Too Much Too Soon (21 page)

For the first time his eyes focused on her. His forehead and high cheeks gleamed, either from the fog’s moisture or sweat. “Right,” he said. “Come along.” And without another word he strode downhill.

She trotted next to him.

On Union Street, the lit sign of a free taxi showed hazily above the headlights. Curt
stepped from the sidewalk, lifting his arm. When the cab halted, he said, “The airport.”

Fly?

When she was four, living in that farmhouse near Edinthorpe, a Spitfire had crashed in a nearby field. Billows of petrol-smelling smoke, flames, and the odor of broiling meat. Death by roasting.

But fears or no fears, she had the cab door yanked open before Curt could get it for her.

The second Sylvander girl had run from Gideon Talbott’s house without so much as a coat to go with Curt Ivory.

The fog prevented Curt and Joscelyn’s plane from taking off until late the following morning. Curt drove directly from the Burbank airport to Hollywood Presbyterian for the afternoon visiting hours, but Joscelyn was not permitted to accompany him up to Honora’s room. Despite their combined arguments, the hospital held firm to the rule that visitors must be over twelve.

So Joscelyn didn’t see her sister for ten days.

Curt had rented a pseudo-Spanish bungalow on a narrow, nondescript street south of Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. After the Clay Street mansion, the rooms seemed minuscule and the heavily varnished Sheraton reproductions low on the social scale. However,
Eula Lee, the light-brown, taciturn, elderly maid-cook who drove up each morning in her two-tone Cadillac, was real class. Her meals paid homage to Joscelyn’s sweet tooth with fresh baked Tollhouse cookies, flaky-crusted pies, hand-cranked peach ice cream.

At quarter past eight, Curt would depart for McNee’s downtown offices—McNee competed with Talbott’s and Bechtel for large-scale construction jobs—coming home around six for dinner, then hurrying off to the hospital. On his return, he spread plans or proposals on the dining room table.

Joscelyn wasn’t unhappy in the little house. Unlike at Gideon’s, nobody fussed at her. It was too near summer vacation to enroll in school, so she explored Beverly Hills’ few blocks of neighborhood stores. After that she stayed home, poring over Curt’s college engineering text books. At dinner she would question him about stress, thrust, erosion protection, hydraulics, and he, with that half-amused smile, would draw explanatory diagrams on paper napkins. These few minutes were the highlight of her day.

*   *   *

Honora’s new specialist sent her home in an ambulance. As the attendants wheeled her up the path, she lifted her head.

“What a lovely street, Curt,” she said brightly. “And our house is a regular Alhambra.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s better than the Hollywood dump.”

“And those palms!” She gazed upward at a tall, slender trunk with fronds swaying against the blue sky. “I love them.”

Joscelyn, waiting by the open door, had the feeling that this was not her sister, but an actress playing the role of Honora while a director hidden behind the privet hedge called out instructions through his megaphone. Lift head. Look around. Express pleasure. Smile, smile, smile.

The attendants lifted the gantry onto the front patio. “Joss!” Honora cried, lifting her arms.

“Hi,” Joscelyn bent down to be hugged.

“How wonderful seeing you. I’ve missed you so much.”

Joscelyn swallowed and her mouth trembled over her armored teeth. “Honora, I’m sorry about—”

“Yes,” Honora interrupted. Her face was thin and very pale, which made her eyes seem enormous. “But let them bring me in and then we can catch up.”

The attendants couldn’t maneuver the stretcher in the narrow hall to the bedrooms, so Curt carried his wife and set her down on newly ironed sheets.

*   *   *

“It’s like she’s wadded in cotton,” Curt said to Joscelyn a week later. “I can’t get through to her.”

“It’s not your fault. You’ve been terrific.”

He had been, too. He brought home small, humorous gifts every night, he told amusing
incidents that happened at work, he held her hand when he thought Joscelyn couldn’t see. Honora accepted gifts and affection with patently spurious smiles. Joscelyn, too, had tried, talking to her sister about the “old days” in England, the new days in Beverly Hills. Her efforts met with a blank wall of smiles.

Curt said, “She blames herself.”

Joscelyn pulled a serious face to be worthy of this adult conversation. “I’ve never heard her cry. Does she?”

“Not around me. She’s always so damn cheerful that
I
want to cry.”

