The Bilbao Looking Glass (3 page)

“Now, Aunt Appie, you mustn’t try to carry all that stuff alone. Here, I’ll take the casserole and your tote bag. Max can handle the suitcases. You remember Max Bittersohn. You met him at Dolph and Mary’s wedding reception.”

“Yes, of course,” cried Appie, who clearly didn’t but wouldn’t have dreamed of saying so because she could never bear to hurt anyone’s feelings. “Are you a neighbor?”

“Max is one of my boarders and a very good friend,” Sarah answered for him. “He’s staying in the carriage house.”

Her aunt beamed. “Oh how nice. Then we have a man around to carry the trash to the dump. I’ve been wondering all the way out on the train how we were going to manage that.”

By a supreme effort of will, Sarah refrained from grinding her teeth. “Aunt Appie, you don’t have to manage anything. You’re here strictly as a guest, and see that you remember it. You’re not to do one single thing except visit your friends and enjoy yourself. And Max is not the odd-job man, so don’t get any bright ideas about having him paint the house or build you a kayak.”

“Sarah, you do get the oddest notions. Whatever would I do with a kayak? But then how do we manage the trash?”

“Mr. Lomax comes with his truck and takes it away, the same as he’s always done. He also copes with the repairs, the grounds, and the garden. I’m going to be weeding the vegetables and Max will attend to his own business. We’ll all three be awfully busy, so you’ll have to amuse yourself with Miffy and the yacht club bunch. They’ll keep you hopping, never fear. Now come upstairs and let’s get you settled.”

“Just let me fill my lungs with this wonderful air first. Um-aah!”

There were two kinds of Kellings, the longs and the shorts. The tall ones inclined to oblong faces and eagle-beak noses. A few, like Sarah’s late husband, had managed to be handsome. Most did not.

The short Kellings had squarish faces, straight little noses, and mouths that could be described, though never by Kellings themselves, as kissable. Their contours were gentle, ranging from agreeably curved to much too fat. Sarah herself was an unusually pleasant specimen of the shorts.

Aunt Appie, also a Kelling-Kelling like Sarah since the Kellings tended to marry their distant cousins and keep the money in the family, was a long; one of the scraggy longs. As she stood snuffling up the salt air with arms outstretched and nostrils flaring, she might have inspired Cyrus Dallin’s “Appeal to the Great Spirit” if she’d had a horse under her and been wearing moccasins and breechclout instead of sensible oxfords and a green seersucker shirtwaist that actually did suggest a Girl Scout uniform.

Having primed her pumps, Appie led the march into the house, lugging a bulging photograph album she intended to entertain Sarah with during the long, cozy evenings. Max, who’d had other ideas about how to beguile the moonlight hours, eyed the album without favor.

“Your room isn’t ready because I wasn’t expecting you until Monday,” Sarah told her aunt. “Max and I just got here ourselves. I’m not even unpacked yet, and neither is he.”

“Then we’ll all bustle around at once and get ourselves stowed away shipshape and Bristol fashion. What fun! Shoo, chickens. Old mother hen will build her own nest and lie in it with the greatest of ease. Oh, she floats through the air—”

Even Max couldn’t help grinning as they left Appie thumping pillows and rattling drawers. “I see what you mean,” he murmured. “Is she always like that?”

“Pretty much. Just be firm with her if she offers to cook you anything or starts organizing an expedition to study the tufted titmouse in its native habitat. Some of her old pals will be wanting her to go and stay with them, God willing, as soon as they find out she’s in town. You are going to drive us to Miffy’s, I hope? Aunt Appie would be heartbroken if she thought you were being left out of the general jollity.”

“Will there be any?”

“It’ll be deadly. The interesting people stay clear of Miffy. But Aunt Appie will enjoy herself. All we have to do is get her nicely planted at the party, then sneak off alone. Once they’ve all poured a few of Miffy’s martinis down the hatch, they won’t know who’s there and who isn’t.”

“Then how’s she going to get back here?”

“Somebody will bring her, sooner or later. Don’t look so glum, darling. We’ll work things out one way or another. Come and see your new home. I hope the paint’s dry.”

Despite her resolution not to spend any money on the Ireson’s Landing place until she knew whether or not she still owned it, Sarah had done a fair amount of titivating in the carriage house. She’d had to. The little apartment over the stalls hadn’t been occupied by a coachman since 1915, and the cobwebs practically had to be hacked through with a machete.

