Those Harper Women (47 page)

The dark little cars crawl by.

Edith taps the window glass that separates them from John, and he lowers the glass. “Who is it, John?” she asks. “Do you know?”

John turns and smiles, showing them the trove of gold in his mouth and speaks in his soft Cruzan patois. “Andreas Larsen. But he was an old man, Miss.” (But surely that was not the name John murmured; not him, not today, it couldn't be, because isn't he already dead? Didn't she hear, once, that he had died? No, this is her imagination working; she is dreaming, and this is a dream.)

“Why, Granny—what's the matter? Are you feeling sick?”

“Nothing, nothing.” She grips Leona's hand tightly. The cortege passes, and they drive on.

“Did you know the man, Granny?”

“I think so. I'm not sure.”

“Ah, Granny. I'm sorry.”

Beaches bring everything into such bright focus. Perhaps it is the dazzle of sun on sand, the sun on the tinfoil surface of the water that intensifies every object, counteracting any gauziness in the air … it intensifies the people, the lounging ones, the sleeping ones, the love-making ones, the running and splashing ones. Clad in what goes for beachwear these days—clothes not designed to conceal those few, poor, typically human glands, but rather to emphasize them—the atmosphere of sex is thick and soft as butter in the air; you could slice it with the handle of a spoon. Beaches intensify and focus without clarifying anything. It is astonishing to see, even at this early-morning hour, how many and how much the old beach contains—dried kelp and rockweed, ice-cream sticks, peanut shells, coconut husks, sticky glasses covered with sand and aswirl with the warm remnants of soft drinks, and the rubber balls and the floating toys of children; and the children's screams, and the scolding of mothers, the shouts, the hellos, the dashes into water, the splashes and the squeals and the dunkings and the shrill lifeguard whistles. Leona is off at one of the little shops at the edge of the beach—open, palm-thatched shops that sell everything from popcorn to comic hats—to rent beach chairs for the two of them, and now there is an, unpleasant-looking boy of fifteen or so, with a gritty voice and wearing an elasticized figleaf, who comes prancing across the sand with a small barracuda he had netted. Everyone throngs around him to admire this remarkable catch.

“Throw it back!” Edith demands.

“Look, lady,” he says, “a barracuda is a dangerous, man-eating fish. You want me to throw him back so he can eat somebody? You must be nuts.” And very vigorously and thoroughly he beats it to death by swatting its head an excessive number of times against the armrest of a beach chair. All muscle and openmouthed cruelty, he wields the tiny fish as though it were a billy club, until its head hangs as humbly as a darning egg inside a sock. Gratified, he turns and gives Edith a glum look.

“How are you so sure that it was a male?” Edith asks. “Just because you obviously are? There are thousands more spet like that one in the sea. Destroying one will hardly do any good.”

A dream …

“How I dislike beaches,” Edith says to Leona when she returns with the chairs, unfolding them and setting them up.

“Why, Granny?”

“Because I can't swim in the raw any more!”

They sit down.

“You can't believe how this beach has changed since I was here last,” Edith says.

Leona is looking at Edith curiously. “Are you sure you feel all right, Granny?” she asks.

Edith laughs. “No—I'm not sure I am at all! I think I've had too much excitement in the last few weeks.”

“And I've brought a lot of it on, haven't I? Well, Granny, one of the things I have to tell you is that I'm going back to New York.”

“Oh,” Edith says.

“Coming here was—it was a mistake, this time. I'll come back for visits, but they won't be visits like this one. But first I've got to straighten out—oh, so many things.”

Edith nods.

“And maybe you'll come to New York and visit me.”

“I'm too old for New York. I wouldn't know what to do.”

“It's really not that far away. It's not the moon.”

“But what about your gallery?” Edith asks. “Of course we'll have to get this other business settled first. This business that's happened with—with whatsisname—with—” (Has she suddenly forgotten her brother's name? “Who are you?” she asks that pale, downy, bored young face. “Harold,” he answers.) “With Harold.”

