Bereavements (35 page)

They’d traveled awhile after Jamie’s death, and Mrs. Evans developed a penchant for high places: tourist stops on mountains overlooking cliffs with rivers a ribbon below, or a mile’s drop to the sea, and always her ecstatic “Oh Dori! Look! What a
glorious
view! Do stop; I want to get out.”

“And did you?” Angel asked.

“Did I what?”

“Stop.”

“But of course. I’m employed.”

“But . . . I mean . . . ” It was hard to say. “Was she always ready to . . . Could you see she
wanted
to?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“And you stopped her?”

“Well . . .” Dori laughed. “No one stops Mrs. Evans. Only by being there. She has something in abundance known as good taste.” He thought about that. “On the other hand, I remember she and Rose had a wrestling match one night over a handful of pills. She’d already taken a dozen or so.”

“What happened?”

“A doctor lives across the street; in Manhattan, that is. He came over, in an overcoat and pajamas I remember. He gave her an emetic.”

“What’s that?”

“To make her vomit.”

“Oh.”

Dori smiled, touched the boy’s cheek fondly. “And that was it; she was fine.”

In the pause, Angel asked: “And those were the only times?”

“Probably not. But as far as I know. After the first month, she let all the servants go. There had been twenty of us, believe it or not—for two people! But, of course, three houses. The few of us who are left—we’ve learned to live with it, Rose and Cook, Jodi, Delia, I. I mean the threat of it, the possibility. In the beginning, we all simply waited for it to happen—not an if but a when. Now . . . Well, after more than a year . . .”

“What.”

He seemed to digress. “Death distorts and magnifies things. And glorifies them. I was married once, you know.”

There seemed no connection. Angel waited for Dori to make sense, put things together.

“A pretty girl, very. Attractive. And nice. Good-natured. Couldn’t cook! But tidy. And virtuous. Sweet most of the time. A bit of a temper.” He paused. “She died less than a year after we’d married. And then the pretty girl—attractive did I say?—became
lovely,
incredibly
beautiful.
And the virtuous,
saintly.
Loss does that. Grief. I had married a girl and buried an angel. And loved her a thousand times more than I had in life.”

Now the connection came. “Jamie . . . ? Handsome as hell; a bit astonishing that way, but otherwise—” he shrugged “—just like you, Angel, or me growing up. Any kid; any rich kid I should add.” Suddenly he remembered something. “How would you like . . . There are no pictures around, God knows she doesn’t need them, but I do have a color snapshot of him, if you’d like to see.” He reached for his wallet. “It’s here, along with a dozen nephews and cousins, uncles and aunts . . .”

It was a waist to head shot, in a garden, by a pool, among sunlit flowers and leaves, the boy holding what appeared to be a Japanese kite.

Angel stared without blinking for what might have been a full two minutes, resisting Dori’s several half-gestures to take the photo back.

“I guess,” he murmured softly, his hand beginning to tremble, “he could’ve been . . . a movie star . . . if he wanted.”

The picture returned to his wallet, Dori was surprised to see how pale and—what?—angry and sick Angel looked. In a sudden expansive, healing gesture he grabbed the boy in both arms, hugged him fiercely, then let him go, his eyes saddening.

“Actually,” he said, “we were depending, sort of, on you, y’know. Now.”

Angel took a moment to respond. “F’what?”

“For. . . Well, you know: Mrs. Evans. What we’ve been talking about.”

“Me!”

Dori nodded. “Life seemed—brighter, with you around. God knows—there was a Christmas this year!—as bad as it was after that—accident in New York. But maybe New Year’s will make up for it. Maybe there’ll be another celebration, a good one this time—the best.”

Angel lowered his eyes. He didn’t agree with Dori. “That was before . . . before we got here,” he said. “Now something’s different, it’s changed. I don’t think she . . . wants me anymore.”

Dori frowned, hesitated, becoming depressed himself because of the boy’s depression.

“Oh, I’m sure you’re wrong. I know it. She wants you; she wants you, Angel . . .”

Dori could have been right. He could. But whatever Mrs. Evans had said to him, whatever it all meant, there was he knew, something altogether final in it. She hadn’t abandoned him as he’d feared; no, there wasn’t that intolerable kind of thrown-out, discarded-refuse feeling in his heart, but she had essentially left him. He was alone.