She and Mr. Lomax had brushed and scrubbed the walls and ceiling then covered the old gray plaster with creamy yellow paint. The exposed beams had been oiled with some magic potion brewed by Mr. Lomax, the battered furniture painted bright red and camouflaged as far as possible with India print throws and cushions. The wide-board pine floor, which was really beyond restoration, had been painted dark green and covered by a braided rug Mrs. Lomax had made some time ago. Mrs. Lomax was laid up with arthritis now, but still pleased to be doing something for Isaac Bittersohn’s boy because she’d always thought a heap of Isaac.

There wasn’t much they could do about the old-fashioned bathroom except clean it. As to the kitchen, there wasn’t one. Max would take his meals at the big house or, if Kellings got too thick on the ground, go over to Miriam or his mother for a handout.

Sarah hadn’t got to meet Max’s parents yet. Apparently that wasn’t going to happen until she was ready to affirm without a qualm or a sniffle that she was ready to tie the knot. She wished she were. It would be so much pleasanter to share these two bright rooms with Max than to rattle around with Aunt Appie in that drafty ark on top of the hill. She gave him a rather forlorn smile and went back to finish her own settling-in.

“W
ELL, SARAH, YOU’RE LOOKING
a shade less bedraggled than you did the last time I saw you, though I don’t suppose you’ll ever get over losing Alex. Too bad you never managed to have a child. That would have been some consolation, though probably not much the way they’re all turning out these days. What in God’s name do you think Miffy put in these martinis?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Sarah refrained from wishing it were something instantly lethal, and wriggled herself away from Pussy Beaxitt. Max, she noticed, had been cornered by somebody wanting a free appraisal of what was alleged to be a Rembrandt Peale but most likely wasn’t. She trusted he wouldn’t be foolish enough to oblige. She ought to have had brains enough not to drag him here in the first place. She’d forgotten how unspeakably god-awful these gatherings of Miffy’s could be.

A year ago, she’d have been passively bored instead of actively hating every second she spent here. She’d got used to boredom ages ago, since that had seemed her inescapable lot. First she’d been only Walter Kelling’s daughter, too young to count with the grown-ups and too shy to mingle with any teen-agers who might be around. Then, about the time she might have been making her debut and perhaps arousing a little interest among the stag line, her father had died from eating poisoned mushrooms and she’d married the distant cousin Walter had named as Sarah’s guardian. As Alexander’s wife she’d never got much attention either. Who’d notice quiet little Sarah when they’d always had to take her mother-in-law, the beautiful, blind, intelligent, opinionated Caroline Kelling, with them?

But she wasn’t little Sarah any more. Sudden widowhood and unexpected crises had pushed her out of the old rut; a long way out but still not far enough or she wouldn’t be here now, nursing a glass of the vermouth that hadn’t got put into the martinis and wondering why she hadn’t had guts enough to be rude to Pussy.

Aunt Appie was enjoying herself, at any rate. She had one of Miffy’s awful cocktails in her hand and was sipping at it with every appearance of relish as she entertained a cluster of her chums with a groan-by-groan replay of Uncle Samuel’s final illness. She’d be regaled in turn with cozy details about how other members of the old guard had expired in agony or wasted silently away as the case might have been. She’d be showered with invitations to this, that, and the other thing; and nobody would be crushed to learn her niece Sarah was too busy to accompany her.

Sarah only hoped Appie was bearing in mind the fact that they had no car to provide taxi service. She knew how Cousin Lionel would feel about using up costly gasoline ferrying his mother around to her routs and revels; and Sarah wasn’t about to let Max get roped into driving Appie.

Between being a dumping-ground for the whole Kelling tribe’s problems and a seeing-eye dog for his mother, Alexander had wound up having time for everybody except his wife. That wasn’t going to happen with the next man she married. Anyway, Max didn’t show any particular inclination to become a universal father-figure. She thought about what Max wanted and blushed, since after all she’d led a sheltered life in some respects.

“Been out in the sun, Sarah?”

For a moment, Sarah couldn’t place this tall man with the weather-beaten face and the sun-bleached hair. Then she decided he must be a Larrington. Hadn’t somebody mentioned a while ago that one of the twins had got divorced? Would that be Fren or Don? Anyway, this ought to be Fren because Don always wore his Porcellian tie even, rumor had it, in the shower.

