Barbara Greer (38 page)

‘What the hell are you talking about?' he asked softly.

She lifted her glass. ‘Forgive me.
In vino
, you know. Forget it. Tell me—why do you love her, Barney?'

He looked at her evenly and calmly, but his voice was full of quiet anger. ‘It's because she's not like—like the people you're talking about,' he said. ‘She's not like you. She's got the courage and the strength and the blood. And she also happens to have another quality you lack—decency. And cleanliness, and goodness and morality!'

‘Oh, Barney!' Nancy said.

‘What?'

‘Oh, you
are
like me! Like I
was
. You
do
believe in pure things, don't you? Pure love, pure money, pure God—but don't you see? Nothing is that way!'

‘It can be.'

‘You don't mean that, do you? Those words? That's all they are—words. What you think about Barbara. Nobody's that way! Why—why, it's wonderful to think it, but so, so naive, Barney dear! So innocent and child-like. Do you really have that much faith in her?'

‘Of course I do,' he said.

‘Oh, Barney, forgive me. I love her, too, but you're making me laugh! She's my dearest friend, but I don't harbour such illusions about Barbara! People just aren't that way. No one is! Oh, some people have those qualiies some of the time—but
always?
Oh, my dear boy, I don't know how old you are but you talk like a schoolboy! Love Barbara if you want to—I don't disapprove of that. After all, everyone has always loved Barbara. But love her with your eyes open! She's hardly a paragon, Barney. Hardly!'

He stood up. ‘I'm going to bed,' he said. ‘I'm not going to listen to this.'

‘Listen. You're a babe in the wood. I've known Barbara for years. We spent that year in Hawaii together. Did she ever tell you about that year in Hawaii?'

‘Certainly,' he said.

‘About—everything? Schuyler Osata, for instance?'

‘Who is he?'

‘Ah,' she said. ‘You see? Well, take Schuyler Osata—take him for just one example.'

‘Who is Schuyler Osata?'

‘A good question! Who was he? Who knew? He was just a boy—Schuyler Osata, the bronze boy! Barbara found him—on the beach. He came from Lanikai. He was born on the little island of Manana which does not, incidentally, mean “tomorrow.” That's all we knew about him. A boy from Lanikai, born on Manana, a beach boy. Barbara brought him home, as proudly as a little girl who's found a beautiful sea shell. He was eighteen. Schuyler Osata.
He
was Mr. Magnificent. A primitive, a true primitive. He rode sea turtles from the reefs, across the combers! I don't think he could even read or write. But, my dear, there are certain fields of endeavour where the three R's are definitely not necessary! At these fields of endeavour he excelled …'

She suddenly turned her back to him, holding her glass with two hands, in front of her, and walked a few steps away.

‘I said to Barbara—I know he's yours. You found him. But, please, let me play with him! Barbara is generous. She was brought up to share her toys. And Mr. Osata was generous, too, in bestowing his—shall we say—favours? And so we took turns, Barbara and I, in our apartment in Honolulu, on the hill. He loved us both—he said. But I knew differently. One day, by mistake, I came in when I shouldn't have—during Barbara's turn. It's a failing of mine … barging in when I'm not wanted. Like with the two of you, this afternoon. I saw—oh, only enough! Only enough to know that it was different. He loved Barbara best. They all did. But he was kind to me, too, that year. I suppose I was—just a change of pace!' And then, making no sound, she began to cry.

He stared at her, saying nothing, for a moment. Then he turned away.

She lifted her head. ‘And when she told me about you—'

He turned again and looked at her. ‘She told you about me?' he said.

‘Yes, oh yes. A long time ago, one time in Locustville when Carson was away. And we were talking, reminiscing, and she said—oh, just mentioned that you and she—' She began to laugh. ‘Oh, I've forgotten all of it. It sort of slipped out, one night in Locustville, and she mentioned that once—in her room, here at the farm I think it was—you and she, just before you and Peggy were married—' She stopped abruptly, then slowly turned to him. There was a little smile on her face. ‘We always shared everything, Miss Woodcock and I.'

He stood very still, looking at her.

‘But she deceived us, you and me. She deceived us both,' she whispered. ‘So perhaps we can comfort each other.'