“Granny, are you sure—” Leona begins. “Are you sure you feel all right? Are you ill?” What is it, Leona wonders? Is it perhaps only seeing her grandmother in such strong sunlight that makes the old woman's skin look so extraordinarily pale, oily-white, and the bones beneath the skin so fragile? And the white skin hatched with lines, and the mortality of the veined hand she touches … is that it? The cruel light?

And Edith is thinking that of course if Leona goes this time, she will not come back, not for visits, not for anything. If she leaves now, they will never see each other again. She sits very still.

“Would you like to borrow my sun hat, Granny?”

Edith shakes her head.

“We might be able to work it out so that you could start your gallery on a smaller scale,” Edith says. “In New York—or even here in St. Thomas.”

“No, Granny.”

“Don't tell me you've changed your mind about the gallery.”

“It's just that other things are more important now. Granny, last night I couldn't sleep, thinking of all the things you've done and wanted to do for me. The gallery—everything. You've always been so good to me, and I've hardly ever thanked you—once. But my life was running on such a crazy track. I never seemed to be able to think. Or see. Anything.”

“Leona,” Edith says quickly, “you don't have to go yet, do you? Can't you stay here with me just a little longer?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head slowly. “No, it's time to go.” She smiles a small, faint half-smile that seems more like a smile at herself than at Edith. “I'm a city kid, Granny. A jungle cat. It's time for me to go back to my jungle.”

“But that's the point. Leave the jungle. Escape now. Escape. Stay here where it's safe and warm.”

Her smile fades, but she continues to look at Edith. “The way you did, Granny?” she asks finally.

“Yes, the way I did.” Then, all in a rush, Edith says, “Listen to me. No one has ever belonged to me. I've killed or crippled every person I ever loved. Someone has got to belong to me, Leona. Won't you belong to me? Leona, I'm seventy-five years old. Stay here.”

At the end of the long silence that follows, Leona stands up slowly, pulling the striped beach towel around her shoulders. She looks away across the sand. “My enemy lives in that jungle, Granny. I've got to find him and track him down.” Then, almost as an afterthought, as though it didn't matter, she says, “And there's another thing. I'm not going alone. I'm going with someone.” But the look in her eyes says that of course it does matter, and that the words were experimental, spoken to test their permanence and substance upon the ear.

“With a man?” Edith says. “Do you mean you're going to get married again? Is that what you're trying to say?”

“No. He hasn't asked me to marry him, and I don't want him to ask me—not yet. We're not ready for that, either of us. But he is willing to let me go with him, and so I'm going to go with him.”

“What?” Edith cries. “You mean you're going to be some man's
mistress?
Who? Short-neck?”

“Oh, look,” Leona says, pointing. “There he is—looking for us!”

“What? Where? Leona, listen to me—”

“See?” She waves her hand. “He doesn't see us. Let me get him. Wait here.” With the towel over her shoulders she runs off across the beach.

“
Leona!
” Edith calls.

Edith Blakewell stands up. Her sunglasses are steamed from the salt spray in the air, and she removes them and cleans them with her handkerchief. Standing there in the blazing sun, she is not conscious of the beach any more, and is thinking only: No, I cannot have this;
I will not have this!
Then, like running specks, she sees them coming from the far end of the beach. Hand in hand, darting between umbrellas and around sunbathers, they come—their hands breaking briefly apart, then joining again, as they run. From a distance they wave to her, and a strange thing happens. Edith's eyes blur and she sees, in the young man running, Andreas. He stops to scoop up a handful of sand, and he tosses it, scattering in their path. An indolent woman sunbather turns on one elbow to look at them, and it seems impossible to behold any longer this vision of her own happiness; a surf of years rolls over her, turning her in it, transposing Leona and herself. Then, with an effort, she pulls herself back. Her cobwebbed eyes clear, and she sees that it is not Andreas but only Jimmy Breed.

“Don't look so unhappy, Granny.”

The folly of everything she has ever dreamed or planned for Leona overwhelms her. It doesn't matter. He is terrible. They are all terrible—all Leona's men. They have always been; they will always be.