Oh, there was Delia, of course, who was friendly and fun, who never tired of answering his questions and whom he loved to watch as she cooked and did all the many things that needed doing around the house.

One odd thing: she kept insisting he looked ill—everyday more peaked—”and tired; are you?”

“No.”

If she hadn’t broken her thermometer, she’d have taken his temperature every hour on the hour. As it was, all she could do was feel his head, each time doubtfully, but reassured.

“Well, you don’t look like you, anymore, that’s all I can say, nor act the same; not that first-day boy who danced around the tree, always out in the snow, off on his sled or skiis.” She lifted his chin with a teasing smile. “Where’s that boy, Angel, where? Forever indoors, dreamy and mooning around, as if you hated the snow, as if you couldn’t wait for Palm Beach. Why you act more like . . .”

She flushed quickly, turning pink about the white lace collar, and shooed him off on the pretext that she had some Christmas thank-you notes to write, as well as other private things to do.

At such times, and they kept increasing, when Delia made herself unavailable to him, watching Jodi was sometimes fun, and Angel spent hours in the immense steamy greenhouse, frequently helping as best he could, while the man watered and planted and pruned and weeded and cross-bred and fertilized and mulched and carefully adjusted the thermostats and inspected and oiled the strange, faintly-hissing machinery that controlled the heat and the amount of moisture in the air.

And there was Dori, of course, very much Dori, when he was there, which now was hardly ever, since he was daily sent on any number of private errands, usually chauffeuring people—invariably dark-suited, brief-cased, sober-looking business-type men back and forth between Long Island and New York.

So . . . Seldom Dori.

Never, Mrs. Evans; she wouldn’t see him at all, conducting her business, whatever it was, behind the thick, locked double doors of her spacious bedroom suite on the second floor of the west wing, where he was forbidden to go.

And Delia eventually became impatient, having Angel tagging behind her, upsetting her with his eternal questions, particularly the why, why, why of Mrs. Evans behavior. Finally, she had to tell him, for pity’s sake to give her some peace, let her go about her chores, begging him, “dear boy,” to amuse himself, “run off and play.”

So finally, inevitably, the only thing left was the house. And its forty-two rooms. With the exception of those Mrs. Evans occupied, and the servants quarters, Angel set out to explore every one, stealing the great ring of keys from the dusty hook where silly Jodi probably imagined he’d safely and secretly hidden it.

Of course, he knew from the very first key in the very first lock—as his desire and desperation grew—exactly what room he was looking for. And with the twenty-second key in the twenty-second door, he found it.

It wasn’t one room but several, contiguous, the first merely an entrance or small hall containing a leather chair, presumably more for ornament than use, a gold-shaded black lamp, a round table, and on it, a brass bowl of flowers, long withered and dead. White dust, like a fall of the finest snow, covered everything.

Angel plucked at a few dried petals that broke to flaked cereal in his hand, eyeing the other rooms—those he could see at a glance.

Like the wedding table in
Great Expectations,
it was obvious that nothing had been touched since Jamie’s death. The entrance room had been locked, and presumably Mrs. Evans had never gone in again. What need, what worth to see his belongings, when she had the boy in the flesh to visit, locked in his tomb below?

The second room, spacious and square, of richly-stained wood, was—what? The “study?” The “sitting” room? Certainly, the “studio.” There were two easels, a drawing board, several unfinished canvases, and intricate clusters of black-hooded lamps on the ceiling, so many it strongly resembled the equipment that illuminates a stage.

Two walls were shelved, ceiling to floor, and filled with books and knick-knacks, the countless personal things—trash or treasure—every boy collects.

Posters, too: science fiction, movie stars and monsters, sports pros, photos of surfers, a pretty girl or two. And an immense stack of old MAD magazines, a few of which he picked up and thumbed through without seeing a thing, so restless and nervous were his eyes—moving constantly, “drinking in,” searching, seeking, looking—for
what?

Mystery of mysteries, he had no idea what it was, what it could be, only the necessity and urgency of
finding
it, an ache growing in his chest, his breathing becoming shallow and short.