He came toward her.

‘All right,' he said. ‘Perhaps you're right.'

With one hand he reached for the drink she held—the glass that floated whimsically a lime and a rose blossom—and she said a little laughing,
‘No!'
But he seized the drink and set it down on the table. As she playfully reached for it again he grabbed her arm and turned her roughly toward him, pinning her arm back, bending her backward. She looked up at him. He pulled her, bent her body backward across the velvet cushions. Her knees bent and, with both hands now, he forced her down. She closed her eyes as she let herself fall into the sofa's depths. He pressed himself hard against her and she whispered, ‘Close the door!' And then, ‘No—never mind. They're all asleep …' He covered her mouth with his.

‘There,' she breathed. ‘There! Now you're acting like a big boy!'

19

The trees above her rose in arches, their branches in ascending tiers. And though there was no moon now the pattern of sky that appeared between the leaves held a pale light and a few fuzzy shapes of stars. The road ran around the lake's edge, and in spaces where the screen of shrubbery fell and the trees opened, she could see the water, flat and leaden-looking and unmoving, with clumps of cat-tails rising from the shallow places along the shore. The sound of her footsteps in the gravel stilled the voices of peepers and croakers as she passed.

She had been walking with a rhythm; some sort of little quick march had been playing in her head. It was the rhythm, actually, of the little ball, bouncing up and down on the rubber string, and it made her walk faster than usual, with a kind of impatience, her hands deep in the pockets of her light trench coat. She had tied a bright yellow silk scarf around her throat, for confidence—confidence, because it was printed with bright French sayings:
Allo? Allons-y, Comment ça va? Ooh, la-la!
And she had put on a gay print cotton dress that tied at the middle with a belt composed of ceramic squares. For comfort, and confidence, too, she wore flat-heeled shoes. She walked as she might walk to a summer cocktail party, or barbecue, the kind that were given on back-yard terraces in Locustville, the kind where the host wore a chef's hat and apron that said, ‘Look Who's Cookin',' and though the trees and the darkness blotted her out, made her feel ectoplasmic, she knew she looked this way. Actually, a curious thing had happened to her mood in more than two hours since Barney had spoken to her in the garden. She no longer truly felt confident or sure or buoyant, convinced of anything. She had become less and less sure of herself, of her relationship to him, of what, if anything, she was going to do about it. She walked through the trees, exploring her feeling. They would have a little talk, perhaps (‘Now Barney, we must be sensible …'). Or perhaps she would let him kiss her a few times and see how she felt about it then. Or perhaps she would not let him kiss her, or even touch her hand. But really she was no longer certain of anything, of the kind of person he was, or—a more disquieting thought—of the kind of person she was. So in place of the confidence and knowledge she had had earlier was now nothing but the excitement of not knowing. It was this peculiar excitement, nothing more, that made her walk quickly along the dark road toward the guesthouse, the excitement of going to a party where you knew none of the people.

Suddenly she came out of the trees. Ahead of her was the wide stretch of grass and the dark shape of the house itself, with the screened porch running around it, just a few hundred feet away, and everything stopped. The march music stopped and the bouncing ball stopped and the night suddenly seemed enormous and she stepped back into the shadows, terrified. Something hot and unbearable welled and throbbed in her throat. She leaned back against the trunk of a tree, feeling dizzy. She thought:
Why have I come here?

Why had she thought of the guesthouse? What curious chain of thought, what sequence of long-ago things had worked their way together so quickly in her mind to suggest, all at once, the guesthouse? Then she remembered the broken dollhouse and she thought how queerly the things that happen to children, one after another, reassemble themselves long afterward.

It was a huge, elaborate dollhouse, elaborately furnished. It had a front door that opened on real hinges and the windows had real glass in them. The green painted shutters could close, and inside—when the back of the house was swung open to reveal the little rooms—the windows had real curtains made of gauze and real roll-up shades. The bathroom even had a tub made of china for dolly's bath. She remembered once hearing Sylvia Sturgis ask her mother in a whisper, admiringly, ‘How much did it cost, Edith?' It was not a question that most people asked about things the Woodcocks owned, but Sylvia Sturgis was a straightforward woman and a good friend. She asked, ‘How much did it cost?' not to imply that the cost was the most interesting thing about the doll-house, but in a businesslike way, as she might ask a sales clerk how much a thing cost. Edith, who understood the frank money-question, answered her frankly. ‘Ninety-eight dollars,' she said. ‘Preston and I are trying to interest Peggy in more feminine toys. She's turning into such a tomboy!'

