Tigers in Red Weather (7 page)

“Of course I love him,” Nick said. “I just thought it would be a little more exciting.”

“Marriage is a haven,” Helena said quietly. “You’ll never be alone again.”

“Not marriage,” Nick said. “Life.” She looked out the window and then turned quickly back to her cousin. “I mean, think about Elm Street. We could do exactly as we pleased and no one expected anything of us. I even miss those horrible ration books. I wish it could be like that now, for me and Hughes. Not all stuffy and respectable. Sometimes I want to rip my clothes off and go running down the street stark naked and screaming my head off. Just for a goddamn change of pace.”

“That was the war, not real life,” Helena said. “And it wasn’t all good.”

Nick sighed, remembering Fen. “You’re right. I’m being a twit.” She forced a smile onto her face. “Enough of this. Darling, why don’t you pour the wine. It’s right next to you on that funny counter Hughes designed.”

“He really has bought you a lovely house,” Helena said, filling the two small jelly jars Nick had rescued from their apartment.

“Yes, a lovely house for a good wife,” Nick said, bringing the knife down on a stalk of celery. “I shouldn’t say that, it’s nasty. But damn men, anyway.”

“Nick, you really are impossible. You want too much. It’s like flying in the face of God, as Mother used to say.”

“And Avery?” Nick asked, suddenly piqued by Helena’s stoicism. “Is he everything you want? Is god so damn pleased with you both?”

“We’re living in a rented house,” Helena said, thoughtfully. “I would like to have one of my own. Then again, it is a lovely little bungalow, with a spare room for when the baby comes.”

“You can be so dense sometimes, darling,” Nick said, putting the knife down on the cutting board. “I want to know about your husband, not your living arrangements.”

“Oh.” Helena seemed to withdraw slightly from Nick’s gaze. “Well, I don’t know. The same as usual, I guess.”

“Lord, Helena, you’re slower than molasses in January.” Nick felt like hitting her on the head with the celery stalk. “What is the same as usual?”

“Nick, he’s not like other men, you know. I mean, he’s an artist, really.”

“What on earth are you talking about? Avery isn’t an artist, he sells insurance, for god’s sakes.”

“Yes, to earn his living. But his real passion is films,” Helena said, peering into her glass as if she was looking for something. “Actually, he’s very meticulous about it. You see, he has this collection.”

Nick walked over and sat down next to her cousin. “A collection.”

“Yes, well, actually, you see, he had this friend, this actress, and she was very good and very talented and very beautiful. And they were going to make films together, she was going to be the star and he was going to raise the money, but then, well, then someone killed her and he was just absolutely heartbroken. It changed everything for him.”

“I see.” And Nick did think she was beginning to see just what Avery Lewis was all about. “That all sounds very dramatic.”

“Well, yes,” Helena said. “And he didn’t feel like he could go on. And then he met me and he realized that he didn’t have to do it alone. You see, he’s dedicated himself to showing the world the talent that she was. So, he’s started this collection. Of her.”

Nick could barely believe what she was hearing; Helena could be guileless at times, but she wasn’t a complete idiot. “So, how is he doing with all that? Showing the world what a talent his ex-mistress was, I mean?”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Helena said, jerking her chin. “Most people don’t. It’s a work of art, someone’s whole life. As if I collected everything about you in order to capture your essence. And he’s going to make a film. That’s what Avery is doing.”

“Essence, my foot.” Nick tried to make eye contact with her cousin, but she wouldn’t look at her. “Honestly, Helena.” She shook her head in wonderment. “I knew something funny was going on out there, but I didn’t realize he had you convinced that it was art.”

“You’re being unfair,” Helena said. “He may be unusual, but what’s wrong with that? He loves me and, Nick, he understands me. I owe him my support.”

“Your financial support, you mean.” Nick saw her cousin’s face color, and she felt her passion receding. She put her hand on Helena’s shoulder, saying gently, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be critical. But really, darling. This is cracked, you can see that, can’t you?”

