Burning House (12 page)

Jason was yelling and laughing.

“Put him right side up,” Elizabeth said, going and standing in the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room.

Benton stood Jason back on his feet.

“Aw, Lizzie,” Benton said.

“Who’s Lizzie?” Jason said.

“She is. Lizzie is a nickname for Elizabeth.”

“No one has ever called me Lizzie in my life,” Elizabeth said.

Uncle Cal was putting logs in the fireplace. Above the mantel was a poster of the Lone Ranger and Tonto on horseback. Cloudy sky. Mountains behind them. The Lone Ranger was positioned directly in front of a tall cactus, so that it appeared the cactus was rising out of his hat.

“Lizzie is also the nickname for a lizard,” Benton said.

“It’s nice you’re so clever,” Elizabeth said to Benton.

“Lizzie loves me,” Benton said. He put his thumb to his lip and flipped it forward, blowing her a kiss.

“Beautiful, beautiful,” Uncle Cal said. He was admiring the fire, with strong yellow flames crackling out of the logs. Ena had explained to them that there was only wood for one fire, and she had decided to save it until the family could be together. It seemed impossible for everyone to be in the same room at the same time, though, so finally she had told Cal to lay the fire. Benton and Jason were in the kitchen; Olivia was upstairs taking a bath. She was humming loudly.

“I’m going to stay here a while,” Ena said. “No one should feel that they have to stay with me.”

“I’m staying,” Uncle Cal said.

“I’ve already called Hanley Paulson, and he’s delivering more firewood tonight. I can always count on Hanley. I think Wesley would have liked him, and the other people around here. Wesley didn’t move here just to take care of me.”

“Is there something wrong with you?” Uncle Cal said.

“No. Nothing is wrong with me. He wanted to be closer to me because sometimes I get lonesome.”

“Don’t tell me you ran down some sob story that made Wesley feel guilty for living in the city,” Benton said, coming to the doorway.

“Some people,” Ena said, staring at him with eyes hot from the fire, “think about the needs of others without having to be told.”

“Christ,” Benton said in disgust. “Is that what you did to Wesley?”

“I love it,” Uncle Cal said. “I wish I’d never blocked up my fireplace.”

“Take down the paneling,” Elizabeth said.

“And I wish I’d never painted my living room green,” Uncle Cal said.

Nick was playing solitaire. Elizabeth was sitting and looking bored, shifting her eyes from the fireplace to the empty doorway to the kitchen. When things were silent in there too long, she got up to investigate. Benton was holding Jason on his shoulders, and Jason was fastening the bunches of mint to the wooden ceiling beams with tacks.

“Come to kiss us?” Benton said to Elizabeth. “Legend has it that when you stand under mistletoe—or mint—you have to be kissed.”

She looked at Jason, grinning as he sat high above them, one bunch of mint left in his hand. She went over to Jason and kissed his hand.

“Kiss Daddy,” he said.

Benton was standing with his eyes closed, lips puckered in exaggeration, bending forward. Elizabeth walked out of the room.

“Kiss him,” Jason hollered, and kicked his feet, in damp brown socks, against Benton’s chest.

“Kiss him,” Jason called again.

Elizabeth sighed and went upstairs, leaving Benton to deal with the situation he’d created. Nick put an ace on top of a deuce and had no more cards to play. He went to the kitchen and poured a shot glass full of bourbon.

“Would anyone else like a drink?” Nick said, coming back into the living room.

“I swore off,” Uncle Cal said, tapping his chest.

“Give me whatever you’re drinking,” Ena said to Nick.

Everyone was ignoring Jason, crying in the kitchen, and Benton, whispering to him.

Nick went into the kitchen to get Ena a drink, and Jason broke away from Benton and tried to kick Nick. When Nick drew away in time, Jason made fists and stood there, crying.

“I’m your friend,” Nick said. He put half a shot of bourbon in a glass and filled it with water. He dropped in an ice cube.

“I go to bed at ten,” Uncle Cal said.

“Why
can’t
I?” Jason screamed in the kitchen.

“Because she’s a naked lady. Decency forbids,” Benton said. “It will take me one minute to tell her she’s been in there long enough.”

Olivia was singing very loudly.

