Embers (73 page)

Russ left his mother in a state of shock. Helen began pacing the room in her stockinged feet, wondering whether there was anything she could or should do at this point. Acting on her first impulse, she ran to the phone and dialed the number of the Byrne mansion. She got an answering machine, which she hadn
'
t expected; like a fool, she hung up.

Who should receive her condolences? Poor little Katie? Obviously not. But Helen didn
'
t know the husband. For that matter, she hardly knew Peaches—and anyway, there was something irreverent about offering one
'
s condolences to someone named Peaches.

Besides, the fact that Peaches had given the message directly to the first person to pick up the phone suggested that the call had been the merest courtesy rather than a social event.

Okay, so that was that. Helen Eve
t
t and Linda Byrne were simply two ships that had passed in the night. It was sad but hardly extraordinary. Helen picked up her ice bag from the floor and lay back down on the sofa. The pacing had made a horrendous headache worse.

Inevitably, her thoughts focused on her conversation with Linda Byrne. Helen regretted not having been able to satisfy the woman
'
s last request. Not that it was Helen
'
s fault, really. After all, she
'
d gone to see Linda Byrne the first chance she got. She
'
d been prepared to accept Katherine into the class. There was nothing more she could have done.

So where
'
s all this damn guilt coming from?

"
Oh, God
...
this hurts,
"
she said, interrupting her own reverie. She remembered that Hank had once had a sinus infection that had leveled him for two or three days—and Hank had been as big, as strong, and as stoic as they came.

Yeah, but this one
'
s lasted all week,
a voice kept prodding.

It was the headache, she decided, that was making her feel such deep remorse; before it, she hadn
'
t felt nearly enough sympathy for Linda Byrne. All that was different now.

She tried to siphon off some of the pain with a low, prolonged sound deep in her throat. It was neither moan nor whimper, but a kind of pleading pant—as if she were begging for mercy. After a moment, the sound came out again.

But this time it wasn
'
t coming from her.

Instantly Helen held her breath, listening. There it was again: a soft pant, with something like a shiver underlying it. Someone crying? But no one else was in the house.

She sat up on the denim-covered sofa, trying to track the source of the sound. It seemed to evolve into another, sharper noise—as if someone were trying to jiggle a locked door.

Helen turned off the light, tiptoed to the big bay window, and peeked through the lace curtain on the side window nearest the front stone steps. The night was inky black: a streetlight had gone out the day before, leaving the house in a big black hole. She thought of flipping on the porch light, but it was obvious that no one was jimmying the lock of her front door. Unsure now whether she
'
d dreamed the whole thing, Helen lay back down on the sofa. And listened.

Again the panting
...
again the jiggling.

She sat back up. Someone was in the house. God in heaven. Someone was in the house.

"
Helen? Dear? Are you home?
"

Ah.
"
In here, Aunt Mary,
"
Helen said, relieved. Of course someone was in the house. When you give your key to a kindly old aunt who lives in the apartment in the back bumpout, you can reasonably expect the aunt, sooner or later, to be in the house.

With soup. Into the room walked Helen
's seventy-three-
year-old relation, a gentle, gray-haired bundle of quirks and good intentions.
"
How
'
re you feeling, dear?
"
the old woman asked, sitting next to Helen and patting her hand with her own veiny, wrinkled one.
"
I brought you something to clear your sinuses. It
'
s on the stove, on low. You want me to bring you a bowl, dear?
"

The soup fumes—aroma seemed too kind a word—were turning the corner just about then.
"
Gee, Aunt Mary, I don
'
t know
...
,
"
Helen said feebly.
"
What
'
s in it?
"

"
This and that. Sauerkraut
...
pigs
'
feet
...
I fiddled with the recipe your Uncle Tadeusz taught me.
"

Tadeusz Grzybylek, a member of
Salem
'
s spirited Polish community, had wooed Helen
'
s spinster aunt late in her life. No kids, but plenty of amazing food, had come out of the union.

Helen smiled wanly.
"
Only a taste. It doesn
'
t have the blood of anything in it, does it?
"

Her aunt gave her a little laughing pinch and said,
"
No, no, you
'
re thinking of
czarnina—
duck
soup. You just lie there, dear. I
'
ll be right back.
"

With a mixture of affection and dread, Helen watched the elderly woman scurry out of the room for a bowl of her brew. Aunt Mary had given up a life of her own to raise Helen after Helen
'
s mother—Aunt Mary
'
s sister—had died; Helen owed her everything. Now that Uncle Tadeusz was gone, it gave Helen great pleasure to give her aunt the back apartment and let her have the run of the house.

