Rumors of Peace (16 page)

W
HEN
I
WENT OVER
the following Saturday, the fireplace was black, the whole room smelled of burned wood. Sitting by the cold grate, Aunt Dorothy was still talking. Her face with its bright mouth was startingly pale in the room's dimness. In emerald green lounging pajamas, her red curls piled high, she was puffing on a cigarette with quick stabs that made her long diamond earrings shake. Quietly smoking and listening, Dr. Hatton with her short hair and plain skirt seemed blotted out. I took my time going by. Aunt Dorothy's voice was lowered, but hard and intense. On her lap she held her ginger ale glass in a clenched grip, as if she didn't mind if it broke in her hand. There seemed something fabulous about her, after all, something larger than life, sitting there so white-faced with the portrait of the matador scowling down at her, and her own eyes shooting fiercely through the curling smoke, not even noticing as I passed.

I found Peggy in Helen Maria's room. She was brushing Rudy on the step of the French windows, which stood open to the warm early afternoon. Helen Maria was working at her desk. Her green eyes looked up.

“Is she still talking?”

I nodded. “And she sounds mad.”

“That's the strain of not drinking. We'll all rejoice when she leaves tomorrow.”

“I feel sorry for her,” Peggy said, tenderly brushing one of Rudy's long ears. “She didn't have a good time.”

“And why not? Because she makes one wish to escape her. That's why you're here in my room.”

“I know. She was more fun when she drank.”

Helen Maria turned around in her swivel chair. “She was never fun, Peggy. She was slaphappy, which you may have found appealing. I did not. I could only think that this nitwit might have been a front-rank painter.” She pointed her pencil at me as I sat down on the step. “She was outstanding. An outstanding student at Pratt Institute. I once had a drawing of hers, just a quick sketch of a boy's head, but masterful—”

“You've still got it,” said Peggy. “I saw it on your desk.”

“That's a lie! I threw it out long ago!”

Peggy was silent.

“Her future was vast. She betrayed it. She collected husbands and lovers and face creams and silly hats and became a drunken bore. Now she's sober and a worse bore. Estelle's about to collapse. Even Rudolph is half demented.”

“She keeps calling him Doris,” Peggy explained.

“Doris.” Helen Maria sighed. “A dog from her golden youth. Everything is from her youth.” She turned back to her work.
“Cependant,
why talk about her, she talks enough about herself.”

“But you've got to give her credit,” Peggy said. “It's hard to stop drinking. That's what Estelle says. She says Aunt Dorothy's a trooper.”

Helen Maria turned a page. “I don't consider her a trooper. I consider her posthumous.”

“Well, she tries to be nice. Like the living room. She didn't
try
to ruin it.”

Helen Maria looked around from her book. “One doesn't need to try, Peggy, when one has degenerated to a tenth-rate talent. I'd like to turn that unspeakable bullfighter to the wall.”

“Did she paint that?” I asked. “That's good!”

“Good! Have you studied the perspective? Have you drunk in the garish flesh tones? Have you seen how she's hidden the hands? Do
you know why she's hidden the hands? Because she can no longer
manage
hands! That's how bad she is.” Compressing her lips, she turned back to her work.

Dr. Hatton could be heard going along the hall to her room, released at last. Peggy took a pack of cards from the pocket of her shorts. We began playing a whispered game of blackjack.

The afternoon unfolded to a great hush, as if the smallest carrying sound might undo Aunt Dorothy's plans to leave. From Mr. Hatton's workshop below came an infrequent dim clunk. Now and then Helen Maria turned a page. Rudy lay like a dropped shoe. Slowly the sunlight deepened, throwing a gold wash across the cards.

I heard Helen Maria's chair squeak suddenly around. The door had opened to a crack. Aunt Dorothy's face peered in. “Hello, hello,” she sang out, twisting through with her glass, not looking at all fierce now, but warmly sociable, completely at ease. Ice cubes clinked as she crossed the room. She held her glass cozily, rocking it gently, and plumped herself down in a chair as streaks of spilled liquid soaked into her emerald green bosom. Smiling all around, she clamped the glass between her knees and reached over to help herself to a pack of Fleetwoods on the desk. Helen Maria had risen. She stood stiffly by her chair, watching nervously as her aunt began a long, fumbling process of lighting up, twisting her face into a hard-breathing knot of absorption.

