Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (116 page)

“And then, last night, I was restless, kind of, because of those telephone calls you was getting. I couldn’t sleep as good as usual. After a while I got up, wandered around a bit. It was when I came into the big room that I saw them lights again. Going away from the house, like that other night when you fell down the stairs, something funny about it. A car, late at night, going away, and at the time I thought about it. Who could be driving off so late at night? And then, last night, seeing the lights again, going off. I lit a lamp and saw the time. Little before ten. Mr. John went to the Tap Room of the John Adams house, say about nine thirty. And you? You went up to your room.”

He spread his hands. “So what did I do? I went up to Mr. John’s room, thinking he might of come back. I knocked at the door. No answer, so I went in.

“No Mr. John.

“So I go downstairs again, and look outside. His car gone from the driveway. But not only his car, your car too. That’s funny, I think, and I race upstairs to your room. Knock at the door, no answer. I go in and no Miss Margo.

“At that point, only two things to do. Call Mr. John, maybe you go with him after all. I try the Tap Room. He comes to the phone. Says no, he’s alone, you not with him.

“I don’t like the sound of it, so next I call Mr. Doug. No answer. I try again, no answer. So I call Mr. John again. Lay it on the line. Tell him you’re not home, not anywhere so far as I can see.

“Then he raised the ceiling. Screamed at me, he did. ‘Can’t you take better care of her?’

“I said he was right, I was a no-good old man. He was shouting at me, like God on a bad day. Hung up and a few minutes later he calls back.

“ ‘It’s a long chance,’ he says. ‘But something come to me. When they was kids. She hit Margo on the head with a stick.’

“ ‘Who did that hittin’,’ I asked. ‘Norma,’ he said. ‘She hit her and Margo almost drowned.’

“There was a buzzing on the phone and I started saying, ‘Mr. John, you there?’ and he said, in this funny voice, like he was choking, ‘Let’s try the lake.’

“I started to say something and he shouted at me again. ‘You just get out there as fast as you can.’ So I did. I got quick as a bunny into my old piece of tin and got out there.”

He finished his story. “If not, Miss Margo, you been fished out of the water, dead as a doornail, with your eyes hanging open.”

“Pompey,” she said, whispering it. “I remember that day. I guess I didn’t know much about jealousy then. Except I got the vibrations. I was the city girl, and they were paying a lot of attention to me, the twins. I didn’t think much about it, I liked it, obviously. But she must have suffered … watching them fight over me.”

“She was bad, a bad girl.”

“No, not really, Pomp. She was a victim. I’m sure she loved John, and she wanted something from life. I don’t blame her, I never will.”

“I do,” he said implacably. “I saw that face of Miss Vicky, purple, her tongue hanging out. Who’s to ever know now if she died natural?”

She stared at him.

“What
do
you mean?” she asked breathlessly.

“Could have put a pillow over her poor head,” he said.

“Norma?”

“Day in, day out. Year in, year out. Came a time, maybe, when that girl went plumb crazy. Thought, I’ll end it, I can’t stand this no more. I just remember her face, Miss Margo. Like a fish pulled out of water. The eyes gogging out. It could have been that way.”

John saying, “Tell her, Norma.” She had gulled him, pretending weakness where there was none.

Mr. Bach: “She never had a bad day.”

And Norma, sad-eyed: “John, she’s failing …”

A still strong woman, looking into the face of hate, seeing the inexorable advance of the hands coming toward her …

She had a good life,
Margo thought,
Please let me remember that … she had a good life. Christ, let me always remember that …

“Don’t cry like that,” Pompey said, distressed, holding her. “Please, Miss Margo, don’t cry like that.”

And then the hands had choked out her life. And she had seen that it would happen, hence the palindrome. “Don’t,” Pompey said, pleading. “You’ll make yourself sick, Miss Margo.”

• • •

Her body was fished out of the water that afternoon. Bloated, eyes open and befogged, hair tangled with water-weed and slime. That beautiful face. The hooks dragged her up, laid her on the ground, a pitiful thing, dead and swollen from the water that had devoured her. “Got tangled in some hell-vines,” the townspeople were told. “Good swimmer too, but these things happen.”

