Everything and More (18 page)

It took a number of years for their union to be blessed. Over the drawing-room fireplace hung a Danilova portrait of Gertrude, her homely face radiant as she gazed down on the pink-and-white infant in her arms. Her maternal delight proved short-term, for the genes were there. Early on, Althea showed the Coyne arrogance mingled with Gertrude’s own lamentable timidity. Harry adored the child, who had an attenuated, feminine version of his fair good looks.

Gertrude blocked her jealousy as unflaggingly as she denied to herself the possible meaning of certain distant sounds that occurred during Harry’s infrequent, drink-induced bouts of derangement. Her love had deepened to worship. And like many adoring wives, she formed a membrane of self-deception that thickened, thus permitting the marriage to flourish.

Because of this shadowy, hidden area, neither parent chose to gainsay
Althea. They granted her a remarkable amount of freedom, acquiescing to her whims. They gave in to her about attending the public high school, they permitted her friendship with this impoverished little Wace girl.

*   *   *

The rear of Belvedere was banded with two levels of broad porch. The upper, Althea explained to Roy, was used only for dinner; lunch was served on the lower veranda, which was actually part of the gardens. The mist had totally burned away, and the sun blazed down, but here, under trellised vines, the murmurous green shade was pleasant. A manservant named Luther, who had strands of mouse-colored hair combed across his bumpy head and wore a loose white linen jacket, maneuvered in and out through the French doors with grapefruit halves followed by cold lamb, creamed peas, and little new potatoes.

Mrs. Cunningham sat at one end of the table, Mr. Cunningham at the other. Althea and Roy, in their shorts, side by side, faced toward the golf course. “It’s only six holes,” deprecated Mr. Cunningham. Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham recounted their mornings. He had been in the kennels. “You’ll have to let me take you through this afternoon, Roy,” he said with amiable warmth. “Althea, did I tell you Silent Night had her litter?” Mrs. Cunningham had worked with orchids in her greenhouse, which she did not offer to show.

Roy scarcely knew what she ate. She lifted heavy sterling cutlery, the nerves of her fingers tingling with her effort to avoid a hideous gaffe. Yet despite her heebie-jeebies, Belvedere touched her imagination and she could not control her surreptitious glances at its proprietors.

Mrs. Cunningham, dowdy, timid of manner, monstrously rich—a Coyne! Mr. Cunningham, charming and easy. If he had, indeed, married for money, it was not apparent. He smiled often at his wife, and when he spoke to her, there was affection in his voice. Conversing with him, she gazed into his dark glasses, her lipstickless mouth twisting with enthusiasm.

Althea spoke only to her father.

The Cunningham family, Roy reflected, was like three telephone poles, the two farthest apart—Mrs. Cunningham and Althea—connected only through Mr. Cunningham. Still, mothers and daughters go through brittle times, and this was a mild eccentricity.

Mr. Cunningham said to his wife, “Did these delicious peas come from your garden, Mutty?”

“Of course, Ducky.”

“Come on, Roy,” Althea said in a shaking voice.

The Cunninghams glanced at one another. Mr. Cunningham said, “Althea.”

“We’re
finished,
Daddy.”

“But Mother and I aren’t. And I’m sure Roy is looking forward to dessert.”

At this lightly spoken paternal reproof, Althea looked desolate, ostracized, frightened.

Luther served them crystal bowls of sliced fresh peaches, fruit also nurtured in Belvedere soil. Althea watched impatiently as Roy spooned up the last sweet, juicy slice. “May-we-be-excused?” she blurted.

Again the parents glanced at each other. Mr. Cunningham said, “Sure thing, Toots. Roy, you make sure you have a good time.”

Roy thanked her host and hostess, repeating “scrumptious” several times, then barged inside the French windows, where Althea waited.

Althea walked several steps ahead, leading the way through a paneled hall as high and large as the lobby of the Fox Beverly, up a broad staircase, along a gallery-corridor whose aromatic odors of floor wax could not drown out the faint must from the tapestries of hunting scenes. She opened a door and when they were both inside pressed the bolt. In her whole life Roy had never locked the door of a room.

They were in the ultimate girl’s bedroom. A fireplace, a big bay window with a curve of pillowed window seats, wallpaper of the same charming blue forget-me-not pattern as the chintz bedspread, curtains, and upholstery. A glass-fronted cabinet displayed a collection of demure china and crystal horses. A chaise longue waited temptingly in the alcove shelved with books and record albums.

Althea, who still had not spoken, took out the Firelli-conducted recording of the final movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth, stacking the four records on the big Magnavox. The mournful chords added to Roy’s uneasiness. When she was no longer able to bear the turgid atmosphere, she murmured below the music, “They don’t seem such monsters.”

“What did you expect?” Althea retorted. “Fangs?”

“I mean, a lot of people fight with their mothers, I do myself at times. It’s not exactly the collapse of the Allied armed forces.”

“Is that your considered opinion?” Althea asked.

“All I have to say is that for a parent hater, you’re a real Daddy’s girl.”

The next record dropped. “You don’t understand one single thing about us,” Althea said, expressionless.

“Most girls would die for a room like this.”

“That just proves what morons most girls are.” Althea blew her nose, a muffled, unhappy sound.

Sympathy clogged Roy’s own sinuses. “Althea,” she admitted, “I
did
feel sort of eerie at lunch, but then again, I’ve never eaten a meal served by a butler. Is it really so infested around here? I mean, your parents seemed very close. They aren’t getting a divorce, are they?”

“A divorce? Don’t be such a child, Roy. What could be more
ordinary
than a divorce?”