“You know, sweeties,” she said, loud and slurred, finally getting the match blown out, “your mother's an angel. And I mean that. Your mother's an angel, putting up with all my
miserere,
and I've given out no little
miserere,
you don't have to tell me—don't even tell me. Here's a big fat apology for boring everybody to death.” She lifted the glass with a slosh and drank. Peggy and I moved slowly inside and stood together near the wall.

“I was doing fine till Roger cracked,” she said, lowering the glass. “I was doing great. We both were. What you wouldn't know, it's a lot easier if your sweetie's off it too.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette, letting the smoke roll thickly out her nostrils. “But I should've known he'd crack. All right, so what? Estelle says Dorothy, you can do it on your own, yes Dorothy, you can! you just keep looking at those five solid months behind you!” She slid a forefinger slowly around the
rim of her glass. “Your mother's an angel, the only thing is, she doesn't know anything.” She gave her head a sudden shake. “But I don't want to talk about me, I want
you
to talk—”

“I think we should get Estelle,” Helen Maria said in a small voice.

“Nonsense, let her nap. I wore her out. Wore everybody out. Jack's hiding, you don't have to tell me. All right, who cares? I mean that, it's all right, sit down and be comfy. Don't look so sepulchral. Don't take it so bloody serious.” She finished her drink and set the glass unsteadily on the floor.

Helen Maria seated herself on the edge of her swivel chair. She looked nervous, disapproving, yet her voice had a strange catch in it. “Aunt Dorothy, if that's your first drink, it's not fatal. One slip doesn't—”

“My fourth, sweetie. And don't lecture. I feel good, what's wrong with that? Sit down, you two!” She scribbled her cigarette at Peggy and me. We sat quickly on the floor.

“Now I want to hear everything, I mean that. God, just look at you, Helen Maria, so pretty and grown-up. And Peggy! So slim and darling. You're Hatton girls all right, I mean that for a fact, heartbreakers, it's in the genes. Who's your little friend with the hair?” She looked at me with warm, benevolent eyes. “What is it, sweetie, green? My God, it really is. Green hair . . . or is it just me?” And she gave a deep, rich laugh.

“No,” I answered shyly. “That's what the Ferry Street drunks think too, but it's really green.”

As soon as I spoke, I was stricken. Peggy looked horrified. Helen Maria took over swiftly.

“This is our friend, Suse, whom I believe you met the day of your arrival. The green you refer to is the result of swimming-pool chlorination.”

Aunt Dorothy was still laughing, but silently, her fingers slowly rubbing her eyelids. Then she looked down at her lap with a sigh.

She looked old in the afternoon light. I could see that her red hair was tinted, dry and brittle-looking. Under the eyes hung soft, puffy bags. Around the mouth were lines that branched down to the jaw in spidery cracks. A white flake of cigarette paper was stuck to her lower
lip. The earrings sent a soft spray of pink and blue specks across her powdered cheek, just where the mouth turned up faintly, ruefully, with its little tatter of paper stuck to the lip.

The earrings flashed. “You know what you've got, sweetie?” she said to Helen Maria. “Flair. That lilac dress is perfection, most redheads wouldn't dare, but you would, and I would. That's flair. You got that from me, not them, God knows. Oh they're darlings, but windbreakers,
wind
breakers!”

“Our parents are of a practical turn,” said Helen Maria coldly.

“Oh I know, God love them,” she smiled, mashing out her cigarette in the ashtray on her lap and with fumbling concentration lighting another. “You'll be one of the great beauties of your generation, sweetie, and Peggy too, it's all in the genes, you're lucky or you're not. Hatton women are lucky. Marvelous genes.
Thank
your genes. Thank you, thank you, I thank thee, God, for all shimmering things, for skies of firecolor coal . . . firecoaler color . . . oh hell, Hopkins anyway, who's talking about poetry, we're talking about you and Peggy, and I want to hear everything, everything. Peggy, tell me everything. . . .”

“Well. I'm in the eighth grade now. I'm getting good grades. And I'm Towel Supervisor in gym class.”

“That's wonderful, Peggy. And you went on a diet, was it hard?”

“Not too. I wanted to look good.”