“Hello, Fren,” she replied, taking a chance on getting it right. “No, I haven’t been at Ireson’s long enough for sunning. It must be windburn from all the hot air that’s blowing around in here. Why aren’t you out on your boat?”

“She’s having her bottom scraped.”

“Sounds painful. I hope she’s not minding too much.”

“I am. My God, Sarah, do you know what it costs to maintain a boat these days?”

“No, and don’t tell me. I know far too well what other things cost.”

“Oh, right. Alex left you strapped, didn’t he? Must have been quite a jolt. Understand you’ve been running a boarding house or some damn thing to keep body and soul together. You’ll drop that, of course, now that you’ve got your hands on Walter’s money.”

“Why should I? It’s fun and it pays the taxes.”

“But Jesus, why a boarding house? Bunch of God-knows-whats all over the place.”

“They’re hardly a bunch of God-knows-whats,” Sarah informed him rather snappishly. “I have Cousin Brooks and his wife, old Mrs. Gates from Chestnut Hill, an accountant who works for Cousin Percy, and one of Mrs. LaValliere’s granddaughters.”

Fren shrugged. “Miffy got it wrong then, as usual. She told me you had a houseful of Jews from Lynn or Chelsea.”

“Just one, and he’s from Saugus.” Sarah was not about to let Fren Larrington see how furious she was. “That’s Max Bittersohn over there by the door. The intelligent-looking one.”

Max, in a light blazer jacket and well-pressed flannels, did make an agreeable contrast to the hairy bare legs and dirty Topsiders around him. Other women were noticing, too. Sarah was not surprised to see the expressions on their faces, though it was a bit of an eye-opener to observe who some of the women were.

Max must be used to mass adulation by now. At any rate, he was wearing the polite, fixed smile that told Sarah he was bored already and wondering how he’d let himself get sucked into coming. So was she. While Fren maundered on about jib booms and backstays, Sarah stood wondering how soon they could decently make their escape. She’d just about decided it would be inhumane to keep Max there one moment longer when Alice B. whizzed in with a trayful of something hot and no doubt exotic.

She always moves as though she’d been wound up and set going, Sarah thought. She herself could just about remember when Alice B., as in Toklas, had come to live with Miffy. One or two of the literati among the group had tried calling Miffy Gertrude, as in Stein, but that hadn’t ever worked. Miffy was Miffy and that was that.

Nobody really knew or very much cared what precise relationship existed between Miffy and Alice B. So-called Boston marriages between women of independent means who either didn’t like men or couldn’t get men to like them had been common enough long before their time. Miffy’d always gone in for cropped hair and egomania, while Alice B. took naturally to arty clothes and fancy cooking, at which latter she was in fact extremely good. Aunt Appie was already taking large bites out of whatever Alice B. had concocted this time and exclaiming, “Supermella gorgeous!”

But Max wouldn’t agree, Sarah realized as soon as she’d got one of the things herself and bitten through, puff pastry into a filling of chopped clams and whipped cream. Max hated shellfish and shied away from rich foods of any sort. She must warn him. Alice B. would throw a public fit if he were to take one taste and leave the rest uneaten. When Bradley Rovedock came in and Fren turned to complain to him about the exorbitant cost of bottom-scraping, she grabbed the chance to slip away and cross the room.

She was sorry not to have a word with Bradley, whom she’d always liked, but there was no time to lose. Alice B. was now in among the women surrounding Max, dispensing her clam tarts, twitching her sharp little nose this way and that, sniffing out whatever might be going on for eager speculation and early repetition.

Alice B. never forgot a face, a name, or an indiscretion. Though she’d wait for the most awkward possible moment to share what she’d learned or deduced, she was never stingy about passing it on. Nor did it ever occur to her that she might have heard or guessed wrong. It was no doubt Alice B. and not Miffy who’d come up with the houseful of God-knew-whats from Lynn. When she got face-to-face with Max, she turned up her round, black birds’ eyes and gave him a long, thoughtful stare. Then she crowed.

“I know you. You’re the Bittersohn boy. Whatever happened to that girl you were living with? Becky, was it? Or Bertha?”

Sarah noticed Max’s jawbones tighten, but he answered calmly enough. “Her name was Barbara. The last I heard, she was in Switzerland.”

“What was she doing there?”