“Exactly,” said Joscelyn, whose limited patience was wilting under the strain of being perpetually pleasant to the sister who used to mother her.

“Bear with her, Joss, give her time,” he said, and a spasm contorted his mouth. “Christ, if only I could do something, anything, to snap her out of it.”

*   *   *

Joscelyn glanced out her open bedroom window, which gave onto a small square back garden. Honora knelt before a flowerbed, carefully mounding fertilizer around each little plant. Tender upper lip held by lower teeth, a line drawn between her eyes, she had the dreamy expression of the real Honora.

A few weeks ago, Curt’s present had been a flat of zinnias, frail, leafy shoots that looked as if they would wilt immediately in the southern California heat. That same evening Honora had taken the carton of tiny plants into the back
garden, planting them a trowel’s length apart. Watching, Joscelyn had remembered Honora in outsize trousers, monitor in charge of Edinthorpe’s vegetable garden.

Since then Honora had spent most of her time outside, pruning and fertilizing and weeding. In the evening she would sit on the narrow, flagstone patio, as if guarding her flourishing little zinnias.

Honora pulled out a weed, dropping it into the paper grocery sack at her side.

Joscelyn sighed:
Who wants to garden on a hot day like this!

She herself was dying to be at the beach. The southern California seaside was broad, golden of sand and blaring with records from the hamburger shacks. Curt had bought Honora a blue Studebaker which looked the same at either end, and in less than fifteen minutes they could be dabbling their toes in the curls of salt foam.

Maybe I can talk her into going after lunch.

*   *   *

Eula Lee served a big spinach salad with bacon and chopped eggs. Honora, showered and wearing a skirt and blouse, ate very little. “What are you doing this afternoon, Joss?”

Joscelyn carefully broke apart her third sweet roll—Eula Lee coiled rich dough around Demerara sugar, pecans and raisins. “I was thinking about the beach.”

Honora smiled, and said as if answering a question, “Curt brought me
The Disenchanted
yesterday and I thought I’d start it.”

“There’s no law against taking books to Santa Monica.”

Honora tilted her head as if Joscelyn’s words had finally registered. “The beach?”

“Yes, remember? Sand, big waves, cool breezes, etcetera.”

“Some other time.”

“When?”

Honora rolled her tumbler between her palms, and ice tinkled in the cold, creamed coffee. She smiled absently.

Joscelyn wanted to feel sympathetic, but instead she dropped into the black pit of rejection. “When?” she asked shrilly. “Tomorrow? Thursday week? December 25, 1999?”

“Soon.” Honora put down her napkin. “See you later,” she said. She moved in that uniquely graceful way from the dining ell, crossing the living room, echoing down the short bedroom hall. A door closed.

Joscelyn sat at the table, picking at her sweet roll as Eula Lee cleared off. After a brief clatter of dishes being stacked, silence descended: the house might have been deserted except for an occasional rustle as the cook turned the pages of the
Los Angeles Times.
It was like this every weekday unless Vi dropped over for lunch.

Into this stillness came silent questions.
Is it such a big deal to drive down to the beach with me? Doesn’t she care whether I’m here or not? Will I always be the ugly tagalong who doesn’t belong anywhere?

With a sudden leap, Joscelyn was on her feet, rushing into the back garden.

With disbelieving horror yet unable to stop herself she began yanking out the bushy little zinnias. The stalks oozed a sourish-smelling gum which stuck in the lines of her palms. It was well over ninety, and by the time every plant was uprooted she was sweating freely. She began a witches’ dance, her skinny body circling as her fraying Keds stamped the plants into the Bermuda grass.

The larger bedroom door opened onto the rear patio. Intent on wreaking total destruction, Joscelyn didn’t hear the creak of the screen door.

Suddenly she was yanked from the trampled plants.

Shaking her, Honora cried, “What have you do-o-one?” The normally soft low-pitched voice was distorted into a shrieking howl.

Startled, guilty, Joscelyn snapped back, “So the waxwork lady’s come to life.”

“My poor zinnias!” Honora slapped Joscelyn on the jaw so hard that her braces caught against her flesh. Joscelyn staggered backward, then struck out, raking her dirty, gum-encrusted nails down her sister’s creamy cheek. Immediately four angry red lines showed.

“You murderer!” Honora screamed. “You’ve killed them!”

“Your precious plants! They’re more important to you than me. Or Curt!”