“I want to come with you,” Jason said.

Benton walked out of the kitchen and went to get Olivia out of her bath. She was doing her Judy Collins imitation, loudly, which she only did when she was stoned. Obviously, she had taken a joint into the bathroom.

Uncle Cal followed Benton up the stairs. It was nine-thirty.

“Early to bed, clears up the head,” Uncle Cal said. He was sleeping in Ena’s room, on a Futon mattress he had brought with him that he tried to get everyone to try out. Jason liked it best. He used it as a trampoline.

“I don’t think Hanley is coming tonight,” Ena said. She had gotten herself another drink. The fire was ash. She got out of the chair and turned up the thermostat, and instead of coming back to the living room, she began to climb the stairs, calling to Uncle Cal that he should do yoga exercises in the morning instead of at night, because if his back went out, she wouldn’t know whom to call in the middle of the night.

The next evening Nick talked to Ilena. Manuela picked up the phone and started telling him about his messages. He cut
her off. Then she told him about what had been delivered that day—as she described it, it was a milk-chocolate top of a woman’s body. She and Ilena had stood it up on the kitchen table, and the table was far enough away from the window that the sun wouldn’t melt it. Manuela told him not to worry. She read him the message on the card that was enclosed. It was from Mr. Bornstein, a man he vaguely remembered from some party in Beverly Hills. Mr. Bornstein was with Fat Productions. He had another company called Fat Chance.

llena got on the phone. “Hi, Nick,” she said.

“It’s winter here,” he said. “You should see it.”

“I wasn’t invited,” she said.

“You hate Olivia,” he said. “Anyway—it’s not the time to bring somebody new into the house when Wesley just died.”

“I wouldn’t have come,” Ilena said. “I just felt like sulk

“So what’s up?” he said. “You there sulking?”

“My cervix hurts. And somebody stole our hose. Unless you did something with the hose.”

“The garden hose? What would I do with it?”

“That’s what I thought. So somebody must have stolen it.”

“What would they want with it?” he said.

“Strangle a Puerto Rican, maybe.”

“How’s the dog?” he said.

“He missed you and wouldn’t eat, so Manuela poached a chicken for him. The chicken made him forget his grief.”

“Good,” he said.

“When are you coming back?”

“Pretty soon. Tomorrow or the next day, I guess. I was hoping it would snow.”

“That creepy man keeps calling. The one Benton sells his stuff to. He’s having a costume party, and he called yesterday to say that somebody was still needed to dress as Commissioner Gordon. Then he called this morning to say that some
body named Turaj was going as Gordon, but he still needed to find somebody to be the mother of Kal-El. Tell me there’s not going to be a lot of coke at that party.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “I guess that’s where the snow is.”

“He’s so creepy. He gives me the creepy-crawls. I hope he doesn’t call here anymore.”

“Just tell him that I can’t do it.”

“That chocolate body in the other room gives me the creeps too.

“Other than that,” he said, “is everything all right there?”

“Manuela wanted a raise, so I gave her one.”

“Does that mean she’s going to clean the bathroom?”

“I told her you didn’t like her smoking cigars. She said she wouldn’t anymore.”

“Great. Sounds like everything will be perfect when I get back.”

“What would you know about perfection? I’m perfect, and you don’t appreciate me. I don’t even have an eroded cervix anymore.”

“I hope you feel better soon, Ilena.”

“Thanks,” she said. “See you when I see you. I might go to Ojai with Perry Dwyer and his sister this weekend.”

“Have a good time in Ojai,” he said.

They said goodbye and he hung up the kitchen phone. Elizabeth was leaning against the stove, staring at him. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t. She went to the window and looked at Jason and Benton, playing tag in the circle of light in the back yard.

“He must be doing well,” she said. “He’s been paying child support.”

“He’s got quite a reputation on the West Coast.”

“Do you know the man he sells the paintings to?”

“I saw him again when Benton was in L.A.”

“Is he crazy, or does Benton exaggerate?”

“Crazy,” Nick said.

Nick stood beside her and watched Benton chugging along, pretending to be running as fast as he could to catch Jason, then moving in comic slow motion.

“That’s like the picture,” Elizabeth said.

“What is?”

“That.”