“Nick, he’s my husband. And my second at that. I don’t plan to get a divorce and move on to number three.”

Nick pulled Helena to her and put her cheek against her soft hair. “We could ask someone at Hughes’s law firm.”

“I’m having a baby.”

Nick drew away and looked at her for a moment, and then slowly nodded her head. “Right. Of course you are.”

“The whip-poor-will may be in the brush where it has hidden during the hours of light, or it may have stolen close to the house. It may even drop unperceived on the housetop, and cry out with sudden vehemence in the middle of the night, perhaps sending a shiver through those persons whose nervous organization is susceptible of impressions ominous or superstitious.”

Nick felt the baby kick, like a very small flash of lightning running down her belly. She began sorting through the mail. In one pile, she put the bills for Hughes to look at when he returned from work. In another, she put their social correspondence, which she would have to reply to tomorrow, after the ironing.

“Oh god, life is boring,” she said to the empty kitchen.

Nick knew that Hughes wanted a girl, but a boy wouldn’t have to
deal with all of life’s mundane details. He would call the shots, do whatever he pleased. He would be strong and determined and independent, without having to apologize or bake cookies he didn’t even want to eat.

She stopped. “For crying out loud, cheer up,” she told herself. She found these black moods coming over her more and more frequently these days. Dr. Monty had said it was normal to feel off during pregnancy.

“Many women feel a bit down during this time,” he said, his hand lingering a little too long on her knee as they sat in his little office off Brattle Street. “It’s very normal, Mrs. Derringer. It’s a big change for any woman, but a welcome one.”

Last week he had recommended she start reading more enlivening books, eyeing Kant’s
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime
suspiciously. “Many of my patients have found following patterns very uplifting. Industry, that’s what I recommend,” he said, assurance leaking out of his voice.

And Nick had gone and bought a book of patterns, for day dresses. It was sitting upstairs in her dressing room, still wrapped in its brown paper.

She put a finger to the meringues. They had cooled. She brought over the black tin lined with waxed paper and gently started placing them in it, taking care not to break their peaks. She wondered what Helena was doing at that moment, how she was dealing with life with a baby. Ed was four months old now, and Nick kept telling herself that her cousin must be awfully busy with her son. But she couldn’t help feeling that during their brief chats on the telephone, Helena sounded increasingly far away, like she was underwater.

Each time, it made Nick a little sorry, although not entirely, for the way they had parted at the end of Helena’s visit. After their first conversation about Avery, they had stuck to happier subjects. But the
night before Helena went back to Los Angeles, Nick couldn’t help bringing him up one last time.

“You don’t have to go back to him, you know,” Nick said. Hughes had gone to bed and they were finishing off what had already been a little too much wine.

“I want to go back to him,” Helena said, not looking at her.

“You don’t owe him anything. I know you think you do, but you have a right to be happy, too.”

“I don’t think you’re really one to be dispensing marital advice.”

It was the first time in their lives that Nick felt something akin to contempt in Helena’s voice, and it took her aback.

“I just want you to be happy.” She felt her own temper rise.

“You don’t know anything about it.” Helena looked directly at her. “Nothing makes you happy except what you don’t have. You’ve never known how to do anything but to take and take and then ask for more. You have everything and you act like it’s nothing. So how would you know what makes me or anyone else happy?”

Nick was stunned. “I guess I should be glad that we’re finally telling the truth,” she said, tasting metal in her mouth. “Since we’re not mincing words, your neediness is what makes you so goddamn self-centered that you can’t see past your sorry little world. I’m supposed to be happy just because I have more than you? For heaven’s sakes, listen to yourself.”

“No, you listen to yourself,” Helena said, rising. “I’m going to bed.”

They had made their apologies in the morning, and kissed warmly at South Station, but the episode had left Nick wondering how well she did know her cousin’s heart.

“The birds are in full cry during the breeding season, after which the cry is seldom if ever heard; and this being the principal indication of the birds’ presence, it is difficult to say at what precise time they depart, so silently and furtively do they slip away from our midst.”