It had been a funny day, the day Peggy's dollhouse arrived, a summer day like today, warm and hazy and restless. Barbara was fourteen and Woody had come to the farm that day for his swimming lesson. After the lesson, she and Woody went into the house and she showed him the dollhouse. For a long time, in Peggy's room, they admired it, opening the little doors, rolling the little window shades up and down, arranging and rearranging the furniture. Then Peggy came in, ordered them imperiously to leave the dollhouse alone, and so they walked out on to the lawn, barefoot and bored, and presently they conceived their scheme of kidnapping Danny. In whispers, they plotted it.

Danny was beside the pool, stretched out on the walk on his stomach, asleep in the sun. He was a vain boy, and when his lesson-giving hour was over, he spent his time working on his tan, lying on first one side, then the other, rubbing himself periodically with a dark and unguinous liquid that he had prepared from Skol, coconut oil, and iodine. ‘It's what all the life guards use,' he said airily. Already this ritual had had its desired cosmetic effect; it had turned his skin a dark, chestnut shade, the colour of brandy, and with his dark hair and eyes, had given him a singularly Latin look. Barbara and Woody looked at him, rigidly asleep with tricklets of perspiration gleaming along the bronzed curve of his back. Then they went into the laundry yard, found two lengths of clothesline to tie him with and a linen handkerchief to use as a gag. Their plan was, as he slept, to bind his hands and feet securely—Barbara working at one end and Woody at the other—and then, when he was immobilised, to tie the gag around his mouth to silence the screams that would no doubt emerge. Beyond this stage, they had not planned. They didn't know, precisely, what they would do with him when they had him. But they would probably take him away somewhere and enslave him. He had angered them when, a week before, they had asked him to run away to New Haven with them, and he had said witheringly, ‘What? I wouldn't be caught dead in New Haven with you two creeps!' He had said the wrong thing. The time for sympathy was past. The time had come, as Woody said, for action. He would be sorry. They would make him grovel at their feet. They would make him call them ‘sir' and ‘madam,' or perhaps, ‘master' and ‘mistress,' or ‘your lordship' and ‘your ladyship.' But, in any case, some day when he had suffered enough they would release him, and let him be their friend.

But their plan misfired. Woody was to tie his feet and Barbara his outstretched hands. Woody got his rope encircled about Danny's crossed ankles and got it knotted, but Barbara's job was harder, pulling the hands together from the distance at which they lay, three or four feet apart. In attempting this, she woke him. He sat up quickly. ‘Jesus Christ!' he yelled. ‘What do you think you're doing?' He jumped to his feet, hopped around crazily in his bonds, yelling and shouting, and toppled into the pool. He came up sputtering and screaming, ‘Mrs.
Wood
-cock! Mrs. Wood-cock! Help! Help!'

Barbara and Woody were convulsed with laughter. But when Edith Woodcock came running from the house to see what was the matter, and found Danny that way struggling and shouting in the water, they stopped. She helped Danny out of the pool and helped him undo the wet line that tied his ankles. ‘Jesus Christ, Mrs. Woodcock!' Danny said. ‘Look what those brats did! They tried to drown me, they pushed me in the pool!'

Edith was very angry, ‘Woody,' she said, ‘go to the front steps of this house and sit there until your mother comes. I'm going to telephone her right now and tell her what you did, and have her come and get you. Barbara, go to your room and don't come down until I tell you to.'

Angry and humiliated, she went upstairs. Peggy's room, as she passed, was empty, and in it stood the abandoned dollhouse. From the door she gazed at it. Then she stepped inside the room, went to the dollhouse, and leaned on it. It was simple and arbitrary at first, then systematic, as she smashed it. With the end of a wooden clothes hanger, she punched out each glass window. She shredded the curtains and crushed the furniture, shattered the little porcelain bathtub and wrenched the shutters from their hinges. Then she left the room.