NolaBee often stated with great pride that there had never been a broken marriage among any of her wide-flung connections. “Don’t blame me for not understanding the problems of the feelthy rich,” Roy said, “but life here can’t be any weirder than in my home, can it?”

Althea knew a few details of poor Marylin’s romance, and though Roy had disclosed nothing about the abortion, maybe Althea guessed. “Consider this,” Althea replied with odious acidity. “If all were perfection at Belvedere, do you imagine I’d have my own way about going to a public school, spending my days every which way I want?”

“Never thought of that,” Roy said, her eyes round. “Can’t I help?”

“The perfect definition of solipsism. Roy Wace believing she can alter the inescapable.” Althea sat on the window seat gazing out.

When Althea was in this kind of a snit, any remark, however innocuous or placatory, was a flung gauntlet.

Without further conversation they listened to the dreary movement which, Althea told Roy, was composed in a presentiment of death.

Afterward they went down to the tennis court. Roy had learned to play only last semester at Beverly, while Althea’s years of private lessons had endowed her with a crushing forehand and a near-professional serve, both of which she used with calculated determination. It wasn’t a game, it was a rout.

They ate dinner alone in the breakfast room.

To Roy it seemed weeks before M’liss came up to say she would drive her home. Althea elected not to accompany them. At the side door she said in a low, swift voice, “It’s been hideous, hasn’t it?”

“Not really.” Roy’s voice cracked. “Oh, Althea, you were so
mean.”

“It’s this ghastly place, Roy, it’s nothing to do with you.”

“Positively?”

“You’re my best friend. You always will be.”

“Honestly?”

“All my life.”

Roy opened the door of the gray Chevy feeling happier than she had all day.

*   *   *

That night Roy lay awake a long time. NolaBee was still riveting wing assemblies at Hughes. Marylin’s quiet breathing sounded on the other side of the wardrobe: all at once she gave a muffled cry that seemed to hang in the stuffy air of the apartment.

“Marylin,” Roy whispered.

The bewildered sobbing continued. Since Linc’s death, Marylin often cried in her sleep. Roy padded across the dark room to touch her sleeping sister’s shoulder.

The piteous little sounds quieted, but Roy stood in the darkness, her hand poised compassionately for several minutes before she returned to bed.

Were there really morbid disorders behind Belvedere’s oleandertangled box-hedge? Wasn’t it possible that Althea, embarrassed about hiding the truth, had heaped on insinuations of dark, dire secrets to cover up her lies?

Roy squeezed her eyes shut until she saw red dashes. She despised herself for thinking this way, yet she couldn’t stop questioning the mysteries surrounding Althea’s relationship to her parents.

She was still puzzling things through a hour later when NolaBee unlocked the door. She tiptoed around, undressing, washing, then came over to Roy’s bed. Roy could smell the staleness of work, the cigarette smoke, on her mother.

“Roy, you ’wake?”

“Yes.” Roy held open the blanket. “Come on in.”

NolaBee snuggled down on the cot, as she often did with Marylin, pulling the covers over her, whispering, “Well, how was it at the Cunningham’s? What did you do over there? Did you meet them, Althea’s parents? What time did M’liss bring you home? What did you have for dinner? Did you have a nice time?”

“They live north of Sunset in a huge, huge mansion that makes the Fernauld’s place look pipsqueak.”

“I reckoned they were very well-fixed. Go on, hon, tell me.”

Roy whispered enthusiastically about the forty-three rooms, the tennis court, the swimming pool with its own house, the six-hole golf course, the vast shady porch where they’d lunched—“It wasn’t truffles under glass or caviar, like you’d expect, just plain food.” She described Althea’s perfect room, adding with enthralled awe, “I guess you’d call it a
suite.”

“Her folks sound right nice. Why do you figure Althea didn’t want you to meet them?”

Roy’s eyes closed. She had always yearned to have such a nightwhispered conversation, the kind Marylin and her mother shared, but the price for such closeness was too steep. Talking about Althea’s veiled hints regarding her parents—or her own reservations—would be exposing her friend.

“Oh, a lot of kids like to keep stuff to themselves. Mama, I’m dead tired.”

“Good night, curly-top, sleep tight,” NolaBee said, kissing her forehead, and climbing out of the cot.

  
16
  

Althea, too, was awake.

She lay on her back, the position in which she normally fell asleep, but her muscles were taut and her face hot as the events of the day whirled in her mind. This morning, when Mrs. Wace had forced the issue that Roy visit Belvedere, Althea had fought off nausea. It was that old, bitter sickness. Would she always experience this furious helplessness with people?

As a small child at Belvedere, she had found life bearable, even happy sometimes. A governess and tutors had given her lessons until she was eleven; then she had started Westlake School for Girls. Sensitive and timid, entering school late, she was a natural patsy. When the other girls discovered she was part of the Coyne family, they immediately nicknamed her “Your Highness.” Althea, on the surface of her mind, understood that they picked on her because her wealth made her different, yet behind conscious thought hovered the question: could her schoolmates see through her flesh to that unmentionable shame? Did they have some clue, undetectable by her, yet visible to their eyes, that she was a pariah?

She had battled until her parents reluctantly allowed her to transfer
to Beverly High. She had made her first friend. The hours she spent with Roy at the Waces’ funny little apartment were the happiest of her life. Losing Roy was more than she could bear, so she had never risked inviting her to Belvedere. Yet miraculously, Roy’s brown eyes had still shone with affection even after seeing the place and hearing her mother’s patronym. This fidelity, for some odd reason, made Althea think less of Roy. And possibly Althea’s feelings of superiority over her friend had brought about that one dangerous moment during the Tchaikovsky album when she had been tempted to blurt out the deep, heinous truth about herself.