“Granny?”

“
Unhappy!
” Edith cries. “Oh, I will not
have
this, Leona!” And she turns and runs herself, awkwardly and heavily, away from them, across the beach.

Twenty-One

Once more it is Wednesday afternoon, and Alan Osborn is with her. The examination is over, and they are having their brandy in her room.

“So now they've gone,” he says.

“They left for the airport half an hour ago. And good riddance.”

“Poor Edith.”

“Don't say ‘Poor Edith.' I said good riddance, and I meant it. One thing's certain. She goes out of my will entirely. I'm not going to help support her in her little flings. My mind's made up. Everything I have goes to your hospital, Alan.”

He is smiling at her with one of his white-rabbit smiles.

“Of course there won't be as much money now. But there's this house, some leases on the old Sans Souci property, and I have a few good paintings, and some good pieces of jewelry. Despite what Diana keeps saying, we are not all going to be paupers as a result of this—though there'll be some tough sledding for a while.”

“Have they located your brother Harold yet?”

Edith laughs. “One report has him in South America and another has him in Switzerland. Last night I had a dream that he was here, in St. Thomas, and that he came stalking me through the garden with a gun to get even with me for the things I said. But I'm sure I shall have no such luck as that.”

He continues to smile at her.

“Have you been following this thing in the papers, Alan, the way I have? Have you noticed how wonderfully Arthur has been emerging through all of this? To me, that's the best thing that's come out of it. Suddenly everyone can see how much of a man Arthur is.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she says, “I've just told you I was leaving everything to your hospital, and you haven't even said thank you. Isn't this what you want? What do you think?”

He twirls the brandy in his glass. “I think,” he says, “that you are your father's daughter.”

“Well!” she says. “That was a reasonably unpleasant crack, wasn't it?” She sips her brandy. “You don't seem to understand, Alan, there were a lot of things I could have told her, but she would never listen to me. I could have told her things that would have helped her—things about the past—”

“The past can be a pretty chilly gift, if nothing else goes with it.”

“Nothing
else!
I was going to leave her all my money!”

“Ah,” he says, “you
were
, but now you're not. When there was a lot of it, you were going to give her all of it. Now that there's not so much of it, you're not going to give her anything. Poor Edith. You're stymied, aren't you? Without any money, what have you got left to fight with? Yes, there is going to be some tough sledding—some very tough sledding for a while.”

“Well,” she says after a moment. “I asked for this, didn't I? I asked you what you thought. Now you've told me.”

“At least Leona won't be all alone.”

“You mean she's luckier than I am. She has someone. I have no one. Well, perhaps you're right.” Then she says, “Very well. What shall I do?”

“Do about what?”

“Should I leave everything to Leona—or not?”

With a wink, he says, “I thought you said your mind was made up.”

“Money never did a damned thing for me, I'll say that. It never gave me anything but misery. But in her case—”

“Perhaps she should be allowed the chance to try it on her own,” he says. “It may not do anything for her either, but it might be worth it to her to have the chance.”

“Yes. That's what I meant,” she says. “So suppose I keep my will just as it is, leaving everything to her—except the car, which is for Sibbie—and add a codicil—just a little note. Asking her, if she doesn't want the house, or any of the other things, to consider giving them to your hospital, or selling them to you for a nominal figure.”

He smiles a particularly male smile, the smile men give you which means that their thoughts have been running several yards ahead of your own. “Whatever you think, my dear,” he says.

A breeze stirs the heavy curtains of her big old room, and there is a chill in the air. “February,” she says, almost absently. And then, “Well, I'll think about this.”

“February—yes, and more tourists coming to get away from winter.”

“I'll be alone here for a while,” she says. “Now that Leona's gone. Let's see more of each other, Alan. I want to plan a series of little dinner parties, Alan, for people like you and Sibbie Sanderson, the old friends. We'll pass the time. We'll have fun. Let's be kind to one another, Alan, as long as we're all there is.”