The casket was closed. She was unrecognizable; it was better that way. Who wanted to see such a sight?

And so the casket was closed, not to offend. There were a great many carnations: they had been Norma’s favorite flower.

• • •

There were visitors all through the day. Old Mrs. Pride, the Minister, and several ladies from the Women’s League of the Methodist Church, bringing pastry and jellies and fudge brownies. The small son of a neighbor brought a whole Virginia ham, with cloves. “She’d of come,” he explained about his mother, through the braces on his teeth. “ ‘Cept she’s almost to term, there’s another child on the way.”

He was darling, with soft brown eyes and a peachy skin, accepting with downcast eyes but a dimpled cheek, Margo’s kiss and Pompey’s pat on the bottom.

Abner Zeiss called, saying what a horrible thing, and quoting poetry. “Over a monstrous sea without a bourn …”

And Norma Calvet was buried the next day.

There were no more telephone calls from that day on.

Douglas called, his arms filled with fruits and vegetables and grapes and half a side of beef. “I was always fond of Norma,” he said quietly. “We all thought she was doing so well. I don’t know whether anyone told you, but she spent a year in Forrest Hill, had electric shock, but seemed to recover very well, and made a life for herself.”

So you see, you find out little by little,
Margo thought when he went off. Beautiful Norma, with her problems and heartaches, had at some time in her life spent a year in a mental institution.
And it was I who triggered the reaction
, Margo thought, I
who was the cause of her regression.

Could she ever forget that?

At six o’clock, John came home. Margo was curled up on the camel-backed sofa, wan and tired. She said, “Hello, John,” and he said,

“Hello, Margo,” and gave her a quick look. “You’ve been wondering about Ben, I imagine. He’s in the hospital, I gave him a rather rough going-over, but he’s alive and well. Only he’ll never set foot on this place again.”

He stood there, at the liquor cart, a hand dashing back his dark hair, and then poured the drinks he made. They sat almost silent, and the cooking smells drifted in from the kitchen. But after a while she had to speak, and said, “John, I just want to say that I’m not going to use this house. It’s yours, you deserve it. You stuck, through thick and thin, through the years. So the house is yours, John, because when I turn it over to the Historical Society I’ll insist you be curator. As a matter of fact it will be a
sine qua non.
” She looked up. “John, I owe you my life. But I don’t belong here. All those years were … years ago. I’m so … so wracked about Norma, and you must have loved her. In spite of what Pompey said. I’m sure you loved Norma, and I do understand.”

He got up and stared down at her. “Why, you don’t understand one single thing!” he said harshly. “Are you blind, then? I
never
loved Norma! I pitied her, wanted the best for her … but I never loved her, nor did I give her any proof that I did. She tried with Doug and she tried with me. But for God’s sake that poor darling was pitiable,
pitiable!
It was always you, for both of us, Douglas and myself. You were the wonderful unattainable. I know you’ve fallen for my brother, and it’s bad luck for me. He has the charisma, the bravado. Me? I was always the boy who stayed close to home, taking care of her, Aunt Vicky. I know I’m no prize. I can’t help what I am. But just don’t say … that … that …”

He got up and went to the liquor cart. “You’ll be ready for another drink,” he said thickly.

She didn’t answer, simply sat looking at him as he pushed his thick, dark hair back with an impatient hand, and didn’t fail to notice that as he filled her glass he spilled some liquid, and that the fingers that wiped up the spill were trembling.
They’re both beautiful young men
, she thought, and God forgive her if she ever put down John as a clod. Why, he had lived here, through boyhood and manhood, keeping the home fires burning, and as she looked at him from across the room he seemed to grow in stature in her eyes. No European vacations? Why? Because Aunt Vicky had been too old to travel. He had kept the going concern, with good will and good nature.

Charisma? Anyone could have charisma. But character? How many persons had character?

“Here you are,” he said, coming back and handing her the glass.

She said, “Thanks, John,” and looked at him, kept looking at him, until he grew uneasy and said, “We might have some music.”

He got up and turned on the radio. The strains of
“Wien, Wien, nur du allein”
filled the room. He sat down again, quietly — John did everything quietly — and crossed his long, lithe legs.