Nick slid her mother’s silver letter opener under the fold of the first letter in her pile. There was no return address and her hand shook as she tried to pull the card out. She knew it would just be an invitation to a cocktail party thrown by the wife of one of Hughes’s colleagues, or a note from a neighbor on the Island reporting on her hydrangea, but she felt her mouth go dry nonetheless. Ever since the Letter, as she thought of it, she found this dread creeping up on her when confronted by an unknown sender.

“Don’t be a silly goose,” she told herself firmly, but felt unconvinced.

She had to put the card down and stare out the window for a minute before she could read it.

Nicky dear
,
  
Tea on Wednesday?
  
4 p.m
.

Love
,
Birdie

Nick laughed with relief. Just tea, just Birdie. It was fine. She felt elated, high. Hughes would be home soon, she had baked his favorite cookies and they were having a baby. It was fine. Everything was just fine.

The Letter had arrived on a Tuesday five months ago, during an unseasonably cold September. She had been on the fence about whether to take the pot roast out of the freezer or make a run to the butcher for lamb chops before Hughes got home, leaning toward the pot roast, because it meant she would have time to go buy some new gloves in Harvard Square instead.

She had thought,
I’ll just open the mail first, and then decide
. It had been the third letter in her pile. It was a bulky, brown envelope, almost a parcel. It was addressed to Hughes, but it was handwritten
instead of typed, so she knew it wasn’t a bill. Also, it had been forwarded on from the base in Green Cove Springs, and she had been afraid that it might be a letter from Charlie Wells, perhaps an act of revenge for her behavior after their lunch together.

The minute her hand felt the expensive correspondence paper inside, however, she knew it couldn’t be from Charlie. The first thing she noticed was the initials at the top,
ELB
. Frowning, Nick scanned down the card to the slanted, elegant script.

I know I said I wouldn’t write. The world’s not on fire anymore
.

But I still love you
.

I wanted you to know that, wherever you are
.

Besides, everyone deserves to be happy
.

Nick reached her hand back into the envelope and pulled out a silver skeleton key attached to a brass plate that read C
LARIDGE’S
R
OOM
201.

The key was heavy and the plate so smooth. Nick rubbed her thumb over the shiny brass, leaving a greasy smudge. She looked at her thumb and it suddenly seemed fat and dull and dirty.
Common hands
, as her mother had told her as she massaged butter into her fingers at night,
that’s what every lady must avoid
.

Nick picked up the card and read it again, deciphering every line, measuring it, trying to decide which word meant something, and which had just been pressed into service to connect those that carried weight.

There were few that weren’t significant, she decided. “That” and “to be” were the only spares, and even they couldn’t be done without.
Besides, everyone deserves to be happy
.

“Oh god,” she said, as the full weight of the words, the stationery, the heavy silver key, hit her. “Oh god.”

She put her head down on the counter and tried to cry, but nothing
came out. She watched her breath as it steamed up the Formica before vanishing again.

After a while, she sat up and straightened her back. She passed her hand over the Letter again. Leaving the key on the counter, she picked up the thick, creamy card and walked into the bar in the garden room, where she mixed herself a martini and upended it into her mouth.

Then she mixed another. After she had drunk the second one, she looked at the card again.
The world’s not on fire anymore. But I still love you
. She mixed herself a third, this time letting three olives drop into the glass. Then, with the Letter in one hand and the martini in the other, Nick walked into the living room, where the fire she had lit earlier that afternoon was now smoldering and spitting.

She sat down on the embroidered low bench in front of the fireplace and took one last look.

I know I said I wouldn’t write
.

Then she threw the Letter on top of the sagging logs, where she watched it curl and slowly, slowly turn to ash.

She stayed there, twirling the stem of her glass between her fingers, feeling hypnotized by the fire. Then she rose and wandered into the library. Taking out her address book, Nick placed a long-distance telephone call to Helena.