said, ‘It's fun at the Ritz. Just forget all your troubles, sweetie, and come over here and have some fun.' She didn't even bother to sign it!”