Nonetheless, she could do without the soup.

Helen sighed. It came out in a shudder, and that reminded her of the deeply distressing sound of panting that she thought she
'
d heard. The jiggling—okay, that was because Aunt Mary
'
s cataracts made the back-door keyhole hard for her to find. But the sound of panting—that, Helen couldn
'
t explain.

Ironically, the panting could just as easily have been of someone in the throes of passion as someone in the throes of distress. Helen ought to know. In bed with Hank, she used to make the sound regularly. And yet. . . no. This sound had been too full of pain. Something deep inside Helen had responded the way a mother would
....

Becky!
Had something happened to Becky? Helen jumped up, terrified that she
'
d had some kind of premonition. At that instant the phone rang.

It was Becky, calling to ask whether her mother was interested in a set of Liz Claiborne sweats at seventy-five off.

"
Thanks, no, I
'
m all set,
"
said Helen, buckling with relief onto the sofa.
"
And, Becky? Please drive carefully. You know how intense you get when you
'
re yakking with your pals.
"

"
Yes,
Mother,
"
Becky said in an exaggerated way.

Obviously her girlfriends were near the phone: Helen heard giggling. Becky said good-bye and Helen, reassured, was left waiting for her medicine.

Aunt Mary came bearing a galleried brass tray on which a bowl of
kapusniak
sat like a queen
'
s coronet. Helen made herself sit up straight to receive the tray across her lap, then took the round-shaped spoon, part of the old set her aunt had foisted on her when she moved in, and skimmed a bit of clear liquid into it.
"
Here goes nothing,
"
she said with a game smile.

Aunt Mary sat perched on the edge of one of the corduroy chairs and shook her head.
"
You look so pale. I don
'
t know
...
maybe you need more protein. Say what you will about
czarnina,
it
'
s high in that, at least. It would put some color in those cheeks.
"

"
Don
'
t even think about it,
"
said Helen, shuddering. The one time her aunt had made a batch of
czarnina,
a neighbor had called the police.

"
She was overreacting,
"
said Aunt Mary, reading Helen
'
s mind.

Helen grimaced.
"
Well, what do you expect when you throw a quart of blood in a vat of water? It doesn
'
t smell like anything normal.
"

Aunt Mary gave a little tuck to her single long gray braid and said with great dignity,
"
I
'
m glad your uncle Tadeusz isn
'
t here to hear you say that about Polish cuisine. He
'
d be very hurt.
"

And so, obviously, was Aunt Mary. Her pale brown eyes were glazed over in tears and her rather small, once pretty mouth was trembling in distress.

"
I
'
m sorry,
"
Helen said at once, closing her eyes.
"
It
'
s this stupid, stupid headache. I wish it would go away.
"

"
Maybe that
'
s what I should do,
"
her aunt said, pushing herself up from the chair with a sigh. She gave the bowl of soup an appraising look, then shifted her gaze to her suffering niece.
"
Eat it,
"
she said, and then she left.

Helen, feeling honor-bound, finished the serving and then lay back down, closed her eyes, and dreamed of ducks being hunted, their quacks dissolving into panting sounds as hunters with bloodied hands wrung their necks.

She woke with a start at the sound of the front door opening.

"
Mom!
" yelled Becky up the stairs
.
"
It
'
s me! How
'
re you feeling?
"

Helen sat up, groggy and tentative.
"
I
'
m
down
here, Becky. And I
'
m feeling. . . better,
"
she said, surprised and pleased that the headache had retreated, if ever so slightly.

Becky came in—mercifully free of shopping bags—and Helen smiled a greeting.
"
I guess that last decongestant kicked in,
"
she explained.
"
What time is it?
"

"
Eight-thirty. So what
'
s going on?
"
asked Becky, flopping tiredly into one of the corduroy chairs. Obviously she expected her mother to answer
"
Nothin
'
much.
"

But the death of Linda Byrne was uppermost in Helen
'
s mind. She related the call that Russell had taken, then said,
"
I feel unbelievably bad about it.
"

"
Yeah.. . I can see. I
'
m surprised you didn
'
t notice something in the obituaries,
"
Becky added.
"
You always read them.
"

"
Ah, but not this week,
"
Helen realized.
"
It
'
s been so crazy, I
'
ve hardly had time to scan the headlines.
"

She went to the butler
'
s pantry and fished out the week
'
s copies of the
Evening News
from the iron recycle rack, then dumped them in a pile on the claw-footed, round oak table in the center of the kitchen. She pulled the chain on
the
stained-glass lamp above the table, throwing light that was more quaint than bright across the walls and high ceiling of the carefully restored room.