Honora dragged her across the lawn to the circular clothesline, then rushed back to sink kneeling by the mound of crushed plants. Violent sobs shuddered below the silk blouse
and tears streamed down the scratched oval face onto the mangled zinnias.

Joscelyn’s heart began to bang madly. She had no idea how to handle her sister’s maniacally out-of-proportion grief.

“My babies, my poor babies,” Honora gasped. “I never should have left them. I’m careless, so careless . . . .”

Joscelyn crouched next to her sister, putting her arms around the slim, heaving shoulders. “Honora, please don’t. I’m the one who dug them up.”

“If I’d taken proper care . . . they’d be alive . . . .”

“No, no.”

“Oh, my God . . . .”

“I’ve always been a monster, you know that, Honora.”

“It’s me, me . . . my fault.” Honora clutched Joscelyn to her muddied blouse.

In the gaudy southern California midday sun, amid the sour odor of uprooted summer flowers, the two sisters knelt on recently mowed grass, clasped together and swaying as they wept for the unalterable, irrefutable truth of death.

*   *   *

That evening when Curt opened the front door, he raised an eyebrow at the scratches on his wife’s cheek, the bruise mark on Joscelyn’s, “Looks like combat zone.”

Joscelyn, in terror lest he dispatch her back to San Francisco, said truculently, “Honora doesn’t like my gardening.”

“She’s dreadful,” Honora said with a rueful,
genuine laugh. “You’ll have to get me some more zinnias.”

*   *   *

“I thought it was never going to happen again,” Curt said.

Honora pressed his head against her breasts. “I told you two weeks ago Doctor Taupin had given the go-ahead.”

“I was waiting for a more enthusiastic invitation.”

“Like tonight?”

“Like tonight.”

“Do you think Joss heard us?”

“The walls are thick,” he said, rubbing, kissing her softness.

It was Gideon’s habit to visit the nursery before they went out for the evening. On this chilly August night his ponderous tiptoeing on patent pumps was unnecessary.

Gid was awake.

The crib creaked, banging against the wall as the baby jounced back and forth on his hands and knees, snuffling in misery. When his father picked him up, though, his brown eyes widened and he gave his sweet, pink-gummed smile.

“It must be the tooth,” said Crystal. A sensual feast in her black chiffon strapless and her cloud of Chanel N° 5 perfume, she
remained in the doorway.

Being decades younger than Gideon, Crystal was able to view their child’s minor ups and downs with equanimity. At six months, Gid was a solidly healthy specimen who stayed in the precise center of the normal parameters as outlined by his pediatrician. Crystal was filled with maternal affection for her son, and even proud of him, although Gid had inherited his father’s burly shoulders and short legs, the small, round, brown eyes.

“Teething?” Gideon shook his head worriedly. “Not with this kind of congestion.”

“Piers says it’s a tooth, and Piers knows all there is about babies.”

Piers, nanny to nobility for a quarter of a century, had been lured from a London registry by a regal salary. This was her every-other-weekend off.

“He’s getting slobber all over you.” Crystal whipped a clean, initialed diaper from the neatly folded stack to dab at her husband’s stiffly starched shirtfront.

“Maybe he’s picked up the flu,” Gideon said worriedly.

“Gid?” She wiped her son’s face and nose. “He’s never even had a cold.”

“I don’t like leaving him.”

“Gideon, do you have any idea of how difficult it was to get this invitation?” Crystal asked, smiling prettily. Thomas Wei, a wealthy Chinese-American, was throwing a reception at his San Rafael home to honor a committee from Taiwan, as the Chinese called Formosa. The
group was in the United States to select a company to plan and oversee the building of a vast seawall that would ward off the monsoon tidal waves, a never before attempted engineering feat.

To receive an embossed invitation and thus enable Gideon to meet the committee on an informal basis, Crystal had worked her tail off.

Since her marriage, she had joined in a business alliance with her husband, a partnership that she found exciting, deeply satisfying and a beneficial balance to the scales of her horrendous nights. Major construction was emerging from its cyclical slump, and her exquisitely planned entertainments were helping Talbott’s win contracts. Gideon, however, nursed uncertainties about his wife’s activities: the loans of their new limousine, the lavish weekends at their Monterey house on the golf course, went against his sternly moral grain, even though, as Crystal often pointed out, she was merely following common practice.