“I was a little plump at your age, then the pounds just fell away like magic. I just kept getting prettier and prettier. A painter stopped me on the street once—”

“I know,” Peggy murmured.

“I must have been, oh, fifteen, sixteen—”

“Sixteen.”

“There were tears in his eyes. A face—”

“In a thousand.”

“A face in a thousand. That's what he said.” There was a faraway look in her eyes, which were a golden color. “You'll get used to it, people stopping you. Oh God, and in this town, crawling with soldiers—” A flush broke beneath the powder; the gold eyes burned. “Don't ever expect a minute to yourselves, can't even walk down the street—that's
the price we pay!” She laughed, moving the ashtray around in her lap; then her eye caught the amber holder on the desk. “Ah, the old holder.” She beamed.

“I use it on occasion,” said Helen Maria.

“You shouldn't at all, sweetie, not yet. You're too young.”

“I am a graduate student at the university.”

Her aunt nodded, smiling at the amber gleam. “You know, I used that crazy thing in my heyday, you can't imagine how
outré
I felt, running around with my sophisticated holder . . . ah, God, those days were wonderful, and you've got it all before you. . . .”

“I don't intend to have a heyday.”

“Good gracious, sweetie, I should hope you will—with
those
looks? You're on top of the world, and I mean that, oh Christ do I mean that, this crud, you call it skin? I don't know what the hell it is!” Her fingers were digging deep into the folds of her face, to the bone. Then the hand returned with a plop to her lap. From between the ring-laden fingers rose a thick plume of smoke which made her eyes water. “I should've stayed in Mexico. All those damn trains, all those damn duffel bags, couldn't even move. Poor old broken-down Roger. Get old, you get old men. Can't keep up, nothing left, not a spark in bed. . . .”

My face broke into flame. I had never heard anyone speak this way, actually admitting they had experienced sex, inviting you to envision them in its dark clutch. Helen Maria's eyes dropped. Peggy's head was lowered.

But Aunt Dorothy was continuing along some more innocent track now. “. . . Evenings we used to take canoes out on the lake, a whole group of us . . . boys and girls . . . girls wore long dresses then, not like now . . . long, white, pretty dresses . . . I never wore a stitch underneath, my body was smooth as glass . . . I always slept naked. . . .”

Just cooling, my face began to burn again. Peggy glanced worriedly at her aunt.

“I used to lie there, and I'd cry . . . I don't know why, for the pleasure of it . . . I was all smooth and fresh, like a rose. . . .” She sat gazing at Helen Maria, her golden eyes soft. Slowly, awkwardly setting her ashtray aside, she got to her feet and wobbled over to her. Gently she tried to lift her niece's rigid chin.

“Exquisite,” she murmured. “Exquisite. . . .”

And turning carefully, as if afraid of falling, but with intent, luminous eyes, she crossed over to us.

“And Peggy, a more flamboyant type . . . nobody has eyes like that. Ocean pools . . . men will drown in them. . . .”

I saw Peggy's face twitch with embarrassment. But her eyes were wide as she waited for more.

Aunt Dorothy tried to touch the nose with her finger, but couldn't get it in focus. “A retroussé nose is a charming, charming feature. Thank your genes, Peggy, thank your genes. . . .”

Finally, she turned to me. “You may do someday. . . .” She came wobbling closer. I could smell sweet, pungent perfume in waves. “Get rid of the hair . . . but first-rate bone structure . . . bone structure is very important . . . yes, this is first-rate bone structure. . . .”

I felt like a horse at auction, yet there was nothing cold in the way she spoke. In fact she seemed to be speaking to each of us from some passionate depth, some fierce burning center, and I knew now what Peggy had meant when she said her aunt seemed to “eat her up.” The eyes were eating the flesh from my bones.

“You don't know what it's like yet,” she said, turning, swaying a little. “None of you, you don't know what it's like, men wanting you . . . oh, God, they want you, they want you, your breasts, your—”

“I must protest, Aunt Dorothy!” said Helen Maria, standing up.

“Oh shut up, sweetie, relax . . . that's your problem.” She took a few uneven steps. “Enjoy your youth, for God's sake, it won't last . . . I mean that, here's somebody who knows. . . . All right, all right, what am I crabbing about? I've had a good long haul, haven't I?”