She was pointing to his hands, folded on the window sill. He felt a tingling in his fingers, as if his hands were about to move.

“Benton told me that picture always embarrassed you,” she said. “You know—everybody in this family is embarrassed by beautiful things. That’s why Benton never shows Ena or Cal his paintings. Even Benton’s given in to it: he made fun of me for putting one of my watercolors up on the bulletin board alongside Jason’s. You’ve probably hung around all these people so long that you’ve fallen into the pattern.”

“I’m not embarrassed by it. It was just a picture he took one day when I was sitting in some diner.”

“You look like a holy person when you clasp your hands.”

She looked out the window again.

“What did you want to say to me when I was on the phone, Elizabeth?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I was being envious. I was thinking how nice it is that he has a friend who’ll fly from one coast to the other to pal around with him.” She coughed. “And I’ve always been a little jealous of you—that people study you, photograph you—and they don’t pay attention to me.” She put her nose against the window. “Saying that Lizzie was a nickname for a lizard,” she said.

Benton did not go to Westport with them because Jason acted up. Jason said that Benton had promised that the two of them could play tag. He was about to cry, and Benton had been
trying since the day before to get back into Jason’s good graces.

After Nick had opened the door on the driver’s side of Elizabeth’s car, he realized that he had made a silly, macho move. She was sober, and he had been drunk since before he called Ilena. He should have let her drive the car.

Elizabeth was shivering, her scarf over her mouth, staring straight ahead. He couldn’t think of anything to say. It had been her idea to get out of the house and go get a drink, and he was surprised that he had agreed. Finally she said something. “Turn right,” she said.

He turned, and was on a narrow road he wished she were navigating. “Hard to believe we’re an hour outside New York,” she said. “It’s nice, when it isn’t pitch black. This road reminds me of a road that winds in back of my grandmother’s house in Pennsylvania.”

She reached over and pushed down a lever. The heat came on.

“What kills me is that she knows Hanley Paulson charges outrageous prices for firewood, and she still won’t consider having anyone else deliver it because Hanley is an old-timer, and she’s so charmed by people who hang on.”

She adjusted the heater to low. This time Nick remembered to look at the road, and not at what she was doing. He was trying to remember if he had just been told that his dog was, or was not, eating. A small animal ran in front of the car and made it to the other side. “Again,” she said, and pointed for him to turn right.

They went to a bar with a lot of cars parked outside. A man was inside, sitting on a stool, collecting money. “Zenith String Band,” he said, although neither of them had asked.

They sat side-by-side behind a small round table. One of the people on stage had broken a string, and another member of the band had stopped playing to pretend to beat him over
the head with his fiddle. They ordered bourbon. A curly-haired girl handed another guitar up onto the stage, and everyone was playing together again.

“I hated it that he turned everybody against me,” she said. “He was so angry that I wouldn’t have an abortion, and look at the way he loves Jason. You’d think he’d be glad I didn’t listen to him, but he’s still making jokes, and I’m still the villain.”

She was speaking quite loudly. The people at the next table were looking at them and pretending not to. He knew he should do something to pass it off, so he gave them a little smile, but he was drunk and the smile spread too far over his face; what he was giving them was an evil smirk.

“What a family. Cal with his mansion on Long Island, never liking what the decorator does, having some goddam vegetarian decorator who paints the walls the color of carrots and turnips. He gives better Christmas presents to his decorator than he does to Jason. Poor Cal, out in East Hampton, and poor Ena, who’s staying in Wesley’s house when he’s dead because he wouldn’t have her there when he was alive. The only person in the family worth anything was Wesley.”

They sat in silence, drinking, until the set was over. It was slowly starting to sink in that he was not in California—that lantana would not be growing outside when they went out, that it would be dark and cold. He usually said that he loved California, but when he was back East he felt much better. He began to wish for snow again. When the musicians climbed down from the stage he asked for the check. He left money on the table, wondering if he was crazy to suspect that the people at the next table were going to take the money. Since no one ran out of the bar after them in all the time it took to start Elizabeth’s car in the cold, he decided that it was paranoia.

He thought that he remembered the way back and was glad
that he did. Elizabeth’s eyes were closed. He put on the heater. Elizabeth put it off.