There was a long, protracted silence. Then she said, “Aren’t you ever going to get married, John?”

“Possibly not.”

“Why?”

“Because there was always only one person.”

“What’s that person’s name?”

“Oh, Margo,” he said angrily. “I just told you. It was always you, and now will you please drink up and for sake let me be?”

“You don’t mean to say you’re still in love with me?”

“Yes, but don’t give it a thought. Undoubtedly I’ll be the best man, keeping a “stiff upper lip. Please don’t say anything more.”

“Well, of course I’ll say something more,” she said, putting down her glass. “If you don’t kiss me, I won’t ever know what I missed.”

He pushed back his hair again, looking angry, even threatening. Then he too put down his glass. “You’re making fun of me,” he said.

“No, certainly not. If you don’t let me know how you feel, I can’t possibly imagine what it would be like. And if I can’t imagine what it would be like, we’re out of luck, you and I.”

It happened rather quickly. Then he was there, beside her. Then he was holding her. Then kissing her. Mouth to mouth, body against body. “Why, John,” she tried to say, but couldn’t tear herself away from him. It was just that dazzling time before the sun set, so that gold shot in through the Deerfield blinds, and she had to close her eyes against the blinding beauty of it, and she knew that she had found her home at last, here, in this beloved old house.

Pompey, poking his head in, said hastily, “Oh, excuse me, you two, just that dinner’s almost ready.”

“Dinner’s almost ready,” she said dreamily, and wound her arms around John, now knowing that she would end her days here, with this man she had known as a boy and who had fished her out of the lake water and given her back life. They would have children, and their children would have children, and the House on the Hill would endure into other centuries, other times, while they grew old and gray and died their natural deaths.

But before that —

Before that would be the begetting of them, in one of the tester beds, love children, love children. “John,” she said, when he got up hastily. “Why are you leaving me?”

“Because discretion is the greater part of valor,” he told her, flushed, and stirred the pitcher of martinis.

Then Pompey poked his head in the room again. “Scuse it,” he apologized. “Just that the pot roast’s getting overcooked. Sorry to intrude.” He added, somewhat questioning, “The rest can wait, can’t it?”

“The rest can wait, can’t it?” John asked, with a quick look at Margo, who said yes, indeed, the rest could wait … for a while …

For a while.

At Christmas, they would trim a tree together, and exchange presents, two people in love, and see out the seasons in this fine old house. And, as it had all those years ago, her aunt’s voice seemed to speak to her, warm and friendly and enthusiastic. “Well, then, here you are, Margo, everything set for you, just what I would have wanted. You must grow up, you know, you’re no longer a child, and if you want to be a good wife you must find wisdom. You will have patience, that’s the secret of it all, Margo, my dearly beloved … patience … patience.”

“You are not to think about it,” John says, getting out of bed as he sees her standing at the window, restless in the night “I forbid you to think about it.”

But she will. In time even that terrible memory will fade. Not entirely, for it will always be there, in her mind, the exquisite face unrecognizable, the dewy eyes popping, the hair like seaweed, the arms and legs swollen stumps:
It could have been me
, Margo thinks.

“Darling, come back to bed.”

She goes back to bed, holding him, for in the morning there will be a tour, and they will eat a hasty breakfast, after which she will follow him, listening. “In the year 1659, a band of English pioneers, following the lordly Hudson upstream in search of fertile lands, paused when they reached a place where the river seems to linger to embrace the Sterling intervale, before it breaks through Mount Tom and Michford and flows to the sea …”

The tourists, from every part of New York State, follow him, murmuring, touching with light and reverent fingers, the artifacts of another age. The House on the Hill, beautiful and timeless, stands on its summit, the sun flaming through its windows, making them golden and glorious, and the mansard roof, innocent of any television antenna, is outlined against the blue upstate sky, and the lilac bushes, fragrant and purple, blossom beside the Georgian doorway. And a man named John Michaels shows visitors through the house.

They go off, in buses, and John reaches for his wife’s hand. “Well, how did I do today?” he asks.

“Very good. Have I told you, lately, that I’m madly in love with you?”